Ls&Cs: Two from Free Inquiry

Posted on Monday 18 October 2021 by Mark R. Kelly

From the October/November 2021 issue, articles about Christian Morality and about how understanding COVID does not depend on a Kuhnian paradigm shift.

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Personal History: World Fantasy Con Badges

Posted on Sunday 17 October 2021 by Mark R. Kelly

One more set of badges with commentary for today, then I’ll move on to other things, and catch up on links and comments. Today: badges from World Fantasy Conventions.

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Personal History: Worldcon Badges

Posted on Saturday 16 October 2021 by Mark R. Kelly

Another afternoon of sorting and photographing photos and artifacts. For today, here’s a group shot of badges I’ve collected from the World Science Fiction Conventions (Worldcons for short) over the years.

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Personal History: Work Badges and Travel

Posted on Friday 15 October 2021 by Mark R. Kelly

I’m going through — one more time! — artifacts of my family’s life, and my own life, that have been gathering dust in a couple closets, determined once and for all to take photographs and write up descriptions of them, for posterity.

Let’s begin with a set of work badges. (Click to embiggen.)

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Ls&Cs: You Suggest Having Ice Cream, They Hate Ice Cream

Posted on Thursday 14 October 2021 by Mark R. Kelly

The principles of an angry 3-year-old; the anti-business party; Supreme Court justices’ motivations.

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Ls&Cs: Look at the (Economics) Evidence

Posted on Wednesday 13 October 2021 by Mark R. Kelly

More evidence that economics (and psychology) are becoming sciences, not just ideologies.

This year’s Nobel Prizes in economics are interesting, Paul Krugman explains, because their recipients applied real-world evidence which turn out to undermine ideological economic theories that that have intuitive appeal for certain mindsets.

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Robert Sheckley, MINDSWAP (1966)

Posted on Tuesday 12 October 2021 by Mark R. Kelly

Robert Sheckley was a science fiction writer who debuted in the early 1950s, right about the time that Philip K. Dick did. They were both prolific short story writers through the ’50s, each publishing several stories a year, in the various magazines of the time.

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Ls&Cs: Problem-Solving, Ethics, Out-Group Prejudice, and Padding Bestseller Lists

Posted on Monday 11 October 2021 by Mark R. Kelly

Several links that I collected on April 20th, the day I went to the hospital for what led to my heart transplant.

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Afternoon Drive: M440i

Posted on Sunday 10 October 2021 by Mark R. Kelly

Yesterday we took a three-hour drive, with a lunch stop part-way through, but since I didn’t take any photos along the way, it didn’t happen, by some internet standards.

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Lc&Cs: Disinfo’s Popularity, Villainous Facebook, and the Complexity of Modern Life

Posted on Saturday 9 October 2021 by Mark R. Kelly

Links from this past week, with comments, about how Facebook finds disinformation popular and therefore profitable, how its users search out disinformation to confirm their preconceptions, how Republican disinfo about COVID is killing off its base, about Trump True Believers’ authoritarian reasons, and about the complexity of modern life.

[Image from Salon.]

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