Category Archives: Quote at Length

James Morrow: We’re not tourists on this planet, we’re citizens

Posted on Wednesday 24 June 2015 by Mark R. Kelly

Many thoughts resonate with me in the James Morrow interview in the June issue of Locus, which I excerpted here. E.g., That’s the great gift of the 18th-century Enlightenment, that insistence on a conversation that must never stop, a conversation … Continue reading →

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Phil Zuckerman, Living the Secular Life

Posted on Monday 22 December 2014 by Mark R. Kelly

Subtitled: New Answers to Old Questions. This is a book that addresses the growing trend of non-religious people especially in the US, and how they live their lives without the assumptions that the faithful think are necessary for living a … Continue reading →

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Links and Quotes, mid-June

Posted on Monday 16 June 2014 by Mark R. Kelly

Preoccupied with writing up book notes this past week (and other things), I have a bunch of linked articles to note without making any of them separate posts. From last Monday, two interesting op-eds in the New York Times. Charles … 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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Goonan Quotes

Posted on Sunday 4 May 2014 by Mark R. Kelly

Like the meaty interview with Joan Slonczewski a couple months ago, Locus Magazine’s May interview with Kathleen Ann Goonan, of which I posted excerpts this afternoon, has several passages of particular interest to my theme here. About science fiction: At … Continue reading →

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Age of Ignorance

Posted on Tuesday 14 January 2014 by Mark R. Kelly

Via Paul Fidalgo’s blog at CFI, an essay by Charles Simic, in The New York Review of Books, from about two years ago. http://www.nybooks.com/blogs/nyrblog/2012/mar/20/age-of-ignorance/ In the past, if someone knew nothing and talked nonsense, no one paid any attention to … Continue reading →

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Two Interesting Articles

Posted on Friday 27 December 2013 by Mark R. Kelly

Adam Lee looks at the current political climate and what may be coming next. The Rising of the Sun The cause of these convulsions is privileged distress on a massive scale, as white Christian conservatives realize they’re losing their power … Continue reading →

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Man in the Sky

Posted on Monday 21 October 2013 by Mark R. Kelly

Via The Dish, Embracing the Void. Making the sky into a humanlike God is a shortcut to making it legible. If you believe that there is a man in the sky, you can interpret its unpredictable cinema, its colour shifts … Continue reading →

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Connor Wood on Atheists

Posted on Friday 18 October 2013 by Mark R. Kelly

The perspicacious Connor Wood, at Science on Religion, asks Why Are There Atheists?. That is, since the vast majority of humanity subscribes to one variety of faith or another, how is it that atheists exist at all? Are they some … Continue reading →

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Sunday Links and Commentary

Posted on Sunday 8 September 2013 by Mark R. Kelly

PZ Myers compares the atheist movement to the plight of World SF Conventions — in terms of their resistance to being open to interests of younger members. http://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/2013/09/06/the-future-will-not-be-the-past/ Alternet: http://www.alternet.org/former-christian-fundamentalist-how-science-made-me-lose-my-religion?paging=off When an engineer raised in a fundamentalist Christian community sees … Continue reading →

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