Analyzing The Anthrax Attacks - 2009-2014 edition

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Analyzing the Anthrax Attacks
(2009-2014 Edition)

Commentary
& Analysis
by
Ed Lake

IF YOU HAVE ANY ADDITIONAL INFORMATION OR SEE ANY ERRORS ON THIS SITE, PLEASE CONTACT ME AT:
detect (at) newsguy (dot) com

The discussion blog for this web site is at
anthraxdebate.blogspot.com

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My original analysis and working hypothesis,
and everything from prior to January 1, 2005,
can still be accessed by clicking HERE.

All the information gathered and analyzed from
January 1, 2005, through December 31, 2008,
can still be accessed by clicking HERE.

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CONTENTS
(click on the Section to go to it)

Overview
Thoughts and Comments
Latest references (top)
Latest references (end)

VIDEOS
12 FACTS which show that a child wrote the anthrax letters
Ed Lake describes his book "A Crime Unlike Any Other"

KEY SUPPLEMENTAL PAGES
(click on the name to link to the page)
Where & When Bruce Ivins Made the Anthrax Powders ... Allegedly
How Bruce Ivins Made the Anthrax Powders ... Allegedly
FOIA Pictures of Bruce Ivins' Laboratory
FOIA Pictures of Bruce Ivins' Office
The Bruce Ivins Timeline
The Errors That Snared Dr. Bruce Ivins
Bruce Ivins' Consciousness of Guilt
The Coded Message in the Media Letters (the "smoking gun")
Dr. Ivins' "Non-Denial Denials"
Evidence vs. Beliefs
The Mysteries of the AFIP "Report"
The Facts Say: A Child Wrote The Anthrax Letters

The Attack Anthrax Pictures
The annotated version of the Aug. 18, 2008, roundtable discussion
Van Der Waals Forces & Static Electricity: How they affect bacillus spores
The Steven Hatfill Timeline/The Attempted Lynching of Steven Hatfill
The Campaign to Point the Finger at Dr. Hatfill
Dr. Hatfill & The "Clueless" Media
The Media & Iowa State University
PBS Frontline vs. The Anthrax Facts
Anthrax, Assaad, Terror and the Timeline
Other Theories About the Anthrax Case
The Illogical al Qaeda Theory
Mohamed Atta did NOT write the anthrax letters
Reviews of my first book
My comments about other anthrax-related books

Overview

This web site was started on November 22, 2001 to keep track of facts related to the anthrax attacks which had become a major news event during the previous month. I found that most people only wanted to discuss beliefs, opinions and conspiracy theories. I wanted to see what the facts said. Plus, news stories were appearing and then being deleted, and I needed a place to retain the articles which contained new information. So, for the next seven years I accumulated facts and references and analyzed all the data I could find. In March of 2005, I even self-published a book describing what the first three years of my analysis had found.

On August 1, 2008, the news broke that the person the FBI believed to be the anthrax mailer had committed suicide. His name was Dr. Bruce Ivins, and he worked at the USAMRIID labs at Ft. Detrick, MD.

The conspiracy theorists and True Believers who had argued their beliefs and opinions for the prior seven years were not persuaded by the FBI's evidence. They continue to argue their beliefs and opinions, claiming that the FBI cannot prove Dr. Ivins was guilty. After all, if the FBI was right, that would mean they have been wrong for seven years. And that couldn't be, even though they don't even agree with each other about key facts:

Some still believe al Qaeda was behind the attacks.
Some still believe Saddam Hussein was behind the attacks
Some still believe a vast Jewish conspiracy was behind the attacks.
Some still believe the Bush administration was behind the attacks.
Some still believe the CIA was behind the attacks.
Some still believe pharmaceutical companies were behind the attacks.
Some still believe a writer was behind the attacks in order to sell books.
Some still believe Dr. Steven Hatfill was behind the attacks.
Some still believe a different scientist was behind the attacks.
Some still believe that a military person was behind the attacks.
Some still believe their next door neighbor was behind the attacks.

Some still believe the attack spores were "weaponized" with silica or silicon and that anyone who says otherwise is either lying or incompetent. They still believe there must be some vast criminal conspiracy to cover up the real facts, because they simply do not believe anything the government - and particularly the FBI - says.

Some still believe that Dr. Ivins did not have the ability to make the attack anthrax.

And, perhaps most bizarre of all, some still believe that there is some similarity between the "investigation" of Dr. Steven Hatfill (who was eventually exonerated) and the investigation of Dr. Bruce Ivins. The facts show that the two cases could not be more different. Dr. Hatfill was the victim of an attempted lynching by conspiracy theorists, people in the media and some politicians. They worked together for six months to get Dr. Hatfill arrested for a crime he didn't do. The FBI's Hatfill "investigation" was purely political and based upon "tips" from those same conspiracy theorist scientists who claimed the FBI was "covering up" for Dr. Hatfill when the FBI's investigation found nothing to tie him to the mailings. The Ivins investigation, on the other hand, was the result of years of detailed scientific analysis and an equally detailed criminal investigation.

The Case Against Dr. Ivins

The facts say that Dr. Ivins was the anthrax mailer:

1. He was in charge of the RMR-1029 flask containing the "mother" spores which produced the attack anthrax "daughter" spores. He was in charge of "the murder weapon."

1.1 He tried to destroy "smoking gun" evidence that he had encoded a hidden message inside the media letters, but the evidence was recovered and clearly points to Dr. Ivins as the anthrax mailer.

1.2 He was a diagnosed sociopath. In 2000, a year before the anthrax mailings, Ivins had talked with his mental heath counselor about his plan to poison a "young woman." The counselor called the police, but because Ivins hadn't provided a name, there wasn't anything they could do. The facts indicate the woman was Ivins' former assistant, Mara Linscott. Ivins evidently changed his mind about poisoning her.

2. The FBI investigated everyone else who had access to the RMR-1029 flask and eliminated all of them as suspects. Eliminating potential suspects is routine police procedure.

3. He had worked with Bacillus anthracis for over 20 years and had all the necessary expertise and equipment to prepare the spores in the anthrax letters. He could routinely make a trillion spores a week.

4. He accessed the locked suite (B3) where the RMR-1029 flask of spores was stored at the times the attack anthrax would have been prepared.

5. He worked alone and unsupervised in his lab for long hours at night and on weekends during the time the attack anthrax would have been prepared.

6. He had no scientific reason or verifiable explanation for working those hours or at those times.

7. In December of 2001, Dr. Ivins secretly swabbed and bleached more than 20 areas in his lab, destroying possible evidence. In April of 2002, he did it again. Both cleanings were unauthorized and against protocol. His explanations for doing it were contradictory to his actions.

8. Investigators examined another flask of Ames anthrax spores created by Dr. Ivins for his own use in his work and found that a percentage of the spores in flask RMR-1030 contained silicon just like what was in the attack spores.

9. It was not commonplace for him to work long evening hours in the Bacteriology Division's Suite B3 before the anthrax attacks or in the months after the anthrax attacks. His long hours in Suite B3 at that time broke his normal work pattern. Suite B3 was a BioSafety Level-3 area.

10. He had multiple motives for sending the anthrax letters.

11. He tried various ways to mislead investigators when they started to suspect him.

12. He had no verifiable alibi for the times when he could have driven to New Jersey to mail the letters.

13. He was known to drive long distances and to use various methods to mail letters and packages so they could not be traced back to him.

14. He had various connections to the New Jersey area where the anthrax letters were mailed. The ZIP Code used in the return address on the senate letters was 08852. It belongs to Monmouth Junction, NJ. According to a letter in Ivins' files, his ancestors on his father's side came from an area then known as Monmouth, NJ. Plus, Monmouth College in Monmouth, IL, is where the Kappa Kappa Gamma sorority (an obsession of Ivins') was founded.

15. He had serious mental problems, which appear to include murderous impulses. He'd been seeing psychiatrists since 1978.

16. The pre-stamped envelopes which were used in the attacks had print defects, and one of the post offices which sold those envelopes was a post office which Dr. Ivins used.

17. His wife ran a day care center at the time of the attacks, Ivins had many contacts with children, and the facts indicate that a child of about 6 was used to do the actual writing on the anthrax letters.

18. Investigations found no evidence that someone other than Dr. Ivins sent the letters.

19. There is no evidence that Dr. Ivins could not possibly have sent the anthrax letters.

20. People commit suicide to escape justice. People who are unfairly accused sue their tormenters.

Although the case was officially closed on February 19, 2010, there may still be some additional facts pointing to Dr. Ivins' guilt which have not yet been disclosed by the FBI, specifically information related to his sessions with his psychiatrist or psychologist. That information is still "under seal" by court order.

Meanwhile, those who cannot accept the FBI's findings continue to use every tactic they can to cast doubt upon the FBI's findings. They have no proof of Dr. Ivins' innocence, so all they can do is try to make it appear that if there is any doubt - reasonable or not - about Dr. Ivins' guilt, then he must be innocent.

Conspiracy Theorists and True Believers

Because they often support each other in opposing the FBI's official findings, it is sometimes difficult to tell a Conspiracy Theorist from a True Believer. But, there is really are very distinct differences:

Conspiracy theorists often do not know or care who sent the anthrax letters, they only know that "the government" cannot be trusted, "the government" is lying about something, and they want to expose it.

True Believers feel they know beyond any doubt who sent the anthrax letters, and anyone who does not believe as they believe - including the FBI - is just not looking at the right facts.

Both will do anything and everything they can to get the undecided and uncertain to join with their cause. And there are differences in their tactics as the go about their recruiting:

The #1 tactic used by conspiracy theorists is junk science. They wildly misinterpret facts about the case, they claim their bizarre misinterpretations prove something, and they demand that those misinterpretations and baseless claims be either accepted or disproved.

The #1 tactic used by True Believers is to accuse the non-believer of being "closed minded" and to wear down the non-believer as he tries to prove he is not "closed minded."

There's really no point to arguing with a True Believer. Back in 1951, Eric Hoffer published his landmark book "The True Believer" in which he stated that the only way to change a True Believer's mind is to convert him to a different belief. So, unless you are prepared to do that, it's best to just avoid them. They will bury you in irrelevant facts if you don't avoid them, they'll claim that if you do not read everything they read and interpret everything the way they interpret them, then you are ill-informed and your opinion is worthless.

Conspiracy theorists, however, appear ready to debate some of the relevant facts of the case. They just move on to different facts if they are proven wrong about their first set of facts. Example:

The initial theory about the anthrax being "weaponized" was that the attack spores were coated with bentonite and the government was covering up that fact. That theory was quickly shown to be false. When the next theory that the attack spores were coated with fumed silica was also disproved, they moved on to a new theory that the attack spores had tiny particles of silica glued to them to defeat van der Waals forces. When that was shown to be nonsense, they moved on to a theory that the spores were treated with a waterproofing substance that would coat the spore coat without leaving any trace on the exosporium.

The conspiracy theorists and True Believers seem to have a few followers in Congress. Perhaps there will also be some Congressional hearings. I hope so. Congressional hearings seem to be the only way to clarify certain details about others who were caught up in the investigation.

Thoughts and Comments
by Ed Lake

Updates & Changes: Sunday, April 13, 2014, thru Saturday, April 19, 2014

April 18, 2014 - I don't know how he did it, but "Anonymous/DXer" seems to have put 2 and 2 together once again, and, according to his 3 posts this morning to my interactive blog, he came up with 735,967. It seems he somehow decided that the three non-US labs which received samples of the Ames strain from USAMRIID were DRES in Canada, Porton Down in England, and Centre d'Etudes du Bouchet in France. It may be totally illogical, but it appears to fit with his beliefs in some way.

There are probably dozens of news articles which explain that the third lab was in Sweden. I listed 3 such articles in my response. And in the 3 posts by "Anonymous," he even provides a good clue as to which lab in Sweden got the Ames from USAMRIID: it was most likely the Swedish Defense Research Agency in Umea, Sweden. (In a later post "Anonymous" says someone else confirmed that it was the lab in Umea. So, now he's trying to figure out some way to argue that Muslim terrorists got their sample of Ames from the lab in Umea, Sweden.)

Meanwhile, in case anyone is interested, I've finished reading Mark Twain's book "The Innocents Abroad," which I've been reading on my Kindle during breakfast and lunch since Jan. 29. It was a fascinating look at a 6-month trip Twain and a group of tourists took in 1867 to the Paris Exposition of that year. They traveled aboard a sidewheeler which was basically hired by the group to take them from place to place for the six months. After dropping them off in Marseille, Twain went to Paris and then by train to Venice, Italy, and to Rome and Naples, where he got aboard the sidewheeler again. Then they went to Crete, to Greece, to Turkey, to Russia, and then to the Near East where they traveled by donkey all across the Holy Land. Then by sidewheeler again to Egypt to climb the pyramids, and then home again. Six months. Along the way, the tourists would chip pieces off of monuments as souvenirs, and endlessly compare things to the U.S. Most poor people encountered along the way were referred to as "vermin," and the tourists woud give their tour guides silly American names instead of trying to pronounce their real names. But, it was a fascinating trip and a fascinating read.

I've decided to do a high-speed read next, reading for hours at a time. I'm already 36% through "Tripwire," the third Jack Reacher novel by Lee Child. I started it yesterday.

April 17, 2014 - Someone brought to my attention a new French novel by John N. Turner titled "Amerithrax," published on Jan. 7, 2014. It's the first published novel by Turner, a bacteriologist who evidently specializes in anthrax. His Facebook page is HERE. A book review HERE, when translated by Google, begins this way:

September 2001. A date engraved in the collective memory. The world fell within the twenty-first century in the most sensational way that is. On arrival over 3,000 people and sprayed it with the hope of a peaceful century. But while the dust death were still suspended in the air of New York, the mechanics of another drama already put on.

