Article reprinted with permission from the author: Bob Howell. Originally printed in the Reader’s Forum – Courier-Journal, Louisville KY., December 2nd 2009

What has happened to “truth?”

The scientific, political, educational and business communities have willingly joined in on a hoax of biblical proportion in regards to global warming. It is now becoming known that many scientists and politicians have colluded to lie
about facts and data that prove that there is no global warming. Why do scientists who have studied long and hard to achieve their status willingly alter data and facts in order to dupe the citizens of this country and the world?

People like Al Gore distort and lie about facts and data to get glory or money and will not even discuss, debate or provide the actual facts and data.  He has made over $100 million from lies and computer trickery in his famous film.

Hackers broke into Web sites that prove the distortion and now any reasonable person that is caught up in this travesty needs to come clean and help set the record straight. These scoundrels have scared our nation’s children with their
lies and now we need some good people to admit their lies and stand for what is right. This is the United States of America and eventually the truth will out, and we need champions to admit their errors and help correct the situation.

Good politicians are trying to get those involved to stop the destruction of the evidence and bring it to the American people. Let us hope for the sake of this nation and our children there are decent people that went along for whatever
reason but will now stop the lies and deceit.

Bernie Madoff’s fraud pales in comparison to this hoax, and people like Gore need to be held accountable. He needs to be Madoff’s cell mate.

BOB HOWELL
Louisville 40299

123beta would like to express it’s complete gratitude to Mr. Bob Howell for granting permission to reprint his very truthful article on global warming…

Posted without comment, just for fun–5 Myths that People Don’t Realize are Admitted Hoaxes and 7 Insane Conspiracies that Actually Happened.

According to Lachezar Filipov of the Bulgarian Space Research Institute, questions the agency beamed into space are being answered by the aliens.

The Bulgarian researchers are now analysing pictograms contained in 150 crop circles which have appeared around the globe in the past year.
Even then, we might not see eye-to-eye with them, he warned. Referring to our interference with nature, he said: ‘Extraterrestrials are critical of people’s amoral behaviour.’

I always figured when we made alien contact they would look at us like we’re total idiots. What are their thoughts on gay marriage or for-profit health care? Got a pictogram for that?

Enjoy.

Barack Obama’s cabinet is highly qualified on almost every score.  It’s the first cabinet to feature someone who has already received a Nobel prize in the field (Teddy Roosevelt as head of his own cabinet excepted).  Obama pulled highly qualified people from a lot of important positions, from both major parties, and from across the nation.

Conservatives, religiously believing Obama’s administration cannot be allowed to succeed, erupted in bluster this past week when a chart mysteriously cited to an unfound (by me) “J. P. Morgan study” claimed Obama’s cabinet has less that 10% who have private sector experience.

“No business people!” the bloggers splutter.  “However can the government function?”

Chart claimed by American Enterprise Institute to be from J. P. Morgan, hoaxing experience data of Obama cabinet, underestimating by 700%

Gullibles rarely ask good questions, so we don’t need to bother with an answer to the question, if it’s a stupid question.  And in order to determine whether it’s a stupid question, we ought to ask whether the chart has any resemblance to reality.

According to the White House website:

The Cabinet includes the Vice President and the heads of 15 executive departments — the Secretaries of Agriculture, Commerce, Defense, Education, Energy, Health and Human Services, Homeland Security, Housing and Urban Development, Interior, Labor, State, Transportation, Treasury, and Veterans Affairs, as well as the Attorney General.

Six others have “cabinet-rank” status:  White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel, EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson, OMB Director Peter Orzag, U.S. Trade Representative Ronald Kirk, U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Susan Rice, and Council of Economic Advisors Chair Christina Romer.

Vice President, plus 15 executive department heads, plus six others:  22 people.

If only 10% had private sector experience, that would be 2.2 of them.  Each of the 22 people comprises about 4.5% of the cabinet.  Two of them with private experience would be 9% of the cabinet.  Three with private experience would reveal the chart to be in error.  Would it be possible to create a cabinet of 22 people and have only two of them with private experience?

The bullshit detectors in the bloggers’ minds should have been clanging like crazy when they saw that chart.

No one has cited any methodology for the chart, so I figure it was created on a napkin by interns for the American Enterprise Institute at lunch, and it took off before anyone could check the claims made for accuracy.  I’m a bit reluctant to blame it on J. P. Morgan, but maybe AEI can provide the interpleader to pin the blame on that private sector organization — which would be one more demonstration that private sector experience may not be all that AEI tries to crack it up to be.  Before counting, I guessed that Obama’s cabinet has more like 50% with private sector experience; it turns out to be more like 80%.  So the question now becomes, how and why did the chart originator discount real private-sector experience?

The “J. P. Morgan” chart from AEI is a hoax.  Here’s the cabinet, listed in succession order, with their private sector experience; members were listed from the White House website; biographical data were taken from Wikipedia, supplemented by official departmental biographies:

