Back of the Envelope

Jeremy Pierce has an interesting post on Cognitive Behavior Therapy.  It's a topic I know pretty much nothing about, but what caught my attention was a short discussion on how it relates to Stoicism:

Powlison bases a lot of his critique on the fact that CBT uses (sometimes consciously) methods that can rightly be described as Stoic in that they do have a strong enough similiarity to key ideas of the ancient Stoics that I don't think the comparison is inapt. Stoicism, at least on the issues relevant here, involves one key claim. The Stoics didn't think it's worth worrying about something outside your control. The reason is that your life is made worse off by your worrying, but you can do something about the worry. You can't do anything about the fact that George W. Bush won the presidential election in 2004 or Barack Obama won the presidential election in 2008. You can't change the fact that lots of people died recently in China from landslides. You can do something to help those who remain, and you can do something to change people's minds on policy issues and perhaps help elect a different sort of person next time, but there's no point in worrying about something you can't do anything about.

That element of Stoic philosophy seems entirely reasonable to me. The Stoics do go on to say that we should remove all emotions, but it's important to be clear on what they meant. They defined emotions more or less as bad reasoning. Things we call feelings that aren't bad reasoning and are compatible with good reasoning would not be emotions for the Stoic. So there's no reason to complain about that view on the ground that it's healthy to have emotions and inhuman not to. We should eschew the things they called emotions without actually eschewing emotions as we understand the term. They had a strange view about what we should call emotions, but the substance of their view is mostly right, as Augustine so deftly argued in his critique of the Stoics. Feelings of any sort should be submitted to reason, and those that are irrational are best removed. Augustine shows that the Stoic view, when reworked into ordinary language without their odd view of what counts as an emotion, is largely correct and fully compatible with Christian teaching.

Where the Stoic goes wrong, as far as Christianity is concerned, is in not submitting things to the lordship of Christ. I can't even say that they don't equate submission to reason with submission to God. They do. They just have a false view of what God is like. Does that affect the practical level? Not so much. Does it affect CBT? Not remotely. The reason is that CBT is really a method, a placeholder in which you insert the content you intend to replace the unhealthy and irrational beliefs. The Stoics insisted that irrationality comes from false thinking. They may have been wrong about that as a fully adequate explanation of all irrationality. But they were certainly right that a whole lot of irrationality comes from false beliefs. I know at least two cases of chronic depression that in large part involves flat-out false beliefs, even if there may also be neurological causes. In one case it's someone who consistently interprets any possible information that could be stretched to show that people don't like him or that he's a failure as if everyone doesn't like him and as if his abilities are the problem, when in many of these cases no one is even evaluating him negatively, and often enough their evaluations aren't seen that way by the people doing the evaluating. Such a person might benefit from neurochemical supplements, but CBT would encourage him to replace those false beliefs with a more hesitant approach to such negative interpretations, one much more like how most people would respond.

CBT is offered as a correction to the biggest problem [of] Applied Behavior Analysis therapy. ABA insists on treating only behavior without dealing with anything internal, e.g. unhealthy beliefs. It stems from the behaviorist model of psychology, according to which we shouldn't postulate anything internal that can't be measured empirically, and thus any psychologist who talks about beliefs, desires, and so on is engaging in unscientific behavior (notice that even the way I've constructed that sentence admits only to the behavior of such a psychologist; a behaviorist shouldn't even say that such a psychologist has false beliefs about how psychology should be done, just that the speech and methods of such a psychologist are unscientific).

It's an interesting analysis, but I know too little about psychology to have much to add.  I do know a little about Stoicism, although not enough to correct a professional philosopher.  As I understand it, at its core, Stoicism was fatalist.  I don't mean that in a necessarily negative sense, but in the technical sense.  Stoics believed that the future was set, that it had indeed happened before and would happen again, in an endless repeating cycle.  This didn't mean that anything you did was meaningless.  You, too, had a part in that cycle, and what you did had meaning and relevance.  But you had done it before and would do it again.

At least, that's how I understand their beliefs.

