Writer's Block: Goodness gracious

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The existence of our civilization and the realization of its tremendous complexity, its reliance on so many people who have no personal connection or commitment to each other still doing what they have to do for all the others to get their work done. One of the reasons "Lord of the Flies" pissed me off so much was that it simply didn't ring true. If people were naturally that nasty, you'd never have gotten out of the caves, and certainly that whole "civilization" thing would never have caught on.

We hear about crimes, betrayals, and atrocities and are horrified by them PRECISELY BECAUSE THEY ARE THE EXCEPTION.

You don't see headlines, "Boy heeds parents, does homework with minimal argument", or "Man kisses wife, they resolve argument peacefully" because these are the norm. You don't see "Countries settle differences by quiet negotiation" because that's 99% of how it works.

We're living in an era of UNPRECEDENTED peace, with the vast majority of people not involved in war, with lifespans increasing and living conditions improving slowly (or not so slowly) in most places.

The crime rate is drastically down from what it was some years ago -- lower in the USA than it's been since the early 1960s.

People PERCEIVE things as being all so horrible because that's what gets news, that's what sells papers, gets views online, etc.

But the perception is 100% wrong.

Dearie me, it looks like BP could be in MORE trouble...

... A variant of Rule #3 in The Seven Habits of Highly Effective Pirates would apply: 3. A safety inspector at a dead run outranks everybody.

Rumor, with some reinforcing testimony, is that the company (Schlumberger) hired to do a final inspection of the cement plug ordered BP's on-site ranking manager to kill the well because it was kicking (a behavior that you might see early on but that should DEFINITELY not be seen that far along in the process); the manager REFUSED, and the Schlumberger rep immediately asked for a helicopter out; BP refused, Schlumberger rep immediately phoned his HQ and got THEM TO FLY A HELICOPTER OUT IMMEDIATELY and took his crew off. Hours later the rig went up.

If this is substantiated, it's a Hollywood-Evil Corporation level of stupidity and greed -- the kind you see onscreen  and say to yourself, "but no one in real life would be that stupid, to deliberately ignore the ultra-expensive and competent safety consultant YOU HIRED to make sure things were safe!" Heads will be rolling from the level of the BP manager ON UP.

Ganked from autopope 

TVTropes and other such sites...

I've noticed that some fine soul or souls has been adding material to TVTropes for some of my stuff. I greatly approve. Similarly for things like Wikipedia.

Summaries of the novels themselves would be especially good.

I'm starting work on updating the www.grandcentralarena,com site again. I want to start adding stuff for Threshold; if I can figure out a good approach I may make a short trailer for Threshold, but I'm not sure I have the materials. 

I have already sent out materials to add a reference list for GCA , chapter by chapter (I'm going to do about 5 chapters or so a week of references until I get through the whole novel).

Should I maybe put all or part of Hyperion Origin on the site?

Project Wonderful: any experience with it?

I'm looking at doing Project Wonderful ads for my books and I was wondering if anyone out there has any experience in how well they work and if there's any advice to someone like me who's pretty much incompetent at doing imagery. :)

NWN2 on Mac...

... is there a way to put it entirely on the hard drive instead of requiring the CD constantly in the drive?

And are there (really working) ways to get the expansions to work with it, as it appears they're all PC only.