Category Archives: Evolution

Brian Greene: UNTIL THE END OF TIME, post 5

Posted on Saturday 10 August 2024 by Mark R. Kelly

Final post summarizing this Brian Greene book. Earlier: post 1, post 2, post 3, post 4. The final three chapters return to the cosmic scope of the book’s overall theme, exploring what we’ve concluded about the far future and the … Continue reading →

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Brian Greene: UNTIL THE END OF TIME, post 3

Posted on Thursday 8 August 2024 by Mark R. Kelly

More summary of this Brian Greene book. Earlier: post 1, post 2. Today’s chapters concern how life gave rise to consciousness, and how mind gave rise to the imagination, and to stories. Ch5, Particles and Consciousness: From Life to Mind, … Continue reading →

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Brian Greene: UNTIL THE END OF TIME, post 2

Posted on Wednesday 7 August 2024 by Mark R. Kelly

More summary of this Brian Greene book. Earlier: post 1. 3, Origins and Entropy: From Creation to Structure, p44 If the universe began with a big explosion, how has so much order, with complex structures, emerged? Because, consistent with the … Continue reading →

Posted in Book Notes, Cosmology, Evolution | Comments Off on Brian Greene: UNTIL THE END OF TIME, post 2

Understanding Human Nature

Posted on Sunday 23 June 2024 by Mark R. Kelly

Ultimately, everything in the daily news makes sense through an honest understanding of human nature. (It is not there are two legitimate “sides” to every issue.) Two thought pieces for today, then a bunch of shorter items. About how macaques … Continue reading →

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Loyalty vs. Principles

Posted on Friday 21 June 2024 by Mark R. Kelly

Three threads today, all related. Considering whistle-blowing as an example of wrestling loyalty vs. principles, and how this applies to Trump and his followers; Related items about how Trump supporters vow to “lie, cheat, and steal”; how Donald Trump knows … Continue reading →

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Change Control

Posted on Saturday 15 June 2024 by Mark R. Kelly

How even modest measures to ameliorate problems in NYC face resistance; How religious certitudes from Alito and others will not end well. Still under the weather, but let’s try a couple items from today’s NYT, about perhaps the broadest issue … Continue reading →

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Can Education Account for Evolutionary Change?

Posted on Wednesday 8 May 2024 by Mark R. Kelly

Steven Pinker on education, and how it might prioritize overcoming base intuitions that don’t apply in the modern world; The naturalistic fallacy and DeSantis’ and Fetterman’s objections to lab-grown meat. This month I’m working my way through the last ‘big’ … Continue reading →

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Violence, Evolution, Climate Change, and Cory Doctorow’s THE LOST CAUSE

Posted on Monday 22 April 2024 by Mark R. Kelly

How Republicans increasingly advocate violence; How Tucker Carlson doesn’t understand evolution, and his several dumb objections to evolution; How 10 straight months of record-breaking temperatures won’t persuade the skeptics; And a passage from Cory Doctorow’s 2023 novel The Lost Cause … Continue reading →

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Third Essay of the Weekend

Posted on Sunday 21 April 2024 by Mark R. Kelly

An Elizabeth Kolbert essay about the debate about the term “Anthropocene”; And Neil Finn’s beautiful lullaby “Faster than Light”. * This is Elizabeth Kolbert (author of The Sixth Extinction, one of the best nonfiction books of the 21st century; review … Continue reading →

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Steven Pinker, HOW THE MIND WORKS, post 3

Posted on Sunday 25 February 2024 by Mark R. Kelly

Chapter 7, “Family Values,” about the psychology of social relations, is the longest chapter in the book, and second-to-last. The author begins by recalling that period in the 1960s when activists and folk singers called for peace and understanding, a … Continue reading →

Posted in Book Notes, Evolution, MInd, Psychology, Steven Pinker | Comments Off on Steven Pinker, HOW THE MIND WORKS, post 3