• Vice President Joe Biden – Private experience:  Yes.  4.5% of the cabinet.  Biden’s father worked in the private sector his entire life — unsuccessfully for a critical period.  Biden attended a private university’s law school (Syracuse), and operated a successful-because-of-property-management law practice for three years before winning election to the U.S. Senate.  (I regard a campaign as a private business, too — and Biden’s first campaign was masterful entrepreneurship.)
• Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton – Private experience:  Yes, significant.  9% of the cabinet.  Extremely successful private practice lawyer in Arkansa for the Rose Law Firm, one of the “Top 100 Lawyers” in a classicly dog-eat-dog business.
• Secretary of Treasury Tim Geithner – Private experience:  Yes, significant.  13.6% of the cabinet (The chart’s error is established in the first three people checked — surely no one bothered to make a serious count of the cabinet in compiling the chart.) Geithner traveled with world with his Ford Foundation-employed father.  He graduated from private universities, with an A.B. from Dartmouth and an M.A. in economics from Johns Hopkins.  Starting his career, he worked three years in the private sector with Kissinger Associates.  After significant positions at Treasury and State Departments, he again ventured into the private sector with the Council on Foreign Relations; from their he moved to the Federal Reserve Bank of New York — in what is at worst a semi-public organization.  Running a Federal Reserve Branch is among the most intensive jobs one can have in private sector economics and management.   If an analyst at a bank named after J. P. Morgan didn’t understand that, one wonders just what the person does understand.
• Secretary of Defense Robert Gates – Private sector experience:  Yes, at high levels.  18% of the cabinet.  Bob Gates spent a career with the Central Intelligence Agency, finally as Director of Central Intelligence, an executive level position with no equal in private enterprise.  He retired in 1993, and then worked in a variety of university positions, and joined several different corporate boards; in 1999 he was appointed interim Dean of the George W. Bush School of Government and Public Service at Texas A&M, and was appointed President of Texas A&M in 2002, where he served until his appointment as Secretary of Defense in 2006.
• Attorney General Eric H. Holder, Jr – Private sector experience:  Yes, significant.  23% of the cabinet, total.  After a sterling career in the Justice Department, as a Ronald Reagan appointment to be a federal judge, as a U.S. Attorney, and again at the Justice Department, Holder spent eight years representing high profile private clients at Covington  &  Burling in Washington, D.C.  His clients included the National Football League, the giant pharmaceutical company Merck, and Chiquita Brands, a U.S. company with extensive international business.
• Secretary of Interior Kenneth L. Salazar – Private sector experience: Yes.  27% of Obama cabinet.  Besides a distinguished career in government, as advisor and Cabinet Member with Colorado Gov. Roy Romer, Salazar was a successful private-practice attorney from 1981 to 1985, and then again from 1994 to 1998 when he won election as Colorado’s Attorney General.  As Senator, Salazar maintained a good voting record for a Republican business-supporting senator; Salazar is a Democrat.  Salazar’s family is in ranching, and he is usually listed as a “rancher from Colorado,” with life experience in the ranching business at least equal to that of former Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Conner.
• Secretary of Agriculture Thomas J. Vilsack - Private sector experience:  Yes, signficant.  32% of Obama cabinet.  Vilsack spent 23 years in private practice as an attorney, 1975 to 1998, while holding not-full-time elective offices such as mayor and state representative.  He joined government as Governor of Iowa in 1998, and except for two years, has been in employed in government since then.
• Secretary of Commerce Gary F. Locke – Private sector experience:  Yes, significant.  36% of Obama cabinet.  As near as I can determine, Locke was in private law practice from 1975 through his election as Executive in King County in 1993 (is that a full-time position?).  He was elected Governor of Washington in 1996.  After leaving office in 2005, he again worked in private practice with Davis Wright Tremaine, LLP, until 2009.  22 years in private practice, three years as Executive of King County, eight years as Governor of Washington.
• Secretary of Labor Hilda L. Solis – Private sector experience:  Yes, but I consider it insignificant.  36% of Obama cabinet with private sector experience, 4.5% without.  Solis’s father was a Teamster and union organizer who contracted lead poisoning on the job; her mother was an assembly line worker for Mattel Toys.  She overachieved in high school and ignored her counselor’s advice to avoid college, and earned degrees from Cal Poly-Pomona and USC.  She held a variety of posts in federal government before returning to California to work for education and win election to the California House and California Senate, and then to Congress.
• Secretary of  Health and Human Services Kathleen Sebelius – Private sector experience:  Yes, significant.  41% of Obama cabinet with private sector experience, 4.5% without.  Former Kansas Governor Kathleen Sebelius worked in the private sector for 12 years, at least nine years as director and lobbyist for the Kansas Association for Justice (then Kansas Trial Lawyers Association).  One might understand why the American Enterprise Institute would not count as “business experience” a career built on reining in insurance companies, as Sebelius did as a lobbyist and then elected Kansas Insurance Commissioner.
• Secretary of  Housing and Urban Development Shaun L.S. Donovan – Private sector experience:  Yes, only 4 years, but significant because it bugs AEI analysts so much.  45% of cabinet with private sector experience, 4.5% without.  With multiple degrees from Harvard University in architecture and public administration, Donovan was Deputy Assistant Secretary of HUD for Multifamily Housing during the Clinton Administration; and he was Commissioner of the New York City Department of Housing Preservation and Development (HPD).  In the private sector, he worked for the Community Preservation Corporation, a non-profit in New York City, and he worked for a while finding sources to lend to people to buy “affordable housing” in the city, a task perhaps equal to wringing blood from a block of granite.
• Secretary of  Transportation Raymond L. LaHood – Private sector experience:  No (not significant); school teacher at Holy Family School in Peoria, Illinois.  [As a teacher, I'm not sure that teaching should count as government experience, but it's not really private sector stuff, either.  Education isn't as wasteful as for-profit groups.]  45% of cabinet with private sector experience, 9% without.  Ironically, it is the Republican former Representative who pulls down the private sector experience percentage in the Obama cabinet.
• Secretary of Energy Steven Chu – Private sector experience:  Yes, extremely significant.  50% of cabinet with private sector experience, 9% without.  Chu worked at Bell Labs, where he and his several co-workers carried out his Nobel Prize-winning laser cooling work, from 1978 to 1987.  Having won a Nobel for private sector work, I think we can count his private sector experience as important.  Chu also headed the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, which is seeded by a government contract to a university but must operate as a very highly-regulated business.  (I’ll wager Chu is counted as “no private sector experience,” which demonstrates the poverty of methodology of the so-called “J. P. Morgan” study AEI claims.)
• Secretary of Education Arne Duncan – Private sector experience:  Yes, significant.  55% of cabinet with private sector experience, 9% without.  Duncan earned Academic All-American honors in basketball at Harvard.  His private sector is among the more unusual of any cabinet member’s, and more competitive.  Duncan played professional basketball: “From 1987 to 1991, Duncan played professional basketball in Australia with the Eastside Spectres of the [Australian] National Basketball League, and while there, worked with children who were wards of the state. He also played with the Rhode Island Gulls and tried out for the New Jersey Jammers.”  Since leaving basketball he’s worked in education, about four years in a private company aiming to improve education.
• Secretary of Veterans Affairs Eric K. Shinseki – Private sector experience:  Yes, but to give AEI and “Morgan” a chance, we won’t count it.  55% of cabinet with private sector experience, 13.6% without.  Shinseki is a retired, four-star general in the army, a former Chief of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.  While Shinseki served on the boards of a half-dozen corporations, all of that service was in the six years between his official retirement and his appointment as Secretary of Veterans Affairs.
• Secretary of Homeland Security Janet A. Napolitano - Private sector experience:  Yes, significant.  59% of cabinet with private sector experience, 13.6% without.  After a brilliant turn in law school at the University of Virginia, and a clerking appointment with a federal judge, Napalitano joined the distinguished Phoenix firm Lewis & Roca, where she practiced privately for nine years before Bill Clinton appointed her U.S. Attorney for Arizona.  AEI probably doesn’t want to count her private sector experience because, among other irritations to them, she was the attorney-advisor to Prof. Anita Hill during her questioning by the Senate Judiciary Committee on the issue of Clarence Thomas’s nomination to be Associate Justice of the Supreme Court.
• White House Chief of Staff Rahm I. Emanuel – Private sector experience:  Yes, significant.  64% of cabinet with private sector experience, 13.6% without.  Emanuel’s major private sector experience is short, but spectacular.  “After serving as an advisor to Bill Clinton, in 1998 Emanuel resigned from his position in the Clinton administration and became an investment banker at Wasserstein Perella (now Dresdner Kleinwort), where he worked until 2002. In 1999, he became a managing director at the firm’s Chicago office. Emanuel made $16.2 million in his two-and-a-half-year stint as a banker, according to Congressional disclosures. At Wasserstein Perella, he worked on eight deals, including the acquisition by Commonwealth Edison of Peco Energy and the purchase by GTCR Golder Rauner of the SecurityLink home security unit from SBC Communications.”  J. P. Morgan and AEI wish that Emanuel had not had such smashing success is such a short time.
• Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lisa P. Jackson – Private sector experience:  No, significant.  64% of cabinet with private sector experience, 18% without.  Despite a brilliant clear cleaning up environmental messes, with EPA and the New Jersey State government, Jackson has negligible private sector experience.  She was a brilliant student, valedictorian in high school and honors graduate in chemical engineering.
• Office of Management & Budget Director Peter R. Orszag – Private sector experience:  Yes, short but significant.  68% of cabinet with private sector experience, 18% without.  Orszag is the youngest member of the cabinet, but he had a brilliant academic career (Princeton, London School for Economics) and a series of tough assignments in the Clinton Administration.  During the Bush years he founded an economic consulting firm, and sold it, and worked with McKinsey and Company, mostly on health care financing (he’s a member of the National Institute of Medicine in the National Academies of Science).
• U.S. Trade Representative Ambassador Ronald Kirk – Private sector experience:  Yes, long and significant.  73% of cabinet with private sector experience, 18% without.  Son of a postal worker, Ron Kirk used academic achievement to get through law school.  He practiced privately for 13 years, interspersed with a bit of political work, before being appointed Texas Secretary of State in 1994 — the office that most businesses have most of their state regulatory action with.  About a year later he ran for and won election as Mayor of Dallas, considered a major business post in Texas.  Re-elected by a huge margin in 1999, he resigned to run for the U.S. Senate in 2002.  After losing (to John Cornyn), Price took positions with Dallas and then Houston law firms representing big businesses, especially in government arenas.
• U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Ambassador Susan Rice – Private sector experience:  Yes.  77% of cabinet with private sector experience, 18% without.  Rice was a consultant with McKinsey and Co., sort of the ne plus ultra of private sectorness, for a while before beginning her climb to U.N Ambassador.
• Council of Economic Advisors Chair Christina Romer – Private sector experience:  Yes, but academic.  We won’t count it to make AEI out to be less of a sucker.  77% of cabinet with private sector experience, 23% without significant private sector experience.  Dr. Romer’s chief appointments have been academic, and at a public university, though her education was entirely private.  A specialist in the Great Depression and economic data gathering, she’s highly considered by her colleagues, and is a past-president of the American Economic Association.

