Mindblown: a blog about philosophy.

Socialist Mitt Romney – the Republican candidate for President in 2012 – has called for a hike in the minimum wage. …Mitt Romney on Friday called for an increase in the federal minimum wage, splitting with party leaders and some top business groups on what’s expected to a major issue in this year’s midterm elections.…

In Saudi Arabia, discussing religion can get you torture plus many years in prison: A Saudi Arabian court has sentenced the editor of a website that discussed religion in the ultra-conservative Islamic kingdom to 10 years in jail and 1,000 lashes. Raif Badawi, who started the “Free Saudi Liberals” website, was arrested in June 2012…

I guess it’s that time of night when I have to write a blog post lest I turn into a pumpkin. Anything happening? Yeah. According to an article linked by Drudge, the homos are making all kinds of trouble for the Sultan of Brunei.       BEVERLY HILLS, Calif.–The pink stucco palace known as…

Chris Wallace is being excoriated for saying this: Fox News host Chris Wallace on Sunday became the latest voice on the conservative network to repeat incorrect information about climate change, and suggested that it was time to “worry about global cooling now.” During a segment about the economy on Fox News Sunday, former UBS CEO…

I don’t know whether this will have any effect on an intractable situation, but a group of Nobel Prize winning economists — along with Reagan’s former Secretary of State George Shultz — have warned that the war on drugs has failed big time: The global “war on drugs” has been a catastrophic failure and world…

In an article on the rise of Libertarianism some one in the comments posted this criticism: “This is the most libertarian generation that has ever existed.” Probably tue and completely scary. A philosophy based on the writings of an increasingly alienated sociopath, whose hero was a serial killer for his extreme dedication to self-gratification at…

According to this article, the relentless climate change harangue is driving children crazy: Child psychiatrists, psychologists and educators say they’ve seen an escalation in the anxiety levels of today’s youth, who are constantly exposed to doomsday talk about the destruction of our planet. But despite the fact that we live in a world with more…

This took place Monday – so I’m a little late to the show. But Obama’s home state? Very little happens in Illinois without Democrat Party approval. And it appears that the Democrats are backing legalization. “The main difference between the War on Drugs and Prohibition is that, after 40 years, this country still hasn’t acknowledged…

Reading this, you’d almost think that conservatives want their fellow citizens imprisoned for victimless crimes: Last week, leading conservatives raised the alarm about yet another terrifying instance of “presidential lawlessness” from President Obama. What is it this time? New revelations of dragnet spying? Targeting more American citizens with flying robot assassins? Nope: He’s going to let…

Considering that it never has worked anywhere as an economic system, and considering the millions of people killed under Communism, saying that Marxism sucks (even though it is an understatement) seems entirely appropriate as today, May 1, is the day chosen by Marxists to champion their drivel. But of course, even opining against Marxism is a…

If true (unfortunately, I have learned to trust almost no person or source), this is incredibly sleazy and cruel: The Fort Worth Star-Telegram reported that Marian Harris and her family had brought their dog, Sid, to the Camp Bowie Animal Clinic in May 2013 to deal with a common anal gland problem. When Sid seemed to be…

Pushing up the definition of childhood and adolescence into adulthood is not a new idea, but this one takes the cake: Patients out of childhood but not yet fully mature have physical, developmental and social needs that often go unrecognized by doctors, studies show. The adolescent-young adult group, dubbed “AYA,” ranges in age from about 13…

I read a LOT of stuff every day. And this caught my eye (from Supply Chain 24/7 – Reshoring). The overall manufacturing-cost structures of Mexico and the U.S. have significantly improved relative to nearly all other leading exporters across the globe. The key reasons were stable wage growth, sustained productivity gains, steady exchange rates, and…

Yes, we’re up to three asterisks now.  We already knew Obama illegally used the IRS to suppress the Tea Party during the  2012 election, and that he flat-out lied about being able to keep your doctor or insurance (who thinks Obama would have won re-election if Obamacare took effect in 2012?  Anyone? Anyone? Bueller?), now…

A stirring defense of McCarthyism.  Not sure Randall quite realizes everything he’s implicitly condoning, which easily covers the Hollywood Ten blacklist and openly political firings as well as having people remove your books from libraries and burn them. I always wonder how these people would have reacted to, say, firing people for criticizing the military…

A gay man is running for a California State Assembly seat. As might be expected, he is getting a lot of flak. But because he is running as a Republican, a lot of the flak is coming from Democrats: …DeMaio has been the target of homophobic attacks. But where are those attacks coming from? It’s…

No, the Tea Party is not going to abandon the GOP, sorry to disappoint you WaPo readers. They’ve been building GOP officeholders at the state level for several years now. Hey kids, remember when the WaPo reported the Tea Party could “just as easily” fade away… in 2010? Remember the Coffee Party? Good times, good…

Anyone remember the anti-bullying crusade? Bullying is evil and must be condemned whenever and wherever it occurs, right? Not so fast. A mother and her 9-year-old son say school officials won’t let him bring a My Little Pony bag to school. The boy and his mother say he’s getting shoved around because bullies think his…

After hearing about these things from a friend, I decided to get a Raspberry Pi. It is a genuine computer and I am using it right now to write this post. Took me less than a half an hour to set it up right out of the box. It is a bit slower than my…

The latest huge talking point on the left is that Cliven Bundy is a racist. This is supposed to mean what, precisely? The left considers everyone who isn’t on the left as being a racist, right? So why would it matter whether some old crank who is involved in a high profile argument with the…