I wrote using the title above before, and then became engrossed in other pursuits, mostly having to do with cutting up logs, hauling them up a hill behind our house, splitting the logs and then stacking them. It takes hours and offers so little payback! All that results is a stack of wood for the winter and a savings of perhaps $300, but then, I could pay that $300 and then have the wood dumped in our driveway. I would still have to haul it and stack it.
Why bother do it myself? I have a sense that the amount of work involved is making my sore aching body somehow better.
Enough of that. I want to recount four experiences I have had on this blog with my face splitting experiments. Many years back I learned that human beings develop in many ways, some permanent. One of those permanent ways is the shape of our skulls, which are finalized in our late teens or early twenties. It does not change thereafter. ( I can recall one person whose head was deformed by ALS so that photo comparisons of him, young and old, could not be done: Stephen Hawking.)
I thought that if I could develop a means by which I could compare faces of supposedly different (or dead) people, or people at different ages, I could uncover a mystery or two. Just as an example, another blogger used humor, splitting my face and placing it next to that of John Candy, claiming we were the same person, by my technique, anyway.
OK, several problems, but the primary one is due diligence. The guy who did this split did not set the pupil distance on the two photos at a common distance. That is critical to this technique. Without that constant in place, the person doing the comparison is free to manipulate the result to his liking, which is what the person doing this split did.
I could not find the original photo that my critic used, and so chose another where Candy is smiling with lips parted and is facing the camera. Are you seeing a problem? I set his and my eyes at common distance, and then did the split, aligning the tips of our noses. I did nothing else. Notice that the eyes do not align, and that the ears, less reliable, are quite a bit different. In this case the face splitting technique tells us that two photos are not of the same person.
That’s two photos of me, thirty-seven years apart. Note that all features align except: I have lost hair, my ear lobes have lengthened, my teeth have been worked on. But note that our smiles are alike, as is our posture for the camera. Can you see that both are me? (I have noticed that when two photos, even years apart, are of the same person, it is not unusual for that person to assume the same head posture.)
All that follows is probably repeat to followers of this blog. I suggest that if you know what is coming, go stack some wood instead. It will be far more interesting for you.
All of this will lead to the Mighty Wurlitzer, but there are steps on the way that I underwent. A former blog partner and I had both read the book Weird Scenes Inside the Canyon, by Dave McGowan. In it, the author describes the fact that many of the famous musicians and actors of the late-sixties and early-seventies had come from military families. He then goes on to describe their gruesome deaths. There must have been 50-70 who died young. McGowan accepted all of the deaths save one as real (he questioned that of Jim Morrison). My partner and I … well, we could not imagine that even in a war zone so many deaths from a select group, even a platoon, would happen. Some other game was afoot. I was playing with facial alignment, wondering what happened to all of the dead musicians, as we believed they were still alive.
The first thing we did was to check the Social Security Death Index (SSDI). It’s not totally reliable, but for our purposes it showed that almost all of the McGowan deaths were not in it. A few were, say Ricky Nelson and Phil Hartman’s wife, Brynn. Sharon Tate was in there, but had a spooky Social Security number, 452-74-4733, which can be read as 11-11-1133. She has since been removed from SSDI. The point, however, is that McGowan did not do something as rudimentary as an investigator as checking SSDI. He also never interviewed anyone. He seemed to write his book out of whole cloth.
One day Tyrone McCloskey suggested to us that Fox news host Bill O’Reilly was not himself, that he at one time was singer Bobby Fuller. We checked it out, and found the following: The evidence suggested Tyrone was right.
This set our course, and from that day forward we searched for our dead rockers in news media and entertainment.
Without regard to McGowan and his book, someone else suggested that dead comedian Bill Hicks became Alex Jones of Prison Planet fame. I did the face splits and came to agree – indeed the two were a match with a confounding factor Hicks/Jones had apparently had some plastic surgery to straighten his nose. It’s a common surgery, one I could use. But this fact led to ridicule, and to this day people don’t believe that the two are the same man.
One day a guy at another web site thought he had caught us with our pants down as he set two photos side by side of Hicks and Jones, each with a shit-eating grin.
We were told that these had to be two different persons because Hicks’ mouth was bigger than Jones. They are the same size, but that was not what I noticed … I thought we were looking at exactly the same teeth in each man. So we did an overlay:
That’s a transparency of one mouth laid over the other, identical! I called the post I wrote on this matter “Case Closed,” as I think it is. Same man.
I am only going to name one other person(s) in our ongoing quest to find what we began to call Zombies. There have been many, many others, too many to mention here. (Our most absolute fun was Bruce Lee turning up as Judge Lance Ito in the OJ case.) But the one that follows was fun too – the matter of Janis Joplin, who faked her death in 1970 at age 27. We knew she was still alive, intuitively, but did not know where she landed. I think it was my partner at that time who suggested she had become Amy Goodman of Democracy Now! But we could not stick the landing – some photos were dead-on, others not. Finally we had a revelation – we were dealing with twins!
