Month: November 2021

Seance on a Wet Afternoon (1964) – A Movie Review

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This is a British film from the 1960’s and reflects the filmmaking conventions of that place and time.  This is seen in the realistic and drab scenery and even the look of the actors themselves.  The atmosphere is depressing and claustrophobic in the extreme.

Bill and Myra Savage are a middle-aged married couple.  Myra is a professional medium who performs seances for a small circle of believers who would like to communicate with the dearly departed.  Bill is a man who was forced to stop working because of health problems.  Myra is the dominant partner in the marriage and berates and orders Bill around.  But it is apparent that Myra is delusional about many things including her “gift.”  She wishes to be rich and famous for her ability to speak to the dead.

In support of this desire, she comes up with a plan.  It’s a carefully detailed plan to kidnap the young daughter of a rich man and hold her for ransom.  But in addition, the plan calls for Myra to use her “gift” to allow the girl to be found unharmed after the ransom is delivered.  And of course, Bill will have to perform all the active parts of the plan.  He is to kidnap the girl, make the ransom demand, pick up the ransom and drop the girl off for the return.  Myra’s part is to set up the room for the hostage and act as a “nurse” for the girl in the fiction that they will try to maintain that she is a patient in a hospital.  To that end they have a room painted white and a facsimile of a hospital bed set up in it.  And finally, Myra will contact the kidnapped girl’s family and claim that she is in contact with the girl through her spirit world contact, “Arthur.”  And when they have the money, Myra will tell the parents where to find their daughter after Bill has dropped her off at the pick-up spot.

Surprisingly, the plan is remarkably successful.  The girl’s kidnap goes off without a hitch and the ransom is collected by a complicated and circuitous route that the father has to follow going in and around the London Underground Railway.  But after the ransom pick-up the mother of the kidnapped girl shows up at one of Myra’s afternoon seances and we have the nerve-racking experience for Bill of trying to keep the little girl quiet as she calls out in a delirium of fever for her mother who is right in the next room taking part in a séance that is supposedly in contact with her.  At the climax of the séance Myra faints and the séance is stopped and the girl’s mother departs without incident.

But the excitement that Myra felt during this bizarre and dangerous charade has inspired a new and hideous change in the plan.  Myra tells Bill that Arthur, her spirit partner has asked that the girl be sent to him in the spirit world.  In other words, Myra wants Bill to kill the girl with chloroform and thus allow Arthur to have her spirit as his companion.

This madness horrifies Bill and he tries to force Myra to confront her delusions.  Arthur is the dead child of Bill and Myra but whereas Myra believed that Arthur was a child in their lives into his school age years the reality is that “Arthur” was a stillborn baby.  He tries to convince her that there is no Arthur and all these fantasies are her imagination.  And that killing the girl is madness.  But Myra raves on about her gift and Arthur and screams at Bill until he agrees to do her bidding.

In the next scene we see Bill leaving the child’s body in a wooded area and then rushing away to his vehicle.  When he gets home Myra is delighted at the way the plan has worked out.  But suddenly there is a knock at the door.  Bill answers it and comes back with three plainclothes policemen.  They ask Myra if she will perform a séance to help the police locate the girl now that the ransom has been paid.  She agrees and begins the performance with Bill and two of the policemen forming the circle around the table with her.  Myra goes into her trance and starts talking to and for Arthur and slowly she begins to repeat the conversation that Arthur must have had in her mind about killing the child.  When she lapses into silence where she is pantomiming herself cradling a small child in her lap the senior officer looks at Bill and says, “Where did you hide the money sir?”  And Bill replies, It’s in the coal cellar.”  Then Bill adds, “You found the girl alright?”  and the detective says, “Yes, she’s alright.”  And there the movie ends.

This is one weird and creepy movie.  Myra is a deranged lunatic and Bill is a pathetic weakling.  But he actually loves her.  And the atmosphere and plot are quite effective at providing suspense and interest in the story.  Interestingly, Bill was played by Richard Attenborough, the guy who played John Hammond, the man who built Jurassic Park in that movie.  Taken all in all I recommend this movie to fans of suspense movies.  It’s not as shocking as Psycho but it is a similar experience.

14NOV2021 – A Reflection on the State of the Our World

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Since the end of August when Biden’s catastrophic blundering of the Afghanistan Retreat put his approval numbers into free fall, I have noticed that a large swath of the voting population seems to be waking up from the delusion that the Democrats are normal Americans.