Robin Johnson, an obscure photographic retoucher for a Florida tabloid, had nothing that predisposed him to one day in the news, or to become famous. Moreover, it never will. Him, we will retain only his death. Because the man has not left the living world of the mundane that are dead and that it will cause the commotion combat the FBI. An FBI yet still stunned by the attack on the twin towers in New York that he failed to see coming, and that starts without knowing where to look in the hunt for terrorists.

When the phone rings in his narrow office, located at the bottom of a little busy corridor of the large government building FBI Darrin Speman no doubt yet it will call the project in an investigation that lasted nearly seven years and mobilize forces and considerable resources.

Scratching her paper, which has virtually no social life, no one with whom to share his life, and is dedicated body and soul to his work to the point of view as "slave FBI" that employs them. Speman but has a specialty that suddenly interested her agency. Speman is a specialist Anthrax, anthrax.

The overall opinion of the novel in the review is:

"Amerithrax" is a first novel, and this time it is rather successful! John N. Turner manages to sign a captivating novel, where many scientific explanations are by no means insurmountable, do not adversely affect the pace nor the suspense of the book, and for which the quality and accuracy of its documentation in addition to any credibility.

In another review HERE, it says in French,

Darrin fait connaissance d’une unité qui lui était jusqu’ici inconnu : l’USPIS, United States Postal Inspection Service. Elle sera associée a une force de frappe multi-agences créée spécialement pour l’occasion: la Task Force Anthrax. Darrin se voit déjà en haut de l’affiche, lui le héros qui aura débusqué le criminel. Ce n’est pas vraiment ce qui va se passer. Sept années de longues enquêtes pour rien, ou quasiment. Le livre raconte dans le détail le harcèlement (véridique) auquel se livra le FBI envers un homme qu’il soupçonne d’être le coupable. Cela coûtera aux hommes de feu Edgard Hoover, la bagatelle de et une image ternie auprès du public qui déjà se gaussait d’une autre agence gouvernementale, celle de la CIA. Le FBI s’attaque ensuite a un autre suspecte potentiel qui se suicidera avant de passer en procès. Sept années pour rien. Aujourd’hui, on ne sait toujours pas qui a envoyé les lettres pleines d’anthrax et provoqué ainsi la mort d’innocents.

When I ran that through Google Translator, I got:

Darrin made the acquaintance of a unit that was previously unknown to him : USPIS , United States Postal Inspection Service . It will be linked to a multi -agency force strikes created especially for the occasion: the Task Force Anthrax . Darrin sees himself at the top of the poster, it will be the hero who flushed the criminal. This is not really what happens. Seven years of lengthy investigations for nothing, or almost . The book tells in detail the harassment ( true ) to which the FBI gave to a man he suspects of being the culprit. It will cost the men fire Edgard Hoover, whopping and a tarnished public image with the already mocked another government agency , the CIA . The FBI then attack another potential suspect committed suicide before going to trial. Seven years for nothing. Today, we still do not know who sent letters filled with anthrax and thus caused the death of innocent people .

That review seems to indicate that hero of the book doesn't find the anthrax killer. But, it could just be the opinion of the reviewer. It seems more likely that the book ends with the killer committing suicide before the FBI and the hero can bring him to trial. I doubt that the book suggests that someone else committed the crime. But, I could be wrong.

April 16, 2104 - Groan!! I awoke this morning realizing I needed to add a new first sentence to my sci-fi novel. The current first sentence (and first paragraph) is:

Molly Mitchell wasn't my patent attorney, but she worked for the same law firm: Weisman, Fairchild and Miller.

The new first sentence will be:

They arrived while I was having dinner with Molly Mitchell, a patent attorney.

So, the new first paragraph will now be:

They arrived while I was having dinner with Molly Mitchell, a patent attorney. Molly wasn't my patent attorney, but she worked for the same law firm: Weisman, Fairchild and Miller.

What's the difference? The difference is that the new first sentence causes the reader to wonder: "Who are 'they'?" The old first sentence presumably caused the reader to wonder: "Who am 'I' that I need a patent attorney?" Or, perhaps, "Is Molly Mitchell the main character in the story?" Who "I" am is answered almost immediately. So, there's no reason to read any further. And, Molly Mitchell isn't important to the story at all. She isn't mentioned in the book after Chapter 4.

The "Who are 'they?'" question posed by the new first sentence isn't answered until the second chapter, and by that time the reader will be (hopefully) fully hooked, since they'll have encountered many more interesting questions that need answering.

Look at the first sentence of Lee Child's first Jack Reacher novel, "The Killing Floor":

I was arrested at Eno's Diner.

How far will you need to read to find out why "I" (Jack Reacher) is being arrested?

The first sentence of "Die Trying," Lee Child's second Jack Reacher novel is:

Nathan Rubin died because he got brave.

The first sentence of "Tripwire," Lee Child's third Jack Reacher novel is:

Hook Hobie owed the whole of his life to a secret nearly thirty years old.

First sentences are VERY important. I didn't build a good enough "hook" into the first sentence in my book. So, I'll fix that today.

I don't know what made me suddenly realize that I needed a new first sentence. It was probably the fact that the last query letter I sent out was to a literary agent who only wanted me to send the first 5 pages of my book with the query letter. Presumably, if the agent isn't hooked by the first five pages, then he/she will never be hooked. So, why read any further?

I probably knew all this. It's probably mentioned in every book on fiction writing. Doing a Google lookup for "first sentence," I found a random First Line Generator to start short stories. Here are some of the lines that pop up:

He hadn't seen anything like it in twenty years of teaching

He stared hard at the table as he tried to recall his attacker, and began describing

He was terrified of small spaces and she knew

When she opened the door, she wished

You're supposed to finish the thought. A web site about short story writing says,

The first line of a short story is very important, a good one can hook the reader and make them want to read on. A weak first line and they might pass your story by.

If you're entering short story writing competitions then make sure you have a strong opening to keep the judges reading.

Sometimes it's easier to write the whole short story, then go back and rewrite the first line knowing how it will fit in with the rest of the story.

It may be very important for short stories, but it can also be important for novels. A web site HERE that contains the best first lines from a hundred different famous novels. A few of them:

1. Call me Ishmael. —Herman Melville, Moby-Dick (1851)

2. It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife. —Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice (1813)

3. A screaming comes across the sky. —Thomas Pynchon, Gravity's Rainbow (1973)

6. Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way. —Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina (1877; trans. Constance Garnett)

8. It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen. —George Orwell, 1984 (1949)

9. It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair. —Charles Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities (1859)

10. I am an invisible man. —Ralph Ellison, Invisible Man (1952)

11. The Miss Lonelyhearts of the New York Post-Dispatch (Are you in trouble?—Do-you-need-advice?—Write-to-Miss-Lonelyhearts-and-she-will-help-you) sat at his desk and stared at a piece of white cardboard. —Nathanael West, Miss Lonelyhearts (1933)

It's not that the old first sentence in my sci-fi novel was terrible. But, the new first line is much better. Live and learn. (Hey! "Live and Learn" is a good first sentence. I wonder if anyone has used it. Maybe I'll use it in the sequel to my sci-fi novel.)

April 15, 2014 - Someone sent me an article from Gawker.com titled "The Astounding Conspiracy Theories of Wall Street Genius Mark Gorton." The article begins with this:

Mark Gorton does not have a reputation as a crackpot. Quite the opposite. He's been favorably profiled in the New York Times for his business acumen and charitable deeds. His experience as the head of Limewire—which disrupted the music industry and then lost a $100 million lawsuit as a result—was closely followed by the press. And when Michael Lewis's blockbuster new book about high frequency trading was published recently, prominent media outlets turned to Gorton to learn what HFT firms are really like. The Huffington Post even dubbed him "the new face of Wall Street." He is a very respected and very wealthy man.

The Gawker.com article contains two lengthy documents by Mark Gorton which describe his various conspiracy theories in great detail. They seem to have started with his conspiracy theory related to the John F. Kennedy assassination. Gorton, who runs Tower Research, doesn't seem to have a conspiracy theory about the anthrax attacks, however. Neither of the two documents contain the word "anthrax." But, that may just be because he considers the anthrax attacks to be a minor part of his 9/11 conspiracy theory. Here's some of what Gorton wrote about 9/11:

9/11 was a massive operation, and only the most visible elements of the plot have been investigated. But despite the mass of information yet to be discovered, enough information exists to clearly demonstrate that 9/11 was a massive, domestic run, black op.

The key players behind 9/11 were The Bush Family (George H.W., George W., and Marvin, and perhaps others), Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, the neocons surrounding PNAC (Paul Wolfowitz, Scooter Libby, Richard Armitage,), Saudi Prince Bandar, Saudi Intelligence and senior Saudi leadership (get more names), elements of the US military, elements with the CIA and the FBI, the ISI (Pakistani Intelligence)

The comment section of the Gawker.com article contains some interesting opinions. Here's one:

I once worked for a few months as a temp receptionist at a mental health hospital. Many of the patients (all low risk and generally speaking very friendly) sounded exactly like this guy. Since my time there, which was years ago, I came to the conclusion that there are two types of people into conspiracy theories: the lazy ones who forward the emails that someone else wrote (or who repeat said ideas in conversations) and the ones who actually write/ create them.

That comment reminds me of what I wrote in a comment on November 22, 2009:

As with the anthrax case conspiracy theorists, some of the 9/11 conspiracy theorists have modified their claims after being repeatedly confronted with irrefutable proof that their claims were total nonsense. They still believe it was all a government conspiracy, they just accept that Flight 93 probably existed and the Pentagon was probably hit by an aircraft, not by a guided missile.

However, it apparently wasn't the endless flood of undeniable facts which changed their minds. It seems to be the loss of followers and supporters which convinced them they needed to adjust their preachings. If potential and existing followers could easily see that the conspiracy theorists claims were total nonsense and no one wanted to support or be associated with such total nonsense, clearly it was time for the conspiracy theorists to start making revisions. There's no point in being a conspiracy theorist if no one believes your conspiracy theory. If you cannot collect followers, you're either wrong or you're wasting your time trying to get people to listen to your theory.

Another comment after the Gawker.com article says,

I recall at UCLA reading an elegantly systematized paranoid document that was really impressive in its detail. However, the writer became more disorganized as his disease progressed, and the writing deteriorated into graphomania. It's unfortunate that Mr. Gorton is afflicted this way, but from what I hear, recovery is extremely difficult once people acquire these fixed delusions. One caution would be if Mr. Gorton's fears become so overwhelming, persistent and immediate that he decides to "strike" first.

"An elegantly systematized paranoid document" might be one way to describe a certain blog dedicated to the anthrax attacks that I check out every day. Paranoia seems to be the primary force behind it.

The word "graphomania" was a new one for me. Looking it up, I find this definition:

Graphomania (from Greek γραφειν — writing, and μανία — insanity), also known as scribomania, refers to an obsessive impulse to write. When used in a specifically psychiatric context, it labels a morbid mental condition which results in writing rambling and confused statements, often degenerating into a meaningless succession of words or even nonsense and called then graphorrhea.

Hmm. I know someone who seems to write all day and then seems to get up in the middle of the night with a compulsion to write more and endlessly about the anthrax attacks of 2001. He also copies and pastes things in with no coherent idea behind them.

I believe that any day is a good day if you learn something new. Today I learned a new word: graphomania.

April 14, 2014 - Today's Hartford Courant has an article about the anthrax attacks of 2001 which seems to be deliberately trying to create or revive controversy about the case. The article also has what might be a new piece of information:

[Ottilie Lundgren's niece, Shirley] Davis, who was briefed on the Ivins investigation by FBI officials, said she was disappointed that Ivins never went to trial.

"They told me they were two days away from making the arrest when he killed himself, and that ended any chance of knowing why he did it," Davis said.

But, mostly the article resurrects a lot of previously voiced OPINIONS and BELIEFS without any attempt to determine what is actually true. The article says:

Since Ivins' death, several anthrax experts and some of his USAMRIID colleagues have criticized the FBI investigation and said they believe that the FBI got the wrong man again.

In 2011, Ivins' supporters got a major boost when a group of prominent national scientists raised questions about the science behind the federal probe in a 190-page review that concluded that there was not enough evidence to say for certain where the anthrax originated.
.....

"I cannot agree more with the statement that it is not possible to reach a definitive conclusion on where the anthrax came from based on the scientific evidence the FBI presented," Louisiana State University professor Martin Hugh-Jones said after the report was released [ignoring all the other evidence in the case].

Hugh-Jones and two other scientists have criticized the FBI for ignoring the high levels of silicon found in the attack anthrax. Although federal authorities have said the silicon most likely got into the powder naturally, Jones and others believe it was intentionally added to it.

Hugh-Jones also argues [his belief] that Ivins did not have the expertise or the equipment to make the attack anthrax.

"Making a powder of that level could never be done in 20 days, even by someone who knew what they were doing," Hugh-Jones said [of his beliefs] recently.

In reality, of course, Ivins routinely made spores of the same quality as those in the anthrax letters. And, he didn't have to make any new spores for the letters. All he had to do was retrieve spores he'd already made out of his garbage. He'd recently made enough spores for the letters when he checked dosage levels for some mouse tests. The spores on those discarded serial dilution plates were simply not counted as being part the production of spores at USAMRIID. They were assumed to be destroyed. But Ivins didn't destroy those spores. He used them in the letters.

The problem today is that no "authority" with real facts and information can be bothered to argue with the relentless Anthrax Truthers and media people who want to rehash all those old beliefs and opinions. There's just me. And I'm no "authority."

April 13, 2014 (B) - DAMN!!! I just noticed that the DOJ recently changed the address for their copy of the Amerithrax Investigative Summary.

OLD: http://www.justice.gov/amerithrax/docs/amx-investigative-summary.pdf

NEW: http://www.justice.gov/archive/amerithrax/docs/amx-investigative-summary.pdf

That means that none of the seventy kajillion places where I used that link on this site, on my interactive blog and elsewhere work any more. And, I don't have the energy, ambition or desire to go back and fix all the links. #%*(@^#%@^$#^&$^!!!

