Pick up the nearest book, turn to page 48. What are the first 5 complete sentences on the page?

Answer 1

The location of the aerodynamic center of an airfoil is not affected by camber, thickness, and angle of attack. In fact, two dimensional in-compressible airfoil theory will predict the aerodynamic center of the 25 percent cord point for any airfoil regardless of camber,
thickness, and angle of attack. Actual airfoil, which are subject to real fluid flow, may not have the lift due to angle of attack concentrated at the exact 25 percent chord point. However, the actual location of the aerodynamic center for various sections is rarely forward of the 23 percent or aft of the 25 percent cord point. The moment about the aerodynamic center has its source in the relative pressure distribution and requires application of the coefficient form of expressions for proper evaluation.

Answer 2

The most spectacular early development in Oaxaca took place at Monte Alban. The city was founded at the beginning of the Late Formative, presumably as the Zapotec capital. A mountainous outcrop overlooking three important valleys of central Oaxaca was reworked into a great manmade acropolis. In the first era of occupation, a main axis running roughly north-south was established and at least some structures were erected to define the main plaza as the ritual core. Monte Alban has no natural source of water, and one might legitimately surmise that it took an advanced social organization to sustain a community high above the fertile valleys below.
Art of Mesoamerica

Answer 3

James Joyce. Finnegans Wake. The first page has 3 sentences on it. pg 48 hasn't got a complete sentence. A great read all the same.

Answer 4

Catlin R. Kiernan was born near Dublin, Ireland, but has lived most of her life in the southeastern United States.
Her short stories has appeared in numerous anthologies, including Dark Terrors 2, Darkside: Horror Lethal Kisses, Noirotica 2, Dark of the Night, Sandman: Book of Dreams, Best New Horror, and The Year's Best Fantasy and Horror.
Her first novel, Silk, was published in 1998 and Meisha Merlin Press has recently released Candles for Elizabeth, a collection of her short fiction.
She made her comic writing debut with "Souvenirs" for DC Comics, series The Dreaming.
Kiernan currently lives in Athens, Georgia, where she divides her time between her writing and vertebrate paleontology.

Answer 5

Yens sat in front of the crystal and pushed the one button that was set into the device below the glass orb. Lights began to flicker inside the glass and where mere moments ago nothing had been, there now existed the image of the evil sorceress. Yens knew that his likeness was at the same time being projected onto a similar device in Haeron's castle.
Despite what her name and reputation might suggest, the evil sorceress was beautiful. More beautiful than anyone had a right to be.

Answer 6

Totally weird idea, and also the very coolest thing I have seen on this site in ages.

"Had not the stranger stood between me and the door, I would have bolted out of it quicker than ever I bolted a dinner.

Even as it was, I thought something of slipping out of the window, but it was the second floor back. I am no coward, but what to make of this head-peddling purple rascal altogether passed my comprehension. Ignorance is the parent of fear, and being completely nonplussed and confounded about the stranger, I confess I was now as much afraid of him as if it was the devil himself who had thus broken into my room at the dead of night. In fact, I was so afraid of him that I was not game enough just then to address him, and demand a satisfactory answer concerning what seemed inexplicable in him."

Did you want to know where it is from, or are you going to try to guess? If you want to know, post it in the details, and I will come back and edit my answer to include the name of the book.

Answer 7

"As they went first around the final buoy, both Bobby Scott and Joe Rogers looked back at the 'Icicle' and gave a long triumphant wave.
Derry never budged her red-mittened hands from the sheet rope. 'The 'Jack Frost' is a good boat but they are careless,' she said in her careful, stilted English. 'With the melted water on the top it is glary and hard to see where the ice has crack----'
She had not finished before a line of rough ice had snapped the rudder out of Bob Scott's unwary hands! In another second he was catapulting headlong across the flat deck of the 'Jack Frost'".

Answer 8

"Colonel James M. Phalen, writing for his /Army Medical Bulletin/, subtitled his biography of John Saw Billing 'A Many-Sided Genius.' Billings was probably the most remarkable person ever to serve the Army Medical Department. Billings graduated from Miami of Ohio in 1857 and recieved his medical degree in 1860 from the Medical College of Ohio in Cincinnati. He became a contract surgeon at the outbreak of the Civil War and was commissioned in July 1862. In March 1863, he reported to Jonathan Letterman, Medical Director of the Army of the Potomac."
-'Medics at War: Military medicine from Colonial Times to the 21st Century' by John T. Greenwood

I swear...that's a quote, and that 'Miami of Ohio' thing is in the book. It may/may not be a typo.

Answer 9

"Brad and his little boys would need her more than they have ever needed her. Sarah couldn't feel any personal sense of loss for Cheryl Keeton, although all human life mattered to her."

There are the first 2 sentences of Dead by Sunset by Ann Rule page 48. Its too late to type the next three.

Answer 10

I really like the idea, by the way....
But since you asked to pick the nearest - there you go:

Die Kategorie des Neuen hat einen Konflikt hervorgebracht. Nicht unähnlich der querelle des anciens et des modernes im siebzehnten Jahrhundert ist der Konflikt zwischen dem Neuen und der Dauer. Durchweg waren die Kunstwerke auf Dauer angelegt; sie ist ihrem Begriff, dem der Objektivitäten verschwistert. Durch Dauer erhebt Kunst Einspruch gegen den Tod; die kurzfristige Ewigkeit der Werke ist Allegorie einer scheinlosen. Kunst ist Schein dessen, woran der Tod nicht heranreicht.

Theodor W. Adorno - Ästhetische Theorie, p. 48