Crosby, Stills, and Nash: Daylight Again

Posted on Thursday 19 January 2023 by Mark R. Kelly

So David Crosby died today. I only acquired a couple three of this group’s albums over the years, and from them, this is my favorite song.

Update 23 Jan 23: This post here and on Fb may strike some as inappropriate, because though David Crosby sang these songs, he did not write them, and I didn’t realize that. Numerous sites in recent days that have compiled the best David Crosby songs, which of course don’t include these. This Wikipedia page for the album reveals that this song was written by Stephen Stills.

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Atmospheric Rivers and A Coding Conundrum

Posted on Wednesday 18 January 2023 by Mark R. Kelly


As has been widely reported on the news, even nationally, California has experienced a nearly unprecedented series of storms moving in from the Pacific in what are called “atmospheric rivers,” some ten storms since late December, with only partial day breaks in between. Continue reading →

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Alcohol and Civilization, and other recent items

Posted on Tuesday 17 January 2023 by Mark R. Kelly

How civilization might have been driven by the desire for alcohol; about the NYT interviewing Republicans; the perspective on conspiratorial thinking from an American living in Britain; paranoia and the GOP; DeSantis’ war on “wokeness”; Paul Waldman on 6 things people believe about politics that are wrong.

And pasta.

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Optimism About America, and other recent items

Posted on Monday 16 January 2023 by Mark R. Kelly

David Brooks on how America is on the right track; Ezra Klein on the fractured Republican Party; and items about gas stoves, red states and their blue cities, the partisan divide in COVID deaths, and how politics doesn’t do nuance.

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The Erratic March of Scientific Progress

Posted on Sunday 15 January 2023 by Mark R. Kelly

Vox, Kelsey Piper, 11 Jan 2023: Why is science slowing down?, subtitled “Science is the engine of society, and the decline of truly disruptive research is a warning sign for all of us.”

Is this really a new problem? Or one of those issues that keeps welling up in popular media because the answer is not well-understood?

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Cosmic Websites; Recent Headlines

Posted on Friday 13 January 2023 by Mark R. Kelly

Let’s begin with an item from December, on a website called Topia: A World of Good, promoted on Facebook today by David Brin since it reproduces a list Brin compiled on his own blog some time ago.

21 COSMIC WEBSITES YOU NEED TO KNOW: How big is space? Sci-fi legend David Brin investigates

These sites display the scientific urge to understand a universe that humans cannot correctly perceive intuitively.

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Yuval Noah Harari, UNSTOPPABLE US

Posted on Thursday 12 January 2023 by Mark R. Kelly

Here’s a book I read near the end of last year that, like the Dawkins book recently reviewed, is a book directed at young people. Like the Dawkins, it’s heavily illustrated; unlike that, Harari’s book is essentially a rewrite of a book he has already written, his popular and bestselling SAPIENS from 2015 (my review here), aimed at younger readers. Apparently the first of several books. This one is subtitled “Vol. 1: How Humans Took Over the World.”

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Narrative as Denialism

Posted on Tuesday 10 January 2023 by Mark R. Kelly

Today’s reading is yet another example of how narratives — stories that simplify the world and make it more understandable, even if they’re completely fictional — dominate so many people’s beliefs, especially in politics, that they amount to a denial of reality. (This isn’t about that anthology that tries to correct myths of American history; this is about what’s happening right now.)

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More About Stories v. Reality

Posted on Monday 9 January 2023 by Mark R. Kelly

Yet another item about that anthology of historical essays. Plus items about pandemics, bestseller lists, wokeness in the military, the attraction of conspiracy theories, and violence on TV.

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Myth America

Posted on Sunday 8 January 2023 by Mark R. Kelly

Today in the papers, both an op-ed about and a review of a new book called Myth America: Historians Take On the Biggest Legends and Lies About Our Past, edited by Kevin M. Kruse and Julian E. Zelizer, published by Basic Books a few days ago. It’s an anthology of essays by various writers.

There are interesting points to be made from these, though I doubt I’ll buy or read the book. Consider this post a meta-review perhaps, a reaction to what others are saying about the book. It’s of interest to me because it relates to my running theme of how humans understand the world through stories, and how this plays out politically, why some are more attracted to stories than others.
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