Settling Back Into the Middle Ages

Posted on Sunday 17 May 2026 by Mark R. Kelly
  • How the US is sliding back into the Middle Ages: demons, teleportation, religious practice; re-enchantment or cognitive limitations?
  • Where real enchantment lies;
  • About the prayer festival on the National Mall;
  • The “universe” of Christianity;
  • Two items about St. Paul.
– – –

This is about the religious rally in Washington DC this weekend. And the limitations of human nature.

NY Times, guest essay by Katya Underman, today: We Are Sliding Back Into the Middle Ages

My comments before reading the essay: One irony is that humanity as a whole knows more about the world and the cosmos, and wields more power, than it ever has in its history. Yet a minority pretends that nothing has been learned, or don’t believe anything has been learned, or is simply more comfortable believing childish fictions about their personal god being the center of the entire cosmos. I’ve been characterizing this as evidence of potential limitations of human cognition. Some people reject complexity and defend childish simplicity. Part of this irony is that such childish fantasies and conspiracy theories are spread ever more easily by the technological infrastructure that has been built up, over the centuries, by the minority of the population that has outgrown such fantasies and theories.

To the essay:
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The World Marches On, With or Without the US

Posted on Saturday 16 May 2026 by Mark R. Kelly
  • An idea to anticipate, not react to, car accidents;
  • How American under Trump and MAGA is moving exactly backwards in dependence on fossil fuels;
  • Florida is whitewashing the history of slavery;
  • Men who want women to be quiet: this idea has never gone away;
  • Trump spreading assassination conspiracy theories; the woman who’s writing Trump’s Truth Social posts; how belief in UFOs reveals declining trust in institutions; Tennessee bans ROOTS; and Trumps most brazen grift.
    – – –

    Brief items today, catching up.

        • Washington Post, 14 May 2026: Don’t react to car accidents. Predict them instead., subtitled “A new incentive strategy could save thousands of lives.”
        • It’s worked for flying. Why not rigorously investigate causes and identify avoidance strategies. We’re measuring the wrong things, and the targets aren’t incentives for avoidance. In other words, apply science!

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Haidt’s Graduation Speech, and More

Posted on Friday 15 May 2026 by Mark R. Kelly
  • Jonathan Haidt’s graduation speech: choose your attention, do hard things, make personal connections;
  • Like billionaires, what Christian nationalists have is never enough: now they want to inscribe “In God We Trust” on every Federal Building in the US; Amanda Marcotte on hijacking America’s 250th anniversary; and how most Americans do *not* want Christian nationalism;
  • Veritasium on a flaw in fundamental mathematics, and Conway’s “Game of Life”, and a pertinent passage from the latest Tyson.
– – –

So I’ve read the Jonathan Haidt graduation speech, and it strikes me as perfectly anodyne, occasionally inspirational, and in no way offensive. Of course the people who objected to his giving a speech hadn’t read the speech; they only objected to his presence, because of other things he’d said elsewhere. But those protests illustrate some of those other things he’d been saying.

I’ll quote some bits, including what I quoted yesterday.

The Atlantic, Jonathan Haidt, today: Pay Attention, subtitled “Essential advice for the class of 2026”

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Messier objects; Rebecca Solnit; Jonathan Haidt

Posted on Thursday 14 May 2026 by Mark R. Kelly
  • A chart showing the actual relative sizes of the Messier objects;
  • Rebecca Solnit on the potential for imminent revolutionary change;
  • Jonathan Haidt’s graduation speech, today.
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Now this is cool. The Messier objects, fuzzy objects in the sky listed in the 18th century Messier Catalog as objects to beware of for comet-spotters, and which were later identified has close nebulae and distant galaxies, have become objects for amateur astronomers to track down, as I did in my teens during summers in Apple Valley in the 1970s.

Astronomy Picture of the Day, Sylvian Villet, today: Messier Catalog at Uniform Scale

I’ll quote their entire brief explanation…
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Posted in Astronomy, Psychology, Social Progress | Comments Off on Messier objects; Rebecca Solnit; Jonathan Haidt

Categories, Scales, a Public Health Triumph, and How the So-Called Experts Have Been Right

Posted on Wednesday 13 May 2026 by Mark R. Kelly
  • Conservatives like categories, especially binary ones: two examples. Including the claim that what makes a man gay is liberalism;
  • NYT updates its Autocracy Index, 12 markers of democratic erosion;
  • Conservative panic over falling reproduction rates seen instead as a public health triumph;
  • Paul Krugman reminds us that all the “so-called experts” who ridiculed Trump’s plans and goals have turned out to be right;
  • Short items on the upcoming Christian revival in DC, and the presumption that the founders intended the US to be explicitly Christian; RFK Jr.’s war on scientists; how Trump is mentally unwell; and how a Republican senator thinks solar power doesn’t work when the sun goes down.
– – –

A post from Facebook. I don’t know the poster, but I like his point.

