Mindblown: a blog about philosophy.

Details here. Tom announced his presence here: I’ll be giving one of the opening talks at the Balticon Science Fiction Convention this Friday, May 28, at 9 PM, near Baltimore, MD. This will be an updated version of the talk I’ve given before. I won’t have any earth-shattering news, but I will have my recently-overhauled…

Congressman Tom Price has a piece about HR 5175, the so-called DISCLOSE Act. This is the Democrats’ retaliation for the Citizens United case, which ruled that there is still a First Amendment right to produce political films and held McCain-Feingold unconstitutional. Apparently, though, they want to get tough on bloggers and make them register and…

In the Drug War front, the situation in Mexico may have become completely uncontrollable, but not to worry! Our drug enforcement agents are continuing to launch raids on doctors in this country and charge them with overprescribing pain meds. The legal system being the way it is, a charge of overprescribing now translates into racketeering,…

In a post about the police raid in which a 7 year old girl was accidentally shot by an officer, I missed a horrifying detail which makes the incident more egregious. The SWAT team fired a flashbang grenade into the room in which the girl was sleeping. As if that wasn’t bad enough, the building…

Why do beautiful women get cheated on so much? “Beautiful women are prey to men who want to use their beauty to elevate their own status. Because of their beauty they’re used to being adored, and they are flattered by guys who go completely goo goo for them,” explains relationship expert, Dr. Gilda Carle, who…

Here’s an incident epitomizing the stubborn bureaucratic recalcitrance which has the most of the country in a deathlock and which fuels the Tea Party Movement. A notorious (and famously incompetent) Philadelphia principal who presided over the racist attacks on Chinese students — and who was found not even to be properly credentialed to be a…

Nothing like getting a good morning scolding — especially from an operating system. All I did was enter a very simple command sudo fdisk -l Which is only supposed to read the fdisk output (showing the layout of the hard drive). Anyway, because poor little Eric wasn’t logged in as root (even though I am…

Back from a well-deserved vacation, Glenn Reynolds said this: It’s amazing, though, how much more relaxed I am when I’m not being exposed to the latest outrage on the Internet . . . . That made me feel less crazy. Sometimes it feels like being online means round-the-clock exposure to constant “latest outrages.” And there…

Ed Driscoll notes that J. Neil Schulman’s Alongside Night is available for free download. “Just look at TV news or read a newspaper,” Schulman said. “Plot point after plot point is identical. In my 1979 novel I have General Motors go bankrupt — General Motors then files for bankruptcy. I have Europe issue a common…

There is a Drug War going on in Ciudad Juarez, Mexico. As you might expect, it is not going well. CIUDAD JUAREZ, Mexico– Authorities battling drug traffickers in this violent border city have begun to suspect that their efforts to impede the flow of drugs into the U.S. has fostered demand–and turf wars–on their own…

In a comment to an earlier post, commenter Gringo said, I like hearing your computer tales. Talk about asking for it. If it’s tales you want, it’s tales you’ll get! So onto the latest tales. I have now installed and tried out innumerable Linux distributions in various old computers, and thanks to the tricky but…

More video: Glenn Beck Part 2 Glenn Beck Part 3 Glenn Beck Part 4 Books mentioned: George Washington’s Sacred Fire New Deal or Raw Deal?: How FDR’s Economic Legacy Has Damaged America H/T Jccarlton at Talk Polywell Cross Posted at Power and Control

Last night I watched a movie about Rwandan genocide that made me sick. Especially the scene showing hapless UN soldiers who had been ordered to withdraw being confronted by the doomed Tutsis they refused to protect. The Tutsis were already surrounded by gleeful Hutus waving machetes while gloating in anticipation. One Tutsi leader begged a…

H/T Vanderleun at American Digest Cross Posted at Power and Control

Interviewer: But under your philosophy, it would be OK for Dr. King not to be served at the counter at Woolworths? Paul: I would not go to that Woolworths, and I would stand up in my community and say that it is abhorrent, um, but, the hard part–and this is the hard part about believing…

Looks like it’s “I TOLD YOU SO” time. In a post not long ago, I noted that gay activist busybodies and anti-gay busybodies both share a similar mindset where it comes to privacy in matters of human sexual freedom. They don’t like it: There are gay activist busybodies who don’t believe in leaving people alone,…

House Bill H.R. 5143 is touted as a review of Criminal Justice in America. According to the summary its purpose is: National Criminal Justice Commission Act of 2010 – Establishes the National Criminal Justice Commission. Directs the Commission to: (1) review all areas of the criminal justice system, including federal, state, local, and tribal governments’…

Has Tom Friedman heard? There’s always been a fundamental error in the notion of “growing” a “green economy” — you don’t create efficiencies by purposely introducing inefficiencies, you destroy them, reducing productivity and by extension GDP. Contra Friedman’s longstanding premise that “green technology” is some sort of burgeoning new growth sector, these programs are virtually…

Remember the computer I bought at the salvage yard for ten bucks? I’m on it right now, running Puppy Linux on the 128 Megabyte Compact Flash card, which I plugged into one of these: The computer’s BIOS is tricked into believing that the flash card is a primary Hitachi hard drive. Once again, the simplicity…

Watts Up With That reports on a primary race in Oregon. Art Robinson ran in the GOP Primary to represent the Oregon in 4th Congressional District. Wise Republican voters selected Dr. Art Robinson to represent them in the November 2010 Congressional race against Democrat Peter DeFazio. I saw an online video by Art Robinson at…