Scientist

Random quote of the day:


"Science involves a seemingly self-contradictory mix of attitudes: On the one hand it requires an almost complete openness to all ideas, no matter how bizarre and weird they sound, a propensity to wonder....But at the same time, science requires the most vigorous and uncompromising skepticism, because the vast majority of ideas are simply wrong, and the only way you can distinguish the right from the wrong, the wheat from the chaff, is by critical experiment and analysis."

—Carl Sagan, "Wonder and Skepticism," Skeptical Enquirer, Vol. 19, Iss. 1, Jan.-Feb. 1995





( Illustrated version. )

Three random ironies make another post

• On the side of the Dreyer's Slow-Churned ice cream carton it says (paraphrase), "Scientific studies have shown that consuming moderate amounts of dairy products daily leads to a healthy lifestyle." It was Dreyer's Lite, but somehow I don't think that's what the studies meant.

• I'm having so much trouble buying a necklace for my mother online. The post office stole the first one. This isn't the first time a package has gone missing, always when a particular mail carrier is on duty, so I feel comfortable with the word "stole." Then yesterday I got an email regarding another necklace I ordered through an Amazon vendor. At the time they guaranteed delivery by December 24, but it now has a revised delivery date of December 29. Too late to cancel—it's already mailed—they just used the slow boat to China method. I guess I'll be wrapping up a picture of the necklace and giving it to Mom for Christmas. I'm thinking of taping it to a rock or something so the package at least has some heft . . . but that seems like a rather dirty trick. Even though the gift is on the way—really, Mom! Unless the post office steals this one, too.

• I've been doing an inordinate amount of comfort reading this year. I just finished rereading Naked in Death because J. D. Robb is sort of my ultimate comfort read—which is ironic, since those books are all about serial killers and violent murder. But I just love hanging out with the regular characters in her books. I hadn't read Naked in years, since it's the first in the series, but I found I had a hankering to revisit it. I couldn't find my old copy—I suspect it's still packed away in the garage—so I bought a new paperback.

And wow, La Nora must have rewritten it at some point. Although when I first read it I found myself captivated by the characters of Eve and Roarke and their friends and acquaintances, I always thought the writing in that first book wasn't up to the rest of the series. There was a great deal of head-hopping, as I recall. I remembered one short scene which must have jumped into four or five different heads, including people who were completely incidental to the story. But that's gone. There's still a bit of head-hopping, but way less, and the prose has been smoothed out and beefed up. It's the same story, for the most part, but one crucial scene in which Roarke finds out Eve's big secret is gone. Nora/Robb replaced it with something subtler, something that allows Eve some choice in the revelation and Roarke some time to figure things out beforehand. It's a good change, but I'd been anticipating the emotional wallop of that other scene. I have to say, I missed it, and it lessens the impact of the book's final exchange between Roarke and Eve, which refers back to the stark emotion of the original scene. But I guess the change serves the characters better, in the sense of making them less passive victims of circumstance.

So there's a writing lesson there, I suppose: in every revision, something is lost and something gained, and it's all a matter of what you're willing to give up. Your readers may not agree with your decision, however, and after publication, I'd say the book belongs to them at least as much as it does to the writer. Or am I completely off base there? I know writers often wish they could change the books that have already gone public. Few have the clout of Nora Roberts which allows it, though.

I still enjoyed hanging out with those characters, getting to see them at the beginning of their arc, and still derived my necessary comfort, so I'm good. I don't know if I'll reread the entire series. But I might.