Mindblown: a blog about philosophy.

“A candy-colored clown they call the sandman.” My favorite scene from Blue Velvet is when Dean Stockwell lip-syncs Roy Orbison’s “In Dreams.” In today’s podcast, I am trying to capture that style in this dream-laden song cycle. Listen up and don’t snooze while listening to Roy Orbison, Little Feat, Chris Isaak, Otis Redding, Dave &…

Another quiet week here. Hunkering down and patiently waiting for the vaccine, which is at least two months away for us. Then we can start feeling a little safer. Need to get to critical mass, which won’t be until summertime at least. To wait, there’s music. Sharing some with you this week includes artists like…

Gee, I love slow news weeks, don’t you? It gives one an ability to focus on oneself rather than what is happening in the world at large, and how those things might affect you. What’s that? No, I haven’t really been paying attention to the news – it’s one of my New Year’s resolutions. I…

We made it. It’s 2021 and the worst is over (we hope). Sure, the pandemic’s still cresting, we still have our old President (before we get a new old President), too many people still aren’t working, and it’s winter in our hemisphere. Still, not 2020. I’m going to remain hopeful that 2021 will end up…

How was everyone’s Christmas? It was very strange for us – didn’t feel much like Christmas (the rain washing away most of the snow didn’t help. We tried to get Chinese food for Christmas Eve, but the best place in town was way back-ordered. We went to another (disappointing ) Chines restaurant, and was thus…

Hi, this is the second set of songs I’ve put together that came out in 2020 (first came out on November 25). I don’t usually have a “best of’ list for the year – my likes shift from day-to-day, and I think that there’s recency bias (“I just heard this album, – it’s now number…

It’s Christmas week, but it doesn’t really feel like Christmas. Sure, we got nailed with snow, there is Christmas music everywhere, and some people have gone nuts decorating for Christmas, but for me, the Spirit of Christmas hasn’t come (I don’t think that I’ll be visited by three Christmas spirits – stow it, Jacob Marley).…

It’s been a year, hasn’t it? on the one hand, there’s a global pandemic and a loosening of the fabric of Democracy in America; on the other hand…many of us are still alive. Doesn’t seem fair. That’s it today. Let’s be hopeful for the future – there’s a possible solution to the pandemic on the…

Nor’Easter? We were supposed to get a ton of snow yesterday but ended up with an annoying amount of snow. For those of you who live in climes that do not have snow, let me explain: an annoying amount is enough snow that needs to be shoveled but not enough that it’s worth taking out…

We’re almost there. Just December to get through. Did anyone predict that 2020 would be so long and drawn out? For me, May was the longest month of the year. It was then that we knew that COVID-19 was going to affect us long-term and wouldn’t just go away when the weather got warm. Seemed…