Those Who Do, Those Who Can’t

Posted on Friday 10 April 2026 by Mark R. Kelly
  • How some of us reach for the stars, while others are mired in oppressive religious fantasies;
  • How both sides think God is on their side, and wondering what religions are trying to accomplish;
  • Rebecca Boyle on what we’re seeing new about the Moon, from Artemis II;
  • Brief items about why we keep going back to the Moon, why Vance is stumping for a dictator, the Christian right’s victim complex, how Trump gives old people a bad name, how employees respond to that religious message, and how the US is losing the world’s respect.
– – –

As I begin this post the Artemis II mission, named Integrity, while the spacecraft itself is called Orion (if I’m following this correctly), is about 20 minutes from splashdown. Here’s an essay on the chasm between those who understand and do, and those who believe and don’t, and can’t.

Free Inquiry, Ronald A. Lindsay, 9 April 2026: Reaching for the Stars, But Mired in Oppressive Fantasies

So, the news this week featured headlines about how the Artemis II crew had traveled farther away from the Earth than anyone else in prior lunar missions. An amazing achievement, and a testament to the rigorous application of scientific principles and evidence.

In the same time frame, however, we had reminders of how much of humanity remains trapped in detrimental religious fantasies.

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Our Demented Administration

Posted on Thursday 9 April 2026 by Mark R. Kelly
  • A majority of Americans favor impeachment;
  • Now the Trump administration is threatening the Vatican;
  • Yet more evidence that they’re white supremacists;
  • Revisiting the question if Trump is suffering dementia;
  • Long piece about how Trump is stuck in the era of the 1980s;
  • Brief items: The administration delays published news about vaccine benefits; the USDA secretary sends a Jesus email to 100,000 of her workers; comment on Fb about why MAGA thinks protesters are being paid;
  • Radiohead’s “Dollars and Cents”.
– – –

Newsweek, updated today: Donald Trump Impeachment Backed by Most Americans: Poll

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Another Nothing-burger Trump Deal

Posted on Wednesday 8 April 2026 by Mark R. Kelly
  • Trump’s ‘deal’ with Iran seems to have accomplished none of his objectives, and is worse than the Obama deal that Trump cancelled;
  • Comments from Robert Reich, Paul Krugman, Media Matters;
  • Which spills over in the contrast between Artemis II and Trump’s funding priorities;
  • The Atlantic’s Charlie Warzel on the best and worst of humanity this week: Artemis, and Trump;
  • Former NASA research scientist Kate Marvel on the chaos of science funding;
  • How MAGA men loathe tradwives;
  • Another piece about how religions survive by influencing the youth early on;
  • Radiohead’s “Daydreaming”
– – –

The general tenor today.

The Atlantic, Nancy A. Youssef, today: Trump Made a Deal That Gives Him Nothing He Wanted, subtitled “U.S. declarations of victory ring hollow.”

President Trump said he went to war to ensure that Iran never acquired a nuclear bomb. The war ended—for now, at least—with a demonstration that Tehran possesses an arguably more powerful weapon of deterrence against future attacks, one that is cheaper to use, gives Iran enormous sway over the global economy, can bring in revenue, and can’t be negotiated away: the Strait of Hormuz.

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TACO and Cognitive Surrender

Posted on Tuesday 7 April 2026 by Mark R. Kelly
  • The world worries about presidential insanity and nuclear war until Trump backs down, yet again;
  • AI and “cognitive surrender”;
  • With some perspective about electronic calculators and other forms of new technology over the millennia;
  • And how the surrender of critical thinking aligns with the credulity of religious faith;
  • Paul Krugman on MAGA’s war against science; that Trump and Hegseth think “overwhelming violence is Biblical” is a problem with the Bible.
  • “The moral arc of the universe bends toward finding out.” (via Mary Doria Russell)
  • Ennio Morricone: Once Upon a Time in America.
– – –

No surprise really: Trump put off his threats against Iran. This is after he said, just this morning, “A whole civilization will die tonight, never to be brought back again.” And reports of senior military officials considering disobeying his orders. But nothing from Republican politicians.

Washington Post, today: Trump agrees to suspend attacks for ‘two weeks’ if Iran opens Strait of Hormuz, subtitled “Amid threats to bomb civilian infrastructure, the president said he had received a 10-point proposal from Iran that formed a ‘workable basis’ for continued negotiations.”

