Grab the Nearest Book February 18, 2008
Posted by Evil Bender in Blogging, Science.trackback
Dan at Fitness for the Occasion tagged me with a cool meme:
The rules are very straightforward and go as follows:
- Grab the nearest book (that is at least 123 pages long).
- Open to p. 123.
- Go down to the 5th sentence.
- Type in the following 3 sentences.
- Tag five people.
I’m sitting next to my bookshelf, so dozens of books were equally close. I grabbed one of my favorites, Carl Sagan’s The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark. The results:
Burning witches is a feature of Western civilization that has, with occasional political exceptions, declined since the sixteenth century. In the last judicial execution of witches in England, a woman and her nine-year-old daughter were hanged. Their crime was raising a rain storm by taking their stockings off.
Supernatural thinking at work. I occasionally express my irritation at defenders of “Western culture” in part because of the sloppy, ethnocentric thinking that is often relied upon by its self-appointed defenders, but largely because of things like witch burnings: Western history is as much a history of attacks on rationalism as it is a defense of it. The scientific method remains our greatest defense against the dangers of witch burnings and other attacks on reason.
Now, for tagging: The Lizard Queen, Rev BigDumbChimp, luaphacim, the Bronze Dog and Austin Atheist.
Oh, cool. I saw this one a few days ago over at Barefoot Bum’s place, but he didn’t tag anyone specifically, and I was sitting next to a bunch of pulp I had thrown in a box to make room on the shelf. I’ll have a post up later tonight.
Still calling me Austin Atheist, are you?
Bob–
Hehe. Sorry! Old habits are hard to break, I guess. I’ll each out for that in the future.
Not a problem. Each ya later! Heh.
“On the palate, dynamic fruit, malt, light caramel, and hops all show through to a dry hoppy finish. A toasty, biscuity grain flavor lingers. A distinctive beer – no wonder it’s so widely copied.”
From Garret Oliver’s “The Brewmaster’s Table.” I’m at work and this was in my briefcase under my desk. The passage cited is about Fuller’s ESB in the section “British Pale Ales and India Pale Ales.”