Do You Have Info?

In a new personal blog series, I’ll be posting parts of this story every Wednesday evening.  While I’ve written short stories before and even taken a crack at creative writing on other sites, this will be my first real serial attempt at writing a story in the public eye.  For now, feedback is turned off, but feel free to let me know what you think on Twitter (@adamholisky).

The McCanter Treatment

In a world of confused morality and longevity exists The McCanter Treatment, the cause of and solution to, all of life’s problems.

“It is through this mortality that humanity knows moral bounds.  Thou shall not kill, because ending’s one existence prematurely is one of the ultimate wrongs.  Thou shall not covet another man’s wife, because creating existence forbiddinly is just as inappropriate.” The professor recited his prepared lecture as he strode across the front of the auditorium.  Back and forth from one wall to the other he walked, always eying his pupils.

“Now, what happens when these boundaries on Human life are removed?  What then becomes of the morals that we humans posses?”  He paused for a moment to let his words sink in.  “Do they become less important or more?  For if human life has no end, and only a beginning, does establishing that end detract or add to existence?”

“Assume for a moment that our existence as a species is most full when we realize we have a finite amount of time to accomplish our goals.  We achieve great things in that finite time – we build civilizations, wage wars, explore the heavens – all in the span of about 75 years.  If we knew we had 500 years to do it all, would not Human progress be delayed?  Why accomplish everything in your first 75 years of existence, what would you do for the rest of your life?”  As the professor said this he noticed student move nervously in their seats, understanding perhaps for the first time that this course on the Ethics of the McCanter Treatment would truly challenge their thinking.  He smiled to himself and chuckled.

“Now that we’ve established, at least in our example world, why life is the fullest when it has boundaries, when is it okay to impose those boundaries on others?”  He raised an eyebrow, pausing for a calculated dramatic effect.  “Yes, imposing a boundary on someone else’s life would be murder – but in doing so you’d help them realize their full potential, exist as a full human being.  And if existing to our fullest in a short amount of time is what makes us realize our morals, does murder in-and-of-itself not become a means to and end of great morality for humanity?”

The professor stood still and silent for several minutes and the students took this in, that with some slightly twisted philosophical logic murder became acceptable.  Knowing this viewpoint was important for the class, it allowed them to argue against it – to begin to see both side of the ethics involved in the McCanter Treatment.

“For your homework this week, I want you to refute why murder would not be a logical step towards restoring ethics in humanity’s existence.  Class dismissed.”

Devon Anders grabbed his notebook and filed out of the auditorium along with the rest of the 100 person class.  He wrapped his jacket around him tighter when he got outside, the cool air of autumn reminding everyone that winter was not far away.

As he walked to his next class, Devon began thinking of how an evil act could lead towards a righteous good.  If Humanity did not value the moral life, wasting it away on pitiful and self indulgent activities, then anything that restored that moral value of life would be a worthy action.  If it was just as simple as flicking a switch, no one would argue; but what if that switch killed off a million random people, thus ensuring that those remaining would live in fear that the next time the switch would be flipped, they would die?

Devon pondered this, asking himself if the means of such an action would justify the ends.  And every time he asked himself, the answer he came up with was no – the means of killing could never justify the ends of morality.  They were so inherently contradictory that such paradoxes of morality be best left up to theological debate and not to actual ethical practices.

Then again, Devon thought, living forever was always a religious idea before the McCanter Treatment.

The McCanter Treatment is a simple process by which biological molecules, and thus biological structures, are replaced with their non-biological counterparts.  Where there once was a cell wall made of biological material, there now exists a cell wall made of metallic nanostructures.  However the trick of the Treatment isn’t that the cells themselves are replaced, but that they are emulated to such a high degree of realism.

It’s virtually impossible to distinguish between non-McCantered flesh and McCantered flesh.  Only upon microscopic examination do the differences become noticeable.

Of course, the other difference is that biological organisms which have gone through the McCanter process do not age – at all.  They exist in the perpetual state in which they were first McCanterized, sans any direct modification applied to them after the Treatment.

The process was developed fifty years ago by Kara McCanter, an English scientist who stumbled upon it one day while working with nanomachines to deconstruct a cell wall.  While having the machines temporarily destroy part of a cell and then reassemble it, she noticed that the nanites would fill in for parts of the destroyed sections for a short amount of time, simulating their functions as to avoid the cell’s immune system from automatically isolating and destroying what it considered to be a faltering cell.  This was an odd automatic behavior which wasn’t programmed into the nanites, it just was something that happened.  However with a little bit of testing and work, Kara McCanter was able to make the nanite’s work permanent.

