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: January 2016
On Trying to Read 100 Books a Year
Here’s some advice from The Observer [a British weekly newspaper] about How to Read 100 Books a Year. Long ago on this blog, or its precursor, I mentioned something about how I would describe the kinds of lists and statistics … Continue reading
Posted in Personal history
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Syllabuses and Sfadb.com rankings
This op-ed item in Sunday’s New York Times, What a Million Syllabuses Can Teach Us, caught my eye initially because part of my long-range plans for sfadb.com involves continuing to add ‘citation’ and ‘anthology’ references to complement the awards data, … Continue reading
Posted in science fiction, Website Issues
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My memories of David G. Hartwell
(Expanded a bit from Facebook post, 20jan16) I met David G. Hartwell in the mid 1990s and had lunch with him on the Queen Mary, one Nebula Awards weekend (it was 1997), where I described my idea of compiling a … Continue reading
Posted in Uncategorized
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EO Wilson, Consilience, 3
Third post about Edward O. Wilson’s 1998 book Consilience: The Unity of Knowledge. (first post; second post) Chapter 4, “The Natural Sciences”, focuses on the nature of science and how scientists actually work. The great divide among cultures on Planet … Continue reading
Posted in Book Notes, Human Progress
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Links and Comments: Narrative; the Limits of Rationality
I seem to have not yet mentioned yet another essay about how narrative is taking over the world. James Murdoch (CEO of 21st Century Fox) a couple weeks ago in Time Magazine: Storytelling—both fiction and nonfiction, for good and for … Continue reading
Film Review: JOY
From Facebook, 18jan16: We caught up with JOY today, the third film from director David O. Russell starring Jennifer Lawrence and Bradley Cooper, following SILVER LININGS PLAYBOOK (for which Lawrence won an Oscar) and AMERICAN HUSTLE. It’s a story about … Continue reading
Posted in Films
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EO Wilson, Consilience, 2
Second post about Edward O. Wilson’s 1998 book Consilience: The Unity of Knowledge. (first post) Chapter 2, “The Great Branches of Learning”, seems a bit off the mark since it doesn’t address those branches directly. Wilson says the Enlightenment thinkers … Continue reading
Posted in Book Notes, Human Progress
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EO Wilson, Consilience, 1
So now, after reading Edward O. Wilson’s The Meaning of Human Existence a bit over a year ago (last of five posts about it here), I’m returning nearly 20 years to one of his earlier, foundational I think, books: Consilience: … Continue reading
Posted in Book Notes, Human Progress
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Links and Comments: Fear, Terrorism, Fear, and Religion
The New Yorker, January 2, 2016: Thinking Rationally About Terror, by Lawrence M. Krauss How people overestimate the risk of low-probability (but highly-publicized) dangers, like terrorism, and seldom worry about more mundane dangers, like gun violence and auto crashes. As … Continue reading
Review: The Outsider Test for Faith
John W. Loftus’s THE OUTSIDER TEST FOR FAITH: How to Know Which Religion Is True (2013) is a trade paperback book, one of a number of similar volumes I’ve perused over the past couple years, generally from Prometheus Books or … Continue reading
Posted in Atheism, Book Notes, Religion
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