Mindblown: a blog about philosophy.

While I thought the schools couldn’t possibly get any crazier, today I read about a kid who got suspended from school merely for talking about guns: OWINGS, MD — The father of a middle schooler in Calvert County, Md. says his 11-year-old son was suspended for 10 days for merely talking about guns on the…

Via Glenn Reynolds, I learned about a secret apartment which was built in a shopping mall. “Installation art,” the artists called it. The man built the apartment with the help of seven other artists, and various people have lived in it over the past few years for up to three weeks at a time. The…

I just stumbled across an article which says that ObamaCare will wreck the US economy. Under Obamacare, Americans will be required to buy health insurance or pay a penalty to the IRS. The IRS’s assumption that the cheapest plan for a family will cost $20,000 per year is found in examples the IRS gives to…

Just as “money laundering” is being used as the cutting edge to destroy the last vestiges of financial privacy, so “kiddie porn” is being used to destroy the last vestiges of online privacy. This is not to say that there aren’t such things as money laundering or kiddie porn, but how does the existence of…

Today I learned about two Salvador Dali paintings that I had never known about before. Both are from 1942 when he was living in the United States after fleeing Europe. One is “The Sheep” (the lamp is an optical illusion): The other is a an anti-VD propaganda poster he made for the U.S. Army titled…

On June 3, President Barack Obama will sign the U.N. Arms Trade Treaty. Yeah. It don’t mean nothin’ without Senate ratification. Still……..

Some sick friend told me about this awful picture which seems to be floating around. I think it’s downright disrespectful. Sheesh. Next the Teabaggers will be saying the ‘Mericans are like the Eloi. UPDATE: Damn! The cult is spreading! I’m all for people worshiping together in the church of their choice, but this is getting…

This morning I saw a story about a kindergarten riot. Actually, it was parents who rioted. Seven adults and one teenager were arrested for aggravated rioting and prosecutors will decide whether to charge them, he said. No one was seriously injured, but there were a number of scrapes and bruises from the fisticuffs. Drummond said…

Poor Coco! She has managed to fracture one of her toes, so her foot is in a sort of doggie cast, and I am nursing her and giving her lots of love and doggie pain killers. She is going to have to have that thing on for 6-8 weeks, and it makes a clumping sound…

Bill Quick quotes Theodore Dalrymple on why so many young converts to Islam are violent. What these cases show is that it is not Islam that makes young converts violent; it is the violence within them that causes them to convert to Islam. Adds Bill Quick: The only reason these violent young men turn to…

Earlier I read that a woman is having a “dolphin-assisted birth.” CHARLOTTE (CBS Charlotte) — A North Carolina couple traveled to Hawaii in order to bring their baby into the world in a dolphin-assisted birth. The Charlotte Observer reports Adam and Heather Barrington are staying with Star Newland, founder of The Sirius Institute, in Pohoa.…

To The Horror Of Global Warming Alarmists, Global Cooling Is Here That was the headline in a Forbes piece I saw today, which hardly surprises me. Just last night I was reminiscing about my freshman Paleontology classes at UC Berkeley, in which we were taught that what is commonly known as “the Ice Age” was…

It’s a little too cold, wet, and bleak for most people around here to be out having fun, but that makes it a good time to remember the purpose of the holiday today: to honor those who fought and died to preserve the freedoms we take for granted. All the more important because some Americans…

A headline quoted at Drudge makes the following claim: Protesters in over 400 cities march vs MONSANTO… Really? That sounds like quite a movement. I didn’t know that many people cared. So I checked out the AP story, and — lo and behold — the source of the “news” was revealed in the first sentence:…

House Republicans are working hard to lose the next election. An all-male panel of House lawmakers considered a bill on Thursday that would ban abortions after 20 weeks of pregnancy across the United States, without exceptions for rape, incest or health of the mother. There was some testimony given. At 21 weeks, Zink’s doctors discovered…

My original title for this post was Why Is Marijuana A Leftist Issue?. But I decided to change it. You will see why when you get to the end. Eric did a post yesterday Why does the left want guns and gays to be mutually exclusive? Which got me thinking about a link I came…

Watch the whole video. It is not what you might think from the title. About 8 1/2 minutes.

Freedom is freedom, and freedoms are interrelated. That’s the message of this ad. The Seattle poster has caused a lot of trouble on the left, which cannot stand freedom unless they can dispense it in such a way as to make people beholden to them. What they hate most of all is independent, free citizens…

Seniors are the fastest growing population segment when it comes to marijuana use. And not all of that use is medicinal. Statistics suggest that more members of the older generations, like Ms. Neufer, are using marijuana. The National Survey on Drug Use and Health reported in 2011 that 6.3 percent of adults between the ages…

Possession or distribution of kiddie porn is a crime, right? Arguably, it is one of the more serious crimes  imaginable, as violators can typically get more years in prison for possession of child pornography than for possession of drugs. The theory of the crime is that the children involved are victimized every time the porn…