Of all the instruments in an orchestra, my favorite is the oboe. Its sound haunts me, and perhaps as in the screen grab above, has the same effects on the clarinetist sitting next to the oboist in the London Symphony Orchestra. And, perhaps as you read this and think I am going to write about classical music, you’ve decided that you’ve better things to do.

I’ll be brief. The oboist is playing part of Dvorak’s 9th Symphony, second movement, a beautiful haunting piece.  I recognized it instantly as I flipped on my iPad this morning. I tried to save it but could not. It only wants to show the entire video, and take you to Facebook in the process. You’re on your own.

I first came upon this piece of music years ago in a piano piece by Charlie Haden and Hank Jones, used by the producers of the TV series Bosch. In the episode a young boy had died before his time, and as the piano music, called “Goin’Home“, played, two detectives were informing the mother of her son’s death, and Harry Bosch uncovering the body at the morgue. The emotion that the piece invoked was overwhelming. I sent away for the CD on which Haden and Jones*** played it, and a couple of months later it arrived from England. The entire CD consisted of that piece and familiar religious compositions, none of which appealed to me. But I hung on to Goin’ Home piece because of its powerful evocative quality. Later I learned that the piece was played at FDR’s funeral, during a time when the whole nation was in mourning. (Have I ever written about FDR faking his death? All of the hallmarks of a fake presidential death are there, but I’ve never had the energy to write it up.)

I put the lyrics to the piece at the end here for anyone interested, as it was written to be a Negro spiritual. Lovely though they are, I think the lyrics ruin the music.

Continue reading “Musings, what is to become of this blog, and other more important stuff” →

Sometimes in arguing about this and that, we are reduced to absurdity by official truth: The view of the sky from the Moon was total blackness. Yes, I know, we are told that the cameras used by the astronauts had to be shielded from intense light and so were f-stopped down so that the surface was visible while the stars invisible. But honestly, folks, you would think that one or two of the guys who walked there would have said “Holy shit, Batman! It’s beautiful beyond belief! We gotta get a photo before we leave!”

The above image is said to be taken from the surface of Mars, and a commenter or two has noticed that Moon pictures are oddly lacking a night sky. OK, it’s NASA. They claim to have landed a rover on Mars, Curiosity, and this is the view. The panoramic view has all the colors of the rainbow, and I only grabbed what looked real, and I don’t buy all those colors, obviously doctored. This by itself is reward enough, if if is real. A big IF, as always with NASA. But we have all seen doctored images from Hubble, so we know it is amazing once we get out of Earth’s atmosphere, even after the Hubble doctors do their graphics.

Continue reading “View from the Moon” →

Just for fun, now and then, I have a go-round with AI, which is provided and appears on my desktop screen via my browser, Brave, without my authorizing it. I print one such exchange beneath the fold here.

What I have discovered about AI is that it uniformly reiterates mainstream views on everything from Moon landings to virology, so that it is, in effect, just Snopes, writ large.

Snopes is, in my view, an intelligence front, an intellectual swindling operation in which advantage is taken of the confidence the victim places in the swindler, aka a “Con game”.  Snopes has gone to great lengths to offer satisfactory explanations of routine phenomena, and so is able to easily dispatch claims that sporting events are rigged, news is fake, and certain events are or are not real.

In so assuring us of its integrity, Snopes thereby gains our confidence in other areas, and so will assert things understood by many possessing skeptical intelligence to be fake, such as the Moon Landings, the origin of the collapse of the twin towers, the number of victims who died from Covid-19 (my view: -0-). This allows Snopes to lie with ease, knowing it has gained trust. That is why I maintain it is a way to reaffirm official lies and keep the majority of people in line with standard beliefs.

AI is the same animal, but now available on a much larger scale. As such, I view it as a force closing the door on skeptics and independent thought. I view it as a danger to our collective well being. The objective of AI appears to be to reinforce the alleged words of former CIA Director William Simon, who said, according to witnesses, that

“We’ll know that our disinformation campaign has worked when everything the American public believes is false.”

In fact, I asked AI about the William Simon Statement, and got this answer:

No, William Simon did not say this quote; it is widely attributed to William J. Casey, who served as the Director of the CIA from 1981 to 1987.  The quote is: “We’ll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false.” 

The authenticity of this quote is highly disputed:

• Alleged Source: The primary claimant is Barbara Honegger, a former White House domestic policy researcher, who stated in 2014 that she heard Casey say it at a February 1981 cabinet meeting and told journalist Sarah McClendon. 

