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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Active ignorance

I chose the title above because I had already, in 2021, written a post called “Aggressive stupidity“, and on rereading it, was not disappointed. There is a quote widely attributed to Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, that “there is nothing worse than aggressive stupidity.” I think I know what it means, but am having a hard time clarifying it in my mind. I know there is stupidity, much of it mindless. It is not the same as “ignorance”, which is curable once admitted.

However, as the comedian Ron White says, “You can’t fix stupid.”

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NASA and the missing tapes: a tale of careless indifference

This post follows up on a conversation I had with our friend Petra at Psyop Detective on her post “Testing skills in propaganda detection and expertise evaluation“, where we went full circle back to a post I had written back in 2023, “Moondoggie Reviewed, where I recounted a 14-post series by Dave McGowan called Wagging the Moondoggie. In summary, it is my contention that McGowan was a hired writer, and a very good one, who was given the material he used to write about serial killers, the Boston Marathon Bombings, the Lincoln Assassination, the music scene of the late-sixties early seventies, and the Moon Landings.

In each of his subjects, I contend, he did a classic limited hangout. His objective, then, would be to take us as far as other researchers had already gotten on these topics, and to act as a gatekeeper, allowing for “This far, no further.” On the rock and roll scene, for instance, he told us that most of the stars of the era (65-75) he wrote about had military connections, in fact, came from military families, and that an ungodly number of them had died prematurely. My take after hours and days and months of research here on the blog was that McGowan was stopping short of the truth, which was that they were not “from” military families, but rather “assigned to” them for hands-on management. So John Denver was not a Duetschendorf, Jim not a Morrison, and Janis not a Joplin.  Further, their deaths were, as far as we could see here, faked.

 

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“The truth is, I never left you” …

First, the movie Sixth Sense … Dr. Malcolm Crowe (Bruce Willis) is watching a play put on by Cole Sear’s (Haley Joel Osment) class. Subtle hints of the movie’s ending were in that  scene, Crowe sitting in the crowd but someone directly behind him filming the kids, with Crowe obviously blocking his view. Cole asked him as they walk out what he thought of the performance. Says Dr. Crowe, “I liked it better than Cats.”

David Letterman had just started his CBS Late Night show, and was doing his monologue when Paul Newman stands up in the audience and interrupts him. Dave introduces him to applause and then asks what the problem is. “Where the hell are those singing cats?” asks Newman. Dave explains to him that Cats, the musical, is playing at a different theater. Newman pulls a ticket stub out of his shirt pocket, looks at it, apologizes and leaves.

And, Dennis Miller, here quoted from frail memory, speaking of Andrew Lloyd Weber’s music, saying it is like fine wines, sweet, rich, aromatic, and yet, all tasting somewhat alike.

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Hoaxes, conspiracies, groupthink and money

I watched a discussion between John Robson of Climate Discussion Nexus and Steven Koonin, author of Unsettled, What Climate Science Tells Us, What It Doesn’t, and Why It Matters. You can access the discussion here, but I won’t replay it as it is quite long. Over time I’ve become adverse to sending people off to watch or read things just because I did. You’re on your own.

It’s a good discussion highlighting the shortcomings of the Climate Alarmism movement, including lack of rigor in science, failure to make predictions of any kind at any time that actually come true. That is a bit of what I might call a cornerstone of science, to make accurate predictions validating theories, but the movement exists without that benefit. Al Gore was asked recently in some highlighted interview about the predications made in his movie An Inconvenient Truth,  and he claimed to be lecturing the sky, as all of the movie’s claims have come to fruition but nobody cares. That is a Burger King-grade lie, a whopper, as just the opposite is true. The movie has disintegrated into a pile of high production values carrying with it not a shred of truth. It is classic propaganda.

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Are our state populations overstated? World?

I don’t know how many of our readers here have ever traveled across Wyoming, either west to east or north to south, or visa versa. The western one-third of the state is beautiful, with Yellowstone National Park, Grand Teton National Park, and the Wind River Mountains, to name a few outstanding highlights. But getting there … say you enter the state via Gillette on I-80 traveling west. You’ll encounter high winds and blowing dust, pronghorn for hundreds of miles of what must be one of the busiest semi-truck highways in the country. It is almost unbearable.

There are miles upon miles of unsettled land in Wyoming. As much as 30% of the state is managed by the Bureau of Land Management (BLM). If you are unfamiliar with our public land hierarchy, it goes like this:

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Reality is bunk

“Perhaps Love is like the ocean, full of conflict, full of pain …”
(Perhaps Love, words and music by John Denver, allegedly)

The above words came to mind this morning, but it took some effort to uncover the recording that has Placido Domingo and John Denver singing side by side. Denver is said to have written it, but I doubt it – listen to the whole thing here and judge for yourself.

From my view, Denver was a gifted singer, played a mean 12-string, and was chosen for fame, assigned to a military family for management (Lt. Col. Deutschendorf). He was given songs that appealed to the environmentalist mindset coming of age in that time, the post-Earth Day 70s.

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Non-readers, plants, influencers, staged events

I am a mere observer and do not take much of “news” seriously. Yet the essential meaning of news stories penetrates the consciousness of the mass of humans so easily that it can be distressing. So much of what appears to be human stupidity is really just indifference based on trust, and it is trust that is the great human failing here.

Some years back I was in a conversation with a relative about some thing or event, and in passing suggested either a book or an article, some form of written reference to help support whatever claim I was making. “Oh, we don’t read” was the answer I got, so don’t bother sending along anything. Much later on, same company and playing a card game that had special rules in the various cards, I was repeatedly reminded that I had not read a card correctly. Asshole that I am, I replied “Oh, I don’t read.” My reference was not taken kindly to the two who knew what I was talking about. I could not help myself, as the idea of not reading has such large implications, and I lack filters.

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Judith Curry, farewell to arms, Roger Pielke Jr. scattering ♥’s all about the landscape

Climatologist Judith Curry announced she is retiring her blog, Climate Etc.  She has an impressive CV, which I will not detail here, and more than that, I’ve always enjoyed her writing and combativeness. Michael Mann, the seemingly psychopathic pseudoscientist, took pains one time to claim that her relationship with a divorced man at Penn State was “sleeping her way to the top.” He did so in a public email, finding Curry to be particularly dislikable, to her credit.

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