WisCon 38 Panel Invention

[jesse_the_k]

While swimming and riding endlessly on paratransit, I've come up with some loose ideas for panels, and I know you can improve them. I welcome discussion, amendations, and improvements, that won't work! if you tell me why, and any other thoughts which come to mind. If you think you could design a better suggestion around my kernels go right ahead! WisCon programming is a collective, democratic process. Programming submission ends January 26th. You don't have to be registered to play.

I've placed each possible submission in its own thread, click the titles to jump there:
Genetic memory: past and future
Five Minutes Inside My Brain
1001 Things You Don't Know About Sheherazade
Designing Ethical Oversight
The Real Faces of Medieval Europe

Comments

Genetic memory: past and future

[jesse_the_k]

- It was commonly believed before Empiricism that an event in your granma's life influence would influence your phenotype?
- Lamarck said positive impacts on an individual would carry through the germ line
- Everybody laughed at Lamarck (except the Soviets, since it supported scientific materialism)
- Then DNA happened
- And now the latest twist is epigenetics -- environmental factors can alter the way our genes are expressed, making even identical twins different.
- impact of mutagens (radiation/toxin/poisons) are mostly negative

can't think of particularly helpful fiction/non-fiction titles; I'd surely love a reading list to come out of it.

Re: Genetic memory: past and future

[holyoutlaw]

There have been studies (I don't know if sociological or genetic) about how trauma affects subsequent generations. I remember reading a paper about this topic a couple years ago, and have an email query to the teacher to see if she could send me author and title. (Unlikely but worth a shot.)

Re: Genetic memory: past and future

[selki]

The Wikipedia article on epigenetics links to some of that (starvation in modern wartimes, studying grandchildren of famine victims).

Perhaps y'all might obtain Ken Liu's permission to read his extremely short SF story of baseball, cloning, and epigenetics, Second Chance: http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v505/n7483/full/505448a.html

Re: Genetic memory: past and future

[jesse_the_k]

Great info.

Ken Liu's story is actually short enough someone could read it aloud at the start of the panel.

BAKED!

Five Minutes Inside My Brain

[jesse_the_k]

Also known as Lightning Talks, redux

Sign up to make a five-minute presentation on something you know a lot about. Best kept to topics of interest to the WisCon community; given that we're voracious readers, watchers, thinkers, writers, that's a broad field. This is a great way to become a WisCon participant!

Re: Five Minutes Inside My Brain

[littlebutfierce]

I really like this idea!!

Re: Five Minutes Inside My Brain

[emceeaich]

I like this too, do you want to do it full on Pecha Kucha/Ignite style (20 slides/5 minutes/slides update every 30 seconds) or is that overly complexifing things?

Re: Five Minutes Inside My Brain

[sasha_feather]

We did the "Lightning Talks" last year and it was hard for people (incl. me) not to over the time limit. A little more structure would be ok. Some of us used slides, some did not. We ended up in the "Science and Tech" track which may have confused some audience members b/c we talked about all kinds of things.

Re: Five Minutes Inside My Brain

[julieandrews]

I went to the lightning talks at Arisia 2 times now and I like them because they do range all over the place. Maybe some posted flyers would encourage people to come who might otherwise ignore whatever track it ends up stuck in.

Maybe a flashier name. Sparkly Lightning Talks Full of Awesome. These ARE Your Grandmother's Lightning Talks. Lightning Talks II: Return of the Thinky Thoughts.

Re: Five Minutes Inside My Brain

[jesse_the_k]

Great names!

BAKED!

Re: Five Minutes Inside My Brain

[bibliofile]

Maybe have a stopwatch and signs up front, to signal to the speaker? Volunteers from the audience, or a designated volunteer?

I know that some courts use timers and colored lights, but I dunno how specific or useful those tools might be.

NOT-S0-SUB TEXT: Cool idea!!! Still sad I missed last year's.