Labels: Philosophy

NOTE: This is a re-post of an old carnival, so I can't guarantee the link.

Andrew hosts the latest Storyblogging Carnival, with six stories, at Dodgeblogium. Go read.

Labels: Storyblogging Carnival

NOTE: This is a re-posting of an old post, so links may be broken.

Welcome to the sixty-seventh Storyblogging Carnival.  We have five entries this time.  I won't bother writing a long introduction, and instead we can jump straight to the stories.

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Small Packages
by Jeremiah Lewis at Fringeblog
A 50 word brief story rated PG.

A man contemplating suicide sees something that changes his mind.

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Loneliness
by Jeremiah Lewis at Fringeblog
A 50 word brief story rated PG.

A girl sees her singleness as a measure of time.

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Taxing Times
by Mad Kane at Mad Kane's Humor Blog
A 570 word brief story rated PG.

Humorous adventures in tax return preparation.

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Faithful are the Wounds of a Friend
by Donald S. Crankshaw of Back of the Envelope
A 970 word brief story rated PG.

While technically more of a homily, this story recounts some painful, yet helpful, real life events.

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The Shaft
by Andrew Ian Dodge of Dodgeblogium
A 1391 word short story rated PG-13.

It takes place just after the Norman invasion. A man gets an odd knife from a Saxon raider.

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This concludes the sixty-seventh Storyblogging Carnival.

If you'd like to take part in a future carnival, please contact me.  I am also looking for hosts.  Other carnivals can be found here.

The Storyblogging Carnival can be found at The Truth Laid Bear's ÜberCarnival.

Labels: Storyblogging Carnival

NOTE: This is a re-posting of an old post, so links may be broken.

Welcome to the sixty-sixth Storyblogging Carnival.  We had five entries this time, one from a new authors.  I didn't have a lot of time to put into this one, since I'm gone for today and had to get up really early.  Still, I'm sure the authors put plenty of work into it, so enjoy.

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Glitch 100 words
by Andrew Ian Dodge of Dodgeblogium
A 100 word brief story rated PG.

It's 100 words and the title says it all.

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Real Friends
by Anonymous at Zechary White
A 273 word brief story rated G.

A war story.

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Thag not grok big bottoms!
by Mark Rayner of The Skwib
A 350 word brief story rated PG.

The continuing saga of Thag — in which he learns the penchant the Drunka Grunka tribe has for an overabundance of rump.

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The Long Journey Back
by Mama Kelly at A Blog of Two Witches
A 3,261 word short story rated PG-13.

While this story is a work of fiction, elements of the abuse are inspired by real life events.

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Leprechaun Love
by Charmaine Frost at Reason and Rhyme
A 3,403 word short story rated PG-13.

A painfully shy new employee lifts the fortunes of a dating service.

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This concludes the sixty-sixth Storyblogging Carnival.

If you'd like to take part in a future carnival, please contact me.  I am also looking for hosts.  Other carnivals can be found here.

The Storyblogging Carnival can be found at The Truth Laid Bear's ÜberCarnival.

Labels: Storyblogging Carnival

It's sad, but Kristin's dreams are more coherent than some of my stories.

Labels: Storyblogging Carnival

This is a re-post of an old carnival, so some of the links may be broken.

Welcome to the sixty-fifth Storyblogging Carnival. We had five entries this time, one from a new authors. I didn't have a lot of time to put into this one, since I'm gone for today and had to get up really early. Still, I'm sure the authors put plenty of work into it, so enjoy.

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Plates of Meat
by 100 Words of The Centurion Diaries
A 100 word brief story rated G.

A shoe story.

[Although I normally reject submissions that don't include a blurb, I let this one slide since it was so short... plus, we were short on stories this week. -DSC]

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Steaming
by Andrew Ian Dodge of Dodgeblogium
A 100 word brief story rated R.

100 words of steaming... er.

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Mist Magic 22 (Beginning)
by Dave Gudeman at Doc Rampage
The next 271 words of a 7,000 word story in progress rated PG.

In which I learn the origins of the story of the Minotaur.