After that revelation, things cleared up. The photos were interesting in that the one on the right above is never seen smiling and never shows her teeth. She is apparently a very reserved individual. The one on the left appears gregarious. How then did the one on the right put on those manic stage performances? She didn’t. I think she was used for public appearances, photo ops, press conferences, talk shows and the like. The one on the left was the singer. (It was the one on the right who appeared in a nude photo, which must have been terrifying for her, so shy is she.)
This blog is littered with posts about all of the above, and is searchable. That’s all I am going to write about except what I noticed … Bill O’Reilly represented the right wing view of news. Alex Jones is considered a right wing conspiracy theorist. Democracy Now! is considered far left news. There are others we uncovered in various media posts. It seems that no matter where we turn, the bases are covered. The entire spectrum of opinion is covered. I remember when Jane Fonda visited Hanoi during the Vietnam War, enflaming the American right wing. She didn’t care, and our leadership did not care whether we were for or against the war. Public opinion does not matter. They only wanted to be sure we were either for or against it. It keeps us occupied. Likewise, all news outlets are fair game, as all are under control, part of the Mighty Wurlitzer.
CIA officer Frank Wisner coined that phrase “The Mighty Wurlitzer” to characterize the Agency’s control of public opinion through various front organizations. Here we are seeing but a small part of it, two news outlet and one TV show (Prison Planet) all served by people who faked their deaths first. In her book The Cultural Cold War, Frances Stonor Saunders describes dozens of magazines, organizations, Foundations (as in Ford) and wealthy families (Rockefeller, for example) that are doing CIA business while pretending to be arm’s length. William F. Buckley, Jr. was a CIA agent and founder of National Review. It is said of William Paley, one-time head of CBS, that the CIA was the one thing he could not remember.
I set out in my last post, The Mighty Wurlitzer, to get to this point, where we understand that American (and world) public opinion is under management, and no one escapes. You can be right, left, center, woke, John Birch, Prison Planet, Green, “independent”, intellectual and thoughtful, college student or professor … none of it matters. You can “get your news” from TV or magazines or web pages and blog posts. The Mighty Wurlitzer entered your head some time in your youth and took control, and owns you to this day.
How to exit? Through the gift shop? My only answer is to turn off news from all sources, think and question everything we read, and stop worrying about elections. Then we might become somewhat free and independent of thought. Might. Trust no one.
Piece of Mindful 
No one is ever ‘free’ and no one is escaping the machinations of the sway of public opinion. Ask the Australian Aborigines or natives from any place how ignorance worked out for them.
The closest we get to freedom is pursuing something we think we want. Our entire personality (ego) is built from everything that we have perceived for all of our lives (plus whatever we bring with us). We are part of the world around us.
My suggestion is embrace it, understand it if you want. Enjoy it, hate it live it. Chop wood, watch football, read the paper or don’t if that’s not your desire. Simply work out what you want to do and try to do it. In 10 years (minutes?) time you will want something else, go for that too. Our Lord’s have created a world of opportunity and entertainment (mostly because it benefits them), get into it, make the most of it.
LikeLike
Damned nice comment!
LikeLike
How does your advice/ philosophy here compare or differ with Stoicism? Ie where do you agree or disagree with that school?
Somewhere I heard or read an analysis of “freedom” as a bit of neurolingistic programming.. “free dumb” like a light mockery every time it’s invoked. Also dom as in domination, a contradictory root word when ostensibly saying “free-ness”.. This source IIRC preferred “liberty,” both for lacking these overtones, and for some subtle differences in the definitions of the two words. But I don’t remember the exact distinction offhand, maybe somebody with a good old print dictionary can remind me.. if anyone wants and enjoys that task in this moment..
LikeLike
I bristle at the use of the word “freedom”, as it has been gutted of all meaning. It’s fluffy.
LikeLike
Thanks for asking.Not by much I guess. When I read Marcus’s Meditations it had a very pre Christianity feel to it. I didn’t like it much. It felt like a project preparing for Christianity.
Differences
No Gods in my philosophy. (I also don’t actually believe in free will, but I like to pretend I have it. Thats probably beyond the scope of this conversation)
I am also suggesting you can chase instant gratification if you want. Just recognise what it is you actually want.
i don’t believe you have to work for the good of the state or empire etc. unless you want to of course. Just do your thing.
They would be the big differences. My philosophy is probably more Crowley than stoic. Do what you want. It just happens that what I want fits more with the stoics. I enjoy a days work more than a days debauchery. Maybe Im just not doing it right
I enjoy working towards an uncertain (with belief I can achieve it) outcome especially with other people. But I know some people would prefer to watch tv. Sometimes I get tired and prefer to watch tv (usually cricket) myself.
