Wednesday, February 27, 2008

Nearest Book Thread

T&A of the inked forearms and biceps has tagged me for another thread. This one is called "the Nearest Book".

Here are the rules:
1. Pick up the nearest book with more than 123 pages.
2. Go to page 123 in the book.
3. Find the first 5 sentences.
4. Post the NEXT 3 sentences.
5. Tag 5 people.

I was disappointed that the NIV Student Bible I had sitting on the cabinet next to me had been shoved out of the way.

If it HAD been the book nearest me the 3 sentences would have been
Leviticus 18:3-4
3 You must not do as they do in Egypt, where you used to live, and you must not do as they do in the land of Cannan, where I am bringing you. Do not follow their practices. 4 You must obey my laws and be careful to follow my decrees.


Not a lot of grey area there- stone naughty children, don't suffer a witch to live and selling your daughter as a sex slave is acceptable. Check. Thanks god. Good to know.

I was also hoping it might have been a favorite of mine Beauty: A Retelling of the Story of Beauty & the Beast by Robin McKinley.

If that one had been the book nearest me the 3 sentences would have been
Breakfast was laid on the table by the fire, which was burning once again. I bounced joyfully out of bed. Every morning in the city my maid had brought me toast and chocolate: How did they know?

Toast with Nutella or hot buttered toast with hot chocolate... either way mmmmmmmmm. :D

On the other hand I was really hoping it would be Secret Fire by Johanna Lindsey.
He too had forgotten that he was still grasping her leg, which had been a purely impulsive hold, unnecessary to detain her. He took his arm away, but did not immediately remove his hand, letting the fingers trail up her thigh as she put her foot down. He heard her sharp intake of breath at the deliberate liberty, but didn't regret it in the least, even when she swung around to glare furiously at him.

All three of those books were in a stack, but not as close as the book given to me by our very own Thump Thump Eyes. A controversial book by Philip Pullman that the fundies have been flipping over because it was written by an ...*whispers* atheist...!!!!!!!

OH NO!!! THE ATHEISTS ARE WRITING CHILDREN'S BOOKS NOW!!!! ARMAGEDDON!! ARMAGEDDON!!!! Not only that but godless Hollywood had the temerity to make a movie out of it: The Golden Compass. Where...if the fundies are to be believed... children kill God the Father Almighty, Creator of Heaven and Earth! *GASP*

There was a light in the parley room window. It was too high to look through, but she could hear a low rumble of voices inside. So she walked up to the door and knocked on it firmly five times.

I would love to know what book is closest to
Johnny
Richard
Protium (Here's hoping it's a technical manual!!!!)
Sean
OzAtheist

10 comments:

SouthLoopScot said...

Excellent! By the way that new tattoo is on my right forearm, not on either of my biceps. Thanks for the nice plug!

Fiery said...

so noted! :)

Richard said...

Boy, that is a neat Tag!

Right now, adherence to the rules takes me to a book in my office's neat piles of confusion. a little while ago I looked in it briefly (for 'anagenesis') to contribute to the Evolution thread on Fiery's blog!

The result is:
"Perhaps these are the smallest packages with enough DNA to program metabolism and enough enzymes and other cellular equipment to carry out the activities necessary for a cell to sustain itself and reproduce. Most bacteria are one to 10 µm in diameter, about 10 times larger than the Mycoplasma's at 10 to 100 µm in diameter eukaryotic cells are typically 10 times larger than bacteria.

Metabolic requirements also impose upper limits on the size that is practical for a single cell.
"

This is from "Biology" 2nd ed., by Campbell. It is the text I chose for my final year, high school Biology students; it is actually a first year university text. Over the years I learned that my students referred to it repeatedly while at university —even those taking Arts programs.

Having looked about 20 biology texts. It was by far the best for rational explanations and excellent illustrations.

Right beside Campbell's text another book has this on page 123, starting at sentence six:
" Metaphysically there is only one universe. This means that everything in reality is interconnected. Every entity is related in some way to the others; each somehow affects and is affected by the others. Nothing is a completely isolated fact, without causes or effects; no aspect of the total can exist ultimately, apart from the total. Knowledge, therefore, which seeks to grasp reality, must also be total; its elements must be interconnected to form a unified whole reflecting the whole, which is the universe."

Yes, I gave a whole paragraph rather than just three sentences. It comes from Chapter 4 "Objectivity: knowledge as contextual", of Objectivism: the Philosophy of Ayn Rand by Leonard Peikoff.

to explain the paragraph, briefly, Peikoff is pointing out that all things in the universe are related to one another in some way. Stars that are trillions of light-years away from us, have the contest of being trillions of light-years away from us. They therefore have that specific relationship with us. That too, is our context in relation to distant stars. Furthermore, any light that reaches us from those stars is a part of that context.