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Thag not got milk!
by Mark Rayner of The Skwib
A 600 word brief story rated PG.

The latest chapter in the humorous saga of Thag — prehistoric everyman — in which he learns about milk, and asks the Elder's council to let him go learn to make beer.

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Surmounting Marriage
by Madeleine Begun Kane at Madkane's Humor Blog
A 700 word brief story rated PG.

What happens when a couple who has no business mountain climbing, does it anyway.

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This concludes the sixty-fifth Storyblogging Carnival.

If you'd like to take part in a future carnival, please contact me. I am also looking for hosts. Other carnivals can be found here.

The Storyblogging Carnival can be found at The Truth Laid Bear's ÜberCarnival.

Labels: Storyblogging Carnival

Glenn disappointed me with this one:

TALKING CARS with the Car Lust guys.

Here I was expecting a post about talking cars, and instead I get a post talking about cars.

Labels: blogging

I thought it couldn't be done. I didn't think anyone could combine two of my favorite things: computer humor and the Middle Ages. I was wrong.

Labels: Humor, Technology

I've already touched on this subject, here and here. But Mike Duran, who's a Christian horror writer whose first book is coming out soon, has more on the subject:

Likewise, the “dread” invoked by the Christian writer is dissimilar to that of the atheist. Scripture warns, “It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God” (Heb. 10:31). This “fear” is pivotal to “Christian horror.” Whereas the atheist author invokes the fear of the absence of God, the Christian invokes the fear of the presence of God. The “horror” is in His existence, not His non-existence. Of course, this “horror” is for those who deny Him, ignore His warnings, and refuse His mercy. Sadly, terror awaits those on the “wrong side” of the Universe.
...
Perhaps there is no greater horror than that of an atheistic worldview. Forget blood, gore, and ghoulies. A world without meaning and purpose is the ultimate horror. A universe that arose by chance, exists without meaning, where lives plummet toward annihilation is the worst kind of horror. The child huddled in bed, fixated upon the dark closet, becomes the adult gaping into the void of what, he believes, is a godless universe. And unlike the Christian novelist, the atheist author has nothing but more “dark closets” to offer their readers.

It's an interesting post, but there are some things I'd quibble with. For example, the argument that only those who "deny Him, ignore His warnings, and refuse His mercy" have any reason to fear God. The Bible's account makes it clear that anyone who meets God feels dread. "The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom." (Proverbs 1:7) We tend to whitewash this, to say what the Bible really means is respect. The word, though, also means terror. And terror is probably a better description of what people feel when they meet God, or even an angel, than respect, in the Biblical accounts.

Why is that? What is scary about God? It's not that he is capricious or abusive. It's that he's unfathomable. Completely beyond our ken, and because we don't understand him, yet are completely under his power, we fear him. What's more, we realize that we are unworthy of him. We are fallen and sinful creatures, who by all rights should be the subject of his wrath. Thus fear is the natural and right response--it simply acknowledges the truth about who he is and who we are. That is why fear is the beginning of wisdom.

Now if I only knew how to capture this in a story...

Labels: Christianity, Writing

The next Storyblogging Carnival will be the one hundred and twelfth. It will be our sixth anniversary, and I'll host it here, at Back of the Envelope. The carnival will go up on Monday, September 6th. If you use your blog to share your fiction, then the Storyblogging Carnival is your opportunity. Here we host any and all forms of storytelling in blog format. If you're curious about what this looks like, have a look at some examples of previous storyblogging carnivals.

