Mindblown: a blog about philosophy.

Rumors that the Iranian elections had crooked election results in 150 or more Iranian cities is totally false. Nothing of the sort happened. According to Iranian government sources. Quoted by Press TV, Abbas Ali Kadkhodaei, the spokesman for the authoritative Guardian Council — a 12-member panel of clerics charged with certifying the vote — denied…

In an incident which Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice called “embarrassing” last year, bumbling bureaucrats (if that isn’t too much of a redundancy) placed the elderly and venerated South African leader Nelson Mandela on the infamous “terrorist watch list”: WASHINGTON — Nobel Peace Prize winner and international symbol of freedom Nelson Mandela is flagged on…

You don’t get that much around here. But when he does something right he should be encouraged. This is from the 16th of June so I’m a little late. WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The U.S. State Department said on Tuesday it had contacted the social networking service Twitter to urge it to delay a planned upgrade…

Of course, I’m not a father, nor do I have one, as my dad died decades ago. But I’m sure there are plenty of readers who are dads or are married to one, so I found something which might be of interest. Dr. Helen reflects on a Spectator article about today’s neutered dads, and offers…

The story of the Revolution is being written by the women. I don’t know where this uprising is leading. I do know some police units are wavering. That commander talking about his family was not alone. There were other policemen complaining about the unruly Basijis. Some security forces just stood and watched. “All together, all…

I loved this typewriter sculpture, which I thought I’d share. Nothing like new uses for old things.

Woman Shot By Iranian Regime Gateway Pundit has the story. Gateway also has this picture gleaned from Facebook. The next few days will tell the story. Will there be enough blood in the streets to end the demonstrations? Or have things already gone beyond control? Update: 21 June 2009, 0152z The woman who died was…

Barack Obama finally weighs in on the Iranian protests with these weightless words: “The world is watching.” And apparently watching is all the world is going to do, if Obama has anything to say about it. “The last thing that I want to do is to have the United States be a foil for those…

A few days ago, M. Simon wrote a post (“Brain Dead Republican Enhances Party Image“) that just stuck in my craw. A Republican congressman in Illinois (he’s co-blogger TallDave’s rep) has sponsored a new anti-marijuana bill to toughen penalties for with penalties of up to 25 years in prison for first-time offenses involving sales of…

Scientists are all the time trying to figure out how the world works (it is their job after all). So they think about things that interest them and imagine how they work. Then they develop a rule, called a hypothesis, to match their imaginings. Then they test the rule against the real world. Some times…

It seems that the Obama Government is loosing the support of its own members. WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The Obama administration is unfair to the ethanol industry with its proposals on greenhouse gas reduction, the House Agriculture Committee chairman said on Wednesday, and he will not support any climate-change bills. “You’re going to kill off the…

Rumor has it that the IRGC will be called into to crush the Iranian protests sooner rather than later. While many see hope for revolutionary change, I’m skeptical any internal movement will displace the mullahs. It’s easy to forget the Soviet Union fell only because their leadership lacked the will to send in the tanks…

This interesting essay over at HotAir by Doctor Zero looks at various scenarios under which Iran might wreak havoc as a nuclear power, including this very real problem: The Nuclear Umbrella: The most logical, and essentially guaranteed, result of a rogue regime achieving nuclear capability is the immediate foreclosure of the Saddam Hussein option. The…

The below video came from Raye Man Kojast? Where Is My Vote? There is a lot of excellent material there in English, French, and Farsi. Updated frequently. I SUPPORT DEMOCRACY IN IRAN Just as Cross Posted at Power and Control

Three news items intrigued me, but as they didn’t inspire me enough to write three individual blog posts, I thought I’d do the lazy thing and dump them together in one. In New York, a man posed as his dead mother in order to collect her government benefits. He did a pretty good job of…

The joke that is the ITER Fusion Project in France just got a lot funnier today. The EC said it welcomed the decision by the parties to adopt a “phased approach to the completion of ITER construction as a working basis for development of the project baseline.” In particular the EC said it welcomed a…

Greetings CV readers, I’m honored and blessed to be contributing at Classical Values. You may have seen my work at Dean’s World, perhaps via the odd Instalanche. I’ve always loved the idea of a blog based on the values of classical civilization (partly as a result of everything Victor Davis Hanson has written on the…

The BBC reports that tokamak fusion may be 100 years off. The Iter project was set up three years ago to build an experimental nuclear fusion reactor in the south of France. But construction costs alone have more than doubled and some scientists now argue that the development of fusion as a commercial power source…

I am pleased to announce that a new blogger will be contributing here at Classical Values: Dave Price, best known to commenters as “Tall Dave.” Dave is a regular blogger at Dean’s World, a good friend of M. Simon, and his philosophy is quite compatible with that of this blog, so I’m honored to have…

I don’t know how many readers have seen this picture, but it’s been making the rounds as an email attachment: I’ve gotten it twice now, both times in a Power Point file with this cute accompanying story: MY FAMILY PHOTO On the left is my wife, in the middle is my mother-in-law, beside her is…