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.
» Full Profile
» Facebook profile
» Previous Views from Medina Road (2010-2013)
» Blogspot Views from Medina Road (2003-2010)-
Recent Posts
- Incompetence, Greed, or Sabotage?
- Is the universe friendly, or hostile?
- History and Change
- The problem with the world is not evil. It’s ignorance, and delusion.
- Responsibility, Certainty, and Doubt
- No Necessary Nations
- Two Takes on the Problem with Men
- As I’ve Been Saying…
- Darkest Days
- David Brooks on Alasdair MacIntyre and How We Got to Where We Are
Categories
- Aesthetics
- Art
- Arthur C. Clarke
- Astronomy
- Atheism
- authoritarianism
- Bay Area
- Bible
- Book Notes
- Cars
- Changing One's Mind
- Children
- Commonplace Book
- Conservative Resistance
- conservatives
- Conventions
- Cosmology
- Culture
- Decline
- Economics
- Education
- Epistemology
- Evolution
- Family History
- Films
- Games
- Heinlein
- History
- Human Nature
- Human Progress
- Humanism
- Humor
- Isaac Asimov
- Links
- Links & Comments
- longtermism
- Lunacy
- Mathematics
- Meaning
- MInd
- Morality
- Movies
- Music
- Musings
- Narrative
- Notes For
- Paperback Sets
- Personal history
- Pet Peeves
- Philosophy
- Physics
- Politics
- progress
- Provisional Conclusions
- Psychology
- Quote at Length
- Quotes
- Ray Bradbury
- reality
- Religion
- Reviews
- Robert Silverberg
- Robert Wright
- Science
- science fiction
- Science Fiction Nonfiction
- Short Fiction
- Silverberg
- Skiffy Flix
- Social Progress
- Space
- Species Reset
- Spirituality
- Star Trek
- Statistics
- Steven Pinker
- Supernatural
- Technology
- Ten Commandments
- The Book
- The Gays
- Thinking
- Travel
- Tribalism
- TV Sci Fi
- Uncategorized
- Website Issues
- Writing
Archives
- July 2025 (19)
- June 2025 (28)
- May 2025 (35)
- April 2025 (33)
- March 2025 (34)
- February 2025 (31)
- January 2025 (36)
- December 2024 (26)
- November 2024 (30)
- October 2024 (32)
- September 2024 (29)
- August 2024 (37)
- July 2024 (33)
- June 2024 (25)
- May 2024 (31)
- April 2024 (25)
- March 2024 (36)
- February 2024 (32)
- January 2024 (32)
- December 2023 (25)
- November 2023 (31)
- October 2023 (29)
- September 2023 (29)
- August 2023 (31)
- July 2023 (31)
- June 2023 (30)
- May 2023 (28)
- April 2023 (27)
- March 2023 (33)
- February 2023 (29)
- January 2023 (30)
- December 2022 (30)
- November 2022 (29)
- October 2022 (32)
- September 2022 (30)
- August 2022 (30)
- July 2022 (32)
- June 2022 (30)
- May 2022 (33)
- April 2022 (32)
- March 2022 (31)
- February 2022 (29)
- January 2022 (31)
- December 2021 (34)
- November 2021 (32)
- October 2021 (31)
- September 2021 (20)
- August 2021 (8)
- July 2021 (13)
- June 2021 (4)
- April 2021 (8)
- March 2021 (25)
- February 2021 (16)
- January 2021 (20)
- December 2020 (10)
- November 2020 (11)
- October 2020 (15)
- September 2020 (13)
- August 2020 (23)
- July 2020 (27)
- June 2020 (11)
- May 2020 (13)
- April 2020 (10)
- March 2020 (8)
- February 2020 (3)
- January 2020 (5)
- December 2019 (3)
- November 2019 (7)
- October 2019 (12)
- September 2019 (5)
- August 2019 (4)
- July 2019 (5)
- June 2019 (9)
- May 2019 (3)
- April 2019 (2)
- March 2019 (4)
- February 2019 (16)
- January 2019 (3)
- October 2018 (4)
- September 2018 (5)
- August 2018 (9)
- July 2018 (3)
- June 2018 (7)
- May 2018 (6)
- April 2018 (11)
- March 2018 (5)
- February 2018 (6)
- January 2018 (3)
- December 2017 (8)
- November 2017 (11)
- October 2017 (8)
- September 2017 (14)
- August 2017 (12)
- July 2017 (13)
- June 2017 (15)
- May 2017 (21)
- April 2017 (24)
- March 2017 (16)
- February 2017 (22)
- January 2017 (14)
- December 2016 (3)
- November 2016 (1)
- October 2016 (9)
- September 2016 (3)
- August 2016 (4)
- July 2016 (2)
- June 2016 (18)
- May 2016 (11)
- April 2016 (12)
- March 2016 (9)
- February 2016 (9)
- January 2016 (18)
- December 2015 (21)
- November 2015 (17)
- October 2015 (14)
- September 2015 (22)
- August 2015 (16)
