Author: Mark Tokarski

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

Men are not pigs, we find

I was reading a MMG piece this morning on Ted Bundy. In it he said,

“You know what other story this contradicts? The story we are told about 1 in 4 girls being raped on campuses. That has been the number for decades. They were selling that story when I was in school in 1981 and still are. The contradiction is that despite the horrible odds against them, college girls didn’t seem to be getting the message.”

I was curious about that 1 in 4 number, wondering if anyone anywhere had ever done any actual research. We live in an era when accusations suffice and can ruin a man’s life. I found an article, Legal Process and the Phony Rape Crisis on Campus,  by Bettina Arndt in Quadrant Online, an Australian publication. Here is the money quote:

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I won’t mess around with Jim (Croce)

Long ago there was a singer, Jim Croce, who (supposedly) wrote and (actually) performed some catchy tunes – this was in an era when melody was important, and jacking up the background noise in recordings was not yet being done. Here is one that is fairly typical of his output, Time in a Bottle:

 

That type of music actually played and sold as “rock and roll” even as it is a classic ballad. He was not a terribly good singer, that is, lacked vocal range.

I never thought much about Croce. Here is what is interesting: In reading about his death on September 20, 1973, it appears to have been real! The only spook markers are 9/20 (=11) and the aircraft being a Beech 18 (=9=3*3). I have not seen 9/20 used in that fashion before, but have not looked for it either. He and four others were taking off from Natchitoches Regional Airport in Louisiana when their plane hit a tree. All were killed. I could look into the matter further, but in 2019 I am not going to mess around with Jim.

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The black advantage

This is a risky post in that I open myself up for accusations of racism, so let me start by saying that I do not care what your skin color is. I can find many reasons to dislike you, but that won’t be one of them.

I have had many friends and acquaintances over time who called themselves liberals and/or Democrats. I was one myself for a brief period. They were given this man, Barack Obama, who by two separate lines is descended from Edward I, King of England (d. 1307) and William I the Lion, King of Scotland (d. 1214).  The former lineage includes James Madison, the latter, as I recall, John McCain.

That is pretty standard for our presidents, all but one (Van Buren) descended from British royalty. This is just an aside, but indicates to me that the American Revolution was a farce. The Brits (at least the aristocracy) have among them some cagey and smart people. When they sense a rebellion in the works, they don’t always use direct confrontation to put it down. Instead they retreat into the tapestry of time and are the shadow behind the leaders of the new government. I saw this done by Americans in Venezuela with Hugo Chavez. Josh did some nice work on Mahatma Gandhi, same strategy apparent. The MM group found Americans playing the same game with Fidel Castro. I sense a similar stink around Nelson Mandela.

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One last climate post

“There are not enough morally brave men in stock. We are out of moral-courage material.” (Mark Twain, United States of Lyncherdom)

I just got done listening to Mark Steyn speaking before the Heartland Institute. He’s a smart, charming and entertaining speaker. Also, he is a courageous man. Michael Mann has sued him for saying that the Hockey Stick is science fraud. It is a SLAP suit more than real, trying to get Steyn to stfu, but Mann has grabbed a wolf by the ears. This is a free speech case, and not about science. Typical of the climate hoax crowd, Mann wants to be immune from criticism. Steyn has counter-sued using anti-SLAP laws.

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Is climate crisis a religion?

Here is a clip from an article reprinted at Climate Etc. by Garth Partridge, Climate’s Uncertainty Principle. It originally appeared in The Quadrant.

“The significant point in this cost-benefit business is that there is virtually no certainty about any of the numbers that are used to calculate either the likely change of climate or the impact of that change on future populations. In essence it is simply assumed that all climate change is bad—that the current climate is the best of all possible climates. Furthermore, there is little or no recognition in most of the scenarios that mankind is very good at adapting to new circumstances. It is more than likely that, if indeed climate change is noticeably “bad”, the future population will adjust to the changed circumstances. If the change is “good”, the population will again adapt and become richer as a consequence. If the change is a mixture of good and bad, the chances are that the adaptive processes will ensure a net improvement in wealth. This for a population which, if history is any guide, and for reasons entirely independent of climate change, will probably be a lot wealthier than we are.”

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Michael Mann whips that baby out

The hockey stick

The above graph is Michael Mann’s infamous 1998 “Hockey Stick,” long discredited. Nonetheless, I just listened to a Mann presentation from mid-2018, and he once again whipped that baby out, asserted that it is an accurate depiction of reality, and then went into his usual spiel about the need to convert to overpriced, subsidized and inefficient solar and wind energy. More about that later.

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The Church of Climatology*

MannWhat follows is going to be old news for many readers, so bear with me. The issue of climate change is something that takes time to sink in for me, and I am a late arrival, so please, if you are up to speed already, humor me.

I finally took time these past few days to read some of the so-called Climategate emails, wherein over a thousand internal messages from The Climate Research Unit (CRU) at the University of East Anglia in Norwich England were made public. I thought it was going to be a tortuous task for a non-scientist, but it is not. The emails that I read at this site are not loaded with jargon and math. They concern themselves with politics, playing defense against pain-in-the-ass skeptics, and making  sure that the public only sees an alarmist point of view about climate change on news and television. In the emails scientists who are skeptical on this subject are ridiculed, stonewalled and suppressed.

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Judith Curry versus the GTMS

It is interesting how various people are treated in public discourse. Certain propaganda techniques are used to either advance careers or destroy people and minimize their exposure. Since most science is funded by the National Science Foundation, that is where the agenda is set. If a scientist wants to be funded, that scientist had better conform to the current paradigm.

In other words, science in general is corrupt. But readers here already knew this. I have come across two terms that grate like fingernails on a blackboard: “debunk” and “deny.” Both are used as a wave-of-dismissal technique for anyone outside the NSA-funded paradigm, better defined as a “groupthink mindset,” or GTMS (they love their acronyms!). To assert that the current GTMS on climate change is overstated, especially with use of observational evidence, is not science. It is denial! Using the Google to locate anyone skeptical about GTMS usually results a cascade of links on how that person has been debunked.

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Was Ayn Rand a sociopath?

Rand
Yikes!

One of the most read and commented-on pieces  ever published here was called “Was Ayn Rand a Sociopath?” It’s gone now, and I doubt I would have deleted it, but it is possible. I did delete a few hundred posts a couple of years ago, extricating myself from Montana blogs and politics. Maybe that piece was collateral damage.

This came to mind recently as I have been doing a deep dive, trying to understand climate science and the pseudoscience of Anthropogenic Global Warming. I find myself in league with some Randians, and it gives me that not-so-fresh feeling.

To recap on Rand, I suggested that her real-life behaviors showed a callousness that was reflected in her writing and philosophy. She did not believe in romantic love, for example. Those of us of normal makeup know that it is real, and spectacular. She missed out. She was married, but carried on an extramarital affair out in the open, indifferent to any feelings her husband might have had.

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SAT-smart, real life-dumbed down?

Jeopardy champ

I am not a fan of the TV quiz show Jeopardy, though it graces our TV set each evening. I am usually busy playing Canasta or Rummy 500 on the iPad, and these days waiting for the show to end so I an turn on a baseball game. By that time of day, I am usually in  vegetative state.

However, there is a contestant on now who has won sixteen times, and is racking up an incredible pile of winnings. His name is James Holzhauer. He is a professional gambler and holds a degree in mathematics. He is currently well over $1 million in winnings.

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