Visiting the Profound

Posted on Sunday 2 June 2024 by Mark R. Kelly
  • Brian Greene on understanding reality as a collection of nested stories;
  • Recalling analogous thoughts by Sean Carroll and others;
  • Big Think’s Ethan Siegel on the success of modern fundamental science.

Perhaps today we can step back from the paranoid, delusional bickering of human tribalists, to sample some of the best ideas of the relative handful of profound thinkers who manage perceive the world as it really exists.

First of all — this is not the beginning of a review or summary of the Brian Greene book shown here. Well, maybe it is, but I’ve only read the first 30 pages, and while I may resume reading it later this month, at best any further review discussion won’t be along for several weeks. For now, there’s a key passage early in a book that relates to my continued interest in narratives, and stories. Continue reading →

Posted in Book Notes, Cosmology, Narrative, Physics, Science | Comments Off on Visiting the Profound

When They Tell You Who They Are, Believe Them

Posted on Saturday 1 June 2024 by Mark R. Kelly

Actually it was Maya Angelou who said, “When someone shows you who they are, believe them the first time,”, which I looked up after typing the title above.

Today’s post is another summary of political items, in this case about Republican responses to Trump’s conviction on fraud charges in New York City a few days ago. Keep in mind that much of this is projecting. This is what they would do to Democrats, if they could, and some of them even say so.

Items at aggregate site Joe.My.God yesterday and today.

Continue reading →

Posted in Conservative Resistance, conservatives, Politics, Psychology | Comments Off on When They Tell You Who They Are, Believe Them

Busy Busy Busy; the Duties of an Executor

Posted on Friday 31 May 2024 by Mark R. Kelly

This week has been busy with medical procedures and doctor’s appointments, all part of that ‘third birthday’ I discussed two days ago. Tuesday: draws for extensive blood-work, at Alta Bates Summit Medical Center on Ashby in Berkeley (photo above), followed by an EKG, and a chest x-ray. Wednesday, to CMPC in the city — that was the photo two days ago — for an echo-cardiogram, another blood draw (the folks on Tuesday missed one of the tests, argh), and a visit with one of my four cardiologists, this one Ranjan Ray, whom I saw for the first time not wearing a mask. (Even folks in hospitals are becoming lax about masks, but I still wear mine, since I’m immunosuppressed.) Thursday, another trip to CMPC (the Bay Bridge traffic is rarely good; the 15 mile trip typically takes an hour; it’s all about those obsolete toll booths, but that’s another story), for a left/right heart catheter procedure, which they do only once a year, on the anniversaries of the transplant. This entails bedrest after the procedures for 2 hours, since they put me under slight anesthesia, so even though we left the house at 7:30am, we weren’t home until nearly 2pm, following a procedure that itself lasted only 45 minutes.

Continue reading →

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Guilty Guilty Guilty; Over and Over and Over

Posted on Thursday 30 May 2024 by Mark R. Kelly
  • Trump found guilty today on 34 charges; we oldsters remember the Doonsbury cartoon about Nixon: “Guilty! Guilty! Guilty!”, which is apropos here;
  • With a comment from David Brin, who has been saying the same things about Republicans, over and over and over;
  • How Trump’s lawyers took the jurors for idiots;
  • Thomas L. Friedman on the absence of shame among Republicans;
  • A Supreme Court Justice with seditionist sympathies; an LA lifeguard imposing his religious scruples on the public; Robert Reich on Trump supporters’ embrace of fascism;
  • And items about the fantasy worlds some Republicans live in: the Capitol was built by literal giants; Boebert takes credit for what she voted against; the government is promoting atheism; and how some Christians are boycotting Fox News for promoting witchcraft.
  • And an essential, pure, Enya song.

So, it didn’t take long for 12 jurors to come to a consensus today, in the criminal trial against Donald Trump. Guilty, on 34 counts. And right on cue, the MAGA-verse erupted into outrage. Law and order is all very well when it’s about thugs on the streets, but not when it’s about one of *them*. (Imagine if Biden were subject of similar charges.) This happens over, and over, and over again.

Since it popped up on my Fb feed just now, I’ll quote this comment by David Brin, who in his book POLEMICAL JUDO (reviewed here) and elsewhere, has been saying similar things over, and over, and over again.

Continue reading →

Posted in conservatives, Lunacy, Music, Politics, Psychology | Comments Off on Guilty Guilty Guilty; Over and Over and Over

Third Birthday

Posted on Wednesday 29 May 2024 by Mark R. Kelly
  • Third ‘birthday’;
  • Why American Christians support Israel;
  • More polarities and correlations for my chart;
  • Examples, just from recent days, about Republican ambitions to turn back history;
  • More examples of Christian indoctrination.

This week is the third anniversary of my heart and kidney transplants. May 26th, actually, which quite coincidentally was the 20th anniversary of when I met my partner Y. (Who prefers I not spell out his name on social media.) And so this week I am enduring another battery of tests and blood draws, for the cardiologists at CMPC. So far so good; I’m fine, doing well. Today’s visit with the cardiologist, Dr. Ray, mentioned this third anniversary as my “third birthday,” which in a sense is true. I would have died without the transplants, and it’s only because I live with a partner, who saved me each time I had a heart attack, that I’m still alive. Unlike my late friend Larry Kramer, who lived alone for the past 15+ years near Austin TX, and had no one to save him when he fell, and died in his house, alone. I am still dealing with his estate; we will be back in Austin the weekend of June 7th.

