Author: Mark Tokarski

Just a man who likes to read, argue, and occasionally be surprised.

Micrometeorite dangers in space

I draw your attention to the article linked here, How Do You Shield Astronauts and Satellites from Deadly Micrometeorites?

A caveat or two: Regarding the matter of the possibility of space travel, I am currently on the fence. But the International Space Station, if real, would be in Lower Earth Orbit (LEO), and so would have atmosphere to bounce off. Are there astronauts aboard? I have my doubts, but cannot prove or disprove any of it. The whole thing could be part of the ongoing hoax started in 1957 when the USSR launched Sputnik.

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Apollo 11: Something went somewhere

Note to readers: This post originally appeared in 2019, and has in it evidence that Apollo 11 was severely under-powered, and had no astronauts or space capsule aboard. It was merely ditched in the Atlantic, its sole purpose to fulfill JFK’s 1961 pledge to put a man on the moon by the end of the decade. It does not address the Apollo 12-17, which never left lower earth orbit, but were on some other mission, the supposed moon landings part of what Neil Armstrong called “Truth’s Protective Layers.”
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Apollo 11 launch
Launch of Apollo 11, July 16, 1969

Few of us remember the Mercury, Gemini and Apollo programs that led to Apollo 11, the one that landed men on the moon. So mention of Apollo 6 is not going to ring any bells. This mission, unmanned, was a test of the Saturn 5 rocket engines, and was fraught with difficulties. The destination was low earth orbit (LEO), and the entire craft suffered from “pogo oscillations,” or a vibration that would eventually cause mission failure if not remedied. Think of driving down the highway with a bad tire.Eventually the vibrations will cause other failures.

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Debunking debunking

I was thinking this morning, rather angrily I might add, that this is my blog, and I can make rules and insist that commenters follow them. And the rule that right away came to mind was “no more links to debunking sites.”I will refine that a little bit here in a minute.

First, what is “debunking”? A few examples, the first rather hilarious. I still lived in Bozeman, and we were now and then discussing 9/11 on the blog, with miles to go before we slept. But I had mentioned Newton’s Second Law of motion, generally stated to be that every action has an equal and opposite reaction. That in mind, when an aluminum jet aircraft slams into a steel and concrete building at (we are told) 500mph, it is no different than if the building is traveling that fast and slams into the jet aircraft. The aircraft are crushed. There are no Roadrunner holes in the building, and debris falls to the earth, tons of it.

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Aulis well

Aulis (Ancient Greek: Αὐλίς) was a Greek port-town, located in ancient Boeotia in central Greece, at the Euripus Strait, opposite of the island of Euboea. Livy states that Aulis was distant 3 miles (4.8 km) from Chalcis.. Aulis never developed into a fully independent polis, but belonged to Thebes (378 BC) and Tanagra respectively.. According to legend (The Iliad) the Greek fleet … (Wikipedia)

Aulis is a website used as a clearing house for information on Apollo. There is a pile of stuff there. I spent the last three days reading the work of Mary Bennett and David S. Percy, authors of Dark Moon: Apollo and the Whistle-Blowers. I read more than half of that book, and not due to lack of interest but extreme skepticism, gave it up. I did think the authors did a good job exposing the frailty of the case for moon landings in 1969-72. But they were headed in a direction I could not fathom, that of a connection between supposed structures on Mars and the pyramids.

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Portrait of the accountant as a young man

I have often thought about writing a post by this name, with no idea of what the content might be. I like the idea of comparing an accountant to an artist, as two walks of life could not be more different. That’s why the title.

My daughter once worked around some accounting personnel, and she noted that they were jovial and outgoing. But, she added, it was a front. These people knew the reputation accountants had and were deflecting by putting on masks. Underneath the lilting outer surfaces were staid and tired folks, as you would expect.

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The 1980 New Mexico Prison Revolt

I was reading a work of fiction (CJ Box, The Disappeared) and on page 190 came across the following passage:

The authorities who ran the place were so spooked not to repeat the infamous New Mexico prison riot of 1980 – where thirty-three men were murdered, some by having lengths of steel rebar shoved through their heads …

The 33 caught my eye, and I put down my work of fiction to entertain the possibility of another … a fake prison riot. Of course, the existence of that number does not automatically indicate a fake event, as 33 is a real number that occurs in real life. So I went to Wikipedia to see if there were more spook markers and other indicators of fakery. There are.

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Rep Cori Bush, radical cancelist

I have trouble imagining myself as a Democrat, but I was one in the early-to middle 1990s. In my defense, I found them, by and large, to be a reprehensible lot. I am speaking here of the leadership of the Montana Democratic Party at that time. The leader of the party was Senator Max Baucus, as thoroughly dislikable as any politician I have ever known or followed, and I include Al Gore in that sentiment. I have worse things to say about the stuttering galoot, but I’ll stop there.

In my defense, as Monty Python might say, I got better. I quit the party, but I did not bounce to the Republican half of our one-party system. I came to realize that each party has a role to play, working together to prevent the rise of a true second party. The idea that we must be one or the other, or that behind closed doors there is true disagreement between them, is in my view absurd. Both parties work in conjunction to contain us, to keep us from moving out and forming movements that might threaten them. True, when elections are underway, there is intense bickering. But when it is over, they settle in and nothing changes, ever.

I do not vote, ever. I am told I have to vote to have a voice, but learned many years ago (the 2000s) that elections are stage-managed affairs, and that votes, the further up the power structure one goes, are not even counted.

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Oh no, not another Moon post!

No, not really. Honestly, if we did not have a Petra, I would have to hire one, as she kept it lively. Unfortunately, the blog does not have a large enough budget to pay her or to hire someone like her.

Jackie Barlow put up a comment linking us to a treasure trove of information called Apollo Reality: How, and where, NASA faked the lunar landing, and lunar lift off.` I think I have seen this before, or at least knew of it. It involves a great deal of reading, and for me, wonderment at how they managed to get hold of so many incriminating photos and videos. I am thinking, once again, limited hangout.

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Occam’s razor, and other matters

William of Ockham, a 14th century philosopher, is credited with his “razor,” that “entities must not be multiplied beyond necessity,” often interpreted to mean that the simplest explanation usually leads us closest to truth.

It is a tool, nothing more, and like any tool, the craftperson holding it is more important than the tool itself. You can give me a pallet and oil paints and brushes, but I assure you the end product will not be a Mona Lisa, but rather more like a Jackson Pollack. Onlookers to Pollack’s work, seen at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City, are encouraged to look at the painting below and marvel at its beauty. 

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How stupid are we? (he asked, rhetorically)

When I was in high school, I worked afternoons in a grocery store, Albertson’s. In those days stores would buy a full two page newspaper ad each Thursday highlighting sale prices, and people would buy sale items, often in quantity. One day I noticed our assistant manager going around and marking up various items – I asked him “John, what’s this about?”

He said that they had to make up for money they lost on advertised sale items, so that part of his job was to go around and mark up enough stuff so that the store would break even on their “sale”.  It was a good life lesson on how things really worked. There were no computers in those days, so that the process was not foolproof, but was at least carefully calculated.

This morning on entering our local Kings Sooper I encountered this sign. It says that shopping carts will stop rolling if they leave the parking lot.

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