Mindblown: a blog about philosophy.

One of the greatest challenges in blogging is to write about something without knowing anything about it. While I was delighted and honored to be asked by Pajamas Media to cover last night’s Iowa Democratic debate, despite my best attempts, there was no way for me to possibly watch it, because it was broadcast on…

I’m glad Duncan Hunter had the good sense to call this seeming yahoo on the “gun toss.” My initial suspicion was that he’s about as much of a gun toting redneck as the school teacher who was arrested for the Columbine remarks. “Jay Fox lifetime member of the NRA.” Really? I’m a “life member” of…

Although I wrote a post about it earlier, I have no idea what is happening at tonight’s Iowa debate, because it is being broadcast on an elite network called HDNet that only five people in the United States can receive. But there’s some severe weather, and it is unclear whether Hillary will make it: Des…

I hate insurance companies. Seriously, I really do, and I always have. There’s just something about the idea of paying for something you might never need (and don’t want to use at all) which makes me instinctively recoil. Then on top of that, what really rankles me is that when you do need to make…

When I heard that Leeland Eisenberg, the man said to have taken hostages at the Clinton campaign “has a history,” I thought I’d turn to Google. Sure enough a man with the name of Leeland Eisenberg was described in this legal memorandum of findings as an “inmate in the custody of the Massachusetts Department of…

Via Glenn Reynolds, I found an intriguing question about female genital mutilation: Should outsiders be telling African women what initiation practices are acceptable? Gee, I don’t know. I guess as an “outsider” I should first be asking whether I have a right to an opinion about what is acceptable. But I agree that it’s a…

That CNN has been caught again using planted questioners should surprise no one, least of all me. I’ve lost count of how many of their “ordinary citizen” questioners turned out to be activists known to CNN or associated with various campaigns. There were several in the last debate, and there have of course been several…

By now you have probably heard about the ringers at the CNN debate. If not Glen Reynolds has a few links to get you started. Eric also has some help. The short version: The Democrats had party activists asking questions for the Democrat’s debate and they had party activists asking questions for the Republican’s debate.…

Megan McArdle looks at a meme of which I’ve grown quite tired — that “real libertarians” didn’t support the war: This is the emerging meme, mostly, interestingly, among people who are not themselves libertarians.Stand by for my post tomorrow: real progressives won’t vote for Hilary Clinton. Real or not, there’s this test result. And there’s…

A recent Philadelphia shooting has attracted so much local attention that I thought it merited a post. The situation is so appalling, and the family so squalid and so dysfunctional, that it challenges my usual libertarian sensibilities, and while it doesn’t incline me towards communitarian thinking, it does incline me to entertain the idea that…

I watched part of last night’s debate and read about the rest (via Glenn Reynolds) at Vodka Pundit. Nothing beats reading drunken live blogging the morning after. The most important things were that Fred looked good, so did McCain (at least during the waterboarding discussion when he “pulled rank”), and I agree with Stephen that…

According to logic, if tasers are instruments of torture (which the UN argues they are), and if you can use an ordinary camera to make a taser, then cameras should also be considered instruments of torture, and regulated, right? What? You don’t believe me because my old link no longer works? There’s a new link…

Apparently there are such things. And I’m not referring to anything done by the Inquisition (which I hope people will grant was worse than Bush and Rumsfeld). I refer to the comments of a Philadelphia judge in characterizing a defendant’s crimes: “She was basically tortured,” said Philadelphia Municipal Court Judge James M. DeLeon, summarizing the…

Even The New Republic notices. Campaigning for his wife this afternoon in Iowa, Bill Clinton threw an asterisk over his position on the Iraq war: “Even though I approved of Afghanistan and opposed Iraq from the beginning,” said Clinton, “I still resent that I was not asked or given the opportunity to support those soldiers.”…

In his continuing examination of why Hollywood’s recent antiwar films have flopped (even though the old Vietnam stuff didn’t), Roger L. Simon offers a very interesting explanation. The Iraq films flop because they lack the same type of passion which characterized the anti-Vietnam war films. As Roger explains, it’s a lot easier for leftists to…

It’s a term I see more and more, and I’m worried that it’s degenerating into either a redundancy, or code language for “atheist left.” Ann Althouse linked this WSJ Op Ed by First Things editor Joseph Bottum which has the following subtitle: Will the secular left soon attack the religious right for being pro-science? In…

Some things are incredibly tedious for me to go through, and I’m afraid that Dinesh D’Souza’s “He didn’t suffer all that much” is one of them. It is D’Souza’s position that because of a false atheist claim that the elderly Galileo was physically tortured, the Inquisition is in need of reexamination. And maybe other stuff…

Good news for Democrats. Something like 100,000 American troops will be leaving Iraq over the next few years. Lieutenant General Douglas Lute, quietly announced that the American and Iraqi governments will start talks early next year to bring about an end to the allied occupation by the close of Mr. Bush’s presidency. The negotiations will…

Last night I had trouble finding “body persons” for anyone except Hillary Clinton, despite the fact that such entities are supposed to be ubiquitous in the um, “industry.” So I thought I’d look again. Using the phrase “my body person,” the first hit was typical, and it involved a person who works on customers’ bodies:…

If the rumors like these are true, then I might have finally found something I like about Hillary. It won’t win my vote though, as I don’t believe in identity politics. Does this finally explain the previously unexplained sex scandal involving the unnamed Democratic candidate which Ron Rosenbaum said was deliberately kept under wraps by…