Mindblown: a blog about philosophy.

Novel headline eh? About what you would expect if you believed in law enforcement. Well as usual I mean what I say but in a different sense. Pot cartels are going broke. ARCATA, Calif. — Stiff competition from thousands of mom-and-pop marijuana farmers in the United States threatens the bottom line for powerful Mexican drug…

President ∅ has won the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize. I’m not going to name all the losers who have won that award. But I will name a few. Al Gore – for Global Warming. The Globe is cooling. Jimmy Carter for bringing Peace to the Israelis and Palistinians. The war never stopped. Yasser Arafat for…

Yes we have gas. Lots of gas. Lots of natural gas. Last October, just as the economy was tilting into crisis, a small oil and gas company in Houston quietly announced the discovery of a mammoth natural gas field in South Texas that at any other time might have garnered bigger headlines. Petrohawk Energy’s find,…

A dishwasher fill valve consists of a simple plastic body, to which are attached a solenoid and an inlet coupling, and a few plastic interior parts. Mine conked out recently, and here is what it looks like, in its disassembled state: Yes, I did clean it up and reassemble it, but the solenoid remained dead.…

Donate to help with breast cancer research. The Boobiethon page is work safe. The rest of them? You are on your own. My mother is a 40+ year breast cancer survivor and she approves of this solicitation. H/T Instapundit Cross Posted at Power and Control

I love Facebook. It’s the perfect medium for tracking down long-lost friends, getting in touch, and then reminiscing. Which is great. (Even though I wouldn’t say anything there that I wouldn’t say here in my blog) But as they luxuriate in the warmth and camaraderie of a technology that seems calculated to invite dredging up…

In what I think is a very ominous development, this administration is moving away from a longstanding tradition of defending the principle of free speech, and is instead supporting a UN resolution with “a number of disturbing elements.” It emphasizes that “the exercise of the right to freedom of expression carries with it special duties…

If we want to save the planet we will need to put it in a bank. If we want to invest the planet we will have to get an army of space aliens to surround it. Another possibility is setting up a series of artificial banks often referred to as dikes. If we can get…

My apologies for titling this post with a 1960s slogan, but the stuff I have been reading about makes me so angry that I thought a little vintage rhetoric was justified. Anyway, Glenn Reynolds is not kidding when he speaks of “THE CRIMINALIZATION OF EVERYONE AND EVERYTHING”: With the proliferation of criminal law, everyone is…

Speaking of a lack of virginity, the last thing I am interested in is David Letterman’s sex life. (No really. Do I have to explain why?) Just thought I’d point that out in case I’m accused of deliberately avoiding it. This is not to say that I’m in any way supportive of sexual harassment; even…

What do vinyl records, slow food, mechanical watches, cloth diapers (and the more primitivistic diaperless movement), as well as what I think is the latest example (linked by Glenn Reynolds yesterday) — running barefoot — have in common? The old way was better? Bring back lost innocence? Things that evoke a return to simpler, more…

One reason is that signs like this amuse me. Via Robert Bidinotto, who blogs here. UPDATE: Here are more signs that also amused me: But I might as well be honest and point out that while the above might look like conventional Tea Partiers, they are actually angry gay rights protestors in Beverly Hills, California.…

It appears that there will be no anti-plant food (CO2) bill from Congress in time for the anti-plant food summit in Copenhagen this December. Carol Browner, head of the EPA, says so. “Obviously, we’d like to be through the process, but that’s not going to happen,” Browner said. “I think we would all agree the…

While I have nothing against morality per se, sometimes an overabundance of morality can get in the way of analysis, and this is especially true in economic analysis. So, while I’d like to say that I think that the biggest problem with capitalism is socialism, these concepts are so dripping with morality that it’s tough…

Sometimes I get so sick of the Internet that I want to kill it. As a perfect example of my frustration, I have been plagued by Firefox slowdowns which have grown steadily worse since I was forced to largely stop using Internet Explorer. This started with sluggishness whenever I tried to type URLs in the…

I’m told Michael Moore has a new movie out that is anti-capitalist. And he charges people to see it. I’m having trouble wrapping my head around that. Cross Posted at Power and Control

That is what I have been told repeatedly — both by commenters I don’t know at all and by friends like M. Simon, who recently said, “Where I might have given Jennings a pass as a single as a parent I’m not comfortable with him.” Of course, I never said I was comfortable with him.…

The US Navy has just published a Justification and Award for EMC2’s Polywell Fusion Reactor experiment. The highlights: * The award is for $10 million * WB-8.0 report to be delivered 30 March 2010 * WB-8.1 report to be delivered 30 March 2012 The WB-8.1 effort is contingent on success with WB-8.0 experiments. What does…

While I can’t believe that anyone would take another movie by America-hating hypocrite Michael Moore seriously, apparently some people are. The film has been gushingly praised by Arianna Huffington, who wants President Obama to see it, and I find it typical of Moore’s intellectual perfidy that he starts the film out by resorting to “a…

Eric asks that in his recent post on Kevin Jennings in response to my post on Kevin Jennings (for sure the Google rankings are going up now). He says something to the effect of: “is it good to be demonizing Jennings because of one incident between a boy and an older man which on the…