As the radical left tries to implement deeply un-American policies like vaccine mandates at work and critical race theory in grammar schools even moderate leftists have become worried and even angry that the country is headed for a place that they neither intended nor approved of when they elected Joe Biden.  And now with the economy suffering from multiple serious problems; high inflation, shortages of basic foods and goods, disruptions in the supply of labor for small businesses; people are using the ballot box to register their anger.  In purple states like Virginia and even in deep blue states like New York and New Jersey safe Democrat seats are going to Republicans both to change policy and also to punish the Democrats for what they’ve already done.

And I will admit it has improved my mood and my opinion of what our future looks like.  But by improved I mean it has gone from utter despair to forlorn hope.  After all it was just ten years ago when we watched as the Tea Party candidates cashed in their election success to become Paul Ryan’s RINOs.  The idea that the gutless, soulless Republicans in Congress will fight to restore our rights in a fight against the FBI and the rest of the Justice Department seems absurd.  The idea that bought and paid for Senators will write legislation to regulate Google and Facebook into respecting our free speech rights is laughable.  The idea that the swamp dwellers in the FBI and the Justice Department will obey the orders of a President or Attorney General who tries to reform or clean out their corrupt gangs has been shown by recent example to be a fantasy.  So why should I be even forlornly hopeful that we’ll be even marginally better off in the near future than we are now?

I think the answer is awareness.  The number of people who are finally aware that the whole political system is a set-up by both parties is orders of magnitude higher than what it was just a few years ago.  Millions more people are now aware that men like Mitch McConnell are not on our side.  They now know that Mitch McConnell is on Mitch McConnell’s side.  He’s a crooked politician whose only priority is to hold onto the political power he has in order to benefit monetarily by it.  And if somehow, he is responsible for an action that benefits people on the Right it is simply a coincidence.  This is the reason that I have any hope at all.  Without awareness of the actual situation someone like me voted for the supposedly conservative politicians at every election.  Often these politicians won and took control in Washington.  And yet year by year, decade by decade nothing got better.  In fact, it got so bad that it seemed like some kind of nightmare where the absolutely worst outcome was always the result.  And that is such a debilitating condition that many on our side just gave up thus making the outcome certain.

But when people know they’re being played they start recognizing the fakes.  People like Jeb Bush and Marco Rubio.  Nikki Haley and Mitt Romney.  John McCain and John Kasich.  These people don’t want the things we want.  They believe in the same things our enemies believe in.  That is if they actually believe in anything at all other than money and power.  And knowing that is the only chance we have of getting results.  We can look for someone who actually accomplishes any of the things he promises.  A particularly good way to spot a phony is to see if other phonies start claiming that this guy is the real deal.  Sort of like when the New York Times decides who is the leader of the New Conservatives of the Dark Web.  If that isn’t the kiss of death nothing is.

So that’s kind of why I think we’re in a slightly better place now than a year ago.  The 2020 election, the COVID farce, the BLM riots and Dementia Joe’s lamentable failures have red pilled a goodly chunk of the non-leftists in America.  From my point of view, I’ll at least have a better chance of knowing when it is time to give up all hope and find a new place to live.  So if you can consider that good news then rejoice my people!

Guest Contributor – Chemist – Thoughts on Energy

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In Reply to Energy Equates to Wealth

You are more correct than you know. The green revolution is powered by oil. Oil to make diesel fuel for the giant tractors and combines that plant and harvest the crops. Oil to make energy to make the fertilizers that turn marginal soils into high yield soils.
Without petroleum we would be poorer, hungrier and there would be fewer of us. Millions would have starved to death over the last 100 years that, instead, thrived due to petroleum.

If you want carbon free energy you have to look at nuclear. The greens may not like it, but its the only real solution if carbon is the problem. The newly designed modular reactors are incredibly safe and the Thorium cycle reactors are not only safe but do not use nor do they produce material that can be weaponized.
Ah, but: Nuclear bad! (Insert image of Frankenstein’s monster near a torch.) Its dangerous right? Deadly even! More Americans were killed when Biden abandoned Afghanistan than have died due to Nuclear power accidents in the US since the first reactor. That’s a pretty damned good safety record.

Solar? Its a boondoggle. Here is something they don’t talk about a lot wrt solar panels: They only last about 20 years. And the output drops every year. So if you are getting 5KW your first year you are getting about half that a decade later.
Oh, and its damned near impossible to recycle a solar panel.
Its been a lot of years since I did the math (College undergrad research project) but the last time I ran the numbers, it took more energy to make a solar panel that it ever generated in it’s lifetime. It turns out that it takes a crap ton of energy to make, purify and melt silicon. Who knew?

