Bill of attainder in store?

Bill of Attainder: The Constitution prohibits laws that inflict punishment on specific individuals or easily ascertainable groups without a judicial trial.

A couple of years back we had a writer here, Steve Kelly, who had his own following and wrote about things unlike anything I do. I liked having him aboard for that reason, that he brought some breadth to this place that I cannot. He wrote about environmental issues, mostly about my home state of Montana. I won’t name the group he is/was a part of for reasons outlined below. When he left he told me he felt out of place here. I was sorry that bothered him, as it certainly did not me.

Back before that time I wrote of the group that Steve works for, naming it, praising the work they do, only to be chastised by its head honcho, and the tone was familiar to me. He did not want to be associated with this blog, as I go places that are untrammeled by man, where man himself is a visitor who does not remain. Not everyone likes that, and the leader of a group with a reputation for solid work in environmental causes did not want association with us. For that reason, I distanced myself, removed them from the blogroll, and have not mentioned them by name again since. It was not because I was chastised, but only because I respect their work and want to respect their wishes too., even when snubbed. Continue reading “Bill of attainder in store?” →

Close encounters of the ethereal kind

I had another go-round with AI, which I found interesting. I’ll spill it beneath the fold. It is not terribly long, and has a twist or two in it. I wonder what it would be like if we had real AI, that is, something that is objective and not part of the propaganda system. For instance, I could suggest that the existence of viruses was not proven. As it is, AI comes down completely on the side of virology and dismisses critics. That sort of talk has to be programmed in. Were it not, AI might say something like …

Yes, the subject has inspired both advocates of the existence of viruses, and detractors alike. In fact, most holding the title “virologist” cling steadfastly to their being real. However, detractors point out that while it is claimed that viruses enter human cells and reproduce, thereby creating disease, this has never been proven to be the case. Further, detractors claim that the very experiments that “isolate” viruses have done so merely by changing the definition of the word “isolate”, and that further, Koch’s Postulates have never been satisfied. Virologists dismiss this criticism, citing, for instance, Rivers’ postulates as having replaced Koch.

Just one example. Note in my idealistic example above, AI would not be an advocate for either side. It would merely spell out the facts of the debate. As it is, AI is just another cog in our massive propaganda machine.

But it is useful. We must get used to it, and use it to its best advantage. If people learn to use it properly, they will easily do their own taxes, prepare household budgets, fill out resumes, repair their vehicles, and maybe (longshot) assemble Ikea furniture. Schools would have to change their teaching methods, as all of the answers to multiple choice and true/false questions would be a click away. They would have to line the walls of the classrooms with lead.  Better yet, they could start discussion subjects in give and take forums, inviting students to explore on the own. As Chomsky said once offered (he's quotable on many things), the job of a teacher should be to throw out a rope, and guide the student along as he follows it to places known and unknown*.

But that’s not what we have, and we have to get used to the propaganda system still front and center in our lives. Just use it for good, ignore the bad.
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*I once listened to a private tutor, a student of John Taylor Gatto, who had a young boy as client. The kid was caught up in space travel, aliens, flying saucers and ETs. The tutor’s attitude was “Fine. I won’t tell him he's wrong or off on a tangent. He'll figure that out for himself eventually." Or not.
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Stumbling into the past: A left wing enclave in a DC restaurant

 

 

While in Washington, DC, we had a couple meals at a restaurant called Busboys and Poets. What a trip! It was right out of my life years ago, when freshly sprung from my right-wing Catholic conservative upbringing, I did what I called “the bounce”. Assuming my prior life had misled me about everything, I discovered there was a left, and assumed I would find some truth over there.

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Guess where we are …

That’s the best I can do for a photo from the back set of our Uber. How unfortunate! We are in Washington, DC for one day, and it happens to be at the same time as a two-day visit by Chinese President Xi Jinping. That’s not something we care about, but it means that they have blockaded side streets in the area of Reagan Airport down to where we are staying. Our poor Uber driver was patient, but totally frustrated at almost standstill traffic. It took 90 minutes to get to our hotel, a trip that should have lasted 30. Each intersection was blockaded to prevent side street traffic, and had high barrier fences across to allow only one car at a time. What nonsense! Such a frightened way of life.