Kara McCanter created the fountain of youth, giving humans eternal life.

The Treatment had been around nearly 200 years now, and at the age of 21 every person underwent the process.  The process was started by going to one of the world’s McCanter Centers for a nanite injection.  About five million nanites were injected into the blood stream, which were more than enough to handle the conversion of any human.  The process was painless and took 28 days to complete.  After it was done, the human was practically immortal.  No disease could kill it, no severed limb or decapitation could stop the brain from functioning.

At the age of 20, Devon Anders could do nothing more than think about his body slowly being destroyed and rebuilt by millions of small nanites.  It both excited and scared him at the same time – after all, who in their right mind looks forward to their body slowly being ripped apart by unseen forces?

—

He thrashed against the restraints, throwing his weight around in hopes to break the straps holding him down.  If Devon were in a better state of mind he’d have realized that the straps were beyond his power to break, but even then, he probably wouldn’t have stopped trying.  So he move left and right, his body curving against the cold metallic bed.

The needle containing the nanites was laying on a table near to him, just out of his reach.

I need to set some goals for myself for the next year, and what better way to do it than to publicly say so and let the internet be the judge of me.  Some are cryptic and don’t make sense, but that’s because there’s a backstory to them that I’m not sharing.

1.  Earn 15% more than I currently am.  This should be doable, one way or another.

2.  Branch out writing / managing an area I’m not currently heavily involved in.

3.  Spend more time in the editing process and be more self-reliant on editing decisions.

4.  Absolutely no working after 10 pm.  This includes IMs and Campfire discussions.

5.  Don’t bite off more than I can do in an eight hour day, and learn to say no to things that I don’t need to take on.

Perhaps the internet isn’t the best place for such a list, but really I work in public enough anyways, so what harm could it do.  People that care will care, and the people that don’t won’t be reading this anyways!  All is good, amirite?

I think part of being a good writer is understanding your faults.  And what better way to correct my faults than to yell them to the world?  So without further ado, my top five writing mistakes.

1.  It’s vs. Its

While I know the difference between the two, however when writing I’ll often times mess it up somehow.  When I go back and proof my work, it doesn’t always get caught either.  I also find that this is one of the most common mistakes missed by editors.

2.  One comma too many

I have a tendency to write long and drawn out sentences, often times I’m not content to write in the short bursts that have become common place in modern writing.  That’s just part of my writing style, and while I oftentimes find myself trying to change my style in this regards, when I do write the longer sentences, I tend to use too, many, commas.

3.  Forgetting to edit

I’ll write a sentence like “The Vikings are one of the best teams in the league.”  Then I’ll edit it to say “The Vikings are the best team in the league.”  But, I’ll forget to take off the “s” at the end of “teams,” so my sentence ends up saying “The Vikings are the best teams in the league.”  More fail.

4.  Not connecting disjointed topics

Say I’m talking about how great the Twins are for couple sentences, and then in my mind I’ll start thinking about other great baseball teams of the past twenty years.  I’ll then just launch right into other great teams of the past, not writing a connecting statement to join up my two thoughts.  This has a tendency to make my writing a little more spotty than I want it to be.  This problem becomes particularly obvious when I’m writing a more conversational piece where I need to be entertaining and present unique and insightful thoughts.

5.  Weather/Whether, Affect/Effect, Week/Weak

Those are the top three groups of words that I always have to stop and ask myself “I’m using the correct version, right?”  I’ve gotten better at these mistakes, but I still make them often enough.  When I have weeks like this last one where I write over 10,000 words, I’ll inevitably screw up and let these mistakes negatively affect one of my articles or writings, whether I pay close attention or not.

So what can we all learn from this?  Having another set of eyes on your writing, hopefully by a professional editor, is an awesome thing.

I have a secret – everything that you see is not always what it seems.  This secret is probably pretty hard for some folks to stomach.  They see things like an article being edited or a change in format and immediately assume the worst.

“Oh no!  Adam is only writing the post two days a week instead of three!  He must be in trouble…..” Be sure to say “in trouble” like you did back in third grade when someone got called to the dean’s office, because that’s how I’m saying it as I’m writing this extrapolation.

This situation presents an interesting conundrum in that what is reality is far away from what the public perception is.  In the case of one of my daily columns, we’re just moving around resources to allow other talented writers chances to shine.  No evil or negative intent what so ever.  In fact, I was the one to suggest the change.

