The most amazing thing about this video is that Glen Campbell was not classically trained and did not read music. Nuff said.
Author: Mark Tokarski
Just a man who likes to read, argue, and occasionally be surprised.
More Twaddle
Japan has not warmed since 1989!
1989 is the year that Dr. James Hansen, then Director, NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies, testified before a Senate subcommittee, its name too long to matter. Prior to the hearing, air conditioning was turned off in the room and the windows opened. They wanted people to be hot and uncomfortable. This was the hearing that introduced the world to the concept of Global Warming, later changed to Climate Change (probably to avoid the embarrassment of absence of warming).
This article shows three graphs, one each for Tokyo, the island of Hachijō-jima, and the entire island of Japan. Winters there have not warmed since 1987 (the entire island), and 1984 (Tokyo). The graph for Hachijō-jima goes all the way back to 1947. If anything it shows a slight cooling trend.
Tuesday Twaddle
The Ukrainian matter
Yesterday, as I read the discussion going on in Stephers’ post regarding the reality or falseness of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, I was reminded that my name, Tokarski, originates in Ukraine, and is Ashkenazim Jewish. I am neither Ukrainian nor Jewish, but the name “Tokarski” is in the Jewish registry of surnames. The last I knew of my ancestors was a letter that circulated among us saying that my paternal grandfather’s family lived in Austria, “down the hill from Switzerland.” Legend has it that the surname Tokar, taken from the Tokar region of Ukraine (which I could not locate) spawned emigrants to the United States, many of whom landed in Pennsylvania, mining coal I imagine.
Indeed my grandfather immigrated to Pennsylvania, but not from Ukraine. The story is that while in school he had a particularly strict and unpleasant teacher. The boys in his class managed to subdue him and lock him in a closet. I would make him to be a young teen at that time. It was not shits and giggles. The authorities took the rebellion seriously, and enlisted police and military to hunt down the boys, who would be drafted. There was a war going on at that time (late 1800s, perhaps Franco-Prussian, a predecessor to WWI). My great grandmother stowed grandpa on the back of a potato truck, and he made his way to France, and then to Ellis Island, and only then to Pennsylvania. I assume he worked the coal mines, because he ended up in Great Falls, Montana. The “Great Falls” of the Missouri River, over which Lewis and Clark and their men (33 total) had to portage with massive outriggers, were by that time underwater, as the Anaconda Copper Company had a reduction/smelting operation there. They needed the electricity generated by the powerful movement of current, so no more waterfall.
Climate scientists threaten to go on strike!
This news in that headline falls under the heading “Oh please, don’t tantalize us!”
Two articles today from the Homewood front. Paul Homewood apparently a Brit, has been blogging since 2011, and his output is prolific. Today’s article is titled Are Our Winters Getting Warmer? The answer, no, is no surprise to me. Climate “scientists” apparently do not know how to read a graph. See below.
Continue reading “Climate scientists threaten to go on strike!”
Snopes for dummies
Yes, I was tempted to work in the word “dopes,” but resisted the temptation.
As a young man in 1973 I watched a big-hit movie called The Sting. It starred Robert Redford and Paul Newman, and the plot involved an elaborate charade to convince a very wealthy man that he had a good chance of winning a pile of money if he bet on a certain horse. They had large chalkboards and men on ladders listing and changing horse racing outcomes and betting odds, all fake. The man bet, lost a bundle, but importantly, once the ‘sting’ had occurred it was understood that it be permanent. He could never know he’d been had.
I learned quite a bit from this movie, one thing that the expression “con-game” is based on the word “confidence.” In order to be stung, we have to trust the people sticking it to us. Without trust, people are much harder to fool. Thus in our world do news media outlets and journalists go to great lengths to project an aura of reliability, holding a code of ethical behavior that shields them as they lie with impunity.
Audubon Schmodubon
I used to be a member of Audubon Society, in fact, up until 2021. We are a funky lot of people who devote time and energy into identifying, feeding, studying and talking about birds. Our back deck is usually a minor mess, as birds are not careful when feed is available. It is a tiered ecosystem where birds at the highest perch use their beaks to scatter seed below, looking for the most desirable morsel. Down below birds that are ground feeders hunt and peck. Seed that ends up below the deck accumulates until a doe or buck passes by.
Why, I was asked, do we care about these species? “Unconditional love” was the only answer I could muster. They show no gratitude, in fact do not even know we are caring for them. A bird pecking away at a seed bell strung from a wire has no clue he is not on a tree, one with abundant mealy worms.
