I’ve been doing a lot of reading, and blog posts that say “I read this, you should too,” carrying with them long passages from the original are kind of boring. So I am just going to pass quickly on this stuff, and hope readers pick up on it and do their own journey.

Artikel Wissenschfftplus, LK Verlags UG, The Misconception called VIRUS, by Dr. Stefan Lanka: Of course, I read it in the original German, but it is available in English too.

That’s a joke. My older brother studied German for four years in college, I never understood why, but people who speak more than one language are by definition smarter than me, and he never explained it to me. (This reminds me of a Pat Buchanan speech at a Republican Convention years ago, when party politics still had meaning for me. A pundit, long since passed, said after his speech, “I liked it better in its original German.”)

Continue reading “Some reading topics” →

A brief word on an exchange yesterday under the post titled A project Gone Awry: Transcribing a Kaufman Interview. Ordinarily I don’t much care what goes on in the comments here. People get in arguments, change the subject, sometimes get testy. All in good human fun, as the people who frequent this blog are usually smart and opinionated. However, I took issue yesterday with Maarten for the following reasons:

• One, he attacks people who have checkered pasts for that reason alone. Redemption does not exist in his world, that is, if you are on his hit list. Apparently you’ve got to be Caesar’s wife to enter the arena of the Scamdemic and have credibility. The two people he attacked. Dr. Andy Kaufman and Dr. Tom Cowan, each went into medicine with belief in the system, and became disenchanted and disaffected. They each chose new paths. The financial fallout from such moves is too much for most to endure, but these two men acted on their consciences. I admire them. Those who remain in the system, who maintain belief or who have doubts but are afraid to speak up are far less credible, in my mind, than those who turn their backs.

The photo above, by the way, is me, a real human being with good and bad qualities, abilities and shortcomings. That’s how I look, now at age 70. My wife took the picture, as you can see by the shadow. Photography is a strong point for neither of us.

Continue reading “A word about yesterday’s exchanges” →

I’ve been curious about this … my favorite courses in college were in business law, which included such ideas as “legal tender.” Given that money is a necessary concept, there has to be some means whereby we all agree that there is a common and accepted means of exchange. We use currency. Once upon a time we used the gold standard, and then silver certificates, but all of that was tossed out the window, and we now use Federal Reserve Notes. Continue reading “Legal tender” →

I am taking on more of the writing burden here as others sort through stuff. I have been at this since 2006, and for better or worse I’ve never run out of things to write about. I was wondering what to put up today, and stumbled on this post, courtesy of the Skink: It is called Wear your damned mask, cover your damned nose. Let’s confront store employees who flout mask-up rules, and let’s file formal complaints with our boards of health. That’s a really long title. It is written by James Conner, a man who I used to read occasionally when I lived in Montana. I had forgotten all about him. At the top of his blog he has changed his photo to one of him wearing a mask. He’s always been an angry blogger, so what follows is true to form.

“At Walmart this morning, the checker wore his mask below his nose in defiance of our governor’s mask-up directive. I confronted him. Yesterday, at Super 1, my bagger also wore his mask below his nose. I confronted him, too.”

Continue reading “Too good to pass up … a snitch has had enough” →

The fight to protect native forests in the Northern Rockies region continues. After more than three decades of challenging US Forest Service-USDA timber sales, mining proposals, oil and gas leases and livestock grazing on federal public forests, we have still got a lot fight left in us. It’s nice to win a lawsuit in federal court. It keeps morale high and blues at a safe distance.

Two recent back-to-back court victories really fires up the troops. The “Gold Butterfly” project (the governments sick imitation of “Iron Butterfly”?) was withdrawn last week: https://bitterrootstar.com/2020/09/forest-withdraws-approval-of-massive-gold-butterfly-project/

The other project was a Bureau of Land Management project aimed at killing ancient juniper and limber pine for the livestock industry. They want more grass, less trees. https://helenair.com/news/state-and-regional/blm-withdraws-court-halted-conifer-removal-in-elkhorns/article_2d31c696-9e8b-59a8-9559-e9456f120f81.html#tracking-source=home-top-story-1

One reason and one reason only underlies all such nonsense. Love of mammon. Mammon is not just money, but is a trust and valuation problem. Placing trust in the unreal, the legal fiction which opposes nature is the core belief in commodity production and ecological destruction. More specifically, mammon screws up one’s individual appreciation for reality, for all of (morally priceless) nature, replacing both with monetary valuation — and certain spiritual death. What wouldn’t these sociopaths not sell for a few shekels?

Still kicking. Growing old, but not sick of the fight to save a few patches of God’s country. If you can’t beat ’em, join with us. Never a dull moment.

Photo: Chessman Reservior; Helena, Montana’s water source.

Many years ago when I lived in Montana some friends and I were driving the countryside around Billings looking for birds. It’s still a hobby of mine, and I’ve never gotten very good at it, which keeps it interesting. My friend Jim was a self-trained expert, and a good guy to have along anyway. He was full of surprises. We crossed a small bridge, and down beneath were pigeons (since renamed “rock doves” and then again “rock pigeons” by experts who must earn royalties on new bird books). They were hunkered down, and Jim said it could only be for one reason. Look up, he said. Sure enough, soaring overhead was a red tail hawk.

Power is like that , but not openly visible like that hawk. It is seen in the behavior of those around it. I am new to this game, only awakened since 2015 or so, before that time stumbling through a mystifying swamp of inexplicable events and behaviors. Most befuddling were the behaviors of public people, openly lying yet never fearing exposure. The lies were understood by all around them to be an essential part of having a public life. Where once I thought there must be some threat of violence that kept them in line, as with our pigeons above, I later assumed that they are simply actors and probably oath-bound to keep secrets, not afraid and often enough not even lacking in moral character. The red tail hawk is not evil, just part of nature.

Continue reading “Ducktors” →