Mark R. Kelly
» Founder in 1997 and site-runner for 20 years of Locus Online (Hugo Award winner in 2002). Founder in 2012 and still site-runner of sfadb.com (Science Fiction Awards Database). Retired in 2012 after 30 years as a software engineer for a certain rocket engine factory.
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Meta
Monthly Archives: December 2014
Phil Zuckerman, Living the Secular Life
Subtitled: New Answers to Old Questions. This is a book that addresses the growing trend of non-religious people especially in the US, and how they live their lives without the assumptions that the faithful think are necessary for living a … Continue reading
Posted in Atheism, Book Notes, Culture, Humanism, Quote at Length, Religion
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Hawking’s Theory of Everything
Stephen Hawking & Leonard Mlodinow, THE GRAND DESIGN (2010) This is the most recent book authored (or co-authored) by Stephen Hawking, the well-known brilliant physicist, subject of the recent film The Theory of Everything. The film depicts (in addition to … Continue reading
Posted in Book Notes, Cosmology, Philosophy, Physics, Science
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Christopher Hitchens’ Ten Commandments
Christopher Hitchens’ Ten Commandments, via Hemant Mehta’s Friendly Atheist blog. I’m fascinated by the obvious irrelevancy of the traditional, Biblical, commandments, and have collected here on my blog various alternate versions (I need to create and retroactively tag those earlier … Continue reading
Posted in Culture, Religion, Ten Commandments
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Stephen Prothero on ‘why liberals win’ America’s culture wars
Stephen Prothero is a religious scholar at Boston University, who gave a talk on October 23rd called Why Liberals Win: America’s Culture Wars from the Election of 1800 to Same-Sex Marriage. It’s a preview of Prothero’s upcoming book of nearly … Continue reading
Links and Comments: Gay Marriage; Evangelical Doomsday; Natural Selection is not a guide to life; Jibbers Crabst; the power of faith, and science, and physics
Slate’s William Saletan: A Conservative Case for Gay Marriage, subtitled, “How to talk to your antigay religious relatives about same-sex unions”. Key points: homosexuality is not a sin, because it’s not a choice; it’s not harmful, but is in fact … Continue reading
The Science of Interstellar
Just finished reading Kip Thorne’s THE SCIENCE OF INTERSTELLAR, a big trade paperback with lots of diagrams and a few photos. Takeaways: 1) Thorne was one of the creators of the initial premise for the film, long before Christopher Nolan … Continue reading
Links and Comments: Memory, Math, Church and State, Faith, Facts, Stories
New York Times: Why Our Memory Fails Us A fascinating NYT op-ed about the fallibility of memory, led by a notorious example from Neil DeGrasse Tyson. \/\/\/\/ Math Anxiety: Why Hollywood Makes Robots of Alan Turing and Other Geniuses How … Continue reading
Posted in Book Notes, Culture, Lunacy, Mathematics, MInd, Religion, Science
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EO Wilson, The Meaning of Human Existence, Part 5 and last
Fifth and final of several posts about Edward O. Wilson’s book THE MEANING OF HUMAN EXISTENCE, which as I described earlier both here on my blog and on Facebook, is a concise summary of this important scientist’s views on the … Continue reading
Posted in Book Notes, Culture, Evolution, Science
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EO Wilson, The Meaning of Human Existence, Part 4
Fourth of several posts about Edward O. Wilson’s book THE MEANING OF HUMAN EXISTENCE, which as I described earlier both here on my blog and on Facebook, is a concise summary of this important scientist’s views on the big issues … Continue reading
Posted in Book Notes, Culture, Evolution, Science
Comments Off on EO Wilson, The Meaning of Human Existence, Part 4
Interstellar
To begin with, I haven’t seen anyone note the coincidence that recent two films, Interstellar and The Theory of Everything (the Stephen Hawking biopic), both key off a major unsolved problem of physics, the unification of gravity and quantum theory. … Continue reading
