Mindblown: a blog about philosophy.

I tell you we must die. I’m just kidding. Death is optional. Sanity is optional. Hell, everything is optional. Tha’ts the real secret. Coincidentally, it’s happy hour. Always is. Somewhere. Somewhere. You know what is incredibly unenjoyable? A radio friendly version of a rap album. Give me parental warnings for [G]od’s sake! How else am…

I realize that the annual White House Correspondents’ Dinner is supposed to be a sort of no-holds-barred roast, but isn’t there a tradition that the insults are at least supposed to be funny? I admit, my sense of humor has not been up to snuff lately, but still, I’m having trouble seeing the humor in…

I was reading the reviews at Amazon and came across one about the book The Wisdom of Whores: Bureaucrats, Brothels, and the Business of AIDS by Elizabeth Pisani that I found rather interesting. Pisani has no patience for distraction, a major one being that AIDS is a gender / development / poverty issue. Pisani shows…

This will have a lot of ramifications if Wickard vs. Filburn is overturned. Justice Thomas in his dissent in Raich took the stance that Wickard was wrongly decided. So there is one Justice on board. The States only need four more. Here is my favorite part of Thomas’ Raich dissent. Monson and Raich neither buy…

On Mothers Day, I remember and miss my mother. That’s all I can do, for she died nearly ten years ago. So, my simple advice to those with moms who are living is to celebrate Mothers Day. Go do something nice for her!

In yesterday’s post (in which I maintained that “conservatism can be effectively communicated in a Moveon-esque, 20-second sound clip“), I cited the example of Ronald Reagan’s “Government is not the solution to our problem. Government is the problem.” I forgot about a complicating factor, and that is the recent GOP movement (criticized here by Rush…

As I was reading the comments to some blog posts around the net I came across one that suggested a read of Ludwig Von Mises’ book The Anti-Capitalistic Mentality. So I looked at the reviews and found an interesting one. This book explains the basis for the American (and Western) fascination with non-capitalism despite an…

It seems there is a mismatch between jobs and workers that is keeping as many as 3 million people unemployed. (it could be a lot less – but still) Are American employers too picky? Are they rejecting reasonable candidates at the same time they claim to have lots of openings they would like to fill?…

Jeremy Marks (a very articulate, conservative law student) identifies what he sees as the real problem for conservatives: Conservatism’s real quandary lies in the fact that it cannot be effectively communicated in a Moveon-esque, 20-second sound clip — a medium that my Pavlovian generation flocks to without a critical thought. Liberalism is an ideology of…

I wonder whether Linda Sanchez has considered that the bill she proposes (which Glenn Reynolds linked here and here) — to Imprison Hostile Bloggers — would make felons out of some leading left wing bloggers. The text of the bill (H.R. 1966) says this: (a) Whoever transmits in interstate or foreign commerce any communication, with…

In a piece titled “Attention Conservatives: Nice Guys Do Finish Last,” John Hawkins responds to Adam Graham’s argument that conservatives shouldn’t play dirty. I read Hawkins regularly, and I like his blog. Although I don’t consider myself especially nice, the point of this post is not to take sides in this dispute so much as…

Schizophrenics like to self medicate with tobacco – a LOT. Schizophrenia and Tobacco And they are among the heaviest of tobacco users. So maybe we need to call the tobacco tax a Schizophrenia Tax. If we can raise tobacco taxes high enough maybe there will come a day when only crazy people will pay taxes.…

I’ve been thinking Barack Obama would like very much to capture or kill Osama bin Laden, or (if that fails) at least have him declared officially dead. If he is successful in actually nailing bin Laden, it would be a game changer in more ways than one. This would not only appear to fulfill a…

In what appears to be another Patriot Act horror story, a 16 year old North Carolina boy was arrested by a team of agents, dragged from his home, and is being held incommicado for two months now: WRAL television reported yesterday that Ashton Lundeby, an Oxford, North Carolina teenager, was removed from his home by…

Clayton Cramer links a story that seems certain to go largely unreported, in which a college student shot and killed an armed home invader and scared another armed invader away — in the process preventing what would have been horrendous carnage: Bailey said he thought it was the end of his life and the lives…

Regular readers know I can’t stand Michael Savage, who I think is an opportunistic provocateur who devotes his time to giving conservatism a bad name. But I would unhesitatingly defend his First Amendment rights, and even though there is no First Amendment in England, the fact that Savage has been banned from entering the country…

The Obama Administration has another plan to screw poor people. He is working with Congress to drive the poorest people out of the used car market. The plan is called Cash For Clunkers. Committee members emerged from the meeting Tuesday claiming a modest victory. They said they agreed to embrace a “cash for clunkers” plan…

Via Glenn Reynolds, I learned that F. A. Hayek would be 110 today. (I celebrated by running three miles.) As Glenn also pointed out by way of irony, Barack Obama is helping Hayek in book sales. Irony or not, I think it’s only fair that the Obama administration should help sell Hayek’s books, for they…

One of my concerns over the years has been with the way freedom of religion and the Establishment Clause are being used to whittle away free speech. It started with the court’s banning the expression of religious views in schools (lest the government be seen as endorsing religion). But almost as if there’s a giant…

While Hollywood celebrities are not this blog’s shtick, I love old movies, and I dearly love the TCM channel. (It’s the only TV channel I like, and if it didn’t exist, I’d dump cable.) As it happens, yesterday was the 77th birthday of Robert Osborne, host of TCM Classics. The guy is always so crammed…