• Lack of Corroboration: No contemporary news reports, official records, or other attendees corroborate Honegger’s claim. The quote first appeared in the late 1980s on conspiracy radio show hosted by Mae Brussell. 

• Debunking: Investigative analyses conclude the quote is likely false and fabricated, noting that Honegger provided no notes and had a history of unreliable claims. 

Of course, that proves nothing, and means nothing except that we can count on AI to come down on one side only on all of these debates, that of the state and its official truth. Did William Casey say those words? I don’t know, but he might well have, as they ring true. For example, “It is easier to fool people than to convince them they’ve been fooled”. Did Mark Twain say that? No. But it’s rings true anyway.

Below the fold is an exchange I had with AI regarding virology and SARS-CoV-2. It is all for naught, of course, as AI disposes of all queries and answers a short time after they happen, and never adapts future answers to any opinions offered by those making queries.

Continue reading “AI and the battle for freedom of thought” →

Continue reading “Harry Callahan is brought to justice” →

I chose the title above because I had already, in 2021, written a post called “Aggressive stupidity“, and on rereading it, was not disappointed. There is a quote widely attributed to Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, that “there is nothing worse than aggressive stupidity.” I think I know what it means, but am having a hard time clarifying it in my mind. I know there is stupidity, much of it mindless. It is not the same as “ignorance”, which is curable once admitted.

However, as the comedian Ron White says, “You can’t fix stupid.”

Continue reading “Active ignorance” →

I don’t know how many of our readers here have ever traveled across Wyoming, either west to east or north to south, or visa versa. The western one-third of the state is beautiful, with Yellowstone National Park, Grand Teton National Park, and the Wind River Mountains, to name a few outstanding highlights. But getting there … say you enter the state via Gillette on I-80 traveling west. You’ll encounter high winds and blowing dust, pronghorn for hundreds of miles of what must be one of the busiest semi-truck highways in the country. It is almost unbearable.

There are miles upon miles of unsettled land in Wyoming. As much as 30% of the state is managed by the Bureau of Land Management (BLM). If you are unfamiliar with our public land hierarchy, it goes like this:

Continue reading “Are our state populations overstated? World?” →

I am a mere observer and do not take much of “news” seriously. Yet the essential meaning of news stories penetrates the consciousness of the mass of humans so easily that it can be distressing. So much of what appears to be human stupidity is really just indifference based on trust, and it is trust that is the great human failing here.

Some years back I was in a conversation with a relative about some thing or event, and in passing suggested either a book or an article, some form of written reference to help support whatever claim I was making. “Oh, we don’t read” was the answer I got, so don’t bother sending along anything. Much later on, same company and playing a card game that had special rules in the various cards, I was repeatedly reminded that I had not read a card correctly. Asshole that I am, I replied “Oh, I don’t read.” My reference was not taken kindly to the two who knew what I was talking about. I could not help myself, as the idea of not reading has such large implications, and I lack filters.

Continue reading “Non-readers, plants, influencers, staged events” →

Climatologist Judith Curry announced she is retiring her blog, Climate Etc.  She has an impressive CV, which I will not detail here, and more than that, I’ve always enjoyed her writing and combativeness. Michael Mann, the seemingly psychopathic pseudoscientist, took pains one time to claim that her relationship with a divorced man at Penn State was “sleeping her way to the top.” He did so in a public email, finding Curry to be particularly dislikable, to her credit.

Continue reading “Judith Curry, farewell to arms, Roger Pielke Jr. scattering ♥’s all about the landscape” →

As usual, the true worthy commentary of the day comes from comedians.

The Strait of Hormuz, I never went so fast from not knowing something existed to talking about it all the time since the air fryer. (Jimmy Carr)

There’s something to be said for reading over other means of ingesting information, as long as we follow Daniel Boortsin’s advice, that we “Classify, make inferences, reason, and practice, practice, practice.” Other forms of receipt of information are less useful:

Television and other electronic forms: I created, not intentionally but rather by blurting a while back, a bit at a kerfuffle at a family gathering when someone mentioned some news item, and I observed that the effects of television news were not just belief, but instant belief. From there I was castigated with the usually defensive nonsense, that people get “news” from more than one source, that the Wall Street Journal is reliable, and that no one really takes TV news seriously anyway. A grandson mentioned reading something, and I said reactively to the overall tone of rebuke that “Paper doesn’t refuse ink”, which brought about laughter. That’s a saying I remember via my mother from my grandmother, a school teacher.

Continue reading “The age of enlightenment begins, 8/6/1945” →