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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» Previous Views from Medina Road (2010-2013)
» Blogspot Views from Medina Road (2003-2010)-
Recent Posts
- Government Suppression, and Dr. Noc
- Steven Pinker, ENLIGHTENMENT NOW, post 5
- An Antebellum Constitution, Christianity, and Christmas
- Steven Pinker, ENLIGHTENMENT NOW, post 4
- Frogs, Religion, the Ballroom, Bigotry, and Dictators
- Kindergarten Anthropology, and Ordering Things Into Existence
- Steven Pinker, ENLIGHTENMENT NOW, post 3
- Documenting My Reading; Holiday Shopping; and Tr*mp
- Do People Actually Believe the Things That They Say?
- Steven Pinker: ENLIGHTENMENT NOW, post 2
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Meta
Category Archives: Conservative Resistance
Religious Liberty and Christian Theology
Salon: Republicans have turned God upside down with their so-called “religious liberty”. The “liberty” part in “religious liberty” is not intended to empower the believers of a dominant religion, such as, say, Christianity, to give them the “liberty” to impose … Continue reading
Posted in Conservative Resistance, Religion
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Links and Comments: Irrational Voters; Republicans and Gays; Religious Liberty v Progress
Robert Sapolsky in last week’s Los Angeles Times: We’re rarely rational when we vote because we’re rarely rational, period. How various discoveries about mental biases and motivated thinking play out in elections. Probably the most striking thing about any of … Continue reading
Posted in Conservative Resistance, Culture, Human Progress, MInd, Religion
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Trump, Abortion, Conservatives, and Guns
(From two posts on Facebook over the past week, somewhat edited.) 31 March: I confess a bit of bewilderment at the outrage over Donald Trump’s comments about abortion, not just from the pro-choice left, but also the anti-abortion (‘pro-life’) right. … Continue reading
Posted in Conservative Resistance, Religion
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Links and Comments: Trump; Democrats v Republicans; American exceptionalism; government regulations
As Donald Trump seems to be on the path to claiming the Republican nomination for president, Republicans who are appalled by him are increasingly expressing misgivings. Salon has this fascinating article about how some Republican pundits admit that the crude … Continue reading
Posted in Conservative Resistance, Culture, Politics, Religion, Social Progress
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The Yearning for the Golden Past
The Conservative Grand Narrative, according to Jonathan Haidt (mentioned in my discussion of his book The Righteous Mind in this post) is about “the struggle to return to a golden past” — a theme we hear echoed in Republican presidential … Continue reading
Posted in Conservative Resistance, Culture, Narrative, Politics
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Elizabeth Kolbert on Climate Change and Florida
Fine essay by Elizabeth Kolbert — whose 2014 book The Sixth Extinction I greatly admired — in the current New Yorker, The Siege of Miami, about how rising sea levels are already affecting that city. This dovetails with my previous … Continue reading
Posted in Conservative Resistance, Politics, Science
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Chris Mooney’s THE REPUBLICAN BRAIN
As I alluded in my previous post, I’ve been reading Chris Mooney’s 2012 book The Republican Brain: The Science of Why They Deny Science — and Reality, which explores how psychology can inform the obvious fact that different people react … Continue reading
Posted in Book Notes, Changing One's Mind, Conservative Resistance, Culture, Evolution, Politics
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Links and Comments: Sacred truths, Catholic priorities, and Santorum advice, vs. Individualism and the arc of moral history
A number of items in recent days about issues of society and culture vs. individualism, which I will compile and quote without necessarily trying to draw any conclusions just yet… These issues renovate with the Jonathan Haidt book I’m still … Continue reading
Posted in Conservative Resistance, Culture, Morality, Religion
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Links and Comments: Haidt, Krugman, Cruz and Swanson, Evolution v Creationism and Iowa Home-Schoolers
I am 3/4 of the way through that Jonathan Haidt book, The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and Religion, which is almost revelatory in the sense that it provides a vocabulary and a theoretical framework for … Continue reading
Posted in Conservative Resistance, Culture, Evolution, Morality, Politics, Psychology, Religion
Comments Off on Links and Comments: Haidt, Krugman, Cruz and Swanson, Evolution v Creationism and Iowa Home-Schoolers
Reading Haidt, arcs of history, false balance, how liberal views are closer to the truth, and science fiction
Beginning to read Jonathan Haidt’s The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and Religion today, an eloquent, insightful exploration into how the parameters of human psychology explain the range of political and religious differences. I wrote a … Continue reading
Posted in Conservative Resistance, Culture, Evolution, MInd, Morality, Politics, Provisional Conclusions
Comments Off on Reading Haidt, arcs of history, false balance, how liberal views are closer to the truth, and science fiction
