Author Archives: Mark R. Kelly

Who’s Happiest and Why?

Posted on Monday 28 April 2025 by Mark R. Kelly

Phil Zuckerman on that World Happiness Report; A NYT article about alternatives to religion; Recalling mythos and logos; Richard Dawkins on how reality is so much more interesting than religion, – – – I’ve seen cautionary notes about this World … Continue reading →

Posted in Human Nature, Religion, Science | Leave a comment

Tribal Warpaint

Posted on Sunday 27 April 2025 by Mark R. Kelly

How Trump doesn’t want to govern, and rejects the idea of American government as a collaboration; How the idea of consumer choice led to the idea of being gay; Trump and covid.gov rewrite the history, as authoritarians do; How Trump … Continue reading →

Posted in authoritarianism, Culture, History, Lunacy, Politics, Religion, Science | Leave a comment

History Rhymes? Will Humanity Ever Advance?

Posted on Saturday 26 April 2025 by Mark R. Kelly

How history rhymes, about tariffs: Smoot-Hawley and Trump; How Musk lives fantasies about expanding the population (of people like him) without a grasp on numbers; How DOGE has cost taxpayers $135B, while claiming to have saved $160B — even that … Continue reading →

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The Cowboy Myth, Presidential Corruption, and Disingenuous Cuts to Science Research

Posted on Friday 25 April 2025 by Mark R. Kelly

Heather Cox Richard on the “cowboy myth” that informs the Trump presidency; How Trump et al are giving billionaires a bad name; How Trump has done the most corrupt thing any president has ever done — getting rich from anonymous … Continue reading →

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Conservative Intellectuals, and the Wrong Way to Do Science

Posted on Thursday 24 April 2025 by Mark R. Kelly

Robert Reich collects comments from conservative intellectuals about the Trump administration; Reich summarizes ten points that demonstrates Trump’s ineptitude and incompetence; Similarly, Salon’s Brian Karem on how Trump has turned the White House into a joke; How RFK Jr.’s approach … Continue reading →

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The Latest Cultural War Conservatives are Losing

Posted on Wednesday 23 April 2025 by Mark R. Kelly

How Conservatives keep badgering the law even as they lose the culture war; Specifically, the Supreme Court case about banning books that Christians are uncomfortable with; Related: HHS is proposing defunding the LGBTQ+ suicide hotline; and Sam Alito misreads a … Continue reading →

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What Conservatives Mean by the Deep State

Posted on Tuesday 22 April 2025 by Mark R. Kelly

Namely, anything that interferes with their agenda, in effect the entirety of Jonathan Rauch’s “constitution of knowledge,” since MAGA conservatives don’t truly believe in the Constitution or our system of government; Robert Reich on the billionaire class, that doesn’t care … Continue reading →

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The War Against Intelligence

Posted on Tuesday 22 April 2025 by Mark R. Kelly

Trump’s rage against smart people; Defunding Harvard will hobble medical research that would benefit people like us; Historian Lauren Thompson compares the Gilded Age to the Trump Age; Trump and Vance praised b conservatives for lying about abortion; Hegseth purges … Continue reading →

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Civic Uprising?

Posted on Sunday 20 April 2025 by Mark R. Kelly

Conservative David Brooks calls for a civic uprising against the Trump administration; How Salon executive editor Andrew O’Hehir reacts to this; How psychopaths and financial services seem to go together; The extent to which JD Vance lies; Aid to foreign … Continue reading →

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The Most Sublime Moment in Classical Music

Posted on Saturday 19 April 2025 by Mark R. Kelly

Asimov on Heinlein, about libertarianism; More about “viewpoint diversity” in science, and how scientists react; About another stupidly doctored photo by Trump, to prove something to his dimwitted followers; How the history Trump wants to erase hold the answer to … Continue reading →

Posted in Lunacy, Music, Politics, Science | Comments Off on The Most Sublime Moment in Classical Music