Sciency Things, and Presidential Pettiness

Posted on Monday 21 July 2025 by Mark R. Kelly
  • Tom Nichols on presidential pettiness;
  • How the Trump administration is using a strength of science to discredit it;
  • Ethan Siegel on what we’ve learned for 35 years of the Hubble Space Telescope;
  • A breakthrough in a grand unified theory of mathematics;
  • How brain scans reveal optimists are alike, and pessimists are unique; and my thoughts on whether this maps to conservative/progressive values.
– – –

Some sciency things today. Oh, OK, and a couple about Trump.

From Tom Nichols (whom I’ve reviewed and mentioned many times).

The Atlantic, Tom Nichols, 21 Jul 2025: Presidential Pettiness, subtitled “Donald Trump seems to have no theory of governance beyond personal gain and retribution.”

Years pass, Trump keeps doing the same thing, the commentators comment, pointing out the same things, and his fans don’t care, and nothing changes. But we can’t become complacent. People in the future will look back on this generation and see which people let Trump get away with all this. They will look back the same way they look back at the “good Germans” who supported Hitler.

So I will offer several paragraphs by Tom Nichols, and leave it at that.

Continue reading →

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Pat Frank: ALAS, BABYLON

Posted on Monday 21 July 2025 by Mark R. Kelly

(First published 1959. Edition here: HarperCollins/Perennial Classics, 1999, 323pp, including author biography and publication history by Hal Hager)

Next up in the group of apocalyptic novels I read in June, following Butler’s PARABLE OF THE SOWER, is this. It isn’t as famous as two other near-contemporaneous novels, ON THE BEACH from 1957 and FAIL-SAFE from 1962, since popular movies were made from both of them. (I think there was a TV version of this one.) The author was a journalist whose work took him into contact with military people who strategized various nuclear war scenarios. He was asked what would happen if nuclear war broke out. He said, “Oh, I think they’d kill fifty or sixty million Americans–but I think we’d win the war.” This was in the 1950s. Frank was similar to George R. Stewart, author of EARTH ABIDES (my review here), in that while both wrote other books and were moderately well-known in their day, they are remembered decades later only for one book each.

The previous time I read this it reminded me of a Stephen King novel. Continue reading →

Posted in Book Notes, science fiction | Comments Off on Pat Frank: ALAS, BABYLON

Stories Mislead You About the Reality of the World

Posted on Sunday 20 July 2025 by Mark R. Kelly
  • Crime on TV v crime in reality;
  • Conspiracy theories on TV v conspiracy theories in reality;
  • If stories mislead about reality, then what is science fiction about?
– – –

 

I’ve mentioned before that my understanding is that there are more crimes depicted in movies and TV shows, especially the latter, than there are in real life, though I don’t have citations for relevant statistics. But here’s an item from today’s NYT Magazine that, offhandedly, supports the notion.

NY Times Magazine, John J. Lennon, 16 Jul 2025: Everyone’s Obsessed With True Crime. Even Prisoners Like Me., subtitled “As the genre has boomed on cable, the incarcerated have found themselves watching more and more of it.”

Continue reading →

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Stories, Traditions, and Science

Posted on Saturday 19 July 2025 by Mark R. Kelly
  • Why does MAGA hate science?
  • Why do right-wing folks think Democratic policies have failed?
  • And Paul Krugman on the top 10 political websites on Substack.
– – –

A significant essay, for my concerns.

Salon, Kirk Swearingen, 19 Jul 2025: Why MAGA hates science so much, subtitled “Billionaires hate the rest of us — and Trump’s loyalists would rather suffer, even die, than face the truth”
Continue reading →

Posted in conservatives, Politics, Science | Comments Off on Stories, Traditions, and Science

Only Certain People Count

Posted on Friday 18 July 2025 by Mark R. Kelly
  • Today’s news about Stephen Colbert;
  • Conservatives have finally managed to cut funding to PBS and NPR;
  • David Brooks on Trump winning the race to the bottom;
  • Sure enough, EPA is firing hundreds of scientific experts;
  • Fareed Zakaria on how Obama deported more people than Trump, and why;
  • And the weird claim about Trump’s 90% approval rating.
– – –

The big news today (aside from yesterday’s big news about Epstein) is about CBS announcing it will not renew the contract of Stephen Colbert when it expires next May.

The Atlantic, David A. Graham, 17 Jul 2025: Is Colbert’s Ouster Really Just a ‘Financial Decision’?, subtitled “CBS no longer deserves the benefit of the doubt.”

