False History Contest

The Internet is a wonderful thing. Where else can you get information on pretty much anything you can imagine. Case and point - The Citizens' Association to Blow Up the Moon. Basically you can find anything on the Internet and many, many, many people are very willing to take it at face value and consider it fact.

I am proposing a contest that works in two parts. First we rewrite history, and second we see how long it takes before we hear it or see it as "fact"


What I would I propose is simple. Every two weeks or so we will post a new time period on this website. All contestants can chose ANY even that occured during that time period. Each contestant will write anywhere from 250 to 750 words on your history subject, but instead of making it an accurate history report we change the real facts. So, if we take the Hindenburg as an example, we don't change the fact it crashed, we just rewrite history as to WHY it crashed. The pilot had been drinking and could not react fast enough when a goose collided with his main engine. Or something along those lines. Obviously the more specific you get with more supporting evidence the more believable it will be.

Please do not change the actual events or make up new events. We want the events to be the same so when someone googles "Hindenburg" somewhere lurking in the results will be our false history. Hopefully from that point forward it will only be a matter of time until we see it posted, read it on another web page, or hear it someplace else.

At this point I do not have anything to offer the best author of each time period other than the prestige of being the individual who rewrote history the best.

All false history reports should be submitted to serenehanzo@gmail.com

All submissions will be posted on falsehistory.blogspot.com and the winning submission will be posted here.

For our first attempt at a false history report write about any major event that happened between 1920 and 1950. This gives us a broad range if topics to chose from. In future contests we will narrow it down a bit more, but to get the ball rolling we have 30 years to chose from. This time period will run from now until August 4th at which time we will review and pick the winner and then reset the contest.

Good luck,

Hanzo














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Rewarded By Force

Okay for once I am moving off plan and just writing something that is not a review or a contest. I just want you to think about the phrase "rewarded by force". Seriously think about it. Are we so far removed from this concept in this day and age?

I am certain that I would not be able to lift my head at the blogger conventions if I didn't write something off the wall and rant-ish every once in a while. Sure, we haven't come to the point where some crazy man in a black suit and dark glasses holds a gun to our head while pushing gift cards on us, but how far away are we?

We seem to be living in a world where increasingly people feel that they are owed something for the monumental task of breathing. We want to spare people's self esteem so everyone gets a reward. The concept of competition, reward and gain for hard work has seemed to slip far away. "There are no losers" is a motto I see more and more in schools and sports. A few weeks ago I read about a gentlemen who was taking time off from work to go see his granddaughter graduate from kindergarten. I was appalled. Looking into it, I found that this was not an uncommon practice, and that increasingly schools had graduation from kindergarten, primary school, middle school and other levels.

Now I am not sure about you, but when I look in a dictionary I find that graduation is typically defined as finishing a course of study in college or high school. I mean the definition of graduation actually uses the words "college" and "high school" to define what graduation is.

Any which way you look at it graduation should not be a right. It should be something that is earned. Holding graduations at mutliple levels just cheapens the experience of accomplishment and fosters feelings of entitlement.

Plenty of parents feel that there should be no last place in sports that every team deserves recognition and reward in order to preserve self esteem. If that is the case where is the motivation to do better? How will these kids learn to take it on the chin if they are passed over for a promotion or didn't receive a Christmas bonus like their coworker. How long until the expectation of reward becomes part of the Human Resource agenda and we have "expectation training" to make sure everyone feels good in their job. Rewards are earned and they should not be forced.

I don't know about you, but I am pretty sure that not everyone is a winner. A lot of people out there are losers. Its that simple. Fostering the idea that everyone is a winner or that everyone deserves a reward for trying their best is insane. The only time I will ever agree to anything remotely like that is when they take that concept and apply it to Las Vegas or the Lottery. I tried my best, I know I didn't have the winning numbers, but since I at least showed up and tried...










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