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 (2003-2013)
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- Joshua Greene, MORAL TRIBES, post 2
- Joshua Greene, MORAL TRIBES, post 1
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- The poorly educated and the “cognishly umpired”
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Meta
Category Archives: Meaning
Two Essays About Current Events: by Connie Willis and Heather Cox Richardson
Connie Willis is one of the most beloved science fiction writers of the past 40 years. As a writer she’s won many awards, for works often humorous but at times tragic, at times building human stories based on the weirdness … Continue reading
Posted in Meaning, Politics
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Ls&Cs: Meaning and Happiness
Kant’s take on happiness; Arthur C. Brooks’ three bite-sized dimensions to the meaning of life; Thomas B. Edsall on whether conservatives are happier than liberals.
Posted in Meaning, Psychology, Reviews
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Links and Comments: Conspiracies! Conspiracies!
Over the past several weeks there’s been an outbreak of stories and articles in the various legitimate media (New York Times, NPR, The Atlantic, The New Yorker, et al) about conspiracy theories related to the coronavirus pandemic. So many articles! … Continue reading
Posted in Lunacy, Meaning, MInd, Psychology
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Tyson, LETTERS FROM AN ASTROPHYSICIST
Here’s a new book by Neil deGrasse Tyson, just published a couple weeks ago. It’s blurbed as a ‘companion’ to his previous book, ASTROPHYSICS FOR PEOPLE IN A HURRY; post about that one here. This is a collection of 101 … Continue reading
Posted in Book Notes, Meaning, Science
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Richard Feynman’s Meaning, and Being Savvy
Here’s a short book of three essays first delivered as lectures at the University of Washington in Seattle, in 1963, gathered into a book published in 1998. Feynman, of course, was a famous CalTech physicist influential for work in quantum … Continue reading
Links and Comments: Rules to Escape Trump’s Moral Rot; Escaping New Atheism(?); Optimistic Nihilism
William Saletan, at Slate, takes inspiration from John McCain’s recent speech, during last week’s health care debate: Words to Live By. Subtitle: “McCain’s speech gives us a map for escaping the moral rot of Trumpism.” He says, “To escape the … Continue reading
Sean Carroll, THE BIG PICTURE
Sean Carroll’s THE BIG PICTURE: On the Origins of Life, Meaning, and the Universe Itself, just published May 10th, is an ambitious, wide-ranging book not so much about cosmology (Carroll’s specialty at CalTech), as about the perspective we gain through … Continue reading
Posted in Atheism, Evolution, Heinlein, Human Progress, Meaning, Morality, Philosophy, Physics, Provisional Conclusions, Religion, Ten Commandments
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Dan Barker on Meaning without Divine Dictates, and the Slave Mentality
Dan Barker’s Life Driven Purpose (Pitchstone, April 2015), is much more cheerful than Lindsay’s book just reviewed. It’s an explicit response to religious superstar Rick Warren, and his ‘purpose-driven life’, in which everything about your life is in service to … Continue reading
Sean Carroll Interview
Phil Torres talks to Sean Carroll, author of a book coming out Tuesday that I’m greatly looking forward to, The Big Picture Salon: “The evidence is pretty incontrovertible that he doesn’t exist”: Stephen Colbert’s favorite scientist on the universe, naturalism … Continue reading
Paul Kalanithi, WHEN BREATH BECOMES AIR
This is an almost unbearably sad, yet poignant and moving and thoughtful, memoir by a young Stanford neurosurgeon who is diagnosed with stage IV lung cancer at the age of 36. His life changes from being the physician to being … Continue reading
Posted in Book Notes, Meaning, Religion, Science
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