Mindblown: a blog about philosophy.

A very good friend of this blog and occasional guest poster Frank has noted my absence. I have been busy designing and writing material for my ECN Magazine column. But Eric sent me a link I couldn’t pass up (Eric KNOWS my hobby horses). And the link is Marijuana is drug most often linked to…

As some of the commenters to this post are realizing, my apparent cluelessness about the rioting in Sweden was grounded in sarcasm. I think a major part of the story is being edited out quite deliberately, with the weasel word “youths” being used as an airbrush.  I find the condescending nature of this approach to…

An interesting philosophical observation from Michigan football star Taylor Lewan: “If you don’t talk about pain, it will go away” The man — a 6-foot 8-inch, 308 lb. lineman renowned for playing through injuries — knows whereof he speaks. What about the inverse? That if you do talk about pain, then you will have it!…

A local San Francisco restaurant specializing in bacon has been forced to close thanks to whining neighbors who don’t like the smell. The story has attracted national attention: Closing Bacon Bacon, the Frederick Street eatery that serves … well … bacon has turned out to be a publicity bonanza. The delicious irony that neighbors are…

What’s going on in Husby? This morning I read that Swedish teens there are rioting. STOCKHOLM (AP) — Gangs of youth angered by the police shooting death of an elderly man in a mainly immigrant neighborhood hurled rocks at police and set cars and buildings on fire in a Stockholm suburb early Monday, forcing the…

Bill Quick linked a horror story from California. Here it is. It speaks for itself. The cops arrived without a warrant (claiming they’d had a “domestic violence report”), demanded entry, which was refused, so they kicked in the door, assaulted the wife, and tazed her husband for trying to help her. How manly of them!…

I think Ron Radosh makes an excellent point about the hard left when he quotes Herbert Marcuse on his doctrine of “repressive tolerance”: Marcuse developed the theory of “repressive tolerance.” As he explained, tolerance of the speech of those who are fascist or conservative is not acceptable for a democratic society. To liberate tolerance means…

One of my pet peeves involves people who use the cover of “freedom” to take away freedom. For years, the puritanical left has been claiming to support free and open human sexuality, while waging a not-so-covert war on sex. I’m not the only one to notice, and while it’s probably normal for libertarians to notice…

Ever wonder why there is such a major push to both militarize the police, and simultaneously demilitarize — even disarm — the military? I think Bill Quick may have touched on the answer. Soldiers expect that they may have to kill enemies of the nation. Cops expect that they may have to kill civilian criminals. They…

Remember the cacophony in 2011 when most of the country’s leading liberals — including Vice President Joe Biden — were loudly calling Tea Party supporters “terrorists.” I do, and I posted about it several times, because I think it is the height of irresponsibility to accuse people of terrorism simply because they think the government…

Short ARM Holdings is the title of an article at Seeking Alpha. It is about ARM computers. What did you think it was about? 😉

Am I alone in finding it extremely annoying to still be forced to use fax technology in this day and age? I have found that often when I have to have dealings with entrenched bureaucracies (typically government or academia), they will absolutely NOT accept emailed documents. Even simple letters; if it contains anything that has…

I enjoyed reading this complaint from a gay man who is sick of being bitch-slapped by gay activists: The rush to embrace and console every gay man who comes out is infantilizing and condescending—but it’s a script written and promoted by GLAAD and reinforced by a sanctimonious establishment of gay men that rewards those who play…

Using the procedures discussed here and here (which I skeptically suspected might be Internet disinformation), I just used a welder to zap the “dead” (meaning no longer chargeable with the charging unit) battery packs for my rechargeable cordless drill by injecting direct current at high amperage. To my utter amazement, this immediately brought a battery…

White Rabbit on a Theremin and should you care to get technical Theremin Tech. I had a few ideas of my own about mixers, VCAs and the like. Which got me looking and following the white rabbit down the rabbit hole. With the words as sung by Grace.

Failing to translate from English to Spanish is being called discrimination in a lawsuit. Ribota said she was injured at work because she couldn’t read a warning sign that was in English. “If I could speak English I wouldn’t have the problems that exist,” said Ribota. Last week 12 custodians from the Auraria Campus filed…

After a couple decades of near-zero growth, Japan finally elected a government that promised to get the hell out of the so-called “liquidity trap” (low growth coupled with low interest rates) by raising the inflation target from 1% to 2%.  Did it work?  Well… Lars Christensen: This is yet another very strong prove that monetary…

Right now I am on the road in Illinois, so I won’t have much time for posting. But earlier (as I tried to enjoy a cup of coffee at a local motel), my relative tranquility was suddenly interrupted by a man who walked into the hotel’s free continental breakfast area in the middle of highly…

I was intrigued to read (in Reason) about “The GOP Civil War Over Libertarianism” “This battle for the soul of the Republican Party [is] between people who are actually interested in cutting the size of government and…an establishment that is more scared,” says Reason Editor in Chief Matt Welch. “I think, right now, this is…

As if more evidence were needed that the public school system is dysfunctional beyond belief, I read that two school boys were suspended for pretending pencils were guns: Media outlets report the 7-year-old boys were suspended for two days for a violation of the Suffolk school system’s zero-tolerance policy on weapons. They were playing with…