[Readings:04] "Reading is Writing. Writing is Reading"

Interview with MICHAEL SILVERBLAT

Excerpts from Zinnser’s on Writing Well

A Farewell to Scienceblogs: the Changing Science Blogging Ecosystem

You can fight violence with violence

How to Tell Kooky Nuts in the Addiction Field

The first three articles enlightens readers about the many facets of writing.

The first article about the host of Bookworm, Michael Silverblatt, described what it takes to be a successful interviewer/host like Silverblatt himself. Since one of the basic tool of writers is talking to sources and subjects, it is apparent that, as Silverblatt said, “the last thing you want is to have people say to you what they’ve said to someone else.” I find the flow of the interview definitive of the SIlverblatt’s philosophy in conversing instead of interrogating the subjects. Moreover, it was evident that Silverblatt’s penchant for reading has helped him be the one writers would want to be friends with.

The excerpts from Zinnser’s on Writing Well talked about the “crimes” budding writers have more or less committed. Honestly, I am guilty of them as well. Keeping the written piece simple and free of clutter should be second nature to writers. But, as Zinnser’s examples pointed out, this is not the case. What is most interesting for me, though, is the part about style and Zinnster’s insistence to use “I” (implicitly or not) in writing, because as a reader, “I don’t want to meet ‘one’—he’s a boring guy.”

The third article is about the scientist-writer’s experience in blogging for a science blog network, Scienceblogs.com, and his decision to leave after an unethical article has come out of the site. He said, “What is relevant is that this event severely undermined the reputation of all of us. Who can trust anything we say in the future?” I commend his statement that both scientists and journalist should be committed to “transparency, authenticity and truth-telling.”

The next two articles are science articles which tried to inform the readers about scientific facts and findings. I could see that the “Kooky Nut” article tried to keep the complexity of article as little as possible. But I just don’t get the changing tones throughout the article–I don’t know if he’s joking or not in some points. In some ways, the last article, the one about war violence, seemed clearer to me. It presented the findings of a research about the effects of violence on the people surrounding the “perpetrators” and the affected ones. The article used graphic and concrete examples to help the readers imagine the situation. There were also some calls for action directed to the government, the media , and the general public as well regarding the perceptions and remedies about these “acts of violence.”