Yes, it absolutely makes a difference

for evidence of that, one needs to look at the example of CANADA. Canada doesn't have a 1st Amendment. It isn't the Supreme Law of the Land, therefore the Canadian media can lie endlessly to their own people. The people are uninformed, and therefore they make more mistakes because of their ignorance.

The first thing that a tyrant does is to shut down the free press, and then to confiscate all firearms. That's what Hitler did. Canada doesn't have a Bill of Rights.

Bongino Show, episode 2582

If You Don't Understand Bonds, You Don't Understand Money

Author: Fred - Money Historian (YouTube Channel)

What the lack of respect for the truth will do to you...

The video builds up a thesis that people don't understand bonds. The reason they don't understand is given late in the video. So I jipped it there. But by all means, watch it all.

This isn't a fault of the author of the video, but in order to save time, and can get to the point; which is that the people are uninformed because the news media and educational system doesn't tell you what you need to know.

But if you don't know, then it really is your own fault. It has been known for the longest time that these institutions are biased, and that bias isn't in YOUR FAVOR.

When it all goes down, the public is going to blame SOMEBODY, and the odds are that the blame will go where it doesn't belong, and that somebody innocent will become the scapegoat. That's the way of the world.

Therefore, when the SHTF, try to step out the line of fire. Know what I mean, Vern?

Basic Instinct AI discussion

Question:

Let's discuss the movie "Basic Instinct" made in the early nineties... In particular, the character Catherine Trammel, who was suspected of murdering her boyfriend Johnny Boz. The film leaves us with a question of the actual guilty party. Was Catherine so evil that she got away with murder, or was she innocent?

Answer:

The definitive answer provided by the film is that Catherine Tramell was undeniably guilty and got away with murder.

While the movie masterfully constructs a web of red herrings, psychological mind games, and plausible deniability to keep Detective Nick Curran (and the audience) off balance throughout the runtime, the final shot settles the question definitively.

Here is a breakdown of why Catherine is guilty and how the film explains her getting away with it:

1. The Definitive Proof: The Final Shot

The most explicit evidence is the final camera move of the movie. After Nick shoots Dr. Beth Garner and Catherine arrives at Nick's apartment, they make love. As they talk about the future, Catherine’s hand slips off the side of the bed, her fingers reaching toward the floor. When Nick embraces her and affirms his attachment to her, she lets her hand relax.

The camera then pans down to the floor under the bed, revealing a brand-new ice pick.

This visual punchline confirms two things:

- Catherine was planning to murder Nick in the exact same manner as Johnny Boz.

- She is the actual killer; Beth was merely her scapegoat.

Both director Paul Verhoeven and screenwriter Joe Eszterhas have confirmed in interviews that Catherine was always intended to be the killer.

2. How She Framed Beth Garner

Catherine’s brilliance lies in her ability to write real life like one of her novels. She understood the psychology of everyone around her: - The Past Connection: Catherine knew Beth had an obsession with her dating back to their college days. Catherine weaponized Beth's unresolved emotional issues.

- Planted Evidence: Catherine arranged the circumstances of Gus’s (Nick’s partner) murder at the hotel. She lured Nick there, knowing Beth would also arrive after being tipped off, creating the exact setup where Nick would shoot Beth in self- defense.

- The Apartment: The police subsequently found evidence in Beth’s apartment (the blonde wig, copies of Catherine’s book, newspaper clippings). Catherine had the resources, intelligence, and access to plant these items to ensure Beth took the fall for all the murders.

3. The Nature of Her Evil: The Ultimate Thrill-Seeker

Catherine is depicted as a pure, high-functioning psychopath. She isn't driven by ordinary criminal motives like money or simple revenge; she kills for:

- Research and Art: She literally acts out the murders she writes about to see if she can do it and get away with it.

- The Thrill of Control: Her greatest pleasure comes from manipulating powerful, aggressive men (like Johnny Boz and Nick Curran) into dangerous situations where she holds all the cards.

4. Nick’s Complicity Through Willful Blindness

Catherine didn’t just outsmart the police through clever plotting; she exploited Nick’s own self-destructive nature. Nick is an adrenaline junkie with a history of substance abuse, violence, and poor impulse control.

By the end of the film, Nick wants to believe Beth is the killer not because the evidence is airtight, but because accepting Catherine's innocence allows him to stay with her. He chooses the dangerous illusion over the lethal truth, leaving him completely at her mercy.

