Mindblown: a blog about philosophy.

Via Glenn Reynolds’ link to Roger L. Simon, I just learned something interesting: In the new world of the NSA, the only secret left is Barack Obama’s college grades. Which comes on the heels of another NSA story: The National Security Agency has spent years demanding that companies turn over their data. Now, the spy agency…

The other day I read that Exodus International — a religious group claiming to cure homosexuality through prayer — is shutting down its operations. That’s right. They will no longer “treat” gays, and they have  even apologized! This startling and unexpected development has been called “huge news” and has had a lot of people shaking their…

After discussing the insider financial shenanigans of successful crooks like Al Gore, NRO’s Jim Geraghty has an interesting observation: It is no wonder that more and more Americans believe the game is rigged. It is no wonder that they buy houses they cannot afford and then walk away from the mortgage when they can no…

A WSJ article on teen peer pressure fascinated me because I can remember what it was like, and I was reminded that the whole deal is a two-edged sword: New studies on peer pressure suggest that teens—who often seem to follow each other like lemmings—may do so because their brains derive more pleasure from social…

The anti-plastic bag hysteria is spreading, with the self-important Los Angeles City Council now voting 11-1 to ban them. Under the ban, stores that sell perishable foods will be prohibited from handing out plastic grocery bags. “We’ve seen plastic bags clogging our gutters, polluting our rivers and piling up on our beaches,” Councilmember José Huizar…

Hard to believe that is an actual photograph I took, but it is.

I loved reading about what I hope is a growing trend — an apparently easy and relatively painless way to work around Obamacare: WICHITA, Kan., June 14 (UPI) — A Kansas physician says he makes the same income and offers better quality care to his patients after he dumped all health insurance companies. Thirty-two-year old…

The right isn’t actually against socialism, they are only against the democrats in control of it. Seen in the comments at Zero Hedge.

A member of a left wing activist group called Clowns Not Bombs (apparently facing deportation) went completely bonkers in a San Francisco BART station and a video of his antics has gone viral. Yeiner Perez, 24, was arrested May 10 at the 16th Street Mission station after a incident in which he did handstands, flips and…

A comment to a Youtube video of Groucho Marx on “What’s My Line?” You know the world is kinda messed up when you find peace of mind in comedy shows from 1950 and they are infinite times better than anything you can find either on tv or anywhere else today. :/ I’m 26 and it’s…

Via Glenn Reynolds‘ link to a link well worth rescuing, I learned that David Brooks — a man who claims to be a great arbiter of civil society if not civilization itself — is upset by what he calls “unmediated” people. I read what Brooks said twice and I don’t think he meant “unmedicated” but missed…

Despite all the hoopla about pretending to help the economy, an item in today’s Wall Street Journal reveals that Obama administration couldn’t possibly be more viciously and stridently anti-business. The federal government — in the form of the EEOC — is applying the  “disproportionate impact” rule to go after employers who run criminal background checks…

I like the sound of gunfire. I particularly like the Navy 3″ 50 caliber rapid fire gun. I had the honor of sitting next to one during military training exercises aboard my ship The Bainbridge DLG(N)-25. Here is a modern version of that gun doing rapid fire Navy training film about the 3″ 50. The…

This video is not safe to watch. It is not pleasant to watch. In fact it is down right disgusting. WND (where I got the video link) describes the contents of the video. The video shows a wedding celebration in which a group of men in a frenzy tear apart a live chicken by hand,…

They know you rang a sex line at 2 am, but they don’t know what your talking about? You ring a suicide prevention hotline from the golden gate bridge, but don’t know what you talked about? They know you spoke with an HIV testing service, then your doctor, then your health insurance, but they don’t…

This Facebook image reminded me of the famous Mae West line: Ironically, students today would be suspended for repeating the Mae West joke, and not because it is sexual — but because of the mere mention of the word “gun.” Considering today’s world of multitasking everything, if they let kids pretend bananas are penises, I…

A couple of days ago, I entertained myself for about two minutes by playing the Fox News / CNN switcheroo game. Between the IRS scandal and the Big Brother database revelations, it seemed to me that the country was in the middle of a major political storm, so I figured both networks would at least…

Jay Leno said something reassuring about President Obama. At least he is listening: Well, this has become a huge controversy after it was revealed that the National Security Agency seized millions of Verizon phone records, and of course this has caused a panic among civil libertarians, constitutional scholars and cheating husbands everywhere. Oh my God.…

John Cochrane argues that our darned political system is just not up the challenges of the economic times. He makes some excellent points re Reinhart and Rogoff, but unfortunately he makes a profound error is his assumptions: …fiscal stimulus is essential when conventional monetary policy is powerless… Monetary policy is never, ever powerless. A central…

I realize the above title is nowhere near as all-encompassing as the famous pangram, “The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog.” But it packs in a lot of suspicious words that we are being warned not to use because the idiots geniuses at the DHS are on the lookout for them. The Department of…