Mindblown: a blog about philosophy.

There are two kinds of politicians in Illinois. Crooks and those who haven’t been caught. When voting in Illinois how do you know which candidate is the most honest? The most honest candidate is not on the ballot. How can you tell which is the crookedest candidate? Easy: the crookedest candidate is the reform candidate.…

The picture you see above is a steam driven fusion reactor. I know what you are thinking. This is some kind of joke. It is no joke. General Fusion has a design that I think has an outside chance of working. I was discussing it with some of the boys at Talk Polywell and I’d…

I was just having a look at the oil market and came across something interesting. Nymex Crude Future 38.74 Dated Brent Spot 37.43 WTI Cushing Spot 30.52 Now I have been following this market intermittently for the last few months and as I recall there was at most a few dollars difference between the different…

It seems like the kids at a high school in Maryland have invented an awful new game called Speed Camera Pimping. As a prank, students from local high schools have been taking advantage of the county’s Speed Camera Program in order to exact revenge on people who they believe have wronged them in the past,…

Wind power is currently limited by the fact that there is a minimum wind speed required for a wind turbine to begin operation. We could harvest a lot more energy from the wind if that minimum speed was lower. Plus it would help a lot if the wind passing the turbine was speeded up to…

I’ve been doing a huge amount of labor and haven’t been online for several days, but I’m still not completely out of touch. Nor are my friends. An especially insightful friend thought I’d appreciate some bread during the festive season. Not just any bread, mind you, but a very special, cake-like bread. So special that…

H/T Dean Esmay Cross Posted at Power and Control

I don’t agree with Roseanne Barr about much but she nails this one: The War On Drugs is a war against poor people on street drugs, waged by rich people on prescription drugs. — Roseanne Barr I did a post on this very topic a while back but Roseanne nails in a sentence what it…

Let us do a thought experiment. Alternative Energy is a Good Thing. But the energy it produces costs more than electrical energy from coal fired plants. Now we want to make our alternative energy equipment the lowest cost way possible – so we will have to burn coal to make the equipment – because if…

Tom, over at Talk Polywell, and I have been having a discussion about Global Warming and how the Pacific Decadal Oscillation (PDO) may be affecting trends. And what the IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) has to say about all this. Now shouldn’t it be the Scientific Panel on Climate Change? Or some such? Of…

“I think the deniers should put their names on a big list to be handed to future generations,” writes Smiths. “These are the people that screwed the planet.” Very well, “Smiths”. The big list begins. Cross Posted at Power and Control

Richard Epstein of the University of Chicago discusses how money can buy happiness and also how money can cost you happiness. His bottom line is that only you can decide what you value but that it is the wise person who knows or at least has thought about (often with the help of others) the…

The Green movement really has nothing to worry about. If coal is shut down and electricity prices spike or the grid becomes unreliable the people who voted against coal will be out of office. For decades. The only way to get off coal is to find a cheaper alternative. Keep up with just say no…

Click on the image to read the whole thing. And here is a two minute introduction: You can buy it here: The Adventures of Johnny Bunko: The Last Career Guide You’ll Ever Need Brought to you by The Online Investing AI Blog which is currently the best economics blog on the ‘net. Funny. Readable. Sensible.…

Not safe for work. The only recycling that makes sense economically is metals recycling. And you know what? It has been going on for at least several hundred years for common metals and for thousands of years for precious metals like gold and silver. Let me add that industrial recycling works in some situations. You…

You can learn more about wind turbine noise by watching these videos. So what is the answer? I think offshore wind is the way to go for now until the issues brought up in these videos are sorted out. An alternate view. Farm machinery is nosier. And from the look at the blade construction on…

Some very nice pictures in high style of Obama during his Occidental College days. You really have to take a look. Trust me. Cross Posted at Power and Control

It seems like Obama’s Attorney General nominee Eric Holder once had a job working for Illinois Governor Blagojevich as an investigator. And what was he investigating? The mobbed-up Rosemont, Illinois casino deal. CHICAGO–Before Eric Holder was President-elect Barack Obama’s choice to be attorney general, he was Gov. Blagojevich’s pick to sort out a mess involving…