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I think I’m a Steelers fan for now

“Covid was a multi-trillion dollar worldwide Psyop meant to see how much they can control us. That’s why people dislike me… because I don’t give a shit. I’m going to tell the truth.”

“Governments, media, tech platforms, and pharmaceutical companies all moved in lockstep. Billions were spent. Dissent was punished. Questions were treated as moral failures. The goal wasn’t public health. It was to measure how quickly people would surrender their judgment, their jobs, their kids’ education, and their right to say “no.”

“85% of people complied. They took the shots, accepted the mandates, and then acted shocked when the same institutions that sold them certainty started walking it back. A lot of them still can’t admit it was a test of compliance. They’d rather keep calling people like me dangerous than look at the data, the lab-leak evidence, the shifting narratives, or the damage done to kids and small businesses.”

“That’s why some people still hate me. Not because of football. Because I wouldn’t play along. I said I was immunized when I meant I had my own protocol. I refused the product. I called Fauci what he is. I pointed out that a captured media and a captured public-health apparatus don’t get to lecture anyone about “the science.” And I’m not going to start lying now just because it’s easier.”

“I don’t give a shit about the cost. I’m going to tell the truth. The experiment happened. Most people failed it. A smaller group noticed in real time and refused to pretend otherwise. That’s the only scoreboard that still matters.” (Pittsburgh Steelers quarterback Aaron Rodgers)

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Climate Change: Not real, not spectacular

“Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler.” (Albert Einstein)

The above quote is actually “attributed” to Einstein, as he did not say such a thing in those words. In as similar fashion, the Mark Twain quote in the upper right of this blog, “It is easier to fool people than to convince them they have been fooled” is merely attributed to him.  He did write, says AI, in 1906: “How easy it is to make people believe a lie, and how hard it is to undo that work again!” I have tried now for years to substitute the real quote for the attributed one, but WordPress will not allow it. 

It’s OK, however. It is the content of the words rather than to person that matters. Using famous people like Einstein and Twain adds gravitas to words, but the words themselves carry enough truth that no further adornment is needed. The whole of the quotation business is a small industry with various agencies mining each one to get to its source, admirable work, in my view.

I have had an exchange now with Michael Booth, who writes for the Colorado Sun, and I think it is at an end. I quoted his article Climate Change in Colorado extensively. I have found Mr. Booth to be, as I suspected, smart, young, genuine, and a product of the education system such as it is. I won’t quote him, as his article (March of 2026) is a fair representation of his attitude and point of view, and I don’t  have permission outside of that to use his words. However, his private words do not do any disservice to either him or his article.  He’s a nice young man.

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Ed Abbey, Annie Dillard: Rest in peace

I first knew the name Annie Dillard through Edward Abbey. I read everything he wrote, except for his fiction, which I did not like. He wrote The Monkey Wrench Gang, and due to that was adopted as a mascot by Earth First!, s false-front environmental group used to discredit true conservationists. I doubt that Ed knew he was being used, but in his shoes I probably would have seized on the added publicity too. He lived on book sales royalties, and it was not much. As I recall, he sold the rights to MRG for a nice sum, but that book is still waiting to be made into a movie.

I read MRG and then avoided all of his other fiction. His characters were too clever and overwrought, and there was just too much self-destructiveness within it. The idea was that a new breed of environmentalist would step forward, and start doing destruction of projects that were anti-nature. The big one in Abbey’s time was the Glen Canyon Dam, a water project built in the 1950s over the objections of then true-to-heart conservationists. Abbey and others would take time to paddle what would later become the catchment area for Lake Powell. His writing about that and other natural wonders of the Western United States, especially the deserts, is why I read it all, everything he wrote, except the fiction.

