Communication and Giving

What is with this "ice bucket challenge" for ALS? It seems like social media believes this is the only cause worthy of donating to, and it makes me mad.

Every day I am bombarded with requests to give money. Every time I go to the grocery store, the drug store, the hardware store, the pet store, I am asked at the register if I want to donate to some cause. And now my news feeds and social media are pockmarked with "ice bucket challenges" as people post pictures and videos of getting doused in ice cubes and cold water for ALS.

First off, without looking it up, I couldn't tell you anything about ALS besides a famous baseball player, Lou Gehrig, had it and had to quit playing. I also know it is a degenerative disease. That's about it.

But I can tell you about malignant melanoma. I can tell you that there are four types of melanoma and once you get to stage 3 and the cancer metastasizes, your chances of survival are a slim 20 percent. I know this because a very dear teacher I had in college lost his battle with nodular melanoma. How many of you donated to the Skin Cancer Foundation to help increase the odds of surviving?

Writing: Know your history

Strahov Monastery - photo courtesy of Wikimedia Commons

When you write non-fiction, it is important to have your facts straight. Being able to reference historical information to support your writing is essential. If you're writing about the future of publishing, be able to discuss publishing's past. If you're writing about a CEO's rise to power, give credit to events in that person's youth that put her where she is today. If you want to be considered an expert on molecular biology, reflect on the various people and theories that make up what the science is today.

But if you are writing fiction, history is meaningless, right? Let's leave out the obvious historical fiction and modern adventure/thrillers that rely on knowing past events. Would you still need history to create an epic fantasy that takes place in a fantasy realm, like J.R.R. Tolkien's The Hobbit? Or how about a grand work of science fiction like Frank Herbert's Dune? Neither novel takes place on Earth, or in a time that we know, so is history all that important?