Mindblown: a blog about philosophy.

Things have reached the point where I am sick to death of the Internet, much as I depend upon it for communications and news. The main reason is spammy suckass websites which promote, condone, allow, are paid to allow, the damnable, detestable audio and video advertising that will AUTOPLAY. I hate intrusive noise, and I avoid…

Well, I always liked Rand Paul’s “End The Drug War” policy. I’m liking his foreign policy as well. As to Assad. Yes. He is an ally of Iran. But if he goes down the Sunnis in the opposition are going to murder a LOT of people who belong to the wrong religion.

While I know I’ve been complaining for years about the prohibition of drunken sex, there is now a new wrinkle. People with Alzheimer’s Disease are now being treated like people on alcohol or drugs. Meaning (of course) that no sex is allowed: The nursing home staff caring for Rayhons’ wife, Donna Lou Rayhons, told the former…

Police violence. Nowadays, nearly everybody is talking about it. Over the years, I’ve kvetched about SWAT team raids, the War on Drugs, Homeland Security, militarization of law enforcement, etc., etc. more times than I care to imagine. In the latest national meme, liberals are doing everything they can to conflate police violence with racism. Nice…

I posted my usual   Every tax, every regulation comes with it an army of bureaucrats and behind that an army (with guns) of enforcers   in a thread and got this sterling reply.     a standing army of soldiers, a kneeling army of priests and a crawling army of informers    

When most people hear the words “kiddie porn,” they’re thinking of innocent children being exploited and damaged for life by villainous adults. That’s the legal theory behind laws against child pornography: protecting the victims against exploitation. What is happening more and more is that these same laws are being used as a tool to punish…

So far at least,  this sort of thing has never happened to me. There is a blurry line separating ‘normal’ healthy eating and orthorexia nervosa, but one way to define the condition is when eating ‘healthily’ causes significant distress or negative consequences in a person’s life. They may be ‘plunged into gloom’ by eating a piece…

Why are so many people (left and right) obsessed with such a question? It should not matter to sane people. But for reasons that still escape me after many years of blogging, it absolutely does.

President Barack Obama was actually interviewed by Reason’s Nick Gillespie. Seeing is believing. Wow. Just wow.

OregonGuy in a comment left a link to a discussion of Polywell at Watts Up With That.

Ferguson is indeed a conversation starter, although I don’t think this is the sort of conversation Starbucks had in mind: ST. LOUIS (AP) — Police are searching for three young men after a light rail passenger in St. Louis was attacked after being asked what he thought about the “Mike Brown situation.” Officers released details…

Right. I often think it’s all a waste of time. People think what they think, whether they think it or not. Arguments are a waste of time. Sometimes I think the Internet has only aggravated the problem. As I know I’ve said countless times, I’m almost as tired of partisan arguments I agree with as…

Writing in the (conservative) National Review, Katherine Timpf argues that conservatives ought to distance themselves from Phil Robertson of “Duck Dynasty” fame: Phil Robertson is an ignorant buffoon, and that many of his comments — despite the fact that he does have every right to make them — are not ones that anyone should ever want…

I don’t know how reliable this report will turn out to be: All evidence indicates that the copilot of Airbus machine in his six-months break during his training as a pilot in Germanwings, converted to Islam and subsequently either by the order of “radical”, ie. devout Muslims , or received the order from the book of…

The subject of Jazz Clapping came up at Samizdata. So I thought some REAL jazz clapping was in order. Ramsey Lewis Trio The ‘In’ Crowd.

I made an uncontroversial comment on a science blog to the effect that cannabis grows brain cells. To which I got this reply: Weed grows brain matter?? Oh my, what a silly post! So I posted this ten year old Science Daily link along with this reply:     There seems to be as much…

The climate wars are cooling down. And it looks like the “consensus” is in error. Take that Jerry Brown. Let us start with the oceans. The oceans are huge and the atmosphere is small. Thermal mass wise. Once the heat from the sun or the atmosphere goes into the 4°C ocean it is not coming…

Some police officers seem to have been drinking at a strip club and then crashed while going the wrong way on a highway. Two of the four officers in the vehicle were killed. No breathalyzers or blood samples have been taken from the officers. Yeah. It looks like they are not treated the same way…

There’s an emerging national inquisition over the issue of race: Workers at the U.S. government’s Forest Service have been asked to use online tests to check whether they are secretly racist, or harboring other biases. The federal employees were asked to use work time to take tests, lasting some 15 minutes each, to see whether…

Pay no attention to the War On Black People says Obama. What does he have against Black People? Modern Prohibition/War on Drugs is the most destructive, dysfunctional and immoral policy since slavery & Jim Crow – says Retired Police Detective Howard Wooldridge – Citizens Opposing Prohibition