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

www.h2g2.com/A453052

Check it out. My first article. A bit too short, is it? Well, write something. If you don´t like it, then just give me some good healthy criticism.
Zec

Ooops. Sorry. It took me some time to find out that my link doesnt work.
here, try this one:
http://www.h2g2.com/A453052
there, that should do it.

Interesting subject and yes, it's too short. I want to know more.

I think you need to expand it in all directions. What led up to the fear; how did the brain detect it; how and why does it stimulate adrenaline output; what other hormones are increased/decreased. Mention the fight or flight response and what happens if fighting or escape are not possible (like when you're at work and it's the stress of your job or your boss causing the response). These responses evolved in a state of nature but kick in at inappropriate times in our modern environment.

I look forward to being educated on the anatomy of fear.

thanks for the posting. It helped a lot. I´m working on expanding it right now. It should be significantly expaanded within the next 24 hours.
Bye and thanks
Zec

Yes, please, tell us more! There is one thing I want to know: why, when I get a fright, does it feel as if all my veins are being flushed full of ice water?

Now its there. Check out the new expanded article.

Now it needs to be broken into logical sections with headings and the definitions of 'anxiety' and 'phobia' should be made into footnotes. If you don't know how to do that, nip over to page http://www.h2g2.com/A395552 where you can find instructions on how to write entries in GuideML. You'll also find links to other useful pages there.

I think it also requires further expansion and explanation but if you break it up under headings of, for example, an introduction, a main text heading and a conclusion and footnote any points of clarification, it will probably be easier for you to see what further information could enhance it. I, personally, would like to know more about the physiological processes involved and how fear helps an animal (me for example) to survive.

You're doing well. Get stuck in and make it a fascinating read!

Thanks for your help, but further expansion of the article will probably take some time. You´ve been a tremendous help so far. Keep at it.
Zec

I´ve converted the article into GuideML format. Looks pretty cool.
Zec

I liked this article. I guess I have seen the edited version, but it is still really good.

That looks better Zec. I'd like to see a bit of expansion and anxiety and phobia made into footnotes, preferably related to something in the text. As those 2 items stand they seem a little bit disconnected.

It's up to you of course and if you choose to leave the content as it is, perhaps you could just edit it a bit more. You have the first paragraph under the phobia heading starting with a comma. I can see that you've set it out in such a way that the headings actually form the beginnings of sentences but that comma looks very odd in that position.

Then it's up to a scout to spot your masterpiece. Good luck.

I´ll get right on to removing the comma. Come to think of it, it does look odd. I don´t think I´ll be making any other changes to the article though.
Zec

I enjoyed your article; it's certainly a very interesting topic.

One nitpick: despite the name of this article, there really doesn't seem to be much anatomy init. You have briefly touched on the anatomy of the adrenal gland, but the vast majority of the article seems to concentrate on the physiological processes associated with fear, and the response of the sympathetic nervous system, with mention of some psychological processes at the end.

Could I suggest just calling it 'Fear' or 'The Physiology of Fear'?

This article is very cool for it's atmosphere,
which leaves you standing alone among the blank lines, hoping for more text to cling to,
and it
almost
frightened me.

Leave it like this! Don't fill it with details, and make it a boring read.

Therefore, i agree with sadbadmad, that it needs a bit more on the adrenaline gland to fill out the title, and
to that i add that the sentence about the 'hormone catecholamine' is so outrageously short, i can't make head nor tail.
But that should be all! I wouldn't add more bland facts, or the article will lose it's eery feary feel.

Agree that 'physiology of...' would work better as a title. Or 'types of fear'? 'fear' itself is fairly overarching - people would be after all *sorts* of information and details from an entry named that, and you'd never get it past peer review... {well, maybe, who knows}

"Microsoft Encarta Encyclopedia used for reference" - if you direct-quote from Encarta at any point then you are breaking the Terms of h2g2, because you don't say exactly where you direct-quote (footnoting works best). If you don't, then you don't need to put this here.

I'd suggest rewriting any direct-quotes in your own words, and zpping the reference. Nobody likes MS anyway...

While I *do* like the atmosphere of the piece - I'd be loathe to suggest that style should take precedence over providing helpful and factual information. Would it be possible to keep this style for the first little bit, and then go into more detail afterwards? That way you get to scare everyone to start off with, then leave them feeling more stable after finishing...

It's a shame the entry is gonna miss halloween...

I appologize for the lateness of my reply, but I haven´t been online very lately. Now to get to the point. I like the suggestion for the new title. I´ll go change it right now. I´m also going to remove the "Encarta Encyclopedia used for reference" sentence because I didn´t use any direct quotes anyway.

I´m glad you like the atmosphere of the style, but it really wasn´t on purpose.

I think that there isn´t much more to be said about fear directly, and that if I put any more information in there I´d have to change the title to "The glands" or "Hormones are our friends".

Oh and thanks for the help.
Zec.

Hi Zec,

A great subject for an article, and a nice start. It brought back my degree course (Experimental Psychology). I'd like to suggest a few possible extensions:

Adrenaline is often called the "fight or flight" response. You could mention that, in a fight, you should be more afraid of an opponent with a whitened face than a reddened one, because the adrenaline response causes the blood vessels under the skin to constrict so that more oxygen goes to the muscles.

You bring up the subject of anxiety: if you want to cover it here (it's not exactly fear), maybe you could tell the reader a little about the effects of long-term anxiety, eg ulcers, and how they come about.

There's a really good piece of science which I'd like to see you mention here. Studies have been done on people with severe spinal injuries - often Vietnam war veterans - whose nerve links to their adrenal glands has been cut. When they are placed in a dangerous (or infuriating) situation, they report that they don't feel fear (or anger or whatever) in the way other people do - it's a purely intellectual exercise, without the gut-wrenching, sweating etc, and it feels "strange", almost "unreal". This is an interesting demonstration that our thoughts are heavily modified by hormonal processes, which in turn has interesting implications for the development of artificial intelligence in a neuron-only model.

Please don't give up on this article, because a bit more research would make it a shoo-in for the Guide.

GVI

Myself I'd say that as anxiety is a seperate emotion to fear an entry ought to focus on either one or the other - but there you are.

I'm afraid it still just feels too short for me, considering the topic. There must be more you can say abour the physiology of fear, right?

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