April 13, 2014 (A) - Arguing with Anthrax Truthers can be very frustrating, particularly the ones who seem totally incapable of explaining what they mean when they argue their bizarre beliefs. The way they put 2 and 2 together to get 739 is sometimes amazing. I just created a new cartoon for my interactive blog which illustrates this subject:

When I provided "Anonymous/DXer" with that list of people who agree Ivins was guilty ( FBI agent Edward Montooth, AUSA Rachel Lieber, FBI agent Darin Steele, FBI agent Scott Stanley, Counselor Jean Duley, journalist David Willman, microbiologist Patricia Fellows), Anonymous's reponse on my interactive blog was:

Ed, none of them are experts under the Federal Rules. Indeed, none of them have personal knowledge so as to qualify them to testify other than people making investigative assertions and conclusions.

No one said anything about any of them testifying in court as "expert witnesses." How he put 2 and 2 together to think they would be expert witnesses is a mystery. They are just people who agree with me (or with whom I agree) to counter Anonymous's list of Ivins' co-workers and friends who believe Ivins was innocent. None of the people in his list (Adamovicz, Andrews, Little, Worsham, Byrne, Friedlander, Welkos, Friend, Salerno) would have been testifying in the case as "expert witnesses," either. If they testified at all, it would have been as character witnesses after Ivins had been found guilty.

This morning, I found that "Anonymous" posted another message which says,

Ed, I never said the listed USAMRIID scientists would be testifying as experts. You are the one who began misusing the term. They would be testifying as people who knew the facts relating to the lab and its workings, etc. -- for example, the FBI didn't even understand the facts relating to practices. As an example, the FBI relied on the lack of after hours work beginning January 2002 without realizing that is when a two person rule was first implemented. Thus, their entire chart on hours was a crock.

No, he never said that his "experts" would be testifying as experts. But he clearly said that MY experts could NOT testify as "experts under Federal Rules." I just wondered why he made such a bizarre statement if HIS experts could not testify as "experts under Federal Rules" either.

The people on his list would definitely NOT be "testifying as people who knew the facts relating to the lab and its workings, etc." None of them had the vaguest clue as to what Ivins was doing in his lab at night and on weekends. And many of them have screwball ideas about how the spores were made.

And what does the "two person rule" have to do with anything? It certainly doesn't affect the unexplained hours Ivins worked at night and on weekends.

I'll respond in greater detail on my blog after I finish writing this comment, but his new post is another good example of his putting 2 and 2 together to get 739. He seems to be putting the two person rule that was NOT in effect in September 2001 together with Ivins unexplained evening and weekend hours during that time and producing a belief that the combination somehow says Ivins was innocent. HOW? He can't explain how, of course. You have to understand something before you can explain it. And, it definitely appears that "Anonymous" doesn't understand what he is saying.

Furthermore, "Anonymous" seems to believe that anyone who ever listened to Bruce Ivins' counselor Judith McLean would be viewed by the courts as being mentally incompetent and not eligible for testifying or even commenting on the case. Anonymous seems absolutely obsessed with the fact that McLean once wrote a book about her past mental problems. And, to Anonymous, that seems to make her ineligible to testify in court, or to speak on any subject. And, anyone who ever even listened to her is contaminated beyond all hope and must be ignored and banished from all courtrooms. "Anonymous" inexplicably believes McLean would have been a "key witness" against Ivins, even though McLean might never have been a witness of any kind, since she knew nothing of Ivins' role in the anthrax attacks of 2001. There's no hint of any potential testimony from her in the Amerithrax Investigative Summary. On page 9 and elsewhere, however, there are mentions of opinions from Ivins' psychiatrists:

Dr. Ivins had “a history dating to his graduate days of homicidal threats, actions, [and] plans,” and that a prior psychiatrist “called him homicidal [and] sociopathic with clear intentions.”

On my interactive blog, "Anonymous" also indicated once again that Patricia Fellows' deposition in the Maureen Stevens vs USA lawsuit is now available if I would just send in an FOIA request. Why he won't just email it to me is anyone's guess. I assumed he just wants to be an annoying pest.

This morning, however, on Lew Weinstein's blog where "Anonymous" posts as "DXer," he wrote:

Failing production under FOIA of the civil depositions of Colonel Elliott, Patricia Fellows and Mara Linscott under FOIA, suit should be brought in federal court given the public interest in disclosure.

Failure to solve Amerithrax is not an option

Isn't he saying that the Patricia Fellows deposition has NOT yet been produced and that a lawsuit should be filed to force the DOJ to produce it? That's how I read it. And, if it hasn't been produced, why does he complain that I haven't read it while indicating that he has read it? It appears to be some kind of "game" he's playing. He seems to want me to send in an FOIA request merely as a way of putting "pressure" on the DOJ to release the Fellows deposition. It's a trick he's trying to pull on me. Or, maybe it's another example of him not understanding what he's doing. Either way, I'm not going to send in any FOIA request until I know that the Patricia Fellows deposition is available.

And in his most recent post he also says,

I'm not interested in posting here given that you are such an unpleasant person.

It appears he's saying I'm an "unpleasant person" because I disagree with him and show him that his logic is illogical and that he's putting 2 and 2 together to get 739. He doesn't like that. "Pleasant" people are evidently those who believe as he believes.

2131?cp

Updates & Changes: Sunday, April 6, 2014, thru Saturday, April 12, 2014

April 12, 2014 (B) - Hmm. That was quick. (See my A comment.) "The Australian" has a new article which says that the "Malaysian govt doubts report of MH370 call on night of disappearance." Why do they doubt it?

“I cannot comment because, if it is true, we would have known about it much earlier,” Mr Hishamuddin yesterday told Malaysian news agency Bernama.

It appears "doubt" is deduced from the comment above. It's making a headline out of a statement of uncertainty by one official. What the "doubt" probably shows is that the government officials involved aren't really communicating with one another, nor are they studying all the details. The story seems too detailed to be false, but (also see my A comment) it is certainly possible that some enterprising reporter just made it all up.

Later, the British newspaper "The Independent" had a headline which said, "Missing Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370: Co-pilot call claims denied." It's based upon the same comment from Mr. Hishamuddin. So, one reporter's "doubt" is another reporter's "denial." It all depends upon interpretations and how you want to write the story.

April 12, 2014 (A) - This morning, there's a report in the New Straits Times that says the pilot or co-pilot of Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 took the aircraft down to about 5,000 feet while passing over Penang, Malaysia, and someone tried to use the co-pilot's cell phone to make a call. The article says,

A CREW member of Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 made a desperate call from his mobile phone as the plane was flying low near Penang, the morning it went missing.

How does the New Straits Times know the call was "desperate"? If the pilots took the plane down to 5,000 feet to make a phone call, doesn't that also indicate that at least one of the pilots was still in full control of the airplane? The Straits Times also reports,

It is understood that the aircraft with 239 people on board was flying at an altitude low enough for the nearest telecommunications tower to pick up his phone's signal.

His call, however, ended abruptly, but not before contact was established with a telecommunications sub-station in the state.

However, the NST is unable to ascertain who Fariq was trying to call as sources chose not to divulge details of the investigation. The links that police are trying to establish are also unclear.

"The telco's (telecommunications company's) tower established the call that he was trying to make. On why the call was cut off, it was likely because the aircraft was fast moving away from the tower and had not come under the coverage of the next one," the sources said.

So, investigators evidently know it was co-pilot Fariq's cell phone, but the connection was never made, so no one knows if the call was "desperate" or not. And, it might not even have been a phone call. It could just have been that the cell phone was turned on and it "reattached" to an "ap" that connected the phone to the cell tower, specifically the WhatsApp Messenger application. The article says,

"A 'reattachment' does not necessarily mean that a call was made. It can also be the result of the phone being switched on again," the sources said.

The idea that the co-pilot was "desperate" to make a call is just a reporter's imagination at work. What we do know is that the authorities have more information than what they've released. And they're not releasing that information because they don't want the media and Internet detectives trying to contact witnesses for their own purposes.

And that leads me to something else:

On Thursday, after my regular workout at the health club, I stopped at Shopko because they had a sale on DVDs. They had a bin full of them for $3.88 each. I dug through the bin and found a movie I'd never heard of, "Shattered Glass," from 2003. Here's the blurb from the Internet Movie Database:

This film tells the true story of fraudulent Washington, D.C. journalist Stephen Glass [Played by Hayden] (Christensen), who rose to meteoric heights as a young writer in his 20s, becoming a staff writer at "The New Republic" for three years (1995-1998), where 27 of his 41 published stories were either partially or completely made up. Looking for a short cut to fame, Glass concocted sources, quotes and even entire stories, but his deception did not go unnoticed forever, and eventually, his world came crumbling down

It looked interesting, so I bought it. I watched it last night. The story was fascinating and one I didn't recall at all, although I'd undoubtedly read about it at the time. It was very interesting how Glass tried to cover his tracks when people started investigating his sources. Glass would manufacture false sources by creating a false web site, by having his brother pose as a source, and by setting up cell phones to take voice messages from the people trying to check his sources. It's a chilling example of how conniving and devious a seemingly "nice" person can be.

The DVD "extras" included an interview Glass did with "60 Minutes" five years after he was found out. Glass tried to convince the reporter that he was now a better person and wouldn't do such a thing again, but it seemed absolutely clear that he was just trying to make people like and believe him once again. The commentary track on the DVD was done by the director and by Glass's editor, Charles Lane, who helped expose Glass after a reporter for an internet version of Forbes magazine began to check on what Glass had written. (Click HERE for a picture and some more recent news about him.)

But, perhaps most interesting of all, was how all of Glass's friends and co-workers stood by him and couldn't believe that he'd done what he did. They all viewed it as some kind of vendetta editor Charles' Lane had against Glass. Lane put them all to work to check the facts in Glass's articles, and that turned things around. When Glass's co-workers fact-checked Glass's articles, they found that it probably wasn't just 27 of 41 of his articles that "were either partially or completely made up," the rest could have had parts that were made up, too. It's just that proving something was not "made up" is trying to prove the negative: you have to prove something was not done or said.

The fact that Glass's co-workers and friends supported him so strongly connects to the anthrax case and Bruce Ivins. Here's what "Anonymous/DXer" posted yesterday evening to my interactive blog:

If you read the Adamovicz, Andrews, Little, Worsham, Byrne, Friedlander, Welkos, Friend, Salerno, etc depositions that I got for you to upload, you will see that you are the odd man out.

My response,

Duh! Yes, I would be the "odd man out" in a group of Ivins' co-workers who do not believe Ivins did it because they do not BELIEVE or UNDERSTAND the EVIDENCE or haven't even LOOKED at the evidence.

And, you would be the "odd man out" in a group of actual EXPERTS who think Ivins DID do it because they looked at the EVIDENCE, like Edward Montooth, Rachel Lieber, Darin Steele, Scott Stanley, Jean Duley, David Willman, Patricia Fellows, etc., etc.

The problem is getting people to look at the evidence when they do not WANT to look at the evidence. They want to believe that they could not have been fooled by a friend, no matter how cunning and devious and mentally unbalanced that friend was. It's almost as difficult as trying to get conspiracy theorists and True Believers to look at the evidence when their minds are made up and no evidence could possibly change their minds.

April 11, 2014 (C) - I keep thinking that cell phones carried by the passengers and crew of flight MH370 could provide a wealth of information about why the plane disappeared. On PPRuNe.org, "Airbubba" provided a link to an accident report where cell phone data was used. Unfortunately, it's not a flight that crashed in an ocean. It's a UPS flight that crashed short of the runway in Birmingham, AL, in August 2013. But, it indicates that recovering cell phones is already something investigators are probably thinking about.

April 11, 2014 (B) - SPOILER ALERT! If you have last night episode of "Elementary" (which was about anthrax) on your DVR and haven't yet watched it, this comment is going to be a "spoiler" and tell you some of what happened.

The episode involved some guy who made 40 pounds of anthrax in a makeshift lab. The powder was stored in a dozen half-gallon-size jars. He made it on glass plates which were the size and shape of rectangular cake baking pans. There were "hundreds" of those plates in the lab when the police arrived, and the plates all still had the "sheep's blood agar" in them, even though the manufacturing process had been completed. And, it turned out that the crime for which the anthrax was made, would have, in real life, required only about a couple tablespoonfuls. Otherwise, it was a good show - as usual.

April 11, 2014 (A) - This morning, on my interactive blog, someone brought to my attention an interesting article titled "How politics makes us stupid." The idea is that anyone who believes that providing more and better information to your opponent will change his mind --- is wrong. Politics isn't about who is right and who is wrong, it's about "us against them." And the more information you try to give to your opponents, the more angry and disagreeable they will get. The article says:

Individuals subconsciously resist factual information that threatens their defining values.

Is it the same with the debates over the anthrax attacks of 2001? It certainly appears to be when the Truthers band together to fight "us against them." However, in reality, there is no "us." Each Truther has his own personal theory about what happened, who committed the anthrax attacks of 2001 and why. It seems like each Truther has a case of paranoia, and there is no connection between the cases. With enough information, can you change the mind of a paranoiac? I dunno. But, I'll keep trying -- for now.

April 10, 2014 (B) - I just received another query letter turndown. It was a form letter response to the query letter I sent out yesterday, and it says:

Thank you for the opportunity to read your submission. Unfortunately, you have come to me at a time when I am inundated with requests for assistance and representation. The need to allocate my time effectively forces me to decline participation in many worthy projects, and, regretully, that must be the decision in this case as well.

I am very sorry not to be able to help you with this project but please accept my best wishes for you in your search for representation.

Best regards,

At least I didn't have to wait weeks to get that response. So, I'll now get to work on sending out a query to another agent.