- July 2015 (12)
- June 2015 (14)
- May 2015 (14)
- April 2015 (7)
- March 2015 (13)
- February 2015 (19)
- January 2015 (20)
- December 2014 (11)
- November 2014 (15)
- October 2014 (9)
- September 2014 (3)
- August 2014 (2)
- July 2014 (16)
- June 2014 (19)
- May 2014 (34)
- April 2014 (26)
- March 2014 (37)
- February 2014 (27)
- January 2014 (19)
- December 2013 (11)
- November 2013 (8)
- October 2013 (10)
- September 2013 (21)
- August 2013 (13)
- July 2013 (6)
Meta
Search Results for: consilience
My Essay Accepted for Publication
The news this late October is that I’ve had an 11,000 word essay, the one I’ve been working on since June, accepted by Gary Westfahl for publication in a volume of essays to be published in a year or so … Continue reading
Posted in Personal history, science fiction
Comments Off on My Essay Accepted for Publication
Science and Art and Predictions and Immortality
Carlo Rovelli on science and art; Big Think on failed predictions; Immortality as a philosophical paradox; Michio Kaku on the four types of planetary civilizations. —— NY Times, guest essay by Carlo Rovelli, 16 Oct 2023: The Secret to Unlocking … Continue reading
Modern Science and Literary Wisdom
and Human Nature and Its Biases and Rationality and The Two Cultures and Consilience. Gregory Feeley, in a friends-only post on Facebook three days ago, linked the two items below and and made some generalizing comments about them.
Evolution Understood and Not Understood
I mentioned those John Brockman anthologies of science essays back on Feb 4th. They’re associated with the website Edge.org, one of those fascinating websites I’ve noticed over the years but have not followed regularly (others are Big Think, Quanta, Aero, … Continue reading
Third Culture Books; Perceptions and Reality
Today’s three topics: A new Michael Shermer book I missed when it came out last October; How magenta is a color that doesn’t exist on the spectrum; Public perceptions of the economy. There are authors I’ve followed for years, both … Continue reading
Posted in Book Notes, Politics, Psychology
Comments Off on Third Culture Books; Perceptions and Reality
Dialogues: Democracy’s Enemies; Yuval Noah Harari
Two items today are responses to earlier articles or reviews, about the enemies of democracy, and about Yuval Noah Harari. And then my responses to them.
E.O. Wilson: THE SOCIAL CONQUEST OF EARTH (2012)
E.O. Wilson’s THE SOCIAL CONQUEST OF EARTH, from 2012, is in my estimation one of the four most significant books by this scientist and writer. (The others are ON HUMAN NATURE, 1978; CONSILIENCE, 1998; and THE MEANING OF HUMAN EXISTENCE, … Continue reading
Posted in Book Notes, Changing One's Mind, Culture, Evolution, Morality, Religion
Comments Off on E.O. Wilson: THE SOCIAL CONQUEST OF EARTH (2012)
E.O. Wilson: THE ORIGINS OF CREATIVITY (2017)
What is creativity? It is the innate quest for originality. The driving force is humanity’s instinctive love of novelty—the discovery of new entities and processes, the solving of old challenges and disclosure of new ones, the aesthetic surprise of unanticipated … Continue reading
Posted in Book Notes, Evolution
Comments Off on E.O. Wilson: THE ORIGINS OF CREATIVITY (2017)
E.O. Wilson
The great evolutionary biologist and author E.O. Wilson died on Sunday. He was 92. He had been publishing new books right up to the end, with Tales from the Ant World in 2020. Several of his earlier books, from On … Continue reading
Posted in Personal history, Science
Comments Off on E.O. Wilson
Novella et al: THE SKEPTICS’ GUIDE TO THE UNIVERSE
Novella, Dr. Steven, et al. The Skeptics’ Guide to the Universe: How to Know What’s Really Real in a World Increasingly Full of Fake. Grand Central, 2018. *** I read this shortly after publication, nearly three years ago now, and … Continue reading
Posted in Book Notes, Science, Thinking
Comments Off on Novella et al: THE SKEPTICS’ GUIDE TO THE UNIVERSE
