Expelled the Movie And the Smell of Death in Wisconsin

Creationists are fond to equate Darwinism with eugenics and fascism as they dangle the fear of Nazi state led eugenics programs in front of the faces of the unsophisticated. Of course, much of the eugenics under the Nazi regime was little more than your old-fashioned garden variety Antisemitism and a variety of other racist beliefs couched in an official pogrom and jargon. It had little to Darwinism but the creationists figure if you throw enough crap about something is bound to stick to someone. The fact that the holocaust was the result of hundreds of years of religious intolerance in Europe just obscures the Expelled crowd’s true agenda. Of course, to blame religion and god for the holocaust is just as absurd as to blame Darwin. Blame the rightful source for this continued desecration of humanity: man’s baser behavior.

Well, now is the time for evolutionists and Darwinists to stick some crap to their Intelligent Design dogma. So to all of my creationists friends by all means reject science, embrace the world of gods and angels preferably a Christian world and by all means revel in your ignorance. You know more than the eggheads will ever know because, after all you, are a true believer. To hell with nuance and shades of gray, you are black and white man and god is on your side.

And let’s face it, verifiable and testable results are not your norm but are rather the tools of subjugation utilized by the atheist scientists. Your norm is the rejection of science and medicine wherever it conflicts with your god-view. So if a home schooled eleven year-old girl dies of a diabetic shock because her fundamentalist parents believe more in prayer than insulin, so be it. Such is your influence that in Wisconsin there is a statue protecting such child abusive behavior. Wisconsin state statute 948.03(6) provides an exemption from the law against failing to act to protect children from bodily harm for what is referred to as “Treatment through prayer.” The statute says: “A person is not guilty of an offense under this section solely because he or she provides a child with treatment by spiritual means through prayer alone for healing in accordance with the religious method of healing … in lieu of medical or surgical treatment.”

Now if you are a normal, all American, family loving kind of guy or gal this sort of law should raise some type of proverbial red flag for you. While you have been sleeping the religious wackos have been working with our sycophant, pandering politicians and have been quietly subverting our laws and making the world save for family child abusers. Then again, you are probably more concerned about the latest puppy mill scandal on Oprah than you are about that eleven-year old girl who recently died. Such is our world where the pious get absolved of sin and yet they get to cast aspersions about everybody else who differs with their strange world view. Such is the world of the Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed followers, where they want to extend this type wacky rationale and thinking into our public schools and all in the name of fair play!

Remember, Intelligent Design as depicted in Expelled is not a science and if this continues to spread and infect our future generations expect to read more headlines like the one in Wassau, Wisconsin. You may be okay with that daunting prospect but I am not going to ignore that young girl’s smell of death.

Observation Regarding the Latest Flores Island Controversy

A new George Washington study of craniums discloses that the Hobbits of Flores Island are in fact a new human species. Well duh, the GW study is merely stating the obvious as the likes of the late Dr. Teuku Jacob and Dr. Berger’s Palau find continue to muck the proverbial academic waters with their own murky agendas. No wonder the creationists feel so emboldened nowadays when they observe evolutionary scientists continuously getting embroiled in a pissing contest of personal egos. As Dr. Junger from SUNY Stony Brook said the Palau find is “is really much ado about nothing.” I guess the fact that none of the Palau bones found match the hobbits really doesn’t matter. After all, the frontal cranium looks almost as high as a human’s but hey Dr. Berger says they are related to the hobbit. Damn, can’t we complete a dig before we report the findings nowadays?

You know I have a vested interest in this discovery, having written the speculative fiction novel called Flores Girl: The Children God Forgot on the recent fossil find.

