Mindblown: a blog about philosophy.

Croatian ATM (by Pudelek/Marcin Szala) “It all happened so fast,” said my friend Debbie at a recent dinner. “I’m standing at an ATM, this woman comes up and asks me a question, and then I glance down at the ground and my backpack is gone ! My passport, credit cards, tickets, cash, everything!” Driving home…

What, me worried? Few things can make my eyes glaze over faster than looking at other people’s vacation photos. I’ll never forget the Christmas when a friend gave her husband a video made from home movies of his graduation trip to Europe thirty years before. After a long, wine-soaked dinner, we settled into soft sofas…

Driverless cars: now being road tested near you “Driverless cars? Sure, I see them on the road all the time,” said my friend Susan, who lives and works in Silicon Valley. “They’re testing them on the freeway now.” “Are they safe ?” I asked incredulously. She looked at me strangely. “They’re safer than cars driven…

Civilized air travel has disappeared like the dodo. “You know what I hate about flying?” my friend D. once told me. “Knowing that the stranger sitting next to me paid half as much as I did for my ticket. Or a fifth. Or a tenth .” Pricing, and practically everything else about air travel, has…

Statue of Krakow’s dragon. By Eirne/Wikimedia I have nothing against the comforts and easy pleasures of a lighthearted holiday, but I’ll always choose adventure travel over a vacation. I simply feel more alive heading out into unknown territories that are the cultural equivalent of the spaces on the old maps marked “Here there be dragons.”…

The subhead reads: “February 14 is Bombshell Day.” Yeah, right. I have to confess, I’m not a huge fan of Valentine’s Day. As regular readers of this blog know, I love most holidays and jump at almost any excuse, however flimsy, for a celebration. But to me, Valentine’s Day has a forced feeling, even worse…

I love bookstores. I also love 1962 VW Bugs, my vinyl copy of the Beatle’s White Album, and coffee that costs less than a dollar a cup. But despite what John Lennon wrote, love isn’t all you need, at least not when you’re running a commercial enterprise. And one fact that’s rarely mentioned in all…

Stehen King defines “earworm” I was recently appalled to discover how many of the “new” words just appearing in the Oxford Dictionary are hacked-down versions of old favorites: apols (apologies), grats (congratulations), srsly (seriously), and so on. Is our language being hijacked by Twitter? But no, I was relieved to note that many of this…

Contrary to popular belief, living abroad doesn’t require you to be wealthy, retired, or willing to spend years restoring a crumbling farmhouse with the help of semi-literate but wise and amusing locals. But if you do choose to become an expat, there are three things you will need to survive the general upheaval of the move…

The Erratic Boulder is said to be near this fountain. (Photo: Ecelan) It’s a curious but well-known phenomenon among travelers that once you’ve been presented with a list of must-sees in the district, you feel almost honor-bound to pay each one of them a visit. Even if you’d never heard of, say, The Erratic Boulder…