At 08:47 PM 3/28/2010, OrionWorks - Steven Vincent Johnson wrote:
I've noticed that you occasionally respond to some of my posts.
Hopefully, most posters feel honored and occasionally even validated
when others feel compelled to respond to their posts. Nevertheless,
I've noticed that on occasion some of your posts seem to possess an
order of magnitude more prose than what I initially produced.
Yes. This is because I am not responding simply to you. Rather, I am
using your ideas, questions, proposals, or whatever, to stimulate my
own thinking about the topic. You have no obligation to read it, at
all. Read it if it serves you, don't if it doesn't.
If I write something really important, someone else will echo it,
hopefully more succinctly, the part that is important.
Keep in mind that dyslexia means reading can be a chore, and trying
to write (or respond) intelligently even more so. I know I should
probably feel honored that you feel compelled to be as detailed as
you feel you need to be.
Well, unfortunately, not. Not simply from the fact that I respond, or
respond at length. I'm generally communicating with the entire list,
or, more accurately, to the subset of those who prefer to read my
writing, for their own reasons.
With that out of the way, I hope you will take the following link in
the humor that it was intended, particularly a famous quote (which
consists of seven words) which the science fiction author, John
Scalzi, hijacked for his own purpose. See Mr. Scalzi's blog:
<http://tinyurl.com/yh9ak8q>http://tinyurl.com/yh9ak8q
I did not find anything resembling the description there, and I
didn't feel like looking at all combinations of seven words!
So let me quote my own piece, from Mark Twain: "I would have written
less, but I didn't have time."
Don't from this, assume that I don't take a lot of time to write, I
spend way too much time, in fact, but less would not be more, it
would be less. I'd have to do rewrite to give more with less, and
it's just not possible, as Mark Twain wrote.
The other factor is that I learn by writing. Sometimes I do research.
It can be *very* time-consuming. I share the process. So if you look
back, you can see the evolution of my ideas, if you care. It's all
there. You can see, on this list, my first questions about
Takahashi's TSC theory, which I truly did not understand.
Unfortunately, I think nobody else commenting did, either! No blame,
it took me a long time of pouring over his papers to find the
information that at least partially corrected my misunderstandings.
He is not predicting 23.8 MeV alpha particles at all!