Conclusion

Catherine Tramell was not innocent. She was a remorseless killer who successfully manipulated the police department, framed an emotionally vulnerable former lover, and ensnared the lead investigator—walking away entirely free.

Comment:


Any follow-ups? There are suggested ones, but do I want to follow that, or another tack?

Here's GAB AI's suggestion:

What was the significance of Beth's background?

Answer:

In "Basic Instinct", Beth Garner’s background serves as the linchpin of Catherine

Tramell’s master plan. Catherine doesn’t just frame Beth by planting physical evidence; she exploits Beth's psychological history to ensure the police—and specifically Nick Curran—will accept the narrative that Beth is the killer.

Here is the significance of Beth’s background and how Catherine weaponized it:

1. The Psychological "Mirror"

Beth was a psychologist who had attended the same university as Catherine. Catherine reveals that they had a complex, intense history during their college years. By establishing this prior connection, Catherine creates a "motive" for Beth: obsession.

Catherine successfully paints a picture of Beth as a woman who was infatuated with her, someone who became jealous, grew to hate her, and ultimately decided to become her—imitating Catherine’s style, her books, and her murders to frame her. This allows Catherine to suggest that Beth is a "copycat" killer.

2. The Credibility of a Professional

Because Beth was a psychologist (and specifically one who worked for the police department), she was viewed as reliable and stable. Catherine used this status to her advantage:

- Access: Being a police psychologist gave Beth legitimate access to the investigation and to Nick.

- The "Reliable Witness": By framing someone who was a respected member of the police inner circle, Catherine made the police reluctant to look elsewhere. It was much easier for the department to believe that a "troubled" colleague had snapped than to admit that a wealthy, beautiful, and charismatic suspect had played them all for fools.

3. The "Scorned Woman" Narrative

Catherine knows how to manipulate the prejudices of the men investigating her. By pointing Nick toward Beth, she taps into the classic, misogynistic trope of the "scorned woman." She presents herself as the victim of a woman who is "obsessed" with her, knowing that Nick—already emotionally compromised and attracted to Catherine—is primed to see Beth as the dangerous, unstable force in his life.

4. Mirroring and Inversion

In a broader narrative sense, Beth acts as a foil to Catherine. If Catherine is a sociopath who lives without rules, Beth is the character who attempts to live within the rules but ultimately is destroyed by her inability to control her own past trauma.

Catherine notes that Beth is just as capable of being "dark" as she is, but while Catherine embraces her psychopathy as a source of power, Beth is portrayed as a victim of her own repressed volatility. By the time Nick "finds" the evidence in Beth's apartment (which Catherine clearly planted), the police have already been fed enough context about Beth’s "unstable" history to believe that she was capable of these brutal murders.

Summary

Beth’s background was the narrative architecture of Catherine’s defense. Catherine is a writer, and she understood that for a "story" (her innocence) to be believed by the police, she needed a compelling "villain" to take her place. Beth was the perfect vessel for that story: a former friend, a professional, and a woman with a history that could be easily twisted into the portrait of a murderer.

My final question about all this:

One final question with respect to the movie, if you please... The reason that I ask is this: can a person such as Catherine exist in real life, and if so, can you provide an example, and an explanation why the real person is an extraordinary evil person who "got away with it."?

Answer:

Can a person like Catherine Tramell exist in real life?

Yes, but with caveats.

In clinical psychology and criminology, Catherine Tramell represents an extreme archetype of Factor 1 Psychopathy paired with high intelligence, Machiavellianism, and malignant narcissism.

While Hollywood exaggerates the glamour and theatrical 4D chess moves, real- world individuals with this psychological profile share specific, lethal traits:

- Superficial Charm and Glibness: An ability to disarm others, exude confidence, and appear magnetic.

- Cold Rationality and Lack of Fear: A biological inability to experience genuine panic, guilt, or remorse.

- Predatory Empathy: The ability to understand what others are feeling—not to sympathize, but to identify weaknesses and weaponize them.

- Exploitation of Societal Biases: Knowing that people (especially men in authority) naturally struggle to see an attractive, poised woman as a ruthless predator.

Real-Life Example 1: Karla Homolka (The Psychological Manipulator Who Beat the System)

Perhaps the closest real-world analog to the psychological manipulation seen in Basic Instinct is Karla Homolka.

The Background

In the early 1990s in Canada, Homolka and her husband, Paul Bernardo, committed a series of abductions, rapes, and murders of teenage girls—including Homolka’s own 15-year-old sister, Tammy.