April 10, 2014 (A) - Yesterday afternoon, I added the other five presumably acceptable article links to the Wikipedia article about the 2001 anthrax attacks. I don't see any attempt to undo any of them. So, the debate with Wikipedia editor "JzG" is over and done with, from my point of view.

However, I notice on JzG's talk page that two people ("EarWigBot" and "Cjwilky") posted messages telling JzG the proper way to resolve issues. You are supposed to take the argument to the Wikipedia Dispute Resolution Board. I recall someone did that back in June 2010, when some other person kept deleting something I'd put in the article about the hidden message in the media anthrax letter. A third party "Elen of the Roads" created a dispute resolution discussion about the issue.

This morning, I received an email from a regular visitor to this site who wrote:

guess you forgot that "Wiki-ny-2007" is me.

Yes, I had forgotten who editor "Wiki-ny-2007" was. I vaguely remembered that we'd communicated in the past, but I couldn't remember the context or who it was. When I've got 23,107 things going on at once, it becomes difficult to sort out specific memories.

Meanwhile, on my interactive blog, one Anthrax Truther came to my defense after a different Anthrax Truther attacked me by arguing:

Now, I've pointed out to you that your view that a First Grader wrote the anthrax letters is in fact delusional.

The second Truther countered:

I think that's too strong. There are reasons for thinking a child printer is extremely unlikely, but 'delusional' is too much like, indeed stronger than, "preposterous", used upthread by the host. It's a hypothesis, not one I think bears great scrutiny, but certainly not on the same level as Elvis being kidnapped by Martians or anything I would label 'delusional'.

It's nice to see that there are attacks that even Truthers consider to be unacceptable.

Of course, I still spend some time every day on PPRuNe.org trying to find the latest information about Malaysian Airlines flight MH370. And, yesterday's news about picking up more signals from the flight's black box was very interesting indeed. I keep wanting to write a comment about all the conspiracy theories there are about the disappearance of flight MH370. Some of the theories are really interesting. Some are just mindless rants, like this one following the WSJ article:

They can't find the haystack...but they find the needle? Interesting! Somebody really wants us to believe the flight 370 landed in the Indian Ocean...even if they never actually find anything. I wonder... who? and... why?

My guess is the Chinese...and that negotiations with the Uighurs went badly... or Chinese radar did detect the plane and shot it down.

One thing I know for sure ...our leaders lie to us.

Meanwhile, one Anthrax Truther seems certain that Muslim terrorists hijacked MH370 and flew it into the Indian Ocean to do a suicide attack upon an American warship there. The problem is, he can't find any American warship that was in the area at that time. But, if he finds one, it will undoubtedly everlastingly confirm his beliefs. (There almost certainly were American warships in the Indian Ocean at that time. The American Navy constantly patrols to watch for pirates off the coast of Somalia. Does he think Somali Muslim pirates hijacked MH370 and planned to crash it into an American warship off Somalia as payback for the incident in the hit movie "Captain Phillips," but got lost?)

He also seems to have a second theory, that Muslim terrorists blew up the plane for some unexplained reason. Here's how he put two and two together yesterday:

In today’s news:

Bomb Hidden in Fruit Crate Kills 20 in Pakistan’s Capital
By Fakhar ur Rehman

The fruit in today’s bomb was guavas. On MH 370, they had two or three tons of mangosteens.

Or maybe the bomb was there as an added bonus for when the plane was flown into the American warship. As usual, he doesn't explain how his theories fit together. He just believes Muslim terrorists were involved in the disappearance of MH370 somehow - and they are the same Muslim terrorists who were also behind the anthrax attacks of 2001.

Yesterday, I was also involved in a very interesting argument on WorldScienceU.com about the properties of gravity and how many "hypotheticals" you can have in one argument before the hypothesis becomes just plain silly.

A first-responder paramedic I know also sent me three newspaper articles about how some doctors are ripping off Medicare, and how the American Medical Association (AMA) has been fighting for 35 years to keep the information confidential. The AMA just lost that particular battle. Click HERE, HERE and HERE for details.

And I'm getting phone calls from people in India with indecipherable accents who want to help me with my computer. I hang up on them, but they are presumably related to the fact that I still use Windows XP as an operating system, which the news says is about to cease being updated. My copy of Windows XP hasn't been updated in many years. I just don't have the time to install a new operating system AND all of my other software.

And somehow, in the middle of all the things I had to do yesterday, I managed to send out another query letter for my sci-fi novel.

April 9, 2014 (B) - This morning, when I checked Wikipedia's article about the 2001 anthrax attacks, I found that the deleted links to articles on my web site had been restored by a second Wikipedia editor "Wiki-ny-2007." (See the comments I wrote yesterday for details.) Not only that, but the editor also added a link to my 2012 book "A Crime Unlike Any Other."

Then, I did some more of my daily chores. When I went back to Wikipedia to look at the changes again and to see if there were any new comments on any talk pages, I found that the first editor had put things back to his way again, with the comment "Please do not reinsert copies of material on unreliable websites with clear evidence of copyright violation."

So the first editor changed the argument. First he argued that I was a conspiracy theorist and that's why he deleted the links. Now he's arguing that the links are in violation of copyrights (even though I offered to replace them with new links that go directly to the sources of the articles).

And on that first editor's talk page, he explained his actions this way:

Ed, I noticed you are a crank abusing Wikipedia to promote your website and delusional beliefs. Now would be a great time to leave because you have been rumbled.

So, in that editor's opinion, agreeing with the government is a "delusional belief," and it makes me a "crank." (Evidently, arguing with him also makes me a "crank.")

The editor called "JzG" also deleted the link to my book, then editor "Wiki-ny-2007" put it back again with the comment:

re-added Ed Lake's book to the list. It's at least as valid as the others. So to the person killing it off, please stop.

And, of course, "JzG" just deleted it again because it's a self-published book. (I can see the point of not allowing the use of self-published books as references.)

There's only so much arguing I can do with a Wikipedia editor on his talk page. He has the ability to delete everything I write there. But, if editor "Wiki-ny-2007" sticks to his guns, maybe the matter will be taken to a Wikipedia forum where arguments are resolved. That has happened with debates in the past.

I may also go to those deleted links and replace them one by one with links to the same articles on other sites - mostly the sites where they first appeared. Then we'll see if he can find some new reason to delete the links. (Added Note: I tried three times to add back one of the links via a patch. None worked perfectly. But the third try was "good enough." I'll study the coding process further before adding another link.)

April 9, 2014 (A) - On my interactive blog, "Anonymous" has hinted that the deposition done by Patricia Fellows in the Maureen Stevens v USA lawsuit is now available for Freedom Of Information Act (FOIA) requests. He hasn't supplied any link anywhere that I've seen. And, I hate to go through the time and trouble of sending in another FOIA request if the pdf file is available somewhere. But, if it's available, I'd certainly like to get a copy. So, if anyone has it, please let me know.

April 8, 2014 (B) - While at the health club working out, it occurred to me that I might be able to find out who removed those links on Wikipedia I mentioned this morning, and why he did it. All it says on the changes is that the guy is named "JzG." But, I tracked him down and found that he's a Wikipedia editor who thinks I'm a conspiracy theorist, and that this web site is a conspiracy theorist web site. So, I got on his TALK page and set him straight. Now, I'm going to wait for his response before I try to fix those links.

April 8, 2014 (A) - Hmm. Each morning, I check Wikipedia's article on the 2001 anthrax attacks to see if there have been any changes. Yesterday, someone evidently suddenly decided to do some housecleaning on that article. They deleted 1,846 bytes. Looking over what they deleted, I see that ALL the deleted items are links to articles on this web site. The links to very important articles were evidently deleted as "Citation Spam."

The first link they deleted was to my copy of a New York Times article from Dec. 5, 2001, titled "Anthrax Pervades Florida Site, and Experts See Likeness to That Sent to Senators." They deleted the link to my copy of the article, but didn't replace it with the above link to the New York Time's copy. Most interestingly, the subject of the article is something I was discussing yesterday on my interactive blog - how the AMI building became so thoroughly contaminated. The NYT article says,

Spores ended up not just in the mailroom and on Mr. Stevens's keyboard, but also in such out-of-the-way places as atop a room divider and computer monitors and in a nook between banks of shelves.

and

Investigators said that some sites found to be contaminated closely traced the routes taken by people making regular rounds from the first-floor mailroom up stairs and elevators to dozens of desks and cabinets. Spores presumably were stirred up and transported as mail was sorted and delivered. These findings point to a less-dangerous preparation with spores that do not linger in the air but fall where they are released.

Yesterday, on my interactive blog, a Truther argued the notion that the J-Lo letter was transported through the AMI building, spreading spores along the way, which makes no sense whatsoever. But, this NY Times article explains it differently. The mail was contaminated and the cross-contaminated mail was carried through the building and delivered to many different places in the building. That makes a great deal of sense. The fact that there were spores atop a room divider also means spores were floating around in the air, so Bob Stevens didn't need to sniff the powder to become infected.

The second deleted link was to my copy of an Oct. 25, 2001 New York Times article: "Contradicting Some U.S. Officials, 3 Scientists Call Anthrax Powder High-Grade." It is also about subjects that were being discussed on my interactive blog yesterday:

"It's high-grade," said Mr. [William] Patrick, who consults widely on making germ defenses. "It's free flowing. It's electrostatic free. And it's in high concentration."

Experts on germ weaponry agree that the removal of electrostatic charges is a major step toward making an effective munition. The Soviet Union and United States developed sophisticated ways of diminishing this attraction and helping the particles float more freely, increasing their ease of dissemination and likelihood of inhalation.

Mr. Patrick said that whoever sent the Daschle letter had clearly achieved this step. "It's fluffy," he said, quoting experts who examined the powder. "It appears to have an additive that keeps the spores from clumping." Removing the charge, he added, is a black art, few details of which are known publicly.

This also was being discussed on my interactive blog. "Anonymous/DXer" was digging up old articles where people once believed the attack spores were weaponized with silica.

The third deleted link was to my copy of Douglas Beecher's 2006 article in Applied and Environmental Microbiology titled "Forensic Application of Microbiological Culture Analysis To Identify Mail Intentionally Contaminated withBacillus anthracis Spores." It's probably no coincidence that "Anonymous" on my interactive blog had recently cited an article that challenged the conclusions in Douglas Beecher's article.

The fourth deleted link was to my copy of an ABC News article from Oct. 26, 2001 titled "Troubling Anthrax Additive Found."

ABCNEWS has been told by three well-placed and separate sources that initial tests on an anthrax-laced letter sent to Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle have detected a troubling chemical additive that authorities consider their first significant clue yet.

An urgent series of tests conducted on the letter at Ft. Detrick, Md., and elsewhere discovered the anthrax spores were treated with bentonite, a substance that keeps the tiny particles floating in the air by preventing them from sticking together. The easier the particles are to inhale, the more deadly they are.

As far as is known, only one country, Iraq, has used bentonite to produce biological weapons.

Just minutes before ABCNEWS' World News Tonight aired this report, White House spokesman Ari Fleischer flatly denied bentonite was found on the letters. Moments later, another senior White House official backed off Fleischer's comments, saying it does not appear to be bentonite "at this point."

The official said the Ft. Detrick findings represented an "opinionated analysis," that three other labs are conducting tests, and that one of those labs had contradicted the bentonite finding. But, the official added, "tests continue."

It appears there were different versions of that article produced on Oct. 26, 27 and 29. The quotes above are from ABC News's Oct. 27 version. Is it just a coincidence that "Anonymous/DXer" on my interactive blog seems to be pushing Gary Matsumoto as an authority on how the spores used in the anthrax attacks were "weaponized"?

The fifth deleted link was to my copy of Barbara Hatch Rosenberg's June 13, 2002 rant from the FAS web site. The rant is titled "The Anthrax Case: What the FBI Knows" (which can also be found HERE). A couple paragraphs from that article:

2. Properties and Composition of the Anthrax Samples-A biodefense insider who has hands-on experience in weaponizing anthrax says the Daschle sample corresponds to state-of-the-art US anthrax preparations. A number of other inside experts concur. The perpetrator may well be one of those who helped perfect the US technique. No other country is known to have comparable capability.

5. The Likely Suspect--Early in the investigation, a number of inside experts (at least five that I know about) gave the FBI the name of one specific person as the most likely suspect. That person fits the FBI profile in most respects. He has the right skills, experience with anthrax, up-to-date anthrax vaccination, forensic training, and access to USAMRIID and its biological agents through 2001.

The sixth and last deleted link was to my copy of the September 2001 Canadian Study titled "Risk assessment of anthrax threat letters." This is the study that was published BEFORE the anthrax attacks, and some Truthers argue that it was the blueprint for the attacks or generated the idea for the attacks. Here's the abstract:

In recent years an increasing number of letters alleging to contain anthrax have been sent to health clinics, government offices and other locations. While such “anthrax letter” incidents to date have proven to be hoaxes, all incidents must be treated as real until proven otherwise. Since no experimental studies on which to base a realistic assessment of the threat posed by these “anthrax letters” could be found, Defence Research Establishment Suffield (DRES) undertook a series of experiments to determine the extent of the hazard. In the experiments, envelopes containing Bacillus globigii spores (a simulant for anthrax) were opened in a mock mail room/office environment. The data measured on the dispersion of the spores were used to estimate if letters containing anthrax spores posed a significant health risk.

I don't recall if I'm the one who created those links in the Wikipedia article, but, if I did, it wasn't for "citation spam" purposes. It was because newspapers would constantly change the addresses of their articles, so the links would constantly stop working. They'd move a article from their "today" file to their "past week" file and then to their "past month" file and then to the "archive" file. Because they were constantly changing the links, Google couldn't find the article, either. That's why I created this web site, as a place where I could store copies of articles without fear that they'd disappear. Such links just clutter up my log files and use extra bandwidth.

