Book Meme
From artaxastra
1. Grab the nearest book.
2. Open the book to page 123.
3. Find the fifth sentence.
4. Post the text of the next 4-7 sentences on your LJ along with these instructions.
5. Don't you dare dig for that "cool" or "intellectual" book in your closet! I know you were thinking about it! Just pick up whatever is closest (unless it's too troublesome to reach and is really heavy. Then go back to step 1).
"Killed?" He almost whispered the word.
"In Vietnam!" I yelled. "On the goddamn television!"
"Oh . . . yes . . . yes," he said. "This terrible war. When will it end?"
"Tell me," I said quietly. "What do you want?"
~~~
Dr. Jackson explained his position in a book called A Manual of Etherization, which he published in 1861, fifteen years after the discovery. He didn't merely give his side of the story, he gave his view of the world and his place in it, by choosing to quote at length a letter he had written on the subject of the controversy to Baron Alexander von Humboldt, a German toasted as the "king of science" in his day.
"The circumstances were as follows," Jackson wrote to Humboldt, as he proceeded to explain that he had first etherized himself as far back as 1842, after accidentally inhaling chlorine gas. Chlorine gas is very harsh.
~~~
To indulge in such atavistic nonsense as belief in miracles and mysteries was to live like an ignorant savage in an age of science and knowledge. When a reporter asked him how Mollie could manage to deceive the learned clergymen who supported her cause, Hammond immediately retorted, "Oh, that's nothing. Clergymen are the most gullible men in the world!"
In a book debunking Spiritualism published in 1871, Hammond had laid out his philosophy--the worldview he was trying so hard to get across to the ignorant masses in 1878 by using the case of Mollie Fancher: "[Man] has learned to doubt," he wrote in The Physics and Physiology of Spiritualism, "and, therefore, to reason better; he makes experiments, collects facts, does not begin to theorize until his data are sufficient, and then is careful that his theories do not extend beyond the foundation of certainty, or at least of probability, upon which he builds." That foundation was seriously undercut by belief in miraculous creatures like Mollie Fancher, creatures who could live without sustenance and see through walls and into sealed envelopes.
Good thing I hadn't put up my books from when I made my list or you'd be reading about dolls. ;)
1. Grab the nearest book.
2. Open the book to page 123.
3. Find the fifth sentence.
4. Post the text of the next 4-7 sentences on your LJ along with these instructions.
5. Don't you dare dig for that "cool" or "intellectual" book in your closet! I know you were thinking about it! Just pick up whatever is closest (unless it's too troublesome to reach and is really heavy. Then go back to step 1).
"Killed?" He almost whispered the word.
"In Vietnam!" I yelled. "On the goddamn television!"
"Oh . . . yes . . . yes," he said. "This terrible war. When will it end?"
"Tell me," I said quietly. "What do you want?"
~~~
Dr. Jackson explained his position in a book called A Manual of Etherization, which he published in 1861, fifteen years after the discovery. He didn't merely give his side of the story, he gave his view of the world and his place in it, by choosing to quote at length a letter he had written on the subject of the controversy to Baron Alexander von Humboldt, a German toasted as the "king of science" in his day.
"The circumstances were as follows," Jackson wrote to Humboldt, as he proceeded to explain that he had first etherized himself as far back as 1842, after accidentally inhaling chlorine gas. Chlorine gas is very harsh.
~~~
To indulge in such atavistic nonsense as belief in miracles and mysteries was to live like an ignorant savage in an age of science and knowledge. When a reporter asked him how Mollie could manage to deceive the learned clergymen who supported her cause, Hammond immediately retorted, "Oh, that's nothing. Clergymen are the most gullible men in the world!"
In a book debunking Spiritualism published in 1871, Hammond had laid out his philosophy--the worldview he was trying so hard to get across to the ignorant masses in 1878 by using the case of Mollie Fancher: "[Man] has learned to doubt," he wrote in The Physics and Physiology of Spiritualism, "and, therefore, to reason better; he makes experiments, collects facts, does not begin to theorize until his data are sufficient, and then is careful that his theories do not extend beyond the foundation of certainty, or at least of probability, upon which he builds." That foundation was seriously undercut by belief in miraculous creatures like Mollie Fancher, creatures who could live without sustenance and see through walls and into sealed envelopes.
Good thing I hadn't put up my books from when I made my list or you'd be reading about dolls. ;)