Mark R. Kelly
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Recent Posts
- Lilla: THE ONCE AND FUTURE LIBERAL
- Gladstone: THE TROUBLE WITH REALITY
- Kakutani: THE DEATH OF TRUTH
- Levitan: NOT A SCIENTIST
- Nichols, THE DEATH OF EXPERTISE
- Levitin: A FIELD GUIDE TO LIES
- Ariely: PREDICTABLY IRRATIONAL
- Keen: HOW TO FIX THE FUTURE
- Lightman: SEARCHING FOR STARS ON AN ISLAND IN MAINE
- Gould: UNIVERSE IN CREATION
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Category Archives: Culture
Nichols, THE DEATH OF EXPERTISE
Tom Nichols’ THE DEATH OF EXPERTISE: The Campaign against Established Knowledge and Why it Matters (Oxford, 2017) is one of the better in the batch of recent books I’ve read about current events and how they reflect issues of science … Continue reading
Posted in Book Notes, Conservative Resistance, Culture
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Levitin: A FIELD GUIDE TO LIES
Daniel J. Levitin’s A FIELD GUIDE TO LIES: Critical Thinking in the Information Age (Dutton, 2016) is a nice complement to the book previously reviewed. Levitin an academic at UC Berkeley and has written three previous books, including This Is … Continue reading
Posted in Book Notes, Culture, Politics, Psychology
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Keen: HOW TO FIX THE FUTURE
Andrew Keen’s How to Fix the Future (Atlantic Monthly Press, 2018) is a breezy book in the Thomas L. Friedman mode, as the author travels the world speaking to various experts, and describing his trips and circumstances as he goes. … Continue reading
Posted in Book Notes, Culture, Technology
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Links and Comments: Progress; San Francisco Values; Value of Literature
From earlier this month. New York Times, Nicholas Kristoff: Why 2018 Was the Best Year in Human History!: Once again, the world’s population was living longer and living better than ever before. Kristof does a version of this column every … Continue reading
Posted in Culture, Human Progress
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Links and Comments: Why I am Not a Conservative
Every once in a while an op-ed in the New York Times, or a book review in NYT or PW (Publishers Weekly), will be on the subject of defending conservative values. I have a very basic intellectual grasp of what … Continue reading
Link and Comments: About Superhero Movies
From Sunday’s NYT. Mark Bowden, Why Are We Obsessed With Superhero Movies? The issue for me is why these types of stories are so popular, recently – and how these are primitive fantasies, the very opposite type of story as … Continue reading
Posted in Culture, Movies
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Links and Comments: Formal and Intuitive Religion
Two items. First, the latest survey showing the rise of the “nones,” the younger generation for whom formal religion is losing its attraction. In Nearly Every Country, Young People Are Way Less Religious Than Adults. The pattern holds throughout most … Continue reading
Posted in Culture, Religion
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C.P. Snow’s The Two Cultures, The Third Culture, Big History, and 2001
C.P. Snow’s “The Two Cultures” is the famous 1959 lecture and then essay about the divide between the scientific community and the literary ‘intellectual’ community, an essay much referenced in books about the acceptance of science in modern culture (with, … Continue reading
Posted in Culture, Science, science fiction
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Links from NYT recently, with Comments
Op-ed by Amy Sullivan in the New York Times, April 1 (posted March 31): Trump’s Christian Soldiers The recurring, amazing fact that the self-righteous evangelicals support someone like Trump. You could open a publishing press devoted to the theological and … Continue reading
Posted in Conservative Resistance, Culture, Evolution, Politics, Psychology
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Links and Comments: Sports and Trump; Pinker and Gates; Tribal Allegiance and Actual Progress
NYT, 3Feb18: Trump’s Blood Sport Politics. The writer recalls “”The Sporting Spirit,” an essay written by George Orwell in 1945 that sought to reckon with the rise of our modern athletic-industrial complex.” For Orwell, the rise of sports was bound … Continue reading