Mindblown: a blog about philosophy.
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Teapots and spaghetti monsters
My philosophical interest in religion has been revived in recent weeks thanks to the writing of Ross Douthat over at the Atlantic. First the quote from the Pope, and then a reference to Bertrand Russell’s teapot analogy. It is a curious debate. But I am also struck by Douthat’s language: I see the genesis of…
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Brian Cowen
Bad Taoiseach or the worst Taoiseach? Will all the cuts lead to wholescale industrial action? Can Cowen actually lead the country? Can he hold more than one press conference a year?
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Christian Bale loses it
An hilarious listen. Mr Bale loses it on the set of Terminator Salvation. Not work safe though. Very well worth a listen if you want to hear an actor throwing a hissy fit.
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Google Earth 5.0
Pretty awesome stuff. They’ve finally added ocean topography. Also the following rather cool features: * Historical Imagery: Until today, Google Earth displayed only one image of a given place at a given time. With this new feature, you can now move back and forth in time to reveal imagery from years and even decades past,…
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Books
I have got copies of Cyburbia by James Harkin and Here Comes Everybody by Clay Shirky. Should make for interesting reading. Hopefully a review in a couple of weeks time.
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Apture for WordPress
I first started experimenting with Apture a few months back, and have since turned it off. While I loved it, it had a habit of chewing up memory on my server. To me it was a combination of ease-of-use, along with providing readers with quick links to rich content. Indeed, I would call it the…
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Back to reality
My first full day of news and it aint pretty. Near riots in Waterford, Dunne nearing bankuptcy, Quinn saying he lost €1bn in Anglo, and some unbelievable scheme of local authorities to rent empty houses at prices way over the odds. Eddie Hobbs was also getting berated by some for suggesting that recent graduates should…
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Back in Ireland
Back to reality. Ugh. For a while there I wanted to change my citizenship.
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How many people were at the inauguration?
I, like many others, was asking that question throughout the day. Being on the ground it felt like Croke Park times 20. Slate asks how best to reach a figure: Thanks to advances in aerial digital photography and computer image-processing, it’s now possible to get a fairly exact head count—without a magnifying glass. As Farouk…
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Where I was on inuguration day
It is interesting to look at the photos from today, and they are all over the web. But in this photo, I was around this spot on the day Barack Obama became president of the United States. I was there. How happy I am that I planned it early, and made it happen. I recommend…
Got any book recommendations?