Category Archives: Quote at Length

Quote: David McRaney

Posted on 3 August 2020 by Mark R. Kelly

From his 2011 book YOU ARE NOT SO SMART, which I blogged here about in 2013. One particular idea came to mind again recently (which I managed to track down to this book, though it’s likely discussed in others), considering … Continue reading →

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Pinker and Crane: Quotes and Comments about Faith and Religion

Posted on 30 October 2017 by Mark R. Kelly

Still working my way, slowly, through Steven Pinker’s THE BETTER ANGELS OF OUR NATURE. In Chapter 4, The Humanitarian Revolution, he discusses various kinds of violence over human history, beginning with human sacrifice, and then to violence “against blasphemers, heretics, … Continue reading →

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Salman Rushdie, Two Quotes

Posted on 28 September 2015 by Mark R. Kelly

Yesterday’s (print) New York Times Book Review, the Inside the List commentary, discussing Salman Rushdie’s new novel. (Paul Di Filippo’s review, posted last Friday, was seen by Rushdie himself, who tweeted it to his 1M+ followers — you can see … Continue reading →

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Revisiting Carl Sagan’s The Cosmic Connection

Posted on 26 June 2015 by Mark R. Kelly

The Cosmic Connection, published in 1973, was the first popular book by Carl Sagan, after some academic tomes and an anthology of essays about UFOs, who later gained much fame as the author and host of the 1980 book and … Continue reading →

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James Morrow: We’re not tourists on this planet, we’re citizens

Posted on 24 June 2015 by Mark R. Kelly

Many thoughts resonate with me in the James Morrow interview in the June issue of Locus, which I excerpted here. E.g., That’s the great gift of the 18th-century Enlightenment, that insistence on a conversation that must never stop, a conversation … Continue reading →

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Phil Zuckerman, Living the Secular Life

Posted on 22 December 2014 by Mark R. Kelly

Subtitled: New Answers to Old Questions. This is a book that addresses the growing trend of non-religious people especially in the US, and how they live their lives without the assumptions that the faithful think are necessary for living a … Continue reading →

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Links and Quotes, mid-June

Posted on 16 June 2014 by Mark R. Kelly

Preoccupied with writing up book notes this past week (and other things), I have a bunch of linked articles to note without making any of them separate posts. From last Monday, two interesting op-eds in the New York Times. Charles … Continue reading →

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Sean Carroll: The Meaning of Life

Posted on 31 May 2014 by Mark R. Kelly

I was checking out Sean Carroll’s blog today, and saw this post with a YouTube excerpt of comments he made during a debate with Michael Shermer, Dinesh D’Souza, and Ian Hutchinson. Can’t resist quoting extensively, since he summarizes much of … Continue reading →

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Goonan Quotes

Posted on 4 May 2014 by Mark R. Kelly

Like the meaty interview with Joan Slonczewski a couple months ago, Locus Magazine’s May interview with Kathleen Ann Goonan, of which I posted excerpts this afternoon, has several passages of particular interest to my theme here. About science fiction: At … Continue reading →

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Age of Ignorance

Posted on 14 January 2014 by Mark R. Kelly

Via Paul Fidalgo’s blog at CFI, an essay by Charles Simic, in The New York Review of Books, from about two years ago. http://www.nybooks.com/blogs/nyrblog/2012/mar/20/age-of-ignorance/ In the past, if someone knew nothing and talked nonsense, no one paid any attention to … Continue reading →

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