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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- This Much is Reality… and This Much is Fantasy
- The Anticipation of Unintended Consequences
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- Shocked, Just Shocked
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- Here’s a New One: Terrain Theory
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- There Is Always Long Term Progress and Short Term Retreat
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Meta
Category Archives: Science
Links and Comments: APOD; Trusting Science; Trusting Experts
Another amazing photo from APOD– Which as in previous photos like this that I’ve posted, shows a huge swath of sky, as we would see it with all the stars we *can* see, along with all the nebulae that we … Continue reading
Nonfiction Notes: Alan Lightman’s PROBABLE IMPOSSIBILITIES
Alan Lightman: PROBABLE IMPOSSIBILITIES (2021) This is a new book of essays by a professor at MIT, author of earlier books including the well-regarded novel Einstein’s Dreams (Wikipedia, way back in 1993) and most recently of essay collection Searching for … Continue reading
Posted in Book Notes, Philosophy, Science
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Nonfiction Notes: Elizabeth Kolbert’s UNDER A WHITE SKY
This modestly-length book is a sequel of sorts to the author’s The Sixth Extinction (2014), which won a Pulitzer Prize and which I greatly admired. (My review here.) That book was about how the human impact on the planet, especially … Continue reading
Posted in Book Notes, Science
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Links and Comments: APOD: The Enormous Deep Sky
Here’s another amazing photo from APOD, Astronomy Picture of the Day, that illustrates how enormous some of the famous nebulae in the sky are, compared to constellations.
Nonfiction Notes: Carl Sagan’s BILLIONS & BILLIONS
Carl Sagan: BILLIONS & BILLIONS: Thoughts on Life and Death at the Brink of the Millennium (1996, Random House) This was Carl Sagan’s final book, it says, published in 1997 not long after his premature death in 1996 at age … Continue reading
Posted in Book Notes, Religion, Science
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Link and Quotes: Harari on the Pandemic
Financial Times: Yuval Noah Harari on Lessons from a year of Covid, Feb 25th. How can we summarise the Covid year from a broad historical perspective? Many people believe that the terrible toll coronavirus has taken demonstrates humanity’s helplessness in … Continue reading
Notes and Quotes: Richard Dawkins’ UNWEAVING THE RAINBOW
Here is a middle-period book by the Oxford scientist whose writing mostly focuses on evolution; this one is an exception. Its topic is the beauty of science, how science addresses the “appetite for wonder,” and how people who don’t understand … Continue reading
Posted in Book Notes, Lunacy, Religion, Science
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Nonfiction Notes: Michael Shermer’s HOW WE BELIEVE
Michael Shermer, How We Believe: The Search for God in an Age of Science. Freeman, 2000 When I was writing up a post here about Shermer’s first book, Why People Believe Weird Things (post here), I realized Shermer in that … Continue reading
Posted in Book Notes, Religion, Science
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Links and Comments: Reality as a Common Ground
“Common ground,” false balance, reality and science, coronavirus evolution, Heinlein on facts, Tucker C still spreading alarmist lies.
Links and Comments: Astronomical Photos from APOD
After seeing links to the site Astronomy Picture of the Day (APOD) occasionally on my Facebook friends’ posts over the past few months, I added it to my morning regimen of sites to check every day. Here’s today’s. Click for … Continue reading
