Author: Mark Tokarski

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

The Manhattan Contrarian continually puts out good and credible work

I read the Manhattan Contrarian regularly. That blog is listed in our blogroll. I have never thought to plug his work, as it has never occurred to me that he is in need of help from a lesser blog. But today I want to offer him some kudos.

The post I am referring to is The Energy Storage Fiasco: How Soon Will It Be Abandoned?, dated January 17, 2025. The photo above, is of the Moss Landing battery storage facility, located in Monterey County, California. It is the largest battery storage facility in the world.  Lithium ion batteries have a tendency to spontaneously combust, and this fire broke out on January 16, or two days ago from this writing. No one is yet revealing the amount of damage done by the fire, so I can only observe by the photo that it is substantial.

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One small oversight

Here’s an obviously staged photo taken at the fake Trump assassination attempt on July 13, 2024.

How can we tell it was staged? A shot had supposedly been taken at Trump from the direction that his white shirt is facing, opening him up to more shots from that direction. Any prominent public figure knows that when faced with danger the instructions are to get low and stay low, and crawl to safety. Since fight promoter Trump knows about staging, it is safe to say that he and the circle of people around him rehearsed this scene for dramatic effect, creating a courageous and defiant leader.

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Of climate models and other toys

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) recently announced that 2024 was the warmest year on record, the key being “on record.” When IPCC speaks it is treated in the media as an ex cathedra source (a Catholic expression meaning “from the chair”, or infallible). There are several reasons for this:

  • IPCC was set up on the founding principle that greenhouse gases were heating up our climate, a finalistic principle that has led to circular thinking from the beginning.
  • IPCC relies on 30 or so climate models coming from around the world, each starting with the assumption that the Earth’s climate is in equilibrium, and that only human activity will change that. All of these climate models drift off into catastrophic warming except one, the Russians, who have always produced better scientists than here in the West. Save that, none of the climate models are in sync with real climate data, and yet are followed with rigor by governments all over the planet. Hence, windmills littering the landscapes along with solar panels, and countries like Germany and Great Britain drifting into perilous shortages, blackouts, and rationing. One can infer from this, as during Covid, that all the governments on the planet (save perhaps Tanzania) march lockstep to an undisclosed higher power. We were once told that we should fear a “one world government”, but I am here to tell you that while we were barring our doors against it, it came in through the bathroom window.
  • All news agencies everywhere treat the IPCC as the man behind the green curtain, and none will dare pull back that curtain to reveal the Oscar Zoroaster Phadrig Isaac Norman Henkle Emmannuel Ambroise Diggs – like character who is governing our perceptions. This gives IPCC an entrenched aura of (unearned) authority, as in essence it is a propaganda body, and follows the principles of propaganda far more faithfully than those of science.

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Post hoc, ergo propter hoc

I do not need to instruct most of my readers on the meaning of the Latin phrase used as the title of this piece. For the few uninitiated, post hoc, ergo propter hoc is a phrase used to describe a logical fallacy, one of the most common in use. It translates to “after this, therefore because of this.” Better to illustrate by example rather than ‘splain, John Brown, the man who initiated the beginning of the US Civil War by attacking the weapons storage facility at Harpers Ferry, was supposedly superstitious and guided by stars in the heavens to dictate his moves. If they aligned, he moved. The fallacy here is that stars had anything to do with his movements. That translates to after this, therefore because of this.

I worked on John Brown quite a bit, assisted by Kevin Starr, who added much more. My initial trigger was the fact that the armory at Harper’s Ferry on the night of the attack had but one guard on duty, and was in essence left unguarded. That told me that the event was staged, and that both Northern and Southern elements were in on it. Then we learn that Brown was juiced, part of the British peerage, and that it does not take much sleuthing to realize that his public hanging was staged, and that he walked away. It then logically follows that if the trigger event of the Civil War was staged, that the war itself, while costly in terms of lives and property, was a planned event. Lincoln, who would later fake his death, was in on it as well. The object of the war? Another time, another story. Slavery was part of it, but the driving force was a new kind of union of the states, and a major rewriting of our governing document, the Constitution. Power was transferred from the individual states to a new and powerful federal government.*

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A conversation with AI about 911

AI is programmed to repeat the essential arguments of propaganda surrounding the events of 9/11, and as such is just another Wikipedia, a LOOT, or Lies Of Our Times.

