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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» Previous Views from Medina Road (2010-2013)
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Recent Posts
- Outdoing Themselves Every Day
- Incompetence and Restlessness
- Sea Change: Living in History, and Most People Not Noticing
- A Continual Stream of Lies and Gaslighting
- How Soon Will This Madness End?
- Mark Lilla, IGNORANCE AND BLISS
- Today’s Political Readings from Facebook and Substack
- What They Mean By Traditional
- Richard Dawkins: THE MAGIC OF REALITY
- And They’re Doing It All In Plain Sight
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Category Archives: MInd
Harari on THE KNOWLEDGE ILLUSION
In today’s NYT Book Review, Yuval Noah Harari reviews THE KNOWLEDGE ILLUSION: Why We Never Think Alone, by Steven Sloman and Philip Fernbach. The review’s opening echoes Harari’s own work, e.g. What gave Homo sapiens an edge over all other … Continue reading
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Link and Comments: Molly Worthen on Evangelicals and Fake News
New York Times’ Sunday Review: Molly Worthen on The Evangelical Roots of Our Post-Truth Society. The arrival of the “post-truth” political climate came as a shock to many Americans. But to the Christian writer Rachel Held Evans, charges of “fake … Continue reading
Links and Comments: Thinking about the Future; Doctors and Fake News; Polls about Atheists
Slate: Our Puny Human Brains Are Terrible at Thinking About the Future, to follow up on the Elizabeth Kolbert post a few days ago. Some people regularly connect with their future selves, but a majority does not. And this matters, … Continue reading
That Dress, and How to Do Science
Slate: Two Years Later, We Finally Know Why People Saw “The Dress” Differently Two points here. First, the controversy over the color of the dress — blue and black or white and gold — is certainly the most widely-known example … Continue reading
The Mendacious David Barton
Amanda Marcotte at Salon: First fake news, now fake history: Glenn Beck wants to train young people to promote an alternative history About Glenn Beck and his partner, David Barton -! If there are two characteristics that really define Trumpism, … Continue reading
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Religious Zealotry in Science Fiction
There has been a controversy within the SF field over the past few years about how groups called the “sad puppies” and the “rabid puppies”, for various reasons, have mounted campaigns to influence the Hugo Awards nominations. (They succeeded two … Continue reading
Links and Comments: Religious Intellectuals; Lawrence Krauss; Daniel Dennett
Jerry Coyne asks, Are religious people a bit thick?. He disagrees with someone who claims that many very smart people are also religious. Look at it this way: if someone spent much of their lives worshiping Santa, elves, fairies, or … Continue reading
Links and Comments: Conservative Cruelty; Blue Lies
Chauncey DeVega at Alternet: Why Are Republicans So Relentlessly Cruel to the Poor?. Subtitle: “Paul Ryan has dreamed of slashing Medicaid since his keg-party days—and that blithe hostility is widespread”. Because conservatives are more inclined to think that poor people … Continue reading
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Links and Comments: Political bubbles; Group knowledge; Randall reviews Rovelli
Interesting pieces from Sunday’s New York Times Front page article: How to Escape Your Political Bubble for a Clearer View. About how to overcome the built-in biases in Facebook and other social media to feed you only what you want … Continue reading
Elizabeth Kolbert on books about the limitations of human reason
In last week’s New Yorker, Elizabeth Kolbert (author of foundational, Pulitzer Prize-winning nonfiction The Sixth Extinction; my review) reviews three books about the limitations of human reason. Why Facts Don’t Change Our Minds The review/essay describes various psychological experiments — … Continue reading
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