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 (2003-2013)
» Blogspot Views from Medina Road (2003-2010)-
Recent Posts
- Tribal Notes
- Joshua Greene, MORAL TRIBES, post 2
- Joshua Greene, MORAL TRIBES, post 1
- Believing Anything
- The poorly educated and the “cognishly umpired”
- Slouching
- The Dual-Process Theory of Morality, and Some Examples
- Obsolete Laws, Morality, and Beliefs
- Daniel Dennett, Exploring the Universe, the Eclipse, and How so Many People have no idea what an eclipse is about
- Jaime Green, THE POSSIBILITY OF LIFE
Categories
- Aesthetics
- Arthur C. Clarke
- Astronomy
- Atheism
- 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 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
- April 2024 (18)
- 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
Monthly Archives: August 2020
Links and Comments: Recent links, August 2020
Too many recently for detailed comments. Here are a bunch. \\ CNN: Tucker Carlson upset that he’s told how to correctly pronounce Kamala Harris’ name. Why are conservatives upset by being asked to observe simple standards of decency and respect? … Continue reading
Favorite Film: Magnolia
Sunday night we caught, on one of the cable channels, the 1999 film by Paul Thomas Anderson, Magnolia (all but the first few minutes; we caught up on those the next night, since I have the DVD). It’s one of … Continue reading
Posted in Movies
Comments Off on Favorite Film: Magnolia
Link and Comments: Challenge to Conventional Wisdom: About the Nuclear Family
That long NYT news story about the religious heartland that I posted a couple days ago included this quote from a Mr. Driesen, a utility company worker: “Unfortunately, there’s just more divorce than there used to be,” he said. “There’s … Continue reading
Posted in Conservative Resistance, Social Progress
Comments Off on Link and Comments: Challenge to Conventional Wisdom: About the Nuclear Family
Link and Comments: The View from Down Under
Several of my Facebook friends occasionally post the entire text of this or that article or editorial in their post, or in a comment to their post, for the sake of those others who don’t have subscriptions to, say, the … Continue reading
Posted in Conservative Resistance, Lunacy, Politics
Comments Off on Link and Comments: The View from Down Under
APOD: This is Reality: The Origin of the Elements
Click for a text description, with many explanatory links (some technical, some funny).
Links and Comments: Trump, Evangelicals, Persecution, Fear, Withdrawal
The front page of today’s New York Times has an aerial photo of a house in Sioux Center, Iowa, with the words “In God We Trust” on the roof. The article, a long one, is ‘Christianity Will Have Power’ with … Continue reading
Posted in Culture, Human Progress, Lunacy, Religion
Comments Off on Links and Comments: Trump, Evangelicals, Persecution, Fear, Withdrawal
Skiffy Flix: Destination Moon
This 1951 film was the first prestigious science fiction film, its script inspired or perhaps partially written, by Robert A. Heinlein. The credits say “from a novel by” Heinlein but that’s not accurate. Heinlein had written a juvenile novel about … Continue reading
Posted in Movies, Skiffy Flix
Comments Off on Skiffy Flix: Destination Moon
Stamp Collecting
In the year or two that I collected stamps, about age 12 and 13, inspired by my Great Aunt Maude when we’d moved to Illinois, I discovered companies that would do approval services similar to those that book distributors did … Continue reading
Posted in Personal history
Leave a comment
Link and Comments: Jared Diamond on Why Nations Fail Or Succeed When Facing A Crisis
Let’s do a relatively academic item today, to avoid the day to day political issues. Though of course it’s not irrelevant to those. Noemag: Jared Diamond: Why Nations Fail Or Succeed When Facing A Crisis Jared Diamond is, of course, … Continue reading
Links and Comments: About Thinking; About Research; About Orientations
First, from yesterday’s New York Times Science section: How to Think Like an Epidemiologist. Subtitle: “Don’t worry, a little Bayesian analysis won’t hurt you.” As Marc Lipsitch, an infectious disease epidemiologist at Harvard, noted on Twitter, Bayesian reasoning comes awfully … Continue reading
Posted in Psychology, Science
Comments Off on Links and Comments: About Thinking; About Research; About Orientations
