LLB

Sheep seen chez senji:

Go to your info page and find the seventh name listed on your friends list. Go to their info page. Find the seventh name on their friends list. Repeat until you are seven LJs from your own. (If you come across someone who doesn't have seven friends or the seventh friend is a journal you have already visited on this trip, randomly pick another name and continue).

(1) 7th on my friends list, barbarakitten_t.
(2) 7th on her friends list, anahata56.
(3) 7th on eir friends list is also barbarakitten_t, so random pick is lutonianbill.
(4) 7th on eir friends list is dirtynumbangel.
(5) barbarakitten_t is also 7th here, so my first random pick is costillo. However, e doesn't have any friends with seven friends, so let's pick mactavish.
(6) E has a friends list that I can't access for some reason(something to do with there being 595 entries and my having a Free Account?), so I'll pick 7th from Mutual Friends, ailbhe. (Who is friends with kightp on my friends list, so I haven't gone too far afield yet.)
(7) Eir seventh is annburlingham(also friend of kightp).



Now, use the info page and recent entries of that 7th LJ to answer the following questions:

1) What is the title of this journal (NOT the user name)? annburlingham's journal

2) How many communities does this person belong to? 0.

3) List any interests you share in common with this user. books

4) List any friends you have in common with this user. kightp

5) Where does this user live? Perry, New York

6) What is the seventh sentence in this user's most recent journal entry? And the local librarians chose male authors for our community reading book for the first two years, to try to bring men in.

7) What is the first sentence in this user's seventh most recent journal entry? It's a beautiful sunny day here, all blue and white.

Thoughts right away: picking the 7th, when many people have dozens if not hundreds of friends, tends to keep things near the beginning of the alphabet.

Still On Fire

I know it's been a while since I did a books post(if you don't count the rabbit hole), but of course it's been long enough that it's become a daunting task. Part of the daunting task is the fact that I wanted to do the non-fiction books first, which for some reason incomprehensible to myself I don't keep track of as slavishly as I do the fiction books. So I have to do this from memory...

The Making of Star Trek by Stephen E. Whitfield & Gene Roddenberry. This is the original, 1968 version, in battered paperback. At this point they didn't know that Star Trek would be cancelled after the third season. It purports to be the first book to examine, in depth, the production of a weekly TV series, and it may very well be. I originally read it as a teenager, though I'm sure I skimmed over some bits of it. It's amazing how much I seemed to do that--and perhaps still do it--given how unfamiliar things seem on rereading. Having read the Buffy Watcher's Guides since then, I can see how exactly things have changed in TV production--which is to say, not a lot. Post-production has changed, but the basic production seems pretty much the same.

Inside The Yellow Submarine : The Making of The Beatles' Animated Classic by Robert Hieronimus. What with the boys being so into the movie still, it seemed like an interesting thing to read. Another inside-the-film-industry book, but this time an animated movie instead of an SF TV show. It's interesting seeing the whole dissociation between the producer and the "writers" on one side, and the animators. Four writers are credited, and yet none of them produced the final script--nobody produced it at all until after the fact. And there's still bad blood between the producer and the animators. But I didn't realize that the "Hey Bulldog" sequence was only restored to the movie for the 1999 restoration--not that I remembered the movie well enough to know whether it was there or not; I don't remember the "Only A Northern Song" sequence either.

The Birth of The Mind : How A Tiny Number of Genes Creates The Complexities of Human Thought by Gary F. Marcus. Picked up at a whim from a rack of books on display at the library, because it seemed to be about genetics and the development of the brain and stuff which I find somewhat interesting. I have little to no background in biology, except for what I've taught myself, but it made sense to me. I found it a good, accessible book on the basics of genetics for the layman. He goes into more detail on how the "recipe" model of DNA works, for one thing.

Basically, genes control protein production, and they can trigger cascades of other genes. This is not only something that happens while the organism is developing, but all throughout its lifespan. After all, all cells have the same genetic material, but they react differently based on the environment that surrounds them. During the development of the embryo, cells will be moving around based on their chemical environments--eye cells will look for certain triggers, ear cells for other triggers, etc. So there's nothing like one gene for every brain cell or anything like that--the difference in genetics between mice and humans is minuscule, but it's enough to make us vastly different beings, because of the way they work.

...I think I've forgotten one or two, but oh, well.

I keep seeing interesting books on the Amazon bestseller lists, like the new Jared Diamond book, and that Blink book. I've got too many nonfiction books piling up at home, though--just last week I picked up a biography of Eleanor of Aquitaine at the library, as well as a book on pirates. And I'm stalled in the appendices of Please Understand Me, and there's a Simpson's episode guide sitting on top of my computer, etc.