An astonishing discovery

Plot, plot, plot. Of course I read for plot. Who doesn't? All I'm saying is, I do recognize that there can be more to a book than just plot. I will probably pick up The Plot Against America again some time. I'm sure it's a great book. Maybe it was just bad timing. Have you ever had it happen that you don't like a perfectly good book just because it clashes with the book you just finished? I might have liked Kite Runner if I hadn't just read Atonement, for example. Anyway, enough of that. Movin' right along . . . .

I made an astonishing -- astonishing! -- discovery yesterday. I can't stop grinning over this. Last month's book group selection was The Beak of the Finch by Jonathan Weiner. I absolutely loved this book, even though I only read half of it. If you think evolutionary theory is the most beautiful thing ever, and if Darwin happens to be your personal hero, you will love, love, love this book. And if you also happen to be an absolute sucker for scientists who spend months and months on a desert island measuring millimeter differences in the size of finch beaks, well, you will love this book even more. This book was selected for our "community reads" program, and the actual scientists are giving a talk right here in town tomorrow evening. I am so there!

Anyway, my discovery. Yesterday afternoon as I was whipping through the last bit of the book my eye happened to light upon a quote by Darwin. Sez he: ". . . I cannot admit that man's rudimentary mammae, bladder drained as if he went on all four legs, and pug-nose were designed." Isn't this EXACTLY what I've been saying? And even threatening to make a bumper sticker out of? If we're so intelligently designed, why do men have nipples? And Darwin said. The. Exact. Same. Thing. Ok, he called them rudimentary mammae, but still. Pride goeth before a fall, I know, but I'm just so chuffed that Charles Darwin and I independently arrived at the same exact thought. Wow.