All totaled, Obama’s cabinet is one of the certifiably most brainy, most successful and most decorated of any president at any time.  His cabinet brings extensive and extremely successful private sector experience coupled with outstanding and considerable successful experience in government and elective politics.

AEI’s claim that the cabinet lacks private sector experience is astoundingly in error, with 77% of the 22 members showing private sector experience — according to the bizarre chart, putting Obama’s cabinet in the premiere levels of private sector experience.  The chart looks more and more like a hoax that AEI fell sucker to — and so did others (von Mises Institute, Wall Street Blips, League of Ordinary Gentlemen, Volokh Conspiracy, Econlib).

Others bitten by Barnum’s Law:

• Coyote Blog — stepped right into the punch:  “Ever get that feeling like the Obama White House doesn’t have a clue as to what it takes to actually run a business, make investments, hire people, sell a product, etc?”
• Say Anthing

Important update:  Thanks to the comment of Jake, below, I found this article in Forbes, by J. P. Morgan Michael Cembalest, chief investment officer for J. P. Morgan. In notes to the article Cembalest reports on his methodology:

A variety of sources were consulted for this analysis, including the Miller Center of Public Affairs at the University of Virginia. In the rankings, I did not include prior private-sector experience for the following positions: Postmaster General; Navy; War; Health, Education & Welfare; Veterans Affairs; and Homeland Security. In the rankings, private-sector experience at a law firm counts for a 33% score, which I think is very generous. My wife strongly suggested raising this to 50%, but I refused.

Cembalest doesn’t reveal much.  Does he include all cabinet-level posts outside the few he excluded?  Why did he exclude Navy and War, but not Defense?  Why would he exclude Homeland Security, with such obvious and extensive hits on private enterprise (think airlines and rail and ships)?  If no Homeland Security, why not exclude Transportation, too?

I’m particularly perturbed by his exclusion of lawyers.  If lawyers are excluded, why not investment bankers?  Lawyers are more directly engages in day-to-day competitive enterprise — and certainly most lawyers have more experience in hiring, firing, and as a commenter notes, “product placement” and advertising, than investment bankers.

In the end, Cembalest doesn’t provide enough details of his methdology, but we can see it’s a quick-and-very-dirty count, not much different from a SWAG.  I’m dying to see how Cembalest dealt with Energy Secretary Chu’s winning a Nobel from his work at Bell Labs, a bastion and symbol of private enterprise power and strength — or rather, how I suspect it was discounted in Cembalest’s counting.  And I wonder how his method dealt with the academic careers of George P. Shultz and Henry Kissinger, and the law career of James P. Baker III.  [end of update]

Satire, hoax, fact — how can we tell the difference?

Maybe more importantly, how can we tell early on that the “Climategate” kerfuffle, involving purloined, but otherwise dull e-mails from climate scientists, is nothing to worry about?

Look at history!  Remember Newtongate?  Read it here, at Carbon Fixated.

