Category Archives: Culture

Infrastructure, the Constitution, Changing Minds, and Fringe Items

Posted on Saturday 31 August 2024 by Mark R. Kelly

How expanding America’s highways doesn’t solve their congestion; Ten ways the heat is changing us, including impacts on the infrastructure; Another perspective on issues with the US Constitution; Changing minds, appeals to fear, or persuasion; Fringe items about a fake … Continue reading →

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Robert Reich, THE COMMON GOOD

Posted on Friday 30 August 2024 by Mark R. Kelly

Here’s another shortish book I read recently, not a memoir but a book at the intersection of politics, morality, and human nature, which is itself another theme of my reading the past two or three years. It’s by Robert Reich, … Continue reading →

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About Expanding the Human Population

Posted on Monday 26 August 2024 by Mark R. Kelly

Two items today on this topic, first an essay in NY Times, then a letters column today responding to it. I addressed a similar piece Saturday. Here’s the NYT essay. NY Times, Victor Kumar, a philosophy professor at Boston University, … Continue reading →

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Friends and Neighbors, Conformity vs. Liberty

Posted on Thursday 22 August 2024 by Mark R. Kelly

How the Walz/Vance debate revealed two different views of America: conformity v liberty; How we depend on friends and neighbors, and Oprah’s DNC speech; How morality evolved, and religion merely captured it; Brief items about crowd sizes and looks; taking … Continue reading →

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Sebastian Junger: FREEDOM

Posted on Wednesday 21 August 2024 by Mark R. Kelly

Then I looked over my shelves to see if there was some other memoir type book, preferably short, that I could read before returning to another big science tome. I found this, by the same author as TRIBE, which I … Continue reading →

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Tara Westover: EDUCATED: A MEMOIR

Posted on Monday 19 August 2024 by Mark R. Kelly

And here’s a third memoir I read recently, inspired by that NYT list — though in this case, the book didn’t place on the final list, though it was nominated by a couple of the 500 contributors who revealed their … Continue reading →

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Things That Don’t Change

Posted on Sunday 18 August 2024 by Mark R. Kelly

In particular, the reactions by conservatives to things that do change. Topics today: Illegals and the military; How poor poll results must be fake; The American struggle between reason and ignorance; How one small town is indeed deeply conservative; Considering … Continue reading →

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Ta-Nehisi Coates: BETWEEN THE WORLD AND ME

Posted on Saturday 17 August 2024 by Mark R. Kelly

Here is the next memoir I read, after Joan Didion’s, as inspired by that NYT list. This is a statement by a black intellectual to his 15-year-old son, about life as a black person and the struggles and dangers he … Continue reading →

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Long-Term Considerations

Posted on Saturday 3 August 2024 by Mark R. Kelly

It’s a basic provisional conclusion on this blog that conservatives deal with short-term matters, corporate profits and so on, without concern for long-term effects, like climate change. They’re concerned about their children — but not enough concerned about how climate … Continue reading →

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Steven Pinker: THE BLANK SLATE, post 9

Posted on Thursday 1 August 2024 by Mark R. Kelly

This time: Children. The old nature vs. nurture debate is too simplistic and binary. Given implications of our innate human nature, the (by now unsurprising) takeaway here is that parents have far less influence on their children than people have … Continue reading →

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