Mindblown: a blog about philosophy.

I second this post! (What are you doing here?) Me, I’m back after a long drive to avoid driving in the snowstorm that’s on the way. Hope everyone is enjoying the holiday.

From Ron Bailey, the best piece on health care I’ve seen all year: What would the results look like? It’s impossible to predict all the specifics, but here’s one partial vision of what markets might bring us. The typical American might purchase high-deductible insurance policies that cover expensive treatments for chronic diseases such as heart…

Cross Posted at Power and Control

There has been a discussion in the comment section of Watts Up With That about the use of tow vs toe in the phrase “Toe the line”. It means not exceeding bounds or limits. A commenter there said: Aaagh! I can’t stand it any longer! The phrase is “toeing the line” i.e. “not stepping over…

Turn Off The Computer. Spend time with your family. And A Merry Christmas to all. From all of us at CV.

I have zero time right now, but regular readers might enjoy this post from David Swindle, “Conservatives Need to Reconsider War on Drugs.” HT: Michael van der Galien

Blogging from me will be sparse in the next few days, as I will be doing the usual Christmas stuff. Frantic time, but I will try to check in when I can. Kill the bill! Ho Ho Ho!

Tom Ligon will be on the Space Show at 9 PM CDT, 22 December 2009. That is this evening. The Maker willing and if the technical details work out I will be joining him. You can listen live at the link. Cross Posted at Power and Control

As if any further proof was needed that global warming hysteria was a pretext to invade people’s lives and tell them what to do, a “study” — by so-called “specialists in sustainable living” — advances the claim that dogs are worse for the environment than SUVs: PARIS (AFP) – Man’s best friend could be one…

I couldn’t agree more with what Gene Healy says here: In a party-line vote at 1:17 a.m. yesterday, Senate Democrats cleared a key procedural obstacle to a federal takeover of health care. With Saturday’s buyoff of Sen. Ben Nelson, D-Neb., a pre-Christmas vote now looks likely. But Obamacare’s far from a done deal. There are…

According to Future Pundit (who Glenn Reynolds linked), the latest research shows that “dogs rule”: New research from the University of Missouri has found that people who walk dogs are more consistent about regular exercise and show more improvement in fitness than people who walk with a human companion. In a 12-week study of 54…

Not really old history just forgotten according to history Professor David Kaiser. How did he get people on his side? He did it by promising jobs to the jobless, money to the money-less, and rewards for the military-industrial complex. He did it by indoctrinating the children, advocating gun control, health care for all, better wages,…

I just had an experience which illustrates the folly of thinking that if a quote can’t be found online, it doesn’t exist. Looking an a 1917 road map last week, my eyes were drawn to quote from Rear Admiral W.W. Kimball. Above the picture of Uncle Sam, here’s the quote from W.W. Kimball: “A military…

It looks like health care “reform” will pass. Nick Gillespie asks: How Many Americans Will Choose to be Uninsured Even if Insurance is Mandatory? This problem is MUCH worse than it seems at first glance. Since there’s no PEC (pre-existing condition) denial anymore, you aren’t buying insurance, you’re buying the right to exchange your medical…

What do you do when the keys on your keyboard wear out? I have been using a Logitech model EX-110 wireless keyboard for two and a half years, and I have gradually worn off the letters on the more frequently used keys, to wit, the letters A, S, D, H, L, and C. (The carrots…

Riveting Rousseauian warporn, set in a gorgeous hi-def Azerothian CGI landscape, ironically itself a dazzling gem of the technological civilization it decries.

Reading today that “there’ll be nowhere to run from the new world government” which will use “climate change” as a pretext reminded me of a prediction repeatedly made by William S. Burroughs, as immortalized in 1989 in a marvelous film clip from “Drugstore Cowboy”. Unfortunately, embedding has been disabled, so you’ll have to click on…

Who owns what professors teach? Can knowledge in the sense of knowing what the truth is about a particular subject really said to be someone’s property? Greg Mankiw links a fascinating discussion of the online sale and distribution of notes taken in class: The basic legal question of whether a professor or university has any…

Despite a lot of wishful thinking on the right, it appears that the health care boondoggle will pass this week. Reid and company managed to literally buy off the sole remaining holdout (Nelson) with an abortion compromise measure. John McCain says the Republicans will not be able to stop the bill, although he says Bernie…

It looks like Al Gore is not the only one involved in making big money on CO2 trading. The Head of The IPCC, Dr Rajendra Pachauri, is in on it as well. Although Dr Pachauri is often presented as a scientist (he was even once described by the BBC as “the world’s top climate scientist”),…