As far as accepting the world how it is. It just is how it is, how could I do anything else (wish in one hand and shit in the other, see which one fills up first). Id rather not be stuck at the traffic lights breathing exhaust fumes but….Of course things are always changing. At least there is no lead in the exhaust fumes anymore.
.
LikeLike
Thanks.. I probably need to review what Stoicism is. I don’t recall them as ascetic so much as somehow cultivating indifference to desire, and acceptance of any fate, or something..
LikeLike
i don’t think you need to review stoicism. I think you are pretty much spot on. Your description of it is much better than mine. I’m not a very good writer.
Can you see why I see it as a precursor to Christianity Which by the way I think is most of what makes the west such a great place to live.
LikeLike
No, it’s not immediately intuitive to me what connection you see. Please elaborate if you care to. I’m definitely no expert in Christianity, since I had a nonreligious upbringing, and have only done spotty reading or study since.
LikeLike
They say you can’t cheat an honest man. Mark is an honest man. Great advice I try to spread everywhere I go. Turn off the news. F the government and their demands, never rely on them for anything. I remember my grandfathers hated FDR with a purple passion and would never ever take anything free from the government. Because nothing in this world is free.
LikeLike
Something that just popped in my head vis a vis Bill Hicks/Alex Jones: masks. Bill Hicks looks like he’s wearing a mask, same with AJ. Especially since both obviously CIA. You can’t, however, mask teeth easily; you can use dentures, but then you get an ugly POS like Freddy Mercury.
LikeLike
Just based on the pic above, AJ looks to me like he could possibly be wearing some high tech face mask.. that weird all over smoothness.
Interesting how alleged hyper-realistic face masks got some mainstream promotion for awhile a few years ago, when that CIA lady wrote a memoir(?) or something and hit the interview circuit talking about it.
LikeLike
Mark, have you ever listened to Amy Goodman and Democracy Now? I do almost every day, since it interrupts my WZBC rock show at lunchtime. You call Amy the queen of dour; I call her the Earnest Queen. Democracy Now! is an unintentionally hilarious show: 90% of what they cover and talk about is Israel/Palestine. Someone made a very astute comment (I forget the source, MM?) that they must use theater students to populate the protests during the Isreal conflict. The intro music to Democracy Now! is very jazzy/lighthearted, a real juxtaposition against the supposed outrages going on. I also often notice the “journalists” are heavy on fake outrage, light on real feeling.
LikeLike
I used to listen to her regularly during my lefty phase. That’s when I called her the “queen of dour”. I also sent her $25 a month for a couple of years.
LikeLike
I’m finally getting to that Ron Unz article that was linked in the Mathis thread. Interesting to learn of Michael Piper Collins (pied piper?) and The Spotlight paper, which I vaguely recall hearing of but didn’t know much about. However Unz’s writing is almost like nails on a chalkboard in terms of how loaded it is with ad hominem and arguments from incredulity, and lack of almost any evidence or reasoning to support his assertions. Maybe this is how some find reading Mathis to be, I remember some commenters here describing it as painful reading. But I generally find him much more fair minded and reasonable than Unz is in this piece.
LikeLike
Adding… Unz marvelling at how prolific Mathis is, oh he’s written the equivalent of 60 to 70 books or something, that whole business.. it gets a bit silly. The papers are largely just expounding on MM’s mostly developed worldview (just evolving or shifting a little over time as anyone does) in a casual, conversational tone, by someone with strong verbal fluency and able to quickly and easily articulate their ideas. Ie, a writer. Anybody off the street can talk your ear off about what they think about things, and any columnist writing regularly week to week will eventually write thousands of words. We’re not talking “books” in the sense of when a serious nonfiction writer (do those exist) develops a single new thesis in each large volume, carefully researching and orchestrating the whole, with supporting chapters and an overall architecture to the book, after digging into old archives and conducting interviews, etc… if you know what I mean if you’ve ever cracked open an actual book.
LikeLike
Hi, I wanted to say my piece on this. Previously I was too hard on Miles, and some other contributors to this blog. I have decided to not be so negative on these individuals like Miles who have made very significant contributions to the field. I believe Miles output is completely within the scope of a dedicated, focused, highly intelligent researcher. In fact, I am somewhat disappointed he did not move into the biosciences, as he had an excellent speculative paper on enzymology, which he did not follow up on. Moreover, his model of the nucleus is very elegant and far superior on paper to the Bohr model. However, I wish he could follow up with experimental studies on this, including the charge field. It should be possible to test the theory of chiral photons. If anything, this output suggests it comes from mostly a single source. Regards, Ray.
