Author: Mark Tokarski

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

Wagging the Moondoggie, Part 1, the clip show

Below are sections I lifted from Wagging the Moondoggie, Part 1, by Dave McGowan. It is 23 pages in pdf but flows very fast as DM is a very good writer. I clipped those sections that seemed most pertinent. In part one he is questioning at great length why, if we had the technology in 1969, we never went back. The obvious answer, given that the original footage of the men on the moon has never been seen, and all of the technical data has been lost due to a whale oil shortage, is that we never went there in the first place.

It is my intention to do this for all 14 essays that comprise Moondoggie, interspersed with regular stuff that goes on here. By the way, it occurred to me as I was reading that what McGowan was giving us was something seldom seen … critical thinking. (Speaking of which, in the comments in the post below I meant to add that SpaceX has given us footage of rockets landing after having flown. That is utterly absurd and did not happen, so that even in this century we are still being hoaxed. But imagine that for six successful moon missions they pulled off this feat. The problem is that rocket engines produce uneven thrust, but when moving forward unite that thrust in one motion. Seeking to land with uneven thrust would most assuredly have stranded men in Playtex suits on the moon forever.)

Everything hereafter is DM’s words, not mine. I have underlined parts for emphasis.

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Debunking the debunking of Wagging the Moondoggie, Part I

I few things to say at the beginning here before delving into to the actual content of “Debunking Wagging the Moondoggie, Part I“:

First, why “debunk” rather than simply engage in dialogue, or more importantly, “rebut”? The origins of the word “debunk” explain the need for its use rather than to engage in civil and non-offputting dialogue. It is an enabling device for the “debunker” to assume a haughty, superior and condescending stance in order to establish a statuesque appearance of speaking with great authority. “Debunking” is said to arise as a means to “…expose false or nonsensical claims or sentiments.” Essential to this effort is framing, as to have a civil dialogue among persons when one is spouting nonsense, the other not, is not productive. Ergo, Dave McGowan’s debunking of the alleged Moon shots had to be shot down, and in the most aggressive language possible, crude, condescending, and venomous.

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Football odd plays and and referee calls repeated again

We all saw the above call last night. I am told there was a similar “soft” holding call in last year’s Superbowl, which I did not watch. As the announcer said at the time of this call, it was a “game changer”. Otherwise, the game was spectacular, with Philadelphia making some amazing passes and catches. But as the game closed out, the referee gave it to the Chiefs. Did he receive a message via his headset to “call something!”?

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When “science” is unrepentant and wrong for forty years

This is from Susan Krumdieck, Research Director for Net Zero, chastising us for not being true believers in the supposed science behind climate alarmism and impending apocalypse.

Cognitive Dissonance is a phenomena those of us in Energy Transition need to understand and develop ways to deal with in ourselves and others.

The first big dissonance was 40 years ago when the belief that scientific observations warning of environmental damage would cause the necessary change. I still want it to be true. But I look at data and evidence to determine what is most likely. And then I investigate how changes can work and how different people play a part.

Purposeful questions about assumptions is necessary. Questioning widely held assumptions about what can and can’t be done in what timeframe by whom means you are awake to facts.

This story about people believing alien guardians were going to come save them from the destruction of the earth should be of interest.

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Ruthless people

Covid, like Climate Change, is run by people who are required, at high levels, to lie and then lie, and then lie some more. At lower levels, it is only necessary to avoid thinking, and to believe.

But the lies have to stick, that is, people cannot be allowed to disbelieve the propaganda. Punishments have to be in place to discipline anyone who observes, thinks, and speaks out. Such people are, in the eyes of the people behind the hoax, dangerous.

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Book talk

Anna Karenina

‘I shall get angry with Ivan the coachman in the same way, shall dispute in the same way, shall inopportunely express my thoughts; there will still be a wall between my soul’s holy of holies and other people; even my wife I shall blame for my own fears and shall repent it. My reason will still not understand why I pray, but I shall pray, and my life, my whole life, independently of anything that may happen to me, is every moment of it no longer meaningless as it was before but has an unquestionable meaning of goodness with which I have the power to invest it.’

I decided going into ankle surgery and a period of disability that I would attempt to read what is considered one of the greatest works of fiction of all time, Anna Karenina, by Leo Tolstoy. How would I know if it is the greatest? I cannot know any such thing, as I have not read enough of the classics. I should have more periods of disability, as a friend of ours in Bozeman, a wonderfully serene man and a Jewish physician, not only read Don Quixote, but when we knew him, was rereading it. There is something there. We have a copy upstairs, and I am tempted to give it a go.

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Wokism and other stuff

This is just a compendium of small matters that together amount to … a small matter.

Are you alive?

I am 72. I cannot believe how much time has passed, how my childhood is now so far away, and how various events in my life which I thought significant are now ‘distant’. I am not yet old in any sense other than the body does not keep up with the mind. When I went under the knife for surgery on my ankle, they gathered information on me, other surgeries, personal habits, all that stuff, and most importantly, what drugs am I taking? The answer: None. I take an occasional sleeping pill, but that is rare and mostly I don’t even think of it as I fall asleep at night. Other than that … nada. The reaction I got from the young lady at the orthopedic center, who does this for a living and whose clientele are mostly older folks like me … “amazing!”

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A beautiful scam by Viasat

We take satellite TV from Viasat, our only choice. No one else can deliver a signal to us, and our former TV carrier, Centurylink, went to hell on us, claiming its equipment is too old to adequately serve rural customers. This is a situation that has affected customers all over its Western base.

By and large, Viasat is just adequate. Relying as it does on satellites in geosynchronous orbit (and I know, some say satellites do not exist – I remain unconvinced) at 22,236 miles above the planet, there is a natural signal delay. We first noticed this as our phone signal, which we had connected to the Viasat router, was unusable because of a talk over delay. Same with our cell phones, so we 1) had to go back to Centurylink for land line service, adding $50 monthly to our cost of service from Viasat, and 2) had to turn off our cell phone reliance on the Viasat signal too, using T-Mobile and its weak signal to the house for cell service. In the end we were overpaying Viasat for services they could not deliver. But we had no choice other than to go bare or return to DirectTV and their overpriced service, wanting us to purchase 60+ channels when we only watch one or two. That business model is either dead or dying but they refuse to let it go.

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Psychiatry: a useless profession

I do not have a lot of faith in the profession of psychiatry. I am familiar with the work of Jung, and only somewhat with Freud, and I regard them both as brilliant men and trailblazers. Freud came to the conclusion that children abused before the age of five would not remember that abuse even as it affected them for life. I think that is a brilliant insight.

Bipolar disorder, or manic depression, is taken from the DSM-5, the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, 5th edition. I am somewhat confident that it is a real thing, and in fact have a been exposed to it both at work and in my personal life. However, psychiatrists are pill dispensers first, diagnosticians second, and the DSM contains hundreds of disorders that have been voted on by members of the profession. I don’t buy that, don’t buy any of it, don’t imagine that there is ADD or defiant personality disorder or anything else. There are just people in pain.

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