But herein lies the crux of the matter – how do you correct such a public perception without coming out and sound like, well… like a whinny little three year old?

Part of the way you can do it is provide excellent transparency in all public processes.  But often that opens up such processes for public input – people think because we’re telling them about internal workings they can influence and change them.  That’s hardly ever going to happen (infact, I can’t think of a time it has happened).  More so, it often leads to points where you have to say “But we can’t go into that, because it’s a private matter.”

So how else can public perception in the mass media world we all live in be changed?

More and more communication, even if it’s not all transparent.  Letting people know what’s happening, answering even the most mundane and ridiculous questions with the same cool and collected answer can quash even the most abusive perceptions.

In my day job it’s become apparent that this level of communication is necessary in order to keep things running smoothly in the public arena.  Daily interaction with comments and community figures allows this level of consistent communication.  Not only does this lead to better public reception of changes, but it also leads to growth of the site and overall buy in of our ideas and direction, which is a good thing (one that will eventually lead to even bigger and better things).

In my previous job, working as a manager of a symphony orchestra, my boss and I would often have to work day and night to get the orchestra and its various factions to buy into our ideas.  The group was much smaller, about 150 people at most, but the same concepts apply when dealing with numbers in the millions.  The key is not to change the nature of your decisions, which are hopefully well thought out and hopefully correct, but to change the perception of such decisions through directed communication and overall message shaping.

It takes a lot of work and practice to become proficient at that level of communication – it’s something that I am no where perfect at yet, and might never be.  But the key is to recognize this point of importance and be mindful to always take care of it.

Tonight President Obama came out to deliver what many in the media were calling a “do or die” speech to a joint session of congress.   He was either going to make health care reform in this country a possibility, or he was going to crash his presidency early in the first term – so much so that he would likely not be able to recover.  At least according to the media he wouldn’t have been able to recover.  Because they know what’s going to happen three years down the road.  /sarcasm

There were several aspects of his speech that I found compelling.  First and foremost he gave a very clear rebuttal to many of the persistent and nagging myths floating around out there about health care reform.  He attacked head on Sara Palin’s “Death Panels,” although he didn’t use those exact words (which was probably a smart move, eliminates a Fox News sound byte).  He clearly said there’d be no public care for illegal aliens, and once again stressed that care for seniors would not shrink.  While the President spoke of using part of Senator McCain’s health care plan in his own plan, he took a lot more from McCain than just that.  His whole myth debunking segment was pulled right out of the old John McCain Straight Talk Express.  You know – the McCain everyone liked, not the one that was on display during the 2008 elections.

The President’s evocation of the late Senator Kennedy and his philosophical defense of liberal health care reforms will strike a chord with the Democratic party for years to come – assuming they are able to pass whatever bill ends up being voted on.  Senator Kennedy’s letter to the President has the possibility to exist as a turning point in this whole ordeal; it can become the Democratic answer to the 1990’s Contract With America.  Let the masses of liberals and free thinkers flock to the Kennedy’s and the President’s ideologies and restore the “fundamental principles of social justice and the character of our country” to what it should have always been – one that guarantees health care to the masses.

Give us your sick, your weak, your poor.

And while all of the good things that the President did tonight will help cement the passage of health care reform legislation in our country, there was one thing that sealed the deal.  A certain representative from South Carolina named Joe Wilson.  His outburst “You lie!” to the President, interrupting his speech and drawing the attention of the world will backfire in the worst possible way for the Republicans.

While it is typical for the opposition party not to stand as much as the majority party, not to clap as much, not to smile as much, and not to like the speech as much, it is not typical for them to misbehave in the way Representative Wilson did.  His behavior now reflects on the entire Republican Party, it reflects onto them the message that they have been trying to get rid of – that of the obstructionist and “the party of no.”

Representative Wilson did something that President Obama never could do, he made it clear that there is only one mature and stately group in the hallowed halls of Congress to help the American people.  He made it clear that there is only one voice which speaks with reason and compassion.  He made it clear that the Republicans are there to do nothing more than yell at those working towards health care reform, that they are not interested in having a real discussion or real debate.

Representative Wilson brought the shameful behavior at town halls to our nation’s capitol; and in doing so has delivered unto Democrats the ultimate gift – that of a single voice speaking above the yelling and screaming – President Obama’s.