Now I have to decide if I want to go to the trouble of putting back all those links using the versions that do not come from my web site. As you can see from the links provided above, all the articles are available elsewhere, and only the Beecher article requires a subscription to access a fully copy. If links to very relevant articles about the anthrax case are just "spam" if they come from my web site, maybe adding links to different versions of the articles from elsewhere will somehow convert those important articles into "non-spam." I just need to find the time and ambition to make the changes. I think it could be several hours work. Groan!

April 7, 2014 (B) - Wow! Someone on PPRuNe.org just provided a link to a web site at http://www.marinetraffic.com/en/ where you can track almost any ship on any ocean. They've got 481,812 ships in their data base. I checked, and it was easy to locate the Australian ship Ocean Shield that is searching for the black box from MH370. Plus, you can locate and track the other ships involved in the search. And you can also see that there are a few tankers passing through the area. It's really cool!

The image below is a composite someone made, with the names added. On the site, you have to put the cursor over the arrow to see what ship it is. The red arrow is a tanker.

tracking ships in the Indian Ocean

April 7, 2014 (A) - This morning, someone called "Dai Farr" on PPRuNe.org posted a long dissertation on radio energy versus sound energy. Right now, it is HERE, but I don't know if the link will work for very long. Links on that site seem to change when the moderator deletes a post that was made before the linked post.

Anyway, "Dai Farr" explained that the signals from the "black box" that the ships are now using to try to locate in the Indian Ocean are SOUND signals, not radio signals. Radio signals do not travel well through water. So, instead of listening for radio signals, which travel at the speed of light, the searchers are listening to sound signals which, according to Wikipedia, in sea water travel at about 4,500 feet per second, depending upon a several factors, primarily temperature, salinity and density.

When looking for the black box from Malaysia Airlines flight MH370, they have to worry about sound waves emitted by the black box bouncing off of underwater canyon walls, off of different temperature or salinity layers, etc. The deeper the box, the more potential bouncing of the signal. That makes it far more difficult to locate the box. (If you really want to dig into the subject, click on the link HERE, which also comes from a post to PPRuNe.org. It explains how you can pick up the same underwater sound signal coming from a hundred different directions.)

The information above may help people understand an article in The Washington Post which says:

Searchers looking for the missing Malaysia Airlines plane have discovered signals consistent with those emitted by black boxes in the Indian Ocean, but they may still be a long way from finding the first piece of wreckage.

and

The pinger locator is designed to detect signals at a range of 1.8 kilometers (1.2 miles), meaning it would need to be almost on top of the black boxes to detect them if they were on the ocean floor, which is 4,500 meters (14,800 feet).

The first signal was picked up Saturday evening and lasted two hours and 20 minutes before it was lost as the ship moved forward. The ship then turned around and a few hours later picked up a second signal that lasted for 13 minutes.

and

On Monday, the Ocean Shield was trying to pick up the signal again, so far without success. [U.S. Navy Capt. Mark] Matthews said it would continue trying for at least another day. He said the boat tries to go over the area from different angles in an attempt to triangulate an exact position.

and

When crews determine the best possible location, the next step will be to send down the U.S. Navy’s autonomous underwater vessel Bluefin 21, a robot that can create a sonar map of the seafloor and any wreckage, as well as take photos.

Matthews said the Bluefin’s sonar can scan only about 100 meters (328 feet) and it can “see” with lights and cameras only a few meters. Since its range is limited, searchers are waiting to use it until they determine more precisely where the pings are coming from.

So, the signals from the black box appear to be real. But, they could still be a week or more away from actually finding the black box. It's also interesting to note that the signals are right on the line where the satellite last detected a "ping" from the plane. The image below is from HERE, where a larger version can be found.

I keep thinking that, even when the find the black box, they might find better recordings telling what happened on Flight MH370 by looking for cell phones belonging to the passengers. Those cell phones might have recorded dozens of eye witness accounts.

April 6, 2014 - The most interesting things related to the anthrax attacks of 2001 that occurred last week - that I know about - are (1) I sold three copies of my 2012 book "A Crime Unlike Any Other;" (2) there was some kind of sudden surge in people viewing my YouTube video explaining the facts which say a child wrote the anthrax letters; (3) "DXer/Anonyous" on my interactive blog tried to make some kind of unexplained point about a new article in the Journal of Applied Microbiology that mentions the anthrax attacks of 2001; (4) a different Anthrax Truther on my interactive blog pointed out an error I made in my March 16 (B) comment; and (5) this week's episode of one of my favorite TV series, "Elementary," to be aired on CBS on Thursday, is advertised as being about thwarting some kind of anthrax attack involving a pound of anthrax.

I don't have anything more to add about item #5, but taking the other items one by one,

1. I actually know who bought one of the three copies of my book that I sold last week. He sent me an email saying he'd done so. Based upon the sales reports I get, the first copy was sold on April 1 and seems to have been paid for in English pounds. The second was purchased on April 4 and was paid for in American dollars. Both were purchased via the printer's web site. The third sale appeared on this morning's reports and was via Amazon.com. But, the three buyers could all be connected. The person who emailed me said he and someone else were working on a project that involved the anthrax attacks of 2001, and they needed my book for research. Those three copies were the only copies of my book that have been sold in the past two or three weeks.

2. The numbers are less tangible for the "surge" in viewers of my YouTube video about how the facts say a child wrote the anthrax letters. I don't get or keep any records of the number of viewers, but I do check the total number every day. And it seems like there was a brief surge last week. I crossed the 800 viewer mark just a few days ago. 800 viewers in about a year equals less than 3 viewers a day, and that seemed to be what I was getting. But, as of this morning, there have been 825 viewers. It's not a huge "surge," but I have to wonder if it doesn't have something to do with the books I sold and the anthrax case "project" that is going on.

3. The Journal of Applied Microbiology article that mentions the anthrax attacks of 2001 is also featured in a new thread on Lew Weinstein's blog HERE.   As far as I can tell, the only point being made by the Anthrax Truther is that the article seems to cite as a source Gary Matsumoto's thoroughly debunked 2003 Science Magazine article titled "Anthrax Powder: State of the Art?" The Applied Microbiology article doesn't seem have anything new to say about the anthrax attacks. It's about a method to make aerosolizable spores for various kinds of tests.   But, the Anthrax Truthers seem to be mentioning it as proof of something. They're just incapable of explaining what it proves.

4. In my March 16 (B) comment, I made the mistake of writing that two Anthrax Truthers on my interactive blog "suddenly and inexplicably seemed to cite Leonard Cole as being a supreme authority" on the J-Lo letter. Yesterday, one of those Truthers pointed out to me that he was actually citing Robert Graysmith and had even provided a link to key pages in Graysmith's book "Amerithrax: The Hunt for the Anthrax Killer." I had evidently read no further in his post than to where he rationalized, "there's no reason the sender couldn't have mixed anthrax spores in with laundry detergent."

Looking over those pages in Graysmith's book (pages 5 & 6 in the hardcover edition), I find them to be, in some ways, even more interesting than what Leonard Cole wrote.

Graysmith seems to say that the J-Lo letter was delivered on Sept. 21, 2001. The National Enquirer says it was opened on Sept. 19.

Graysmith says that as Ernesto Blanco carried the J-Lo letter through the building in his mail delivery cart, he left a trail of spores behind him. That is total nonsense. The facts say otherwise. The CDC's data showed the mailroom to be the most contaminated place in the AMI building. The FBI said the spores were most likely tracked through the building by people coming to the thoroughly contaminated mail room to get copy paper.   Graysmith says (without any apparent foundation) that Blanco had "rested a handful of mail atop stacks of copy paper" for some unexplained reason.

Graysmith says that when the J-Lo letter was opened, "a small, cheap Star of David dropped out." Graysmith also wrote, "Inside the envelope was a 'childish' one page, handwritten love letter to Jennifer Lopez. Also enclosed was a tablespoon of 'soapy, powdery substance,' a bluish dust that resembled dishwashing powder. It might have come from a ruptured detergent packet, a sample, but an inspection revealed no packet inside." The Enquirer says the Star of David pendant was buried in the soap powder inside the folded J-Lo love letter, the powder was "pink-tinged," and the envelope also contained a cigar tube with a cheap cigar inside, and "There was also an empty can of chewing tobacco and a small detergent carton."

Graysmith didn't even mention the powder-filled letter that Stephanie Dailey opened. He just mentions that Dailey was one of the mail sorters who put mail into sorting slots in the mailroom.

While I'd normally be the last person in the world to cite the National Enquirer as a key authority on anything, the J-Lo letter was opened in their building by their people, and they had much better access than Cole or Graysmith to interview all the AMI employees involved. And the Enquirer reporters did their interviews when memories were still relatively fresh. While Cole can be faulted for having interviewed only some of the key employees - and not the person who actually received the J-Lo letter - Graysmith's book seems to have far more errors - at least as far as the J-Lo letter is concerned. Yet, the Anthrax Truther stated on March 11 "Graysmith's book is very good on this," meaning the subject of the J-Lo letter.

Of course, all three of them are WRONG about anthrax being in the J-Lo letter.

Meanwhile, this morning I see a lot of news reports about Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 and the acoustic signals detected by a Chinese ship which may to have come from the black box aboard MH370. But nothing has been verified.   CBS News also reports:

[Retired Air Chief Marshal Angus Houston told reporters in Perth] that the Australian vessel Ocean Shield also was investigating a separate acoustic detection.

The CBS report also says,

false alerts can come from animals such as whales, or interference from shipping noise.

Unfortunately, the Sun Daily reports that the Australian vessel was 300 nautical miles away from where the Chinese ship detected what seemed like black box signals. But, most news reports are now saying that the Chinese ship appears to have picked up black box signals TWICE, first on Saturday, then on Sunday (Friday and Saturday, GMT.)

On the negative side, it appears from a BBC report that the Chinese ship didn't detect the signals, the signals were detected by putting a hydrophone in the water from a zodiac patrol boat launched from the Chinese ship. That's why there were no recordings of it.

Also interesting is the fact that CNN seems to be comparing the search for flight MH370 to the search for the Holy Grail. And "The Voice of Russia" has an article which lists 10 "conspiracy theories" regarding Malaysia Airlines flight MH370. They're not all true "conspiracy theories," many are just "theories," but the one about finding some safety instruction sheets from a Malaysian Boeing 777 in a trash heap in Australia should be interesting to the Truther on my interactive blog who seems to truly believe the plane crash-landed somewhere in Western Australia.

Updates & Changes: Sunday, March 30, 2014, thru Saturday, April 5, 2014

April 5, 2014 - Hmm. Chinese media is reporting that a Chinese ship picked up "black box" signals in the Indian Ocean in the general area where everyone has been searching for debris from Malaysia Airlines flight MH370:

China's Haixun 01 ship has detected pulse signal in the South Indian Ocean, Xinhua news agency reports.

The signal, at 37.5 kHz per second, was picked up by a black box locator at 25 degrees south latitude and 101 degrees east longitude.

It is yet to be determined whether the signal is related to the missing flight MH370 of the Malaysian Airlines, the report says.

The signal was picked up at 4:30pm, which lasted about one minute and a half, the jfdaily.com reports. [jfdaily.com is the same report in Chinese].

According to the British newspaper The Telegraph:

A reporter with Chinese state broadcaster CCTV, who is onboard the Haixun, said the patrol ship first picked up the signal on Friday when it was detected intermittently for about 15 minutes. But other vessels were in the vicinity at the time, raising the possibility that they might have been the source.

But Haixun, China's largest patrol vessel, picked up the signal again on Saturday, when it was detected every second for 90 seconds

According to two comments on PPRuNe.org HERE and HERE:

Three crew members heard this signal but could not make a recording as they were surprised by the signal!! Hope its not another false hope.

Neither of two bloggers stated where they read that information. So, I did a Google news search for "three crew members" and "Malaysia," and I found a report from Malaysian media which said:

Meanwhile, Chinese state media agency China News Service reports that the signal that Haixun 01 detected lasted only about 90 seconds, and was heard at about 4.30pm.

“Three crew members have confirmed hearing the suspicious signal, but it came so suddenly that they did not manage to record it in time,” the report said.

That Malaysian source also provided a map of where the signals were received:

It's not in any aircraft search area, but that doesn't mean anything. The aircraft search areas are either where unidentified debris was spotted (and could have floated there from elsewhere) or where various calculations estimate the plane went down.

And, according to another source, more "floating objects" have been spotted and photographed:

A Chinese air force plane has spotted floating objects in the search area for the missing Malaysia Airlines flight MH370, news agency Xinhua reported on Saturday.

The plane photographed the objects over a period of 20 minutes after spotting them at 11:05 local time.

An Australian pilot on board the plane reported the information to the Joint Agency Coordination Center, which is coordinating the multinational search in the southern Indian Ocean.

The LA Times says that the new floating objects were spotted "about 90 kilometers" from the area where the supposed black box signals were detected.

I hope, too, that it's not all just another false hope.

April 4, 2014 - Someone calling him/herself "lynw" on PPRuNe.org just posted this comment about Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 at 15:47 GMT:

I am not saying eyewitnesses should be ignored I am simply pointing out that eyewitness testimony is proven to be unreliable and much more unreliable than technical evidence.

If all you have is eyewitnesses, then of course you need to investigate the validity of that evidence bearing in mind recall is not always complete, or accurate. If you have technical evidence that also needs to be assessed and investigated. Unlike eyewitness testimony though, that technical evidence is unlikely to change and the validation comes from another examiner using the same set of data and independently reaching the same conclusion.

In this case, Inmarsat have confirmed the aircraft pings long after these eyewitness reports saying they saw the plane. A company like Inmarsat is not going to put their reputation on the line over data they are not sure of. I suspect that these calculations would have been thoroughly validated and verified before release. The consequences for Inmarsat are very considerable if they have got it wrong.