\\

Moving on. I monitor these things because they’re scary, and threatening. Existentially threatening.

Continue reading →

Posted in conservatives, Narrative, Personal history, Religion | Comments Off on Third Birthday

Floating

Posted on Tuesday 28 May 2024 by Mark R. Kelly

After three days summarizing recently read nonfiction books, today let’s capture recent items from the news.

  • A conservative blames the unpopularity of an ice cream flavor on Biden;
  • Conservatives are eager to impose Christian indoctrination in Florida and Texas;
  • Paul Krugman identifies overflowing septic tanks as another unanticipated effect of climate change;
  • Two pieces about how and why so many people believe wrong things about the economy, and how the blue vs. red divide is about more than race and education; with charts;
  • Listening again to Enya, with two tracks from her first album… floating in her ethereal realm.

*

First up: an absurd example of how conservatives blame everything they perceive as negative on people they don’t like.

Joe.My.God, 28 May 2024: Newsmax: Biden Made Ice Cream Flavor Unpopular

Continue reading →

Posted in Music, Narrative, Politics, Religion, Science | Comments Off on Floating

Jonathan Gottschall, THE STORY PARADOX

Posted on Monday 27 May 2024 by Mark R. Kelly

Here’s a nonfiction book from 2021 that I read just a couple weeks ago. It’s similar in heft to the two books just discussed, in terms of length and conceptual depth, perhaps somewhere in the middle below Wilson and above Ahn. This is the book I noted a while back because it got a killer review in the NY Times a couple years ago, noted here. I’m not going reread that review; just respond to the book myself. Mostly.

Subtitled “How Our Love of Storytelling Builds Societies and Tears Them Down” (Basic Books, Nov. 2021, 258pp, including 64p of acknowledgements, references, notes, and index.)

It seems to be a rule these days — though it’s easy to think of similar examples from decades ago — that nonfiction writers leaven their serious messages with anecdotes not just about others, but from their own personal lives. Wilson did; Ahn did; and here Gottschalk does. (Actually, that’s one thing Snyder complained about; oops.) In terms of conceptual value for the reading effort, this one is closer to Wilson than to Ahn.

This is a companion to the author’s earlier book, THE STORYTELLING ANIMAL (2012), which I reviewed here.

Rather than summarizing chapter by chapter, I’m going to reread my notes and just compile key points. As always, personal asides are noted in [[ double brackets ]].

Continue reading →

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Woo-Kyoung Ahn, THINKING 101

Posted on Sunday 26 May 2024 by Mark R. Kelly

Subtitled: “How to Reason Better and Live Better” (Flatiron Books, Sept 2022, 276pp, including 21p of acknowledgements, notes, and index)

Here’s another short book, read the same month as yesterday’s Robert Charles Wilson book though it was published a year earlier, that needs only a brief summary. It’s the latest in a long line of books occupying the boundaries between psychology and self-help that identify our various cognitive biases, and in this case supplies suggestions for overcoming or avoiding them. It’s heavily laden with anecdotes and summaries of studies, many familiar from other books on these topics. I’ll focus on her suggested remedies, and a couple cautionary notes.

Continue reading →

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Robert Charles Wilson, OWNING THE UNKNOWN

Posted on Saturday 25 May 2024 by Mark R. Kelly

This is a book about theology, atheism and the idea of God, from the perspective of a science fiction writer. Wilson is a significant contemporary SF writer whose fiction output has slowed in recent years; I reviewed his 2015 novel The Affinities here but for some reason didn’t read his 2016 novel Last Year, and there’s been nothing since then. (See SFE for background; earlier great novels by Wilson include Spin, Darwinia, and Julian: A Christmas Story.)

Except this short nonfiction book, published last year. It’s only 146 pages long, though the volume includes two short stories as appendices filling out another 45 pages. I heard about this book almost a year in advance, when the author announced it on Facebook, and I looked forward to it in part because of the inherent fascination of its topic, but also because I wondered how it might compare to my own approach in comparing science fiction, science, and even philosophy in the essay I was just completing… I read the book shortly after it was published, but being distracted by trying to figure out what to do following the death of my friend Larry Kramer the previous month, did not get around to writing my notes up here.

Subtitled: “A Science Fiction Writer Explores Atheism, Agnosticism, and the Idea of God”. (Pitchstone Publishing, Sep. 2023, 205pp, including 47p of two short stories, 12p of notes and bibliography; no index.)

Having reread my notes on the book just now, for this book I’m going to copy them relatively complete into this post, but precede the long summary with some points I found especially interesting.

So first some key ideas and takeaways…. Continue reading →

Posted in Book Notes, Religion, science fiction | Comments Off on Robert Charles Wilson, OWNING THE UNKNOWN

More Panic, Projection, Nonsense, and Superstition

Posted on Friday 24 May 2024 by Mark R. Kelly
  • Takes on the “Biden assassination plot” fantasy, and projection;
  • Why would DeSantis think the Founding Fathers would hate sociology?
  • Tribal mentality from Royce White and Bryce Mitchell;
  • And Christian rejection of the nature of the real world.

First for today, two takes on the Republican panic in recent days about the ludicrous, alleged assassination plot by Biden against Trump.

Salon, Amanda Marcotte, 24 May 2024: Trump’s “Biden the assassin” fantasy is pure projection, subtitled “With Trump, every accusation is a confession”:

No one thinks President Joe Biden tried to assassinate Donald Trump.

Continue reading →

Posted in Conservative Resistance, Lunacy | Comments Off on More Panic, Projection, Nonsense, and Superstition