Mindblown: a blog about philosophy.

The below video is a test firing of a surplus laser. Here is a picture of the laser: And the video of the laser firing: Fire the Laser! from famulus fusion on Vimeo. It is amazing what people are doing with industrial and government surplus these days. It is amazing what we can do with…

The Drug Task Forces that ran wild under the Clinton Administration were curtailed under Bush II but are set to be revived under Obama. Why? Well it will stimulate the economy. The stimulus bill includes plenty of green for those wearing blue. The compromise bill doles out more than $3.7 billion for police programs, much…

NASA is building a new man rated launch vehicle that is going back to the tried and tested methods of the Apollo Program. You can see more pictures and read the captions at Constellation Program Gallery. If you want to learn more about the Apollo Program this DVD from 2005 might help: Apollo 11: The…

Yes. The War On Gangs is over in the US. The murder rate in the USA has been declining since 1991. We know that a real war on drug gangs (Mexico) causes an increase in dug violence. Even the FBI agrees with that point (a real drug war increases violence). So in reality drugs have…

And why not? Europe is headed for the rocks. And it appears that there is nothing that can save it. The rocks are Eastern European debt. If mishandled by the world policy establishment, this debacle is big enough to shatter the fragile banking systems of Western Europe and set off round two of our financial…

I especially liked the Bo Diddley Beat about 4 1/2 minutes in. Cross Posted at Power and Control

Part 2 Part 3 Part 4 Part 5 I especially liked Part 5 where one engineer describes what it is like to commit other people’s lives to one of your designs. I had that feeling a lot working in aerospace on jet aircraft. I still get that feeling when a plane goes down. Was it…

I’m visiting here and there on the ‘net and find many conservatives shocked and awed by our new President. They believed it would take Obama six months to show his level of incompetence. But two weeks? Outside the realm of calculation. Only three Years 11 months and 6 days to go. He has exceeded his…

Yes. It is true. They are hooking up their electrical grids. AREVA’s Transmission and Distribution (T&D) division has signed a multi-million Euro contract to supply H400 High-Voltage Direct Current (HVDC) thyristor valves to interconnect the Chinese and Russian power grids. The contract, the first of its kind awarded to AREVA T&D in China, is signed…

While running through a predominantly gay neighborbood in Los Angeles yesterday, I saw a sign which struck me as so ridiculous that I did a doubletake, and returned to take a photo of it. What that means is that residents who leave their homes and return (whether to go to local stores or whatever) more…

Obama has a plan for herding his cattle (or should that be sheeple) into cities where they will be more amenable to Democrat machine politics. That’s why I’d like to see high speed rail where it can be constructed. That’s why I would like to invest in mass transit because potentially that’s energy efficient and…

Since there is so much Green Money coming out of Washington it looks like a lot of people want in on the act. There is a lot of wind in the upper Mid-West but not many power lines. So a company is proposing that the government get behind building some new power lines. ITC Holdings…

I’m now officially on the road, having stopped in LA to help an artist with a kiln problem. Being wIthout Internet access where I’m staying, I decided to check email at a local place called the Lyric Cafe, on Hyperion and Lyric. (Good coffee.) I’m just lucky as hell that M. Simon has been blogging…

Dave Price at Dean Esmay has done a post that I should have done. He is discussing Physicist Rick Nebel’s report on the latest Polywell Fusion experiments. Dean goes into the technical nitty gritty of the report (and has a link to where the discussion took place) and if that interests you by all means…

It looks like the Obama administration has found the perfect cure for our medical crisis and our Social Security crisis. Kill off old people. Republican Senators are questioning whether President Barack Obama’s stimulus bill contains the right mix of tax breaks and cash infusions to jump-start the economy. Tragically, no one from either party is…

Keeping an eye on the supply and demand of basic commodities can tell a lot about the direction the economy is headed in. Cross Posted at Power and Control

Lucky she didn’t try “bong head”. Although lighting it would probably have been more fun than torching the pot. Cross Posted at Power and Control

For those of you who haven’t been keeping up, Michael Phelps who won 14 Olympic Gold Medals in Swimming has also been caught smoking a bong. Graphic evidence has been provided. Naturally his sponsors are not happy. But the sponsor’s customers are unhappy that the sponsors are unhappy. As part of its damage control efforts…

It looks like the Obama administration has accidentally given the economy a boost. Due to the overwhelming increase in orders, it has become increasingly difficult to predict deliveries for all Rock River Arms’ products. Because of this, we are no longer quoting estimated delivery dates. We are continuing to increase production, build, and ship products…

Sgt. Mom, blogging under the pseudonym Celia Hayes, left this comment at Althouse about the Obama Administration. “I knew it was gonna be a train wreck, but I thought it would have pulled out of the station, first!” Sgt. Mom writes books. You should read some. H/T Instapundit Cross Posted at Power and Control