Category Archives: Science

Links and Comments: Reason; Morality; Wesleyan; Timeline; The Onion; Jeffrey Tayler

Posted on Friday 21 August 2015 by Mark R. Kelly

Today, a collection of posts I’ve not read in detail, or do not have time to comment upon in detail, but wish to save for future reference. Science on Religon: Connor Wood: Reason™ is not going to save the world … Continue reading →

Posted in Atheism, Morality, Science, science fiction | Comments Off on Links and Comments: Reason; Morality; Wesleyan; Timeline; The Onion; Jeffrey Tayler

The Methodical, Cheerful, Bluntness of Isaac Asimov

Posted on Wednesday 19 August 2015 by Mark R. Kelly

I switched gears a couple weeks ago, after reading several recent (2014 and 2015) novels, to spend some time revisiting one of the 20th century’s most acclaimed science fiction authors, Isaac Asimov. It’s hard to tell, at this point about … Continue reading →

Posted in Atheism, Book Notes, Conservative Resistance, Isaac Asimov, Personal history, Science | Comments Off on The Methodical, Cheerful, Bluntness of Isaac Asimov

Links and Comments: Biblical Literalism; the Manhattan Option; the excessive optimism of 2001; Neil de Grasse Tyson explains everything

Posted on Monday 3 August 2015 by Mark R. Kelly

Adam Lee: So Wrong For So Long: On Liberal Biblical Reinterpretation Lee discusses the cognitive dissonance of those who espouse progressive social views while maintaining fealty to their Biblical-based religions. They rely on relativistic interpretation of scripture, as if the … Continue reading →

Posted in Conservative Resistance, MInd, Religion, Science, science fiction, Space | Comments Off on Links and Comments: Biblical Literalism; the Manhattan Option; the excessive optimism of 2001; Neil de Grasse Tyson explains everything

Kim Stanley Robinson, AURORA

Posted on Thursday 23 July 2015 by Mark R. Kelly

I began reading Kim Stanley Robinson’s AURORA on the Sunday before last, in the afternoon, and later that evening realized that I had the answer to an ‘elevator conversation’ question — actually a dinner conversation question with some in-laws — … Continue reading →

Posted in Book Notes, Narrative, Science, science fiction | Comments Off on Kim Stanley Robinson, AURORA

Steven Weinberg, TO EXPLAIN THE WORLD

Posted on Monday 13 July 2015 by Mark R. Kelly

Steven Weinberg is a Nobel Prize-winning physicist who is best known (I gather) as a leading proponent of the idea that progress in physics will ultimately lead to a small set of fundamental principles that explain everything — i.e. the … Continue reading →

Posted in Book Notes, Science | Comments Off on Steven Weinberg, TO EXPLAIN THE WORLD

Links and Comments: Criminal Justice; Evangelicals and Divorce; Vaccine Narratives; Anthony Doerr’s favorite science books; Jeffrey Tayler’s latest; social trends and arcs of history

Posted on Wednesday 8 July 2015 by Mark R. Kelly

Monday 6 July: Today’s episode of NPR’s “Fresh Air” has an interview with Adam Benforado, author of new book Unfair: The New Science of Criminal Justice, which applies the developments of the past decade or two in human psychology to … Continue reading →

Posted in Culture, Human Progress, Morality, Science | Comments Off on Links and Comments: Criminal Justice; Evangelicals and Divorce; Vaccine Narratives; Anthony Doerr’s favorite science books; Jeffrey Tayler’s latest; social trends and arcs of history

Lewis Thomas, Late Night Thoughts on Listening to Mahler’s Ninth Symphony

Posted on Thursday 2 July 2015 by Mark R. Kelly

This was the third collection, published in 1983, of Lewis Thomas’s elegant, mostly short, essays, following The Lives of a Cell (which I blogged about last week) and The Medusa and the Snail. I read (or reread, I’m not sure) … Continue reading →

Posted in Book Notes, Culture, Music, Science | Comments Off on Lewis Thomas, Late Night Thoughts on Listening to Mahler’s Ninth Symphony

Elizabeth Kolbert, The Sixth Extinction

Posted on Tuesday 30 June 2015 by Mark R. Kelly

This book won the Pulitzer Prize for Nonfiction (and was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award). I finally got around to it on my plane flight back east a month ago. The title refers to five prominent … Continue reading →

Posted in Book Notes, Evolution, Science | Comments Off on Elizabeth Kolbert, The Sixth Extinction

Lewis Thomas, The Lives of a Cell

Posted on Friday 26 June 2015 by Mark R. Kelly

Lewis Thomas was a pediatrician and doctor, who became president of the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York, and who wrote a series of short essays which were first published in New England Journal of Medicine in the early … Continue reading →

Posted in Book Notes, Personal history, Philosophy, Science | Comments Off on Lewis Thomas, The Lives of a Cell

Revisiting Carl Sagan’s The Cosmic Connection

Posted on Friday 26 June 2015 by Mark R. Kelly

The Cosmic Connection, published in 1973, was the first popular book by Carl Sagan, after some academic tomes and an anthology of essays about UFOs, who later gained much fame as the author and host of the 1980 book and … Continue reading →

Posted in Book Notes, Evolution, Personal history, Quote at Length, Science, Space | Comments Off on Revisiting Carl Sagan’s The Cosmic Connection