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McAnally's (The Community Pub) => Author Craft => Topic started by: meg_evonne on September 08, 2007, 12:40:18 AM
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Question for Jim or others who have published, “Yes or No, does the bear ever go away?”
There is a bear that lives in my room.
As I write, he's tiny & small in the corner.
Sometimes so large, I can’t get in.
He asks things-- I try to ignore,
“You don’t know the craft, you never will.
Give up, go away. Leave. me. in. peace…”
Not nice, not cute; I battle him daily.
If he wins, my ideas would cease.
And my heart would be shattered.
How I hate that gosh darn bear…
Jim, will he always be there, just out of sight, in the corner of my room…
Will he forever hold the power to terrify me? Or does he finally, finally go away?
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My bear is a panda.
He's cute and distracts me.
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My bear is a panda.
He's cute and distracts me.
Is his name Gema? :D
Craig
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Panda huh?
(http://users.aber.ac.uk/ead4/pvp.png)
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My bear is pink with a heart on her chest and she smiles a lot. She scares me.
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My bear keeps stealing my pick-a-nic basket.
And no, I don't think he'll ever go away.
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Is he smarter than your average bear?
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I think mine is a polar bear, which aren't actually bears. It perches on the porch outside my apartment and gets me with that same scooping motion they use in the wild for flipping seals out of the water through holes in the ice. Fortunately, it's only metaphorical, because real polar bears kill people every year this way in Churchill. {Note; when building a town in the middle of nowhere to take advantage of huge untapped mineral deposits, it's worth checking you're not right in the middle of the annual polar bear migration route.)
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Polar bears are not real bears? They're genetically very closely related to brown bears. What research are you looking at, just curiously?
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mine are all pandas, and they're real bears. I see them everywhere too...
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Polar bears are not real bears? They're genetically very closely related to brown bears. What research are you looking at, just curiously?
Last I saw - and do please remind me to look this up if I don't come back to it - polar bears are genetically closer to weasels, ferrets and so forth than to other bears. Convergent evolution to some extent.
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Last I saw - and do please remind me to look this up if I don't come back to it - polar bears are genetically closer to weasels, ferrets and so forth than to other bears. Convergent evolution to some extent.
They do sort of look weasel-esque in the face I guess.
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They do sort of look weasel-esque in the face I guess.
There are a fairly tightly defined set of solutions to the problem of how best to move fast in water, which is why fish, whales and ichthyosaurs are all roughly the same shape despite coming from differently-shaped direct ancestors. I've been in a couple of zoo-type things with polar bear enclosures where one could see them on land and in water, and that face from above is strikingly streamlined.
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Bear?
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Last I saw - and do please remind me to look this up if I don't come back to it - polar bears are genetically closer to weasels, ferrets and so forth than to other bears. Convergent evolution to some extent.
From what I've quickly read up on Google Scholar, all evidence points to polar bears being actual bears.
Phylogenetic Relationships of North American Ursids Based on Analysis of Mitochondrial DNA (http://www.jstor.org/view/00143820/di000312/00p0381r/0)
Mitochondrial DNA Sequence Evolution in the Arctoidea (full text avail) (http://www.pnas.org/cgi/content/abstract/90/20/9557)
An Empirical Evaluation of Genetic Distance.....From Bear (Ursidae) Populations (full text avail) (http://www.genetics.org/cgi/content/abstract/147/4/1943)
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watched some special on The discovery channel recently about various species of bears and how they evolved. Said something along the lines that Polar bears evolved from the same Bear ancestor as grizzly bears. But both species are related to the weasel family distantly. Thousands of years ago grizzly bears evolved into Polar bears to better adjust to the arctic climate but polar bears are indeed bears. Their snouts became longer and their claws have more of a razor edge for killing walrus and seals. that's what was said on the show anyway.
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I just love this board! No where else does a group of people get off track in such creative or educational ways. You guys are the best! :D
Barbara
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Polar bears are one of the eight species of bears - the other seven being brown bears (grizzlies), black bears, sun bears, moon bears, spectacles bears, sloth bears, and panda bears.
