Mindblown: a blog about philosophy.

The idea of “honor killings” of Muslim girls by their fathers for dressing like Westerners or dating boys would strike most Americans as too horrific to contemplate. Certainly not the kind of thing that would happen here, right? Think again. Not only is it happening, but it’s barely being reported. If you’re as horrified as…

The above picture tells a lot about who the Iraqis trust when things get rough in that country. It also tells a lot about the men and women of our fighting forces. It is from an essay by Bill Whittle. You can read the essay at part 1 and part 2. It is very good.…

H/T Instapundit Commenter Oregon Guy suggested this post. He has a link to a very good Milton Friedman video interview. You should take a look. Also have a look at the Lileks piece he links to. The economic stuff is at the bottom of the Lileks post.

Michael Totten has a piece up on what he saw on his recent trip to Fallujah. He says it is still very third world but nothing like it was a year ago. In fact he has this amazing (to some of our “liberal” friends) quote from a wedding party he saw on the streets. Sharply…

The constantly changing story about the San Francisco tiger attack (which has resisted my attempts at analysis so far) just keeps getting harder and harder to follow. Reports are disappearing. To read this one, I had to resort to the Google cache to find the scubbed version, titled Report: Tiger Victims Were Carrying Slingshots: SAN…

A few weeks ago, I touched on the (in my opinion nutty) view that Mitt Romney is “Satanic.” Because I think that certain elements of the Republican Party are battling with a deep underlying religious struggle of the sort which cannot readily be acknowledged, I think it’s worth another look. Sometimes I’m a bit slow…

A word worth learning. Bernie at Planck’s Constant explains in words and pictures. Enjoy. Cross Posted at Power and Control

Speaking of polls, the Des Moines Register appears to have done a pretty thorough job of gauging the support of Iowans for the various candidates as they make their way into the final stretch of the caucuses. While the poll is mainly attracting attention because it shows Obama pulling ahead of Hillary, something else really…

A. Jacksonian (A.J.) has an excellent post up tying Iran’s natural gas problems with Turkmenistan with its oil problem and its internal economic woes. Let us start with this bit that A.J quotes from Reuters Ebadollah Ghanbari, who heads the public relations unit of the national gas company, said Turkmenistan on Saturday slashed exports to…

In keeping with a tradition of sorts, we watched the last sunset of the year on the west coast of New Jersey. Cape May’s Higbee Beach, to be exact. (One of the few places on the East Coast where homesick Californians can actually watch the sun set over the ocean. Not sure Coco understands the…

In a recent Philadelphia Inquirer op-ed titled “Impeach Cheney now,” House Judiciary Committee members U.S. Reps. Robert Wexler (D., Fla.), Luis Gutierrez (D., Ill.) and Tammy Baldwin (D., Wis.) state that a large number of Americans believe Dick Cheney should be impeached: The charges against Cheney are not personal. They go to the core of…

A few weeks ago I bought Mark Steyn’s America Alone: The End of the World as We Know It at Amazon.com and sent it to the Canadian Human Rights Commission at the address Glenn Reynolds and Kathryn Jean Lopez gave. Much to my disappointment, today I received an email from Amazon.com that the book was…

About 17 minutes HT Instapundit

A lawyer in Chicago, Jay R. Grodner, appears to have been caught in the act of keying a Marine’s car and it looks like he is going to get away with it. Black Five has the details. Marine Sgt Mike McNulty is on activation orders to Iraq (second tour). On December 1st, 2007, Mike went…

Have you ever wondered what it must have been like to cross the prairies and the Rockies, then make the truly perilous trip through the snowy mountains to California during the first half of the 19th Century? Celia Hayes (best known to the blogosphere as “Sgt. Mom“) has written a great book — To Truckee’s…

If you have lost Islam and need to find it, Finding Islam can help. Schools. Colleges. The local Muslim Student Association. Islamic Centers. The Koran. Hadith. Fiqh and Fatawa. It is all there. Be nice. There is plenty to learn. If you meet any Muslims during your researches you might want to ask them what…

I try to be fair, and I like to think that I don’t suffer from regional bias. However, I’m afraid that my Northern regional bias might have been exhibited in several posts in which I repeatedly compared Hillary Clinton to Lurleen Wallace. I also compared both Hillary Clinton and Lurleen Wallace to Peronist wives… For…

Burt Prelutsky takes a look at a frustrating question much on everyone’s mind — what’s so special about Iowa and New Hampshire? Don’t ask me. We should probably all be grateful that the first primary isn’t held in the city of Philadelphia (where in the last mayoral election the Republican whats-his-name got a full 17%…

The Drug Czar says says that the current cocaine price spike shows progress in the War On Druggies. NPR reports on the story. For the past few months, the federal government has been celebrating the fact that U.S. cities are experiencing “an unprecedented cocaine shortage” due to increased law enforcement in the southwestern United States…

Working New Hampshire police officer Bradley Jardis confronted Senator John McCain on November 25, 2007, at a Presidential Campaign stop at Franklin Pierce College in Ringe, New Hampshire, about Senator McCains’s support for The War On Drugs. Here is the transcript: Bradley Jardis: I have served here in my state as a law enforcement officer…