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
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- Continuing Our Studies of Human Nature…
- Here’s a New One: Terrain Theory
- A Little Knowledge… Is a Dangerous Thing
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Meta
Category Archives: Science
Kalam, Infinities, and Intellectual Honesty
I was glancing around Adam Lee’s website and noticed his archive of foundational essays (some of which have been partially incorporated into his book). One is a very long, detailed response to the traditional arguments for the existence of God. … Continue reading
Posted in Personal history, Philosophy, Religion, Science
Comments Off on Kalam, Infinities, and Intellectual Honesty
Assorted Links and Quotes: Selective Thinking, Southern Atheists, Creationist Logic, Fox News, Neuroscience
Assorted links from the past couple days: Neil deGrasse Tyson vs. the right: “Cosmos,” Christians, and the battle for American science, by Sean McElwee. About the selective thinking of the religious right in denying those Enlightenment values that threaten their … Continue reading
Cosmos and the Future of Humanity
Last week’s episode of Cosmos, episode 11, The Immortals, was one of the best and most moving. Neil deGrasse Tyson examines humanity’s desire for immortality, and the ways that this has happened in some sense: writing, that captures thoughts for … Continue reading
The Perception of Patterns in Nature
Fascinating essay by science-writer George Johnson in Tuesday’s NYT Science section, Creation, in the Eye of the Beholder, about the eternal tendency of humans to perceive patterns in nature as evidence of some designer. Whereas in fact, it’s evidence of … Continue reading
Climate Change, Denialism, and History’s Judgment: With a Prediction
I love Andrew Sullivan’s blog, The Dish, since he gathers comments about many topics as well as responses to them, and is willing to post long reader comments that challenge earlier posts. (Sullivan is gay, but he’s also a self-described … Continue reading
Rainbows and the Afterlife
Notes for an idea. Had thought the other day to pursue the metaphor about human life being a transient state of a vast collection of molecules that will eventually collapse and disperse, leaving nothing behind, rather analogous to the way … Continue reading
Goonan Quotes
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
Posted in Quote at Length, Science, science fiction
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Amateur Astronomy and Cultural Mythology
Since my post the other day about the my trigger to amateur astronomy in my youth, a grade-school textbook called A Dipper Full of Stars, I picked up the copy of that book I bought for a few dollars over … Continue reading
Posted in Astronomy, Culture, Personal history, Science
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The Range of Human Perception
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
Posted in Cosmology, Culture, Psychology, Science
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Kalam Cosmological Argument
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
Posted in Atheism, Cosmology, Psychology, Science, Thinking
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