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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Monthly Archives: December 2021
L&Cs: About Religious History, Defined by Europeans
Until the late 19th century, there were only four religions, according to Europeans.
Posted in Religion, Social Progress
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Ls&Cs: New Conspiracy Theories and Worldviews Available Here!
Are birds real? Are the leftists the ones denying reality? A perfect gift for the conspiracy theorist in your life who has absorbed all the others, from 9/11 to QAnon to 5G to the stolen election and the Covid hoax, … Continue reading
Lc&Cs: Priorities
Being pro-life and anti-vaccine; being pro-defense and anti-deficit; the decline of American conservatism; and endpiece.
Carl Sagan: THE DRAGONS OF EDEN (1977)
Carl Sagan: The Dragons of Eden: Speculations on the Evolution of Human Intelligence. Random House, 1977. This was Sagan’s first book since his 1973 hit The Cosmic Connection (revisited here), and is distinctive in two ways. First, it was the … Continue reading
Posted in Book Notes, Science
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Ls&Cs: Some Sciency Pieces
About the miraculous history of Earth; an interview with E.O. Wilson; about SF authors addressing scientific challenges; and about whether science, and the arts, are stuck.
Posted in Science
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Novella et al: THE SKEPTICS’ GUIDE TO THE UNIVERSE
Novella, Dr. Steven, et al. The Skeptics’ Guide to the Universe: How to Know What’s Really Real in a World Increasingly Full of Fake. Grand Central, 2018. *** I read this shortly after publication, nearly three years ago now, and … Continue reading
Posted in Book Notes, Science, Thinking
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Pursuing Books During the Pandemic and Supply-Side Crisis
Via book reviews and Fb posts, I’m aware of 2 or 3 new nonfiction books published every week that look interesting enough to consider reading. I restrain myself; at most I buy 2 or 3 new nonfiction books a month … Continue reading
Links and Comments: More from April 2021
Once more reaching into the well for links saved back in April, just before my world almost ended, and before I was effectively zoned out for two months. Nonexistent problems; the next phase of human civilization; a new unchurched majority; … Continue reading
Ls&Cs: Writers’ Blogs; The Secret in the Diary
I should have established that the context for yesterday’s piece about Republicans and Democrats was not about partisanship, but as another example of a counter-intuitive notion, how things have changed over the decades and centuries, so that what might seem … Continue reading
Posted in Links, Personal history, Science, science fiction
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Ls&Cs: Democrats and Republicans and Car Designs
About the changing identities of Democrats and Republicans, over the past century and a half; about the logic of abortion, from a philosopher; about the dismal history of infrastructure (and how this relates to conspiracy theories); and two items about … Continue reading
Posted in Politics, Technology
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