How not to communicate
Back in the 1990s I was active in a group called the Montana Wilderness Association, since renamed “Wild Montana” and changed from activism to collaboration, an industry front group. Part of my self-initiated volunteer work was to go around Billings, my home town, and speak to various groups. But rather than “speak,” I had an idea. I was dedicated to one purpose only, the preservation of wild lands, and noticed that we had this in common with just about everyone, even our severest critics. However, we had among us misanthropes, and such people tended to be the face of our movement, as cameras tend to pick out the wild ones with dreadlocks and who carry signs and stand on street corners. In truth, the men and women I worked with in MWA were serious and stable. These were some of the best people I’ve ever known, and I look back on those times with warmth and good feelings.
My idea was to speak to disinterested and even opposition groups, and bring love of wild lands to them. I went to the forest service and asked if they had any resources I might use – in fact, they had photographs of just about every lake and mountain in the state, and offered to let me use them. My first engagement was a large gathering with the Gem and Mineral Society, and was well received. All I did, without prepared script, was to show the slides and ask who in the audience recognized the places. They were enthusiastic – they knew the names and were proud of having been there. People in that group knew every place, more than a few having hiked to them.
The George McGovern legacy: An equal distribution of poor health
The above image, no longer in use, is called the Food Pyramid. It contains within it suggestions for healthy eating. In my opinion, humble or not, it contains some of the worst dietary advice ever given.
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- It puts too much emphasis on vegetables and fruits. I’ve no problem with them, I like most of them, but I think them overrated in terms of health. In my diet I have a small glass of orange juice daily, though not religiously, and broccoli and onions, green peppers and jalapeños. These turn up in recipes. (As I will be discussing Keto in this piece, I mention here that on that system, we avoid vegetables grown underground, but eat many grown above. Potatoes and yams, for example, are diet death, french fries a never-no-no. Green beans? Not a big deal.) (Keep in mind that I am 71. If you are in your 20s, 30s or 40s, eat, drink and be merry!)
- The pyramid suggests we eat less meat than fruits and vegetables by far. I even get the impression that it might want us to skip meat entirely. I get most of my nutrition from meat. It keeps me slim, and provides all the nutrients I need to stay healthy, except perhaps Vitamin C.
- I would group cheese with meats, as it is something we can eat in any quantity without affecting our weight. I skip yogurt, and do not drink milk (except with coffee). I have never liked milk. Neither did my mother.
- Fats and oils … use “sparingly?” The body loves fats of all kinds, saturated and not. In fact, our brains are comprised of mostly fat, 60% as I read it, meaning that my dad was 60% right in a certain insult he would occasionally lay on me. (For sake of humor, I am too hard on him. He never called me a “fathead.”)
- The biggest problem with the above pyramid is the bottom, the bread, cereal, rice and pasta group – 6-11 servings daily! If you want to lose weight and avoid diabetes, you will ignore that recommendation. Of course we all love bread – I can wolf it down as well as anyone. But if I do, I pay a price – my weight mushrooms.
- We can agree with one thing: Avoid sugars.
Continue reading “The George McGovern legacy: An equal distribution of poor health”
A product endorsement
I have never endorsed a product on this blog, and receive no remuneration for doing so. This blog is 100% non-monetized. However, this morning as I was showering, my wife came up to tell me there was a beeping in the basement. I quickly toweled off and got dressed and went down. Sure enough, the product to the left here, the Watchdog Water Alarm was sitting in a puddle of water by our water heater.
I had been troubled by the water heater, as the hot water coming out of the faucet seemed too hot to me – I used a meat thermometer to register it at 140 degrees when the thermostat is set at 125. I did what we all do, went to YouTube, which said that I probably had a buildups in the tank, and that I needed to flush the water heater to get rid of the debris. That should be done every year, I was told. I thought well, heck, I don’t do that every year, but I do it often, like … well, never.
At the same time, we had two leaks in our boiler room, so I called Weatherbee, the people who tend to our boiler, and while they were booked till Monday agreed to send a man over who was in the area. As it turns out, all leaks had a common source.
Apollo 13 spookiness
I am reading the book Dark Moon, at 512 pages of double-columned 9″ x 6″ pages, quite a chore. Many have probably seen the movies that apparently accompany this book, a two-part presentation available at Aulis Online called What Happened on the Moon, Part One and Part Two. I was reading the book this morning on page 344 forward, and stumbled across some things the authors do not seem to be aware of. Though they talk about a lot of whistle blowing, they do not mention spook markers*.
First, use of the number 13 for the bad luck Apollo trip was most likely no coincidence. Liftoff was on April 11, 1970, at 1:13 pm Houston time, which is, as we all know, a reference to the spook marker ’33’. That time of day can also be expressed as 13:13, which embodies “11” and “33.” April 13 was a Mo(o)nday. The switched astronaut who toggled the switch that produced the alleged exposition was Jack Swigert, the 13th astronaut in the Apollo program.
Piece of Mindful 