Mindblown: a blog about philosophy.

How’s life in modern America? As M. Simon’s post discusses, not showing ID when turning in a cat to animal control can get you killed. Government is now prohibiting sled riding. Government schools are telling kids what they can and cannot eat. Huge quantities of food are being thrown away because children refuse to eat it.…

I came across a comment here that seems to explain the Flynn effect. “if the amount of innovation were simply satisfying a Darwinian need,[…] it would hold actual-total innovation at the same, pre-trade level.” However, if innovation isn’t being actively selected against it will decline slowly, so if the trade/communication increased faster than genetic drift…

I’m trying to find the title and author of an old science fiction short story. It came up in this discussion. Women. Women are the problem; women and their evil commodification of love. There was a science fiction story I read on that topic a long time ago. Can’t remember the title or author. The…

Current Conditions: H/T Snow in Palermo, Sicily – WUWT

I have been passing around phrases similar to No more taxed than tomatoes in reference to cannabis for a while. You can see it at my posts Scheduling and Just Leave Me Alone. So I was pleasantly surprised to see it repeated in a comment at Medical marijuana a challenge for legal pot states. Since…

Alabama Man Shot, Killed by Police While Turning in Stray Cat. I believe the reason for his death is FYTW. And he didn’t have proper government issued papers. Reminds me of the anti-Nazi movies I used to watch in the ’50s. Except our police are now the Nazis. In the ’40s we used to be…

I was discussing with some people what an end to Drug Prohibition might look like. What should an end to Prohibition look like? Suppose you grow and give it away under a high tax regime? Then Wickard vs Filburn kicks in as exemplified by Raich. You are affecting interstate commerce by giving it away. They…

Back in November of 2011 Newt Gingrich had this to say. I would continue current federal policy, largely because of the confusing signal that steps towards legalization sends to harder drugs. I think the California experience is that medical marijuana becomes a joke. It becomes marijuana for any use. You find local doctors who will…

I know M. Simon already said that, but it seems like the theme for the day. Happy New Year to all!  

To all of you who have put up with/enjoyed my rants over the past year.         HAPPY NEW YEAR        

I found an interesting comment. Here is the most interesting part (edited for readability): I am enjoying the latest MSNBC mini-series Pot Barons of Colorado, and look forward to Harry Smith’s end-of-year cannabis special tentatively scheduled for January 5, 2015, as well as the new CNN potumentary. However, I would like to see the New…

“No activity that society thinks immoral is victimless. Knowledge that an activity is taking place is a harm to those who find it profoundly immoral.” – Robert Bork He wants to put people in jail for drug “crimes” because they “trigger him” in current parlance. And people wonder where lefties get their ideas. Triggered by…

I’d call what the U.S. prison system has become under the Drug War a Gulag system, but that would be unfair. Stalin’s Gulags imprisoned fewer “offenders.”

For some time, I have argued that there is no meaningful constitutional distinction between the War on Drugs and Obamacare. Both are overreaches of federal power. And logically, if the federal government has the power to tell citizens what substances they can and cannot possess or put in their bodies, then it has the power…

I was discussing the decline and fall of civilizations with some folks and a commenter had this to say: djolds1 Metahistory (cyclical history theories – Spengler, Toynbee, Polybius’ Kyklos, Turchin’s Cliodynamics) has been a fascination of mine for going on 15 years. Entropy is the nature of the universe, and so everything runs down to…

All the shootings were justified. A shorter version of the above video.

The kids are getting arrested. Nearly half of black males and almost 40 percent of white males in the U.S. are arrested by age 23, which can hurt their ability to find work, go to school and participate fully in their communities. My guess is that the vast majority of these arrests is for prohibition…

Hope it was a good one! I just noticed that the Oscar (in the tank behind the tree) is trying to get into the act. What a ham.

“No amount of experimentation can ever prove me right; a single experiment can prove me wrong.” — Albert Einstein “The models are skillful when it comes to the 20th-century trends over the decades… I could go through a dozen more examples… And we can get a good match to the data… Models are not right…