Tag, I'm it!

Fred has graced me with blogosphere chain mail.

Well, here are the rules...

1. Find the nearest book.
2. Name the book and the author.
3. Turn to page 123.
4. Go to the fifth sentence on the page.
5. Copy out the next three sentences and post to your blog.
6. Tag three more folks.


My contribution to the clogging of the tubes...


From An Introduction to Radio Astronomy by Burke and Graham-Smith:

The plasmas of the ionosphere, of interplanetary space and of the interstellar medium, all contain random irregularities. Propagation through a medium with random fluctuations in refractive index initially corrugates the wavefront, and then leads to amplitude fluctuations which are familiar in the optical domain as the twinkling of stars. In the radio domain the most important example is due to the propagation through interstellar space of radio pulses from stars.

Next contestants: Fade, Dale, and Bacchus.


Enjoy, gentlemen.