Author: Mark Tokarski

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

Photo fakes – spotting trickery

Note to readers: You will find this post quite long, but I hope not tedious. I hope there are enough photographs so that reading goes fast. Enjoy. The last paragraph is repeated here as most people won’t read that far: “One more thing to mention at the end of a long post where very few readers will find it: At the Mathis site there is a 47 page article by “Lestrade” called Pacific Theater. Because it is a PDF and I am technically inept, I cannot link without having a dead link. So you’re on your own to find it. Lestrade has done some excellent work in deconstructing the Aleutian campaign in World War II. The reason I bring it up here is that his photo analysis is superb. It’s well worth a journey and perhaps an hour of your time.”

In a prior post, I mentioned that Jim Morrison, Janis Joplin, John Denver and Taylor Swift had all been pasted into family photos, that is, we do not know their names, only that their last names: Morrison, Joplin, Deutschendorf and Swift are not their real names. It appears from the outside looking in that these musicians were (are) lifetime actors. I would guess that they were recruited because someone spotted some talent that could be developed.

However, it had to be made clear them that they were not to be let loose on the world, that they would put in their time, learn their trade and then exit the music business. They would be given intense training and then songs to sing that they pretend(ed) were (are) their own creation. In fact, Morrison, Denver and Joplin faked their deaths. Swift is still with us, but I have to suspect a fake death is on her horizon. (Prince probably fits into this category, but I never listened to his music and so have not taken the time to look into his very suspicious death. So too a few others, like David Bowie, for example. Rappers and hip hop, I never tuned in. Die away.)

Continue reading “Photo fakes – spotting trickery” →

In defense of face splitting …

If you want to jump ahead, I have with the help of a blog commenter come upon an article  in which author Karen Leibowitcz that implies (actually, seems quite certain) that Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is the love child of the late Cuban premier Fidel Castro. I am going to take issue with that based on my own knowledge and experience in studying faces. But before doing that, I want to offer up a defense of the technology that I developed and use, and will use for Trudeau and Castro, called face splitting, or face chopping.

Quite some years ago I learned that in our late teens our skulls are fully formed, and will remain in that shape for the rest of our lives. The only exception that I have seen to this rule (there are probably others) is that ALS can cause skull deformities. Miles Mathis wrote a paper (dated 4/17/15 – it is a PDF and I am unable to link, so search for a paper titled Stephen Hawking Died and Has Been Replaced) claiming that Stephen Hawking died in 1985 based on the following language in Wikipedia:

During a visit to the European Organisation for Nuclear Research on the border of France and Switzerland in mid-1985, Hawking contracted pneumonia, which in his condition was life-threatening; he was so ill that Jane was asked if life support should be terminated. She refused but the consequence was a tracheotomy, which would require round-the-clock nursing care, and remove what remained of his speech. [ 55] [ 56] The National Health Service would pay for a nursing home, but Jane was determined that he would live at home. The cost of the care was funded by an American foundation. [ 57] [ 58] Nurses were hired for the three shifts required to provide the round-the-clock support he required. One of those employed was Elaine Mason, who was to become Hawking’s second wife.

Continue reading “In defense of face splitting …” →

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.

Continue reading “More Twaddle” →

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.

Continue reading “Tuesday Twaddle” →

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.

Continue reading “Snopes for dummies” →

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.

Continue reading “Audubon Schmodubon” →

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.

Continue reading “How not to communicate” →

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.

    • 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” →