Wind? Another boondoggle. Look into disposing of damaged or end of life turbine blades. There’s a nightmare for you. And the vibrations from the turbine destroy the land they are mounted on to the degree that you can never put another turbine there. If you love nature, don’t look at the number of birds and bats killed by these things.

Geothermal? Maybe. I don’t know how many locations are suitable for it though.

If we could get past the fear of nuclear power, we could build a golden age with cheap, plentiful power and yes, make long chain molecules from water and CO2.

Tweaking the Narrative – How Asians Have Become White Supremacists

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The University of Maryland has figured a way to deal with the refusal of Asian American kids to suffer from systemic racism.  They’ve thrown Asians out of the People of Color (POC) club.  It’s been a real embarrassment to race hustlers that Chinese and Indian kids haven’t been held down by the supposed shackles of a white racist education system here and instead have excelled.  So their success has interfered with the affirmative action blueprint that the Left used to divvy up spots in top colleges.  So the University of Maryland has fixed the problem by kicking the Asian kids out of POC and forcing them into the White category where they can be discriminated against and demonized for all it’s worth.

Now that’s progress!  So if you take all the kids whose ancestors were from Europe (the white kids) and lump them together with the Asian kids does that make them the Eurasians?  And then does that mean Eurasian Supremacy is the new devil we all have to fight against?  And what about Madagascar?  It’s close to Africa but it’s in the Indian Ocean does that make them suspect of being hidden Eurasians.  It’s confusing.

Energy Equates to Wealth

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Something that Environmentalists don’t want to admit is that fossil fuel has produced the modern world.  Without coal, oil and gas as fuels (and much, much else) we would still be living like the peasants in medieval Europe did in the 1300’s.  Coal was the fuel that made steam power possible which produced locomotives and steam ships.  Oil became the default fuel for electrical generation, automobiles, modern trains and also the basis for the myriad petrochemical products that make possible everything from pharmaceuticals and clothing to building materials and every other thing that’s made of what we call polymers.  Natural gas is the fuel for most of the modern electrical generation installations built in the United States over the last forty years or more.  And it heats a large percentage of homes and businesses.   Without these fuels we would literally be poor, cold, hungry and sitting in the dark.

And the Left knows that.  Now Jeff Bezos and the rest of the plutocrats are fine with this.  They know that they would still be able to reap the benefits of energy even if they denied it to the rest of us.  Bezos could have his own private solar collecting system and wind turbines with battery back-ups that could allow him to enjoy all of the modern comforts that would be denied to us.  His jet and helicopter and cars would mysteriously be able to use fuel while we would only be able to purchase a battery car that could only go a short distance and would be hard pressed to recharge by the next morning when we had to commute back to work.  Impoverishing and disenfranchising us is actually the goal of this whole exercise.  A new feudalism would replace a free country and the aristocracy and their minions would lord it over the rest of us deplorables.

Of course, we may not be happy about letting them do this.  Right now, $3.50/gallon gas and the inflation that causes in our economy is making Dementia Joe awfully unpopular.  When it reaches $5.00/gallon he may get tarred and feathered.  And that would be a wonderful thing.  Impoverishing the American people should be considered treason.  So hopefully the environmental insanity being pushed should create a strong reaction to the progressive agenda.  That would be a good outcome.

But there is something that needs to be faced.  There is a finite amount of hydrocarbon fuels in the Earth.  I’m not saying we’re close to the end.  I’m only saying there is an end.  And now is the time to be doing the basic research to find the next energy source for the modern world.  Maybe it’ll be nuclear fission plants, safer versions of the ones currently in place, maybe it’ll be better applications of solar power, perhaps solar collectors outside the atmosphere beaming microwave energy down to collection stations on earth.  Maybe it’ll be geothermal hot spots.

An inexhaustible energy supply solves one of our problems.  With it we can produce electricity to run our factories and if it is truly inexhaustible, we can even heat our homes with it.  But whatever it turns out to be we will still need a fuel for our cars and planes.

Airplanes will never be able to run on batteries.  The power density is too low.  And as we’ve seen battery powered cars are very limited in their range.  Unless there are large gains to be made in battery technology which is unlikely, the best solution is a synthetic fuel.

