Category Archives: Culture

Steven Pinker on the future under Trump

Posted on Monday 27 February 2017 by Mark R. Kelly

An interview, conducted by Phil Torres, of Pinker: The United States Is Not an Apocalyptic Wasteland, Explains Steven Pinker. Pinker is well-known for his book The Better Angels of Our Nature (2011) arguing (with copious references to sources of evidence) … Continue reading →

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Quotes on American Anti-Intellectualism

Posted on Friday 24 February 2017 by Mark R. Kelly

Isaac Asimov, 1980: There is a cult of ignorance in the United States, and there always has been. The strain of anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false … Continue reading →

Posted in Conservative Resistance, Culture | Comments Off

Link and Comments: science visions; the retrograde government; multiverse; faith; Wars v Trek; California as the future; Haidt on tribalism and the national rift

Posted on Wednesday 8 February 2017 by Mark R. Kelly

For today here are several links I’ve ‘saved’ on Facebook in recent weeks, with comments. First, Plate Tectonics Movement During the Last 540 Million Years, a cool video animation, from a Facebook group called Geology Wonders, that shows the continents … Continue reading →

Posted in Conservative Resistance, Culture, Psychology, Religion, Science | Comments Off

Thought Leaders

Posted on Saturday 28 January 2017 by Mark R. Kelly

A couple days ago I was dipping into Peter Singer’s latest book, Ethics in the Real World: 82 Brief Essays on Things That Matter, and saw him mention something about his being a “thought leader” according to some German outfit … Continue reading →

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Links and Comments: Academia, Creationists, Christians and Trump, Plait on the GOP, Evil, Victims

Posted on Tuesday 5 July 2016 by Mark R. Kelly

From Slate, more on the theme of Why Are There So Few Conservatives in Academia? There are three big reasons that conservatives are hard to find in university faculties: intellectual consistency, anti-science trends by conservatives, and social pressure. On the … Continue reading →

Posted in Conservative Resistance, Culture, Morality, Politics, Religion | Comments Off

Links and Comments: Friedman on historical change, why evangelicals like Trump, Paulos on math and biography, Gawande on science, the case against reality

Posted on Wednesday 22 June 2016 by Mark R. Kelly

Today in NYT, Thomas L. Friedman: Another Age of Discovery. Friedman lets Ian Goldin, co-author of a book about the lessons we can draw from the period of 1450 to 1550, i.e. a period of extraordinary change. Then: Gutenberg undermined … Continue reading →

Posted in Atheism, Culture, Mathematics, Science | Comments Off

The Orlando Shooter and the Evil of Religious Fundamentalism

Posted on Wednesday 15 June 2016 by Mark R. Kelly

To put this as concisely as possibly, my take on the Orlando mass-shooting is that it is rooted ultimately in the animus to sexual minorities — a portion of humanity that for whatever reason has *always existed* [see footnote] — … Continue reading →

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Carl Sagan, THE VARIETIES OF SCIENTIFIC EXPERIENCE (2006): History is a battle of inadequate myths

Posted on Tuesday 7 June 2016 by Mark R. Kelly

Here’s a book I had forgotten I had, relatively speaking; I obviously bought it back in 2006 or so, but I didn’t read it right away and so it sat on my shelves among many other books (by Sagan and … Continue reading →

Posted in Book Notes, Cosmology, Culture, Evolution, Human Progress, Provisional Conclusions, Religion, Science | Comments Off

Reading In and Around the Bible: Genesis, part 1

Posted on Thursday 2 June 2016 by Mark R. Kelly

I finished up the New Testament a couple weeks ago, and have notes and comments on those latter epistles, and Revelation. I then circled back to the beginning, to read Genesis itself, rather than merely comments about it, and since … Continue reading →

Posted in Bible, Culture, Religion | Comments Off

Links and Comments: The Literary Canon and the Bible; Americans Compared to the Rest of the World; Rush

Posted on Wednesday 1 June 2016 by Mark R. Kelly

Slate, last week: The Canon Is Sexist, Racist, Colonialist, and Totally Gross. Yes, You Have to Read It Anyway, by Katy Waldman. Specifically discussing the curriculum at Yale, in New Haven, Connecticut. This addresses the efforts for some decades now … Continue reading →