If you own any shares in companies that produce reflecting telescopes, use differential and integral calculus, or rely on the laws of motion, I should start dumping them NOW. The conspiracy behind the calculus myth has been suddenly, brutally and quite deliciously exposed after volumes of Newton’s private correspondence were compiled and published.

When you read some of these letters, you realise just why Newton and his collaborators might have preferred to keep them confidential. This scandal could well be the biggest in Renaissance science. These alleged letters – supposedly exchanged by some of the most prominent scientists behind really hard math lessons – suggest:

Conspiracy, collusion in covering up the truth, manipulation of data, private admissions of flaws in their public claims and much more.

But perhaps the most damaging revelations are those concerning the way these math nerd scientists may variously have manipulated or suppressed evidence to support their cause.

What kind of conspiracy keeps calculus being taught to innocent children today?  Exactly the same conspiracy that causes scientists to sound the alarms about climate change.

Tip of the old scrub brush to Tim Lambert at Deltoid.

‘Nuff said.

… but these literature events were!  In Literary Hoaxes : An Eye-Opening History of Famous Frauds by Melissa Katsoulis, you’ll find out about fake Shakespeare notes, an imposter Hitler diary, ancient Roman tomfoolery, and some recent shannanigans pulled by authors trying to make a quick buck off of forgery and lies.  This isn’t really a book for conspiracy theorists, but is perfect for those interested in proven fakes in literature.

As for this post’s title?  I just really like Refused.

Immer wieder kommen Mails von Menschen, die nach bestem Wissen und Gewissen ihre Mitmenschen über neue Computerviren, versteckte Radargeräte, Handy-Tricks oder ähnliches informieren wollen.

Sie leiten diese Mails meistens einfach weiter, der Ursprung scheint oft bei großen Organisationen (Blaulichtorganisationen, ÖAMTC, Computerfirmen usw. ) zu liegen

Meistens sind das allerdings Falschmeldung.

Die Technische Universität Berlin hat dazu eine Datenbank, nämlich das

Hoax-Info Service

Hier kann man nach solchen Infos suchen und mal abchecken, ob es sich nicht um eine (teilweise schon seit Jahren) im Umlauf befindliche Falschmeldung handelt.

Also bitte überprüfen vor dem Weiterleiten!!!

TU-Berlin * Hoax-Info Service.

John Guy’s review of Alison Weir’s latest book, The Lady in The Tower: The Fall of Anne Boleyn, has various criticisms to make, one of which I am going to deal with here.

If you look at the section in Weir’s book entitled ‘Notes on Some of the Sources’ you will find, listed separately, Lancelot de Carles: Epistre contenant le proces criminel faict a l’encontre de la royne Anne Boullant d’Angleterre and, a few pages on, Crispin, Lord of Milherve. Carles is described as ‘almoner to the Dauphin of France (the future Henri II), a renowned poet and man of letters, and the author of blazons and sacred poetry…who was present at Anne’s trial’ (p.338).  Milherve is described, again, as a man of letters who was present at Anne’s trial (p.341).  Both sources produced poetry describing Anne’s fall.

What’s the problem with all that?  Well, according to Guy:

Weir believes that a separate poem by another Frenchman, an “eyewitness” at Anne’s trial, one Crispin de Miherve, corroborates de Carles and adds extra details. Unfortunately, “Crispin” is a phantom. A French scholar proved in 1844 that the text Weir is using had been doctored, and in 1927 it was shown by comparing all the genuine manuscripts that the two poems are identical and by de Carles. Weir has been duped.

When I read this I turned to the index of The Lady in the Tower to see if I could find a page where both de Miherve and de Carles were mentioned.  I could – page 262.  This page and the following one discuss who served Anne as ladies-in-waiting during her time in the Tower.  The advantage of writing a book focussing on only part of a subject’s life is that there is room to discuss matters like this, which might go by the board in a full biography.  It’s an interesting section which I will return to in a later post.  Weir concludes that as a special favour to his disgraced queen, during her imprisonment in the Tower of London Henry VIII permitted Anne the company of four of her young maids of honour (in addition to four older women, two of whom departed after her condemnation).  In the footnotes Weir cites, in total, six sources to support the fact that Anne was attended by young women at this time, not just her older ladies-in-waiting.  Two of those sources are by Carles and Milherve – in other words, by the same person.

So the six sources Weir cites are reduced to five.  Does that matter?  To the general reader, no.  Even without the Milherve corroboration, it’s still very likely that Anne was attended by maids of honour in the Tower.  Five sources are ample to support a fairly minor point such as this one.  But to the academic world, it does matter.  Narrative history is a constant balancing act, a weighing up of one source against another, and every tip in the balance is crucial.

However.  If Weir has slipped up, she’s not the only one.

Two otherwise excellent books dealing with fashion in Louis XIV’s France (an under-studied subject), Diana de Marly’s Louis XIV and Versailles and Pamela Cowan’s A Fanfare for the Sun King: Unfolding Fans for Louis XIV, cite the memoirs of the Marquise de Montespan, one of Louis XIV’s mistresses and the mother of several of his children.  Here’s a quote from the Montespan memoirs, reproduced on page 90 of A Fanfare for the Sun King, describing a lottery held by Cardinal Mazarin.  (Lotteries, in the seventeenth century, could be a means of entertaining guests at a party and distributing expensive gifts.)

The Queens distributed the tickets with every appearance of honesty and good faith.  But I had reason to remark, by what happened to myself, that the tickets had been registered beforehand.  The young Queen, who felt her garter slipping off, came to me in order to tighten it.  She handed me her ticket to hold for a moment, and when she had fastened her garter, I gave her back my ticket instead of her own…My number won a portrait of the King set in brilliants, much to the surprise of the Queen Mother and His Eminence; they could not get over it.

Reading this left me puzzled.  I had spent several years in the British Library, reading primary and secondary sources for exactly this period without ever, once, encountering any memoirs by Madame de Montespan.  There was nothing obviously fake in the quote, in fact, quite the reverse: it is likely lotteries of this nature were fixed, with the biggest prizes going to those highest in rank, as they did at the lottery held at the festival of the Enchanted Isle, held by Louis XIV at Versailles in May 1664.

