Patrick Stewart and Two Notes About Narrative

Posted on Saturday 31 October 2026 by Mark R. Kelly
  • Noting the passing of Patrick Stewart, and how the noble passages spoken by Picard (and written by unmentioned writers) are credited to the actor;
  • Mike Johnson supports Christian Nationalists (while Republicans rant and rave about Muslims and Sharia Law); and Trump claiming a moral Christian high ground;
  • And Ted Chiang remarks on the gap between writers’ intentions and readers’ understandings.
– – –

No wait, three notes about narrative.

Vox, Ian Millhiser, today: Patrick Stewart taught us what good men do with power, subtitled “Great leaders, and great nations, need role models like Jean-Luc Picard.”
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A Muddled Take on Religion v Atheism

Posted on Friday 30 October 2026 by Mark R. Kelly
  • Jack Symes on a third path between religion and atheism, which turns out to be about why the former is taken for granted, and why God is good and not bad;
  • Another essay on what horror films have to say about God;
  • Brief items about the GOP’s plan to make Americans hate Muslims; Christians who think non-Christians shouldn’t serve in Congress; and that guy with two wives who thinks his rationale is Christian.
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This piece appeared over a week ago, but I don’t want to forget it, since it seems to take an approach I find attractive: that many of our philosophical problems exist because we frame them incorrectly. We project human protocols onto the universe at large, to domains where they don’t apply. (And how science fiction helps exercise the mental muscles needed to consider such thoughts.) Alas, now that I’ve read it, I am disappointed.

Big Think, Jack Symes, (17 Oct 2026): Beyond religion and atheism: The secret third answer to big questions, subtitled “Philosopher Jack Symes explores the space between devout religion and atheism.”

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Religion and Aliens

Posted on Thursday 29 October 2026 by Mark R. Kelly
  • Scientific American on how religions might react to the existence of aliens (while ignoring the insights of decades of science fiction writers);
  • Oakland is one of the US’s best cities…;
  • David Wallace-Wells spells out 12 reasons why the Trump era is fading.
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It’s always interesting when the mainstream media takes on a subject thoroughly examined, for decades, by science fiction. Which is to say, don’t expect any new insights here.

Scientific American, Adam Kovac, today: Can the world’s religions survive the existence of aliens?, subtitled “Finding alien life could shake some people to their very souls, but different religions can take very distinct approaches to the existence of extraterrestrial life”

This echoes David Brin’s discussion of the Disclosure Cult.
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More Evenly Distributed

Posted on Wednesday 28 October 2026 by Mark R. Kelly
  • More of those videos about evolution and homosexuality;
  • Paul Krugman invokes William Gibson in his concerns about AI;
  • Brief items about Orwellian tactics, short-term selfish thinking, and the arrogance of the religious.
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That video I posted yesterday about homosexuality turns out to be last in a series, from a Facebook newsgroup called AD1 Explains, described only as a “Digital Creator.” If you go look at their reels you can scroll down and see many on various topics, including this one.

I think I thought I was posting the first in this series yesterday, when somehow I posted the last in the series instead. Here’s the first, I hope.

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There Is Nothing Wrong with You

Posted on Tuesday 27 October 2026 by Mark R. Kelly
  • Malcolm Gladwell on misunderstandings about gun violence;
  • Kevin Kelly’s proposal for a universal national service;
  • A video that explains why homosexuality has evolutionary advantages;
  • Jim Palmer on religion’s biggest lie: sin;
  • Brief links about Hegseth’s faith advisor, RFK Jr., how the Supreme Court approves every religious privilege, how Trump seems immune from jail, how Trump has failed, how Trump is sowing doubt about the upcoming elections, how the stamp of MAGA is being cruel, how Robert Reich says Trump wants to imprison him, how a MAGA activist thinks Noah’s flood was due to gay sex orgies (!), how a pastor with two wives thinks God approves of him, how Tony Perkins advises voters to vote according to Biblical values, how red states are restricting education to traditional American themes, and how there’s no evidence that voting machines flip votes.
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A lot of things to note today. Let’s focus on the non-fringy ones first.

LA Times, Shelby Hartman, today: Malcolm Gladwell thinks everything you know about gun violence is probably wrong

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The Disclosure Cult

Posted on Monday 26 October 2026 by Mark R. Kelly
  • David Brin on the UFO cult, which he now calls the Disclosure cult;
  • A forthcoming book about the nature of human intelligence;
  • Brief items about the term DARVO, Tina Peters’ defense as a “person of faith”, Trump and Republican priorities, and Laura Ingraham’s claim of a leftist plot to overtake the government.
– – –

Let’s lead with this today: the latest David Brin post about the ongoing UFO mania, in which the evidence has never gotten any better than it was 70 years ago. Brin is now calling it the Disclosure cult, and suggest it’s just as crazy as the MAGA cult.

