Notes to: Tour of Our Terraformed Solar System

Material Covered: 

• Post, "Tour of Our Terraformed Solar System: Inner Planets", by Brandon Kier
• Post, "Tour of Our Terraformed Solar System: The Asteroids", by Brandon Kier
• Post, "Tour of Our Terraformed Solar System: Jupiter and Saturn", by Brandon Kier
• Post, "Tour of Our Terraformed Solar System: The Final Planets", by Brandon Kier

Study Notes: Jul 26-Aug 1, 2015: "Sex & Sexuality in the 19th Century"

This is commentary. And this is really good. 

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

• Article, "Why Germany Has It So Good -- and Why America Is Going Down the Drain" by Terrence McNally
• Article, "Sex & Sexuality in the 19th Century" by Jan Marsh
• Article, "Russia's Terrifying 'Nuke Trains' Will Be Roving The Rails By 2018" by Tyler Rogoway
• Post, "BDSM Questions, Answered", by Ozy Frantz
• Article, "The Quest for an Archaeology of Sea Otter Tool Use", by Elin Kelsey
• Article, "French Design Firms Imagine An Arcology In the Sahara", by Andrew Liptak
• Article, "Portlander Ursula K. Le Guin is Breathing Fire to Save American Literature", by Taylor Clark and William Anthony
• Article, "This academic debate about worms has an important lesson for the future of global poverty", by Amanda Taub
• Article, "Dead Enough", by Walter Glannon
• Post, "Aromanticism: Defining Our Terms" by Ozy
• Article, "Could a Massive Collision Produce a Subsurface Ocean on Pluto?"; by Mika McKinnon
• Article, "Megapolisomancy, Or Why All Cities Are Haunted", by Annalee Newitz
• Article, "How to Use a Black Hole's Spin to Harvest Energy", by Esther Inglis-Arkell
• Article, "Why We Were Totally Wrong About How Boa Constrictors Kill", by Jason Bittel
• Article, "Snake proteins have gone through massive evolutionary redesign", by Ed Yong
• Post, "Non-Dual Awareness", by Scott Alexander
• Article, "Chimps Are Eating Clay to Detox Themselves", by Esther Inglis-Arkell
• Article, "NK Jemisin: the fantasy author upending the 'racist and sexist status quo'", by Noah Berlatsky
• Article, "The 7 biggest myths about abortion", by Kali Holloway

I planned on reading a post by Matt Walsh. Then I saw that it was written by Matt Walsh. I decided to not waste my time or give him another link.

Also check out: 

• "Useful Geographical Descriptors for writers"

Homework for the future:

• Go through at least five entries in in my "P Articles" bookmark folder. Let's go with: (1) "A Neocon Bible: What Would Jesus Say?"; (2) "An Aging God"; (3) "What are Jinns exactly made up of?"; (4) "What are Jinn or Spirits"; (5) "What's a Bodhisattva?"
• 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: Apr 12-18, 2015: "Hope for a Lumpy Filter" &c

This is commentary. And this is really good. 

What I've been watching and reading this week: 

• Post, "Economics of Star Trek" by Surplus Economics
• Article, "Technologies of Abundance and the Fairytale of Jobs" by Extropia DaSilva
• Post, "Hope for a Lumpy Filter" by Robin Hanson
• Article, "What Wide Origins You Have, Little Red Riding Hood!" by Rachel Hartigan Shea

Homework for the future:

• Go through at least five entries in in my "P Articles" bookmark folder. Let's go with: (1) "The Old Ones: The Time Before Sumeria"; (2) "Conceptions Of Soul In Old-Estonian Religion"; (3) "Runes"; (4) "Fenrir's Shrine"; (5) "Kitsune, Kumiho, Huli Jing, Fox"
• 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. 

Study Notes: Feb 15-21, 2015: "Weirdest Solutions to the Fermi Paradox", &c

This is commentary. And this is really good. 

What I've been watching and reading this week: 

• Post, "Into the (Mind of the) Dalek" by David Selby
• Post, "Good Works?" by Eric Peters
• Thread, "Definitions Master List" on Asexuality.org
• Article, "11 of the Weirdest Solutions to the Fermi Paradox" by George Dvorsky
• Post, "Our Love is Synthesis: Marx, Muse, and 'Madness'" by Sam Keeper
• Post, "A Company of Heroes: Pacific Rim, Iron Man, Cloud Atlas, and the Power of Ensemble Casts" by Sam Keeper

Notes to: The Great Conversation: Moving from Medieval to Modern (& other chapters)

This is commentary. And this is really good. 

"The Great Conversation," by Norman Melchert (sixth edition)

Chapter twelve: Moving from Medieval to Modern (pages 299-319)

• "Paradoxically, and to some extent accidentally, skepticism has arisen once more from its ashes-- this phoenix that first Plato and then Augustine sought to slay." 
• The author asks us to "attempt to recapture a more direct and naive interpretation of our experience" and explains how, speaking of the firmament concept, "this view of the heavens is very common among primitive people and among children, too." It is exceedingly patronizing and, I daresay, naive in itself. These so-called "primitives" were often much more intelligent than many people today, and the only reason we know their faults is because we have had the opportunity to stand on their shoulders. 
• "Aristotle does not accept the atomists' conception of a void, that is, a space in which nothing exists. His reasoning depends on the notion of potentiality. Wherever there is space, there is potentially some substance. But potentiality is just the possibility of having some form; and what is formed into a substance is matter. So wherever there is space there is matter, matter never exists unformed; so the idea of empty space is a contradiction in terms. There could not be other worlds out in space beyond this world; this world is not just the only world there is, but the only world there could be." 

Study Notes: December 21-27, 2014: "The Book No One Read"

This is commentary. And this is really good. 

What I've been watching and reading this week: 

• Article, "The Book No One Read: Why Stanislaw Lem's futurism deserves attention" by Lee Billings
• Essay, "Study of Leviticus 18-20 'Abomination'" by Dave Cornwell
• Post, "Surviving in an Alien Environment: Human + Christ as Medieval Natural-born Cyborg" by Ruth Evans
• Essay, "The Sword of Laban as a Symbol of Divine Authority and Kingship" by Brett L. Holbrook
• Article, "The Horizontal and Vertical Axes of Storytelling" by James George
• Article, "The Remarkable Queerness of Shinji Ikari" by Sam Keeper
• Article, "Tony Stark in the Integrated Circuit: The Iron Man films and Cyborg Feminism" by Sam Keeper
• Article, "Stark Modernism: Fine Art and Iron Man" by Sam Keeper
• Article, "The Thingiverse-- Model Reuse in the 3D Printing Community" by Jarkko Moilanen
• Article, "The Practical Guide to the Future of Medicine" by Dr. Bertalen Mesko
• Article, "Controlling Genes With Your Thoughts" by ETH Science Writer
• Article, "The Fermi Paradox, Self-Replicating Probes, and the Interstellar Transportation Bandwidth" by Keith B. Wiley
• Article, "The Stars Are Wrong: Why Cthulhu Needs To Go Away" by Sam Keeper
• Article, "AnimalTech-- Wearable Technology for Fido" by Clara Mancini

WikiLearning #4 (Archeofuturism, &c)

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

This is commentary. And this is really good.

Aglaonice (also called Agloanike, or Aganice of Thessaly) was a Greek astronomer who lived in the first or second centuries BC, "the daughter of Hegetor (or Hegemon) of Thessaly."

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.