Mark R. Kelly
» Founder in 1997 and site-runner for 20 years of Locus Online (Hugo Award winner in 2002). Founder in 2012 and still site-runner of sfadb.com (Science Fiction Awards Database). Retired in 2012 after 30 years as a software engineer for a certain rocket engine factory.
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Meta
Category Archives: MInd
Aesthetics: Color Theory: 60:30:10
Here’s another item I saw just recently, which shares with the previous post how a design principle can be crystalized in numbers. Via Boing Boing, Devin Nealy, 31 May 2022: The 60-30-10 percent rule of color
Posted in Aesthetics, MInd, Science
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Daniel Keyes: FLOWERS FOR ALGERNON (1966)
Here’s the next part of the batch of brief reviews of SF novels that I began last week. I’m now thinking, though, that with more substantial books like this one I’ll just cover one book per post — back to … Continue reading
Posted in Book Notes, MInd, science fiction
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Links and Comments: Nature and Human Brains; Science Fiction and Mental Resiliency
Scientific American, Caleb A. Scharf: A Failure of Imagination, subtitled, “Nature does not have to play fair with our puny human brains.” A favorite theme of mine: how there’s more to the universe than humans are aware of; how there … Continue reading
Posted in Cosmology, MInd, Narrative, science fiction
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Links and Comments: Conspiracies! Conspiracies!
Over the past several weeks there’s been an outbreak of stories and articles in the various legitimate media (New York Times, NPR, The Atlantic, The New Yorker, et al) about conspiracy theories related to the coronavirus pandemic. So many articles! … Continue reading
Posted in Lunacy, Meaning, MInd, Psychology
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What We Learned from This Morning’s Newspaper
Robert H. Frank, Molly Worthen, Anthony Doerr, and Nicholas Kristof on cutting taxes for the rich, rejecting Roy Moore-style evangelicalism, how even the conscientious among us react to warnings of climate change, and how Blue States do better at practicing … Continue reading
Posted in MInd, Politics, Psychology, Religion, Science
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Links and Comments: Philip Pullman meets Matthew Hutson
There was a big profile of Philip Pullman in the New York Times Magazine a couple weeks ago– Philip Pullman Returns to His Fantasy World — on the occasion of the first book in his new trilogy that parallels his … Continue reading
Kahneman, Thinking, Fast and Slow: Intro and Chapter 1
This is perhaps the most influential book of the past couple decades on the whole subject of human mental biases, how the ways in which we think entail errors of perception, and employ heuristics that are often but not always … Continue reading
Posted in Evolution, MInd, Psychology
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George Lakoff on the Conservative Moral Hierarchy
Retired UC Berkeley professor George Lakoff answers Two Questions About Trump and Republicans that Stump Progressives, a piece that has gotten some circulation the past couple weeks. The questions are: 1) Why don’t Trump supporters turn against Trump even though … Continue reading
Posted in Conservative Resistance, Evolution, MInd, Morality
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Carl Sagan’s “Baloney Detection Kit”
Carl Sagan, one of the great scientist-communicators to the general public of the past century, author of the 1980 book Cosmos and host of the 1980 TV series of that name, has a list of ideas for how to evaluate … Continue reading
Posted in MInd, Psychology, Science
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Linkdump: Science, society, conspiracy theories, the fear of NRA conventioneers
Science: The Atlantic: Are We Living in a Giant Cosmic Void?. Maybe. Scientific American: How the Science of “Blue Lies” May Explain Trump’s Support. Subtitle: “They are a very particular form of deception that can build solidarity within groups” Guardian: … Continue reading
Posted in Conservative Resistance, Cosmology, Lunacy, MInd, Psychology, Science
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