Maybe it will be hydrogen.  Hydrogen is highly energetic and when it is burned with oxygen its  combustion product is water.  It doesn’t get cleaner than that.  But hydrogen is a small molecule gas and it leaks easily and it blows up mightily.  So extremely fail-safe equipment will be a necessity if it becomes the fuel, we run our automobiles and planes on.  But hydrogen is not the only option.  With unlimited electrical energy engineers could very easily produce synthetic methane (natural gas).  Or with a little more work they could make longer hydrocarbons.  Octane is the optimal component of gasoline.  That could be the main product we produce as our global fuel.  Of course, we would be using water and carbon dioxide as our starting materials so at that point we would have a carbon neutral effect on the environment which unfortunately would make the environmentalists happy.  I wouldn’t feel so good about that but I guess it will have to be.

So, the exhaustion of supplies of natural hydrocarbon fuels is something we should be anticipating.  But instead of giving up the modern lifestyle we’ve gained from these energy treasures we need to use our ingenuity to invent replacements that enhance our ability to control our environment and improve our way of life.  And that’s my version of following the science.

13NOV2021 – Dunwich Complainer – Irregular Edition

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After a day of rain, some wonderful late fall weather has broken out in Western Dunwich.  Up here in the hill country there have been only sporadic sightings of shoggoths and the odd micro-eruption from the parallel dimension where the lobster fungi of Yuggoth hang out.  Out in the west field I noticed some strange and indescribable colors to the foliage on an elderberry shrub which I immediately attributed to a meteoric landing of the Color Out of Space.   But then I remembered I’m color blind so I dialed that back to perfectly normal green.  When I drove out to our grocery store, the one that’s housed in a ruinous, desanctified, former church the proprietor, a man named Jedediah Spoonhandle, eyed me suspiciously when I entered his building.   When I asked to buy some soap, he accused me of being in league with the devil.  But when I told him I wanted to purchase a dozen frogging gigs he became enraged and attacked me bodily.  Apparently, he has some relatives from Innsmouth who have a slightly batrachian look to them.  I finally subdued him by clubbing him senseless with a leg of lamb that was at hand.  I took the gigs and left the price in paper and coinage on his stunned carcass.

Travelling back to the Compound I reflected on the wonderful world we live in and the strange occurrences that seem to follow me wherever I go.  But then I remembered that it’s Saturday and Saturday is a strange day around here so that put things in perspective.  When I arrived home, I asked Camera Girl if anything had happened while I was gone.  She said no but looking out the kitchen window I noticed that something had flattened two sheds and about a dozen cattle on the neighboring field belonging to Josiah Whateley.  When I brought this to her attention she stopped to reflect then said, “Yes, but it is Saturday.”  So, I shrugged and said, “Yeah, that’s true.”

I hadn’t spoken to old Whateley in a while so I ambled over to his field where he was collecting cow carcasses for salvage and I greeted him cheerily.  But for whatever reason he seemed sort of quiet.  So, I asked him what was the matter and he said, “T’ain’t right that unspeakable, blasphemous, eldritch abominations from beyond space and time keep flattening my outbuildings and livestock whenever they get a notion.”  So, I said, “Well Josiah, why don’t you ask for help at the next Town Council?”  But he backed up with a look of revulsion and said, “And be branded a complainer like you?  No thankee.”

I should have known that even in the heart of a quagmire of unspeakable horror that good old Yankee independence would recoil against asking for help from his neighbors.  I agreed with Josiah and mentioned that one of his flattened sheds looked like it could be used as a patch for one of his other sheds that had only been half flattened and that his smashed cattle would make a very good mulch for his alfalfa field.  I like to think that my talk cheered him up some.

As I walked back to my house, I noticed that a tentacle about as thick as a telephone pole and about a hundred feet long was dragging a full-grown black bear into the swamp.  The panicked roaring of the animal as it was pulled under the surface reminded me that life in Dunwich was full of unexpected problems that could ruin your peace of mind if you didn’t make sure to look on the bright side of things and whistle a happy tune.  I thought, “That poor bear, he probably forgot to look on the bright side of things and he certainly wasn’t whistling a happy tune, and now look at him.”

And by golly now I was right back in step with the world.  I dashed for the side door just as a squadron of eagle sized dragonflies made a bee line for me.  I beat them to the door just in time to hear them slam into the outside of the door after I had drawn the deadbolt.  Suckers!

After a wonderful dinner I sat down in the living room to write up this little post when the motion detector on the west side of the house activated the flood light.  In the dazzling light half a dozen ghouls were staggering back toward the tree line.  I thought about running for my rifle and trying to pick off a few of them but I remembered that ghoul hunting season didn’t start until December so I smiled sheepishly and went back to finishing this report.

Well it was a quiet day in Dunwich today but enjoying nature and the simple pleasures of interacting with neighbors shows you what’s really important in life; timing, muscle memory and pure dumb luck.