Bloggers at the Black Shire

It turns out that many of the local bloggers actually have a once-a-month meeting at my local pub. So I had a fun night out and got to meet a bunch of interesting people.

Anyway, got my hands on the latest issue of 'Skeptical Inquirer' today. It has some very good articles in it. There is an exceptional article discussing the flaws with research into correlations between violent media (particularly video games) and aggression.

Now my position is that violent media has been with us as long as media. The earliest extant written work in the English language, Beowulf, involves a graphic depiction of a troll getting his arm ripped clean off. Three of the four classics of Chinese literature contain graphic violence.

Shakespeare, the Bard himself, didn't shy away from the blood when Henry V exhorts his men into the breach even if they rebuild the wall with the bodies of the dead.

Now most video games are not Shakespeare. Even games based on classics of literature (Dynasty Warriors, I'm looking at you) tend to have... sub-standard... plot and dialogue. However the mass nature of the media does not change the fact that the violence is really no different.

Our stories should reflect the human experience, the love, anger, boredom, wonder, sex, violence, fear and joy of life. Censoring a medium, trying to restrict the stories we tell each other says much more about the would-be censor than it does of the people who consume the medium.

There was also an interesting article about the dreaded death-by-cellphone-rf issue. I have never subscribed to this particular fear even before I saw the science behind why this is a non-issue. Now that I have been exposed to said science I see that my lack of fear was well founded.

Speaking of fear...

We must all tremble because fake-rock-fabricator turned pyramid-power author Wayne Herschel is talking to the non-existent moderators of Wikipedia to get me and my shadowy cabal of manipulative manipulators banned. I'm really scared now...

Editing my book is going slower than I would have hoped. Copy-editing is the worst part of the writing process. To bad spell-checkers and grammar-checkers suck.