Health care reform now has a clear message, and a clear speaker.  Thanks Joe, we all owe you one.

There have been two stories that WoW.com has broke under my name in the past week:

• Patch 3.2 Going Live
• Cataclysm races leaked

Each story relied on anonymous sources (well, anonymous to you) that had information pertaining to the facts which were being reported on.  Each story was cited as such, with the words crafted in a way to express the source’s validity.

But yet here we are, the evening of the big Cataclysm leak, and the crying over WoW.com not revealing its sources has reached the worst levels I’ve ever seen.  People seem to think they’re entitled to the same trust that individuals place in myself and fellow editors at our site, and feel that without their personal seal of approval we have nothing more than unsubstantiated rumors.

Well, okay then.  I’m fine with people questioning or holding up a skeptical eye to our news, especially with something like this.  But when people shut their brains off and just start yelling, it tends to get to me. (Same with the “town halls” going on right now).  And while most of those people who are yelling are getting banned from our site over the next few hours (there’s so many of them), there are some facts I think are appropriate to put out there:

First, we would never stake our reputation on posting news like this if we were not supremely confident in our sources.

Second, the sources are not just one person saying something.  There’s a lot of stuff we’ve got with only one person saying it.  We have no idea if it’s true. It could be false.  But like a good journalist, when more than one person says the exact same thing, and are in a position where they’d know the facts at hand, it becomes valid enough to write about and bring to the public.

Third, no one will reveal their sources.  This is a founding principal of modern journalism.  Anonymous sources stay anonymous.

If I were to reveal the sources, I would likely be fired from my job at WoW.com.  I would be untrustworthy and show a clear lack of decision making capability.  I would be a person who cannot handle confidential information, and thus would be someone who could jeopardizes the welfare of the site on a daily basis.

If I were to reveal the sources I would likely not be able to get another job with responsibilities and tasks which I enjoy spending my life doing, and would be forced to be a burger expert at McDonalds.  And I’d be lucky to even be able to land that job in this economy.

I’m not going to reveal the sources under any circumstance.  If I did, I would be ruining the lives of people who put their trust in me.  That is something I will not, cannot do.  It goes against every ethical fiber of my being.

I know I have a flare for the literary.  I was a big reader as a kid, my nose always buried in some book.  As an adult I’ve carried this tradition on, spending too much money at Barnes & Nobel every month.  I figured that someday I’d write an article for a magazine or SciFi novel, but it was never at the top of my list.  I thought that I’d end up working in computers somehow, probably with stuff on the internet.

I never thought I’d be editing other peoples work.

You see I have two faults as a writer.  The first my grammar – it isn’t really up to my standards.  I have a good persuasive and conversational tone, and can meld the two together with ease.  But my skills in technical and “100% proper” grammar have never been my strong point.  Not the basic stuff like you’re and your, or their, there, and they’re.  More “advanced” stuff like use of – or; or my, penchant, for, comma, usage.

If the above paragraph doesn’t get me fired I don’t know what will.

The second fault I have is my spelling.

I had a teacher in the fourth and fifth grade named Mrs. Davidson, at Otter Lake Elementary School in White Bear Lake, Minnesota.  I stayed in touch with her throughout the rest of my public education, and did some work with her classes for a college course later on.  She was a great teacher to both my brothers and me, and she always gave me shit about one thing: I couldn’t spell to save my life.

I was in an English class of hers in 2003 helping out and observing for a large college honors report I was doing on power structures in the classroom.  She chuckled and motioned for me to come over to her desk, giving me the dreaded two fingered summons.

You know.  The kind every teacher can do.  Raise their hand above their head, look right at you over their bifocals, put their pointer and middle fingers together and give you the “Come over and receive punishment” motion.

I pop up from my seat at the back of the classroom and walk over between the rows of students, reminiscing that I once led such a simple life of worksheets and crossword puzzles.  I take a seat on the chair next to her, smiling.  She hands me a spelling test and says softly, “Make sure you know how to spell the words before you tell the class.”

A grin and a chuckle later, she reminded me after first teaching me over 10 years ago that I still didn’t know how to spell worth a damn.

And she was right.  One of the words was italicize.  Z and not S?  News to me.

So this brings me to today, a full 16 years after I first had spelling lessons given to me by Mrs. Davidson.  I’m now working as a full time editor for WoW.com (formerly WoW Insider) and amongst other things, every day I correct people on spelling, grammar, and other subtle nuisances of the English language.

