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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Meta
Category Archives: Politics
Links and Comments: The Good Old Days; Accusations of Moral Decline
Wall Street Journal (via a ‘sponsored’ post in my Fb feed!): Why We Can’t Stop Longing for the Good Old Days, subtitled, “Neurology and nostalgia help explain why people have always worried that the world is going downhill.” It’s an … Continue reading
Posted in Politics, Psychology
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Links and Comments: The Game of Life; Authoritarianism; Conservatives and the Feudal System
NYT, from last week’s Tuesday Science section: The Lasting Lessons of John Conway’s Game of Life. (Print title: “Life, In All Its Glory” with subtitle “Fifty year on, a game still offers lessons about simplicity, complexity and uncertain.”) The article … Continue reading
Posted in Evolution, Mathematics, Politics
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Links and Comments: The American Divide
Washington Post, Max Boot (a conservative who’s left the Republican party): No vaccine can end America’s pandemic of ignorance and irrationality But the biggest divide in modern America, I would argue, is between those who are rational and those who … Continue reading
Links and Comments: Religion and Abortion
I’m fascinated by how the supposed verities of religion turn out to shift and sway with the times, especially with politics. The religious cherry-pick from scripture whatever they currently want to support, since it’s so easy to find in scripture … Continue reading
Links, Comments, and Memoirs: Republicans from Reagan Forward
Paul Krugman’s NYT column today is When Did Republicans Start Hating Facts?, subtitled “A straight line runs from Reagan to the Trump dead-enders.” I’ll quote from this and comment, and then discuss my own attendance at a Reagan rally way … Continue reading
Links and Comments: How People Think; the Election and the Pandemic
It’s been a few days since last bunch of links and comments, and I’ve collected several since then that perhaps can be fit together into some kind of overe-arching theme. It’s about how different people think differently. I should say … Continue reading
Posted in Conservative Resistance, Politics, Psychology
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Links and Comments: Politics and Conspiracy Theories; Epistemology
Another batch of links and comments, again on topics of politics and conspiracy theories, not because I’m trying to dissuade anyone in particular of any such beliefs (let alone supernatural ones), but because all these examples (more and more of … Continue reading
Posted in Lunacy, Politics, Psychology
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Links and Comments: Obama; Conspiracy Theories; Big Government; Liberty
Guardian: review of Barack Obama’s new book. Obama makes clear he believes the whiplash from the 44th to 45th president is no accident. On the contrary, the mere fact that an accomplished, intelligent, scandal-free black man inhabited the White House … Continue reading
Posted in Politics, Psychology, Social Progress
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Links and Comments: Christian Nationalism; Covid and Climate Denial
NYT: Trump or No Trump, Religious Authoritarianism Is Here to Stay, subtitled “Their unlikely ally may have lost the White House, but Christian nationalists still plan to win the war,” by Katherine Stewart. The 2020 election is proof that religious … Continue reading
Links and Comments: Republican Shamelessness and Hypocrisy; Voter Fraud and Science Denialism
Mostly just links; the headlines and subtitles and quotes speak for themselves. NYT, Bret Stephens: The Conservative Movement Needs a Reckoning: subtitled, Just as ignorance was strength in George Orwell’s “1984,” shamelessness is virtue in Trump’s G.O.P. Trump lost for … Continue reading
Posted in Politics
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