The consequences for these eyewitnesses? they get the Daily Whinge probably paying them for their account and their pic in the paper. It's not rocket science to figure which one I would consider more credible and reliable.

I am not saying all eyewitness accounts should be automatically ignored but their credibility and motives have to be considered, and considered in light of the technical evidence. The question becomes whether they genuinely reported something they think may be relevant even if they are mistaken or hoping the worlds press and its cheque book will come calling.

Amen.

Interestingly, someone else on PPRuNe.org just posted a link to an article from March 8 which was headlined "Vietnam confirms MAS flight crashed into sea off Tho Chu island." The article says,

The Vietnamese navy had earlier confirmed that Kuala Lumpur-Beijing bound Flight MH370 had crashed into the sea off Tho Chu island.

Tuoi Tre quoted Navy Admiral Ngo Van Phat, Commander of Region 5, as saying that military radar reported that the plane crashed into the sea at a location 246km south of Phu Quoc island.

On the map below, Tho Chu island is "A" and Phu Quoc Island is "B."

Evidently, none of this actually related to Malaysia Airlines flight MH370. But, it would be interesting to know what those "experts" actually saw. And, this example makes it easy to see how conspiracy theories can be formed.

April 3, 2104 - There's an interesting video at the link HERE which has one CNN reporter, aviation expert Jeff Wise, discussing the known facts about Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 and another CNN reporter trying to find a way to ignore all the facts so he can believe what he wants to believe.

Meanwhile, on PPRuNe.com, someone mentioned the idea that they try to recreate the flight with another Boeing 777 (without running out of gas and crashing, of course) to see if the satellite and radar data match. If the data does match, it should shut up some of the disbelievers. If the data doesn't match, they can again adjust the search area.

Another comment on PPruNe.com leads to an article HERE which contains some very illuminating information:

[A former lead crash investigator for the US National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB), Greg] Feith believes there will be several plausible theories that all will point to a deliberate act by someone with intimate knowledge of flying the Boeing 777, most likely one of the pilots. Too many deliberate actions maneuvering the airplane and turning off communications systems occurred to have any plausible mechanical failure explanation. He completely discounts theories that a fire, either in the electronics bay or involving lithium-ion batteries being transported in a cargo bay, disabled the airplane. He also discounts a theory that there was a depressurization that incapacitated the pilots and allowed the 777 to meander over the skies of the Gulf of Thailand, Malaysia and the Strait of Malacca before turning south 3,000 miles over the Indian Ocean before running out of fuel. ......

“The transponder is turned off with a switch of a switch. ACARS goes off line with a few key strokes,” Feith told us. “If there was a fire, the auto pilot would have gone off line.”

Fire could not have disabled the transponder, he said. There are different wire bundles for the five radios, the two transponders and the ACARS precisely to avoid a single-source fire capable of disrupting these eight communications devices.

“There is no centralized area where a fire could take all these out at the same time,” he said.

As for the related theory that the auto pilot took over after the crew was disabled by hypoxia, the series of left and right hand turns belies this, he said. If the crew were overcome, the airplane would have continued on its original course to Beijing. Instead, it made a “shallow” left turn after its last radio communication with Malaysian Air Traffic Control to a new course almost behind its original course. Then, over the Strait of Malacca, it made a right turn, a left turn and another left turn going south over the Indian Ocean.

Citing his sources familiar with the investigation, Feith said these were shallow banks of perhaps 20 degrees, normal turns that would not have alerted passengers that anything was out of the ordinary.

“The auto pilot isn’t smart enough [on its own] to make the maneuvers the airplane did,” Feith said.

All the altitude changes that have been reported in the media are incorrect, he said, citing his sources. The airplane never left its cruising altitude of 35,000 ft.

Interesting stuff. It seems to squelch all theories except a deliberate act by a crew member or, less likely, some kind of hijacking.

April 2, 2014 - This morning, someone sent me an email with a link to a Bradenton Herald article about some lawsuits filed by two Florida newspapers trying to get the government to release more information related to the 9/11 hijackers who stayed for awhile in Florida. I was challenged to find some way that Anthrax Truthers could connect these lawsuits to the anthrax attacks. I couldn't find a way. But, that doesn't mean the Truthers can't dream up a connection if they really want to.

April 1, 2014 (B) - Ah! I just received my first response to the query letters I've sent to literary agents regarding my new sci-fi novel. It was a response to the query email I sent out on March 12. The response is a form letter that reads:

Dear Author,

I greatly appreciate the opportunity to consider your query - thanks for sending it.

Alas, the query didn't appeal quite enough to my own tastes to inspire me to offer representation or further consideration of your project. I wish I had the time to respond to everyone with constructive criticism, but it would be overwhelming, hence this form response.

This business is highly subjective; many people whose work I haven't connected with have gone on to critical and commercial success. So, keep trying!

I am grateful that you have afforded me this opportunity to find out about you and your project, and wish you the best of success with your current and future creative work.

All best wishes,

It may be a turn-down, but it's not because there's anything wrong with the book. It's just that the book doesn't match his own personal tastes or what he wants to work on. Such a response is better than no response at all. But not much better. It's only "better" because now I'm free to contact one of the five other agents at that agency.

For the record,

[Stephen] King received dozens of rejections for his first novel, Carrie; he kept them tidily nailed to a spike under a timber in his bedroom.

[William] Golding's Lord of the Flies was rejected by 20 publishers.

[J.K. Rowling's] Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s (later Sorceror’s) Stone was rejected by a dozen publishers, including biggies like Penguin and HarperCollins. Bloomsbury, a small London publisher, only took it on at the behest of the CEO’s eight-year old daughter, who begged her father to print the book.

One publisher rejected Mr. [George] Orwell's submission, Animal Farm, with these words:

It is impossible to sell animal stories in the USA.

Mr. Tony Hillerman, now famous for his Navajo Tribal Police mystery novels, was initially told by publishers to

Get rid of all that Indian stuff.

April 1, 2014 (A) - I find it incredible how many people in the media are trying to make something significant out of the fact that what some Malaysian official originally said were the last words from the co-pilot of flight MH370 is different from what the official transcript says. Click HERE, HERE, HERE, HERE and HERE for a few such articles. All I see is that (1) the official didn't have the words memorized, (2) the official didn't think the exact wording was important, and (3) the official didn't realize that every word he was speaking would be scrutinized and analyzed a million times over.

The official originally said the final words were "All right, good night."

The transcript says the final words were "Good Night Malaysian Three Seven Zero."

This morning I found a full copy of the actual transcript. Click HERE to view it. Since a "transcript" is what someone writes down as they listen to a recording, I suspect that a lot of people are now going to be demanding that the recording be released so they can create their own transcript. There are a lot of "Truthers" out there who believe they are the only reliable investigator for anything unusual that happens anywhere.

On the other hand, you can never tell where a good idea might appear. Some pilots on PPRUNE.ORG have wondered if the plane might have created contrails which might be observable on satellite photos. I see news stories about that HERE and HERE. But, "Lorimer" on PPRUNE.ORG points out that the flight was at night, which would make contrails very difficult to see. But he analyzes the data HERE anyway.

March 30, 2014 - Uh oh. I don't have anything already written and set to post here as my Sunday comment. So, once again, I'm going to have to "wing it" and just write something from scratch.

Umm. Last week a state prosecutor who doesn't have anything to do with the anthrax case sent me an email asking permission to use one of the cartoons on my interactive blog in a presentation she needs to make to a grand jury. For some reason, she wanted to use this cartoon:

I gave her permission and pointed out that the drawings in the cartoon are copyright-free artwork I obtained by buying a Corel MegaGallery CD Pack many years ago. All I did was combine two different drawings and add the text.

And that was that.

Okay. What next? Umm. In yesterday's comment I said I wasn't going to write anything more about the subject I wasn't going to write anything more about. So, I can't write about that, except to say that I got into another argument with another Truther or "True Believer" in the comments that follow a Bloomberg article on the subject.

Umm. I'm not making any progress on starting a new sci-fi novel, a sequel to the one I finished a couple months ago. I even reached the point where I had so little to do that I "borrowed" a novel from my local library. I "borrowed" Lee Child's 6th Jack Reacher thriller "Without Fail." But, as soon as I "borrowed" it, I lost the urge to read it. It's in my Kindle for when the urge returns. (With my Kindle there's no need to return any "borrowed" books. They're automatically considered to be "returned" after 7 days.)

Meanwhile, I'm 75% done with Mark Twain's "The Innocents Abroad." I'm only reading it during breakfast and lunch. Here's an interesting passage I highlighted:

"What is it that confers the noblest delight? What is that which swells a man's breast with pride above that which any other experience can bring to him? Discovery! To know that you are walking where none others have walked; that you are beholding what human eye has not seen before; that you are breathing a virgin atmosphere. To give birth to an idea--to discover a great thought--an intellectual nugget, right under the dust of a field that many a brain--plow had gone over before. To find a new planet, to invent a new hinge, to find the way to make the lightnings carry your messages. To be the first--that is the idea. To do something, say something, see something, before any body else--these are the things that confer a pleasure compared with which other pleasures are tame and commonplace, other ecstasies cheap and trivial."

I think writing a book might fit into the section about "to give birth to an idea." I also think I can do a better job of marketing my book to literary agents. I'm just not very good at selling. I'd have a hard time selling ice cream sundaes for a penny a dish in the Sahara Desert. I've been trying agents who say they like science fiction, but they all seem to be looking for "young adult science-fiction and fantasy" right now. The "Harry Potter" books fall into that category. So does "The Hunger Games" series, the "Perry Jackson" books, "The Hobbit," the new "Divergent" series and many others. I watched the movie "Ender's Game" a few weeks ago thinking it was going to be my kind of science fiction, and it turned out to be "Harry Potter in Outer Space." They're fantasy books and movies, not science-fiction. While I managed to sit through both "Hunger Games" movies, I didn't buy the premise (people hunting and killing people as a public amusement). While there are lots of exceptions, I don't particularly care for fantasy. I prefer "straight" science fiction -- real science used in fictional situations.

The sci-fi novel I'm trying to get published is "straight" science-fiction. But how do I get a literary agent interested enough to help me? How do I summarize the book into a paragraph or a page? Some agents also want to know "the theme" of the book. What is "the theme" of my book? "New discoveries can be both beneficial and dangerous?" That's not going to sell anything. "None of us is really fully understandable?" Too schmaltzy. "Geniuses are not like other people?" Maybe. But would a literary agent find that "theme" to be interesting?

And what about the synopsis? I know it should emphasize the characters in the book not the science. Maybe something like this:

Professor Frank Wycott has built a device that uses anti-time to help debunk conspiracy theories, which are his favorite peeve. His daughter, Professor Lillian Wycott believes she has uncovered a real conspiracy among anti-government radicals that could be an immediate threat. The two Wycotts explain the situation to one of Frank Wycott's former students, Nathan Rawlins, the President of the United States. The story opens when President Rawlins asks his brother, Kyle, a wealthy inventor, to try to figure out what the Wycotts are talking about, if Frank's invention has any practical use, and if Lillian's theory about a pending attack by anti-government radicals upon Washington has any foundation in reality.

Hmm. That's not bad. It needs work, but maybe I'll use it in my next query letter.

And that's the end of today's comment.

Updates & Changes: Sunday, March 23, 2014, thru Saturday, March 29, 2014

March 29, 2014 - I think this may be my last comment about Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370 until some actual debris from the aircraft is located and is positively identified.

The only news I see this morning is a BBC headline that says "Flight MH370: Chinese and Australian Ships Draw Blank." The article says:

Chinese patrol ship Haixun 01 and Australia's HMAS Success "reported they have retrieved a number of objects from the ocean but so far no objects confirmed to be related to MH370 have been recovered", the Australian Maritime Safety Authority (Amsa) said late on Saturday.

Meanwhile, the pilots on PPRUNE.ORG are discussing and arguing over what yesterday's news reports actually said. It makes no sense that, if the plane was going faster than previously thought, it would have gone a shorter distance in the specified amount of time. Yes, if a plane flies at a steady and faster air-speed, it will go a shorter distance before it runs out of fuel. But, between any two points in time, if it is going faster, it will go further. It would certainly go further between satellite "pings." It would have traveled further at the point of the last known "ping" at 8:11 a.m. So, the chart below (found HERE) makes no sense if the purple track is the faster track.

The only way the new final location might make sense to the pilots on PPRUNE.ORG is if the plane was only flying significantly faster at the start of the flight when it was flying westward, and then it slowed down when it headed south. So, I looked around to find out what the experts actually said. The quote below is from The Detroit Free Press:

Martin Dolan, chief commissioner of the Australian Air Transport Safety Bureau, said a revised analysis of radar data prompted the agency to refocus the search in the Indian Ocean off Perth. The analysis indicates that the plane was flying faster than previously estimated between the South China Sea and the Strait of Malacca before radar contact was lost, Dolan said.

But, if you view the video at that link, it just says what other news reports said:

There's nothing in either report about the plane slowing down when it headed south. You have to deduce that from the area that they're now searching.

I've often written in this blog that a person doesn't really understand something until they can explain it to someone else and get them to understand it, too. It seems like none of the experts explaining things to the media understood that the plane must have slowed down when it headed south, since no one mentions it, and that is the key to understanding what's going on. And, as far as I can tell, no one in the media mentions it either. There are dozens of news stories which merely say the plane didn't go as far as previously thought because it was flying faster. It seems that only the people actually doing the data analysis understood it.

A Google search for the words "slow down" found an interesting article HERE about a "blow torch fire" aboard a different Boeing 777 three years ago that might explain something, if it could somehow also account for all the course and speed changes.

But, I'm tired of trying to put the pieces together when the media and the "experts" are leaving out key pieces. (Bloomberg also mentions that the plane was going faster when heading west, but makes no mention of slowing down when it turned south.)