If you'd like to participate, please e-mail your story submissions to me at dscrank-at-alum-dot-mit-dot-edu (or post in my comments), including the following information:

• Name of your blog
• URL of your blog
• Title of the story
• URL for the blog entry where the story is posted
• (OPTIONAL) Author's name
• (OPTIONAL) A suggested rating for adult content (G, PG, PG-13, R)
• A word count
• A short blurb describing the story

The post may be of any age, from a week old to years old. The submission deadline is 11:59 PM Eastern time on Saturday, September 4th. More detailed information follows (same as always):

1. The story or excerpt submitted must be posted on-line as a blog entry, and while fiction is preferred, non-fiction storytelling is acceptable.
2. The story can be any length, but the Carnival will list them in order of length, from shortest to longest, and include a word count for each one.
3. You may either send a complete story, a story in progress, or a lengthy excerpt. You should indicate the word count for both the excerpt and the complete story in the submission, and you should say how the reader can find more of the story in the post itself.
4. If the story spans multiple posts, each post should contain a link to the beginning of the story, and a link to the next post. You may submit the whole story, the first post, or, if you've previously submitted earlier posts to the Carnival, the next post which you have not submitted. Please indicate the length of the entire story, as well as the portion which you are submitting.
5. The host has sole discretion to decide whether the story will be included or not, or whether to indicate that the story has pornographic or graphically violent content. The ratings for the story will be decided by the host. I expect I'll be pretty lenient on that sort of thing, but I have some limits, and others may draw the line elsewhere. Aside from noting potentially offensive content, while I may say nice things about stories I like, I won't be panning anyone's work. I expect other hosts to be similarly polite.
6. The story may be the blogger's own or posted with permission, but if it is not his own work he should gain permission from the author before submitting to the Carnival.

If you'd like to be added to the e-mail list, please let me know. Finally, I appreciate folks promoting the carnival on their own blogs, and I'm always looking for bloggers willing to host future carnivals.

Labels: Storyblogging Details

The other day, Instapundit linked to this article on Man Caves at The Art of Manliness. A "man cave" is defined as "an area within a house frequented by a man, as a workshop, garage, basement, or den." It's really a sanctuary, where a man goes to be alone and do what he enjoys doing, whether it be tinkering, playing guitar, or writing. It's supposedly a play on "caveman," but I wouldn't be surprised if there was a bit of Batcave (the name of Batman's hidden base) in the etymology.

The man caves in the article include a number of writer's studies, including Ernest Hemingway's, Frederick Douglass's, and, my favorite, Mark Twain's. It got me thinking about my own man cave. My room in my apartment serves as bedroom, work area, and writing studio. It's spacious, if nothing else, but hardly orderly:

This is just one corner, but it tells you most of what you need to know about me. There's an air conditioner, because I live on the third floor and it can get pretty hot, and the curtain is pulled closed over that window. There are the boxes that I haven't gotten around to after a month of living here, and the bookshelf containing just the books I felt that I most needed to unpack. The higher shelf contains books that I've either started reading or plan to soon, while the lower shelf contains the writing reference books I thought that I needed right away. The remaining shelves are filled with junk. Next to the shelves are some filing drawers, containing important papers in the top drawer, and printouts of stories with revision notes from my writing group and myself in the lower drawer. The bed, which is unmade, is set on a frame that was in the apartment when I arrived. Atop it is an inflatable mattress, because I'm too cheap to buy a real one.






This side of the room is where I do all my work. There's my computer and my business class color laser printer. Most importantly is my comfortable desk chair, an absolute necessity considering the number of hours I spend in front of that computer a day. There's a fan nearby, and bottles meant for recycling on the shelf above. Beside them is a black case with my tools. And on the floor is another box I haven't gotten around to unpacking.

Somehow, I doubt I'll be making anyone jealous of my man cave.

UPDATE: Fixed the links, which had somehow gone missing.

Labels: Personal

Welcome to the 111th Storyblogging Carnival. Enjoy the stories.

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Not So Clean Limerick
by Madelein Begun Kane of Mad Kane's Humor Blog
An under 100 word word brief story rated PG.

The tale of a bachelor who hates to clean, told in a two-verse limerick.

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Spot the Differences
by Mohit Salgaonkar of Still Waiting to Wake
An 539 word short story rated PG.

In a photo album of an old trip, I noticed picture of a person who never was on the trip! Bizarre? Creepy? Read on!

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The Disciple
by Terry Haferkamp of Shadow Dwellers
A 2,400 word short story rated PG.

Supernatural / horror. Police question a young writer about his connection to a series of gruesome murders.

