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.
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Recent Posts
- How Rugged Individualists Cannot Solve Global Problems
- Somber News
- Violence, Evolution, Climate Change, and Cory Doctorow’s THE LOST CAUSE
- Third Essay of the Weekend
- Two Essays
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- Joshua Greene, MORAL TRIBES, post 2
- Joshua Greene, MORAL TRIBES, post 1
- Believing Anything
- The poorly educated and the “cognishly umpired”
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Author Archives: Mark R. Kelly
How Rugged Individualists Cannot Solve Global Problems
A note about my trip tomorrow to Austin; How Mike Johnson characterizes Republicans as “rugged individualists,” yet who can still not get along to solve actual problems; How Trump’s policies would increase inflation, and his fans haven’t noticed; More about … Continue reading
Posted in Morality, Personal history, Politics, Psychology
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Somber News
I don’t want to make this too personal, or reveal too much personal information. Just to convey a lesson. Six months ago now, I announced that an old friend of mine, Larry Kramer, who’d moved to Texas in 2006 and … Continue reading
Posted in Personal history
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Violence, Evolution, Climate Change, and Cory Doctorow’s THE LOST CAUSE
How Republicans increasingly advocate violence; How Tucker Carlson doesn’t understand evolution, and his several dumb objections to evolution; How 10 straight months of record-breaking temperatures won’t persuade the skeptics; And a passage from Cory Doctorow’s 2023 novel The Lost Cause … Continue reading
Posted in Conservative Resistance, Evolution, science fiction
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Third Essay of the Weekend
An Elizabeth Kolbert essay about the debate about the term “Anthropocene”; And Neil Finn’s beautiful lullaby “Faster than Light”. * This is Elizabeth Kolbert (author of The Sixth Extinction, one of the best nonfiction books of the 21st century; review … Continue reading
Two Essays
Frank Bruni on how everything is complicated, and the need to be humble; A New Yorker piece about how to understand misinformation. I have at hand two or three long essays that I plan to read and comment on, as … Continue reading
Posted in conservatives, Philosophy, Psychology
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Tribal Notes
Latest examples of tribal thinking, as many of my posts over the past months and years have compiled, clarified by my reading of Joshua Greene’s book and many others. Short items about indoctrination in Florida schools (“get them while they’re … Continue reading
Posted in conservatives, Morality, Politics
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Joshua Greene, MORAL TRIBES, post 2
Concluding summary and comments about this book. Some highlights: The author focuses on a modified utilitarianism, which he calls “deep pragmatism,” to solve tribal disputes in the modern world; He observes that “rights” are claims to end disputes, in order … Continue reading
Posted in Book Notes, Morality, progress
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Joshua Greene, MORAL TRIBES, post 1
Here is a substantial book about human morality that offers ideas that, to me, help to knit together the ideas of others. For chronological context, this 2013 book follows, of course, the 1997 Pinker book that I recently read (review … Continue reading
Posted in Book Notes, Morality, progress, Science
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Believing Anything
A long opinion piece by Dana Milbank at WaPo shows *how* Trump supporters will believe anything, without explaining (despite the headline) *why* they do; My thoughts about what has brought about the loss in consensus reality; And short items about … Continue reading
Posted in Politics, Psychology
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The poorly educated and the “cognishly umpired”
A Tom Gauld cartoon illustrating tribalism — “Our Blessed Homeland” vs. “Their Barbarous Wastes”; Anti-woke teachers in public schools; Abrahm Lustgarten on the American climate migration (which applies to the wider world, of course); More from John Gartner about Trump’s … Continue reading
Posted in Personal history, Science, Tribalism
Comments Off on The poorly educated and the “cognishly umpired”
