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: February 2023
Political News, Ratings Forward
How Fox News prioritizes ratings above truth or principles of journalism; How Florida is seeking to replace SAT with “Christian” testing; How and why to shame Republican judges; How the far-right is ascendant on college campuses. NY Times, Michelle Goldberg, … Continue reading
Posted in Conservative Resistance, Lunacy, Politics
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Brockman, This Explains Everything, 1
Key topics so far: Evolution by means of natural selection. How life is a digital code. Reflective equilibrium and the evolution of non-objective morality. How evolution explains the conflicts in human social life. And how levels of such “variation-selection processes” … Continue reading
Posted in Book Notes, Science
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Stickiness of Nonbelief
How nonbelief is stickier than belief. Plus: Fox News lied! Who would have thought? And: how UFOs and CRT go together; the number of respectable Republicans. \ OnlySky, Andrew Fiala, 15 Feb 2023: What the stickiness of nonbelief says about … Continue reading
Posted in Conservative Resistance, Politics, Religion
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The Myth of the Perfect Past
When life was simple and everything you were supposed to know was contained in a single book. Also: why The Lord of the Rings is so appealing to the right; media libel laws; policing; and a lagniappe about a real … Continue reading
Posted in Conservative Resistance, Philosophy, Politics
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Hypocrisy and Indoctrination
I’ve noted before how conservatives denounce “indoctrination” except when they’re the ones doing the indoctrinating. Examples include DeSantis imposing conservative values on a Florida college long known as a bastion of “free thinkers”. And examples of people believing things that … Continue reading
Posted in Conservative Resistance, Lunacy, Politics
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Readings by John Scalzi and Paul Krugman; Book Notes; Morality
John Scalzi on writing about politics; Republican performance art; Paul Krugman on Republican intentions over decades against Medicare and Society Security; and notes about books about American myths past and present.
Readings: Margaret Atwood and Jared Diamond
Margaret Atwood on the people banning her book The Handmaid’s Tale; Jared Diamond on the earthquake in Turkey and Syria, and long-term disaster planning. Margaret Atwood, The Atlantic, 12 Feb 2023: Go Ahead and Ban My Book, subtitled “To those … Continue reading
Posted in Conservative Resistance, longtermism, Quote at Length
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Crime in Oakland, Restorative Justice, and Personal Experiences with Crime
Here’s a local news item of interest on several points. And then my history of being victim of crime. ABC 7 News, 10 Feb 2023: Family of Oakland baker seeks ‘restorative justice’ for her death following robbery
Posted in Personal history, Social Progress
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Religious Presumptions, Divine Plans, Hollywood’s Worst
Catching up on links not yet used from the past week or so. Jerry Coyne responds to Timothy Keller’s presumptions about the metaphysical truth of Christianity and the need for a revived Church; The obvious evidence for lack of a … Continue reading
Approximations and Denials of Reality
Ted Chiang on ChatGPT; Paul Krugman on the GOP’s Orwellian take on the world; and epistemology. Ted Chiang, The New Yorker, 9 Feb 2023: ChatGPT Is a Blurry JPEG of the Web, subtitled “OpenAI’s chatbot offers paraphrases, whereas Google offers … Continue reading
Posted in Uncategorized
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