LikeLike
3rd time trying to post. Previously I was too hard on Miles, and some other contributors to this blog. I have decided to not be so negative on these individuals like Miles who have made very significant contributions to the field. I believe Miles output is completely wihtin the scope of a dedicated, focused, highly intelligent researcher. In fact, I am somewhat disappointed he did not move into the biosciences, as he had an excellent specultative paper on enzymology, which he did not follow up on. Moreover, his model of the nucleus is very elegant and far superior on paper to the Bohr model. However, I wish he could follow up with experimental studies on this, including the charge field. It should be possible to test the theory of chiral photons. Regards, Ray.
LikeLiked by 1 person
I am going totally off topic as is my wont. I have a prediction for the election, wondering if other people have them. Harris seems like a shoo-in, based on the near pariah status of Trump. However, Trump is really the best gift ever to our media, and controllers, so to let him lose would be the end of him. To keep the story going, I believe they will let Trump win, with a non-majority, but electoral college win, then string out the result by challenging Trumps victory in court with the 100s of lawsuits brought against him. And ultimately seat Harris in January 2025. All to stir the pot of civil war. The right is as angry as a hornets nest now, but completely stupid and predictable at the same time. Clearly the PTB are hoping most of them self-immolate after their hero Trump goes to fake jail after winning.
LikeLike
Partly plausible scenario, but a couple points I’d differ on.. the Trump supporters aren’t particularly angry right now that I see. They’re cautiously optimistic if anything bc he seems to be trending up in polls and Kamala is mediocre to terrible as a candidate, after the initial enthusiasm she gave Dems. The Trump team also has more (all?) the sense of humor on their side, as the Dems have become humorless authoritarians of wokism etc.
On civil war, I agree with Ab Irato, it would be difficult to generate in the real world, though I suppose it could be manufactured on TV.. more likely if your scenario played out, they would be distraught but just have to take it, as they have before many times.
LikeLike
I dunno, the right people I knew were having a meltdown after the “assassination attempt”, guffaw.
Definitely correct, a proper civil war with Grays vs Blues will not happen. But I can say there are hollers (short for hollows) you should be careful going into in New Hampshire, Vermont, etc. if you are a federal or state employee. There are armed people up there who are bat shit crazy, probably for obvious reasons, about the government, and what they might try to do.
LikeLike
My tiny sample of Trump supporters I know in real life are always having meltdowns over something, to varying levels.. which, fair enough, since they are constantly getting trolled by the media, Dems, and basically every institution out there.
Last week or so I saw this cohort in person and a big topic was about public displays of support for Trump – to do or do not – and those they had seen or not seen, in their travels. They worry that anything, say a bumper sticker, could spur vandalism from crazed ruffian Dems. They cite news stories of egregious examples, and so refrain from display despite this being the ur red state (AL)
LikeLike
I wonder who the Republican nominee would have been if not Trump, who was highlighted in news stories every day in his time after the 2020 election, sucking all the oxygen out of the process.
LikeLike
Yes. However, the people I knew on the right were having a meltdown after the “assassination attempt”, guffaw. Thinking it was real and a plot by Lady McBeth (aka Jill Biden), or secret service, etc.
Definitely correct, a proper civil war with Grays vs Blues will not happen. But I can say there are hollers (short for hollows) you should be careful going into in New Hampshire, Vermont, etc. if you are a federal or state employee. There are armed people up there who are bat shit crazy, probably for obvious reasons, about the government, and what they might try to do.
LikeLike
Definitely correct, a proper civil war with Grays vs Blues will not happen. But I can say there are hollers (short for hollows) you should be careful going into in New Hampshire, Vermont, etc. if you are a federal or state employee. There are armed people up there who are bat shit crazy, probably for obvious reasons, about the government, and what they might try to do.
LikeLike
And they will put Trump under house arrest, tweeting his predicament several times a day under X ,or twitter, or whatever its called, for ever and ever, amen.
All the while the complete destruction of Babylon American goes on without slowing down, flooded with immigrants into the cities. I don’t know if anyone else had noticed but the cities of Europe and North America are major hell holes with very expensive restaurants, rude people, and tons of petty crime. Stick to the rural areas traveling or at home.
LikeLike
“Lambert Strether” of NC wargames an autogolpe (self coup) by Biden/ Harris and the Dem/ media/ Intel establishment in the wake of a Trump victory, and a manufactured color revolution, a mass mobilization of Dem true believers –
https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2024/10/democrat_war_games_could_they_try_for_a_color_revolution_after_a_trump_victory.html
One notable point, they cite a couple precedents in other countries of Trump-like figures or populist movements, where these color revolutions succeeded in shifting the sphere of acceptable public discourse or belief, I guess cowing the “deplorables” or populists into some kind of submission.. is that the desired end of the Trump saga? I really have no idea anymore, what anyone is aiming at..
LikeLike