Mark R. Kelly
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Recent Posts
- Links and Comments 19 Feb 2021
- Notes and Quotes: Ray Bradbury on Good, Evil, and Knowledge
- Links and Comments: Reality as a Common Ground
- Links and Comments: RL, as despicable as DJT
- Links and Comments: Republicans and Doing the Right Thing, Not; Religion as LARP
- Links and Comments: Astronomical Photos from APOD
- Nonfiction Notes: Matthew Hutson’s The 7 Laws of Magical Thinking
- Nonfiction Notes: Alex Rosenberg’s THE ATHEIST’S GUIDE TO REALITY
- Links and Comments: Political Matters This Week: 11 Feb 2021
- Nonfiction Notes: Bobby Duffy, WHY WE’RE WRONG ABOUT NEARLY EVERYTHING
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Meta
Category Archives: Human Progress
Links and Comments: Sides of History; Myths and Lies; Voting Inequities
Washington Post: Trump brought data from the Fox News universe to a debate centered in reality How Trump, and Fox News (in particular Laura Ingraham), lie with statistics, as the article explains in great detail. It’s all spin, aimed at … Continue reading
Posted in Conservative Resistance, Human Progress, Politics
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Links and Comments: Trump, Evangelicals, Persecution, Fear, Withdrawal
The front page of today’s New York Times has an aerial photo of a house in Sioux Center, Iowa, with the words “In God We Trust” on the roof. The article, a long one, is ‘Christianity Will Have Power’ with … Continue reading
Posted in Culture, Human Progress, Lunacy, Religion
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Yuval Noah Harari, HOMO DEUS: A Brief History of Tomorrow (2017; 2015 in Israel)
This is, in effect, a sequel to SAPIENS. Top level summary: It opens with a long prologue: now that humanity has largely overcome famine, plague, and war, what next? Three possibilities: immortality, happiness, divinity. However these are predictions; this book … Continue reading
Posted in Book Notes, Evolution, Human Progress, Religion, Science
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Yuval Noah Harari, SAPIENS: A Brief History of Humankind (2015)
Yuval Noah Harari, SAPIENS: A Brief History of Humankind (2015) This is a history of the human species in the context of “Big History” – the first page sketches the history of the entire universe as a backdrop – and … Continue reading
Posted in Book Notes, Evolution, Human Progress, Religion, Science
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Arthur C. Clarke, PROFILES OF THE FUTURE (1962..1999)
This is a book first published in 1962, a nonfiction book speculating on potential technological developments and human achievements. The subtitle is “An Inquiry in the Limits of the Possible.” Clarke revised it three times, the last in 1999 (he … Continue reading
Posted in Arthur C. Clarke, Book Notes, Human Progress, Science
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Link and Comment: Krugman on Terrorism
New York Times columnist Paul Krugman regularly criticizes President Trump and the entire Republican party for engaging in fantasy economics– the kind of economics, which actually has never worked, that says cutting taxes on the wealthy will spur business and … Continue reading
Posted in Culture, Human Progress, Lunacy, Psychology
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Links and Comments: Sapiens; Leaving Religion; Conspiracy Theories; Weather Forecasting
1. From yesterday’s NYT Book Review. Chuck Klosterman likes Harari: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/18/books/review/chuck-klosterman-likes-writers-who-arent-self-absorbed-sociopaths.html What’s the last great book you read? I picked up “Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind,” by Yuval Noah Harari. I thought: “This will probably be O.K. I’ll probably … Continue reading
Posted in Human Progress, Psychology, Religion, Technology
Comments Off on Links and Comments: Sapiens; Leaving Religion; Conspiracy Theories; Weather Forecasting
Oliver Sacks on Forster and Rees
There’s a short essay by the late Oliver Sacks in current issue of The New Yorker: The Machine Stops. He muses about people walking down the street staring at their phones. Much of this, remarkably, was envisaged by E. M. Forster … Continue reading
Posted in Culture, Human Progress, Science, science fiction
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Links and Comments: Progress; San Francisco Values; Value of Literature
From earlier this month. New York Times, Nicholas Kristoff: Why 2018 Was the Best Year in Human History!: Once again, the world’s population was living longer and living better than ever before. Kristof does a version of this column every … Continue reading
Posted in Culture, Human Progress
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Links and Comments: World Getting Better; Choosing What to Believe; Questions for Atheists; Mathematical Ideas; Trumpian Cruelty
Vox: 23 charts and maps that show the world is getting much, much better. From 2014, but updated this month. These data echo the theme of Steven Pinker’s recent books. File under: human progress, despite conservative paranoia and fears \\ … Continue reading
Posted in Atheism, Conservative Resistance, Human Progress, Mathematics, Psychology
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