Richard Dawkins: The Greatest Show on Earth (2009)

Posted on Thursday 16 December 2021 by Mark R. Kelly

Richard Dawkins, The Greatest Show on Earth: The Evidence for Evolution. Free Press, Sept. 2009.

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Jerry Coyne, Why Evolution is True (2009)

Posted on Wednesday 15 December 2021 by Mark R. Kelly

Jerry A. Coyne, Why Evolution is True. Viking, Feb. 2009.

This is another of a dozen or so most significant books that I’ve read over the past decade or more that I’ve put off writing up on this blog simply because my notes were long and so it’s more of a chore than usual to boil them down to a coherent post that anyone might actually read. But I’m finally catching up on these and determined to finish in another few weeks.

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Ls&Cs: Is DNA Safe to Eat? Is America Undergoing a Mass Psychosis?

Posted on Tuesday 14 December 2021 by Mark R. Kelly

Paul Krugman on Republican resistance to investments in the future; a concern about whether DNA is safe to eat; about watching Fox News every day; and about Carl Jung’s warning about mass psychosis.

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Ls&Cs: War on Christmas; Book Hoarders

Posted on Monday 13 December 2021 by Mark R. Kelly

The earliest people who objected to Christmas were… the Puritans. And a piece about famous people who own lots of books.

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Steven Pinker: RATIONALITY (2021)

Posted on Sunday 12 December 2021 by Mark R. Kelly

Pinker, Steven. Rationality: What It Is, Why It Seems Scarce, Why It Matters. Viking, 2021

I realize I’ve never written up a book by Steven Pinker on this blog, though I’ve read several and I think Pinker is one of the very best scientist/writers around (along with, say, Dawkins and Wilson). His themes are often profound, his writing sparkles, and his illustrations are colorful. But his books tend to be long, and detailed, and so my notes are long, and thus difficult to boil down into any kind of readable blog post.

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L&Cs: About Religious History, Defined by Europeans

Posted on Saturday 11 December 2021 by Mark R. Kelly

Until the late 19th century, there were only four religions, according to Europeans.

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Ls&Cs: New Conspiracy Theories and Worldviews Available Here!

Posted on Friday 10 December 2021 by Mark R. Kelly

Are birds real? Are the leftists the ones denying reality?

A perfect gift for the conspiracy theorist in your life who has absorbed all the others, from 9/11 to QAnon to 5G to the stolen election and the Covid hoax, but needs more. Let them know about this: birds aren’t real! They’re all government drones, meant to take over your life! Yes, all of them!

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Lc&Cs: Priorities

Posted on Thursday 9 December 2021 by Mark R. Kelly

Being pro-life and anti-vaccine; being pro-defense and anti-deficit; the decline of American conservatism; and endpiece.

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Carl Sagan: THE DRAGONS OF EDEN (1977)

Posted on Thursday 9 December 2021 by Mark R. Kelly

Carl Sagan: The Dragons of Eden: Speculations on the Evolution of Human Intelligence. Random House, 1977.

This was Sagan’s first book since his 1973 hit The Cosmic Connection (revisited here), and is distinctive in two ways. First, it was the first solo book of his to be written through, as a book, rather than a compilation of earlier articles or an anthology of pieces by others. Second, it was on a topic adjacent to the fields he was best known for, as the subtitle indicates. He admits this in his intro, justifying his theme by suggesting how the lessons of biology, in particular evolution, can not only suggest how humanity might proceed into the future, but how this might inform his special interest: the search for extraterrestrial life (SETI).

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Ls&Cs: Some Sciency Pieces

Posted on Wednesday 8 December 2021 by Mark R. Kelly

About the miraculous history of Earth; an interview with E.O. Wilson; about SF authors addressing scientific challenges; and about whether science, and the arts, are stuck.

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