Thursday 11 October 2012

Anthology II 2012 - Writers wanted!


Anthology II 2012
Holiday Season in Melbourne (Australia)
Brought to you by the Melbourne Writers’ Social Group
Sponsored by The Story Mint

Last year we developed a small book of short stories for Valentine’s Day. Some of those stories were sweet and others not so sweet. This year we are kicking off another anthology with all stories themed for the coming holiday season in Melbourne, Australia.

You are not ruled by any genre and you are certainly not limited to just the more merry times over December; feel free to use the horror genre, for example.
You are however limited by word count and time.
Word count for stories (fiction or non-fiction): 1500 words maximum.
There is no minimum. However we would prefer you try and aim for approximately 1500 words.
If you intend to submit a poem, then the word count is different: 500 words maximum.

Start submitting your story to the Writer’s Pad before the end of October so you can receive feedback and act on it before submissions close. Please also make sure it is at least your third draft.
The Story Mint website: http://www.thestorymint.com/writers-pad

For full details and conditions please visit: http://melbournewriters.wordpress.com/2012/10/12/anthology-ii-2012-writers-wanted/

Click here - writers wanted

Tuesday 2 October 2012

No death for anyone!


In the not too distant future I will write a book on my theory behind life and death. Until then, there is one aspect of my thoughts I would like to talk about: why a body dies.

Evolution needs our body to die... although only if we want to evolve and then also only if we want to procreate.
So first, evolution. Without it we would all be single celled organism swimming in a puddle of muck. Without procreation we wouldn’t have evolution from the combining of two sexes to create a unique being that has been ever so slightly altered to better adapt to its environment than its parents.
Lastly, without death our parents and their parents, etc, would still be around (possibly at the age just before the body starts to break down, lets say 27), and taking up more space on this planet and eating our food.
Evolution therefore ‘decided’ that it would be best to kill off the parents once they had served their purpose; creating offspring that can keep up with the changing environment of the earth and become a more evolved being. This goes for all species on the planet.
Makes sense, yes?
But what if procreation slowed, as it is with humans in some countries. Or what if we developed ways to inhabit other planets, which could mean we wouldn’t have issues with lack of food or space. Couldn’t we then explain to our bodies that we don’t need to die. That we have gone far enough along in evolution that we can adapt our environment to suit us. Not too much, of course, although we are probably changing/adapting it too much right now. But maybe, eventually we could find a happy medium.
We could still have kids, the ones that actually want to, and they would continue evolution. It would take thousands of years before they would be that different to us, so it’s really no issue.
All we need then is to turn off the gene in our bodies that makes our bodies age.
This would also help with disease and cancer. When our bodies age, they don’t put as much effort into fixing things. Our bodies don’t really need to anymore. We’re old, we’re getting ready to die, so there’s no sense in eating additional food to supply the repair of our bodies. Maybe our bodies will put a little effort into repair, but it won’t bother too much.
You may as well go and get one of those box CRT TV’s and repair that, that’s how senseless it is.
But that’s the thing, our bodies don’t realise we have unlimited food (something we need to make happen in every country first, however), that we have medical procedures that can help us, that we can rest and not have to work every single day to hunt and gather if we need to repair. We don’t want a Band-Aid job, we want our bodies to heal fully and properly!

I believe bodies can be easily repaired by themselves. We just need to work out how.
Maybe it would involve putting the body in a state of chemical induced coma so the body doesn’t have to do anything else but heal... there would be more to it than that, of course. Somehow we need to tell our genes that we have the time and the energy to do all repairs. Maybe even grown back limbs and teeth that have fallen out?

Pain is another thing. Wouldn’t it be better if instead of pain our bodies gave us a better idea of what was wrong so we could then work out how to fix it.
Pain is very basic. A lot of the time it comes from something swelling in our bodies which then causes us pain and that stops us from doing that particular thing too much.
An example is, if we were hunting back in days when we were clueless of why pain happened, then twisted our ankle. It would then swell up so much that it looked like our foot swallowed a tennis ball.
That swelling is a reaction by our own bodies designed to create pain. Yes, our bodies want to make that ankle painful. This then stops us from using that leg. If we try and use it, it hurts.
Our body now gives itself a high-5 because what it set out to do worked; it doesn’t want you using that ankle anymore.
Now it has time to heal the ankle. And when the swelling goes down, that should approximately coincide with when the healing that it wishes to complete.