Contrary Brin, David Brin, yesterday 25 Oct: “Disclosure’ UFO cults get worse, even as we try to restore sane politics.

Brin often sounds like a prototypical crazy uncle, except that I think most of his points are valid.

So. Why do I classify UFO nuttery with MAGA? First there’s the blatant overall goal: using X-Files to distract from Eps-Files….
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Failure to Learn

Posted on Sunday 25 October 2026 by Mark R. Kelly
  • Steven Strogatz on the AI crisis in mathematics; is it OK to be given the answers, without figuring them out for ourselves?
  • How religious zealots mock scientific understanding, since scientific conclusions can change;
  • Briefly: another comment about Rubio’s defense of Western civilization; how David French thinks there is no bottom to MAGA; Heather Cox Richardson recounts how the Republican victories in 1920 led to the 1929 Crash; and Nicholas Kristoff on the pillars of our nation — education, immigration, and legal and social norms — that are on the current ballot.
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Humanity only advances by learning from the lessons of the past. No one person can learn everything about modern civilization by themselves, from scratch. But are we now stuck in a cycle of repeated failures, unable to learn? (Or refusal to learn?) (Or failure to launch?)

Is it about the journey, or the destination?

The Atlantic, Steven Strogatz, today: A Mathematician Reads the AI Future, subtitled “My field is as much an expression of the human spirit as music and literature. Is it for the machines now?”

Strogatz is a mathematician and author. I have his book about calculus.
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Passing Through World Fantasy Con 2026

Posted on Saturday 24 October 2026 by Mark R. Kelly

I didn’t attend the World Science Fiction Convention a few months ago, in Anaheim, but I had thought to attend its fantasy counterpart this month since it’s being held in downtown Oakland, just a few miles from me. I wouldn’t need to rent a hotel room; I could drive back and forth each day (even though many of the events at such gatherings occur in the evening, often until late hours, not to mention ordinary gatherings at the bar). But then I waited too long to buy a membership, and found them no longer for sale as of earlier this week, and found daily passes (which Worldcons used to offer) unavailable. Still, inquiries led me to acquire a “Locus staff” badge, and I used it to attend the convention yesterday, Friday, from 10am to 4pm or so. (Not that there were any careful observers keeping non-members out of event rooms.)

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Evolutionary Tradeoffs, and Nonintelligent Design

Posted on Thursday 22 October 2026 by Mark R. Kelly
  • How the evolution of the human brain made us vulnerable to Alzheimer’s;
  • Kibble: Hegseth’s staff broke Eisenhower’s globe; a MAGA host who thinks witchcraft is real; most evangelicals do not consider empathy a core moral value; false Christian Nationalist history from Rob McCoy.
– – –

Today’s thought piece.

Keep in mind that evolution doesn’t “care” about anything; organisms that survive natural selection (or environmental filtering, another term someone used) do so by reproducing, and once they’ve done that, it doesn’t matter what happens in their “old age.”

The Atlantic, Adina Wise, 18 Oct 2026: The Evolution of the Human Brain Set It Up for Failure, subtitled “The genetic changes that made the human brain may have made us uniquely vulnerable to Alzheimer’s.”

Apes don’t develop Alzheimer’s—at least, not like we do. Although we share a hefty amount of our DNA with our closest primate relatives, humans are uniquely at risk of developing the disease that can erode our sense of who we are.

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What Would Be the Cure for Being Human?

Posted on Wednesday 21 October 2026 by Mark R. Kelly
  • Jim Palmer’s six existential realities that humans try to escape…;
  • Short items: Fox News provides the conservative need for the panic of the day, or month; even National Review calls out Trump as shameless; Pete Buttigieg on how Republicans take credit for Democratic projects; and how Christian Nationalists are plain about their intentions to “seize power.”
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I briefly noted this piece back on 9/24. Let’s spend a little more time with it today. What does he mean by “trying to escape”? This goes to the core of his metaphysics, which I still haven’t exactly figured out.

Jim Palmer, Deconstructionology, 23 Sep 2026: There Is No Cure for Being Human, subtitled “The Six Existential Realities We Spend Our Lives Trying to Escape”

It’s 37 screens long, on my big laptop. Just write a book and be done with it! Let’s see if we can find his six.

Here’s part of his preface:

As Existential Health becomes established as a field of health, there is necessary work to be done defining its concepts, developing its theoretical foundations, examining its applications, and subjecting its claims to serious scrutiny. I have published an academic paper Continue reading →

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