It’s absolutely the last job I ever thought I’d have.

If you’re reading this site then you know what I do for a living; I write and edit posts at WoW.com. Some of these are true blog posts, others are news articles, and still others are encyclopedic features that take months of work. I want to ramble for a minute about diversification in blog posts.

Here’s a bold statement for you all: talking just about World of Warcraft is very boring. One of the great things about the game is that it lets you combine many other aspects of your life into it. Have a bunch of friends that play it? You’re probably going to spend the majority of your time talking about non-Wow related stuff while you’re in game. This isn’t a bad thing, indeed it’s a great thing. The inclusion and ability for non-game related material in game will, and might have already, extended the lifetime of the game many times over.

That same diversification should be taken into account in blog posts about WoW. Note that I’ve made a distinction above of the different types of posts WoW.com has. Blog posts are very different from encyclopedic reference posts. You shouldn’t include a Monty Python joke in a 50 page knowledge dump about in-game mounts. But you should include a Monty Python joke (or two) in a blog post where you answer random questions.

An example of this was The Queue that I wrote today.

I’ve reached this conclusion about diversification and inclusion of external non-game content based on the feedback we’ve had to The Queue. When something like Hawaiian Pizza is mentioned, we’ll get 75 to 100 comments talking about Hawaiian Pizza. Post some music or comic reference, guaranteed to get lots of comments on those references too.

Last week my fellow editor Alex Ziebart included some music to listen to while reading The Queue. People loved it, and we’ve continued to include optional reading music. The music doesn’t have a damn thing to do about WoW, but it’s still a piece which people seem interested in and want to comment on. That helps build a community, which means the site gets more traffic and will be around much longer.

Now on a scale of WoW.com, where the site is already well established, has been around a long time, and will be around for a long time to come, it doesn’t have an immediate impact on community building and traffic numbers (however we do see popular and well written articles have increased traffic, of course, just like anything else). But when everyone at WoW.com suddenly starts building communities of readership around their posts and columns, the site’s heath sky rockets. This is true for any long established blog. Just because you’re big, bad, and are pulling in billions and billions of visitors a day doesn’t mean you can’t improve. And that improvement, is, well, awesome.

This might seem like a justification for including off-topic content, and in some ways it is. But it’s also a recent epiphany of sorts on pulling in readers and keeping them here.

Anyone can have a blog, but only the special blogs will make a reader raise an eyebrow at their content.

Really.  Look at this.  A blog update!

I have a good reason for not updating since the flood: I’ve been super busy with work.  WoW Insider has morphed into WoW.com.  WoW.com combines both social networking tools and the great World of Warcraft information site everyone has come to know and love.  The transition took a solid month of internal testing before it went live, and even now, it’s officially in beta.
I’m very impressed with the work that the entire team has put into it.  The social networking side of things really got tested thoroughly by the writing staff.  We were well prepared for whatever problems would creep up on launch day.  The other thing that happened was the new site redesign went live.  This was, in my opinion, even a larger deal; if only because the width of the columns increased from 425px to 580px.  That makes a big big difference in the content that we’re able to produce.  Expect to see lots more tables, graphs, and complicated graphics in the future.

I’ve been doing a lot more behind the scenes with WoW.com/WoW Insider now as well.  I just finished a big project that should help things out significantly.  Lots of research but a good results will come of it.  Completed projects make me happy.  +20 mood for the rest of the week.

BlizzCon is coming up in August and I’m looking forward to traveling out to LA again to enjoy the event.  Perhaps more than the actual event is getting to meetup with the WoW.com folks face to face again.  Last time was a blast, and I’m sure this time will be great fun as well.

Facebook has been discovered, forgotten about, and then rediscovered by me recently.  I’m not really sold on it personally, however.  There is too much personal information in there.  Not that there’s not already a shitton out there on the net about me already, but I’m not too keen on letting eFriends know my phone number and address.  So I think I’m going to limit it to people I know (or remember), and gently let everyone else down.  As if they’d care.  /ego.

I’ve become and am becoming more addicted to twitter.  I hate myself for that.  Oh wait, someone tweeted about their bowl movement.  I wonder how that’ll go.

/facepalm!

The snow is coming down rather heavy, and the wind is cuasing the water along Drain 27 to slosh about.  I’d say maybe 6″ to 1′ waves.  This is only going to put added pressure and erosion on an already maxxed out system.

Clearly, this is just what the region needs right now. (This is internet sarcasm for those who can’t tell.)