I checked the bibliography of the most authoritative biography of Montespan I knew to exist, Madame de Montespan by Jean-Christian Petitfils, Fayard, 1988.  This did indeed include a two volume 1829 edition of the Memoires.  But there was a note with it, which, translated, reads:

These memoirs, apocryphal but quite well written, have been attributed to Philippe Musoni.  The same series includes the Memoires, equally apocryphal, of Mlle de La Valliere.

Of course, it could be that Musoni (supposing him to be the author) based his work on a genuine source, written by Montespan or someone close to her.  But in the absence of any evidence, we have to assume he didn’t, which means the entire book must be completely discounted.

And here’s another book which has to be discounted:

I’ve saved the best till last.  This is Madame du Hausset’s Memoires sur Louis XV et Madame de Pompadour, purporting to be an account of du Hausset’s time in Pompadour’s service, described by Alden R. Gordon, ‘The Longest-Enduring Pompadour Hoax: Senac de Meilhan and the Journal de Madame du Hausset‘ (Art and culture in the eighteenth century: new dimensions and multiple perspectives, ed. Elise Goodman, Newark: University of Delaware Press, 2001) as ‘one of the most successful literary fabrications of all time, enduring for eighteen decades…No single source has been so frequently used as the basis for anecdotal insight into the intimate life of Madame de Pompadour and Louis XV.’

Indeed.  Some of Hausset’s most interesting passages concern Louis XV’s private brothel, and how Pompadour (who was no longer sleeping with the King) would arrange for the children of the King’s mistresses to be cared for.

Madame du Hausset was indeed employed in the household of Madame de Pompadour, but her so-called memoirs were written after the Revolution, probably by Gabriel Senac de Meilhan, the son of one of Louis XV’s doctors.  He would have had inside knowledge of the royal court.  But he wasn’t a lady-in-waiting to Madame de Pompadour.

Doubts were raised about the authenticity of the Madame du Hausset manuscript as early as October 1954 by Pierre Gaxotte.  It has been reprinted (presented as almost entirely authentic) in a scholarly edition as recently as 2002.  Why has it taken so long for it to be debunked?  Well, hoaxes like this one, when they work, work because they’re good – they’re written by people who know what they are talking about and have access to authentic sources of information.  The other reason?  The Hausset memoirs filled a gap, providing details of Pompadour’s private life that are available nowhere else.

Gordon:

The anecdotes in Madame du Hausset are delightful and have seemed so necessary to the biographer because they are the only sustained intimate descriptions of the private life shared by Louis XV with Madame de Pompadour.  And therein lies the gnawing sensation that the journal of Madame du Hausset is too good to be true.  The anecdotes supply precisely the kind of voyeuristic intimacy about incidents, emotions, and personal quirks that people desperately want to know about any famous person.  Having not existed in actuality they had to be invented to supply the lack.

Gordon also concludes that ‘In a scholarly generation given to interpretation, the need to vet primary sources for authentication has not been aggressively practiced.’

And now a confession: Miss Moppet is not clean on this.  The dissertation I completed in the third year of my history degree, which looked at the lives of eighteenth-century French noblewomen through the medium of their memoirs, included extensive quotations from the Memoires de Madame de Crequy.  What I didn’t know (and, presumably, nor did my tutors or examiners, because the dissertation got a high mark and no-one mentioned it) was that Madame de Crequy’s memoirs are a suspect source.  The British Library catalogue attributes them to Pierre-Marie-Jean Cousin de Courchamps.

I will freely admit that even now I have not got to the bottom of this matter.  I had taken it for granted that the memoirs were authentic because they were quoted in one of the seminal works on the French nobility, Guy Chaussinand-Nogaret’s 1976 The French Nobility in the Eighteenth Century: From Feudalism to Enlightenment. But according to Will L. McLendon, ‘A Problem in Plagiarism: Washington Irving and Cousen de Courchamps’, Comparative Literature, Vol 20, No.2, Spring 1968, pp. 157-169, the Crequy memoirs were declared false as early as 1836.

One other fact makes me feel that some mystery surrounds the matter.  One of the sources used to disprove the authorship of the Crequy memoirs happens to be Madame de Crequy’s authentic correspondence with none other than that supremely successful hoaxer…Senac de Meilhan.

Did the poacher turn gamekeeper?  I’m not sure.  But if I find out, you’ll be the first to know.

Heckuva story.  Earl Blumenauer is the man responsible for the language in H.R. 3200 that Sarah Palin erroneously claimed created “death panels.”

He’s a Congressman from Oregon.

In Saturday’s New York Times he detailed how critics hijacked the debate with false claims.  Fascinating story.

A very odd result:  Because of the false claims, a provision to help people plan to avoid death panels was stricken from health care reform proposals.  More citizens will face death panel-like decisions as a result.

Previously I thought Orwell was convoluted.

A posed photograph:  Three Boy Scouts, from at least two different units, holding a poster Scouts were distributing about international cooperation in World War II.  They are saluting, and behind them rises the dome of the U.S. Capitol on a brilliantly sunny day.

Caption from the U.S. Senate Historical Office: "Boy Scouts aid the war effort by delivering posters that encourage a united fight for freedom, ca.1943. credit: Library of Congress"

1943?  Who were the Scouts?

The photo is online in the collection of the U.S. Senate Historical Office (a good source of images, by the way).

I just wondered, who are those Scouts, and where are they today?

Boy Scouts assisted war efforts in a lot of ways in a lot of American cities, towns and villages.  Affiliates at the Tom Harbin Scout Museum at Camp Wisdom in Dallas (Circle 10 Council) have papers documenting and detailing massive scrap and paper drives, and a lot of other activities we probably wouldn’t let Scouts get into today.

The three Scouts in the photo wear what appears to be two different neckerchiefs, suggesting they come from at least two different troops or other units.  All three wear the uniform of the Boy Scouts of America, but two of the three look as though they may be immigrants or children of immigrants.

The date given is a “circa 1943.”  But the poster plugs a “United Nations” — could it have been as late as 1945 or 1946 and the official organizing of the United Nations?

What do you think?  What do you know?

Update: Wikimedia puts the date of the poster as 1941.  Shorpy says the photo is 1943:

“Washington, 1943. “United Nations Fight for Freedom: Colored, white and Chinese Boy Scouts in front of Capitol. They help out by delivering posters to help the war effort.” View full size. 4×5 Kodachrome transparency by John Rous for the Office of War Information. What photo expert out there can tell us about the numbers on these Kodachromes — how and at what point in the manufacturing/ exposure/ developing process they were made, and what they signify.

