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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- So Predictable
- A New Jack Smith Rule
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Meta
Category Archives: Morality
Ls&Qs&Cs: Living in History, Alas
We are now witnessing war in Europe, 60 years after World War II ended and the historians and prognosticators thought it would never happen again. But nothing, I think, will never happen again. There will always be despots and authoritarians … Continue reading
Posted in Conservative Resistance, Morality, Politics
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E.O. Wilson: THE SOCIAL CONQUEST OF EARTH (2012)
E.O. Wilson’s THE SOCIAL CONQUEST OF EARTH, from 2012, is in my estimation one of the four most significant books by this scientist and writer. (The others are ON HUMAN NATURE, 1978; CONSILIENCE, 1998; and THE MEANING OF HUMAN EXISTENCE, … Continue reading
Posted in Book Notes, Changing One's Mind, Culture, Evolution, Morality, Religion
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Ls&Cs: Some Things Never Change; Some That Do Go Unremembered
How racism persists while changing its expression; how cherry-picking the Bible has been done for centuries; and how the seven-day week has only recently become the worldwide standard.
Posted in Conservative Resistance, Morality, Politics, Religion
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Ls&Cs: You Suggest Having Ice Cream, They Hate Ice Cream
The principles of an angry 3-year-old; the anti-business party; Supreme Court justices’ motivations.
Ls&Cs: Morality, Left and Right
Two items recently that dovetail nicely.
Principles and Moral Guidelines, Update
I polished my Principles page today, tightening a bit, and adding a section at the end listing my favorite alternatives to the Biblical Ten Commandments.
Posted in Humanism, Morality, Philosophy, Psychology
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Notes for the Book: Hierarchy of Morality
This one isn’t mine; this is Lawrence Kohlberg’s stages of moral development, which I first became aware of in Steven Pinker’s The Better Angels of Our Nature (2011), page 624, and later recalled when I reread E.O. Wilson’s foundational On … Continue reading
Posted in Morality, Social Progress, The Book
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Links and Comments: Religious Morality; Natural Law
On the heels of yesterday’s post is this “Jesus ‘n’ Mo” comic, posted by Jerry Coyne, on exactly the subject of deciding what seems right to you first, and looking for scriptural authority to support it second. Jesus ‘n’ Mo … Continue reading
Gladstone: THE TROUBLE WITH REALITY
The Trouble with Reality: A Rumination on Moral Panic in Our Time (Workman, 2017) is by Brooke Gladstone, co-host of a syndicated radio program, “On the Media,” that I occasionally hear on my NPR station. The book is small, 91 … Continue reading
Posted in Book Notes, Morality, Politics
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Links and Comments: The Profound and the Pernicious
From NPR, The Answer To Life, The Universe — And Everything? It’s 63. The headline is a riff on the famous episode in Douglas Adams’ The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy (Wikipedia) in which a vast computer called Deep Thought … Continue reading
