Category Archives: Evolution

E.O. Wilson on Human Existence

Posted on Thursday 18 September 2014 by Mark R. Kelly

Via Andrew Sullivan, a passage from E.O. Wilson’s new book The Meaning of Human Existence, to be published October 6th, yet already on the long-list for this year’s National Book Award for Nonfiction [scroll down]. Sullivan quotes, “In a nutshell,” … Continue reading →

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Recent Links and Comments: Do You Believe in Blue?

Posted on Friday 15 August 2014 by Mark R. Kelly

Catching up on three weeks of content, having been preoccupied by personal projects and various life changes. Divided into groups. Science Fascinating speculation by Steve Pinker on the evolutionary significance of music Pinker argues that in fact that music is not an … Continue reading →

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Today’s Odds and Ends: Conservative rejection of science; Christians’ perceived persecution; Dinesh D’Souza’s paranoia

Posted on Wednesday 9 July 2014 by Mark R. Kelly

There have been several articles in recent days about how people [conservatives] who don’t accept evolution or climate science don’t necessarily know less about those subjects than others… they do so because their “community” rejects such conclusions, by instinct. New … Continue reading →

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Links, Quotes, Comments: 20 June

Posted on Friday 20 June 2014 by Mark R. Kelly

A post today by Amanda Marcotte, on both Salon and Alternet– Salon: Reason vs. the right: Have conservatives abandoned science and rationality? Alternet: Have Conservatives Abandoned Rationality, Skepticism and Truth? The possibility that rationality itself has become a partisan issue … Continue reading →

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Unafraid of the Dark: Highlights from the last episode of Cosmos

Posted on Monday 9 June 2014 by Mark R. Kelly

Passages from the last episode of Neil deGrasse Tyson’s “Cosmos”. Early in the episode, he describes a thought experiment: Pick a star, any one of the hundreds of billions of stars in our Milky Way galaxy, which is just one … Continue reading →

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Clarke, Childhood’s End, part 3 – passages

Posted on Saturday 7 June 2014 by Mark R. Kelly

Passages from Clarke’s Childhood’s End. The early part of the book involves a faction of the public that objects to the Overlords’ presence, on the grounds that their influence deprives them of “Freedom to control our own lives, under God’s … Continue reading →

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Assorted Links and Quotes: Selective Thinking, Southern Atheists, Creationist Logic, Fox News, Neuroscience

Posted on Tuesday 27 May 2014 by Mark R. Kelly

Assorted links from the past couple days: Neil deGrasse Tyson vs. the right: “Cosmos,” Christians, and the battle for American science, by Sean McElwee. About the selective thinking of the religious right in denying those Enlightenment values that threaten their … Continue reading →

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It’s in the DNA

Posted on Sunday 25 May 2014 by Mark R. Kelly

The controversy about the revised “statement of belief” professors at the evangelical Bryan College, in Tennessee (named after Scopes trial prosecutor William Jennings Bryan), are being asked to sign, gets a fairly even-handed coverage in the New York Times: Bryan … Continue reading →

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The Perception of Patterns in Nature

Posted on Friday 23 May 2014 by Mark R. Kelly

Fascinating essay by science-writer George Johnson in Tuesday’s NYT Science section, Creation, in the Eye of the Beholder, about the eternal tendency of humans to perceive patterns in nature as evidence of some designer. Whereas in fact, it’s evidence of … Continue reading →

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Cosmos So Far

Posted on Thursday 24 April 2014 by Mark R. Kelly

I should update my thoughts about the new version of the TV series Cosmos, since earlier I posted a mild critique about it needing to explain the background of scientific discovery – presenting not just the grandiose conclusions humanity has … Continue reading →

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