How She "Got Away With It"

When the police closed in, Homolka executed a masterclass in psychological manipulation:

1. The Victim Facade: She portrayed herself as a battered, terrified wife who was forced by Bernardo into participating under duress.

2. Manipulating the Experts: She convinced forensic psychiatrists, defense attorneys, and prosecutors of her supposed helplessness and remorse.

3. The "Deal with the Devil": Relying on her testimony to convict Bernardo, the prosecution granted her a plea deal: just 12 years in prison for manslaughter.

The Truth and the Evil

Shortly after the deal was signed and legally binding, videotapes hidden in Bernardo's ceiling were recovered. They showed Homolka was not a coerced victim; she was an active, willing, and enthusiastic participant in the drugging, assault, and murder of the victims.

Because of double jeopardy protections and the terms of the plea agreement, the deal could not be undone. She served her 12 years and was released in 2005. Today, she lives as a free woman with a family—having committed unspeakable horrors and outsmarted the legal system through calculated deceit.

Real-Life Example 2: Belle Gunness (The Literal Escape)

If looking for a historical killer who used romance, murdered her partners, and vanished without ever facing justice, the archetype is Belle Gunness (1859–1908).

The Murders

Gunness placed personal ads in Midwestern newspapers seeking wealthy suitors, inviting them to her farm in La Porte, Indiana. Once the men arrived with their life savings, she poisoned or bludgeoned them, butchered their bodies, and buried them on her property. She is believed to have murdered over a dozen suitors, several foster children, and two of her husbands.

How She Got Away With It

In 1908, when she realized the brother of one of her victims was closing in on her, Gunness set her farmhouse on fire. In the ruins, authorities found the headless body of a woman (deliberately placed to fool investigators) and the bodies of her children.

Excavations of the yard revealed the butchered remains of dozens of victims, but Belle Gunness—and the substantial fortune she had stolen—was gone. She vanished completely and was never captured or tried, having successfully faked her demise.

Why Are These Individuals Capable of "Extraordinary Evil"?

The evil of a real-life Catherine Tramell does not come from irrational rage or chaotic madness; it comes from calculating, self-aware clarity.

1. Instrumental Cruelty: They do not kill out of sudden passion; they plan murders like financial transactions or games.

2. Subversion of Human Trust: They deliberately use intimacy, romance, and vulnerability—the things human beings rely on to connect with one another—as weapons to trap their targets.

3. Contempt for the Rule of Law: For a high-functioning psychopath, the legal system and social morality are not guardrails; they are merely obstacles to outwit for the thrill of dominance.

=============================
Some final words for this post:

What does this have to do with anything at all?  It has EVERYTHING to do with the nature of man.  Human nature is to be deceitful.  It is the way of the world.  It is naive to believe that there is no such thing as evil in the world.  Turning away from it through denial does not deal with it.  It only confirms it.

What can you do about it?

It's up to you.  You have the power to find the truth, or to accept the lie and just give up on the truth.  It is in the Gospel of John.  The world loves the darkness, and hates the light.  

Therefore, to shed light on evil is DANGEROUS.  You have to accept that risk and be brave, or forever fall under its power.

Electron-Phonon Coupling at the Tungsten Surface

8/27/26:

The struggles in the political realm can give clues as to why this theory is not accepted as correct. Since Donald Trump came down the escalator in 2015, there has been an unrelentling campaign to run him out of the political sphere. It isn't because he did anything WRONG, but is because the political realm will not accept his existence.

The truth of the matter is that protectionism isn't endemic to America, but to the world. If America gives up protection of its vital industries, then the rest of the world will swooop down and take it over. Since WWII, that is exactly what has happened.

This has lessons in the political sphere. Indeed, the rejection of this theory may be political in nature. There are those with too much to lose by this acceptance, and they will fight it to the very end.

The fallacy is that there's no political motivations behind the rejection of Cold Fusion.

But that's nothing new. Not really. It has been suspected all along.

It is also nothing new in the history of science. Galileo was imprisioned. Quantum mechanics theory wasn't accepted at first. There are other examples, I'm sure. Human nature doesn't change even if science is involved.

But how do you prove it? That's a discussion in a seemingly unrelated post coming up soon.

7/25/11: The original post is below:

Another BECNF post here.  At first blush, this may not seem relevant since BECNF doesn't mention this coupling.  I got interested in it because of phonons, as phonons can act as bosons, which are relevant to the theory.

There may also be an objection with respect to Tungsten, since the BECNF is about Ni H systems, not tungsten.

