Author: Mark Tokarski

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

Some words, just words

I recently returned from Kenya with 464 photos on my camera, and as I said to friends and family, “one or two of them are actually quite good.” Of course, the essence of a good photo is to be there, and to snap the one above I had to be in a Land Cruiser, and the lion, while aware of us, needed to be indifferent. As noted by our driver, were I to get out of the vehicle, she would eat me. If this shot were taken from a helicopter above, you would see perhaps five Land Cruisers surrounding the beast. The lion’s attitude reminds me of what is the proper way to view American politics: Studied indifference.

I write a lot, and as with photography, now and then I write something I want to remember, even if no one else cares. Thus the paragraph beneath the fold here, a comment originally addressed to our friend Petra, and modified to include part of her wise response and to remove her personally from it, with respect.

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Is it a shifting tide, or signal from on high?

We all take note here of the Trump executive orders since his inauguration, and while I am not optimistic about Trump, welcome them nonetheless. He has removed us from the Paris Accords once again, and this time has gone after the endangerment finding, that goofy piece of agitation propaganda that set the stage for a host of administrative rulings shutting down fossil fuel activities that benefit all of us. In brief, that ruling says that CO2 is a pollutant. Such a grievous outcropping was the result of years of stage-setting by the people behind the climate change hoax. It was set in stone when a sitting president told an outrageous lie as follows: Ninety-seven percent of scientists agree: Climate change is real, man-made and dangerous.

Obama tweeted that.

Presidents lie all the time – it’s right there on the job application: “Are you prepared to use all of the status and prestige of high office to tell egregious lies? If the answer is “Yes,” you have just a shot. If the answer is “YES!!!”, and you are young and handsome and well-spoken and able to control a forum, we’ll make you president. We’ll even dummy up a fake education and change your place of birth to make it happen. The job requires at its very soul a complete lack of character. Only exceptional criminals need apply.

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The poor, misunderstood carbohydrate, Part II, and finale

I am not going to belabor this subject, as I’ve had a couple of other insights that play along with it. I do want to stress the following:

  • Nutrition has not changed since the nineteenth century, when it was understood that a diet rich in animal fats led to better health than enjoyed by most people coming out of that dreary and unhealthy time.
  • The formula has not changed: balance. Animal fats should be at the center of a healthy diet, though carbohydrates have a part to play.
  • In modern times, ease of production of carbohydrates in the form of sugars delivered by bread and pasta, starchy vegetables, high-fructose corn syrup (now labeled simply “corn sugar”) have led to super-abundance of carbs, simple and complex, in the modern diet.
  • “Complex” carbs like pasta and bread take a day longer for the body to process, but in the end, the body does not know the difference between complex carbs and simple sugars.
  • Hand-in-hand with this are epidemics of diabetes and obesity, often morbid obesity.
  • Just as medical doctors are not trained in healthy nutrition, nutritionists are not either. If they had the ability to walk backward through time, they would discover that they are in large part responsible for our epidemics.

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The poor, misunderstood carbohydrate, Part I

I’ve been in a bit of a fugue lately between jet lag, ten times zones and west to east, tripled with intestinal troubles coming out of Kenya and (which in my mind led to) a nasty head cold. Through all of this, and being upside down on the clock, I decided it was time to write. The result was several hours at the keyboard leading to a very long piece, knowing all along it was too long to be publishable. It was suggested I break it down into shorter pieces, which is where I am at this morning. I am fully recovered now, sleeping on the clock (up at 4:30 AM, but that is just my age) and head, sinuses and lower regions all operating as proscribed. 

The United States and other places (Mexico for one) are in crisis brought about by bad eating habits that lead to obesity and diabetes. I’ve long known a cure for both but run into obstacles getting the information out. These are created in large part by two factors that interfere with simple nutritional eating: Television (and media in general), and professional nutritionists. 

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Mr. Overwrought

I’ve had quite a time since our return from Kenya. For one, I’ve suffered from what I am calling “Hakuna Matata’s” revenge, thinking that Hakuma was just a character in the movie Lion King, rather than a Swahili phrase meaning “no worries.” (I never saw the movie.) Enough about that. In addition, maybe part of the whole, I came down with respiratory troubles, aka head cold. Couple all of that with east-west jet lag (we traveled out ten times zones and back in two weeks), and I’ve been overwrought. The result is that I write long posts like the one (formerly) down below (now removed) about dieting, which occur at 2 and 3AM, and for which I devote considerable brain muscle, all for naught as no one reads them.