Just 90 minutes before President Donald Trump’s 8 p.m. deadline to “wipe out a whole civilization” with massive strikes on Iran’s energy infrastructure and bridges, he granted a two-week extension for diplomacy to continue.

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Artemis, and the Weirding of American Religion

Posted on Monday 6 April 2026 by Mark R. Kelly
  • The Artemis mission, the dark side solecism, the flat earth crazies;
  • Paul Krugman echoes my thoughts from yesterday: will America as we knew it end Tuesday?
  • The weirding of American religion, what with claims of teleportation and demons;
  • Brief items about demonic activity, US agencies celebrating Easter, ignoring the Constitution to fund religion, and how reality eventually catches up.
– – –

NY Times, Live Updates: Artemis II: NASA isn’t going to the dark side of the moon.

I’m following news about the Artemis II mission, and am relieved that not once on the TV news coverage (I mostly watch NBC) nor on NPR have I heard the solecism “dark side of the moon.” Despite the Pink Floyd album, there is no dark side of the moon, any more than there is a dark side of the Earth. There may be a dark side to either at any given moment, but there is no permanent dark side to either. When people say that about the Moon, what they mean is the *far* side, which because of gravitational lockage we never see from Earth. That’s why the face of the moon as seen from Earth always looks the same. The Earth rotates, the Moon rotates, and the Moon just happens to rotate in the same amount of time it takes to orbit the Earth. (Because physics.)

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Skiffy Flix: The Thing From Another World

Posted on Sunday 5 April 2026 by Mark R. Kelly

This is a 1951 black & white science fiction movie set in the Arctic, and it’s one of the most famous of the 1950s science fiction films. (This original version has been eclipsed over the decades by a 1982 remake directed by John Carpenter and starring Kurt Russell, with pulsing music by Ennio Morricone and gruesome special effects that turned off many viewers at the time. But that’s another discussion.)

This version is directed by Christian Nyby with music by Dimitri Tiomkin and a credit to John W. Campbell Jr., who wrote the 1938 novella “Who Goes There?” that the movie is based on. (That story ranks first in my latest weighted poll of science fiction novellas, as shown and discussed on this page.)

The film opens with distributor RKO’s logo, a Eiffel Tower atop a clear, slowly spinning globe, and then the logo, two crossed rifles, of production company Winchester Pictures.

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Eve of Destruction?

Posted on Sunday 5 April 2026 by Mark R. Kelly
  • Trump’s profane threats to Iran;
  • US politicians respond;
  • Seeing resurrection everywhere, in cycles of life and death;
  • Trump killed easy tax filing software to appease big business;
  • Review of a book about how capitalism conquered the world and may destroy it;
  • Brief items about pollution, budget cuts to science, how Trump’s story changes every day, disputes between the right and the Pope, tht teleportation guy, Trump and Sunday School, how data dispute wishful thinking about a Christian religious revival;
  • Radiohead’s “Reckoner.”

Is Trump about to start World War III? Will big US cities be here in two days? (Look up “Eve of Destruction” on YouTube. It’s from 1965, and notice how many of the images are familiar in 2026.)

How far does Trump have to go before his fans see how unhinged he is? Before the rest of the US government does something? Before he is removed from office?

Washington Post, today: Trump threatens Iran with ‘Hell’ over Strait of Hormuz in profane post, subtitled “Trump escalated threats against Iran’s power plants, bridges and other infrastructure in an expletive-laden post on Truth Social on Easter morning.”

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God-Botherers

Posted on Saturday 4 April 2026 by Mark R. Kelly
  • Ross Douthat and Bart Ehrman debate about the evolution of human morality; I’m not completely on board with either of them, and have a better explanation;
  • Examples of the religiously besotted: who think Christ is the King of America; who thinks US troops are fighting for Jesus; who want women barefoot and off the voter rolls;
  • Trump name-checks God;
  • The teleport guy triples down.
– – –

Items on religion, beginning with a serious debate between two scholars.

NY Times, Ross Douthat with Bart Ehrman, 2 Apr 2026: Did Jesus Rise From the Dead? A Debate., subtitled “A ‘Christian Atheist’ joins Ross Douthat.”

