Misconceptions about Science and Predictions

Posted on Friday 20 March 2026 by Mark R. Kelly
  • How Jeffrey Epstein, obsessed with eugenics, was wrong;
  • How Paul Ehrlich was not a villain, even though his predictions failed;
  • John Pavlovitz wonders why anyone still supports Trump; I have another idea;
  • Tom Nichols on no Plan B; the disappearing Charlie Kirk banner;
  • Rufus Wainwright’s “Go Or Go Ahead”.
– – –

Evolution is the scientific topic about which even people who don’t reject it utterly still have more misconceptions about than any other branch of science. (Going back to Lamarckism, or the inheritance of acquired characteristics, that people like Lysenko and Stalin so much wanted to be true it became Soviet doctrine for decades.) I think it must reflect the teleological mode of most human thinking.

Slate, Susanne Paola Antonetta, 19 Mar 2026: Jeffrey Epstein, Eugenics Supremacist, subtitled “The files reveal his obsession with genetics. But genes don’t work the way he thought.”
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Donald Hoffman: THE CASE AGAINST REALITY

Posted on Friday 20 March 2026 by Mark R. Kelly

Subtitle: Why evolution hid the truth from our eyes
(Norton, 2019, 250pp, plus color plates, including 45pp acknowledgements, notes, and index.)

This is the first of three books I read in January, all with ostensibly similar themes, but actually quite different from one another in their perspectives and ultimate intents.

This one, for example, isn’t about evolution per se, as the subtitle suggests; it’s about how humans don’t perceive “true” reality, but only perceive reality in the sense of what is necessary for humans to survive and reproduce. OK, fine. I’ve made the same general point before. But he goes farther: he suggests that when we’re not looking at the moon, for example, the moon doesn’t exist. This goes back to certain philosophers, and sounds fatuous, and can only be true in the sense that humanity’s *conception* of what the moon is – filtered through our senses and our priorities for survival – ceases to exist when we’re not looking at it. It can’t mean that the physical object, the moon, that triggered our perceptions in the first place, ceases to exist. Yet he doesn’t want to spell this out; he leaves us with the impression that the actual moon ceases to exist when we’re not looking at it. Which I think is fatuous, and solipsistic.

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Latter Day Skiffy Flix: STTNG: Encounter at Farpoint

Posted on Thursday 19 March 2026 by Mark R. Kelly

A couple evenings ago I rewatched the pilot episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation, called “Encounter at Farpoint,” for the first time since I watched it as the series premiere back in 1987.

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Increasing Willful Ignorance and Intolerance

Posted on Thursday 19 March 2026 by Mark R. Kelly
  • How energy independence, which even Fox News once thought could avoid the quandary we now face in the Strait or Hormuz, is now regarded as a scam by the likes of JD Vance;
  • How Trump and MAGA are all for religious freedom… for Christians, but definitely not for Muslims;
  • While MAGA Christians want to repeal the 19th amendment and be much more intolerant toward ‘Satanic’ nonbelievers;
  • The White House Cage Match, and a Newsmax Host’s eagerness to punch people: are conservatives prone to settling disputes with violence? (Also yesterday’s item about guns);
  • The kids are all right, say new studies, better than previous generations, and the various psychological reasons many people believe otherwise.
– – –

We have only conservatives to blame.

Media Matters, Allison Fisher, 18 Mar 2026: Fox personalities used to claim that energy independence would shield the US from potential retaliatory action by Iran — such as closing the Strait of Hormuz, subtitled “As gas prices rise, the network has scarcely invoked the concept of ‘energy independence,’ mentioning it a fraction as often as it did during the start of the Russia-Ukraine war”

Hmm, why would that be? Perhaps because the current administration thinks energy independence is a scam.
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The War, the Economy, and Religion

Posted on Wednesday 18 March 2026 by Mark R. Kelly
  • Yet more commentators on the stupidity of this war with Iran, from Adam Lee, Suzanne Maloney, and Susan B. Glasser;
  • How the economies under Biden and Trump aren’t that much different;
  • Brief items about why conservatives need guns, Christian Nationalists who admit they mean to impose their morality on everyone, how the transgender plague is driven by demons, hurricanes, tricks, and Christian theology;
  • And two examples of the first lesson of comparative religion, for conservatives.
– – –

Adam Lee on the war.

OnlySky, Adam Lee, 18 Mar 2026: The colossal stupidity of war with Iran, subtitled “An unwinnable war without a goal and with consequences for the world.”

If anyone still doubted that Donald Trump will be remembered as the worst president of all time, he’s doing his best to eliminate that doubt.

Last month, America and Israel launched a surprise attack on Iran, assassinating Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and senior Iranian military officials. (We also accidentally bombed a school, killing over a hundred children.)

This is all the more hypocritical because isolationism used to be one of Trump’s defining policy stances. As a candidate, he railed against politicians whom he said would get us bogged down in wars:

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Is Trump Insane, Delusional, or Merely an Inveterate Liar?