All those details and not the names of the Scouts?  In comments at Shorpy we also see that the temporary patch for the Scout on the left is for a 1942 campout.  So we know the photo was later than 1941.  The community patch for the Scout on the right says Washington where the city patch should be, with no state patch (if they had separate patches then).  So it’s probably a Washington, D.C. unit — and it’s Troop 11.  Anybody from National Capital Council ever read this site?  Were all three of these Scouts from Troop 11?

I have found, but cannot yet examine, another photo from the same roll of film, showing just the Scout in the middle.

Update 2: This may identify one of the Scouts, with an astounding story:

Caption from CityDesk.net: "July 1941. Local Boy Scout Anderson Grimes in front of the U.S. Capitol building in Washington, D.C., holding a copy of a WPA poster designed for the city’s landmark water conservation program."

That solo Scout is clearly the same one in the first photo, so we have one name:  Anderson Grimes.

But the entire story from CityDesk.net is more amazing, if true:

July 1941. Local Boy Scout Anderson Grimes in front of the U.S. Capitol building in Washington, D.C., holding a copy of a WPA poster designed for the city’s landmark water conservation program. Shortly after this photo was taken, he was to present the poster to local congressman Harford Collins in a brief ceremony. Tragically, Grimes, along with several local reporters and congressional aides, instead found Senator Collins slumped over his desk, dead from a heart attack.

Thirty years later, Grimes ended up serving the same seat in Congress for four terms. He did not die in office.
- RJ White

If true?  I can’t find a listing for a Sen. Harford Collins in the Congressional biography pages, nor for any Member in either house named Anderson Grimes.

More mystery.  Is the Scout even named Anderson Grimes?

Okay, after j. a. higginbotham wrote in, I finally got it:  CityDesk.net is a satire site.  They wrote a phony story to accompany the photograph.

That’s right:  I got hoaxed.

Still looking for information on the Scouts and their troop(s).

Update, November 15: Is the water conservation poster in the version above a PhotoShop addition?  Here’s a photo held by the Library of Congress:

From Library of Congress: "United Nations Fight for Freedom: Boy Scout in front of Capitol. They help out by delivering posters to help the war effort"

It’s time for a preemptive strike, since I’ve already seen this latest load of B.S. beginning to make the rounds on Facebook. I’m sure it’s only a matter of time before the annual “War on Christmas” rite of hyperventilation kicks in, and when it does some will start shouting to the hills that the Obama White House has renamed the White House Christmas Tree and is now calling it the White House Holiday Tree instead.

The problem is it isn’t true. Anyone who says it is has fallen for an Internet hoax. That’s right, it’s totally made up. It is still, in fact, being called a Christmas Tree, and there has been no attempt to rename it.

Actually, if you want to get technical and insist on calling things by their proper names, Christmas trees, such as the one at the White House, really ought to be called Yule trees instead, but I really don’t see that catching on in any truly widespread fashion anytime soon. Personally, I’d love to see the White House rename it the “Hanukkah Bush,” or something really obscure like “Ygdrasil,” but I don’t see those happening anytime soon, either.

Maybe this fake renaming of the White House Christmas tree flap isn’t such a bad thing. Just think of the possibilities that could come of renaming the tree. It could help make a small dent in the deficit if we sold the naming rights to the tree. After all, that’s a very American thing to do. Imagine: “Weyerhaeuser Presents The Glidden White Maxwell House Christmas Tree Hill,” or the “Stihl Chainsaws White House Ygdrasil.” You could so thoroughly decorate it in the corporate logos of paying sponsors that you could enter the tree in a NASCAR race and nobody would notice. Think of all the money it could raise. Isn’t that what the season’s all about for most of us anyway?

I used to be more on the pulse of what’s going on in the world. I still watch the news, read news websites, and even sometimes read the newspaper, but I don’t really feel informed.

The problem is that when I turn to any of these outlets, I cannot shake the feeling that I’m being brainwashed. I’m being told what is important. I’m being given the soundbite version of events. From what little I know about journalism, I know that traditionally in the first paragraph of a news article, you need to get across the who, what, when, where and why. Yet, when I read news stories anymore, I am almost always acutely aware that I’m getting information filtered through someone’s viewpoint.

Some news outlets are better than others, but it seems that all of the major news outlets cover the exact same stories, and they are willing to do anything to have their version of the story stand out. The result is bad reporting, and me having to uncomfortably watch microphones being shoved in people’s faces while they grieve, for example. I wonder if the competition to be on the scene first and to have the most viewers or readers is what really drives the information I’m receiving.
$$$$$$$$$$$
Take the “balloon boy” story, for instance. I was not sitting around my TV watching and waiting for the balloon to land, but I do admit when I first heard that the boy was safe, I felt relieved.

As the hoax has unfolded and the parents have plead guilty, I realized that I’m not angry or outraged at the Heene family’s behavior. Yes, I think it’s sick that one would exploit their children to gain fame. (Though, parents of pop stars and child actors have been doing this for years.) But, the Heene’s are just a product of the environment created by our constant need for “news,” to be connected and in the know, and our obsession with celebrity.

Being bombarded with information, and often mindless information, it’s no wonder everyone thinks they can get on TV. It’s also no wonder that people go to drastic measures to do it. I hope the Heene’s case sets a precedent, but it’s more likely that people will just get more creative with their hoaxes.

What I’m struggling to understand in all of this is “why?”

Is it weird that I have no desire to be on television?

Or that I have no want for people to recognize me, or know who I am without me knowing them?

Does my desire for anonymity make me a freak?

Sesame Street, that beloved icon of childhood, where we learned everything we needed to know that later showed up in an overpriced book on business leadership, is under seige.

We thought that a neighborhood of loveable, shaggy Muppets would escape the ravages of the recession: my friends, we were wrong. So, so wrong.

In a tearful announcement earlier today, Kermit the Frog announced that, effective immediately, Sesame Street will lay off 20% of its workforce. While he refused to give specifics, he did indicate that the cuts would be made from the on-air staff, leaving no-one immune to these Draconian cost-cutting measures. Out of approximately 140 Muppets, this represents a loss of 28 beloved characters. Who will it be???

Video of the press conference from CNN:

and some updated lyrics, for the fans: originals here

Pogey Day

Sweepin’ the sun away

On my way to get my benefits

Can you tell me how to get,

How to get to the EI office, please?

