There are lots of lists of best opening and closing lines/paragraphs of novels. But how about a list of best opening paragraphs from academic titles?
(via MetaFilter which, as always, has some good discussion, other suggestions and related links)
Here’s a bonus FFL – “Virus“, a fun little Flash game that’s sort of like a multi-coloured version of Go. Useful if you've got your laptop in a class that's a bit underwhelming (not that I would knowingly participate in such activities myself of course.)
(also from MetaFilter)
I say that I never played games in class as a joke but actually, now that I think about it, I never did play games in any of my classes. Did I surf around for info related to the lecture topic? Quite often. Work on assignments for other classes. When I had to. Surf aimlessly? Sometimes.
Participate in chatrooms as each week of one particular class got progressively worse? Yes. I never even did instant messaging in my classes except for 1-2 brief occasions (also connected to a really bad class.)
I once asked a professor if the clacking of people's laptops bothered him when he knew people weren't taking notes on what he was teaching. (It's pretty obvious when the clacking continues at the same rate whether the prof is talking or not.) The prof sort of shrugged in a “what can you do?” gesture. Sam Trosow, who also taught in the law faculty, once compared library students who were the most part attentive and focused to his law students who *all* had laptops and were constantly clacking away, fairly obviously not paying attention. So the few people who did have laptops in his LIS classes didn't really bother him.
The ultimate though was one student I know who was a TA for an undergrad MIT class. He got so fed up one day, he raced to the back of the room and laughed at the scramble as a roomful of young kids tried to turn off monitors/close browsers/flip to some “real” work.
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