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: June 2024
The Ten Commandments as the Distillation of Tribal Morality
What to make of the continued efforts by the religious conservatives to impose the Ten Commandments onto schoolchildren and passerby in America’s courtrooms? Which part of the First Amendment don’t they understand? Some part presumption and some part ignorance and … Continue reading
Inherent Ignorance; Juneteenth; Republican schemes about tariffs.
Another three tracks for today. Are some people so ignorant that they believe the creation of the world (and the US) happened 2023 years ago? An example from Facebook. How Juneteenth suggests considering the relationship between MAGA and the Old … Continue reading
Posted in conservatives, Economics, History
Comments Off on Inherent Ignorance; Juneteenth; Republican schemes about tariffs.
Beware Intuition and Common Sense
Three tracks today: Steven Pinker on how democracy and enlightenment values are not intuitive (even though they’ve led to the betterment of humanity); Items about conservative meanings of ‘truth’ and ‘facts’; how evangelicals think sex is only for purposes of … Continue reading
Small Town Thinking, Climate Change, and Smoking Cigars
What people in small-town Oklahoma think; Today’s headlines about the effects of climate change; A lagniappe about Republicans who need to smoke their cigars; and recalling the assumptions of 1940s science fiction by Isaac Asimov. We coastal elites are sensitive … Continue reading
Posted in conservatives, Culture, science fiction
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Emergence, Complexity, and the Potential for Human Understanding
Here are a couple scientific topics that I don’t pretend to understand, at least not in any depth. What I find fascinating is how, while the big-scale scientific conclusions have been fairly stable for several decades (as noted two weeks … Continue reading
Change Control
How even modest measures to ameliorate problems in NYC face resistance; How religious certitudes from Alito and others will not end well. Still under the weather, but let’s try a couple items from today’s NYT, about perhaps the broadest issue … Continue reading
Posted in Culture, Evolution, Morality, Social Progress
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I’ve Caught a Cold; How Much of Science Fiction is Obsolete?
I’ve caught colds my entire life; two or three a year. I sneeze, cough, and it usually starts with a sore throat. (Whereas I very rarely have gotten flues, with a temperature and symptoms that go on for a week.) … Continue reading
Posted in Epistemology, Personal history, science fiction
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Narrative Drives, Reality, and Nothingburgers
More conservative reactions to Hunter Biden’s conviction, and how they are examples of humanity’s drive to fit any new evidence into pre-existing narrative; Heather Cox Richardson on how reality defies Trump’s narrative; How the extreme conservative worldview includes stoning gays … Continue reading
Posted in Conservative Resistance, conservatives, Politics, Psychology, Religion
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Politics as Fantasy, as Competing Stories
Three topics for today. The Hunter Biden verdict this morning, and how conservatives explain it to fit their conspiracy theories; Religious dimwittery about installing the Ten Commandments into schools; and Supreme Court Justice Sam Alito’s presumptuous allegiance to Christian godliness … Continue reading
Second Return from Austin
More executor fun over the past few days. I and my partner and his son and son’s wife spent a long hot weekend in Austin going through Larry’s house, meeting an estate seller and a realtor and a neighbor, and … Continue reading
Posted in Personal history
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