Random Fatigue Meme

Bludgeoned by afarensis.

1. Of all the books that you have eventually finished after many starts & stops, which one took you the longest and how long did it eventually take?

For me, most books that take over a couple of months, don’t recover from the loss of momentum and are never finished, but the one book that stands out is a biography of T. H. Huxley called Scientist Extraordinary: The Life and Scientific Works of Thomas Henry Huxleyby Cyril Bibby, which took more than half a year. I have mentioned it here before. It was in my medical school library and I read just a few pages at a time during study breaks.

Currently I am reading a book titled Mutants : On Genetic Variety and the Human Body by Armand Leroi, which if I ever finish, will be the record holder, its been over a year and it still sits at my bedside, I read about 4 pages every 2-3 weeks.

2. What great band (or album or song) have you heard so often, you wouldn’t mind never hearing again even though you still think the band (or album or song) is great?

Led Zeppelin IV

3. Which cliché or often cited quote needs to be placed in quarantine for a few decades?

“When in doubt, whip it out.” A useful rule of thumb for the college days, that has since been repressed, but may come roaring back when senility sets in.

4. During the 1990s "Compassion Fatigue" received a lot of press, now the media is giddy with "Donation Fatigue". What will be the next trendy fatigue?

Hopefully it will be political correctness fatigue, or for my medical counterparts, fibromyalgia fatigue.

5. What percentage of respondents will answer "meme fatigue" to question #4?
I looked into some of the previous responses of others. I thought somebody would have despite reasons against it stated by PZ Myers. Although many said that everybody would answer “meme fatigue” they themselves did not and none of the others that I looked at did either.
So my answer is none.

Who to pass it on to? In a similar vein to my last meme's method of selection, I will go from random fatigue to random acts of violence and use the following method: From a random nearby book, PDxMD Differential Diagnosis with Clinical Benchmarks, I randomly placed my finger on 3 words, retrosternal, relevant, and findings. Then I took these words to Google and added blog, and arrived at the following unsuspecting blogs to attack: Sumer's Radiolgy Site, Swords Into Plowshares, hibiscusfire

Tagged

Aydin at Snail's Tales tagged me with this meme. Sometimes I like memes, but I don't always enjoy doing the tagging that follows, so I put a spin on that part as you will see below.

10 years ago: I began dating in earnest my life-long friend, who is now also my wife, and I was nearing the end of my college career.

5 years ago: I was really enjoying my senior medical school clerkships (as one advisor put it: “Your fourth year is our way of apologizing for the first three”), and I was preparing to get married.

1 year ago: I was adapting to my new job as a physician in private practice and my new life as a proud father.

Yesterday: I took the afternoon off due the amazing turn in the weather (and lack of patients who I assume were also out enjoying the first crisp, blue day of the season). I was initially planning to play golf, but instead was drawn home by a photo my wife emailed me, of my 1 year-old walking in his “big boy” clothes.

5 songs I know all the words to: 1. Little Martha – Allman Brothers Band 2. White Summer/Black Mountain Side – Led Zeppelin 3. Crowd Sculpture (and the rest of Infrared Roses) – Grateful Dead “I’ll give you every thing we own for a new year’s ticket!” 4. Dueling Banjos - Eric Weissberg & Steve Mandell 5. Bron Y Aur – Led Zeppelin

5 snacks: I generally control myself very well but……1. Turtles 2.Millionaires 3. Oreos 4. Spicy Pork Rinds 5. Flamin’ Hot Cheetos

5 things I’d do with $100 million: There are only 2 things in broad terms, If I earned it and was used to that kind of money, I’d be figuring out how to pass it on to my descendants. If I won it suddenly in a lottery, I would give most of it away ASAP before it ruined me.

5 places I’d run away to: 1. Underneath a large rock somewhere in Arizona 2. Colorado 3. NYC 4. Chicago 5.Toronto

5 things I’d never wear: 1. a wife beater 2. Speedos 3. jewelry of any kind except my wedding ring 4. body art 5. a bow tie

5 favorite TV shows: 1. Family Guy 2. The Simpsons 3. South Park 4. Seinfeld 5. Monty Python’s Flying Circus.