This confusion might arise from the red panda, which is actually not a bear but more closely related to the raccoon - but nonetheless bears both morphological and behavioral similarities to the giant panda.
In response to the original question - I think having the bear go away would be the worst thing for an author. Insecurity is one of the side-effects of concern. The only way I know of the make the bear go away is to not care about the quality of the work.
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Polar bears are one of the eight species of bears - the other seven being brown bears (grizzlies), black bears, sun bears, moon bears, spectacles bears, sloth bears, and panda bears.
So I was also wrong in thinking Kodiak bears are a separate species ? They're just really big grizzlies ?
Yes, I am a working computational biologist, but in a context that does not normally involve multicellular organisms.
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TO ANSWER THE QUESTION :)
No, whatever it is you call the destractions and the things that make you think can't write never go away. It can be like "A Beautiful Mind", though. If you pay it no attention it will just lurk on the edge of your senses. It can only consume you if you let it.
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Mine's not a bear so much as the internet. And clothing websites.
And forums.
No, they never go away. You have to yell at them really loud and shun them so you can get a few sentences out every hour or so. :D
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I have a bear bear. He likes to use my desk as a scratching post and he marks his territory on my bed ;-;
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My bear is animatronic, with a cassette tape deck in his back. He keeps me company, and reads me stories.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teddy_Ruxpin (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teddy_Ruxpin)
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I couldn't resist posting a photo of my friend's polar bears. He took a trip to the Artic just to photograph polar bears. He shared some with me and said I could send your way! Enjoy...
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Wow! Awesome picture!! :)
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I guess if you're considering the bear to be the part that tells you what you're writing is dreck and you'll never get better--I think that for a lot of us the best we can do is keep it caged. But we can't eliminate and, in fact, MUSTN'T eliminate it, because it's what keeps us growing as writers. Every book must become better, richer, stronger. Every sentence is more tightly worded and requires less editing by the publisher. My bear keeps me relevant and thoughtful about my work. It keeps me on my toes in a tough writing market. ;D
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I don't have something that actively tries to discourage me. But there are plenty of times my muse seems to take a very prolonged vacation. Which is sometimes something of a relief. My muse is not gentle. When she says write she uses a 2X4 on me. That can be very distracting while driving. :)
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polar_bear - Universal Knowledge Repository.
"According to both fossil and DNA evidence, the polar bear diverged from the brown bear roughly 200 thousand years ago" - Polar evolved from brown, so pretty closely related.
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polar_bear - Universal Knowledge Repository.
"According to both fossil and DNA evidence, the polar bear diverged from the brown bear roughly 200 thousand years ago" - Polar evolved from brown, so pretty closely related.
Well why are we worried about global warming and the polar bear going extinct? We'll just bread a new one from the brown bear. I'm sure wikipedia has the correct dna sequencing and instructions on repeating the process.
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Well why are we worried about global warming and the polar bear going extinct? We'll just bread a new one from the brown bear. I'm sure wikipedia has the correct dna sequencing and instructions on repeating the process.
And why worry about war and genocide? We can just breed more human beings from apes.
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polar_bear - Universal Knowledge Repository.
"According to both fossil and DNA evidence, the polar bear diverged from the brown bear roughly 200 thousand years ago" - Polar evolved from brown, so pretty closely related.
DNA evidence is a newish technology, and the best guess for divergence dates of major groups of mammals has to my knowledge changed three or four times in the last ten to fifteen years; I could probably dig up some of the relevant Nature papers if anyone cared enough.
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And why worry about war and genocide? We can just breed more human beings from apes.
Can we start with bonobos next time ? Sex rather than violence as preferred means of conflict resolution seems to lead to a more pleasant world in several ways.
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Can we start with bonobos next time ? Sex rather than violence as preferred means of conflict resolution seems to lead to a more pleasant world in several ways.
Meh. Omnisexuality as a practice never appealed to me. ;D
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After having deeply researched the Bonobos (on Wiki :D) I vote HERE< HERE for the Bonobos and their lifestyle. Given my deep research, I do not agree on their aggression or that they are anything like the traditional Chimpanse. Their good natural sense & their matriarchal society appeals to the woman in me. Make love not war!