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.
» Full Profile
» Facebook profile
» Previous Views from Medina Road (2010-2013)
» Blogspot Views from Medina Road (2003-2010)-
Recent Posts
- Like Living in Someone Else’s Fantasy Novel
- Locus Awards and Being Busy
- No Shades of Gray
- Girls and Boys and Evolutionary Psychology
- Police Uniforms and Masks; Humor vs. Anger
- Paleolithic Emotions, Medieval Institutions, and Godlike Technology
- Are Trump and MAGA intending to ethnically cleanse Democrats? Signs Point That Way
- Say Black Is White, and Some Will Believe You
- Trump and MAGA’s War on California
- It’s Not Even About Deportation
Categories
- Aesthetics
- Art
- Arthur C. Clarke
- Astronomy
- Atheism
- authoritarianism
- Bay Area
- Bible
- Book Notes
- Cars
- Changing One's Mind
- Children
- Commonplace Book
- Conservative Resistance
- conservatives
- Conventions
- Cosmology
- Culture
- Decline
- Economics
- Education
- Epistemology
- Evolution
- Family History
- Films
- Games
- Heinlein
- History
- Human Nature
- Human Progress
- Humanism
- Humor
- Isaac Asimov
- Links
- Links & Comments
- longtermism
- Lunacy
- Mathematics
- Meaning
- MInd
- Morality
- Movies
- Music
- Musings
- Narrative
- Notes For
- Paperback Sets
- Personal history
- Pet Peeves
- Philosophy
- Physics
- Politics
- progress
- Provisional Conclusions
- Psychology
- Quote at Length
- Quotes
- Ray Bradbury
- reality
- 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
- Statistics
- Steven Pinker
- Supernatural
- Technology
- Ten Commandments
- The Book
- The Gays
- Thinking
- Travel
- Tribalism
- TV Sci Fi
- Uncategorized
- Website Issues
- Writing
Archives
- June 2025 (21)
- May 2025 (35)
- April 2025 (33)
- March 2025 (34)
- February 2025 (31)
- January 2025 (36)
- December 2024 (26)
- November 2024 (30)
- October 2024 (32)
- September 2024 (29)
- August 2024 (37)
- July 2024 (33)
- June 2024 (25)
- May 2024 (31)
- April 2024 (25)
- March 2024 (36)
- February 2024 (32)
- January 2024 (32)
- December 2023 (25)
- November 2023 (31)
- October 2023 (29)
- September 2023 (29)
- August 2023 (31)
- July 2023 (31)
- June 2023 (30)
- May 2023 (28)
- April 2023 (27)
- March 2023 (33)
- February 2023 (29)
- January 2023 (30)
- December 2022 (30)
- November 2022 (29)
- October 2022 (32)
- September 2022 (30)
- August 2022 (30)
- July 2022 (32)
- June 2022 (30)
- May 2022 (33)
- April 2022 (32)
- March 2022 (31)
- February 2022 (29)
- January 2022 (31)
- December 2021 (34)
- November 2021 (32)
- October 2021 (31)
- September 2021 (20)
- August 2021 (8)
- July 2021 (13)
- June 2021 (4)
- April 2021 (8)
- March 2021 (25)
- February 2021 (16)
- January 2021 (20)
- December 2020 (10)
- November 2020 (11)
- October 2020 (15)
- September 2020 (13)
- August 2020 (23)
- July 2020 (27)
- June 2020 (11)
- May 2020 (13)
- April 2020 (10)
- March 2020 (8)
- 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: Culture
Self-destruction, Mafia Politics, TACO, What Aligns the Right, Bread and Circuses
Paul Krugman on the economic damage of America’s withdrawal from the world; You can get away with anything if you donate enough to Trump; TACO: Trump Always Chickens Out; Zack Beauchamp on how the right isn’t driven by materialism, but … Continue reading
Posted in conservatives, Culture, Economics, Lunacy, Politics
Comments Off on Self-destruction, Mafia Politics, TACO, What Aligns the Right, Bread and Circuses
GOP/conservatives and the Rich; and the Countryside; and Star Wars
The GOP tax bill will hurt lowest earners and help the rich (of course!); NYT’s Jamelle Bouie on Republican hypocrisy and the countryside; Trek v. Wars, and how Wars reveals conservatives’ authoritarian fantasies. – – – NY Times, Tony Romm, … Continue reading
Posted in conservatives, Culture, science fiction
Comments Off on GOP/conservatives and the Rich; and the Countryside; and Star Wars
We’re Living in an Age of Regression
In Trump’s America, it’s every parent and child out for themselves; Who decides who’s Christian? The government? Fox News says the Qatari bribe to Trump is fine because FDR gave three planes to the Saudis… 80 years ago; Robert Reich … Continue reading
Posted in authoritarianism, Conservative Resistance, Culture, Decline, Evolution, Human Nature, Human Progress, Music
Comments Off on We’re Living in an Age of Regression
Tim Urban, WHAT’S OUR PROBLEM?, post 1
(Wait But Why, 2024, 584pp, including 112pp of characters, acknowledgements, notes, bibliography, and bio) I wrote about this book back in December, before deciding to buy it. Which I did despite some cautionary signs: it’s apparently self-published, it’s enormous, it’s … Continue reading
Posted in Book Notes, conservatives, Culture, Human Nature, Human Progress
Comments Off on Tim Urban, WHAT’S OUR PROBLEM?, post 1
Palace in the Sky, For the One
Several items today about the Trump administration’s acceptance from Qatar of a $400 million luxury 747, for Trump’s personal use; How Trump shrugs off intelligence briefings; he knows what he knows because he’s smart; How the story of a woman … Continue reading
Posted in authoritarianism, Conservative Resistance, Culture, Decline, Politics
Comments Off on Palace in the Sky, For the One
J. Bronowksi: THE ASCENT OF MAN
(Little, Brown, 1973, 448pp, including 9pp (in tiny print) of bibliography and index) This is a substantial book that was popular in its time but is probably not really recommendable now, simply because it’s 50 years out of date in … Continue reading
Posted in Book Notes, Culture, History, Human Nature, Human Progress, Science
Comments Off on J. Bronowksi: THE ASCENT OF MAN
Tribal Warpaint
How Trump doesn’t want to govern, and rejects the idea of American government as a collaboration; How the idea of consumer choice led to the idea of being gay; Trump and covid.gov rewrite the history, as authoritarians do; How Trump … Continue reading
The Cowboy Myth, Presidential Corruption, and Disingenuous Cuts to Science Research
Heather Cox Richard on the “cowboy myth” that informs the Trump presidency; How Trump et al are giving billionaires a bad name; How Trump has done the most corrupt thing any president has ever done — getting rich from anonymous … Continue reading
The War Against Intelligence
Trump’s rage against smart people; Defunding Harvard will hobble medical research that would benefit people like us; Historian Lauren Thompson compares the Gilded Age to the Trump Age; Trump and Vance praised b conservatives for lying about abortion; Hegseth purges … Continue reading
Posted in authoritarianism, conservatives, Culture, Politics
Comments Off on The War Against Intelligence
And Now We Have Linus
Why manufacturing jobs are never coming back to America; Heather Cox Richardson records Steven Inskeep’s quip; And How JD Vance is fine with abandoning due process; About Linus, our fourth cat. – – – I keep thinking: we’re living in … Continue reading
Posted in Culture, Human Nature, Politics
Comments Off on And Now We Have Linus
