Study Notes: Aug 2-8, 2015: "What's a Bodhisattva?"

This is commentary. And this is really good. 

What I've been watching and reading in this time: 

• "A Neocon Bible: What Would Jesus Say?", by David Gibson
• "What are Jinns exactly made up of?", on Yahoo! Answers
• "What are Jinn or Spirits", by Shaykh Ibn Arabi
• "What's a Bodhisattva?", by Barbara O'Brien
• Article, "The radical 'Jurassic World' we didn't get to see: When 'starting from scratch' means 'starting from white'", by Imran Siddiquee
• Article, "Desert utopia", by Jared Keller
• Post, "Contra Hallquist on Scientific Rationality", by Scott Alexander
• Article, "The easy morality of Cecil the Lion: Our problem isn't too much outrage--it's that we can't summon enough", Arthur Chu
• Article, "Scholars are way more skeptical of war than the American public. Here's why.", by Zack Beauchamp
• Article, "Why So Many Countries Are Building Airstrips on These Remote Islands", by Kelsey Campbell-Dollaghan
• Article, "It's never too early to start thinking about your own death", by Caitlin Doughty
• Article, "Secrets of the extreme religious right: Inside the frightening world of Christian Reconstructionism", by Paul Rosenberg
• Article, "This Wasp Mind-Controls Spiders Into Building It Cozy Webs", by Matt Simon
• Article, "The Deep Influence of the A-Bomb on Anime and Manga", by Frank Fuller
• Post, "DBT Sequence: Assumptions", by Ozy
• Post, "DBT Sequence: Dialectics", by Ozy
• Post, "Contrarians, Crackpots, and Consensus", by Scott Alexander

Homework for the future:

• 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.
• Finish the reading for "Notes to: Anarchy: Never Been Tried?"
• Finish the reading for "Notes to 16 Articles on Writing"
• Read Fenrir's Shrine. 
• 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. 
• Also, don't forget to flesh this section out a bit more with goals in general, and maybe include a section on which of those goals were accomplished since the last update.

Study Notes: Mar 8-14, 2015: "How long until North Korea collapses?" &c

This is commentary. And this is really good. 

What I've been watching and reading this week: 

• Post, "A Non-Biblical Dating for the Jaredite Migration" by Daymon Smith
• Paper, "Prophets, Kings, and Swords: The Sword of Laban and Its Possible Pre-Laban Origin" by Daniel N. Rolph
• Article, "Here's One Genre That Could Replace Post-Apocalyptic Stories" by Charlie Jane Anders
• Article, "Noah's Ark is a Sustainable Floating City for a Post-Apocalyptic World" by Bridget Meinhold
• Article, "How long until North Korea collapses? Eleven defector perspectives" by Chad O'Carroll
• Post, "You Don't Have to Read That Text Tonight" by Sam Keeper
• Post, "The Girls Who Walk Away From Kyubee" 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 Culture of Violence in Joseph Smith's Mormonism"; (2) "Study Theology, Even If You Don't Believe in God"; (3) "The 'Best Arguments for God's Existence' Are Actually Terrible"; (4) "How To Turn Real Science Into Great Science Fiction"; (5) "Why Did The Doctor Start Eating Meat Again On Doctor Who?"
• 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. 

WikiLearning #6 (various cultures)

Things I've learned from Wikipedia, and sometimes other places.

This is commentary. And this is really good.

High-altitude peoples are probably descended from people that originally moved higher-up for only short periods at a time before eventually settling there.

Tibetan people have lungs that "synthesize larger amounts of... nitric oxide" and may also have larger blood vessels.

WikiLearning #1 (sea organs, &c)

Things I've learned from Wikipedia, and sometimes other places.

This is commentary. And this is really good.

The Sea Organ is an "experimental musical instrument which plays music by way of sea waves and tubes located underneath a set of large marble steps." Built by Nikola Basic "as apart of the project to redesign the new city coast (Nova riva)" of Zadar, Croatia, which had been destroyed during WWII.