Saturday, April 26, 2008

Meme from Elaine

Elaine Fine tagged me with the following meme:

1. Pick up the nearest book.
2. Open to page 123.
3. Find the fifth sentence.
4. Post the next three sentences.
5. Tag five people, and acknowledge who tagged you.

I waited to be home from work, where you'd be reading a few tasty lines from Head-First Java or worse. Instead, I give you this:

The common subject of these disparate assessments is Cesare Lombroso's theory of l'uomo delinquente--the criminal man--probably the most influential doctrine ever to emerge from the anthropometric tradition. Lombroso, an Italian physician, described the insight that led to his theory of innate criminality and to the profession he established--criminal anthropology. He had, in 1870, been trying to discover anatomical differences between criminals and insane men "without succeeding very well."

From The Mismeasure of Man, by Stephen Jay Gould. The book immediately under it was The Rest is Noise, but I resisted. The book under that? Simon Hopkinson's Roast Chicken and Other Stories.

Matthew, David, Joshua, Patrick, and Carrie, you're it if you'd like to play.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Let's see; the fifth sentence on page 123 of the first book on my desk is:

"Hans Kuhn, in the glossary to his corrected version of Gustav Neckel's edition of the Edda (1968: 147), translates myrcvidr as dunkelwald [...] auch name, u. von diesem schwer abzugrenzen, 'dark forest [...] also a name, and hard to distinguish from the latter.'"

The next three sentences take us over on to the next page. Hmm, and I was about to write a review describing this book as captivating to read.

Lisa Hirsch said...

Heheheh, did you also post that on your blog?

Unknown said...

I tagged you, too, Lisa, before I saw Elaine's tag. This post fulfills your sacred blogligation.

Lisa Hirsch said...

Whew!