Mindblown: a blog about philosophy.

Just because I was interested in WW2 code breaking.            

Bloomberg TV has interviewed Ben Carson asking him about Rand Paul’s stance on vaccination. He can’t explain it. But I can.     The Government Doesn’t Own Your Children     All four of mine got vaccinated. Just in case you were wondering.

This comes from the Brits. I wonder if it is affecting the US? Yes it is. Long taken for granted as supplied by the soil and atmosphere, sulfur is slowly rising as a yield-limiting nutrient in Midwestern crops. Ken Ihlenfeld is certainly finding this to be true. The West Bend, Wis, producer farms 2,500 acres…

H/T to Tallbloke for the report. The report can be found here. Some excerpts to get the flavor: Mr Cooper said the findings were consistent with research into health impacts from early model wind turbines conducted in the US more than 20 years ago. == The findings should be used as the basis for a…

In two posts now, I have discussed the growing problem of coyote-wolf hybrids. Unlike coyotes, and unlike wolves, these animals are unafraid of man. And they are capable of doing serious damage. Quite recently, they have attacked two horses, one of which was a police horse, the other of which had to be put down.…

J. Park talks about what he has accomplished at EMC2 and what he hopes to do in the future. You can also watch it at Microsoft where you can see the slides shown during the talk. You can also see a discussion by guys who are into it at Talk Polywell. Update: 30 Jan 2015…

As a believer in personal autonomy (provided others are not harmed), I’m all for the right to commit suicide, whether unassisted or assisted. But this worries me: When a “right to die” becomes settled law, soon the right translates into a duty. That was the message sent by Oregon, which legalized assisted suicide in 1994,…

From the comments at: Congress Introduces Industrial Hemp Farming Act With Bi-partisan Support David P. West, Ph.D (Plant Breeding & Genetics)

“Look, we understood we couldn’t make it illegal to be young or poor or black in the United States, but we could criminalize their common pleasure. We understood that drugs were not the health problem we were making them out to be, but it was such a perfect issue…that we couldn’t resist it.” – John…

Governments were designed with theft in mind. If you can, get them to do your stealing for you. If you do the stealing yourself you will go to jail. If you get the government to do it for you there will be award dinners in your future. One makes you a common thief. The other…

Racial fatigue? Really? It’s hard to imagine anyone in the United States actually being tired of race, but whatever.

H/T Tallbloke

This proves that a Republican Senate is totally qualified to resolve scientific questions. Let it be recorded for history that late in the afternoon of January 21, 2015, the United States Senate formally acknowledged that climate change is real. Related Stories As to that other critical question of whether human beings are contributing to it?…

You may recall that the top Republican Congress Priority was getting a Federal abortion bill passed. There seems to have been a small hitch in their social program. They don’t have the votes. In an embarrassing setback, House Republicans abruptly decided Wednesday to drop planned debate of a bill criminalizing virtually all late-term abortions after…

Researching my ancestry recently, I discovered my grandfather’s draft card. I wasn’t looking for anything more than the names and birth dates of his parents, but I happened to notice the lower left hand corner, which instructed as follows: If person is of African descent, tear off this corner I had not known about that…

After so many years demonstrating that Prohibition does not work, you might think that the government people would have learned that by now. But no. Like Communism, Prohibitionism us one of those stubbornly insane memes that seems here to stay. Its proponents echo the endless mistake and an endless tired rant: Trust us! This time,…

Attorney General Eric Holder has decided to end Federal asset forfeiture for drug crimes unless there is a conviction. “It’s high time we put an end to this damaging practice,” said David Harris, a constitutional law scholar at the University of Pittsburgh. “It has been a civil-liberties debacle and a stain on American criminal justice.”…

A local rec center has multiple TV monitors with multiple channels, so that people can exercise or relax while watching their preferred channel. Sound fair? Not if certain activists get their way: A couple’s objections to Fox News broadcasts at the Meri Lou Murray Recreation Center in Ann Arbor has Washtenaw County officials considering a…

Washington, DC legalized recrational cannabis in the November 2014 election. There is some question if it can go into effect given the rider Republican Andy Harris added to an appropriations bill. None the less DC is going ahead with legalization by submitting the measure passed by voters to Congress for an up or down vote.…

There has been a LOT of speculation about what kept Obama from Paris when some 50 other heads of state showed up for a 3 million person march against Islamic terrorism. I think whitehouse.gov has the answer. From a speech to the UN in 2012: The future must not belong to those who slander the…