Come line up

It’s fun to be a grup

Friendly social workers

Will see you now

Can you tell me how to get

How to get what’s coming to me?

It’s an Orwellian ride

Every one will be pushed aside

Unhappy people like you–

Unhappy people like…

What a terrible…

Dreary Day

Smokin’ my cares away

Off my head, here where the air is sweet

Can you tell me how to get,

How to get to …

Um, I forget.

Self explanatory.
Story:

It’s no surprise that the world gets taken in by hoaxers and con men. They’re really good at what they do and most of us are bored enough to believe anything as long as it takes our mind off the cubicle for a while.

And even when the hoaxers get accused of fakery, we may still take their side. After all, those negative doubting types try to shoot down everything! Who cares what they say! What is harder to explain, though, is the times when the perpetrators of a hoax come out themselves and confess to the fakery… and people still go right on believing.

Yes, this is a post about how to eat beaver. Not just ANY beaver, you understand; we have us some STANDARDS around these parts (these ones right down…here) and will not show you how to gnaw on gristly old beaver, the kind like an old baseball mitt made out of bbq jerky.

This kind:

The wife coyly tried to explain her purchase of a new pair of expensive imported panties. “After all, dear,” she said to her husband, “You wouldn’t expect to find fine perfume in a cheap bottle, would you?”

“No,” her husband replied. “Nor would I expect to find gift wrapping on a dead beaver.”

No indeed!

We’re all about the fresh, young beaver here. Although perhaps not as much as the lesbians down at Lick might like, now that we think of it.

Where were we? Oh yes, speaking of ourselves in the second-person plural, for no reason we can fathom other than it’s practice for when Randy Andy comes to his senses, loses some weight, and gets his butt off the golf course and marries me. Or Hot Ginge, I’m easy.

Anyway, it does look like some people could use instructions for the most basic things, like the great Canadian (yes, it’s Canadian, check out the website) art of beaver-eating. Why, we’ve even got 1/24th of each day devoted to beaver!

Dude, it’s too late for us to help you. Whereas, in my country beaver-eating is a competitive sport.

And the Aussies are no slouches at taking care of beavers, as you can see in this video that Metro has been waiting almost exactly one year for me to steal.

The Brits, on the other hand, have to go to great, bureaucracy-enveloping lengths to be reintroduced to beavers. What, they don’t have Lavalife there? Apparently, they killed every one they could find, thus bringing to life the old cliche about, If I see something I’ve never seen before, I’ll shoot it. Boarding school has a lot to answer for, I’m telling you.

Russia, of course, being somewhat desperate and all out of ponies and small children since Yeltsin sold every mammal larger than a husky, has developed its own way to prepare beaver for eating, and here it is, with photos. Warning! Very wet and lots of bare flesh!

The Catholic Church, surprisingly, has no issue with the Beav, and encourages people to eat it on Friday. Well, it’s a start, I guess.

The 17th century Catholic Church actually declared beavers to be a fish according to dietary restrictions, meaning they are ok to eat on both Fridays and throughout Lent.

Well, this should be more widely known, is all I have to say about the matter!

Some organizations can be so forward-thinking. Look at the Boy Scouts, for instance:

Did you know that the US Cub Scouts give a Silver Beaver award? I nearly got thrown out of the leader’s meeting for laughing so much when they gave it to a retired woman with grey hair.

Hmmm, it’s given for Outstanding Service to Youth. I know more than one or two beavers that would qualify under those criteria!

In the spirit of these fine organizations and countries comes a post from Bug Girl on her serendipitous discovery of a tome of wisdom devoted, at least in substantial part, to instructions on pleasing one’s wife with wild games and, of course, the preparation and consumption of beaver.

The author claims the meat is “dark, moist and tender”; Hmmmm, sounds like somebody’s got a touch of Jungle Fever.

I wonder if it has some tips on how to stuff a beaver? It’s been so long I’ve forgotten.

So we’re all going to die on December 21, 2012.  People seriously believe it.  Remember Y2K?  All those people making fools of themselves buying supplies to survive the disaster, hunkering down in their basements on New Year’s eve.  They came out the next day and were shocked to find… nothing happened.  I hope they enjoyed eating their freeze-dried meatloaf for the next few months, not to mention the research they did about what bugs are the healthiest to consume. 

At least there's no saturated fat

All those people apparently forgot about their gullibility and are at it again.  And now we have to put up with it for 3 annoying years.  I’m hoping that after the movie comes out this will all die down.  I know most of the reason for all this madness is the intense viral marketing campaign, setting up phony websites and such explaining why the world is going to hell in a handbasket on that day.  And then there is this thing with Nostradamus and the Mayan calendar.  Let me tell you about those:  It’s a stretch to believe that Nostradamus predicted anything.  His “predictions” were so vague that many people could perceive it differently and come up with their own views.  It’s like walking into a psychic and them telling you that you will meet someone new very soon.  Wow, really?  Thanks buddy.  Also, the Y2K disaster mentioned earlier that never happened…  everybody was saying he predicted that too.  Oops.

I predict there will be a lot of gullible people in 1999 and 2012

And then the Mayans.  OK, even people who make their living studying the Mayan culture say this is all a bunch of tomfoolery.  Sure, their calendar ends in 2012.  Do you have any calendars in your home that go past 2010?  So I guess that means you must think the world is going to end on December 31 of next year.  And not only that, they say that 2012 was the end of the Mayan calendar cycle, which is true.  But they weren’t the only ones to do that, nor the first.  There was another society called the Greeks who did that.  And they did it better. 

But they're tied as far as coolest ruins

Personally, I think the world is going to end like this.  But other than that,  I’m here to tell you that everyone will wake up alive and well on December 22, 2012.  I’m not an oracle, but I do have a lot of common sense.  The following will address several scenarios proposed by doomsdayers and what I have to say about them.  Oh, I also have some science nerds totally backing me up.  Read on…

The earth is going to pull the e-brake

Doomsdayers say:  A shift in magnetic polarity will stop the earth, then reverse it’s rotation, causing widespread destruction

Scientists say:  First, magnetic polarity and the earth’s rotation are totally unrelated.  The earth’s magnetic polarity does change about every 400,000 years.  There is no evidence that it is going to happen soon, or that there will be anything to be worried about when it does.

