Monthly Archives: June 2019

Ron, Ken, Howard

Posted on Wednesday 26 June 2019 by Mark R. Kelly

Following up on the end of the previous post… Ron Hardcastle died in 2014. He was only 12 years older than me, but since I was in my mid-20s when I met him, he was half again my age, and … Continue reading →

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Cleaning Out the File Cabinet

Posted on Wednesday 26 June 2019 by Mark R. Kelly

Some months ago I went through various folders in my small (two-drawer) file cabinet to see if there were things I still needed or if there were things I could dispose of. I pulled out several folders tentatively identified for … Continue reading →

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Dawkins v Wilson on Group Selection

Posted on Monday 17 June 2019 by Mark R. Kelly

A minor irritant in Dawkins’ book just discussed is that he several times describes claims by other scientists and then patiently explains why they are wrong. In one case it’s a recently published paper in a journal. In another he … Continue reading →

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Dawkins, THE SELFISH GENE

Posted on Sunday 16 June 2019 by Mark R. Kelly

Opening paragraph, of a chapter called “Why are people?” Intelligent life on a planet comes of age when it first works out the reason for its own existence. If superior creatures from space ever visit earth, the first question they … Continue reading →

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Miller, A CANTICLE FOR LEIBOWITZ

Posted on Saturday 15 June 2019 by Mark R. Kelly

This 1959 novel is one of the most popular and celebrated science fiction novels of all time. It’s set in the years following an atomic war, it portrays religion in a relatively favorable way (in contrast to the skeptical or … Continue reading →

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Projects

Posted on Wednesday 12 June 2019 by Mark R. Kelly

Today I spent a couple hours setting up a ‘Projects’ page that is linked in the menu at the top of the site. And I’ll be setting up bibliographic pages for SF and NF to organize links to my posts … Continue reading →

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Links and Comments: Religious Morality; Natural Law

Posted on Wednesday 5 June 2019 by Mark R. Kelly

On the heels of yesterday’s post is this “Jesus ‘n’ Mo” comic, posted by Jerry Coyne, on exactly the subject of deciding what seems right to you first, and looking for scriptural authority to support it second. Jesus ‘n’ Mo … Continue reading →

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Links and Comments: Suffering Death without Religion; Fox News; Fundamentalism

Posted on Tuesday 4 June 2019 by Mark R. Kelly

New York Times: Surviving the Death of My Son After the Death of My Faith, subtitled, I had lost the one thing that could have numbed my pain. By Amber Scorah. A woman leaves her religion, gets on with her … Continue reading →

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Oliver, THE WINDS OF TIME

Posted on Saturday 1 June 2019 by Mark R. Kelly

This science fiction novel, from 1957, is by an author known for anthropologically informed works; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chad_Oliver. (The edition I read, the only edition I have, is a 1975 Avon Equinox trade paperback, one of its “SF Rediscovery” series that ran … Continue reading →

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