Mindblown: a blog about philosophy.

When I wake up in the morning, I tend to look at my clock. Not so much because I’m interested in the time (I have a pretty natural sense of what time it is), but because I want to know the outside temperature. Thanks to this Sharper Image time temperature clock which is still listed…

Via theblogprof, I found a Reason TV report titled “LA Food Police Ban Burger Joints: Is Your City Next?” I find it appalling that the forces of government are attempting to control our diets, but they are. I suspect that they imagine themselves to be on the side of “nature.” You know, natural foods? Eat…

That report is now about two days old. Since then there have been “developments”. That is an euphemism around here for MSHTF. M = more. I’m sure you can take it from there. Here is a good one: Reactor 3 containment feared breached. A suspected breach in the core of a reactor at the stricken…

The accident at Japan’s nuclear reactors officially just got worse. Fukushima No. 1 nuclear plant, crippled by the Great East Japan Earthquake of March 11, has discharged more radiation than the infamous Three Mile Island nuclear plant in the United States, according to calculations by the central government. It has already reached a level 6…

Speaking of things I’ve written about before, Democratic agent provocateur Fred Phelps is hardly at the top of my list of priorities. So when I read about the latest antics of his incestuous cult (a protest at Elizabeth Taylor’s funeral), my reaction was sort of ho-hum. The Supreme Court has said they can do it,…

Remember my story about Tokyo water being unfit for infants due to radioactivity? Evidently it is giving one Westerner in Japan crazy ideas. “It’s unfortunate, but the radiation is clearly being carried on the air from the Fukushima plant,” Yukio Edano, the chief cabinet secretary, said Wednesday. “Because it’s raining, it’s possible that a lot…

Things are getting better and better all the time when it comes to the Japanese Nuclear Reactors in Fukushima. Take this report from 19 March, 2011. — Reactor No. 4 – Under maintenance when quake struck, no fuel rods in reactor core, temperature in spent-fuel storage pool reached 84 C on Monday, fire Tuesday possibly…

The news from Japan continues to be awful, and it will get worse: THE number of people confirmed dead or listed as missing in Japan surpassed 25,000 yesterday 12 days after a massive earthquake and tsunami struck the country’s northeast coast. There are fears of a much higher toll from the disaster, which flattened entire…

Between the horrific earthquake and the reactor problems in Japan, and the operation against Gadhafi in Libya, the war of attrition in Madison, Wisconsin has been pushed off the front pages. (And off Drudge, off Memeorandum, and off almost everywhere else except gloating left-wing sites.) Shouldn’t that cause a collective sigh of relief? I mean,…

And what is the nature of an uncontrolled experiment? They are commonly referred to as accidents. Things are heating up at the Fukushima Experimental Station. Here is the latest status of the experiment. Despite hopes of progress in the world’s worst nuclear crisis in a quarter of a century, triggered by an earthquake and tsunami…

If you thought it was bad that the loony demonic Princess of the right Ann Coulter carried on about the joys of radiation, consider a tidbit from today’s news. George Monbiot, environmental wacko and leftist idiot extraordinaire, has come out in favor of nuclear power: Support for nuclear power has fallen among the British public…

In another bout of sunshine and happiness or as some prefer, happy happy joy joy, an American propaganda nuclear “expert” says that Japan almost has its nuclear reactor problem under control. Meanwhile, officials with the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission upgraded their assessment of the situation at the plant, saying it appeared the reactor cores at…

Am I alone in thinking that the news these days just plain sucks? Seriously, I find myself wanting to take a break — not so much from blogging, but from having to read, subject myself to, and react to the relentless onslaught of bad news. It is dreadfully depressing, and I am not alone in…

We had a reactor leak here now. Give us a few minutes to lock it down. Large leak, very dangerous. A famous Han Solo line from Star Wars. You can read the whole thing here. So what is going on with the reactors on Japan? As you would expect the news is that the situation…

Much to my surprise, I just learned that rooftop solar is much more dangerous than Chernobyl. Here are the stats: Comparing deaths/TWh for all energy sources Coal – China                       278Coal – USA                         15Oil                                36  (36% of world energy)Natural Gas                         4  (21% of world energy)Biofuel/Biomass                    12Peat                               12Solar (rooftop)                     0.44 (less than 0.1% of world energy)Wind                                0.15…

It has been officially Spring since 7:21 p.m. EST. It was still winter yesterday when much to my surprise I discovered that the first flower had already defied the winter and poked its way out through the exhausted soil in my yard: Coco is equally as sick of the winter. Here’s how she looked earlier…

Glenn Reynolds muses: Somebody has to be the first intelligent species. If you believe in randomness, why can’t it randomly be us? The odds may be low, but low-probability events happen all the time, and it’s consistent with the available evidence and doesn’t require the invocation of fudge-factors — “cosmic roadblocks” — for which there’s no…

Notwithstanding my concerns about Yusuf Qaradawi, I think Barack Obama has finally gotten around to doing the right thing in Libya. Sure, it might very well be that he’s doing the right thing for entirely the wrong reasons, but since when has a little thing like irony stood in the way of foreign policy? As…