Very long, with video. I noted it a couple days ago but haven’t taken the time to read it (or watch it). But then I saw this take:

Why Evolution is True, Jerry Coyne, 3 Apr 2026: Bart Ehrman schools Ross Douthat on Christianity and how to find Biblical “truth”

Coyne summarizes and quotes. Both have recent books. Douthat, a reliable defender of faith for NYT, has Believe: Why Everyone Should Be Religious from a year ago. Ehrman has Love Thy Stranger: How the Teachings of Jesus Transformed the Moral Conscience of the West just published in March.

I dismiss Douthat completely; he thinks the world would be a better place if everyone were a Christian, just like him; he thinks that’s what right and true about the world; he was imprinted young. I’m open to Ehrman, who went from believer to scholar (if not entirely skeptic), but I’m still skeptical of him; I had issues with his book JESUS BEFORE THE GOSPELS (review here), and the new one seems similarly credulous about matters of moral evolution (the moral conscience he refers to is the evolved human nature of hundreds of thousands of years; Jesus could not have changed human nature’s moral inclinations in a single generation, and what about the rest of the world?).

(One trouble with experts on any subject is that they don’t always know very much about anything else.)

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Psychics and Literacy

Posted on Friday 3 April 2026 by Mark R. Kelly
  • If psychics are real, why hasn’t even one shown up to find Nancy Guthrie?
  • Pete Hegseth keeps blocking military promotions for blacks and females;
  • And he’s holding a Protestants-only Good Friday service;
  • Big Think on the persistence of intuitive superstitious thought — an example of Harari (see previous post);
  • Trump is “well-read”?
  • How Trump contorts the English language to obfuscate;
  • Learning is perishable: the comeback of smoking.
– – –

It seems that Pete Hegseth is firing generals who challenge or raise doubts about his plans for a ground invasion of Iran. It seems that Trump ignored the advice of 40 years that any attack on Iran would lead to the closing of the Strait of Hormuz. I’ve gathered these from comments on Facebook; neither of these has gelled into a linkable item from any trusted media source. Though the latter might be a reasonable conclusion, based on the evidence of years.

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For all you people who harbor a secret suspicion that there must be something to these psychics. After all, they’ve been around for so long.

Skeptical Inquirer, Benjamin Radford, 31 Mar 2026: Nancy Guthrie Disappearance Highlights Psychic Failure

As March 2026 comes to a close it has been two months since the abduction of Nancy Guthrie, the octogenarian mother of Today show co-host Savannah Guthrie, from her home in Tucson, Arizona. Guthrie was last seen on January 31, and reported missing the next day.

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Yuval Noah Harari: NEXUS

Posted on Friday 3 April 2026 by Mark R. Kelly

Subtitled: A Brief History of Information Networks from the Stone Age to AI
(Random House, Sept. 2024, xxxii + 492pp, including 88pp of acknowledgements, notes, and index; but no bibliography)

This is Harari’s fourth big book, following SAPIENS, HOMO DEUS, and 21 LESSONS FOR THE 21ST CENTURY. The subject of this one may seem a little more abstruse than the others, and maybe it is, but in fact the book is chock full of interesting stuff and typical askance Harari insights.

As usual, I’ll boil down key points and plant them here. Actually, I’ll two levels of key points. Then below those, I’ll data-dump the 12,000 notes I took on the book as I read it, with some pertinent quotes along the way.

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Key Points, 50,000 foot level:

  • Information is not just statements about reality; it includes stories and errors and fantasies. There are both naive (more information is better) and populist (information as power) views of information; neither is correct. Stories enable cultures to grow; documents enabled bureaucracies and the further expansion of cultures.
  • Errors are inevitable. Self-correcting mechanisms were created in support of what became science; religion lacks these, and has splintered into countless sects.
  • Computers and AI increase engagement of all sorts of information, and can create their own fantasies.
  • Information is used differently in democracies, which have self-correcting mechanisms [[ balance of powers, the vote ]], while totalitarian systems prefer to route all information through a central hub, making them more fragile and especially vulnerable to control by AIs.
  • If humans are so smart, why are we so self-destructive? Because our information networks privilege order over truth.

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