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)-
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- Conservative Motivations and Magical Thinking
- Frightened Conservatives’ Paranoid Fantasies
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- Eugene Burdick & Harvey Wheeler: FAIL-SAFE
- Further Reports on the Current Crisis
- The Ultimate Cognitive Bias, and Political News
- Distracted by Politics, Again
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Meta
Category Archives: Culture
L&Cs: Christakis on COVID and Altruism
A Big Picture item: what does our COVID response say about humanity’s capacity for altruism?
Posted in Culture, Evolution, Politics, Psychology
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Ls&Cs: Problem-Solving, Ethics, Out-Group Prejudice, and Padding Bestseller Lists
Several links that I collected on April 20th, the day I went to the hospital for what led to my heart transplant.
Posted in Conservative Resistance, Culture, Links & Comments, Psychology, Technology
Comments Off on Ls&Cs: Problem-Solving, Ethics, Out-Group Prejudice, and Padding Bestseller Lists
Ls&Qs: Rationality and Fear
Two long quotes today, from opposite ends of the spectrum from rationality to fear.
Ls&Cs: Interesting Times
The latest on strategies to avoid long-term calamities, knowing of calamities and lying about them, the US compared to South America and Europe, and Americans’ grasp of reality.
Posted in Conservative Resistance, Culture, Links & Comments, Lunacy, Politics
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Ls&Cs: Utopias; Crises; Paranoia
A sidebar article in last Sunday’s New York Times Magazine interviews Rutger Bregman. How to Think Like a Utopian. Bregman is a young Dutch historian who wrote UTOPIA FOR REALISTS (which I blogged about here) and more recently HUMANKIND: A … Continue reading
Posted in Conservative Resistance, Culture, Links, Social Progress
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Links and Comments, 6 April 2021: Sciencey Things
When life began in the universe; how or whether civilizations die; why people like closed-captioning
Links and Comments: Things Change, 1
Will MAGA panic subside with an old white man back in the presidency? How American political parties have disintegrated in the past, and the Republican party may now be doing. How Britain has become the dumbest society in the world, … Continue reading
Posted in Conservative Resistance, Culture, Politics
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Nonfiction Notes: Bobby Duffy, WHY WE’RE WRONG ABOUT NEARLY EVERYTHING
Bobby Duffy, Why We’re Wrong About Nearly Everything: A Theory of Human Misunderstanding (2018) (US edition Nov 2019) Here’s another book on a seemingly familiar theme: why people so frequently misunderstand the world, and what we can do to correct … Continue reading
Posted in Book Notes, Changing One's Mind, Culture, Social Progress
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Links and Comments: Trying to Be Smarter; Faith vs Fact
NYT: How Do We Get to Herd Immunity for Fake News?, subtitled, “We need to match our focus on the supply of misinformation with a focus on the demand for it.” Yet the chorus of angst over misinformation has focused … Continue reading
Ls&Cs: Stuff, Terms, Panics, Rules
Maybe we should all just buy less stuff. How citizenship has given way to consumerism. Why partisans deliberately confuse terms like expenses and investments. And how some rewrite history in support of ideological narratives.