Category Archives: Social Progress

Links & Quotes: Spy Stories; Secularism

Posted on Tuesday 11 January 2022 by Mark R. Kelly

Janis Ian (the singer, who I follow on Facebook), offered this David Bowie quote the other day: “As you get older, the questions come down to about two or three. How long? And what do I do with the time … Continue reading →

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L&Cs: About Religious History, Defined by Europeans

Posted on Saturday 11 December 2021 by Mark R. Kelly

Until the late 19th century, there were only four religions, according to Europeans.

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L&Cs: Learning from Others; A Universal Education

Posted on Tuesday 30 November 2021 by Mark R. Kelly

Americans mostly resist considering what other countries in the world are doing that objectively makes their economies better, or their health and prosperity higher, than the US’s, because Americans are “exceptional,” and, like, the greatest country ever. I suspect most … Continue reading →

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Ls&Cs: A Few Recent Headlines

Posted on Thursday 25 November 2021 by Mark R. Kelly

Investing; astrology and narcissism; fear as self-defense; insurgency in America.

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Ls&Cs: Recognizing Asians; War on Democracy; Global Government

Posted on Saturday 20 November 2021 by Mark R. Kelly

Conservative outrage about recognizing Asians; the Republican war on democracy; the faded dream of a global government to solve worldwide problems.

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L&Qs&Cs: Innumeracy and Covid

Posted on Sunday 14 November 2021 by Mark R. Kelly

Humans are intuitively not good at proportions and other statistical concepts, but those concepts can be taught. They are not, and politicians and partisan news sources use public misunderstanding of these concepts to their advantage.

Posted in Mathematics, Politics, Social Progress | Comments Off on L&Qs&Cs: Innumeracy and Covid

Ls&Cs: Religion vs Science; Freedom; Feudalism

Posted on Tuesday 9 November 2021 by Mark R. Kelly

Plain speaking about the obvious conflict between science and religion; about the idea of freedom without responsibility; about the odd attraction of feudalism in fantasy and science fiction.

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Ls&Cs: Stuff, Terms, Panics, Rules

Posted on Saturday 30 October 2021 by Mark R. Kelly

Maybe we should all just buy less stuff. How citizenship has given way to consumerism. Why partisans deliberately confuse terms like expenses and investments. And how some rewrite history in support of ideological narratives.

Posted in Conservative Resistance, Culture, Links & Comments, Social Progress | Comments Off on Ls&Cs: Stuff, Terms, Panics, Rules

Ls&Cs: Utopias; Crises; Paranoia

Posted on Friday 25 June 2021 by Mark R. Kelly

A sidebar article in last Sunday’s New York Times Magazine interviews Rutger Bregman. How to Think Like a Utopian. Bregman is a young Dutch historian who wrote UTOPIA FOR REALISTS (which I blogged about here) and more recently HUMANKIND: A … Continue reading →

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Links and Comments: The Decline of US Church Membership

Posted on Friday 2 April 2021 by Mark R. Kelly

When I posted my notes about Michael Shermer’s book How We Believe, I noted that one of his principle observations was how, writing in 2000 or 1999, levels of religious belief hadn’t changed much since the 1960s, the era in … Continue reading →

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