Seven Golden Rules for Effective Fiction Podcasting

So have gotten through this podcasting exercise I came up with seven golden rules for podcasting fiction that I have learned from my own speculative fiction podcast, Flores Girl:The Children God Forgot -

1. Do complete your novel before recording the podcast and do not write as you go. Making it up as you go along may have worked for Indiana Jones but for a podcast that is a recipe for certain failure. It very easy to go down a rat hole in a story and with it so go your listeners.
2. Seriously consider culling your written work so as to make the podcast more manageable in overall length. By the way, I did not listen to my own advice.
3. Do invest in the proper audio equipment for your recording. There are some good discussions at the Podiobooks community site about this issue. You will also need the right software to edit your podcast and yes, we do get into the stupid PC-Mac holy wars as well.
4. Practice, listen and then practice some more.
5. And then edit and re-edit your results like a demon. Listen several times and then asks others to listen as well. One of the Podiobooks writers complained that he recorded a flatulent moment during one of his podcasts and unfortunately he doesn’t use side effects. I can’t say I have recorded a sound artifart but I have occasionally recorded a family argument or two by accident. I have also missed an edit and recorded the same sentence several times.
6. Don’t do accents or change sex during a podcast unless you are a marvelous actor or a very talented hermaphrodite.
7. Once completed marketed the hell out of your podcast. Just because you recorded it that doesn’t mean the listeners will automatically flock to it.

By the way I really do enjoy working with the people at Podiobooks, including Evo Terra and Chris Miller but maybe you have had good experiences with other sites and communities. Please share!

The Expectations of Genre Definition: Speculative Fiction

Speculative fiction is not fantasy fiction, as it rules out the use of anything as material which violates established scientific fact, laws of nature, call it what you will, i.e., it must [be] possible to the universe as we know it. – Robert A. Heinlein

One of the worst aspects of publishing work in a Web 2.0 world is the myriad tasks the author must undertake. Besides writing the crap the writer must undertake numerous sleazy marketing efforts. In the past that been relegated to the obligatory series of interviews and book signing, assuming that is if the author was lucky enough in his career or her to get to that point.

Today the challenges are different and far more varied. Most of the work still revolves around the writing, editing and marketing of the work. However the marketing piece of the puzzle is a bit of a quandary and requires the greatest flexibility on the part of the fledgling writer. Worse, it is also damn time consuming.

If you go the route of podcasting, which has its myriad appeals and challenges, it requires the author to do production work and possibly the biggest challenge of all: narrating the work. The web work can involve a site or minimally a blog for the author’s various fans to turn into. Besides words, structures these endeavors typically require some type of graphics, Search engine optimization and knowledge of key words; all daunting challenges for the uninitiated. If you have money you could have somebody else do it but you still must manage the ongoing mess.

The biggest marketing challenge could be the designation of your work into one of the existing genres. Why? That’s because the genre designation ultimately determines your readers and finally your choices among agents and publishers.

My problem was what the hell do you call Flores Girl: The Children God Forgot? An adventure story sort of describes it but there were some science fiction elements as well to the story. After all the core of the story is about the survival of Homo floresiensis on a small tropical island and that is speculative at best. In actuality these small three-foot tall hominids died out 12,000 years ago or maybe as recently as 400 years ago based on some early historical accounts. In any case, nobody expects them to be found alive and well today, at least not with the way China is clear cutting the forests of Southeast Asia. To call it science fiction would really disappoint the hardcore science fiction fans; you know not enough hardware and overall fantasy elements to keep them enthralled to quite honest with you. I mean if you can’t have sex with an alien then why bother calling it science fiction?

Then I came across the term speculative fiction and the Robert Heinlein definition. The definition seems appropriate fro my book but its usage and acceptance as part of the vernacular is no where near as universally accepted as science fiction. As a measure of popularity I did a search fro speculative fiction and turned up only a couple of million hits in Google. Compare that with science fiction with nearly 140 million hits and you have yourself a huge disparity in overall acceptance. So which sandbox do you want to play in, the larger one where you won’t get noticed or the smaller one with a much smaller audience? I’ll go with the one that is a better fit, thank you, speculative fiction. It maybe a smaller audience but in the long run hopefully it is the right one. I’ll let you know.