David Brower (1912-2000) came out in favor of Glen Canyon, which I think went a long way in helping the project go forward. He was prominent and well-known at that time. His words carried weight. Later Brower would express regret that he came out as he did. To me, suspicious Sam, it told me that Brower, like Earth First!, was false-front. That’s pretty common in the environmental movement.

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tldr (updated (note))

(Note) Original email changed significantly from the original post.
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Just when I think I’ve run out of things to write about, along comes an unexpected trivial delight, a small item in a small newspaper that turned out to be a Readers’ Digest version of a much longer piece published in a more widely read journal, though I do not know about the “widely read” attribution.

The Canyon Courier is a small local tabloid here in the Denver foothills, and is part of a larger chain of such publications. It has an editor, Scott Taylor, whom I suspect holds that title for CC and perhaps other tabloids. Is there enough work in the one to justify a salaried title?

Canyon Courier offers some local news, utterly predictable op-eds, a fun weekly column satirizing local sheriff reports, and local sports. The latter is filler and of no interest beyond parents, but a requirement for all newspapers. The Denver Post does the same thing, calling its local sports trivia the Denver Broncos, Colorado Rockies, Denver Nuggets, and Colorado Avalanche. Such filler regularly leaks onto the front page.

As it happens, Mr. Taylor was, I suspect, short of content for his September 7 issue. He had previously exposed himself to me as a climate alarmist, which is vogue in journalism, where “climate skeptics” (“deniers”) are offered no ink. He linked to a real estate blog, Real Estate Today by Jim Smith, which has three followers. Smith does the proper duty of linking to the original Colorado Sun piece linked below, by Michael Booth. It was obvious to me that neither Taylor nor Smith actually read the Booth piece. They just clipped part of it, copying 7-800 words out of 6,155. Tldr.

Booth is listed as environment writer, co-author of a health newsletter, and a podcast. He has no scientific background, only journalism. I do not genuflect there.

So, me being me, read the Colorado Sun Booth piece, yellow highlighter in hand, and emailed my reactions to Taylor, Smith, and Booth. That email follows beneath the fold. It won’t be read by any of the email recipients, c‘est la vie. It’s just a blend of Booth’s words and my words. If he reads at all, it will be a skim. After all, he is a climate alarmist, and those people go straight to print in our news media, unedited. Climate “deniers” are shut out, as befits a propaganda movement. 

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Musings, what is to become of this blog, and other more important stuff

 

Of all the instruments in an orchestra, my favorite is the oboe. Its sound haunts me, and perhaps as in the screen grab above, has the same effects on the clarinetist sitting next to the oboist in the London Symphony Orchestra. And, perhaps as you read this and think I am going to write about classical music, you’ve decided that you’ve better things to do.

I’ll be brief. The oboist is playing part of Dvorak’s 9th Symphony, second movement, a beautiful haunting piece.  I recognized it instantly as I flipped on my iPad this morning. I tried to save it but could not. It only wants to show the entire video, and take you to Facebook in the process. You’re on your own.

I first came upon this piece of music years ago in a piano piece by Charlie Haden and Hank Jones, used by the producers of the TV series Bosch. In the episode a young boy had died before his time, and as the piano music, called “Goin’Home“, played, two detectives were informing the mother of her son’s death, and Harry Bosch uncovering the body at the morgue. The emotion that the piece invoked was overwhelming. I sent away for the CD on which Haden and Jones*** played it, and a couple of months later it arrived from England. The entire CD consisted of that piece and familiar religious compositions, none of which appealed to me. But I hung on to Goin’ Home piece because of its powerful evocative quality. Later I learned that the piece was played at FDR’s funeral, during a time when the whole nation was in mourning. (Have I ever written about FDR faking his death? All of the hallmarks of a fake presidential death are there, but I’ve never had the energy to write it up.)

I put the lyrics to the piece at the end here for anyone interested, as it was written to be a Negro spiritual. Lovely though they are, I think the lyrics ruin the music.

Continue reading “Musings, what is to become of this blog, and other more important stuff” →