5 greatest joys: 1. Every minute with my son 2. Most minutes with my wife 3. My friends 4. My good fortune 5. Early mornings with coffee and new information

5 favorite toys: 1. my desktop 2. my laptop 3. my digital camera 4. XM Radio 5. my golf clubs

5 people I’m tagging: I need some randomness here so this is how I determined who to tag: I grabbed a dictionary opened it up and randomly pointed to 3 words which were mobile, tantalum, and base. Then I went to Yahoo and typed in these words and added blog. Then I chose the top five blogs that came up. I therefore tag 1.Ideasasylum :: Jamie’s Weblog , original context, 2.Freakonomics: The Auhtors’ Blog, original context , 3.Anne Galloway: Purse Lip Square Jaw , original context, 4.Crazy Little World of Apples , 5.Kryss’ journal, original context

Of course the only way these people will know that I tagged them is if they become curious as to why they are getting hits from me, so if you can't bear to see a meme hit a dead end, just check out their blogs.

Its funny that Freakonomics came up because I just read that book, I liked it. Rather than do the meme, maybe Levitt can analyze the randomness that occurred here and the events that follow.

Book Meme Compilation

For those of you interested in the book meme that has been floating around, here is a compilatioin from Milkriverblog.

Book Meme

This is the first meme I have been personally invited to participate in so I cannot refuse. It came from Wayne at Niches.

Number of books I own:

From my seat here in my office at home I counted 283, adding the others propped up around the house, in storage, and at work, probably around 700.

Last book I bought:

Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies by Jared Diamond

Last book I read for the first time:

Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies by Jared Diamond

Five books that mean a lot to me:

Sociobiology by E. O. Wilson
Beginnings by Isaac Asimov
Time’s Arrow and Evolution by Harold F. Blum
Dune by Frank Herbert
The most recent edition of the Tarascon Pocket Pharmacopoeia

Five bloggers to send this to:

Snail’s Tales
Keats’ Telescope
Artsy Science
afarensis
Niftyfingers

As noted by Wayne who inflicted this meme upon me: You are free to further inflict the meme, kill the meme, or let the meme die of starvation.

Six Degrees of Blogximity or 6 Degrees Meme or Six Degrees of Bloggeration

Last night I came up with the idea of creating a meme game utilizing the Small World Phenomenon which led to the famous phrase six degrees of separation, the movie with the same name and then the popular game Six degrees of Kevin Bacon. Once I thought about it however, I assumed that it had to have been done before so I searched and quickly found Normblog's Six Degrees of Blogximity. So to his credit I will do it his way.

The rules:
Starting from your own blog (Blog Zero), you go via one of your blogroll links to another blog (Blog One), from its blogroll to another (Blog Two), and so on, ending up after six moves at Blog Six. You may not backtrack to the blog you just came from; no blog may figure twice in the one-to-six itinerary.

Then you solve the challenge given to you from which you obtained the meme.

I was given this: Normblog--->Philosophy et cetera

and I solved it thus:
Normblog--->Respectful Insolence--->Pharyngula>--->Philosophy et cetera

Now for my challenge:
Find a connection (the shorter the better) from Henry's Webiocosm Blog to Bored Housewife

"What are you reading?" meme

I obey PZ Myers:

1. Grab the nearest book.
2. Open the book to page 123.
3. Find the fifth sentence.
4. Post the text of the sentence in your journal along with these instructions.
5.Don’t search around and look for the “coolest” book you can find. Do what’s actually next to you.

I was tempted to look past the book nearest to me, "English Literature, with Readings" edited by Pace. Because I have not read it and don't intend to. But, reinforced by rule #5, I grabbed it. Amazingly pages 121-124 are torn out. What are the odds?

Anyway as commanded....
The next closest book is Time's Arrow and Evolution by Harold Francis Blum, 1951. The chapter is 'Structure And Its Reproduction' and the magic sentence is:

The crystals of most organic and some inorganic compunds are not formed of ions, however, but of molecules held together weakly by Van der Waals forces, or hydrogen bonds.