Mindblown: a blog about philosophy.

Roland Burris is not a crook and in so far as we know neither is Mr. Obama. Let me revise that remark. It looks like Burris may be a crook from Crook County. That would be Chicago for you folks not from the area. CHICAGO – Sen. Roland Burris promised to “personally do something” for…

All I can say is that I have done my part. My family includes four children. Yes. It has come with a great economic cost. But what about the future all you hedonists? What kind of world do you want to live in? H/T ravingdave at Talk Polywell Cross Posted at Power and Control

Just what we need — another Czar! This time, we’re getting an Internet Czar. Adds Glenn Reynolds, Several readers point out that, once again, Obama is putting power into the hands of an appointed official who is not subject to Senate confirmation. The reason “Czars” (whether reigning on the Internet or elsewhere) are not subject…

Yesterday I visited the White Chapel Cemetery in Troy, Michigan, where I watched a brand new documentary film about the little-known Polar Bear Expedition (also known as the North Russia Campaign), in which 5500 American soldiers battled Soviet Bolshevik troops through a long arctic winter just after World War I. Many of the veterans of…

You ought to watch an interesting video of oil/economic experts James Hamilton and Daniel Yergin giving testimony before Congress. Their testimony begins about 11 minutes into the video. Note at the beginning though where Congress Critter Carolyn B. Maloney (D-NY) says she wants to avoid drilling new oil supplies. A good text overview can be…

One of the unending annoyances of life on the Internet consists of those forwarded emails making fantastic but false claims, often (although by no means always) politically motivated. I don’t know why anyone would think that making things up and emailing them to millions of people would be of long-term benefit to a favorite cause,…

I can’t believe it’s Memorial Day already. Things are pretty quiet in my neighborhood, but I imagine it will be pretty lively later with student partying. However, as Glenn Reynolds reminds, today is “not all about picnics and beer.” What it is (as many of us tend to forget), is “a day of remembrance for…

We live in a world that is sometimes tough to explain. On the one hand, the U.S. military under Barack Obama discharges gay Arab linguists for being gay, despite the fact that their language skills are much needed. But even though gay Arab linguists are forbidden, in a story headlined “U.S. defense chief lauds soldier…

You can read a story that explains the picture at Dallas-Fort Worth NBC. Cross Posted at Power and Control

Pravda has a very strange view of the American economy. For the newspaper of record of a formerly communist country. Or maybe they have learned their lesson. It must be said, that like the breaking of a great dam, the American decent into Marxism is happening with breath taking speed, against the back drop of…

Doug Giles reviews a book Speaker Pelosi should read. Giles explains why Pelosi needs it. That’s why parents and grandparents who loathe what the media and various institutions are trying to do to our boys need Miniter’s new book more than Pelosi needs Jesus and a straight jacket. Read the whole review. It has a…

History shows that great changes (I mean “great” in the sense of huge or tumultuous, not necessarily good) are almost invariably accompanied by great changes in political rhetoric. Barack Obama not only wants to be remembered as a man who brought great change to America, he is well on his way to having done that.…

Evidently Mr. Obama can’t get gun regulation/confiscation through the Congress in the normal manner so he is trying an end run by getting the Senate to pass a treaty. You can read more about it at this Department of State site. Here is just one provision: Technical Assistance and Training. Parties agree to cooperate to…

When political opposites like Barack Obama and Eric S. Raymond agree on something, that gets my attention. Here’s Barack Obama in a CSPAN interview reported by Drudge today: …we are out of money now. We are operating in deep deficits, not caused by any decisions we’ve made on health care so far. This is a…

Are we becoming like Europe? Victor Davis Hanson argues that we are — and in more ways than one. In particular, he says that Europe has become a place of institutionalized cynicism: The natural human response to forced multiculturalism, socialism, and equality of result is cynicism. One senses that in Europe the public persona is…

Last night I learned that (in what seems to be an increasingly common practice), another important news story has been taken down from YouTube. Explanation? This video is no longer available due to a copyright claim by Georgia Television Co. d/b/a WSB-TV . While I haven’t seen the story because I can’t, it apparently takes…

Sometimes I wonder whether “getting the government out of our bedrooms” (supposedly accomplished by Lawrence v. Texas) wasn’t just a ruse so people could imagine they were more free. Yeah, I know that women are free to destroy their fetuses too. Getting the government out of wombs is also marketed as another ultimate form of…

While there’s plenty of news, there’s nothing I feel terribly compelled to write about today. Besides, no one likes to deal with news stories on Fridays, which is why things that are being swept under the rug tend to hit the press on Friday. On Fridays, that initial feeling of “wanting to write” can very…

EMC2 has just been awarded (a solicitation actually but sure to go through) a contract for a WB-8 and WB-8.1 device under the America recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009. I reported on the prospects for this in mid April in my post Polywell Gets In On The Act. Here is some of the text…

It seems that the Senate is finally holding the line on spending. There will be no money for a GITMO shutdown. WASHINGTON (AP) – In a major rebuke to President Barack Obama, the Senate voted overwhelmingly on Wednesday to block the transfer of Guantanamo detainees to the United States and denied the administration the millions…