What caught my attention, besides the phonon reference was this quote near the end:

This is an important dissipation channel for energy and will affect chemical reactions at surfaces, such as reactions on catalysts. Another interesting implication is the possibility of an electron-phonon-mediated superconductivity that is confined to the surfaces of metals and has a greatly enhanced critical temperature as compared to ordinary superconductors. [emphasis added]

As I noted before, "cold fusion" has been said to be a surface effect phenomenon.

A closer look at this paper allows another quote that I find interesting:

Since these "many-body" effects are often more prominent in physical systems with less than three dimensions  [ comment: as you would find on the surface] carefully prepared surfaces furnish good two-dimensional test beds for examining these effects in detail.

BCEs in this context probably qualify as a type of "many-body" effects referred to here.

Rossi's catalyst then, could be key.  Maybe that is why it is such a big secret.

At San Jacinto

8/26/26:

Anybody remember the Pearl of Great Price post? Can you guess why I mentioned it?

12/18/10: The original post follows:

Just got back from the San Jacinto Battleground.  I went there to take some pictures. The location really isn't unfamiliar with me since I've been there many times before.  But this time, I decide to look around the park and get the lay of the land.  I took several pictures ( about 25 ) of the various markers which show the disposition of the opposing forces on that day in 1836.

I wanted to get the feel for the situation on the ground just before the battle.  How did Santa Anna manage to get beaten so badly?  It was more of a slaughter than a battle.  Sam Houston's army didn't suffer that many casualties; hardly more than a handful.  On the other hand, Santa Anna lost hundreds of men and/ or hundreds more captured.

No doubt, the element of surprise figured significantly in the outcome of the battle.  But looking over the terrain, it is hard to see how anyone could manage to surprise anyone else.  The land is very flat and the grass and bushes don't provide much cover.

I recall reading that Houston's army used a "rise" as cover.  I looked for these and didn't find many, but there are some places that are low.  Of course, the closer you get to the marshes, the more cover there is.  Unless Houston's army was hanging out in the marshes, he didn't have all that much cover.

Another possiblity was the tall prairie grass that grew in those days.  The park management is trying to bring that back, but it is still too low to the ground.  In those days, the tall grass couldn't have shielded a larger force than what would appear to be the case today.

The battleground doesn't look all that large in area.  But one has to keep in mind that they didn't have cars in those days.  I found out the distances when walking around the park a bit.  Things have a different scale when you are on foot.

Sam Houston was shot out from under his horse in the midst of battle.  There was a marker there to indicate the spot.  Just a hundred yards away or loss is another marker for the position in which a cannon was in place.

That seems pretty close range for a cannon.  But Houston was hit by a bullet in his ankle.  Given the surprise, the Mexican army may not have had time to get off a cannon shot.

Marker where Sam Houston was shot from his horse.  About 100 yards from cannon marker.



Of course, there is the legend of the Yellow Rose who distracted the Mexican general with her charms.

Note: this picture wasn't taken today.  I took it several months ago.

What a misfortune for Mexico to have that kind of failure as a leader.  On the other hand, the Texians were lucky.  There was at least one other General in Texas during that war who would not have made that mistake. Just goes to show what could happen when the wrong man is in charge.

Santa Anna was captured.  And Fannin and his men were massacred at Goliad under Santa Anna's orders.


Both are examples are poor leadership and its consequences.

Jambalaya

Sometimes a song just pops up into my head. Just now, Jambalaya did. Then I remembered this little boy singing it with Hank Williams Jr. Amazing! Wonder what young Hunter Hayes is doing these days. This video is 17 years old, so he's a young man about now.

Bongino Show, (Ep. 2580)

Bongino goes into how the commie pinko islamofascist types "reframe" questions in order to distract you from the fact that they are avoiding answering the question. The reason, Bongino explains, is that the truth may change your mind.

Ok, this requires people to pay attention and NOTICE that they aren't answering questions. These aren't trick questions. They are legitimate questions on what folks really ought to consider. To me, this "reframing" is just another way to lie.

Prime example is the distraction away from genital mutilation. The dude answering the question distracts away from an actual answer, and brings up "circumcision". That's not what the question was about.

The part I jipped (joined in progress) to was actual a bit comical. Perhaps if these people are mocked without mercy, folks may awake from the ether, and see where these people are trying to take us. The commies won't stop this guy from saying stupid stuff like this, but if they do, it's only to hide the fact that this guy probably DOES support genital mutilation--or he won't condemn it. That's what folks need to know because it MIGHT change their minds.