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Cyberteapunk
by Andrew Ian Dodge of Dodgeblogium
A 5,080 word short story rated PG-13.

A tale of the future of the tea party movement (20 years). Cyborgs, anarchists and neo-luddites with a touch of humor.

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This concludes the one hundred and eleventh Storyblogging Carnival.

If you'd like to take part in a future carnival, please contact me. I am also looking for hosts. Other carnivals can be found here.

The Storyblogging Carnival can be found at The Truth Laid Bear's ÜberCarnival.

UPDATE: Wow, the Storyblogging Carnival got an Instalanche. It'd be nice if we'd had a few more entries for this one, but hey, I'll take what I can get. See here for more carnivals. You may notice that it's slightly out of order--that's because I've been moving old carnivals over from my old blog, and I haven't put them all in order yet.

FURTHER UPDATE: I'm now accepting entries for the next carnival, our sixth anniversary version. The details are here.

Labels: Storyblogging Carnival

My laptop has been dying a long, slow death. My monitor's been acting up for a while now, freezing the lower part of the screen until I tapped it. A couple days ago, it acquired wavy black lines that won't go away. So I figure it's time to either repair my laptop or get a new one, and I'm leaning in the "get a new one" direction. The reason is that the laptop is out of warranty, and repairing it will require replacing the monitor. I can't imagine it costing less than a few hundred dollars, and I can buy a new netbook for that much.

Therefore I've been looking at netbooks. They generally run in the $300-350 range, and are small. They don't have great screen resolution or speed, but they make up for it in low weight and long battery life. Since I primarily want it for writing (and web browsing), that should be fine. I particularly like the Dell Inspiron 11z. I've looked at the reviews, and they almost universally say not to buy it, because the touchpad is unusable. Fortunately, Dell got the message and replaced the touchpad a couple of months ago, but I haven't seen many reviews done on it since then (customer reviews on the new touchpad are generally positive, though).

At $350 the cost is reasonable. Unfortunately, $350 is for the very basic model, and it'll probably end up costing more than that.

I've been trying to figure out what I really need and what I can do without.

First, there's the non-negotiables:

• Windows 7 ($30 for upgrade) - The default is Windows Vista, and I'm unwilling to inflict that on myself. All the reviews say that Windows 7 is better in every way, so I'll shell out extra for it.
• External DVD drive ($65 separate) - As it doesn't come with an internal drive, this is necessary if I want to install any of my old software on it.

So it's already $100 extra. Still reasonable, however.

Then there's the definitely want:

• Processor upgrade ($75 for upgrade) - According to all the reviews, this makes a definite difference. It certainly sounds worthwhile, and it's the sort of thing that's not easily changed later.
  
• 6-cell battery ($35 for upgrade) - This I'm a bit more hesitant on. I want the battery life, but this apparently sticks out a bit and makes it heavier. However, longer battery life helps it to fulfill my main objective--a portable computer for writing.
  

And finally the cheap nice-to-haves:

• WiFi n card ($25 for upgrade) - Not that I have an 802.11n network, but it'd be nice to be able to use them.
• Internal bluetooth ($20) - This one would be nice to have, but I can do without.

So if you add that all together, it comes to closer to $600 than $350. I'm still trying to convince myself that that I don't need the processor and/or the battery.

UPDATE: And... I've changed my mind. This review convinced me that the M101z is a better choice. It has a more expensive base price, but many of the features I was willing to pay extra for, so the total price is lower.

Labels: Computers

Kristin and I went with some of her friends to see Cirque du Soleil. I'm sure you're familiar with it... it's a circus that's well known for its spectacles. Bizarre costumes, a narrative, very artsy. It was my first Cirque du Soleil performance. And the thing you realize is that, although it's very artsy, it is indeed a circus. There are no animals, but there are jugglers, acrobats, a tight-rope walker, and even clowns. In fact, the clowns are the driving force behind the narrative, which is actually pretty slim. The show I saw is called Ovo, and it has a very vague narrative about insects (each performer played an insect), a stolen egg, and a love story between two bugs. But the story was really just an excuse to set up various performances.