Continue reading →

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Incompetence, Greed, or Sabotage?

Posted on Thursday 17 July 2025 by Mark R. Kelly
  • Elizabeth Kolbert on the Texas floods and the administration’s undermining of climate research;
  • How the Trump administration wants to discourage wind and solar projects;
  • Recalling the Scopes trial, 100 years ago this month, and America’s continued antipathy toward science and long-term thinking;
  • Short items about Alligator Alcatraz and how to tell if someone is a criminal; and floating the execution of Trump foes;
  • And some personal reactions to The Bear episode about the wedding.
– – –

I observe yet again that I don’t see much difference between the behavior of the current US administration and what the behavior of an outside agency would be, one bent on undermining, even sabotaging, critical government functions meant to secure Americans’ health and future and its status in the world.

The New Yorker, Elizabeth Kolbert, 12 July 2025: Flash Floods and Climate Policy

Continue reading →

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Is the universe friendly, or hostile?

Posted on Wednesday 16 July 2025 by Mark R. Kelly
  • David Wallace-Wells on the Epstein scandal, with items by Zack Beauchamp and Shawn McCreesh;
  • How simple-minded Trump characterizes his adversaries as “evil”;
  • How Trump’s economic agenda is driven by simple-minded lies and misunderstandings;
  • How the question “Is the world a friendly place” underlies the range of human nature that determines our politics;
  • And Robert Reich conducts a poll asking when Trump and his followers think American was “great”.
– – –

 

NY Times, David Wallace-Wells, 16 Jul 2025: The Epstein Story Is Both Conspiracy Theory and Genuine Scandal [gift link]

Continue reading →

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History and Change

Posted on Tuesday 15 July 2025 by Mark R. Kelly
  • Trump keeps a trophy for himself;
  • Paul Krugman on why the Trump administration is killing science;
  • How MAGA needs stories in which they are the heroes;
  • Why Trump fans aren’t forgiving Trump about Epstein;
  • Heather Cox Richardson about Trump’s “mandate” vs. actual polls of Americans about immigration.
– – –

First, I amended Harari item posted yesterday.

\

This seems to be the most popular story today, at least on social media.

The Daily Beast, 14 Jul 2025: Trump Kept Gold Club World Cup Trophy for Himself So FIFA Had to Give the Winners a Replica
Continue reading →

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The problem with the world is not evil. It’s ignorance, and delusion.

Posted on Monday 14 July 2025 by Mark R. Kelly
  • Two thoughts from Yuval Noah Harari today;
  • Ramez Naam on how AI models converge on “moderately left-libertarian political viewpoints”;
  • Another piece about how people should be held accountable for tragedies;
  • Heather Cox Richardson summaries the Epstein fiasco;
  • WaPo’s Philip Bump has another take;
  • Linda Greenhouse at NYT wonders how we are not standing up to “this venomous cruelty”;
  • Why Kristi Noem hates FEMA (it boils down to white supremacy, and conservatives’ extremely tight circles of moral concern, i.e. the poor and disadvantaged should be on their own);
  • To some GOP members, cruelty is required to show allegiance to the tribe.
– – –

Today’s thoughts from Yuval Noah Harari, on Facebook.

First this:

Mythology takes human relationships and inflates them as if the whole universe works like our families. Continue reading →

Posted in conservatives, Human Nature, Morality, Politics | Comments Off on The problem with the world is not evil. It’s ignorance, and delusion.

Responsibility, Certainty, and Doubt

Posted on Sunday 13 July 2025 by Mark R. Kelly
  • Defunding weather science and disaster response to save money is like cancelling all your insurance policies to manage your household budget;
  • LAT: Robin Abcarian on the implausibilities of expecting Medicaid recipients to replace deported farmworkers;
  • NYT: Peter Baker on how Trump wants to reverse history by a century, and how this reflects conservative values;
  • And Salon: a psych prof on how certainty is toxic, and ambiguity should be embraced.
– – –

This is like trimming the household budget by cancelling all your insurance policies. It’s irresponsible.

NY Times, 13 Jul 2025: Trump Is Gutting Weather Science and Reducing Disaster Response

Subtitled: “As a warming planet delivers more extreme weather, experts warn that the Trump administration is dismantling the government’s disaster capabilities.”
Continue reading →

Posted in conservatives, Psychology, Science | Comments Off on Responsibility, Certainty, and Doubt