Monthly Archives: January 2025

George Lakoff, THE POLITICAL MIND

Posted on Monday 6 January 2025 by Mark R. Kelly

Subtitled “Why You Can’t Understand 21st-Century American Politics with an 18th-Century Brain” (Viking, June 2008, 292pp, including 20pp of acknowledgements, notes, and index.) Note that the paperback edition from 2009 changed the subtitle to “A Cognitive Scientist’s Guide to Your … Continue reading →

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Faith, Consolation, Reality

Posted on Saturday 4 January 2025 by Mark R. Kelly

A couple weeks ago I noted, without any kind of deep analysis, a David Brooks essay about his experience of faith, and how it involved random emotional feelings of transcendence and nothing about perceiving the actual nature of reality. OnlySky, … Continue reading →

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Knee-Jerk Conservative Reactions

Posted on Friday 3 January 2025 by Mark R. Kelly

Conservatives react to the incidents this past week in New Orleans and Las Vegas by blaming their favorite bogeymen. Immigrants! Diversity initiatives! Without evidence, or rationale. As conservatives reject reality, reality-based scientists are rejecting the coming conservative administration, by moving … Continue reading →

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What Conservatives Want to Conserve

Posted on Friday 3 January 2025 by Mark R. Kelly

Another passage from Lakoff, with my interpolations. From page 68: In its moral basis and its content, conservatism is centered on the politics of authority, obedience, and discipline. This content is profoundly antidemocratic, whereas our country was founded on opposition … Continue reading →

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Remembering Y2k; a Political Commentator admits he was wrong; Fallibilism; Reading Lakoff

Posted on Thursday 2 January 2025 by Mark R. Kelly

Back to interesting ideas. Heather Cox Richardson recalls Y2K, 25 years ago on January 1st, and how since the problem was fixed (by the scientists and tech guys) some people felt the problem had never been real. As always, she … Continue reading →

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Consolidations and Resolutions

Posted on Wednesday 1 January 2025 by Mark R. Kelly

More discussion today of what I got done in 2024, and about my ongoing project that will extend into 2025. This is to start consolidating all my writing ideas from the past decade into some overall framework. I’ve been doing … Continue reading →

Posted in Personal history, The Book | Comments Off on Consolidations and Resolutions