Grab the nearest book~

In blogland there are memes-- fun, but a little like a chain email. Fun is relative, and I hesitate to impose it on others who experience fun differently.

But this, from Josie, is easy, interesting, and-- for me, anyway-- fun!

Rules:  

1. Grab the nearest book of 123 pages or more.  
2. Open it to page 123.  
3. Find the first 5 sentences and write them down.  
4. Then invite 5 friends to do the same.

I just finished reading Susan Wicklund's The Common Secret for a review to be published in The Internet Review of Books March 15. I was tempted to pull from that. But I've moved on to The Best American Nonrequired Reading, an eclectic collection of essays and other bits that "defy classification" as the promo says. Good stuff, all, and I'm enjoying it.

Page 123 happens to be smack in the middle of a section where The Edge Foundation (www.edge.org) posed its 2006 question to scientists:

What is your dangerous idea?

Ray Kurzwell, inventor and technologist, expounds in "The Near-Term Inevitability of Radical Life Extension and Expansion:"

On the other hand, if we factor in the doubling of the power of these technologies each year, the prospect of radical life extension is only a couple of decades away.

In addition to reprogramming biology, we will be able to go substantially beyond biology with nanotechnology, in the form of computerized nanobots in the bloodstream. If the idea of programmable devices the size of blood cells performing therapeutic functions in the bloodstream sounds like far-off science fiction, I would point out that we are doing this already in animals. One scientist cured type I diabetes in rats with blood-cell sized devices containing seven nanometer pores that let insulin out in a controlled fashion and that block antibodies. If we factor in exponential advances in computation and communication (price-performance multiplying by a factor of a billion in twenty-five years, while at the same time shrinking in size by a factor of thousands), these scenarios are highly realistic.

Dangerous ideas. Interesting thoughts. All the essays are interesting and provocative.

I have tried to think of my own version of a dangerous idea since reading. Stay tuned. If I think of one, I'll post.

I'm passing the meme torch to:
Sarah

Tim

Carter

Pauline

Tere
~~~~~
Show me the books he loves and I shall know the man far better than through mortal friends. ~Dawn Adams

For Alice~ She's home!!!!!!!

What lies behind us and what lies before us are tiny matters compared to what lies within us. ~Ralph Waldo Emerson Sometimes it's all about knowing that loved ones and friends stand behind you, knowing that support is there on the down days, the worry days, the days when you feel off-center, out of sync, bedraggled emotionally, and in pain, but knowing all the while that you're not alone. You're not alone... Alice is an online friend--she lives in Hawaii-- who belongs to the writer's workshop that I do. We've only "met" online, but those who have online friendships know that they can be just as strong as those in-person relationships. Alice was hit by a car while walking, and is in the rehab phase of things. She's working to regain mobility after a broken pelvis, a broken arm, and a broken nose. It's scary to realize how, in the blink of an eye, life can lurch and our plans for a time are displaced by survival and healing. We...

Countdown! 10, 9, 8 . . .

Retirement is no big deal statistically speaking. Multitudes step out of the working world every year. I remember when my father retired at 63, two years earlier than typical in those days; I remember my mother's retirement party a few years later. But I don't remember either of them obsessing about ending their careers. They just retired--with a big smile and a sigh, I might add-- then went about the rest of their lives. So most likely I'm over thinking my imminent early-retirement at the ripe young age of 57. My husband tells me I think too much, but then for him the reverse is true. In the car he once answered my question, "What are you thinking?" with, "Nothing. I'm driving." Nothing? Is that even possible? He says it is. Friday my good friends gave me a retirement party that they said was so "me." It was perfect. I enjoyed it to the fullest-- laughs, hugs, warm wishes, tears, and so much more-- and breathed a sigh of relief when I got ...

I kid you not~

We're at the part in the social studies book where the thirteen colonies are forming, and Massachusetts Bay Colony, despite being formed by religious dissenters, allows no dissent among its residents. Roger Williams was banished and has headed south to start a colony in present day Rhode Island with Anne Hutchison following on his heels. She has been speaking up as well, in Bible studies for women, later drawing in men. The student book covers 100 years in four pages, so all the juicy details of Anne's "blasphemy" has been left out, but I paused at this part and opened a discussion about the way things were then-- Puritan women were subordinate to their husbands and were not to teach men, among other things. The kids didn't seem indignant, or concerned, or in any way vested in the plight of Anne, or women in general in those days. But they were energized by a conversation about women and men today. Ashley, an earnest student, and smart, raised her hand. It takes a...

~Upstream and Down~

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