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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Category Archives: Science
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
Nonfiction Notes: Alex Rosenberg’s THE ATHEIST’S GUIDE TO REALITY
Alex Rosenberg, The Atheist’s Guide to Reality: Enjoying Life Without Delusions (2001, Norton) Here’s another book I’ve had since it was published but only got around to reading this past year. This is a book about taking reality at face … Continue reading
Posted in Atheism, Book Notes, Science
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Nonfiction Notes: Michael Shermer: WHY PEOPLE BELIEVE WEIRD THINGS
Michael Shermer: Why People Believe Weird Things: Pseudoscience, Superstition, and Other Confusions of Our Time. (W.H. Freeman, 1997) Here’s one of the earliest books that address human irrationality in terms of both the evidence against various pseudoscientific beliefs, and the … Continue reading
Posted in Book Notes, Psychology, Science
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Nonfiction Notes: Neil F. Comins, HEAVENLY ERRORS: Misconceptions about the real nature of the universe (2001)
This is a book I’ve had for nearly 20 years, since its publication in 2001, and finally I sat down last year, 2020, and read it. I had thought it would be a book about common misconceptions of the universe … Continue reading
Posted in Book Notes, Psychology, Science
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Notes and Quotes: Frank Wilczek’s FUNDAMENTALS: TEN KEYS TO REALITY
Frank Wilczek is a Nobel Prize-winning physicist, whose earlier book A BEAUTIFUL QUESTION: Finding Nature’s Deep Design (2015) I have but have not yet read. (It looks fascinating – the kind big picture book, that tries to understand history or … Continue reading
Posted in Book Notes, Science
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