Mindblown: a blog about philosophy.

So I’m Googling around type “Obama” into Google and the #2 item on the list with over 8 million references is “Obama jokes”. Well I got to get me some of those. My favorite so far is “Barack Obama is President of the United States”. I’m sure he will get funnier as time goes on.…

I’ve had no time to get online lately, but I loved the nostalgic nugget that Glenn linked earlier : So you have a former Weather Underground member who now is pro-military, throwing shoes at the anti-military Socialist Mayor, in a protest that would fall under the “community of sanctuary” protection if the protester still was…

Yes. When I first learned of this practice I was shocked. What kind of mother would do such a thing? Cannabinoids, whether plant-derived, synthetic or endogenous, have been shown to stimulate appetite in the adult organism. We have reported previously that cannabinoid receptors play a critical role during the early suckling period: Then comes a…

It seems as if we have a new kind of economic privilege in America. The Senate voted Tuesday to give a tax break to new car buyers, setting aside bipartisan concerns over the size of an economic stimulus bill with a price tag approaching $900 billion. The 71-26 vote came as President Barack Obama said…

India has a lot of people to educate. It is trying to work out ways of automating the process. One of those ways is the design of a $20 (US) laptop called the Sakshat. The Sakshat is planned to boost distance learning so as to allow India to meet its vast educational requirements: It has…

India thinks it needs a $20 laptop to educate its population. India is planning to produce a laptop computer for the knockdown price of about $20, having come up with the Tata Nano, the world’s cheapest car at about $2,000. The project, backed by New Delhi, would considerably undercut the so-called “$100 laptop”, otherwise known…

President Present is running into resistance from the Pentagon over has troop withdrawal plans. The Times reported that Odierno had “developed a plan that would move slower than Mr. Obama’s campaign timetable” and had suggested in an interview “it might take the rest of the year to determine exactly when United States forces could be…

Commenter windmill at Talk Polywell has brought to my attention an interesting power supply company Diversified Technologies Inc. Here are a couple of short (under 10 pages) papers that explain the technology. Solid State High Voltage DC Power Distribution & Control [pdf] Here is the key point from the above [pdf]. The largest cost components…

Now that things are finally winding down and my long trip back to Ann Arbor is looming ahead, I’ve been checking the omens and portents, because more than anything else, I want to avoid driving in snow or ice. Yesterday was Groundhog Day, and an exceptionally vicious one: Staten Island’s famous groundhog, Charles G. Hogg,…

The CHANGElings are out in force and full of HOPE. Finally the politicians are going to listen. Our Politician In Chief says so. “I will open the doors of government and ask you to be involved in our own democracy again. Well Mr. President Present (or absent as the case may be) we live in…

The groundhog has spoken.

It looks like the solar bubble is about to burst. Bringing an end to eight consecutive years of growth, global revenue for photovoltaic (PV) panels is expected to drop by nearly 20 per cent in 2009, as a massive oversupply causes prices to decline. Worldwide revenue from shipments of panels will decline to $12.9 billion…

We are at the point right now where the increased money supply looks like an increase in real demand. In 12 to 18 months price inflation will kick in. Then all hell will break loose. Had the money supply been increased by giving the money to profitable producers a lot of the damage would have…

First a couple of books mentioned in the video: Atlas Shrugged and The Road to Serfdom Stephen Moore, who you saw in the video, started the ruckus with the article in the Wall Street Journal called Atlas Shrugged’: From Fiction to Fact in 52 Years. Some years ago when I worked at the libertarian Cato…

American Superconductor is making 100 superconducting generator sets for China. DEVENS, Mass. –Jan. 22, 2009–American Superconductor Corporation, a leading energy technologies company, today announced that it has received a multi-million-dollar order for 100 sets of its wind turbine core electrical components from China’s CSR Zhuzhou Electric Locomotive Research Institute Co.(CSR-ZELRI), Ltd. The company will use…

Here is Obama’s plan for failure. For instance he has promised to lower the debt. I think that promise has expired. And he will be friendlier to the working class by destroying the companies they work for. The man is a genius. Obamanomics: How Bottom-Up Economic Prosperity Will Replace Trickle-Down Economics (Economics in the Obama…

President Present is about to unveil his new spending plan. His old plan was spend first and plan later. Could it mean the old way has passed its expiration date? President Barack Obama said Saturday his administration will outline a new strategy in the coming days for spending billions of federal dollars to pull the…

Rush Limbaugh seems to be on a roll. At least he has rolled Obama (and by the end of his term I think you will have a hard time finding some one who hasn’t rolled Obama. 3 years 11 months 2 weeks and 6 days to go.) You can read the whole thing here. But…

Another short term contract [pdf] for wiffle ball fusion is out for bid by the US Navy. Here is the interesting part. 3.1.1 Contractor shall review the results from Contracts N00014-93-C-0224, N00014-96-C-0039, contract N68936-03-C-0031, and any other publically available current documentation regarding the technical research and development in the field of energy production using a…

Dr. Bussard thought that a full scale net energy Polywell Fusion program could be done for $200 million. What could be done to advance the knowledge base that wouldn’t require that kind of commitment? I have been giving some thought to what the next step in the Polywell Fusion experiments might be. Here is what…