Word: diagramed
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...early 1980s was to find a way to analyze the signal from something dramatically smaller. It involves a lot of mathematics - measuring the distances between hundreds of pairs of hydrogen atoms in a given molecule and then combining all of the distances to yield a three-dimensional diagram of the molecule?s shape. That lets biologists understand disease and drug proteins in a whole new way; it was W?thrich?s technique, for example that led to an understanding of the detailed structure of prions, which are involved in Mad Cow disease. It has also been used to help screen...
...Cleland to admit that most people who buy diet pills know they don't work, and that the Venn diagram of those people and the people who read FTC reports doesn't have enough overlap to be worth 2 1/2 years of effort. What he didn't understand, and why he should use whatever little bit of remaining FTC budget he has left to take his staff to a Eugene O'Neill play, is that people want to be deceived. You don't go to John Edward because you believe, but because it's nice to pretend you believe...
...psychological interpretations that Alex's book invites--"The Mixed-race people see things double theory and the fatherless children seek out restored symmetry [theory]"--but this is just a self-conscious cop-out. Likewise, Alex's best friend, Adam, is arranging his own collection of autographs into a cabalistic diagram meant to signify--well, we never learn what, but it obviously services Smith's theme of the power of names. It's a novelist's conceit or a conceptual artist's, not a convincing outgrowth of character...
Smith's narrative is like Adam's diagram: all the pieces seem to fit, but we never feel the animating emotion behind it. We know Alex is driven by unresolved grief and anger, but we don't feel it except at aremove, as when the inebriated hero scrawls out sardonic responses on a hotel feedback form. ("How did you find your sleeping arrangements? Lonely.") We know that Alex's search for Kitty is a spiritual quest because the titles of that section are taken from the Zen parable "Ten Bulls." Nice touch, but it would be better if we knew...
...Cleland to admit that most people who buy diet pills know they don't work, and that the Venn diagram of those people and the people who read FTC reports doesn't have enough overlap to be worth 2 1/2 years of effort. What he didn't understand, and why he should use whatever little bit of remaining FTC budget he has left to take his staff to a Eugene O'Neill play, is that people want to be deceived. You don't go to John Edward because you believe, but because it's nice to pretend you believe...