“…categories are useful models, not moral absolutes, and unusual cases are often where understanding becomes deeper rather than less valid.”

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Dan Barker, CONTRADUCTION

Posted on Wednesday 13 May 2026 by Mark R. Kelly

(UK: Hypathia Press, 2024, 111pp, including References but no index)

Dan Barker (Wikipedia) is an atheist writer who was once an evangelical Christian pastor. I read one of his earlier books, LIFE DRIVEN PURPOSE (review here), which challenged Rick Warren’s idea that the purpose of life is to serve God, and entertained more productive ideas of ‘meaning’ and ‘purpose’.

This book is shorter, and is about providing a word for a concept most people haven’t considered. It relates to my recurring theme that humans tend to project the protocols of their own lives, given relationships among themselves and the need to reproduce and survive, onto the universe at large, to the point where they simply can’t imagine that any other order could possibly exist. Even as issues in science and philosophy suggest that other orders do exist. Continue reading →

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New Ideas in the World

Posted on Tuesday 12 May 2026 by Mark R. Kelly
  • Has a new circulation system been found in the human body that might explain why acupuncture seems to work?
  • Has a new framework been found that explains how the laws of nature varied at the start of the universe before settling into what they are today?
  • Short items: another Republican claims there’s no racism on the right; Robert Reich on the rebirth of the Jim Crow South; Andrew Egger and Heather Cox Richardson on the flop of Trump’s right-wing cell phone.
– – –

Here’s a long, interactive (in an irritating way) piece destined for next weekend’s NYT Magazine, apparently.

NY Times, Avraham Z. Cooper, 11 May 2026: The Human Body’s Hidden Pathways

You have to scroll down to see the images change and bits of text. Let’s see if I can copy/quote some of it. Nope, it won’t let me.

The gist: It’s about the apparent discovery of a “third bodily system for the circulation of fluids” beyond the lymphatic and the cardiovascular. An interstitium. Which the Chinese claim to have been talking about for 4000 years. And which might explain why so many (Chinese) think that acupuncture works.

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Recalling American Life Before Vaccines, Including My Own

Posted on Monday 11 May 2026 by Mark R. Kelly
  • A remembrance of America before vaccines;
  • How the DOGE-ing of the Humanities is being reversed, fortunately;
  • Briefly noted: Trump’s intuitive thinking is wrong about vaccines and autism; a Republican who thinks racial discrimination is a thing of the past, as Tennessee redistricts on racial grounds; how Trump demands loyalty above all; and Rebecca Solnit on what it takes to be California’s governor.
– – –

People think the past was better than the present because they remember only the good parts. A recurring theme. Here’s an essay about the bad parts.

The Atlantic, Fran Moreland Johns, today: I Remember America Before the Measles Vaccine, subtitled “And I wish Robert F. Kennedy Jr. did too.”

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Cooperation Is the Key to Human Advancement

Posted on Sunday 10 May 2026 by Mark R. Kelly
  • A counterpoint to zero-sum thinking from Japan, and cooperation;
  • Tennessee shows how to rig an election;
  • Short items on Trump, the Pope, and the Bible; now RFK Jr. is worried about jello; how a Christian conspiracy theorist now admits to lying; how a Texas legislator thinks his job is to do what (he thinks) God wants; Trump fans’ golden calf; and a social media meme about “when it finally happens.”
– – –

Cooperation, not competition, is the key to the advancement of the human race. Competition is the law of the jungle.

Big Think, Eric Markowitz, 7 May 2026: How helping your rivals makes you harder to beat, subtitled “A counterpoint to zero-sum thinking from Japan.”

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UFOs, Consciousness, Being Savvy

Posted on Saturday 9 May 2026 by Mark R. Kelly
  • Adam Frank on the new UFO data;
  • Thoughts about being savvy, and reality-literacy, and the lack of evidence for both UFOs and God;
  • Carlo Rovelli denies there is a “hard problem” of consciousness.
– – –

One more about the new UFO data, since it’s by Adam Frank.

The Atlantic, Adam Frank, today: Just Show Us the Spaceships Already, subtitled “Until the U.S. government has data or samples of alien material that can be shared, the story of extraterrestrial visitors is just a story.”

Spaceships. That’s all I’m asking for. Just one actual stinking spaceship. I’d also take an actual alien body—I’ve been told that the government has some of them as well. Instead, the first “alien files,” released yesterday, appear to be the same old, same old: stories, but no hard evidence—certainly not of the kind I’d want to see as a scientist, or that could truly advance the debate about UFOs and their alien connection.

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