h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

..and that its title fared better than some lately.

The Sean Connery photo...well, there are just no words for this.

Admittedly, Alexander probably had a Macedonian accent you could cut with a knife...and there are lots of Celts in northern Greece...

Ayup dmitri

Thanks for drawing my attention to it. Malabarista let me choose a title since the Eds wouldn't have the one that fitted well enough for The Stretch. I was all out of inspiration and this was the best I could come up with. I like old Shorn Canary. I bet you're right and he played the role with a recognisably Scottish accent I hope so!

I see they've changed your title too. Hmm. I must say, I preferred your original title. On the brighter side, it's on the front page - yay whereas, my cannibalism entry got over all the hurdles then fell at the last - and the Eds deleted it Ah well

I'll bet he did. I remember his doing this as an Arab, which was disconcerting.

A bit like Sean Bean that way.

They *deleted* your cannibalism entry? What would Dean Swift have said? This is shocking.

The edited version appeared on my page about 3 weeks ago and then promptly got hidden. At the same time they hid the original. It seemed a bit odd since I'd removed it from PR myself, because I didn't think it had a snow-ball's chance of getting into the edited guide - and, of course, to save anyone the bother of telling me to remove it. It was the eds who emailed me and asked me to put it back. So I waited a while to see whether they'd reinstate it, then eventually emailed them to ask why they'd hidden it.

They were very nice about it. Said I should have received an automatic email. (I didn't). They said that when they accepted the entry, they'd overlooked the fact that cannibalism is illegal. (Actually, I didn't suggest that people should just start eating their dead, but should campaign first to get the law changed.) They said I could re-write it making it historical and anthropological and explaining why there's a taboo against it. That would miss the point entirely of course and anyway, I think it's already covered in the Guide. I thanked them for the explanation and they sent me another, very nice email, saying *they* understood the spirit in which it was written, but not everybody would. And they thought it might cause legal problems.

I don't suppose Dean Swift would've got it past them either

Interesting sort of bedlam we all live in.

They're right, lawyers are too thick on the ground.

That they overlooked the fact that cannibalism was illegal, is...well...just priceless.

You have to laugh, don't you

The rude ejection of my cannibalism entry wasn't a dead loss though. I got a lovely new "Order of the Velvet Gauntlet" badge from Pin, to perk up my page.

Good for you.

I don't think the time my entry was yikesed counts.

The entry was on Brendan Behan, and of course we all cried foul, thinking, there they go paddy-bashing again...Behan did famously show up drunk on the BBC, but that was 50 years ago...

Turns out - at least, this was the explanation I got when I emailed them - that somebody said one passage was plagiarised, or at least too close to the source.

I reworded, the entry got published.

I always wondered, though, why someone would feel they had to yikes an entry for a sentence or two, rather than just pointing out the error.

Oh, and we can now have a new art form - PR titles in 39 characters or less...

I may earn that badge yet...my latest essay (it's a future one for ) got yikesed...

Discussing the progress of race relations is fraught with dangers, even with asterisks.

Jumping in because I don't want to start a new thread...

I thought of your Entry when I saw this: http://www.harkavagrant.com/index.php?id=25

Excellent