Study Notes: Mar 15-Apr 11, 2015: "The Culture of Violence in Joseph Smith's Mormonism" &c

This is commentary. And this is really good. 

What I've been watching and reading this week: 

• Article, "How To Turn Real Science Into Great Science Fiction" by Charlie Jane Anders
• Article, "Why Did The Doctor Start Eating Meat Again On Doctor Who?" by Charlie Jane Anders
• Post, "The Visual Intelligence of Pacific Rim" by Sam Keeper

Homework for the future:

• Go through at least five entries in in my "P Articles" bookmark folder. Let's go with: (1) "The 'Monkey Master' Fable"; (2) "Economics of Star Trek"; (3) "Technologies of Abundance and the Fairytale of Jobs"; (4) "Hope For A Lumpy Filter"; (5) "What Wide Origins You Have, Little Red Riding Hood!"
• Read the posts linked to by "Responses to the Anti-Reactionary FAQ.". Eventually. 
• Still on the to-do list: studying the Austrian School of Economics.
• Also need to do some reading on polyamory. 
• Also on the to-do list: All of those themes that I decide I want to play with, and cool bits that attract me, and things like that? Let's get systematic about that, put them into a single document (might be public, might not) and work with at least one of them every week. Systematic. Systematic. I do it best when I do it systematically. 

"How to Turn Real Science Into Great Science Fiction"

• Paul McAuley: "Much of the stuff you can find in these places [New Scientist, Scientific American, Nature, Science, NASA, Smithsonian] is published with, or just before, important and interesting papers, and unless you have been trained as a scientist [they] are your best bet for keeping current [second brackets original]."
• Paul McAuley: "You may not want to read scientific papers, which are 'formal' and 'condensed.'" 
• Sean Carrol: "Most research is of interest primarily to specialists in the field."
• Alastair Reynolds: "What works for me is simply to read a lot of stuff throughout the year, not with a particular story or theme in mind, but just because you never know what might be useful for interesting in the long run." 
• "There's no harm in contacting a scientist directly to ask about his or her research..."
• "When you talk to a scientist, do your homework first-- asking vague questions like 'So what's new in your field?' is a waste of time all around..."
• "Follow blogs and Twitter feeds of working scientists." 
• "Actually, the very best option would be if you can find a scientist who's interested in working with you directly, says Carroll. That way you can 'bring them into the creative process and come up with ideas together.'"
• "Look at transdisciplinary science. Says Trent, 'That's where you'll find teams of scientists from many different fields coming together to work on a particular problem from many angles. That's where science is fresh, interesting, and cutting-edge.'"

"Why Did The Doctor Start Eating Meat Again On Doctor Who?"

• "In a way, it makes sense for the Doctor to be vegetarian. He's a telepathic alien who can apparently communicate with non-human creatures-- in one recent episode, he can speak dinosaur-- and he doesn't seem to draw a clear distinction between humans and other forms of life. And at the end of the horrifying/campy episode 'The Two Doctors,' the Sixth Doctor reflects on his encounter with a psychotic alien butcher who wants to eat human flesh, and decides that he'll just be vegetarian from now on." 
• "The Sixth Doctor makes a big deal out of eating nut cutlets a few stories later. I'm pretty sure Sylvester McCoy's Doctor never eats meat, either." 
• "Why did the Doctor decide at some point that he was okay with eating dead animals again? The obvious answer is, he went through the horrors of the Time War and decided he just didn't care any more." 

"The Visual Intelligence of Pacific Rim"

• "One of the things she [Sara] has trouble with is processing language on a non-literal level. In other words, metaphors, figures of speech, and some humor that depends on incongruities, sort of doesn't interface right with her brain. However, there's no 'metaphor' sector of the brain. There's nothing that interprets figurative information across media. There's brainmatter [sic?] that deals with language... and brainmatter [sic?] that deals with visuals. So while my girlfriend struggles with linguistic metaphor, she takes to visual metaphor like a fish takes to water... She can look at a weird background motif in a Manga panel and immediately list off for me its significance, or pick out recurring color schemes used to signify something about a particular character, or decipher wordless sequences that I find confusing or disorienting and (embarrassingly) explain them back to me like it's no big thing and I'm kinda silly for not getting it." 
• "When confronted with a text that primarily relies on images, therefore, our response is to write that text off as dumb or lacking depth, because we're interpreting the text on a linguistic level rather than on the level that it's working on." 
• "There's a place by the fire here, and we've kept your second favorite chair warm for you." 

Miscellaneous

• Dr. William Wood, University Lecturer in Philosophical Theology at Oxford: "Theology is the closest thing we have at the moment to the kind of general study of all aspects of human culture that was once very common, but is now quite rare." A theologian "has to be a historian, a philosopher, a linguist, a skillful interpreter of texts both ancient and modern, and probably many other things besides." 
• Jerry A. Coyne: "Theology is the only academic discipline where people get paid not to investigate their beliefs, but to rationalize them." 
•