Category Archives: Culture

Conservative Ideology Over Evidence: The Abortion Pills

Posted on Thursday 13 April 2023 by Mark R. Kelly

Several links today to articles on the same topic.

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Wokeness and History

Posted on Sunday 26 March 2023 by Mark R. Kelly

Today: some better descriptions of wokeism; how wokeness undermines the idea of eternal conservative values; and if so many other books are banned from public schools, why not the Bible? Today’s NY Times website has this letter column: A Conservative’s … Continue reading →

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Another Chatbot Shoe Drops

Posted on Saturday 25 March 2023 by Mark R. Kelly

The latest about chatbots, why they would be biased one way or another, and how there is now a conservative version of them; and recalling Conservapedia. Our story so far:

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Harari on the Dangers of AI

Posted on Friday 24 March 2023 by Mark R. Kelly

Also: reflecting on Arthur C. Clarke and John Brockman, wondering if there is a permanent limit to human cultural education. NY Times, Yuval Noah Harari, Tristan Harris, and Aza Raskin, 24 March 2023: You Can Have the Blue Pill or … Continue reading →

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A Literary Break

Posted on Friday 17 March 2023 by Mark R. Kelly

Read last week: six short literary novels in five days. Three by Steinbeck; one each by Henry James and James Joyce and Leo Tolstoy. A break from my routine of reading science fiction and current nonfiction.

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To Conservatives, Woke Seems to Mean Whatever They Don’t Like

Posted on Thursday 16 March 2023 by Mark R. Kelly

So my take on wokeness, a couple weeks ago, as a “perhaps exaggerated respect for the sensitivities of others,” is not what most others mean by “woke.” To some conservatives, it means anything they don’t like or want to acknowledge, … Continue reading →

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The Poetry of Reality

Posted on Sunday 12 March 2023 by Mark R. Kelly

Items about Daylight Saving Time, Tucker Carlson, Biblical Errancy, Neil deGrasse Tyson, and Richard Dawkins Salon, Nicole Karlis, 12 Mar 2023: Why sleep scientists think Standard Time is best, subtitled “People love the extra hour of sunlight at night, but … Continue reading →

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Modern Science and Literary Wisdom

Posted on Saturday 11 March 2023 by Mark R. Kelly

and Human Nature and Its Biases and Rationality and The Two Cultures and Consilience. Gregory Feeley, in a friends-only post on Facebook three days ago, linked the two items below and and made some generalizing comments about them.

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Friday Quick Items

Posted on Friday 10 March 2023 by Mark R. Kelly

About that mask study; about the lab leak theory; and the volume of social media; and about the length of nonfiction books. NY Times, Zeynep Tufekci, 10 Mar 2023: Here’s Why the Science Is Clear That Masks Work

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Two Kinds of Wokeism

Posted on Saturday 4 March 2023 by Mark R. Kelly

There seems to be two kinds of wokeism (just, as we saw yesterday, there seems to be two Overton Windows), which might be described as wokeism on the right and wokeism on the left. If wokeism might be described as … Continue reading →

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