Category Archives: Science

Notes for the Book: Deutsch on Reality

Posted on 16 September 2020 by Mark R. Kelly

I’m still, intermittently, reading my way through David Deutsch’s The Fabric of Reality, and today came across these passages, that echo and underscore my thoughts in Notes for the Book: Hierarchy of Knowledge and Human Affairs. I said in that … Continue reading →

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Links and Comments: A Proposition; Why So Many Still Support Trump

Posted on 15 September 2020 by Mark R. Kelly

Decades ago, from reading reviews of books and movies I had read and seen, I formulated a proposition that runs something like this: There is no work of art (book, film, painting, song) so universally admired that someone, somewhere, will … Continue reading →

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Link and Comment: Profile of an Anti-Vaxxer

Posted on 14 September 2020 by Mark R. Kelly

This one deserves a post of its own. Today in Salon, a profile of a hypothetical anti-vaxxer couple, Jim and Jenny. Inside the mind of an anti-vax parent. Subtitle: A researcher who studies the anti-vaccination movement digs into the psychological … Continue reading →

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Andrew Shtulman: SCIENCEBLIND: Why Our Intuitive Theories About the World Are So Often Wrong

Posted on 13 September 2020 by Mark R. Kelly

(Basic Books, 2017) Here’s a book I read earlier this year and am only just now boiling my notes down into a coherent summary. (Well actually I started boiling my notes down but ended up just cleaning up the remainder, … Continue reading →

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Notes for the Book: The Future of Enlightenment

Posted on 24 August 2020 by Mark R. Kelly

More thoughts coming together. A famous quote is this from SF author William Gibson: “The future is already here – it’s just not evenly distributed.” (There are variants of this phrase around the web also.) Then there was a video … Continue reading →

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APOD: This is Reality: The Origin of the Elements

Posted on 9 August 2020 by Mark R. Kelly

Click for a text description, with many explanatory links (some technical, some funny).

Posted in Astronomy, Science | Leave a comment

Links and Comments: About Thinking; About Research; About Orientations

Posted on 5 August 2020 by Mark R. Kelly

First, from yesterday’s New York Times Science section: How to Think Like an Epidemiologist. Subtitle: “Don’t worry, a little Bayesian analysis won’t hurt you.” As Marc Lipsitch, an infectious disease epidemiologist at Harvard, noted on Twitter, Bayesian reasoning comes awfully … Continue reading →

Posted in Psychology, Science | 761 Comments

Quote: Carl Sagan, Cosmos Chapter IV: Heaven and Hell

Posted on 31 July 2020 by Mark R. Kelly

The end of chapter IV. 40 years ago the scientists were already warning about the perturbation of the planet’s climate. Our lovely blue planet, the Earth, is the only home we know. Venus is too hot. Mars is too cold. … Continue reading →

Posted in Science | 744 Comments

Links and Comments: Coronavirus, Conservative Propaganda, Vaccines, Flat-Earthers, the view of the US from around the world

Posted on 30 July 2020 by Mark R. Kelly

NYT, Paul Krugman: The Cult of Selfishness Is Killing America; subtitle: The right has made irresponsible behavior a key principle. So we’re failing dismally on both the epidemiological and the economic fronts. But why? … So what was going on? … Continue reading →

Posted in Conservative Resistance, Politics, Science | 712 Comments

Link and Quotes: Frank Bruni on the pandemic and freedom

Posted on 22 July 2020 by Mark R. Kelly

I saw this via Facebook, and I can’t just now find a cleaner URL: NYT: Frank Bruni, So This Is Your Idea of Freedom? He’s says more eloquently what I was trying to say a couple days ago. What does … Continue reading →

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