March 28, 2014 - I find this morning's news on CNN about Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370 to be very interesting and very relatable to the Amerithrax investigation. They've got NEW data and that changes their analysis. So,

Forget all those satellite photos showing promising patches of debris. The search for missing Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 has moved again.

In a stunning turn, Australian authorities announced Friday that they were abandoning the remote region of Indian Ocean where search crews had spent more than a week looking for the plane. A new analysis of satellite data showed the plane could not have flown that far south, they said.

Hmmm. So, those 300 white objects in the Thai satellite photos that made headlines yesterday were just whitecaps? No one is actually saying that, but it appears to be the case. Search aircraft weren't able to find anything in the area where 300 large objects were supposed to be. Findings in the new search area, however, are very different:

In what could be a sign the search is on the right track, or possibly yet another letdown, the agency said five of the 10 planes dispatched to the new search zone spotted objects in the waters below. Crews took photographs of the objects, and those images will be analyzed overnight, the authority said.

There's understandable frustration among reporters and among the public. They want investigators to be right the first time. They cannot understand how any facts can point investigators in a wrong direction. But, the investigators can understand it. It happens all the time. When the investigators are questioned about whether the previous searches and findings were all a waste of time, here's the response:

"I don't think we would've done anything different from what we have done," [acting Malaysian Transport Minister] Hishammuddin [Hussein] said.

[John] Young [general manager of emergency response for the Australian maritime authority] said previous searches were based on the information authorities "had at the time."

"That's nothing unusual for search and rescue operations," he said.

CNN safety analyst David Soucie said it was "a good sign" that experts had adjusted their assumptions.

"Assumptions are the key to all of this," he said. "If you assume something and you end up with a final conclusion, you have to constantly review that."

I wouldn't call anything based upon assumptions to be a "final conclusion." But, this seems very relatable to early "findings" in the Amerithrax investigation which later turned out to be wrong or misleading (i.e., an anthrax lab in Afghanistan, the so-called "J-Lo letter, the reports of silica in the powders, "experts" pointing at Steven Hatfill, etc). The Anthrax Truthers were generally incapable of changing their minds when NEW data showed their original "final conclusions" were totally wrong.

It appears that the main assumption they had to review in the MH370 case was the speed at which flight MH370 was traveling as it headed south. The old assumptions were 400 knots and 450 knots. The new findings seem to be based on the plane traveling at a higher speed, about 480 knots (552 mph), which would also mean that it would run out of fuel more quickly. There's evidently another assumption involved, too. They were making assumptions about where the aircraft was and how fast it was traveling when it turned south. If the aircraft traveled further west than previously assumed, then the "ping" data would mean it was flying more south-south east than just straight south. Here's what a pilot in Ireland who calls himself "glenbrook" wrote on PPRUNE.ORG:

my understanding is that the analysis of the satellite pings requires an assumption of constant speed and heading. This does not give unique solution, because you need to know where the start point is (i.e. the point at which the a/c started flying south). If the a/c speed west over the Malay peninsula was higher than assumed up until now then the start point of the southerly track was farther westwards and the mathematical solutions to the satellite ping data have the a/c flying more easterly, ending up closer to Western Australia.

If you've got the time and talent for it, you might try to figure out what "hamster3null" on PPRUNE.ORG was trying to do when he compiled the data found HERE.

A media release from the Australian Martime Safety Authority (AMSA) seems to be making it clear the new sightings cannot be whitecaps. The media release says:

The objects cannot be verified or discounted as being from MH370 until they are relocated and recovered by ships.

A Royal New Zealand Air Force (RNZAF) P3 Orion reported sighting a number of objects white or light in colour and a fishing buoy.

A Royal Australian Air Force P3 Orion relocated the objects detected by the RNZAF Orion and reported it had seen two blue/grey rectangular objects floating in the ocean.

A second RAAF P3 Orion spotted various objects of various colours in a separate part of the search area about 546 kilometres away.

A report from Sky News in Australia says,

'Continuing analysis indicates that the plane was travelling faster than was previously estimated, resulting in increased fuel usage, reducing the possible distance it travelled south into the Indian Ocean,' Australian Transport Safety Bureau chief commissioner Martin Dolan said on Friday.

'This is our best estimate of the area in which the aircraft is likely to have crashed into the ocean.'

He said the search area could change again as new information emerged.

Anthrax Truthers would almost certainly argue that if these "experts" were wrong once, they can never be trusted ever again. But, the CNN report cited above says:

U.S. flight crews involved in the search aren't frustrated or disillusioned by the sudden change in the search, said Cmdr. William Marks of the Navy's U.S. 7th Fleet.

"For the pilots and the air crews, this is what they train for," he said. "They understand it."

I can certainly understand it. But, personally, I'm looking for a plot of the adjusted ping data which visually illustrates the change from the old assumed flight path to the new assumed flight path. And I'd like to see those new photographs taken by the various P3 search aircraft. I don't want to look at any more pictures of whitecaps that some "expert" analyst of satellite images believes could be debris from flight MH370.

March 27, 2014 - An article on CNN's web site this morning points out another problem with those debris sightings in the southern Indian Ocean:

Search crews have yet to put eyes on, much less recover, any of the objects, and experts warned Thursday against putting too much stock in what the images show.

Stephen Wood, a former CIA analyst and satellite imagery expert, said the satellites could be seeing something as simple as whitecaps, which he said can look deceptively like solid objects.

And CNN aviation analyst Jeff Wise said that while the latest find is "very enticing," the number and size of the objects make him question whether they could be from the plane.

"If you see something floating that's 60 feet across, that could be a big chunk of fuselage," he said. "But if you have 10 pieces that are 60 feet across, that would indicate that they're not from the plane because the plane has only so much stuff in it."

That kind of comment makes me want to figure out how large the white spots are in the satellite image below. The image is from the Bangkok Post and is one of several that were taken by a Thai satellite. Unfortunately, I can't find a larger version:

satellite image of debris in Indian Ocean

There's a scale below the main picture which seems to show an inch to be about 250 meters. Based upon that scale, many of the long spots seem to be about 10 to 20 meters in length. That's about 30 to 60 feet. If so, there are simply too many large spots for them to be debris from flight MH370.

I doubt that they are whitecaps, since you'd expect to see more of a pattern to whitecaps. Whitecaps would generally be aligned perpendicular to the prevailing winds.

They're not ice. The sea temperature there is supposedly about 50 degrees.

With luck, planes might get a better look at the items tomorrow. But, we may just have to wait until someone on a surface ship can physically examine some of those items.

March 26, 2014 - Another week has passed without any response at all to my query letters regarding my new sci-fi novel. There's no way of knowing if the agents are just too busy and haven't yet read my queries, or if my query letter is badly phrased, or if the agents don't like the subject of the novel, or if the agents don't like the writing sample I provided. So, I've revised the query letter once again and sent it out to another agent.

Meanwhile, on my interactive blog, "Anonymous/DXer" seems to be arguing that, if the pilot of Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 committed suicide by flying it into the southern Indian Ocean until it ran out of fuel, it could still have been done as part of some kind of al Qaeda terrorist plot. "Anonymous/DXer" seems totally incapable of explaining himself or his theories, so that's just my best guess as to what he is driving at.

Meanwhile, meanwhile, on PPRUNE.org, the idea is being discussed that there might be explanations for the loss of flight MH370 on passenger cell phones, if they are found. Here's a brief discussion I pieced together:

SPEED OF SOUND: One thing which nobody seems to have mentioned so far is the possible use of onboard images and audio recorded on passenger and crew mobile phones in any investigation. ...

If, and it's a big if, passengers and crew were still conscious during some or all of the flight south, it is very likely that audio and video recordings exist on the 200+ mobile phones on board at the time.

In the old days Nokia phones were famous for their ability to survive immersion in water and work perfectly again after removing the battery and leaving them in a warm place for a few hours. I have seen a few telecoms engineers posting here in the last two weeks. Does anyone know the likely survivability of a modern 'smartphone' (or more relevantly, the data contained) inside a crashed aircraft in deep salt water?

JIMSTER99: This has been mentioned. A lot!

PONTIUS NAVIGATOR: There was a case about 3 years ago, a Spanish fisherman recovered a camera that had been lost in the Atlantic some months before. The camera was ruined but the images on the SD Card enabled the owner to be traced. SD Cards are solid so water pressure us unlikely to be a factor and that one had survived immersion in salt water.

Let's hope they find some of those phones. They could tell us a lot more than the "black box" and other official recording equipment aboard. The new report of a satellite photographing 122 objects floating in the search area is in French, so I don't know if it mentions that those 122 objects were spotted in open areas between clouds:

So, there could be thousands of pieces of floating debris under the clouds. One degree of longitude at that location would be about 53 miles. The left and right photos are separated by about 11 minutes of longitude, so they're roughly 10 miles apart.

March 25, 2014 (B) - Ah! My (A) post this morning got a reaction on my interactive blog from Anthrax Truher "Anonymous/DXer." In four posts, he continued to argue that flight MH370 was hijacked to attack an American destroyer (either the USS Kidd or the USS Pinckney) in the southern Indian Ocean. I thoroughly debunked that theory by doing a few minutes of basic research. I did a Google News lookup for "Pinckney" and found an article in Stars and Stripes which said:

The USS Kidd, an Arleigh Burke-class guided missile destroyer, joined the USS Pinckney in the search effort, according to the U.S. 7th Fleet. Both destroyers were conducting training in the South China Sea when they were dispatched to aid the search.

So, according to "Anonymous/DXer's" logic, Al Qaeda operatives hijacked flight MH370 and turned it around in the South China sea where the Pinckney and Kidd were located in order to fly to the southern Indian Ocean where they planned to attack one of the two ships, even though neither of two ships would be there until after flight MH370 ran out of fuel and crashed and the two ships were assigned to help locate the wreckage.

And in one of his posts, "Anonymous/DXer" also asked:

Certainly, it is a lot more likely that Al Qaeda is targeting US naval targets than it is that a First Grader wrote the anthrax letters -- as you think. Isn't it?

Is it? The hypothesis that a child wrote the anthrax letters is supported by 12 solid and unchallenged facts. The belief that Al Qaeda hijacked flight MH370 to target either the Pinckney or the Kidd in the Indian Ocean is unsupported by any logic or reasoning, and has been easily and thoroughly debunked.

March 25, 2014 (A) - Last night, The Daily Show with Jon Stewart contained a very funny bit about how CNN was filling their 24-hour news cycle with reports on Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370 even when there was nothing new to report. They actually had a reporter discussing (or trying to discuss) the "possibility" that the missing aircraft fell into a black hole. The black hole theory apparently came from some blogger.

Almost as funny, this morning I see "Anonymous/DXer" has conjured up a theory where Flight MH370 may have been hijacked by Muslim extremists and flown on a suicide mission to crash into an American warship crossing the south Indian Ocean.

Where was the U.S.S. Harry Truman? Did the 777 try to locate into an US warship that had been supporting the war in Afghanistan? (LINK)

The U.S.S. Harry Truman, which came to mind, is in the 5th Fleet Area of Responsibility but the Indian Ocean is in the 7th Fleet Area of Responsibility. Was there a US aircraft carrier transiting the Indian Ocean that someone might have been targeting? … then running out of gas? (LINK)

Was a terrorist targeting the USS Kidd? (LINK)

A couple more interesting questions might be: (1) How on earth could a commercial airliner locate a specific American warship moving across the middle of the Indian Ocean? (2) Why would Muslim extremists hijack a aircraft from a Muslim country that is carrying numerous Muslims, including a Muslim pilot and co-pilot in order to try to kill some American sailors (but actually just kill a lot of Muslims)?

Meanwhile, this morning I received an email pointing me to an explanation of how the path flown by Flight MH370 was refined using doppler shift calculations. And, when I checked the latest posts to the PPRUNE blog, I found a link to an announcement from Malaysian Ministry of Transport (MOT) which explains in much greater detail the doppler effect technique British experts used to determine that the MH370 had gone down in the south Indian Ocean. The copy of the announcement appears to come from Facebook. Here is some of what it says:

As you have heard, an aircraft is able to communicate with ground stations via satellite.

If the ground station has not heard from an aircraft for an hour it will transmit a 'log on / log off' message, sometimes referred to as a ‘ping’, using the aircraft’s unique identifier. If the aircraft receives its unique identifier it returns a short message indicating that it is still logged on. This process has been described as a “handshake” and takes place automatically.

From the ground station log it was established that after ACARS stopped sending messages, 6 complete handshakes took place.

The position of the satellite is known, and the time that it takes the signal to be sent and received, via the satellite, to the ground station can be used to establish the range of the aircraft from the satellite. This information was used to generate arcs of possible positions from which the Northern and Southern corridors were established.

The "ground station" was evidently an Australian Earth Station. The announcement has three nice illustrations which help explain things. Below is a reduced-in-size copy of one of them. Click HERE for the full size version.

satellit to plane to earth ground station

It's a lot of information to digest. Of course, matters aren't helped when you need to learn new terms in order to understand exactly what is being stated.

I had to look up what "UTC" means, since this and many reports state the "ping" times in UTC time. According to Wikipedia, UTC means "Temps Universel Coordonné" (TUC?) or Coordinated Universal Time (CUT?). It appears to be just another way of giving Greenwich Mean Time (GMT). In order to understand the section of the MOT announcement reproduced below, you may need to convert UTC times to the local time in Kuala Lumpur by adding 8 hours to the UTC time (which I did in red for you).

There is evidence of a partial handshake between the aircraft and ground station at 0019 UTC [8:19 Kuala Lumpur time]. At this time this transmission is not understood and is subject to further ongoing work.

No response was received from the aircraft at 0115 UTC [9:15 Kuala Lumpur time], when the ground earth station sent the next log on / log off message. This indicates that the aircraft was no longer logged on to the network.

Therefore, some time between 0011 UTC and 0115 UTC [8:11 and 9:15 Kuala Lumpur time] the aircraft was no longer able to communicate with the ground station. This is consistent with the maximum endurance of the aircraft.

So, Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370 took off from Kuala Lumpur at 12:41 a.m., local time on March 8, and went down sometime between 8:11 and 9:15 a.m. on March 8 when it would have run out of fuel. They don't know how fast it was flying during its long cruise southward, and that complicates the calculations. If it was flying at 400 knots (460 mph), it would compute to be many hundreds of miles away from where it would compute to be if it was traveling at 450 knots (518 mph). The illustration below [deleted 4/12/14 because it links to Facebook] (click HERE for a larger version) indicates how the satellite "ping" data can determine how far the plane was from the satellite at 8:11 a.m. Kuala Lumpur time (the green line). But, if it was going 518 mph it would be where the yellow line connects with the green line, and at 460 mph it would be where the red line connects with the green line. Or, if it was going at a different speed, it could be anywhere in between or slightly to either side.

What this may illustrate is that people really only want to know the final answer, but they also don't want to be kept in the dark, so they want to know what's going on now. What they really want is the final answer now. And, it's not available.

Right now, everyone is waiting for some surface ships seaching in the Indian Ocean to actually recover some debris that can be directly tied to Malaysia Airlines Flight HM370. Then they'll try to backtrack by calculating ocean currents to locate where the plane actually went down. Then they'll try to figure out HOW it ended up there. That will be the "final answer." It's still a long ways away.

March 24, 2014 - The news this morning indicates that they are finding debris in the search area where Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370 is calculated to have gone down. Unfortunately, the news reports are as murky as the weather in the area appears to be.

Here's what ABC (Australian Broadcasting Corporation) News reported 90 minutes ago:

Prime Minister Tony Abbott says Australian authorities have located new "objects" during the search for missing Malaysian Airlines flight MH370.

He has told Parliament the objects were located 2,500 kilometres south-west of Perth by a Royal Australian Air Force P-3 Orion about 2:45pm (AEDT).

Mr Abbott says the first object was grey or green and circular and the second was orange and rectangular.

He says HMAS Success is on the scene and is attempting to locate and recover the objects.

Further down in the article it says:

Flight Lieutenant Josh Williams, who was on board the P-3 Orion, said the flight was successful.

"We were looking for debris in the water and we sighted a number of objects on the surface and beneath the surface visually as we flew over the top if it," he said.

"The first object was rectangular in shape and slightly below the ocean. The second object was circular, also slightly below the ocean. We came across a long cylindrical object that was possibly two metres long, 20 centimetres across.

"Everyone is quite hyped."

Presumably, "slightly below the ocean" means "slightly under the surface." That would be objects that have enough air inside to keep them from sinking totally, but not enough air to keep them fully above the surface - like the wing of a plane or a deflated life raft. I found the article by going through the posts on the Professional Pilots Rumour Network. Here's a recent exchange that I pieced together from that blog:

DAYGO: Reports suggest that one of the items found is a square orange coloured object. Is there any possibility this could be a life raft?

OLDOBERON: Re P3 debris siting, hopefully the rectangular orange object a slide and the circular green/grey object underside of a raft, as both objects relatively near to each other and two more objects with no details that would indicate a common source and not a very old one .

OPENDOOR: Do the life rafts have to be manually deployed?

SKYTRAX: Not really. Slide rafts would be deployed after the aircraft ditches, what we call ditching in aviation. It is done by the pilots with the clear intention to do so.
In ideal conditions aircraft floats for a while and cabin crew would open doors in armed mode. Slide rafts are deployed automatically when doors are opened in armed mode. Cabin crew would evacuate the pax on rafts, disconnect the rafts and apply sop's to survive for as long as possible and signal when activity is observed in the nearby area.
A B777 raft is large, it can fit up to 80 pax. It does have an orange canopy.....if the sea was rough it would be very hard for a raft to be afloat after 14 days, but you never know.

KOOLJACK: "We came across a long cylindrical object that was possibly two metres long, 20 centimetres across." That sounds like a portable ELT.

SKYTRAX: Sliderafts don't have elts. The plane has 2, one in the front at L1 and one at the aft. They are to be removed by the crew in emergency. They do start transmitting when [they] hit the water but for only 50hrs.

So, the "evidence" at the moment seems to indicate that they've located two empty and partially deflated life rafts, a rectangular life raft that would also serve as a slide during emergency evacuations on land, and a circular life raft that is stored aboard. But, there could be some totally different explanation -- if there were just more facts to work with.

On the other hand, USA Today reported 3 minutes ago that

Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razar said Monday that a new analysis of electronic data shows that the Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 with 239 people aboard "ended" in a remote area of the Indian ocean and indicated there were no survivors.

Just before the prime minister spoke in Kuala Lumpur, the airlines sent a brief text message to family members of the passengers saying, "(w)e have to assume beyond any reasonable doubt that MH370 has been lost and that none of those on board survived."

A BBC article HERE explains how the assumption/conclusion was reached. And, if you are interested, the passenger and crew manifest can be viewed by clicking HERE.

March 23, 2014 - So, another day has gone by without any aircraft or ships spotting any debris from Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370 in the middle of the south Indian Ocean. But, this morning we have news that a French satellite reportedly recorded debris in the same general area where the Chinese and Australian satellites previously recorded objects in the water. Unfortunately, the French satellite images have not yet been made public. Nor do we know when the images were recorded.

While the subject of the missing airliner might seem to be "off topic" here, in many ways it is very much "on topic," if the "topic" is considered to be psychology and how people react to mysteries that aren't immediately solved. The media, conspiracy theorists, amateur detectives, nut cases, and the terminally paranoid are endlessly producing theories about the missing plane, just they way they produced theories about the anthrax attacks. Many seem to be blaming their favorite boogie man. Plus the matter isn't helped by the fact that the authorities are not releasing all the information they have, and occasionally someone in authority makes a mistake in what they tell the public.

"Anonymous/DXer" seems to be desperately trying to pin the blame on his favorite boogie man, Yazid Sufaat, who "DXer" is still arguing had something to do with the anthrax attacks of 2001. And, if some screwball tabloid prints a story that seems to support his beliefs, that is BIG NEWS for him. For example, Britain's Daily Sunday Star printed a story that the plane had been headed toward the island of Diego Garcia to execute a suicide crash into American facilities there, 9/11 style:

Diego Garcia’s US airbase houses 1,400 workers and was used as a CIA “black site” to hold captured Islamic terror suspects.

The remote island is also said to have been used for “extraordinary rendition” flights, in which terrorist figures were transported around the world.

Internet conspiracy theorists backed claims that a hijacker may have been trying to fly there.

Ah! It's a theory that is backed and supported by Internet conspiracy theorists. That is definitely worth making it a headline story. If you've got nothing better to do.

If you read the arguments on the Professional Pilots Rumour Network (PPRUNE), they have all kinds of theories.

Personally, I'm not really trying to promote any theory. Nor am I really interested in any specific theory. I'm just trying to understand what's going on. Mostly, I've been trying to find some solid information which would explain why they are searching for Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370 in the middle of the Indian Ocean. On Friday, I didn't find out why they were searching there, but I think I found out why they aren't providing details about why they are searching there.

On the Professional Pilots Rumour Network, "AndyJS" from Birminham, England, asked this at 18:07 GMT on the 22nd:

I don't understand why they released information about the final "handshake" [at 8:11 a.m.] but not the others.

It would have made sense not to have revealed information about any of them for security reasons maybe, but once they released information about the 8:11 handshake it seems odd that they didn't do the same for the others.

And at 18:34 "RichardC10" replied at 18:34 GMT:

The final handshake/ping data had to be released to convince everyone that the aeroplane was far South (or North) and definitely not in the South China Sea. After that there was no benefit to the investigators in releasing extra information, it would just lead to more spam in the e-mail accounts of NTSB, Boeing, Inmarsat, the Malaysian Authorities etc. etc.

Ah! Okay! If true, that explains why I couldn't find any official information about the "pings" at 2:11, 3:11, 4:11, 5:11, 6:11 and 7:11 a.m. All I could find was someone asking about those "pings," and I found articles and posts which seemed to use the question as if it was an official answer, instead of someone looking for an actual answer. I also found information which vaguely explained that a Malaysian military radar contact with an unidentified aircraft (because its responder was turned off) at 2:14 a.m. was confirmed by a satellite "ping" to be Flight MH370, since the distances match.

The way I'd initially understood those "pings" was based upon a story in the Montreal Gazette, which said the last "ping" recorded from flight MH370 was at 1:07 a.m. on the 8th. There was supposed to be a "ping" every half hour. But, the "ping" scheduled for 1:37 a.m. did not occur. And there were no more "pings" until the satellite received a "faint ping" at 8:11 a.m.

Now it appears there was never any "faint ping," there were loud and clear automatic "pings" at roughly hourly intervals from 2:11 a.m. until 8:11 a.m., when the last automatic "ping" was recorded. And it was the 2:11 a.m. "ping" that verified the Malaysia military radar contact of an unidentified aircraft heading west over the Strait of Malacca. Those pings, while not "faint," were the equivalent of unacknowledged handshakes. Here's how the Hindustan Times describes those "pings":

The data consists of attempts by an Inmarsat satellite to identify a broad area where the plane might be in case a messaging system aboard the plane should need to connect with the satellite, said the official. The official compared the location attempts, called a "handshake," to someone driving around with their cellphone not in use. As the phone passes from the range of one cellphone tower to another, the towers note that the phone is in range in case messages need to be sent.

So the "pings" were the satellite detecting that the plane's ACARS system was in range and available to be used. Here's how a TV station in the United Arab Emirates explains the "pings":

Based on the hourly connections with the plane, described by a US official as a "handshake," the satellite knows at what angle to tilt its antenna to be ready to receive a message from the plane should one be sent.

So, the data recorded on the satellite gives the angle from the satellite to the plane. The satellite is in a "stationary orbit" 22,223 miles over the equator. The up-down angle can be determined, but not the side to side angle. So, the distance to the plane's ACARS system can be computed via triangulation, but not the direction.

The satellite does its "pinging" hourly at 11 minutes past the hour. Like a cell phone tower, it notes which systems are in range. When turned on, the plane's ACARS system does its transmissions every half hour, at 7 and 37 minutes past the hour. The last transmission from the plane was at 1:07 a.m. It failed to do its scheduled transmission at 1:37 a.m. But the ACARS system was still detectable by the satellite every hour at 11 minutes after the hour until the last signal was detected at 8:11 a.m.

Wow! I finally understand what was going on! I understand why they're looking in the middle of the south Indian Ocean. That's where the calculation based upon the hourly "pings" between the satellite and the turned off ACARS system indicate the plane is most likely to have been. The only alternative is for it to have been over land far to the north, and that doesn't seem possible without someone spotting it on radar or visually.

So, I'm changing the confidence level for my hypothesis that the plane went down in the Gulf of Thailand or South China Sea from 5% to 1%.

I don't have any vested interest in where the plane went down or why it disappeared in the first place. I just want to understand the data. Now I think I do.

Another area of very heavy thinking last week involved me trying to figure out exactly what Professor Greene was talking about in the on-line course about Space, Time & Einstein on the WorldScienceU.com web site. I understand time dilation, okay, I think. To confirm it, I created a new web page about it HERE. The idea is that if I can explain it to others and get them to understand, that means I also understand it. I think just about anyone should be able to understand my explanation. I may add some drawings, if I can find the time.

Meanwhile, the part of the course that seems to have nearly everyone else confused is also still confusing to me. It has to do with an alien moving between "slices of time." I think it requires a thorough understanding of theoretical higher mathematics, which I do not have. But, maybe I can learn to understand it enough to explain to others why I find this explanation from the professor to be not understandable:

The point I made in lecture does not have to do with what the alien will see. Instead, it has to do with what events belong on the alien's NOW slice. These two concepts are different. At a given moment, you don't see what is on your NOW slice. Why? It takes some amount of time for light to travel from one location in space to your eye, so you only ever see objects that belong on now-slices for earlier moments in time.

So, the stunning conclusion we reached in the lecture is not that the alien will see, say, your future. Rather, the conclusion is that events that we consider to be in our future would belong on the alien's NOW slice, even though before the alien got on his bike, our NOW slice and his NOW slice agreed completely, they were the same.

THAT'S the marvel of this thought experiment.

If that's not perfectly clear, try reading Minkowski's explanation of spacetime.

I think I need to get back to working on the sequel to my sci-fi novel.

All prior Thoughts and Comments are also available.
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References:

The FBI's summary report of the Amerithrax case
The revised version of the FBI' summary report of the Amerithrax case
Search warrants and attachments to the Summary report from the DOJ's web site
The 2,720 pages of supplementary files for the Amerithrax case in the FBI's "vault"
Dr. Bruce Ivins' emails while at Ft. Detrick from USAMRIID's web site
NAS "Review of the Scientific Approaches Used During the FBI's Investigation of the Anthrax Attacks of 2001"
HistoryCommons.org - Timeline of the 2001 Anthrax Attacks
Edited version of the Hatfill v Ashcroft et al lawsuit Court Docket
Edited version of the Hatfill v Foster/Vanity Fair/Readers Digest Court Docket
Edited version of the Hatfill v The New York Times Court Docket
Edited version of the Maureen Stevens vs The United States lawsuit Court Docket (with full depositions)
Edited version of the Maureen Stevens vs Battelle Memorial, et al lawsuit Court Docket
UCLA's "Disease Detectives" site about the anthrax outbreak of 2001
Frederick Police Department's report on Ivins' Suicide
Report of the Expert Behavioral Analysis Panel

Click HERE to view references from 2005 through 2008.
Click HERE to view pre-2005 references.

NOTE: The (X) following references below includes a link to my copy of the articles, which may or may not be visible on-line.

2009

2010

2011

2014

Hartford Courant - April 14, 2014 - "Oxford Woman, 94, An Unlikely Victim Of Anthrax Attacks" (X)