I say:  Let the rotation reverse.  This world is so ass-backwards sometimes, maybe it would help

The Sumerians said so

Doomsdayers say:  The Sumerians were the first great civilization and made several accurate predictions, including the existence of Uranus, Neptune and Pluto.  So their claim that the planet Nibiru is going to collide with the earth in 2012 must be true.

Scientists say:  The claims that the Sumerians predicted a planetary collision isn’t hotly debated.  In fact, it’s not debated at all.  One Sumerian researcher came up with this theory and people ran with it.  Every other expert on Sumerian culture disagrees.  They did not know about Uranus, Neptune, and Pluto.  They also thought the sun rotated around the earth.

I say: If we still listened to the Sumerians, you wouldn’t be reading this.  You would be too busy sacrificing children.

The futures so bright, you gotta wear shades

Doomsdayers say:  A massive solar flare will strike the earth in 2012 and destroy everything like that awesome Nic Cage movie “Knowing”.  Even NASA says so.

Scientists say: First, that movie was lame.  Second, NASA did say there may be a strong solar flare in 2012, but there are solar flares all the time.  NASA did predict a relatively strong one in a few years that may slightly affect power grids and the like.  If the sun were capable of putting out solar flares like Hollywood seems to think it can, we would know by observing other stars.  It can’t.

I say:  I never saw the movie.  But I checked out the press release about the solar flare.  The doomsdayers never mentioned the fact that it said there is a slight chance it “could be as big as the solar max that hit in 1956″.  You remember that one?  I didn’t think so, and I don’t recall reading anything about the earth exploding when that happened. 

“Old Faithful” will become “Old Suck It Humans”

Doomsdayers say:  Yellowstone has a massive volcanic eruption about every 650,000 years.  2012 is predicted as the next time it will happen.  The eruption will be so big it will block sunlight and put the earth into another ice age.

Scientists say: We agree that there is a history of Yellowstone erupting into a super volcano, and will happen again.  And it will be big.  Big enough to do all that?  Probably not.  And there are no geologists out there who set a date for 2012.  They say it could potentially happen in the next several thousands to tens of thousands of years.

I say:  Wouldn’t an ice age be a good thing?  At least we wouldn’t have to hear about global warming all the time.  In fact, we would crave a little of it.  And besides, a volcano is no problem.  I saw the movie.  You just knock down a couple buildings and funnel the lava into the Pacific ocean.  Problem solved.

Planets don’t like being organized

Doomsdayers day:  The planets will align in 2012, the result will be global catastrophe.

Scientists say:  Well, the planets align about once every 57 years, so I think we’re OK there.  And when they do align, nothing happens anyway.  And just to crush your spirit a little more, the next one will not be in 2012, but on September 8, 2040.  Sorry.

I say:  All I know is the last time the planets aligned was several years ago when I met my wife.  I didn’t even have to look it up.  I think it also happened in Tomb Raider, and the only result from that was the thrill of getting to see Angelina Jolie in her hot little outfit packing heat. 

We’re going to have to hear that damn Aerosmith song again

Doomdayers say: An asteroid will strike the earth in December of 2012 which will kill all living things except bacteria.

Scientists say:  Wrong again.  There are several asteroids that will make close appearances to earth in that month.  There’s even a partial list of them here.  None will get closer than a few hundred thousand miles.  And besides, if there is an asteroid on a collision course with earth big enough to cause serious damage, we’ll know about it decades in advance.

I say:  I’m not worried.  In the event one is discovered, we’ll have plenty of time to assemble a rag-tag group of offshore oil drillers to save the planet.

The Vatican must be involved

Doomsdayers say:  Even the Bible predicts that the final battle of good vs. evil, or armageddon, will occur in 2012

Scientists say:  What did Darwin have to say about it?

I say:  When was that date set?  I went to a Lutheran grade school and high school.  I had to take Theology every semester and was forced into chapel at least once a week that whole time.  I don’t seem to recall anything being said about when that would happen.  I’d like to see some evidence on that one.  Oh?  There is none?  OK, you can shut the hell up now.

The Mayans knew about lasers

Doomsdayers say: The Mayan calendar is ending, which means we are coming out of a “galactic beam.”  You see, the Mayan calendar was based on the “Great Cycle” which lasts 5,200 years and ends on December 21,2012.  When we emerge from the beam, the earth will drastically change.

Scientists say:  There is, nor has there ever been, any evidence of a “galactic beam”.

I say: You’re an idiot.

Here at the Fraud Prevention Unit, I do my best to keep readers informed of the latest clear and present dangers—all those different types of fraud and identity theft that actually occur and that you should be wary of.

However, I also feel like it’s important to dispel the occasional false report of a scam. It takes enough mental energy watching out for the real deal; it’s a waste of time and energy to worry about rumors and hearsay.

That’s why today I’m bringing up a fake scam report that is still making its way around the Internet via email: the Walmart cash back scam.

There are a few variations, all circulated by hysterical emails with a thousand “Fw:’s” in the subject line. The alleged scam works like this:

1. You pay for a purchase at Walmart with your credit or debit card, electing to only pay the exact amount of the purchase
2. The cashier “orders” $20 or $40 cash back but doesn’t tell you
3. The cashier either pockets the cash or passes it off to a friend who is in line behind you

The problem is, cashiers can’t order cash back on your purchase. There is only one way to do that—at the PIN pad, where the customer is the one pushing the buttons.

Now, those buttons are pretty close together, so it’s extremely possible to hit something other than ”No” when the machine asks if you want cash back. If you thought you’d pressed the right button, and the cashier wasn’t expecting a cash back transaction (because you said “no” when they asked), it’s possible that neither party would notice the error. In other words, these occurrences were most likely due to a mistake on the customer’s part.

Of course, nobody ever wants to admit they messed up, so they write long screeds and email them to everyone they know. Is it a deliberate hoax? I don’t think so. I think somebody pressed the wrong button and didn’t catch it until later, and it never occurred to them that they might have erred.

Then again, there are some people who don’t like Walmart even a little bit, so maybe there is some malice behind the message. I couldn’t say. In that case, it seems like “Whirl-Mart” would be a much more fun, albeit weird, way to protest consumerism, or whatever you’re on about.

Information from this article was mostly taken from Snopes.com, which I used to really like, but these days they’ve got too many popup ads (the kind that blast right through my popup blocker) and the site is always trying to install some Office component on my computer, which I don’t like at all. Maybe a permanent switch to Firefox is in order after all…