Posted on Tuesday 17 March 2026 by Mark R. Kelly
  • Trump claims a former president supports his actions in Iran; the four living former presidents all deny it;
  • Many on the extreme right sound insane to the rest of us, with examples;
  • Trump is pressuring the media to support his war, as authoritarians do;
  • Yet another example of how Trump is only transactional, without principles;
  • John Pavlovitz on how MAGA Americans will feign ignorance of the Trump administration, jut as Germans did about the NAZIs.
  • A report on the health of Democracies around the world is unsurprising concerning the US;
  • Anne Applebaum on how everyone but Trump understands what he’s done;
  • Philip Glass’s Monsters of Grace.
– – –

Today’s story about crazy Trump.

NY Times, 16 Mar 2026: Trump Claims an Ex-President Confided His Regrets on Iran. But Who?, subtitled “The New York Times reached out to people close to President Trump’s predecessors. They disputed Mr. Trump’s claims.”

President Trump claimed on Monday that a former president told him privately that “I wish I did what you did” in attacking Iran and killing its supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

Speaking to reporters at the White House, Mr. Trump would not identify which of the four living predecessors he was referring to.

“He said, ‘I wish I did what you did,’” Mr. Trump said. “I don’t want to get into ‘who,’ I don’t want to get him into trouble.”

All of the four living ex-presidents have denied any such conversation. Is Trump delusional? Insane? Lying by rote as he always does?

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Clueless, Stupid, and Cruel

Posted on Monday 16 March 2026 by Mark R. Kelly
  • The status of Trump’s war in Iran;
  • Paul Krugman explains that America is not respected around the world;
  • And how George Orwell foresaw this;
  • Robert Reich on Trump’s stupidest cabinet member: Pete Hegseth;
  • How Hegseth doesn’t understand “no quarter” any more than he understands “rules of engagement”;
  • Brief items about Peter Thiel’s antichrist fixation; grandparents who remember what vaccines were for; the pointless voter fraud bill; how conservative Christians aren’t helping their cause; how the Trump administration is now forced to hire migrant workers (to replace those who were deported); and about the DOGE dolts who mindlessly slashed DEI programs and didn’t actually save any money.
– – –

Recently in the Iran war: Trump has declared the mission complete, or nearly complete, or maybe complete in a few more weeks, but even if it’s complete now, he’s thinking of bombing them some more just for fun. Also, he’s asking all the American “allies” he has insulted with tariffs this past year for help clearing the Strait of Hormuz, and they have declined or not responded, while dolts like Newt Gingrich suggest using nuclear bombs to clear a new pathway that avoids the Strait. These people are clueless.

Thus.

Paul Krugman, 16 Mar 2026: No, America is Not Respected, subtitled “Thanks to Trump, we’re held in contempt even by our closest allies”

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Carl Sagan & Ann Druyan: SHADOWS OF FORGOTTEN ANCESTORS

Posted on Monday 16 March 2026 by Mark R. Kelly

Subtitled: A Search for Who We Are
(Random House, Oct 1992, xvi + 505pp, including 85pp of notes, permissions acknowledgements, and index.)


This is perhaps Carl Sagan’s most substantial book, on the grounds that it’s through-written as a single composition; it’s not a compilation or fix-up of previously written magazine pieces, as THE DEMON-HAUNTED WORLD was, or an edited series of lectures, as THE VARIETIES OF SCIENTIFIC EXPERIENCE WAS, or aligned by chapter to episodes of a TV show, like COSMOS was, or a book aligned to an earlier book, like THE PALE BLUE DOT was.

And on the grounds that it takes a wide perspective, a sort of 10,000 foot view of a period of history not examined by most books about evolution, or the cosmos, or human history. It’s about the history of life up until humanity’s ancestors came on the stage, and so it outlines how and why life on Earth came to be, and how things like competition and violence necessarily came to characterize life on Earth.

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The Most Dangerous Vision

Posted on Sunday 15 March 2026 by Mark R. Kelly

A brief post today, after a long afternoon/evening watching the Oscars. (On the West Coast, what with pre-shows, it ran from mid-afternoon to nearly 8pm.)

So instead of linking news or opinion items today, let me note a nascent thought of mine that’s emerged in recent weeks. I’ll begin with a reminder that every post like this, every post other than objective linking and quoting, is a first draft of sorts, a record of today’s thoughts that might undergo rethinking tomorrow, or next week, or next month. Just as what I opined yesterday, or last month, or five years ago isn’t necessarily what I’d say today. (Usually, when I look back at old posts, I’m bothered only by inexact wording, not ideas I’ve completely abandoned. For some of these ideas it’s important to state things precisely, lest people read into them things I didn’t mean. You know the examples.)

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What Western Civilization is Actually About

Posted on Saturday 14 March 2026 by Mark R. Kelly
  • Francis Fukuyama, responding to Marco Rubio, on how Western Civilization is more about the Enlightenment than religious faith;
  • And Boston Globe via Steven Pinker on that Tennessee congressman’s anti-Muslim screed;
  • Briefly noted items about Trump’s shoe tests and their Soviet odor, Trump’s disconnect with reality, video games, non-Protestant events, forcing student-led prayer, destroying DC architecture, more about the Beha book, dismantling a renowned science lab, Trump’s sons cashing in on drones, weakening limits on a cancer-causing gas, and the eternal sea of misinformation about vaccines.
– – –

Persuasion, Francis Fukuyama, 3 Mar 2026: What “Western Civilization” Really Means, subtitled “It has less to do with faith — and more to do with the Enlightenment — than Marco Rubio thinks.”

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