Mark R. Kelly
-
Recent Posts
- Links and Comments 19 Feb 2021
- Notes and Quotes: Ray Bradbury on Good, Evil, and Knowledge
- Links and Comments: Reality as a Common Ground
- Links and Comments: RL, as despicable as DJT
- Links and Comments: Republicans and Doing the Right Thing, Not; Religion as LARP
- Links and Comments: Astronomical Photos from APOD
- Nonfiction Notes: Matthew Hutson’s The 7 Laws of Magical Thinking
- Nonfiction Notes: Alex Rosenberg’s THE ATHEIST’S GUIDE TO REALITY
- Links and Comments: Political Matters This Week: 11 Feb 2021
- Nonfiction Notes: Bobby Duffy, WHY WE’RE WRONG ABOUT NEARLY EVERYTHING
Bookmarks
- CNN
- NYT
- WaPo
- Guardian US
- NPR
- Google News
- Slate
- Salon
- Vox
- The Week
- The New Yorker
- The Atlantic
- Nature
- Science
- Scientific American
- Why Evolution Is True (Jerry Coyne)
- Friendly Atheist (Hemant Mehta, et al)
- Progressive Secular Humanist (Michael Stone)
- The Morning Heresy | CFI (Paul Fidalgo)
- File 770 (Mike Glyer)
- Tor.com
- AlterNet
- Towleroad
- Joe.My.God
- APOD
- xkcd
Categories
- Arthur C. Clarke
- Astronomy
- Atheism
- Bible
- Book Notes
- Changing One's Mind
- Children
- Commonplace Book
- Conservative Resistance
- Conventions
- Cosmology
- Culture
- Economics
- Evolution
- Films
- Games
- Heinlein
- Human Progress
- Humanism
- Isaac Asimov
- Links
- Lunacy
- Mathematics
- Meaning
- MInd
- Morality
- Movies
- Music
- Narrative
- Personal history
- Pet Peeves
- Philosophy
- Physics
- Politics
- Provisional Conclusions
- Psychology
- Quote at Length
- Quotes
- Ray Bradbury
- 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
- Steven Pinker
- Supernatural
- Technology
- Ten Commandments
- The Book
- The Gays
- Thinking
- Travel
- TV Sci Fi
- Uncategorized
- Website Issues
- Writing
Archives
- February 2021 (13)
- January 2021 (20)
- December 2020 (10)
- November 2020 (11)
- October 2020 (15)
- September 2020 (13)
- August 2020 (22)
- July 2020 (27)
- June 2020 (11)
- May 2020 (13)
- April 2020 (9)
- March 2020 (7)
- 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
Category Archives: Cosmology
Notes for the Book: Timelines
I love timelines, especially those scaled depictions of the progress of time from left (the past) to right (the present and the future). Back in the 8th grade, I think it was, I constructed such a timeline on a scroll … Continue reading
Links and Comments: Nature and Human Brains; Science Fiction and Mental Resiliency
Scientific American, Caleb A. Scharf: A Failure of Imagination, subtitled, “Nature does not have to play fair with our puny human brains.” A favorite theme of mine: how there’s more to the universe than humans are aware of; how there … Continue reading
Posted in Cosmology, MInd, Narrative, science fiction
Comments Off on Links and Comments: Nature and Human Brains; Science Fiction and Mental Resiliency
Gould: UNIVERSE IN CREATION
Roy R. Gould’s UNIVERSE IN CREATION: A New Understanding of The Big Bang and the Emergence of Life (Harvard, 2018) overlaps on a couple topics with the Adam Frank book reviewed previously. But. Gould would like to claim that the … Continue reading
Posted in Book Notes, Cosmology
Comments Off on Gould: UNIVERSE IN CREATION
Frank: LIGHT OF THE STARS
Adam Frank’s LIGHT OF THE STARS: Alien Worlds and the Fate of the Earth (Norton, 2018) asks, what can thinking about the prospect of alien civilizations tell us about our own fate? Currently our species’ story (by those of us … Continue reading
Posted in Astronomy, Book Notes, Cosmology, Species Reset
Comments Off on Frank: LIGHT OF THE STARS
Link and Comment: Adam Frank on the Earth’s Biosphere
Today’s NYT has an op-ed by Adam Frank, Earth Will Survive. We May Not., which keys off the theme of his new book, LIGHT OF THE STARS: ALIEN WORLDS AND THE FATE OF THE EARTH, just released this past Tuesday. … Continue reading
Posted in Cosmology, Evolution, Species Reset
Comments Off on Link and Comment: Adam Frank on the Earth’s Biosphere
Neil deGrasse Tyson, ASTROPHYSICS FOR PEOPLE IN A HURRY
This slender volume of magazine essays came out nearly a year ago, and I read it then, and thought it pleasant but nowhere near foundational. But since it still shows up on bestseller lists, nearly a year later, and has … Continue reading
Posted in Astronomy, Book Notes, Cosmology
Comments Off on Neil deGrasse Tyson, ASTROPHYSICS FOR PEOPLE IN A HURRY
Links and Comments: The Profound and the Pernicious
From NPR, The Answer To Life, The Universe — And Everything? It’s 63. The headline is a riff on the famous episode in Douglas Adams’ The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy (Wikipedia) in which a vast computer called Deep Thought … Continue reading
Linkdump: Science, society, conspiracy theories, the fear of NRA conventioneers
Science: The Atlantic: Are We Living in a Giant Cosmic Void?. Maybe. Scientific American: How the Science of “Blue Lies” May Explain Trump’s Support. Subtitle: “They are a very particular form of deception that can build solidarity within groups” Guardian: … Continue reading
Posted in Conservative Resistance, Cosmology, Lunacy, MInd, Psychology, Science
Comments Off on Linkdump: Science, society, conspiracy theories, the fear of NRA conventioneers
Big History
I’ve just recently become aware of the concept, and term, “Big History”. It happened when I saw a coffee table book, shown here, at Barnes & Noble a couple weeks ago, and glanced through it, noticing two names I recognized: … Continue reading
Posted in Cosmology, Evolution, Human Progress
Comments Off on Big History
Carl Sagan, THE VARIETIES OF SCIENTIFIC EXPERIENCE (2006): History is a battle of inadequate myths
Here’s a book I had forgotten I had, relatively speaking; I obviously bought it back in 2006 or so, but I didn’t read it right away and so it sat on my shelves among many other books (by Sagan and … Continue reading
Posted in Book Notes, Cosmology, Culture, Evolution, Human Progress, Provisional Conclusions, Religion, Science
Comments Off on Carl Sagan, THE VARIETIES OF SCIENTIFIC EXPERIENCE (2006): History is a battle of inadequate myths