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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Meta
Category Archives: MInd
Links and Comments: Tribal Epistemology
Out of all the links compiled for my previous links post, this is the most substantial, the one I have enough comments on to put in a separate post. 19 May: Vox, David Roberts: Donald Trump and the rise of … Continue reading
Parents, Children, Identities: Andrew Solomon’s FAR FROM THE TREE
This is an enormous book, 962 pages long, 702 of that text (with the remainder consisting of encyclopedic notes, a lengthy bibliography, and an index). The book is about how parents deal with exceptional children, covering ten categories of exceptionality, … Continue reading
Posted in Children, Culture, MInd, Psychology, The Gays
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Sapolsky on religion, and human behavior
Via today’s Morning Heresy blog by Paul Fidalgo, this item from Robert M. Sapolsky, a short video on a site called Big Think, called Atheism vs. Religion: Which Is the Healthier Viewpoint?. His thesis is that religious belief, in eternal … Continue reading
How science can explain why you don’t believe in science
Here’s another recent commentary from the San Francisco Chronicle, this by Caille Millner: Free speech is a joke when laughing is a crime It’s nominally about the 61-year-old woman who was just *convicted* of “disorderly and disruptive conduct” for laughing … Continue reading
Links and Comments: Conservatives and the Just World Fallacy
Among the dozens of articles in mainstream and progressive media (not to mention outraged posts by many of my Fb friends) about the insidious effects of the just-passed ‘Trumpcare’ law by the House of Representatives, here’s one that explores how … Continue reading
Posted in MInd
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I Can Do Anything: Mark Haddon’s THE CURIOUS INCIDENT OF THE DOG IN THE NIGHT-TIME
Last week I posted a look back at 20 Years of Locus Online and, having asked my lead contributors over the years for their best or exceptional posts, revisited an 11-year-old essay by film reviewer Gary Westfahl, Homo aspergerus: Evolution … Continue reading
Posted in Book Notes, MInd, Personal history
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Harari on THE KNOWLEDGE ILLUSION
In today’s NYT Book Review, Yuval Noah Harari reviews THE KNOWLEDGE ILLUSION: Why We Never Think Alone, by Steven Sloman and Philip Fernbach. The review’s opening echoes Harari’s own work, e.g. What gave Homo sapiens an edge over all other … Continue reading
Posted in Book Notes, MInd
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Link and Comments: Molly Worthen on Evangelicals and Fake News
New York Times’ Sunday Review: Molly Worthen on The Evangelical Roots of Our Post-Truth Society. The arrival of the “post-truth” political climate came as a shock to many Americans. But to the Christian writer Rachel Held Evans, charges of “fake … Continue reading
Links and Comments: Thinking about the Future; Doctors and Fake News; Polls about Atheists
Slate: Our Puny Human Brains Are Terrible at Thinking About the Future, to follow up on the Elizabeth Kolbert post a few days ago. Some people regularly connect with their future selves, but a majority does not. And this matters, … Continue reading
That Dress, and How to Do Science
Slate: Two Years Later, We Finally Know Why People Saw “The Dress” Differently Two points here. First, the controversy over the color of the dress — blue and black or white and gold — is certainly the most widely-known example … Continue reading
