Wikipedia: A Confidence Game

The con man

The term “con man” may bring to mind images of shady, underworld characters, but reality is quite different. A good con artist needs to appear trustworthy and likable in order to win the trust of his victim. Con artists are charismatic, intelligent, have good memories, and know how to manipulate people’s hopes and fears. They attempt to blend in, to look and sound familiar, and often work diligently at appearing to be smooth, professional, and successful. A con man may wear an expensive suit and appear to work in a high class office.[2] Or, conversely, a con artist may put him or herself in a weaker position to play on a victim’s sympathies: They may take on the role of illegal immigrant, a likable man down on his luck, or a woman with a small child who needs to use the bathroom. From city official to roofer, the con artist can appear to be just about anyone.

Two names came to mind as I read the above definition: Bill Clinton and Barack Obama. Oddly, they both belong to a list of US presidents who changed their names prior to taking office. Isn’t that odd? Top of the list is Gerald Ford (Lesley King), followed by Clinton (William Jefferson Blythe III) and Barack Obama (Barry Soetoro).

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The accountant builds a staircase

The above diagram looks so simple. In residential and commercial construction, the most commonly used rise and runs for stairs are 7 and 11 inches. That yields a pitch line of about 33 degrees (32.7).  I have built two staircases for our house. For the first, to overcome a five-foot retaining wall that kept us from being able to circumnavigate the house, I consulted my son and using sine and cosine, he gave me the run and number of steps. See below.

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Congresswoman Lee: The moon’s a balloon, dammit. Not a gas ball.

I have been unable to get anything but short snippets of an incredibly stupid speech given by Rep Sheila Jackson Lee (D-TX) on the day of the Solar Eclipse. Go to timestamp 16:16 to view the entire painful exhibition. The most disturbing element here is that Lee used to sit on the House Science Committee and the House Space Committee.

Around the same time, The View’s Sunny Hostin blamed the recent solar eclipse on Climate Change, along with the New York earthquake and the return of cicadas. This was too much even for host Whoopi Goldberg, who slammed her for discrediting the show. (Link)

And the beat goes on.

Mansplaining, and cosmic justice

I have a cousin and we talk on a regular basis – she’s in Delaware now, but we grew up together in Billings, Montana. My dad called her “Punky”, a nickname she hated, so of course, I always use it. I am “Marky,” a name my mother would yell out the front door when dinner was ready. That was especially nice if I was talking to a girl I wanted to impress. She is constantly reminding me of the grades where I was held back a year, and I explain to her that the teachers were so fond of me that they wanted me around for one more year. That’s what my mom told me, and she would not lie to me. “How old were you when you finally got out of school?” another cousin asked. “I don’t know – 39, 40, somewhere in that range.”

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The 97% consensus, and the demise of already-corrupted search engines

We here at POM know that among climate scientists there is no 97% “consensus” that Earth is getting warmer and humans are causing that warming. But we can also see that a wall was being built around the propaganda spewing out of IPCC, NASA and other places. Soon to be used following the 97% thrust was the term “denier”. 

97% serves a useful purpose in terms of propaganda – it signals to people who are not paying attention that the work has been done, case closed, no need to think or investigate. It’s a deliberate tactic used because the work has not been done, the case is not closed, and indeed people of intelligence need to think and investigate. 

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Isaac Newton on head butting

A long long time ago I knew a guy in Bozeman who worked in the campus bookstore, let’s call him Roger. It was at least five years after 911, as I had a blog at the time and did not start this blog until 2006. I mentioned to him that what we saw on 911 violated Newton’s laws of motion, and therefore could not have happened as we saw on TV.

He got very pensive on me, and said that experts, real experts, within that university were pondering Newton’s third law of motion in light of the events of that day. Do you get that? “Experts” in the engineering department of Montana State University were afraid to speak up about what happened that day. They would probably  lose their jobs. That’s how I interpreted Roger’s thoughtful comment.

  1. An object at rest remains at rest, and an object in motion remains in motion at constant speed and in a straight line unless acted on by an unbalanced force.
  2. The acceleration of an object depends on the mass of the object and the amount of force applied.
  3. Whenever one object exerts a force on another object, the second object exerts an equal and opposite on the first.

These are called “laws” and not hypotheses, not theories, meaning that in our world they always work. The have not been disproven.

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Easy listening while Waiting for a Chinook

The painting above is titled “Waiting for a Chinook” by Charles M. Russell (1864-1926). He was a great artist who lived in Montana. My dad, who grew up in Great Falls, Montana, dispelled any mythology about him, saying that he would sell his doodles in bars in exchange for drinks. But man could the guy paint. Here’s what another favorite artist of mine, Ian Tyson, had to say about Charles in his unduly sentimental song, The Gift:

God hung the stars over Judith Basin
God put the magic in young Charlie’s hands
And all was seen and all remembered
Every shining mountain, every longhorn brand
He could paint the light on horsehide shining
The great passing herds of the buffalo
And a cow camp cold on a rainy morning
And the twisting wrist of the Houlihan throw

The “Houlihan throw” is a cowboy on a horse roping a calf.

By the way, a “Chinook” refers to warm winds blowing off the western slopes of  our Rocky Mountains – having grown up in Montana, a good old Chinook was a sign of warming – a cold spell ending, snow melting, spring on the horizon. Willard Fraser, once mayor of the town I lived in, Billings, complained that the official stationery of the city had “that damned cow” on it. He ordered it changed, saying it had scared off too many tourists.

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Pockets of intolerance

I had a brief conversation with a fellow yesterday at our local gym, no names. Let’s call him Roger. He is an avid biker, and recalled that once on a long and tiring ride, he found himself in Boulder Colorado, known locally as “The People’s Republic.” He was parched and needed both some hydration and to refill his water bottle to complete the remaining fifty miles of his ride.

We once lived in Boulder, very close to the King’s Sooper where on March 22, 2021 they held a fake mass shooting. 21-year-old Ahmad Al Aliwi Al-Issa allegedly fired 33 bullets in the confines of that store before being shot in the leg and frog-marched out of the store at 3:30 PM. Since none other than jazz musician BB King reminded us that “all police and judges are Freemasons”, it is safe to assert that the event was staged, and that the use of the number “33” was used to signal to all insiders that it was indeed fake.

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Mike Williams, Sage of Quay … limited hangout?

I was listening to an audio yesterday given by Mike Williams, Sage of Quay, and thought I might, while following his guidelines for commenting, introduce his followers to the idea that “Paul” McCartney is two people, Mike and Paul, and that Mike is not “Mike McGear”, supposedly Paul’s brother. I spent a little time on it, not worth repeating here, and closed by suggesting that readers see a performance of the song Till There was You at the Prince of Wales Theater on November 4, 1963, sung by original Paul. I also suggested that they watch the 1984 movie Give My Regards to Broad Street where the two twins are easily seen to be both identical and easy to tell apart. If worse comes to worse, read my post, Sir Faul. (I did not put that link in, as it would be self-promotion, not allowed.)

After I realized my comment would not appear, I was angry. It’s that old feeling that comes with being banned, that the people who do so are usually less intelligent than those attempting to post on their sites. It’s an expression of power, and my goodness, do people enjoy having power over others.

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Science Friday

The Inconvenient Skeptic – why global warming is a scientific impossibility

I am citing John Kehr again because I have finally made my way through his book, taking down 21 pages of notes and 12,680 words. That’s a lot to process, but then, as I see it, reading a book without paying such close attention means that the experience will not stick. I should, however, stick to fiction to avoid the intense work involved in dictating content from highlighted passages.

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