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.

Next Thing They'll Be Saying I'm a Member of a Shadowy Cabal

So that guy that I mentioned yesterday, the self-published author whose name I couldn't remember, yeah, he's named Wayne Herschel and I guess I've got him pissed.

He says on Dan Brown's Facebook wall (yes, that Dan Brown), and I quote:

WIKIPEDIA FRAUD W.HERSCHEL PAGE NOW READS JIBBERISH - DELETION IMMINENT

I am absolutely appauled with what is going on at wikipedia. the page is so manipulated it is now worthless. The whole carfully presented article with almost two pages of referenc...es has been reduced to one paragraph of jiberish saying I claimed findings on some other idiots work, (who was known to have generalised poor correlations long before the work of Bauval)... and say that I claim the grand meaning to be Stonehenge!

No reasoning no explanations, my two periodical references they asked to be place today have been removed by a mass attack of people on wikipedia.

Added to this... the discussion page has someone saying I only have 300 google hits to my name when there are many times that amount and they say I put most of them there! absolute madness.

I throw in the towel here because if i put it all correct ... the next day it will say I claim to have invented the wheel.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/Wayne_Herschel\

Previously, Herschel said:

If there are any wiki subscribers out there we need numbers... some have tried to help already but the manipulators there will not allow two important uploads complete the page to be an accep...table author page.

I have just been talking to Nirman... and he tried uploading my bio and periodical references as the wikipedia page requests and some malicious group is deleting them.

1)The two periodical references are on record here:
http://www.thehiddenrecords.com/press_release.htm

2)Biography text
http://www.wayneherschel.com

There is a full barage there of people (discussion page) manipulating the uploads that wiki are saying they need... any wiki members out there please can you intervene if possible. I am so tied up trying to save my book as well... I am not managing at all with this crazy stuff.

HERE IS THE CRAZY DISCUSSION PAGE... WHO CAN FIGURE A WAY TO FIX IT?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Wayne_Herschel

Now here is what is so funny about this: this malicious group of manipulators is... well... me and like three other guys who frequent the Fringe Theory noticeboard. The malicious manipulations in question were just deleting references and clarifying statements drawn from Mr. Herschel's own bio material. I guess he's grumpy we didn't just copy it whole-cloth. I suppose nobody told Mr. Herschel that Wikipedia isn't prlog.org and nobody there is interested if he touts his silly mars-face book.

Anyway, I responded to these crazed complaints in the only reasonable way I could... I posted a link over here to my blog on my Wikipedia user page.

Anyway, as I try to contain my booming guffaws at Mr. Herschel's invective I think I'll change to some other, less frivolous subject.

I am a cyclist. Bicycling is environmentally friendly, promotes a healthy lifestyle and is mostly sufficient for the urban life I currently lead. I also live in a city where, as a cyclist, I am nearly run over once a week.

So it was with some shock and horror that I saw this story over at CBC.CA:

Former Ontario AG Bryant charged in cyclist's death

Now I'm not saying that the cyclist was necessarily entirely in the right, regardless of what happened, but if an angry guy on a bike is grabbing onto your car you call the police; you don't run over him with your car. There is absolutely no excuse for that.

Ok, now that I've dealt with frivolous Wikipedia tempest in a teapot and the most awful provincial level news I've heard all month one last thing:

Made Apple Flaske for dinner tonight. Recipe has a few innovations of my own and I wanted to share it.

Ingredients:

4 pieces cured pork backs rolled in corn meal (canadian bacon)
4 small apples.
1.5 red onions
Cinnamon
Nutmeg
Salt
Black pepper
A tiny bit of water with 2.5 tsp of corn starch suspended in it.

Side dish was boiled potatoes in lemon dill butter

4 potatoes
1 sprig dill
Juice from 1/2 lemon
butter

So you cut everything and make up the lemon dill butter by blending the sprig of dill and the lemon juice together with about 2 tbsp of butter.

Sprinkle some lemon juice on the cut apples so they don't brown.

Then you start lightly frying the pork, adding spices to taste. When the pork is becomes light pink on both sides add the onion. When the onion begins to soften add the apples.

Drizzle on some maple syrup and toss the dish thoroughly

Add the corn starch water and cook until apples are thoroughly cooked.

Serve immediately.

For the potatoes boil until cooked and then toss with lemon dill butter. Serve immediately.

Well... that does my random musings in for the day. Until tomorrow...

The joys of novel writing

So I'm reading through my first draft and I realize that I drop one of the main characters about half way through the book. He's just... gone.

Now the book is the first volume of a trilogy and he has lots more stuff to do in the later books but it just left the book feeling unbalanced. So I took a longer chapter that needed some splitting, cut it in half and tacked 2500 words about him to the end of the first half.

This solves the problem of having not enough about this crucial character and, simultaneously, provides me with an even 20 chapters. I like that number.

It also brings the novel up to 96000 words which is edging on the upper limit of what I wanted but that's alright too long is better than too short at this point.

I have had a request to post a short story up here. I may do so sometime in the next few weeks but it will take some time. Although I do have some short story ideas I want to flesh out the novel has to take priority and, at this point, it needs more work.

Turning to Wikipedia, I've been very active in a discussion on the notability of this random pseudo-scientist from South Africa. This guy touts this nonsense about how all the pyramids in the world are starmaps and, well, the whole ancient astronauts thing. Anyway I seem to have angered his fan club and they are now accusing me of having a vendetta against him.

A little hint to the "pyramid power!!!" people: I don't even remember this guy's name when I am not looking at it on my watchlist. That is how unimportant he is to me. I don't know him, don't care about him, and don't have anything against him. He could very well be a very sociable fellow in real life. But his books should be shelved in Sci-Fi / Fantasy. And apparently a very small number of people think his hair-brained theories are actually real! And that is just silly.

L. Ron Hubbard silly.

Just made plans for Labour Day. Huo Guo and Mahjong with some good friends of mine. It's going to be sweet.

Initial Post

Well, this is it, I've finally got around to starting one of these things. I should have been blogging a while ago, I mean, it's not as if I don't like to write. I just always found that by the time I finished the writing that I hope to one day get paid for I was feeling tapped.

Anyway, I picked up a delightful new Scotch, McClelland's, which has a sharp lemon sort of nose but tastes strongly of campfire smoke and peat. I sat down for a glass and picked up a new guilty pleasure of mine. "Dzur", a novel by Steven Brust, is a tight and entertaining fantasy novel of gangsterism and soul-eating super-weapons. It is certainly worth a read.

Speaking of reading, I am now in the edit phase of the first draft of my own novel. This is the second time I've taken a crack at a long work of fiction; the first work being just barely readable enough to sheepishly show to my wife and family. This time I'm much more satisfied with the result although it requires a great deal more polishing before it's ready for an agent to look at.

Over on Wikipedia there is lots of fun coming from the Ancient Astronaut types. I just don't get why people feel this compulsive need to download rather simple feats of monolithic architecture to fictitious aliens; it just seems, well, silly. Face it people, it's not hard to build a pyramid. A basic knowledge of levers and a heap of manpower is all it takes and the ancient civilizations who built the darn things had both.

I'm all for people having an active imagination; I only become concerned when they mistake a fantasy for reality.

Well that's all for tonight, more to come in the future.