Category Archives: Psychology

Links and Comments: Robert Wright on Brian Williams; Obama on Christianity; Children of Gay Parents; Republicans and evolution

Posted on Thursday 12 February 2015 by Mark R. Kelly

Robert Wright — author of among other books The Moral Animal (1994), one of the best books I’ve read about how evolutionary psychology affects human culture and relationships — offers his perspective, in New Republic, on how Brian Williams Is … Continue reading →

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Links and Comments: Memory is Fallible; Fundamentalists Are Alike All Over

Posted on Tuesday 10 February 2015 by Mark R. Kelly

A couple informed articles appeared today about the Brian Williams kerfuffle, how the NBC News anchor was discovered to have inflated his account, increasingly over the years, of being on a helicopter in the Iraq War in 2003, and speculation … Continue reading →

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Scientific fidelity vs narrative; anti-gay bigotry and socialism; the ecology of faith; Valerie Tarico on religion; Hans Zimmer and conceptual breakthrough

Posted on Tuesday 18 November 2014 by Mark R. Kelly

Here’s one of several articles in the past week or so about why we should not nitpick the science in Interstellar: Slate: Back Off, Scientists: Don’t be so nitpicky about the technical details of sci-fi movies like Interstellar I have … Continue reading →

Posted in Evolution, Films, MInd, Music, Psychology, Religion, The Gays | Comments Off on Scientific fidelity vs narrative; anti-gay bigotry and socialism; the ecology of faith; Valerie Tarico on religion; Hans Zimmer and conceptual breakthrough

Heroic Individuals and Magical Thinking

Posted on Tuesday 28 October 2014 by Mark R. Kelly

Two interesting article from today’s Science section of The New York Times. From science writer Dennis Overbye: The Leaky Science of Hollywood. The subject is the upcoming film The Theory of Everything, a biopic of Stephen Hawking, which is getting … 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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Sean Carroll: The Meaning of Life

Posted on Saturday 31 May 2014 by Mark R. Kelly

I was checking out Sean Carroll’s blog today, and saw this post with a YouTube excerpt of comments he made during a debate with Michael Shermer, Dinesh D’Souza, and Ian Hutchinson. Can’t resist quoting extensively, since he summarizes much of … Continue reading →

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The Range of Human Perception

Posted on Tuesday 29 April 2014 by Mark R. Kelly

Alternet, Chris Mooney: Why Right-Wingers Think the Way They Do: The Fascinating Psychological Origins of Political Ideology These experiments suggest that conservatives actually do live in a world that is more scary and threatening, at least as they perceive it. … Continue reading →

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Kalam Cosmological Argument

Posted on Tuesday 22 April 2014 by Mark R. Kelly

The Kalam Cosmological Argument is one of the traditional, philosophical, arguments for the existence of God. The idea is that everything must have a beginning; therefore the universe must have a beginning, therefore God. (Which those who use this argument … Continue reading →

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Steven Pinker: Work Habits

Posted on Wednesday 12 March 2014 by Mark R. Kelly

When I remember a passage from something I read a day or two before, I think it’s worth capturing. From that Steven Pinker interview last week (originally at Mosaic), two paragraphs about work habits, and his book The Better Angels … Continue reading →

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Panic and Alarm (and Why This Is About Science Fiction)

Posted on Thursday 27 February 2014 by Mark R. Kelly

Salon: I lost my dad to Fox News: How a generation was captured by thrashing hysteria Sad case study of a man whose father disappeared into the paranoid, outraged worldview of Fox News. Like certain kinds of religious extremists, Fox … Continue reading →

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