I have decided that a paragraph I inserted as an afterthought will be enough on the subject, and so unlike me, ’nuff said.

 

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Intolerance is all about!

I came upon a post about Petra Liverani and the moon landings at Fakeologist. Petra and I have gone round and round on the subject until I decided just to let it be. I cannot change her mind. I won’t try. In the meantime, Petra came out with a post called 12 logical fallacies unmasked in the use of the terms “conspiracy theory” and “conspiracy theorist“. I like the post. Petra started out by naming 12 logical fallacies.

  1. The authorities decide which events are conspiracies – the Appeal to Authority fallacy
  2. Only the majority expert voice counts, the minority expert voice is to be derided and ignored – the Appeal to Common Belief fallacy
  3. Professionals do not make claims of conspiracy nor do they theorise – the Strawman fallacy
  4. Refuters use the more specific and appropriate term, “psychological operation” or psyop – the Definist fallacy
  5. Selecting the obviously invalid argument – the Cherry-picking fallacy
  6. OMG! You’re one of those tinfoil-hatted people! – Argument from Intimidation fallacy
  7. Your reasoning is based on bias, mine is rational – The Bias Blind Spot
  8. Is the fact of conspiracy the main concern? – no, it’s the Big Lie fallacy technique used for millennia to control our minds
  9. The sophisticated Big Lie – the addition of the False Dilemma fallacy
  10. If those in power had done it they would have … – Hypothesis contrary to fact
  11. That’s insane, that cannot be true – Argument from incredulity
  12. When the rule is that they must “tell” us the truth underneath the propaganda how is the rejection of the narrative in the realm of “theory”? – The Loaded Question fallacy

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Is Taylor Swift for real? (I kid! Of course she’s not!)

I draw attention to a post by Francis O’Neill, a man I have only recently come across, called “Is Taylor Swift in on it?” I think that is a fair question, even as it seems painfully obvious to me that she is ‘in on it.’ All she has to do is sit back and take it all in … the fame, the accolades, the money. Like the Beatles and Monkees*, to go generational on you, her job is to merely say nothing in public that would betray that 1) She does not write her own music, and 2) She does not perform her own music. If she were on a tell-all kick, she might also add that she has never seen Travis Kelce naked, nor he her/him/it, and that she knows as much about Covid and vaccines as she does about musical structure.

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About the post below

I like to write, and have even on occasion been paid for my written words. One time was by the Rocky Mountain News. I submitted a piece, it was accepted, and I was paid … the number that comes to mind is $600, but that seems a lot. Maybe more like $200. I don’t recall much about the piece (it will come to me later I suppose), but I do recall that when I read the published piece, the editor had inserted words I had not written.

He made it better, dammit. But I recalled then what my oldest daughter, trying to decide her future, had confided in me: that she could never be a journalist, because they are not allowed to think on the job (my words, hers were probably better). How did such a young person come upon such wisdom? I know what she said to be true, but at her age, not about me.

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Vandalism as a worthy cause

The above 1821 painting is called The Hay Wain, by John Constable, a British artist. I have deliberately kept the reproduction above small to preserve some of the integrity, but of course computer screens do not begin to be faithful to originals, much less iPads or, God forbid, iPhones. I would love to be able to stand in front of it. It is kept at the National Gallery in London.

In July of 2022 this painting was vandalized, a triptych overlaid placing modern civilization atop, and the vandals gluing themselves to the painting. The vandalism was done by a group called Just Stop Oil, the subject of this post, but first more about the article I am citing from, a work by Fred Bauer. It is called Vandals of Civilization, and is in the March, 2025 edition of National Review. Unless you buy the magazine from a newsstand, or subscribe, you’ll not have access. I am a longtime subscriber to NR, since my youth with an extended interruption … I read it in my early 20s and forward, and now read it with a far more skeptical eye. So much of it is good, so much less so in my view, but the people there always adhering to the principles of its founder, William F. Buckley, Jr., a man I deeply admired.

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Airline Geography

 

The above photos were taken with my iPhone as we flew from Paris to Minneapolis two days ago. Screen quality is poor but enough is shown so that the general idea is obvious. We had a brief discussion about geography at that time, and I claimed that the arc I saw in 2006 as we flew from Minneapolis to London was an artefact – a flat map representation of a curved earth.

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