Category Archives: Conservative Resistance

Link and Comments: Facts v Emotions

Posted on Saturday 11 February 2017 by Mark R. Kelly

Slate, Jess Zimmerman: It’s Time to Give Up On Facts — Or at least to temporarily lay them down in favor of a more useful weapon: emotions. Yet another article (by a former fact-checker) about how human mental biases deflect … Continue reading →

Posted in Conservative Resistance, MInd | Comments Off on Link and Comments: Facts v Emotions

Pondering Immigration and the Future of the Nation

Posted on Friday 10 February 2017 by Mark R. Kelly

If there’s any one thing the United States might be remembered for, in future centuries or millennia long after the country has been superseded by newer, more advanced societies, it will be that it was a place for immigrants and … Continue reading →

Posted in Conservative Resistance, Human Progress | Comments Off on Pondering Immigration and the Future of the Nation

Link and Comments: science visions; the retrograde government; multiverse; faith; Wars v Trek; California as the future; Haidt on tribalism and the national rift

Posted on Wednesday 8 February 2017 by Mark R. Kelly

For today here are several links I’ve ‘saved’ on Facebook in recent weeks, with comments. First, Plate Tectonics Movement During the Last 540 Million Years, a cool video animation, from a Facebook group called Geology Wonders, that shows the continents … Continue reading →

Posted in Conservative Resistance, Culture, Psychology, Religion, Science | Comments Off on Link and Comments: science visions; the retrograde government; multiverse; faith; Wars v Trek; California as the future; Haidt on tribalism and the national rift

Links and Comments: Academia, Creationists, Christians and Trump, Plait on the GOP, Evil, Victims

Posted on Tuesday 5 July 2016 by Mark R. Kelly

From Slate, more on the theme of Why Are There So Few Conservatives in Academia? There are three big reasons that conservatives are hard to find in university faculties: intellectual consistency, anti-science trends by conservatives, and social pressure. On the … Continue reading →

Posted in Conservative Resistance, Culture, Morality, Politics, Religion | Comments Off on Links and Comments: Academia, Creationists, Christians and Trump, Plait on the GOP, Evil, Victims

Two Interviews about Current Books, about Reproductive Technologies and Social Cohesion

Posted on Saturday 4 June 2016 by Mark R. Kelly

Two radio interviews this week worth noting, in part just for the pleasure of listening to smart people, in contrast to what we dutifully hear every day from our politicians. First, this KQED forum interview in which Bioethicist Hank Greely … Continue reading →

Posted in Conservative Resistance, Social Progress, Technology | Comments Off on Two Interviews about Current Books, about Reproductive Technologies and Social Cohesion

Links and Comments: Luck; Facebook and social bubbles; being openly secular

Posted on Thursday 26 May 2016 by Mark R. Kelly

One author with a new book currently making the circuit of talk shows and newspaper op-ed pages is Robert H. Frank, whose book is Success and Luck: Good Fortune and the Myth of Meritocracy, and who turned up on KQED’s … Continue reading →

Posted in Conservative Resistance, Culture, Religion | Comments Off on Links and Comments: Luck; Facebook and social bubbles; being openly secular

Religious Liberty and Christian Theology

Posted on Sunday 8 May 2016 by Mark R. Kelly

Salon: Republicans have turned God upside down with their so-called “religious liberty”. The “liberty” part in “religious liberty” is not intended to empower the believers of a dominant religion, such as, say, Christianity, to give them the “liberty” to impose … Continue reading →

Posted in Conservative Resistance, Religion | Comments Off on Religious Liberty and Christian Theology

Links and Comments: Irrational Voters; Republicans and Gays; Religious Liberty v Progress

Posted on Saturday 9 April 2016 by Mark R. Kelly

Robert Sapolsky in last week’s Los Angeles Times: We’re rarely rational when we vote because we’re rarely rational, period. How various discoveries about mental biases and motivated thinking play out in elections. Probably the most striking thing about any of … Continue reading →

Posted in Conservative Resistance, Culture, Human Progress, MInd, Religion | Comments Off on Links and Comments: Irrational Voters; Republicans and Gays; Religious Liberty v Progress

Trump, Abortion, Conservatives, and Guns

Posted on Friday 8 April 2016 by Mark R. Kelly

(From two posts on Facebook over the past week, somewhat edited.) 31 March: I confess a bit of bewilderment at the outrage over Donald Trump’s comments about abortion, not just from the pro-choice left, but also the anti-abortion (‘pro-life’) right. … Continue reading →

Posted in Conservative Resistance, Religion | Comments Off on Trump, Abortion, Conservatives, and Guns

Links and Comments: Trump; Democrats v Republicans; American exceptionalism; government regulations

Posted on Saturday 19 March 2016 by Mark R. Kelly

As Donald Trump seems to be on the path to claiming the Republican nomination for president, Republicans who are appalled by him are increasingly expressing misgivings. Salon has this fascinating article about how some Republican pundits admit that the crude … Continue reading →

Posted in Conservative Resistance, Culture, Politics, Religion, Social Progress | Comments Off on Links and Comments: Trump; Democrats v Republicans; American exceptionalism; government regulations