The title of this article says it all:

Facebook: People Are Now Permitted to Speculate Covid-19 Leaked from a Laboratory

I did a run through the comments under this article – not one of which spots the misdirection at work. It is very discouraging.

The reason why the US Government is “seriously considering” that the virus might have slipped out of a laboratory in Wuhan is obvious, to readers here and at other sites like this. It’s the oldest game there is in propaganda – misdirection. Get people to ask the wrong question, and the answer does not matter. (There is no virus, Cyrus.)

Continue reading “Facebook misdirection” →

I yesterday stumbled upon this list, Master List of Logical Fallacies, assembled by Owen M. Williamson at the University of Texas at El Paso. He’s come up with 146 of them. It is quite a joy ride to read through them, so many of them updated to modern times, as in #90, “Overexplaining, aka “Mansplaining”. Some I like very much and think are justifiably called “fallacies,” such as #146, “Zero Tolerance:

The contemporary fallacy of declaring an “emergency” and promising to disregard justice and due process and devote unlimited resources (and occasionally, unlimited cruelty) to stamp out a limited, insignificant or even nonexistent problem.

My experience with ZT is in our schools. Administrators cast a negative pall over any targeted behavior (“bullying”) and eliminate due process. They apply standardized mindless punishment without a day in court for the accused. It’s nasty business, as I see it, allowing school officials off the hook. Each incident of behavior needs thoughtful and just inquiry into alleged behaviors, meting out measured and just punishment when someone is found guilty. But who the hell has time for that? (It’s lazy too.)

Continue reading “The “Master List” Fallacy” →

This is normally Steve Kelly’s area of expertise, as he is a lifelong wilderness advocate. It has long been an interest of mine as well. My activities in wilderness ceased when I resigned in disgust from the Montana Wilderness Association years ago. While I was an active member, the group was always short of money, the trademark of a genuine environmental group. Over the years, the Pew Charitable Trusts, as an active strategy, took over funding of groups like MWA, removing anyone with a backbone and replacing them with industry “collaborators,” or people who do not believe in confrontation.

They are showered in cash from Pew and other organizations that want to put an end to wilderness activism. MWA now has a large and well-paid staff  (I count 21, whereas when I was a member there were three), and they all wear outdoor apparel and appear in natural settings. Their main funtion is to make the group look like it is doing useful activities while accomplishing nothing. I don’t imagine them to be outdoorsy. 

Pew’s task is now complete. MWA is an industry front group, and not a proponent or defender of wilderness.

(One good thing came out of my years with MWA – it is how I met my wife.)

Continue reading “A justification for wilderness” →

Not sure I want to publish this, as it is something I ran across via someone to get to the original, and I am not even sure it is an exact quote nor have I read the entirety of the original, nor will I. Poetry to me in all my life has only had meaning when read to me by someone else with the necessary inflections, deep voice and added drama. If it is just words on a page with me alone, it deflects off me like wind outside as I drive my truck, sheltered from it. It just doesn’t affect me. I wish I knew more than I do and appreciated more than I do how poetry works. There are a few phrases that move me, and I have them on a bulletin board behind me, so well known that I don’t need name the authors …

If you can hold your head when all about you are losing theirs and blaming it on you …

Whose woods these are I think I know,
His house is in the village though…

Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day…

Continue reading “Resist much, obey little” →

Ted Bundy was an American serial killer who had 30 or more victims in the 1970s, and is suspected of even more. He was captured in Florida, and executed on January 24, 1989. He was 42 years old.

That’s the official story. I just spent the last hour or so re-reading two papers by Miles W. Mathis on Bundy, one from 2014, and the other 2018. That part was fun, as the papers read well. In the 2014 paper, MM tries to tie Ted Bundy, pictured to the right, as a true member of the Bundy family, Boston ultra-wealth and lineage with members like Willliam (foreign affairs advisor to both JFK and LBJ), and McGeorge (yes, that was his real name) (National Security Advisor to the same two presidents). He might well hit that nail, as Ted Bundy bears strong resemblance to the Bundy line.

In the 2018 paper, MM follows the Bundy trail of murders through Washington, Oregon, Utah, Colorado and finally Florida. It’s really hilarious to read, the things they expect us to believe. I won’t repeat anything here as the papers are easily available to the reader. Just enjoy them as I did. I am neither going to add to or detract from the Mathis work, as what I do here is my own research. His stands by itself, as does mine.

Continue reading “The Ted Bundy nightmare … a hoax” →

A hat tip to another blog for posting last week in regards to Penn State convicted pedophile Jerry Sandusky, and allegations of his innocence from investigative reporter John Zeigler. To get deep into it as I have, you will have to listen to a couple of two-and-one-half hour broadcast from Thaddeus Russell, starting here. Zeigler also runs a website called Framing Paterno. In addition are more interviews and a long series of blog posts, 2012-present by Zeigler.  You are, like me, on your own. I spent a weekend, maybe ten or twelve hours of listening and reading and came out refreshed. Now is time to write, hopefully capturing the immensity of the injustice done to Jerry Sandusky.

I am a walking thinker, that is, I cannot just sit and listen to people talk. I have to move about. Maybe this is why schooling never did me much good, as I watched the mouths of teachers and saw the cascades of words coming out of them, but they did not cross the divide. John Cleese, quoting someone else I am not going to run down, told us that a teacher’s lecture is a series of notes on paper that become a series of notes on the student’s paper, without passing through the mind of either.

Continue reading “Is Jerry Sandusky innocent?” →