Despite my lack of excitement about the insect story, I was very impressed with the performances. There was some very good juggling, and the high wire and the trapeze act were both very good. One thing I noticed is that the performers occasionally slipped up. One of the trapeze artists fell into the net, and the jugglers occasionally dropped what they were supposed to be juggling. But each time they simply started again as if nothing had happened, which I think was exactly right. Considering the very fancy things they were doing, perfection's pretty much impossible, and recovering from mistakes well is important. I'm sure there's a life lesson in there somewhere, but I'm equally sure that it's a hoary cliche, so I'll just leave it alone.

Overall, it was worth seeing.

Labels: Reviews

If you're ever feeling bad about your own writing, you should listen to this podcast with Brandon Sanderson. In it, you'll hear just a few sentences from the first novel Brandon ever wrote, back in 1994. For some unknown reason it remains unpublished. Well, technically speaking, it's pretty obvious why it's unpublished. While Brandon is now a well-known and well-respected writer who was asked to finish Robert Jordan's Wheel of Time, in 1994 he was just an amateur, and it shows. What this demonstrates is that even good writers start out pretty bad. The difference between a good writer and the bad writer he began as is time and practice. And if he can do it, so can you.

Update: And thanks to Mike Barker's transcript, here are the first few sentences from Brandon's novel:

The wind blew carelessly and freely. It caressed the stark dunes with its whispering touch, catching fine grains of sand between incorporeal fingers and bearing them forth like hundreds of tiny charioteers. The sand, bone white in color as if it had been bleached by the sun's harsh stare, seemed to shine for a second with a sharp inner light. Then it dulled in color to a deep black.

And as you can see, Brandon's come a long way.

Labels: Writing

The next Storyblogging Carnival will be the one hundred and eleventh. It will be hosted here, at Back of the Envelope, and going up on Monday, August 9th. If you use your blog to share your fiction, then the Storyblogging Carnival is your opportunity. Here we host any and all forms of storytelling in blog format. If you're curious about what this looks like, have a look at some examples of previous storyblogging carnivals.

If you'd like to participate, please e-mail your story submissions to me at dscrank-at-alum-dot-mit-dot-edu (or post in my comments), including the following information:

• Name of your blog
• URL of your blog
• Title of the story
• URL for the blog entry where the story is posted
• (OPTIONAL) Author's name
• (OPTIONAL) A suggested rating for adult content (G, PG, PG-13, R)
• A word count
• A short blurb describing the story

The post may be of any age, from a week old to years old. The submission deadline is 11:59 PM Eastern time on Saturday, August 7th. More detailed information follows (same as always):

1. The story or excerpt submitted must be posted on-line as a blog entry, and while fiction is preferred, non-fiction storytelling is acceptable.
2. The story can be any length, but the Carnival will list them in order of length, from shortest to longest, and include a word count for each one.
3. You may either send a complete story, a story in progress, or a lengthy excerpt. You should indicate the word count for both the excerpt and the complete story in the submission, and you should say how the reader can find more of the story in the post itself.
4. If the story spans multiple posts, each post should contain a link to the beginning of the story, and a link to the next post. You may submit the whole story, the first post, or, if you've previously submitted earlier posts to the Carnival, the next post which you have not submitted. Please indicate the length of the entire story, as well as the portion which you are submitting.
5. The host has sole discretion to decide whether the story will be included or not, or whether to indicate that the story has pornographic or graphically violent content. The ratings for the story will be decided by the host. I expect I'll be pretty lenient on that sort of thing, but I have some limits, and others may draw the line elsewhere. Aside from noting potentially offensive content, while I may say nice things about stories I like, I won't be panning anyone's work. I expect other hosts to be similarly polite.
6. The story may be the blogger's own or posted with permission, but if it is not his own work he should gain permission from the author before submitting to the Carnival.

If you'd like to be added to the e-mail list, please let me know. Finally, I appreciate folks promoting the carnival on their own blogs, and I'm always looking for bloggers willing to host future carnivals.

Labels: Storyblogging Details