Re: Five Minutes Inside My Brain

[jesse_the_k]

Based on my experience, if it ain't an opaque projector, it is too complicated. :)

1001 Things You Don't Know About Sheherazade

[jesse_the_k]

What Westerners think of as a foundational Arab story began in Persia and India. Disney's Aladdin is 95% Walt. Why do these tales exert a world-wide appeal? Why are they a world-wide treasure?
Do we learn Orientalism as we hear these stories? Are there English translations which honor the originals? Is Sheherazade an foremother of feminist fantasy, storytelling her way to freedom or is that convenient appropriation?

Re: 1001 Things You Don't Know About Sheherazade

[jiawen]

I like this a lot as is.

Re: 1001 Things You Don't Know About Sheherazade

[jesse_the_k]

Thanks for the encouragement!

Re: 1001 Things You Don't Know About Sheherazade

[emceeaich]

There's a recent translation from original, pre-Burton, sources that would be a good reference point. I'd suggest Saladin Ahmed for the panel as he had been reading and tweeting passages from that new translation last year.

Re: 1001 Things You Don't Know About Sheherazade

[jesse_the_k]

Cool info, whump. I'll poke Saladin Ahmed and see if he might be interested. A (sometime) local hero, Sofia Samatar, taught a semester-long class on Sheherazade last year, so I'm planning on poking her as well. This year I'm suggesting panels I'd adore attending, and it's #1 on my list.

Re: 1001 Things You Don't Know About Sheherazade

[bibliofile]

IIRD Sofia won't be at WisCon this year (from a thread on someone else's FB). Alas!

(But I bet you could poke her for ideas/input)

Ethical oversight short of telepathy, bureaucracy, or the surveillance state

[jesse_the_k]

We face and commit cruel, violent, and evil acts in even the closest communities, from the family to the faith community to schools to SF fandom. Physical and virtual policing may limit acts, but not eliminate them. Day centers (for babies, people with disabilities, elders) implement extensive self-reporting for bad deeds: who reads these reports and acts on them? How can we implement ethical oversight that isn't security theater?

Re: Ethical oversight short of telepathy, bureaucracy, or the surveillance state

[jiawen]

Maybe shorten the title to "Ethical Oversight without Totalitarianism"?

Hard to avoid having a "Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?" in there, though that might just distract from the point.

Maybe also restrict it to one or two areas where these problems occur? "What insights do SF fandom have to offer day center oversight, and vice versa?"

Re: Ethical oversight short of telepathy, bureaucracy, or the surveillance state

[jesse_the_k]

You cut the title to the right measure, thank you.

I love that day care center/fandom fulcrum!

BAKED!

The Real Faces of Medieval Europe

[jesse_the_k]

A reason to demonstrate and disseminate the awesome revisionist art history at
http://medievalpoc.org

Compare/contrast with CASTLE WAITING graphic novel, a zillion book covers of blond
heroines, whitewashed Moors in the Adoration of Jesus, "Left Hand of Darkness" bookcovers down the ages.

Re: The Real Faces of Medieval Europe

[holyoutlaw]

I think this is a great idea and hope it happens.

A fairly dense but excellent source is "The History of White People" by Nell Irvin Painter. It's not about art history, but the concept of whiteness and how it developed.

Re: The Real Faces of Medieval Europe

[jesse_the_k]

It's a great book, but my imagination fails at how to weld it into a panel in discussion with the site.

But then medievalpoc.org basically reduces me to point! look! Ooooh! Cool! Wow!

Re: The Real Faces of Medieval Europe

[sasha_feather]

Castle Waiting: the most disappointing re-read! It's like animal-creatures were used instead of people of color. And the Gypsy stuff. :(

Re: The Real Faces of Medieval Europe

[jesse_the_k]

Can you recall other graphic novels (esp color) set in Medieval Europe?

(Just did some checking and it seems that the second volume of C.W. was published without the author's name. Wonder what *that's* about.)

Re: The Real Faces of Medieval Europe

[babba]

You shld ask for a screen so you could project the images. I would love to see this.

Re: The Real Faces of Medieval Europe

[jesse_the_k]

Well first I want to check the classroom resources which the blogger as already accumulated on her site, and then ask her permission to present in public (if non-profit) setting.

And if there's a world of yes, then we will need to have a computer projector setup, which should be easier than it usually turns out to be (having tried to do just that at two WisCons). Ugh, technology! Why so vital and so hard?