Monthly Archives: October 2013

To put matters at their simplest

Posted on Tuesday 29 October 2013 by Mark R. Kelly

Reading A.C. Grayling’s The God Argument, a simplistic title that might be better replaced by its subtitle: “The Case Against Religion and for Humanism”. Grayling is a British philosopher who has written on many topics; i.e. he’s not just a … Continue reading →

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Man in the Sky

Posted on Monday 21 October 2013 by Mark R. Kelly

Via The Dish, Embracing the Void. Making the sky into a humanlike God is a shortcut to making it legible. If you believe that there is a man in the sky, you can interpret its unpredictable cinema, its colour shifts … Continue reading →

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12 Years a Slave

Posted on Monday 21 October 2013 by Mark R. Kelly

Saw 12 YEARS A SLAVE on Sunday, a gripping, brilliantly directed and acted film that is at times difficult to watch – but not because you don’t think it’s telling you the truth. It’s about a free black man kidnapped … Continue reading →

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Connor Wood on Atheists

Posted on Friday 18 October 2013 by Mark R. Kelly

The perspicacious Connor Wood, at Science on Religion, asks Why Are There Atheists?. That is, since the vast majority of humanity subscribes to one variety of faith or another, how is it that atheists exist at all? Are they some … Continue reading →

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Rights are Social Contracts

Posted on Friday 18 October 2013 by Mark R. Kelly

Alternet (and Salon): America Is Not a Christian Nation and Never Has Been: Why Is the Right Obsessed With Pushing a Revisionist History? Aside from the angle about the likes of David Barton rewriting American history to conform to the … Continue reading →

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Review of David McRaney’s You Are Now Less Dumb, part 1

Posted on Monday 14 October 2013 by Mark R. Kelly

David McRaney’s second book, YOU ARE NOW LESS DUMB, extends the themes of his first book, in greater depth — there are 17 chapters in some 300 total pages, compared to 48 shorter chapters in the first book. And it’s … Continue reading →

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Review of David McRaney’s You Are Not So Smart

Posted on Monday 14 October 2013 by Mark R. Kelly

As I mentioned in a Facebook post last night, without bookstores to browse through, I discover titles and authors I might not otherwise have seen most often through web excerpts and interviews — at sites like Slate and Salon, Huffington … Continue reading →

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TNT for 2

Posted on Monday 14 October 2013 by Mark R. Kelly

My favorite song on the Neil Finn/Pajama Club album of a couple years ago, for some reason running through my head in that half-awake, half-dreaming state just before the alarm went off this morning.

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Links and Comments, 6 Oct 13

Posted on Sunday 6 October 2013 by Mark R. Kelly

Many interesting posts this past week, some already posted on Facebook, collected here mostly for my future reference. Andrew Sullivan (The Dish) responds to a report about tea party voters. Sullivan: The bewildering economic and social and demographic changes have … Continue reading →

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Gravity

Posted on Sunday 6 October 2013 by Mark R. Kelly

[Capturing my Facebook post as a blog post.] Just back from seeing Gravity. It’s quite a ride — spectacular in many ways. Terrific effects, portrayal of people in orbit over Earth, and even the simulated zero-G (or micro-G) movements look … Continue reading →

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