Mark R. Kelly
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Recent Posts
- Yuval Noah Harari, HOMO DEUS: A Brief History of Tomorrow (2017; 2015 in Israel)
- A note about book notes
- Yuval Noah Harari, SAPIENS: A Brief History of Humankind (2015)
- Carl Sagan’s THE DEMON-HAUNTED WORLD: Science As a Candle in the Dark
- Intuitive Theories about Intuitive Theories
- But What’s at Stake? Hal Clement’s Needle
- Things Are As They Are: George R. Stewart’s EARTH ABIDES
- Links and Comments: Secrets of Success, the 2010s, Gibson’s future, History v. Narratives
- Peter Watts essay: “Understanding Sarah Palin, or, God Is In the Wattles”: Summary and Comments
- Carel Van Schaik & Kai Michel, THE GOOD BOOK OF HUMAN NATURE: An Evolutionary Reading of the Bible (2016): Introduction
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Meta
Monthly Archives: May 2017
Link and Comments: American Narratives
David Brooks NYT column on May 26: The Four American Narratives. He recalls his own characterization of the American unifying story as an Exodus story: one about people leaving oppression to settle a new promised land. A story that no … Continue reading
Posted in Culture
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Accumulated Links I Don’t Have Time to Comment On In Detail
Slate: Donald Trump Doesn’t Share America’s Values. The Transcript of His Call to the Philippine President Proves It. \\ The Blaze (which I never look at but I saw via a relative’s Fb post): Fake academic paper published in liberal … Continue reading
Posted in Uncategorized
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And Nothing Is More Important Than My Ship: TOS #14 “Court Martial”
Kirk faces court martial over the death of a crewman with whom he had a history, in a confrontation that pits human rights against a computerized culture. The enhanced graphics are especially effective in this episode, showing both the Enterprise … Continue reading
Posted in Star Trek
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Correct and Logical Decisions: TOS “The Galileo Seven”
The shuttlecraft Galileo, commanded by Spock, crash-lands on a planet in the midst of a quasar-like phenomenon, where the crew fends off hostile aliens as Kirk on the Enterprise is forced to abandon its search for them. This has … Continue reading
Posted in Star Trek
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Links and Comments: Tyson v. Douthat
I started writing up a few notes about the new (small) Neil deGrasse Tyson book, ASTROPHYSICS FOR PEOPLE IN A HURRY, and got sidetracked by a passage that reminded me of a Ross Douthat column from a few weeks ago. … Continue reading
Posted in Book Notes, Religion, Science
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Link and Comments: Kids These Days
From Sunday’s New York Times Book Review, a review by Jennifer Szalai of a book by new Nebraska senator Ben Sasse, THE VANISHING AMERICAN ADULT: Our Coming-of-Age Crisis — and How to Rebuild a Culture of Self-Reliance. The review is … Continue reading
Posted in Children, Conservative Resistance, Culture
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Links and Comments: Reality and Fantasy about Abortion
I don’t have any horse in the race about abortion, per se, except how it is an example of right-wing authoritarian, anti-science thinking. (I’ve seen but need to document the historical background about how abortion wasn’t on the conservative religious … Continue reading
Posted in Conservative Resistance, Evolution
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Parents, Children, Identities: Andrew Solomon’s FAR FROM THE TREE
This is an enormous book, 962 pages long, 702 of that text (with the remainder consisting of encyclopedic notes, a lengthy bibliography, and an index). The book is about how parents deal with exceptional children, covering ten categories of exceptionality, … Continue reading
Posted in Children, Culture, MInd, Psychology, The Gays
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Sapolsky on religion, and human behavior
Via today’s Morning Heresy blog by Paul Fidalgo, this item from Robert M. Sapolsky, a short video on a site called Big Think, called Atheism vs. Religion: Which Is the Healthier Viewpoint?. His thesis is that religious belief, in eternal … Continue reading
Link and Comment: Religion v. Reality
One more item from last Sunday’s New York Times: the weekly “Modern Love” column, reader-submitted essays about “the joys and tribulations of love.” White Shirt, Black Name Tag, Big Secret It’s about a young Mormon man sent into the world … Continue reading
