Mindblown: a blog about philosophy.

Via Katherine Mangu-Ward, I read this fun fact: Regional alcohol prohibition begat national income taxes which begat national prohibition It’s all quite well documented at Smithsonian magazine: The ASL’s [Anti Saloon League’s] state-by-state campaign was reasonably effective, particularly in the South. But in 1913, two events led the organization to adopt a new strategy. First,…

Here’s something that strikes me as being of interest to very few readers, but I never know…. In my ongoing struggle to make an old clunker laptop (a Dell C600 with an 850MHz CPU) into a modern, fast-running Internet machine, I have been experimenting with different Linux distributions. As I mentioned in an earlier post,…

Yesterday’s post about society’s denial of mental illness drew some very thoughtful comments which reflect the apples-versus-oranges, libertarian-versus-communitarian nature of this debate. I’m not even sure it’s a debate, as people have such widely diverging views which come from different directions. Are these people — those belonging to dysfunctional, unwashed and hallucinatory classes — suffering…

I note that Barnes and Nobel is offering the Nook e-Reader. I wonder if it is safe for children? I wonder what they were thinking? I can just hear the conversations: “Not tonight dear, but the Nook e is fully charged.” Amazon sells them if you have to have a look: Barnes and Noble NOOK…

When I read this story I suspected there was more to it than was being reported: (04-21) 18:28 PDT Bellingham, Wash. (AP) — Police said a Cost Cutter store employee was punched in the mouth after he confronted a customer about his body odor. Police spokesman Mark Young told The Bellingham Herald that police went…

As I sit here playing with my wirelessly-networked Linux laptop and perusing the other nineteen networks that are within range of my wireless card, a thought occurred to me. One of the networks is unsecured, which means I could easily get on it. Not that I want to use someone else’s bandwidth, mind you, but…

Over the years, I’ve had fun ridiculing nonsensical phrases that get bandied about by the left, such as “POVERTY IS VIOLENCE.” But it never occurred to me that anyone would attempt to link skepticism to violence until I saw this editorial by Rush Limbaugh: The latest liberal meme is to equate skepticism of the Obama…

I can’t believe it’s been over a year since I wrote a post about the refusal of the LA Times to release a much-sought video tape which showed Barack Obama at a dinner honoring the notorious former PLO spokesman Rashid Khalidi. At the time I speculated that it was probably because Ayers was there —…

Arizona has become a Birther State. Not full fledged so far. Only the Arizona House has passed the bill. Even by the measure of Arizona’s long history of conservatism, the past week has been extraordinary. In the past six days, the legislature has passed the nation’s strictest anti-illegal immigration bill, a law permitting concealed weapons,…

Via Ann Althouse, a writer who takes himself far too seriously lays viciously into her, then indicts bloggers in general: We who labor at turning dead trees into public knowledge feel some obligation to make the sacrifice of the atmosphere-cleansing, oxygen-producing creatures worthwhile. It’s possible that the theoretical infinity of cyberspace encourages throwing whatever is…

I know I shouldn’t watch TV, but in the wee hours of the morning the other night, I woke up, went downstairs and turned on the damned thing in the hope of inducing drowsiness. As I flipped through the channels, my attention was drawn to one of those sensationalistic animal attack programs, this one being…

Politics is a real drag, and I hate it. But last night I dragged myself to a Tea Party meeting and fund raiser. I wasn’t in the greatest mood, and I have a long history of being immensely turned off by political meetings of any sort. Still, this weird sense of duty made me go…

Along with countless people, my email account with Verizon has been down for two days now. I have spent a lot of time on the phone in India talking with people who have absolutely no ability to do anything except tell me that I am talking to the wrong people. My problem is that I…

I love buffoonery, and former ACORN boss Bertha “bowel movement” Lewis wins the prize for the most bombastic hyperbolic buffoonery imaginable: Any of these groups that says, “I’m young, I’m Democratic, and I’m a socialist,” is okay with me. You know that’s no light thing to do — to actually say, I’m a socialist. You’ve…

I’m not sure exactly what to do with this one, but I’ve had it staring me in the face, and I hate the feeling that if I don’t write about it I might be censoring myself. Or worse, censoring the censoring of the latest love that dare not speak its name — in the name…

And now for something I know will out-thrill all my thrilling blog posts; a update about my ongoing adventure in Jack Dempsey cichlid husbandry. (Or maybe that should be parentage? I’d hate to pollute the institution of marriage any further than it’s already been polluted!) Anyway, while I haven’t yet made a video of the…

Were I to use the word “conservative” to describe myself, I would be more comfortable to modify it with another descriptor, and while “libertarian conservative” immediately comes to mind, this report renews my enthusiasm for the term (and the book) “South Park conservative.” A radical Islamic website is warning the creators of “South Park” that…

Purchasing Magazine is ceasing publication. Reed Elsevier, parent company of Purchasing, announced today that it is closing Purchasing and the magazine’s website, purchasing.com, as well as most of its other U.S. publications, effective immediately. The closing is part of a broad divestiture that itself is part of a restructuring of the London-based Reed Elsevier. The…

I keep reading about the cross-dressing threat to our nation’s children, and I find myself wondering about the meaning of the term. I don’t think it’s inherently sexist language in the purely logical sense, but as applied, “cross dressing” almost exclusively means men dressing as women. Similarly, the word “transvestite” is almost never applied to…