Author Archives: Mark R. Kelly

Frogs, Religion, the Ballroom, Bigotry, and Dictators

Posted on Saturday 20 December 2025 by Mark R. Kelly

Trump’s relative isolationism: big frog in a small pond. The obvious reasons people are walking away from organized religion; Short takes on the White House ballroom, surging bigotry on the right, and Trump’s alignment with history’s worst dictators. – – … Continue reading →

Posted in Conservative Resistance, History, Human Nature, Religion | Comments Off on Frogs, Religion, the Ballroom, Bigotry, and Dictators

Kindergarten Anthropology, and Ordering Things Into Existence

Posted on Friday 19 December 2025 by Mark R. Kelly

A Facebook response to the question of where morality comes from; Franklin Graham admits that God is a God of War; Trump thinks he can order nuclear fusion into existence, and order a Moon landing in 2028. – – – … Continue reading →

Posted in Human Nature, Morality, Religion | Comments Off on Kindergarten Anthropology, and Ordering Things Into Existence

Steven Pinker, ENLIGHTENMENT NOW, post 3

Posted on Friday 19 December 2025 by Mark R. Kelly

Subtitled “The Case for Reason, Science, Humanism, and Progress” (Viking, Feb. 2018, xix+556pp, including 102pp of notes, references, and index.) Here are the first seven of the 17 chapters in the long middle section of the book.  The first one … Continue reading →

Posted in Book Notes, Steven Pinker | Comments Off on Steven Pinker, ENLIGHTENMENT NOW, post 3

Documenting My Reading; Holiday Shopping; and Tr*mp

Posted on Thursday 18 December 2025 by Mark R. Kelly

Infrastructure note: I’ve updated all the pages under the “Nonfiction Books” tab in the menu above. I set up those pages a year ago, in December 2024, and updated a few of them in May 2025, and now have updated … Continue reading →

Posted in Conservative Resistance, Human Nature, Personal history, Politics, Website Issues | Comments Off on Documenting My Reading; Holiday Shopping; and Tr*mp

Do People Actually Believe the Things That They Say?

Posted on Wednesday 17 December 2025 by Mark R. Kelly

Timothy Snyder on Elon Musk, responsibility, and displacement; Adam Lee how on how, despite abortion bans, rates of abortion have gone up; Short items on racism, dual citizenship, dismantling climate research, promoting violence, and snitching and scapegoating. – – – … Continue reading →

Posted in Politics, Psychology | Comments Off on Do People Actually Believe the Things That They Say?

Steven Pinker: ENLIGHTENMENT NOW, post 2

Posted on Wednesday 17 December 2025 by Mark R. Kelly

Subtitled “The Case for Reason, Science, Humanism, and Progress” (Viking, Feb. 2018, xix+556pp, including 102pp of notes, references, and index.) The first three chapters of this book are crisp summaries of themes shared with two or three dozen other books … Continue reading →

Posted in Book Notes, Steven Pinker | Comments Off on Steven Pinker: ENLIGHTENMENT NOW, post 2

Defending the Indefensible; and Reading

Posted on Tuesday 16 December 2025 by Mark R. Kelly

Trump about Rob Reiner and the few who defend him and the many more who do not; How many people don’t finish most books, and how high school students barely read any. – – – Once again, we’re dealing with … Continue reading →

Posted in conservatives, Culture, Lunacy | Comments Off on Defending the Indefensible; and Reading

Narcissists and Simpletons

Posted on Monday 15 December 2025 by Mark R. Kelly

Trump’s vile comments about the deaths of Rob Reiner and his wife, and wondering what kind of people still support him; How the MAGA right succumbs to the bias of believing in an ideal past; Short takes on Ron Johnson; … Continue reading →

Posted in Conservative Resistance, conservatives, Human Nature | Comments Off on Narcissists and Simpletons

Moon Status; Dormant Bigotry

Posted on Monday 15 December 2025 by Mark R. Kelly

Just two items today. First a think piece. Slate, Joel Achenbach, 9 Dec 2025: Moondoggle, subtitled “Officially, America is supposed to land on the moon again in 2027—and Mars thereafter. Ask anyone inside NASA under Trump, and you will hear … Continue reading →

Posted in conservatives, Human Nature, Space | Comments Off on Moon Status; Dormant Bigotry

Nominalism, and Some Cool Maps

Posted on Saturday 13 December 2025 by Mark R. Kelly

The idea of nominalism, from a 77-year-old book, that seems to have inspired MAGA’s arrested moral development; Apocalyptic speculation in science fiction and in speculative maps; Brief items about Trump’s whitewashing of American history, teaching students how to think, and … Continue reading →

Posted in Morality, Politics, science fiction | Comments Off on Nominalism, and Some Cool Maps