The Myth of the Perfect Past

Posted on Thursday 16 February 2023 by Mark R. Kelly

When life was simple and everything you were supposed to know was contained in a single book. Also: why The Lord of the Rings is so appealing to the right; media libel laws; policing; and a lagniappe about a real flying saucer.

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Hypocrisy and Indoctrination

Posted on Wednesday 15 February 2023 by Mark R. Kelly

I’ve noted before how conservatives denounce “indoctrination” except when they’re the ones doing the indoctrinating. Examples include DeSantis imposing conservative values on a Florida college long known as a bastion of “free thinkers”. And examples of people believing things that are not true.

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Readings by John Scalzi and Paul Krugman; Book Notes; Morality

Posted on Tuesday 14 February 2023 by Mark R. Kelly

John Scalzi on writing about politics; Republican performance art; Paul Krugman on Republican intentions over decades against Medicare and Society Security; and notes about books about American myths past and present.

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Readings: Margaret Atwood and Jared Diamond

Posted on Monday 13 February 2023 by Mark R. Kelly

Margaret Atwood on the people banning her book The Handmaid’s Tale; Jared Diamond on the earthquake in Turkey and Syria, and long-term disaster planning.

Margaret Atwood, The Atlantic, 12 Feb 2023: Go Ahead and Ban My Book, subtitled “To those who seek to stop young people from reading The Handmaid’s Tale: Good luck with that. It’ll only make them want to read it more.”

A familiar lesson, which conservatives cannot seem to learn. Ban something, and you create a desire for it. (Similar to the Streisand effect.) Atwood begins:

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Crime in Oakland, Restorative Justice, and Personal Experiences with Crime

Posted on Sunday 12 February 2023 by Mark R. Kelly

Here’s a local news item of interest on several points. And then my history of being victim of crime.

ABC 7 News, 10 Feb 2023: Family of Oakland baker seeks ‘restorative justice’ for her death following robbery

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Religious Presumptions, Divine Plans, Hollywood’s Worst

Posted on Saturday 11 February 2023 by Mark R. Kelly

Catching up on links not yet used from the past week or so. Jerry Coyne responds to Timothy Keller’s presumptions about the metaphysical truth of Christianity and the need for a revived Church; The obvious evidence for lack of a “divine plan”; An example of Hollywood’s worst; and items about the balloon and Ozone Man.

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Approximations and Denials of Reality

Posted on Friday 10 February 2023 by Mark R. Kelly

Ted Chiang on ChatGPT; Paul Krugman on the GOP’s Orwellian take on the world; and epistemology.

Ted Chiang, The New Yorker, 9 Feb 2023: ChatGPT Is a Blurry JPEG of the Web, subtitled “OpenAI’s chatbot offers paraphrases, whereas Google offers quotes. Which do we prefer?”
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Evolution Understood and Not Understood

Posted on Thursday 9 February 2023 by Mark R. Kelly

I mentioned those John Brockman anthologies of science essays back on Feb 4th. They’re associated with the website Edge.org, one of those fascinating websites I’ve noticed over the years but have not followed regularly (others are Big Think, Quanta, Aero, Quillette…) but in this case perhaps should…. Well, except that it doesn’t seem to post much new material lately. Continue reading →

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SOTU Address and Other Current Events

Posted on Wednesday 8 February 2023 by Mark R. Kelly

Some things never change…

NY Times, Round Table, 8 Feb 2023: Times Columnists Respond to the State Of the Union

I’ll just list the contributors and their headlines.

  • Frank Bruni: Biden showed himself to be a happy warrior.
  • Nicholas Kristof: A populist Biden gave perhaps the best speech of his presidency.
  • Bret Stephens: Joe Biden shows his two faces.
  • Michelle Cottle: Biden makes clear he’s still up for the fight.
  • David French: “We will stand with you as long as it takes.”
  • Michelle Goldberg: Biden was at his best.

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The Republican party is full of so many class acts. Continue reading →

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Dacher Keltner, AWE: The New Science of Everyday Wonder and How It Can Transform Your Life

Posted on Tuesday 7 February 2023 by Mark R. Kelly

This is a book about the subjective experience of awe, and how being aware of everyday examples of awe can make your life more meaningful and fulfilling; yet how (in my take) it’s about the emotion, triggered by both the subjective and the objective, and not about science fiction’s “sense of wonder,” something of which the author seems unaware.

(Penguin Press, January 2023, xxvi+309pp, including 59pp of acknowledgements, notes, and index.)

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