Mindblown: a blog about philosophy.
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Georgia
Firstly, the conflict and how it started. The Georgians are saying Russia launched a “full scale invasion”. Russia is saying Ossetia is defending itself against Georgian aggression. Who do I believe right now? Georgia. The volume of Russian units entering Georgia is significant and pre-planned. It’s also mid August, a perfect time for action given…
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NY Times fuck up
From the NY Times today: The owner of the Xinjiang Kashgar Restaurant near the main Olympic venue said he shut down Tuesday [of last week] after repeated visits from officials who cited health concerns. He said several other Muslim restaurants nearby had received similar visits. The owner, a Uighur, spoke on the condition of anonymity…
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Put your question to the minister
The Irish Examiner is running a series at the moment of putting questions to various Government ministers. The minister facing questions for the next edition is Social and Family Affairs Minister Mary Hanafin. Do you have a question you would like to put to Minister Hanafin? Send me an email or leave a comment. A…
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Dan Dennett on consciousness
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Cuil.com search engine
So I’ve been fiddling around with this latest upstart, which promises much. Believe it or not the name is based on the Irish word… though I’m not sure if it’s the word for ‘goal’ or on the fictional character Fionn. CNN have a story on it today, the most read today too. I searched for…
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Health and Education cutbacks
When the government said recently that Health and Education would be saved from any cutbacks, guess what? They lied. Colm Rapple: Third level education grant levels have been frozen until the end of the year. Qualifying means-test levels have also been raised. In addition, decisions on grant levels will be made in the context of…
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ETFs
The Sunday Tribune had a rather odd article today about commodity ETFs. Eddie Lennon seems to get his facts wrong, or at least misses the point with regard to the advantages ETFs provide: ETFs are bought and sold on the stock market just like shares. They offer an easy, inexpensive entry to the markets and…
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Did Mr McWilliams drop by?
This has led to a class division in the financial affairs of the nation. There are now two monetary classes in Ireland: the ‘investor class’ and the ‘lotto class’ (see Barbara Defoe Whitehead, ‘A Nation in Debt’; www.theamericaninterest.com). A Nation in Debt, July 1. Or maybe we just read the same stuff.
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Blogiversary
Well it’s that time of year again. I started blogging on July 19, 2002, making this blog six years old today. Coincidentally my visitor numbers will pass 1,400,000 today too. A rather cool coincidence. Of course the blog didn’t start out in its current form. I started in pure HTML, and later moved on to…
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On death
Besides the coincidence of 1.4m visits on my sixth blogiversary, it is also the birthday of an old and dear friend, who I only met after my blogging started. And today the coincidences grew. My paternal grandmother died at 7.30 this morning, after a long illness. My abiding memory of my grandmother is the best…
Got any book recommendations?