Mindblown: a blog about philosophy.

Muons are measuring the heating up of the stratosphere. Published in the journal Geophysical Research Letters and led by scientists from the UK’s National Centre for Atmospheric Science (NCAS) and the Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC), this remarkable study shows how the number of high-energy cosmic-rays reaching a detector deep underground, closely matches temperature…

The crackdown on drug gangs in Mexico is leading to a crackup. CIUDAD JUAREZ, Mexico — In this carnage-racked border city of 1.3 million, more than 80 murders have been clocked in the past three weeks, and kidnappings, extortions, robberies and rapes further bedevil an already rattled population. So far, the new year looks to…

About 36 minutes into the video is a report on Garberville, California. I used to live in a small town near there called Briceland. This was in the late 60s well before Garberville became known as a center for marijuana growing. My favorite recollection is a party at some people’s house (near Whitethorn as I…

Mr. Obama the great peace maker whose policy in the Middle East is peace, peace, and more peace, because there is nothing like a peaceful peace to make you feel at peace said: “It will be the policy of my administration to actively and aggressively seek a lasting peace between Israel and the Palestinians, as…

Evidently there are going to be racial quotas for construction workers. Or As Mr. Reich might put it somewhat more artfully: “Some of my best friends are white people, but we should do our best to see that their job opportunities are limited.” I’m starting to get Rev. Lowery’s Inauguration benediction. Lord, in the memory…

Sgt. Mom says I should flog her books. They do get good reviews. An outstanding set of historical novels, December 12, 2008 By Al Past (Beeville, TX USA) Is there anything better than a good book? Better than a book that tells an absorbing story, that’s peopled with characters you care about, living through exciting…

When he was campaigning for President Mr. Obama thought that bombing people was bad. Tuesday, August 14, 2007 Asked whether he would move U.S. troops out of Iraq to better fight terrorism elsewhere, he brought up Afghanistan and said, “We’ve got to get the job done there and that requires us to have enough troops…

A lot of folks think that the Black Lawn Jockey is a symbol of racism. Well no. They were actually used as markers for the Underground Railway. I knew this because my Quaker GGGrandfather’s farm was a stop on the Underground Railway and he suffered for it. When we traveled back and forth across the…

A friend emailed me a link to a Smoking Gun article titled “The Audacity Of Dope — Cops: New York dealers sold heroin branded with president’s name”: JANUARY 23–Add heroin to the scores of products that have been branded with President Barack Obama’s name. Cops in upstate New York this week broke up a drug…

It seems that America (at least in El Paso, Texas) has given up on the drug war. Why? Because they know that what is happening in Juarez, Mexico is just a crackdown away. Yet what is happening on the other side of the border — a vicious turf battle prompted by Mexican government efforts to…

I have done a couple of recent posts on code and cipher breaking, SIGINT on signals intelligence and A Crypto Problem about Edgar Alan Poe’s The Gold-Bug.And so I thought what better science kit for this week than Spy Science, which has materials for sending secret messages a number of different ways including codes, invisible…

While George Bush basically figured out that Middle East Peace is an illusion, Mr. Obama promises to go at it full bore. Mr. Obama says: “It will be the policy of my administration to actively and aggressively seek a lasting peace between Israel and the Palestinians, as well as between Israel and its Arab neighbors,”…

As someone who has struggled with unwanted rodents on numerous occasions, I was quite fascinated by the apparent legal precedent being set here: WARWICK, R.I. (WPRI) – A Providence man is in trouble after he abandoned nearly 300 rats on the side of the road. The man, Toby Duffany, pleaded no contest to animal abandonment…

What people really thought of Lincoln: “We show our sympathy with slavery by emancipating slaves where we cannot reach them and holding them in bondage where we can set them free.” – Lincoln’s Secretary of State, William Seward and: “The principle (of the Proclamation) is not that a human being cannot justly own another, but…

Mr. Obama has given the Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, a new mandate. Make the world love us. Hillary Rodham Clinton is taking control of the State Department with a mandate from President Barack Obama to step up diplomatic efforts and restore the nation’s tattered image abroad. Her appointment, confirmed by the Senate and sealed…

Obama Gone In For those of you who would like to keep track. If you want to make your own clock here is the page And here is another way of looking at it: Obama Gone In

The US Government has done some research (1998) on Vitamin C as an antibiotic and found that it works. This study has shown that 4 weeks daily high dose vitamin C treatment in H. pylori infected patients with chronic gastritis resulted in apparent H. pylori eradication in 30% of those treated. In those patients there…

You can read and discuss the rape the taxpayer bill (aka the stimulus bill) at readthestimulus.org. Here is a bit from the site. One of the additional features we want to add to ReadTheStimulus.org is more detail on the actual dollar amounts being appropriated in the bill text. But to do that, we need to…

Hamas has returned to governing Gaza by their usual methods. Murder and theft. The liaison office for civilian territories said Hamas is intentionally harming humanitarian aid transferred from Israel by firing mortars at the Karni, Kissufim and Kerem Shalom crossings. The liaison office and Shin Bet security service both accused Hamas of looting trucks bringing…

Nehemia Shtrasler in a Haaretz article called The Alchemist tells what lies ahead for the US economy under Mr. Obama. The United States faces a huge crisis because it has lived beyond its means and has done so quite irresponsibly. Obama seeks to continue on the exact same path, though on a much larger scale.…