Before I do that, I thought it would be interesting to try to track this meme back as far as possible. For the sake of my sanity, I’m not following multiple paths from posts that link to more than one source–I’ll just pick the link that seems to be the primary source. So here goes:

nothing happens linked to Knowing and Doing linked to Exploration Through Example linked to a thaumaturgical compendium linked to michaelzimmer.org linked to Chronicles of Dissent linked to Fergie’s Tech Blog linked to Threat Level linked to Danger Room linked to Abu Muqawama linked to Afganistanica: Mountain Tourism in Afghanistan linked to [My] State Failure Blog linked to Kings of War linked to MountainRunner linked to zenpundit.com linked to the glittering eye who gave a bad link that I had to track down to Independent Liberal linked to Donklephant linked to Stubborn Facts linked to another post on the same blog, linked to Sideways Mencken, who did not link, but referenced Internet Ronin linked to AmbivaBlog [and now I'm starting to tire of this game] linked to The Anchoress linked [not directly, had to dig it up *sigh*] to Some Have Hats linked to [again not directly...grr] Church of the Masses linked [incorrectly] to The Daily Grotto [warning! annoying chanting] linked to Aussie Coffee Shop linked to Where Angels Go which mentioned, but failed to link to the person who tagged them, so it’s a dead end.

Whew. This was getting a bit tedious. Not to mention that it seemed to have gotten firmly entrenched in religious/pro-life blogs, which were getting on my nerves.

Just as well. Turns out Google returns almost half a million hits for “page 123″ sentence, and there doesn’t seem to be a way to sort results by date (the daterange operator failed me completely). The oldest post I could find on Google Blog search was this one, from November 24, 2004 (albeit for a slight variation on the meme–just the fifth sentence, not the three following it), but which clearly isn’t the origin. Seems it was a meme floating around on LiveJournal around then. If anyone has better search-fu and can find an earlier post, let me know.

At this point, I’ve made myself pretty sick of this meme. Often it appears to be a means by which people can brag about whatever erudite text they may or may not actually be reading. Even so, I can’t have wasted this much time and not play along. I’ve got two books nearly equidistant from my keyboard now. One is, at least in my field, too mundane to bother with: the Pickaxe book. The other sports the following 123/5/3 sentences:

The latissimus dorsi muscles have a major role in the deadlift: from the floor, the lat pulls back on the humerus to keep the arms from swinging forward away from the shins, and acts as an anchor on the upper part of the humerus to maintain the position of the bar directly under the shoulder blades until the bar crosses above the knees. The lats act in an essentially isometric way from the floor to the point where hip extension allows the arms to become vertical. At this point tension comes off the lats, and as the back becomes vertical, the arms drag the bar into the thighs as they assume an angle behind the vertical, opposite the starting position.

That’s from Starting Strength by Rippetoe and Kilgore, which is a great book for learning how to do basic barbell lifts correctly (something we do a fair bit of in Crossfit). Coincidentally, that’s just a couple pages past where I was actually reading about the deadlift. (Most interesting tidbit I’ve learned so far from the book: the importance of a solid grip when doing the dealift. If your hands start slipping, proprioceptive (love that word) feedback tells the back that what you’re trying to lift is too heavy, and it basically gives up.)

I’m not going to inflict this on anyone else, but if you’re reading this, feel free to prate on about whatever book you have near you.

No, I haven’t abandoned this site. I’ve just been working my butt off at a new startup. I’ll try to get some content up soon, but in the meantime, enjoy some pictures of the newest member of our family.

Photos from this year’s Burning Man in the form of a graphic novel. Very nicely done.

With an audio recording of you typing away at your computer for 10 minutes, it’s possible to figure out everything you typed. (via Crypto-Gram)

Tongue-eating bug found in fish. So gross, but so cool. (via Boing-Boing)

Word Pads, a very addictive word game. My high score so far is only around 5000 18575.

I didn’t really discover this in the last week, but it’s too cool not to get a mention: the Gmaps Pedometer (the link centers on a more interesting location than the default of Hoboken, NJ). It’s a testament to the brilliance of the Google folks that people have been able to come up with great hacks like this.

Finally, I’m going to try to play in the upcoming Ultimate Frisbee regionals, despite not having played since last winter, mostly due to my crappy back. I think I can hold it together for a weekend. Or at least a day. But this has inspired me: a 67-year old man comes out of retirement to play for his soccer team in their time of need. (via Fark)

10 Steps to a Hugely Successful Web 2.0 Company

I don’t completely agree with all of his “steps”, particularly the examples he provides. Take #7–Get people hooked on free–for example. Yes, free will always win you fans, and a large user base has intrinsic value, but if you’re providing a service that people are willing to pay for, by all means let them pay. (Regarding his Thefacebook vs. Match.com example–which one is actually making money?) Still, there are some good ones. My favorite: 6. Be mindnumbingly simple. Then again, this is a pretty age-old design mantra.

Perhaps it was just a coincidence, but my theory is that people/agents put holds on flights throughout the day, and those holds are released at the end of the day (assumedly midnight, although I don’t know which timezone), freeing up seats and thus reducing prices. Has anyone else seen this? Or is this common knowledge and I’ve just been clueless?

It seems to me that the queue is the key feature of Netflix. I can’t count the number of times we’ve seen a preview for a movie and thought “We should rent that.” Then you get to the video store and you spend half an hour walking up and down the Recent Releases trying to figure out what to get. Then again, sometimes you’re in the mood for a particular kind of movie, and it might not be what’s next in your queue.

Hmmm…here’s a business idea to help out all those struggling video stores in the new Netflix world: make an online service (let’s call it FooFlix) where people can browse movies, get recommendations, and add movies to a queue, much like Netflix. But then install terminals in video stores and tie member’s FooFlix accounts to their video store account. Then they scan/swipe/enter their store card/code in the terminal and it brings up the movies in their queue and highlights the ones that the video store has available. The stores would also be able to see what their customers (or an aggregate of all FooFlix customers) have in their queues, so they know what they should be ordering.

As for a revenue model, you probably couldn’t get away with charging customers for the service, but you could charge video stores to rent the terminal, and perhaps for customer queue data. You could probably do some pretty targeted advertising on the site, too.

Probably not going to make me a billionare. If anyone steals the idea, at least send me a postcard or something.

Scrumptions Muffins

1 cup softened vanilla ice cream
1 cup sifted self-rising flour

Mix well. Pour into a muffin tin lined with paper cups, about 3/4 full. Bake at 350 F for 20 min.

You know you want to make them. I know I will.

Update: Made them. I had to improvise a bit, as I didn’t have self-rising flour. I added about 1/2 tsp. of baking powder instead. They were pretty bad. Very dense. Must have been the flour.