Mindblown: a blog about philosophy.

I haven’t done a music video here for a long time. This is an attempt to rectify that oversight. The song below “the Spirit of the Radio” describes my experience in the music business when I was the Chief Engineer at WTAO back in the mid 70s. Yeah. Salesmen. They ALWAYS brought coke. I never…

An article warning of an Obamacare provision for “forced” home visits by government agents got me pretty worked up earlier. I was hoping it was untrue or exaggerated, so I Googled some of the claims made, and was hardly reassured. Snopes labels the report “FALSE,” and claimed that the home visits would be made by…

Yep. It is now official. Government is wasting your time. Insurance consultant Robert Laszewski, who has been working with health plans selling insurance on the exchanges, told The Washington Post this week that he wouldn’t even bother using the federal exchange system himself, and would advise others to avoid it. “People are just wasting their…

A sloppy desk and no exercise, Makes a man creative, powerful, and wise. No, Ben Franklin never said that, although John Adams was said to be shocked by Franklin’s failure to practice what he preached. While no one would argue that a sloppy desk alone will not lead to success, it is undeniable that a…

The war on peanuts has gone too far. It has now spread even to college football stadiums: When the Northwestern Wildcats face off against the Minnesota Golden Gophers at Ryan Field in Evanston on Saturday, something will be missing: peanuts. Northwestern University is hosting its first peanut-free football game to give fans with allergies a…

There’s an election in New Jersey which as far as I’m concerned just plain sucks. The polls are closed. Much as I hate to say it, my opposition to socialist policies would have probably made me vote for Lonegan. (Not much of an endorsement, I know.) Anyway, as I tried to point out to a…

Anyone can fly any flag anywhere, right? Especially an unknown person in a crowd. I mean, when a Communist hammer and sickle flag was flown in front of the White House back when Obama was inaugurated, it didn’t cause all that much consternation. That’s because as all of us reasonable people know, anyone can fly…

I frequently rant about American Politics. Especially about how there is little fundamental difference between the two parties. One talks liberty the other talks loot but both are power mad. I think I have come across the perfect definition of the two parties. Most “conservatives” don’t realize it, but they are just liberals and lefties…

While I’ve been writing about this problem for some time, I was a bit taken aback to see it on the front page of today’s Sunday Detroit Free Press: 146,000 Michiganders – at least – face loss of cheap policies under new health care reform rules At least 146,000 Michiganders — and possibly thousands more —…

In a post about John Bagot Glubb Charles Martel had this to say: The best way to describe Sir John Glubb is “Lawrence of Arabia — but smarter”. He goes on to quote Glubb at length from Glubb’s work “The Fate Of Empires”. I’ll just present the one of the really good parts: “An increase…

You might also like these videos: Karen Straughan at the 2013 NY Libertarian Party Convention Men not marrying? Karen Straughan on YouTube and one of her blog posts My address to the NY state libertarian party convention. This post was prompted by a comment at The Futurist – A Poll On The Misandry Bubble.

I get to visit a lot of strange places as part of my work exploring the net. None stranger than The Real Porn Wiki Leaks where I found Sex Slave Story Revealed to be Fabricated. “My name is Meas Ratha and I am 14 years old. I was born in the province of Takeo and…

A recent Reason magazine piece (which pointed out among other things that 60% of likely voters support marijuana legalization) reminded me about a problem with Michigan’s Medical Marijuana Act. A major lawsuit pits the ACLU and the CATO Institute against a state prosecutors lobby, the Michigan State Bar and various municipalities. The latter want the law (passed overwhelmingly…

The beating to death of a football player Adrian Peterson’s 2 year old son has received national — and international — attention because of the father’s fame, but similar cases are in the news all the time, and receive little attention. A lot of infants are killed by mother’s boyfriends. For whatever horrible reason, what happened…

Did you know that swinging nuts can deter thugs? No, I am not talking about an unneutered dogs. Or humans. I’m talking about the anti-sparrow device I made for my chickadee feeder. Sparrows have lately been mobbing my bird feeder, which is not a regular bird feeder, but a specialized chickadee feeder, plainly marked as…

A left-wing writer for the Washington Post tries to make the case that the Tea Party is Neo Confederate: The New Confederacy, as churlish toward President Obama as the Old Confederacy was to Lincoln, has accomplished what its predecessor could not: It has shut down the federal government, and without even firing a weapon or…

These days, nearly everyone is talking about the increasing loss of privacy, including longtime Facebook users. As I just said in a Facebook post, to the extent that I care about privacy, I don’t put my private stuff on Facebook. But words are tricky in this context. When we think of privacy, we tend to think…

Not sure if I should let Coco see this: Dogs Are People, Too And that’s just the headline. The author is serious: Although we are just beginning to answer basic questions about the canine brain, we cannot ignore the striking similarity between dogs and humans in both the structure and function of a key brain…

Pointman has some excellent thoughts on the subject. You can read them at Know your ultimate enemy : the dream. BTW it is about anti-CO2 fanatics.

What is going on to advance the Obama administration’s “government closure” narrative is so crass that it would be comical if it weren’t so downright malicious. It’s one thing to “close” popular national parks, restaurants, bodies of water, and even views, but the way they are singling out war memorials — even to the point of arresting…