tldr

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.

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Censorship, real censorship. Part II

I want to be dispassionate about this … nothing personal. In the larger scheme, people like me do not have impact. One only need glance at how much coverage, how many hits, a figure like, say, Madonna receives to understand how the mass media controls the public mind. I wrote recently about Eva Peron and her daughter, Madonna Ciccone, and my visits on this blog soared from less than 500 on a good day to over 6,000. Then they plummeted again.

Why did that happen? Word of mouth probably. Eva Peron (Madonna Ciccone nee Fortin, “Evita”) is so far removed that hardly anyone knows, much less cares, of her. Madonna, on the other hand, her daughter, is still cranking along. Eva was once First Lady of Argentina in the early 50s, and during the recent final of the FIFA world cup between Argentina and England, who should be featured during intermission but the 68-year-old pop star, Madonna Ciccone! . Whaaaaat? Was Che Guevara not available?

This is not about that. This is about censorship, and not about me personally getting roughed up by it. It is about the extent to which it goes on, and how utterly effective it is. I’ll go back to 2020 and the Scamdemic, and Facebook and Youtube and Nextdoor, three outlets that get heavy traffic, the last, less so but still managed from high above with eyes on all activity. Each outlet made it clear that there would be allowed no criticism of the World Health Organization (WHO) or of the Centers for Disease Control (CDC). Nextdoor even announced on a banner headline that any comments critical of either agency would be immediately removed.

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View from the Moon

Sometimes in arguing about this and that, we are reduced to absurdity by official truth: The view of the sky from the Moon was total blackness. Yes, I know, we are told that the cameras used by the astronauts had to be shielded from intense light and so were f-stopped down so that the surface was visible while the stars invisible. But honestly, folks, you would think that one or two of the guys who walked there would have said “Holy shit, Batman! It’s beautiful beyond belief! We gotta get a photo before we leave!”

The above image is said to be taken from the surface of Mars, and a commenter or two has noticed that Moon pictures are oddly lacking a night sky. OK, it’s NASA. They claim to have landed a rover on Mars, Curiosity, and this is the view. The panoramic view has all the colors of the rainbow, and I only grabbed what looked real, and I don’t buy all those colors, obviously doctored. This by itself is reward enough, if if is real. A big IF, as always with NASA. But we have all seen doctored images from Hubble, so we know it is amazing once we get out of Earth’s atmosphere, even after the Hubble doctors do their graphics.

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AI and the battle for freedom of thought

Just for fun, now and then, I have a go-round with AI, which is provided and appears on my desktop screen via my browser, Brave, without my authorizing it. I print one such exchange beneath the fold here.

What I have discovered about AI is that it uniformly reiterates mainstream views on everything from Moon landings to virology, so that it is, in effect, just Snopes, writ large.

Snopes is, in my view, an intelligence front, an intellectual swindling operation in which advantage is taken of the confidence the victim places in the swindler, aka a “Con game”.  Snopes has gone to great lengths to offer satisfactory explanations of routine phenomena, and so is able to easily dispatch claims that sporting events are rigged, news is fake, and certain events are or are not real.

In so assuring us of its integrity, Snopes thereby gains our confidence in other areas, and so will assert things understood by many possessing skeptical intelligence to be fake, such as the Moon Landings, the origin of the collapse of the twin towers, the number of victims who died from Covid-19 (my view: -0-). This allows Snopes to lie with ease, knowing it has gained trust. That is why I maintain it is a way to reaffirm official lies and keep the majority of people in line with standard beliefs.

AI is the same animal, but now available on a much larger scale. As such, I view it as a force closing the door on skeptics and independent thought. I view it as a danger to our collective well being. The objective of AI appears to be to reinforce the alleged words of former CIA Director William Simon, who said, according to witnesses, that

“We’ll know that our disinformation campaign has worked when everything the American public believes is false.”

In fact, I asked AI about the William Simon Statement, and got this answer:

No, William Simon did not say this quote; it is widely attributed to William J. Casey, who served as the Director of the CIA from 1981 to 1987.  The quote is: “We’ll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false.” 

