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

I just took a peep at the list of Entries currently in Peer Review.

Nineteen out of the first twenty shown deal with fiction, music, or other cultural matters. The only one dealing with real life is "Dry Rot, or how not to have your house eaten."

Is this what DNA had in mind for the Earth Edition of The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy? I kinda understood him to mean "Write about the things and places you know, like your local area."

This is the Guide to Life, the Universe and Everything

I think you might have underestimated the amount of 'real life' in the Entries in Peer Review from the titles alone, but you can also look at the Newest Edited Entries on the Front Page - Entries about places tend to get picked out of Peer Review quite quickly by the Scouts

If you have any more ideas for Entries, we'd be pleased to see them in Peer Review - I particularly enjoyed your Barbershop Singing Entry

It's worse than that, R.

Those aren't the "first 20 entries" in Peer Review. Those are the only entries in Peer Review. Of those, 19 of them are written by the Guide Editors themselves. There is only one entry in Peer Review from anybody other than the small band of volunteers who are attempting to keep this site alive.

Wow. Bold survivors.

I was tending towards the opinion that after all the things that impinge most on our consciousness are cultural things.

We (evolved beings) adapt to our surroundings, and the most powerful determinants of our wellbeing are the other beings like ourselves.

Communication is the most important thing in our lives.

My own entries tend to be cultural too...

I've found that writing an entry on a subject concentrates my mind on the subject I am investigating. I realise the bits I don't know about and know where to continue researching.

For example, I've been writing an entry on Irish Stone Circles. I can see that I will need to visit the circles in Tyrone and Sligo before I can call it complete, so I'll arrange visits to these places over the summer.

What I will do the entry at the end is not clear. I don't see much point in publishing it on h2g2.

Here is the moment for some William James positivity. Believing that the world (website) is intelligently motivated and purposeful helps to make it so.

I think the site gets more readers than you might imagine from hanging around here.

The last entry I wrote for this site - a good three years ago now admittedly was on long distance cycling (of the Audax variety) and I actually got a couple of people tell me on addaxes that they started riding them after reading my article on h2g2.... which greatly pleased me.

But then this is coming from someone who's been here about three times in the last year. The site is definitely near comatose.

Gnomon - maybe you could offer it to Lonely Planet or some other Travel Guide publisher. Or the Irish Tourist board.....

I think the conversations have moved over to twitter/facebook, most message board style conversations have done so.

But I'm continually amazingly, stunningly grateful for the band of volunteers who struggle to keep the site alive.