Monthly Archives: December 2015

Science Fiction As a Prism in the Dawn

Posted on Thursday 31 December 2015 by Mark R. Kelly

Subtitle?

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Review of “The Danish Girl”

Posted on Thursday 31 December 2015 by Mark R. Kelly

from Facebook, today: Today’s movie: “The Danish Girl”, which both Yeong and I liked better than I’d expected given the lukewarm reviews. (Glancing at those negative reviews, their theme seems to be that the movie is too polished, too flat … Continue reading →

Posted in Films | Comments Off on Review of “The Danish Girl”

The Yearning for the Golden Past

Posted on Thursday 31 December 2015 by Mark R. Kelly

The Conservative Grand Narrative, according to Jonathan Haidt (mentioned in my discussion of his book The Righteous Mind in this post) is about “the struggle to return to a golden past” — a theme we hear echoed in Republican presidential … Continue reading →

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Review of “Carol”

Posted on Thursday 31 December 2015 by Mark R. Kelly

From Facebook, 30 Dec 15: Seeing “Carol” at a classic movie theater on Piedmont Avenue– We saw a film today at a classic old movie theater, the kind on a street corner along a street lined with shops and cafes, … Continue reading →

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The Narrative of Narratives

Posted on Monday 28 December 2015 by Mark R. Kelly

A couple of years ago, when I read David McRaney’s second book, You Are Now Less Dumb, with its long section about human beings’ ‘narrative bias’, in which everything must be understood as some kind of story, this was a … Continue reading →

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Refining My Thesis

Posted on Tuesday 22 December 2015 by Mark R. Kelly

My thesis about science fiction is that (for the most part) it reflects the framework of my Provisional Conclusions: science fiction recognizes humanity’s existence within a vast, ancient universe; it recognizes that human perception of reality is incomplete and sometimes … Continue reading →

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Sean Carroll’s Reading List

Posted on Tuesday 22 December 2015 by Mark R. Kelly

Sean Carroll is one of my favorite physicists who blogs, and whom I’ve linked several times before, most recently about his forthcoming book The Big Picture (due May 2016), and in a blog post a few days ago, he posted … Continue reading →

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Alan Lightman on Cosmology and Human Meaning

Posted on Tuesday 22 December 2015 by Mark R. Kelly

Yesterday I mentioned the Harper’s essay by Alan Lightman, What Came Before the Big Bang?, which concerns a couple different theories for that question: one by Sean Carroll and Alan Guth, a so-called “Two-Headed Time” theory, and another by Ukrainian/US … Continue reading →

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Links and Comments: Science and Math and Religion

Posted on Monday 21 December 2015 by Mark R. Kelly

Radio interview with Lee Goldman, MD, about his new book Too Much of a Good Thing, subtitled “How Four Key Survival Traits Are Now Killing Us”. This is about the familiar idea that our species is optimized for survival in … Continue reading →

Posted in Cosmology, Evolution, Science | Comments Off on Links and Comments: Science and Math and Religion

Links and Comments: Politics and Religion

Posted on Monday 21 December 2015 by Mark R. Kelly

Three items by Jeffrey Tayler at Salon recently. First, in what I might call the pot-kettle-black category, Religion is the real problem: Donald Trump, Ted Cruz and GOP demonize Muslims, but too afraid to take on the real truth, where … Continue reading →

Posted in Politics, Religion | Comments Off on Links and Comments: Politics and Religion