The authenticity of this quote is highly disputed:

  • Alleged Source: The primary claimant is Barbara Honegger, a former White House domestic policy researcher, who stated in 2014 that she heard Casey say it at a February 1981 cabinet meeting and told journalist Sarah McClendon. 

  • Lack of Corroboration: No contemporary news reports, official records, or other attendees corroborate Honegger’s claim. The quote first appeared in the late 1980s on conspiracy radio show hosted by Mae Brussell. 

  • Debunking: Investigative analyses conclude the quote is likely false and fabricated, noting that Honegger provided no notes and had a history of unreliable claims. 

Of course, that proves nothing, and means nothing except that we can count on AI to come down on one side only on all of these debates, that of the state and its official truth. Did William Casey say those words? I don’t know, but he might well have, as they ring true. For example, “It is easier to fool people than to convince them they’ve been fooled”. Did Mark Twain say that? No. But it’s rings true anyway.

Below the fold is an exchange I had with AI regarding virology and SARS-CoV-2. It is all for naught, of course, as AI disposes of all queries and answers a short time after they happen, and never adapts future answers to any opinions offered by those making queries.

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That boxed-in feeling

From Dark Moon: Apollo and the Whistle Blowers, by Mary Bennett and David S. Percy (1999, three reprints, 2002, 2003, 2009):

The results of our own research have shown us that it is unsurprising that NASA, while protesting greatly, is not particularly concerned by the accusations of “hoax” when it comes to the Moon landings.

Such a reaction is similar to that of any sophisticated and highly intelligent group – the accused – under interrogation. The interrogators, convinced that they have pieced together many facts of the case, are attempting to extract confessions from the accused. However, the ammunition for the question is, in part, based on disinformation and so the accused sits there, quietly amused at the interrogator’s ineptitude. The accused feels secure in the knowledge that ultimately their group cannot be convicted because, as both parties know, there are missing parts to the picture. (Page 164)

This is not a post about the Moon landings, so well discussed recently. If it goes that way, so be it, as it is a subject that grabs the imagination. While a hoax, Apollo was a broad-daylight one, and so NASA was obliged to show us all what they were up to, kind of. They had to provide photos, movies, conversations, a room full of computers (one or two plugged in), and men willing to testify to the impossible, that they went to the Moon and back.

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A simple pendulum debunks the Moon landings

I watched this video last evening as I perused a number of videos recommended by Trevor Weaver in his book The Apollo Hoax: How Did They Do It? I had long before decided that once done, I would deposit this book upon the circular file. It is not indexed and suffers from typos, typical of any self-published effort. Typos in published works are disconcerting. How hard is it for someone to review a manuscript and fix it up? I suffer from typos here, but I am my own editor, and simply do not see what I have written until after it is published. And I can fix them. In books, they stand. Typos in a book are an unforgiveable sin.

Nonetheless, the Weaver book led me to the video that follows.

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More Mooning: ♫ Short people got no reason to live ♫ …

The photo above is famous, supposedly taken by Neil Armstrong of Buzz Aldrin after he had first set foot on the Moon on July 20, 1969.

Pardon me if I am having too much fun with this, but the photo is all wrong. Keep in mind that the astronauts on Apollo 11 deliberately landed during daylight on that day. Days on the moon are 14 days long, and we know from NASA that the angle of the sun on the Moon that day should have been 15°.  Keep that number in mind as we proceed.

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NASA anticipates the Innertubes

Unknown to NASA itself, the Center for an Informed America (CIA) had installed wiretaps in the offices of the Johnson Space Center in Houston, right around the time of the Watergate affair. There was a tiny microphone tucked away and held in place in the ceiling of the office of Administrator Richard Truly. They used Velcro.

______________________________

Date: July 20, 1994, 9:00 AM

Meeting participants: Richard Truly, NASA Administrator, James Jesus Engle, Deputy Administrator, Carl Severinsen (Doc), Press Secretary, William Gates III, Deputy Assistant

Truly: Gentlemen, before we start, and I offer refreshments? Coffee? Would anyone care for some Tang? OK, then. I called this meeting today because of some troubling news from our deputy, Mr. Gates. Bill, do you want to bring us up to speed?

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