The moon affects the oceans with its gravity.

Changes in the molecules of your retina indicate the presence of these very words to your nervous system and to your mind.

You sit before your monitor, not behind it.

The word "it" in the last sentence has a contextual position that relates it to the antecedent word "monitor".

If I was to say, "HIV is spreading rapidly across America, and soon all Americans will be infected." A rational person could use context to grasp that HIV is a biological organism. With a little knowledge he would know that rapidly multiplying biological organisms grow according to what is known as a Sigmoid or S-Curve. It starts out slow, at the bottom, but the organism plotted then multiplies rapidly, until reaching some sort of environmental resistance, that slows population growth, and the top of the S is reached. The population numbers 'level out'. All organisms do this, especially when they invade a new resource, which in this case would be the human hosts of HIV. it is a major dropping of context to suggest that HIV will continue its rapid growth phase unchecked. Thus the initial argument that America will be overrun with HIV is absurd. Unfortunately, few laypeople understand such aspects of thinking and readily believe such nonsense. And so, Al Gore wins on Environmentalism, priests win over their sheep, and so on. Reason is not only important in discovering ways to live, but it also helps protect us from danger and charlatans.

Proper use of context is one of several aspects of reasoning, that do not fall under the term Logic. illogical, but what we really mean is irrational.

Richard said...

Darn. I had intended to delete "illogical, but what we really mean is irrational." but must have nudged the pointer up at the last moment.

'scuse me.

Reg Golb said...

"There was a light in the parley room window. It was too high to look through, but she could hear a low rumble of voices inside. So she walked up to the door and knocked on it firmly five times."

Interesting how an atheist could hear something "low rumble of voices" and instictively know that information MUST come from intelligence.


My book happens to be the APA Publication Manual 5th Ed.

on 2 trials ... on the ramaining 18 trials
4 of the 40 stimulus words
in 7 blocks ... in 12 blocks

Anonymous said...

Thanks for the tag, but as you've seen I'd already done it, and used the same book!
Interestingly your sentences are different from mine?

Have you got all three books in the His Dark Materials trilogy?
Whilst some of the religious community had a problem with The Golden Compass (Northern Lights), wait till they read the other two books!

Fiery said...

hi Richard!! :)

Thanks for playing along! And an awesome tip for a biology book.

And this, "illogical, but what we really mean is irrational. is such an interesting thought! Such a shame it was a cast-off flotsam at the end.

Fiery said...

Hey Oz!!! I noticed ex post facto (Oooohhhh!! That is a good one!!!) and commented with an "oops" on your blog. lol

Two minds, thinking alike. Be afraid OzA. Be very afraid. For once you align with Fiery... there is no turning back. MWAAAHAHAHAHA!

Fiery said...

Fiery's book quote, ""There was a light in the parley room window. It was too high to look through, but she could hear a low rumble of voices inside. So she walked up to the door and knocked on it firmly five times."

Reg golb said, "Interesting how an atheist could hear something "low rumble of voices" and instictively know that information MUST come from intelligence.

Interesting how a fundy would assume that inside of a structure behind a door the source of the "low rumble of voices" would come from a nonintelligent source.

Richard said...

"illogical, but what we really mean is irrational."

Quoting Rand, "Logic is the art of non-contradictory identification."

Reason includes logic as a subset. Rand identifies Reason as, "the faculty that identifies and integrates the material provided by man's senses."

Logic does not specifically identify the material of the senses, and it certainly does not integrate it. Logic can have a role to play in those things, when conscious and deliberate steps are required.

When observing a cat, an orchid, a dog, a rose, a mouse, bush, and a spoon, we do not turn to logic to identify what is different. We examine their essential characteristics and observe that although all eight are existents, (a fundamental integration, but not an essential here) the spoon does not share the quality of being alive. The spoon is differentiated from the rest because it is not alive.

That they are all existents is the *Common* Conceptual Denominator (CCD) that ties them together. But what kind of existents are they? Now we move to the next level, and we see that all, but one, are living. The spoon is non-living, and essentially different from the rest.

Among the remaining existents, the CCD is "living", and with that categorization properly identified as an essential part of their Identity we can now distinguish them from one another, We naturally observe that the mobility of the animals (and many other features) differentiates them from the living plants.

All knowledge, properly held, is grouped in this hierarchical fashion. If the idea of something is included in the improper CCD, (the spoon is living) then further thinking will not provide reliable results. For example, existents all have some form of identity, which means boundaries, actions, attributes and relationships of a specific kind for God.. If we consider that God is held to be everywhere and in everything how can he have identity? He is an indefinite, floating 'anything'? Nothing, not even God, can exist as an amorphous 'object' with no specific location or attributes.

Any attempt to argue for the existence of such a Being, is a betrayal of reality and thought. It is not a matter of logic, so much as Reason denied.