Mindblown: a blog about philosophy.

Via Sean’s link to Beautiful Atrocities, I learned that Muammar Gaddafi is not just in for it, he’s really really in for it: This should do it: Imelda Marcos tells Gaddafi to behave. That certainly should do it, and were I Gaddafi I would be absolutely terrified. Throwing a temper is one thing, but consider…

I was cut off in traffic earlier by a frustrated driver of a car displaying bumperstickers which struck me as contradictory in nature: One was “WAR IS NOT THE ANSWER!” The other was one of the usual ubiquitous Obama for President stickers (the absence of which in this town is more remarkable than the presence).…

Jessie Jackson Jr has come up with a really good idea for breaking the government monopoly on schools. Give every kid a laptop. Jesse Jackson Jr. wants the Constitution changed so that every kid has the right to an ipod and laptop. I think his method is wrong but the idea is very good. At…

Eric’s post, Just another junkie? Or a mother’s beloved son?, got me to thinking about the premise of the drug war. Here it is: The premise of the Drug War is that by inflicting enough pain you can get people to stop taking unauthorized pain relief medications.

This is some really weird news. Who thinks Obama needs a cabinet czar? If you can believe the news reports – Obama. The larger mission is to make the dealings between the Cabinet and the White House more functional, several senior officials said. Daley, a former commerce secretary himself, has been calling agency heads for…

The gloomy freezing rain that we’re having right now in Ann Arbor pierces me to the bone, and makes me feel like feeling sorry for myself. On days like this, I am reminded of a Charles Addams cartoon showing my favorite all American family at the window seat looking out at an awful rainstorm, while…

Because drugs are illegal, society tends to look at drug users (especially addicts) as bad people. This is reflected in callused attitudes by police, hospitals, courts, employers, bureaucrats, family members — in short, almost anyone likely to have a position of power who might come in contact with the addict. Thus, when an addict runs…

Ross Douthat has a column up about Rethinking The Sexual Revolution. There is only one problem with his thesis. There was no Sexual Revolution. We did have loose women and Dionysian Parties. But Revolution? I don’t think so. The Sexual Revolution of the 1920s was about Demographics. The Sexual Revolution of the 1960s was about…

Jonathan Rauch has post I consider a must-read, titled “Caring for Your Introvert — The habits and needs of a little-understood group.” I admire his courage for admitting to his introversion. (If I am an introvert, I would never admit it! Things like that are best kept it in the closet!) Excerpt: My name is…

I’d be willing to bet that very few readers knew that if you Google the phrase “syphilitic camel” the second hit you get is Glenn’s post from this morning: I would vote for a syphilitic camel over Barack Obama in 2012, so therefore I would even vote for Huckabee or Gingrich. But I might try…

A while back Eric wrote a bit on divorce with the theme that state involvement with personal matters is a bad idea. I had a few comments on the subject but nothing worth a blog post. I now have something I’d like to say. And it came about because Instapundit linked to this video about…

As a response to the civil war in Libya, President Obama is reportedly asking the Saudis to help the rebels. America has asked Saudi Arabia to supply weapons to Libyan rebels in Benghazi fighting the Gaddafi regime. The move is seen as a bid to avoid direct U.S. military involvement in the country’s troubles. So…

Hollywood is betting that Sarah Palin will be a hot issue in 2012. Maybe even in the running for President. …look at this newly greenlit Johnny Knoxville-starring laffer about a fun-loving, rowdy, red-blooded man whose wife is elected President. This is a movie that will film in 2011 and hit theaters in the summer of…

Via Radley Balko, I learned that if certain legislators were to have their way, I might have committed a criminal offense earlier merely by photographing farm animals for what I thought was just a cute birthday post. No really. “Photographing cows or other farm scenery could land you in jail under Senate bill” It seems…

There’s nothing like a day off from blogging, which this almost was. However, it has come to my attention that today is Sean Kinsell‘s birthday — an event which this blog and Coco have celebrated before. Sean is not only a longtime favorite of this blog, but he is a longtime favorite of Coco, and…

A couple of news items on the drug war have caught my interest today. One of them from the Market Watch discusses how the current economic situation has made states rethink how they handle Drug Prohibition. A growing number of states are renouncing some of the long prison sentences that have been a hallmark of…

While I hadn’t weighed in on the subject as I perhaps should have, Michelle Malkin’s post about Eric Holder’s now-infamous “my people” remark inspired me to get off my duff: My fellow Americans, who are “your people”? I ask because U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder, who is black, used the phrase “my people” in congressional…

Last night my bullshit detector was set off by the completely unverifiable nature of a study M. Simon linked.  It was a blog post by an unnamed author at an anonymous blog, quoting from an unlinked “study” by an unnamed person — the sort of thing that strikes me as fiendishly calculated to frustrate people…

Evidence of Islamic terrorism is difficult to find. Especially if your mission is to avoid finding it. And yet when things went the other way (Giffords in Arizona for instance) it took a long time for the White House to chime in. So maybe that is the rule for judging actual White House opinion. If…