The Fifth Sentence Meme
Via Wampum.

1. Grab the nearest book.
2. Open the book to page 23.
3. Find the fifth sentence.
4. Post the text of the sentence in your blog along with these instructions.

I tried surfing backwards to see where this originated--after the fourth or fifth link I got tired of it and will leave it to the folks at Snopes or somesuch.

At any rate, from Emotions Revealed, by Paul Ekman: "One of the Malaysians in Boucher's study told a story about a person who had just heard the call to prayers for a major Muslim religious holiday."*

There, that was edifying. As is the book, actually: he talks about facial expression and revealing emotion based on his cross-cultural research. I also learned that Darwin had done the first important research on physical expression of emotion--who knew? More proof that my fancy college education was a mile wide and an inch deep.

*I know I can't just leave you hanging like that. Here's the last sentence of the previous paragraph and the rest of the paragraph:

'For example, in every culture loss of something important was the trigger for sadness, but exactly what that loss was reported to be varied from one culture to another.

'..."This has made him feel sad when he thinks of his wife and children in the village, to celebrate the [holiday]. He is now in the thick jungle to defend his country. He is on duty as a soldier, and he could not celebrate [the religious holiday] with his wife and children [who are home in their village]." A European in Scherer's study said, "I was thinking about something which triggered off a memory of a school friend who was killed in a road accident. He was a brilliant scholar and a wonderful personality. His life wasted and for what?" Loss is the theme in both stories, but different kinds of loss.'