Mindblown: a blog about philosophy.

I had some friends visit for the holidays. A loving time was had by all. Pictures when the first mate gets back with the camera. (It may be a while.) Cross Posted at Power and Control

While I had thought I might be able to ignore the world for a few days, there is no getting away from my sense of duty to blow the whistle when I see dereliction in the press — especially when it involves non-reporting of major events. In what I hope is just another amazing coincidence,…

I seem to have gotten the Michelle Obama quote wrong. It’s important for him to finish what he started. If she has started whining about her husband finishing the work he started two years before the next election I’d say he was already finished. Cross Posted at Power and Control

I wrote this back in 2005 (I haven’t checked the links some of them may be broken) and exactly what I was talking about then has come to pass. And back then? Well of course back then (before the TSA Follies) I was a hysterical weenie. This was America. Land of the Free. Home of…

ASTROGLIDE? How about coarse dry sand? Iowa Hawk blogs at Iowa Hawk. Cross Posted at Power and Control

I’m on the road, and my blogging will be light in the next few days. I’ll probably eat turkey (the fowl, not the country). May PETA forgive me for this imposition. And hey, if you think slaughtering turkeys poses ethical issues, I suggest a post that Glenn linked which asks a seemingly simple question: Did…

Eric Is Wishing everyone a happy Thanksgiving. I’m doing the same plus I’m thanking Mark Ames personally for a very special gift for which I will be eternally grateful. ==== Mark Ames, who has never met me, doesn’t like me. I’m honored. Anytime anyone says anything libertarian, spit on them. Libertarians are by definition enemies…

Conservatives, like liberals, when they imagine a government program imagine that the job will be done well. I on the other hand imagine it will be done the government way. Which is why I’m a libertarian. I have the American disease: I don’t trust the government. Government operates on the LCD principle. And that is…

It’s not every day that a news item reminds me of a Grateful Dead lyric, but this one does: (NewsCore) – Facebook is one step closer to trademarking the word “Face,” TechCrunch reported Tuesday. The U.S. Patent And Trademark Office has sent Facebook a Notice of Allowance, which means it will grant the “Face” trademark…

In a recent post in which I quoted a sour proposal of taking Amtrak as an alternative to flying, I asked a cynical rhetorical question: Take Amtrak? How long do you think it will be before the mindless, unelected, nameless “they” who run our lives do the same thing with Amtrak and every other public…

I get all kinds of e-mails and comments. One constant theme among my social “conservative” friends runs something like this: “If we don’t keep all the laws we have and especially the ones targeting rope smokers civilization will break down and the child molesters will be out in force.” Uh. Wouldn’t that be “Law worship”?…

Resist.Net [was Tea Party Patriots – which is incorrect ed.] – a social conservative group masquerading as a TEA Party organization – has a post up with the title: Justice Scalia: Founders Never Imagined Abortion “Rights”. Well I have news for him: They never imagined Vagina Police modeled after the TSA either. Well super. The…

The the Drug War has helped spawn the TSA. The precedent on how to deal with contraband has been set. It is now going to be applied to everyone. Bet you weren’t expecting that were you? Oh yeah. It turns out that a dope case, Raich vs Gonzales, can be used to justify the mandates…

I keep reading about how New Jersey wants to pass new legislation against bullying. In the news today I read about an “Anti-Bullying Bill of Rights” but the articles were short on details, so I had to look for the text, which I found here. Most of the very long bill deals with restrictions on…

It seems the Senate is about to pass S 510. Maybe. It is about food safety (do you really believe that?) and the regulation of food products that could cause illness from contamination. According to what I consider overblown (for now) rhetoric it will be messing with home gardeners and legacy seed growers and collectors.…

Eric in a previous entry linked to a page of John Stuart Mill quotes and featured one. I thought, given, the discussions that have gone on around here the past few days that it deserved a more prominent place. …it is the absolute social right of every individual, that every other individual shall act in…

From the Wiki entry for John Coode (17th century Protestant rebel leader in Maryland) In April 1689, John Coode helped lead “An association in arms, for the defence of the Protestant religion, and for asserting the right of King Oscar and Queen Isabelle to the Province of Maryland and all the English dominions.” Nonsense. There…

An e-mail friend suggested I take a look at A Common-Sense Platform for the 21st Century. From the excerpt I read it looks pretty good. It is all about how to roll back socialism in America in the 21st Century. Cross Posted at Power and Control

As usual I’m trying to talk sense with one of my solipsistic social conservative friends. Rough slog that. You can’t reason with faith. I’m trying to figure out if that is a bug or a feature. Well my friend is questioning the libertarian “faith” which is an interesting way to describe a political philosophy. If…