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Me: On 9/11/2001 three jetliners were said to have crashed into the Twin Towers and the Pentagon, and another to have vanished in an old coal mine in Pennsylvania. The latter aside, what we saw on TV, the airliners leaving behind Wiley Coyote-type holes in the building, violates Newton’s Third Law, that every action is met by an equal and opposite reaction, so that the object with the greater mass will prevail, and the aircraft should have been annihilated and left on the streets of Manhattan.

AI: Newton’s Third Law of Motion states that for every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction. This law is universally applicable and is not violated in any physical scenario, including the events of September 11, 2001. The holes formed by the aircraft in the World Trade Center buildings do not violate Newton’s Third Law. When the planes hit the buildings, the planes and the buildings exerted equal and opposite forces on each other. The planes were destroyed due to the high-speed collision, while the buildings, though damaged, did not collapse instantaneously due to their structural integrity and the distribution of the impact force.

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Nattering nabobs of negativity

Not too many readers will remember the words in the title above. It is from 1970, and the  words are attributed to Vice President Spiro T. Agnew. He acted as a distractive force for President Nixon, and was dispatched regularly to grab some headlines. The nabobs in question here were the sad lot of pundits known as “journalists”, said to be one of the easiest college degrees to attain.

Natter: To talk continuously for a long time without any particular purpose.

Nabob: An Indian ruler within the Mogul empire; someone of great wealth or importance; a person with a grandiose style or manner.

Agnew certainly did his homework on this one, drawing out two obscure words and making them memorable, so much so that I still remember the quote 54 years later.

Below the fold are some more quotes from the 31 pages I have preserved:

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A magical Christmas

 

Christmas is mostly for kids, and I think it is perfectly OK to let their imaginations be filled with Santa and reindeer and chimneys. When my kids were little we had a tradition that lasted for a brief while until some cynical brat ruined it.

We lived in Billings, Montana. It’s a nice town, mostly, and is under what are called the Rims, a long geological formation, part of it seen above, that runs the length of the town. I am told that they formed as waves from an inland sea washed in and out, not unlike Galveston, Texas.

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Good Calories, Bad Calories

The above title of this post is also the title of a book published in 2008 by science writer Gary Taubes, full title Good Calories, Bad Calories, Fat, Carbs, and the Controversial Science of Diet and Health.** At 609 pages (counting bibliography and index), I guess we could call it a tome. However, I found it hard to put down.

We had moved to Colorado, and sometime prior to 2011 we went to Boulder to hear Noam Chomsky speak. We got probably the last two tickets and were at the very back of the balcony. I remember it well because I had a hard time squeezing my fat ass into my seat. Some time after that I told my wife that I had to change my eating habits. I had read Taubes’ book, and it made sense to me. Here’s a partial list of the things I gave up:

Pizza, cookies, ice cream, spaghetti (all pastas), bread, beer, pizza, donuts, candy, candy bars, chocolate, potatoes, pizza, onion rings, French fries,  … man I love pizza. Also, many fruits and vegetables have high carbohydrate value. Here’s a link to a site that lists good low-carb fruits and vegetables. Strawberries are always in season at our house. White wine is a safe bet over red.

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Orgies are vile …

Over the years I have been collecting bits and piece of witty snarks and insightful comments in a file I called “Wit and Wisdom”. I pulled it up last week and found that I had a little over one page of items, meaning I had lost the original. But wait! There were two files by that name, one with a different suffix, and it turned out to be 31 pages. I remember sitting at our dining room table in Bozeman when I first decided I needed a way to save stuff, and putting these gems onto my laptop. That it survived all these years, perhaps twenty or more, is no tribute to my competency, but rather to good luck, nothing more.

I’ve gone over those 31 pages now, and found quite a few items that I am going to repeat here, a few at a time. There’s a lot in there that I would not now take trouble to record, notably Edward Abbey, whose every written word (except some of his fiction, which I found over-the-top) I have read. I also made it a point to read everything written by George Orwell, but he does not turn up very often in this file. I suspect that is because somewhere I have a separate file for him.

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