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: Physics
David Deutsch, THE FABRIC OF REALITY
Subtitled: The Science of Parallel Universes—and Its Implications. Published Aug. 1997 by Allen Lane, Penguin Press. 390pp, of which 24pp are bibliography and index. Here is a book that took me a year and a half to read, but was … Continue reading
Posted in Book Notes, Evolution, Physics, Science
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Family History: Architectural Photos: Fermilab
Here are photos of the first of two big architectural/engineering projects my father was involved with over the course of his career, during the late 1960s into the 1980s, though his career went on from there. These are iPhone photographs … Continue reading
Posted in Family History, Physics
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Links and Comments: Muon news
It’s pronounced mew-on, not moo-on, I learned today.
Lawrence M. Krauss: THE GREATEST STORY EVER TOLD — SO FAR
Lawrence M. Krauss’ new book is a book by a theoretical physicist, and so the greatest story turns out to be — a history of physics, especially of the last few decades. He begins by emphasizing how this is a … Continue reading
Posted in Book Notes, Physics
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Links and Comments: Religious Intellectuals; Lawrence Krauss; Daniel Dennett
Jerry Coyne asks, Are religious people a bit thick?. He disagrees with someone who claims that many very smart people are also religious. Look at it this way: if someone spent much of their lives worshiping Santa, elves, fairies, or … Continue reading
Links and Comments: Political bubbles; Group knowledge; Randall reviews Rovelli
Interesting pieces from Sunday’s New York Times Front page article: How to Escape Your Political Bubble for a Clearer View. About how to overcome the built-in biases in Facebook and other social media to feed you only what you want … 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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Jeffrey Tayler on Ben Carson; Frank Bruni on lies about gays and transgenders and Houston; Lee McIntyre on science denialism; how Einstein, proved right again and again over the past century, was resisted on political grounds
Salon: You know Ben Carson is crazy, right? Let’s discuss the craziest things he actually believes Jeffrey Tayler summarizes Carson’s Seventh Adventist faith — a faith built upon a failed prediction of the end of the world, back in 1843, … Continue reading
Posted in Lunacy, Physics, Psychology, Religion
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Sean Carroll on Everything
The physicist Sean Carroll has a new book coming out next May that I’m looking forward to: The Big Picture: On the Origins of Life, Meaning, and the Universe Itself. Carroll blogs about it here, with an outline. A key … Continue reading
Posted in Philosophy, Physics, Science
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Links and Comments: Fermi Paradox; books by Brian Attebery and Frank Wilczek; Religious suppression; Religious fantasy
NY Times, Dennis Overbye: The Flip Side of Optimism About Life on Other Planets. (The print version was titled “A Case for Why We’re Alone”.) A consideration of the “Fermi paradox”: why, if by reasonable estimates there are likely millions … Continue reading
Posted in Conservative Resistance, Cosmology, Narrative, Physics
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