Mark R. Kelly
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Recent Posts
- Intuitive Theories about Intuitive Theories
- What’s at Stake? Hal Clement’s NEEDLE
- Things Are As They Are: George R. Stewart’s EARTH ABIDES
- Links and Comments: Secrets of Success, the 2010s, Gibson’s future, History v. Narratives
- Peter Watts essay: “Understanding Sarah Palin, or, God Is In the Wattles”: Summary and Comments
- Carel Van Schaik & Kai Michel, THE GOOD BOOK OF HUMAN NATURE: An Evolutionary Reading of the Bible (2016): Introduction
- Stephen King, THE INSTITUTE (2019)
- Isaac Asimov: THE EARLY ASIMOV (1972)
- Links and Comments: Sustainability and Rural Living
- Robert A. Heinlein: SIXTH COLUMN (1941/1949)
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Meta
Category Archives: Physics
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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Links and Comments: Steven Weinberg; Trek vs Wars; How the world is getting better; Undermining the Bible
Here’s a archival essay by Steven Weinberg, whose new book I just reviewed in previous post: A Designer Universe?. This is the essay in which Weinberg wrote this oft-quoted passage (though usually only its final line, here bolded): Where religion … Continue reading
Posted in Narrative, Physics, Religion
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Links and Comments: Modern Physics; Evolution and Strangers; Coming out in totalitarian societies; Elizabeth Kolbert on Mars
Sunday’s New York Times has a “Gray Matter” essay on A Crisis at the Edge of Physics by Adam Frank and Marcelo Gleiser* is about whether the empirical method — validating theories via predictions and evidence — does not work … Continue reading
Posted in Evolution, Physics, Science, The Gays
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Naïve Physics
Here’s a fascinating article from The Conversation: Infections of the mind: why anti-vaxxers just ‘know’ they’re right (via). My interest in this piece isn’t about anti-vaxxers per se, it’s about the more general issue of how people form beliefs, what … Continue reading
Posted in Physics, Psychology
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