Some news reports about people making phone calls or even typing on phones as they drive and the various laws against actually leading to roads that are even more unsafe. Is this a surprise? Really, is it? What did people think was going to happen. The texting takes place out of sight of passersby so as to avoid it being reported to the police or spotted by various patrol cars and is therefore even more unsafe than done in a more sensible manner.
Its sort of like opening a candy wrapper in a theater. Get the darned thing open and get it done with, don't try to sneak it open slowly. That just prolongs the agony!
Now as to speeding. For years enforcement of speeding regulations particularly the arbitrary and capricious ones has been to little avail. It does not get bad drivers it only snags random drivers. One might just as well have a cop toss a pair of dice and issue a citation based on that result. Most "cherry patches" are spots on the road where motorists travel at a perfectly safe but technically illegal speed. Cops issue tickets, the motorist gets sore and loses money but the roads are not particularly safer. Usually the best thing that could be done would be to raise the speed limit sign to what most people drive but that would not bring in revenue so it is not going to be done.
Attention to ones driving is important. When learning to drive few can face the sensory overload of a radio playing. After some practice, the radio and some conversation are almost automatic. Most accidents are due to a momentary distraction such as focusing on an ash-tray or simply having the mind wander from boredom. Very few accidents are really due to speeding drivers. So now there is publicity about texting or telephoning. Egads... one need only look at the modern world. People are living in a merged word: leisure and work are not really separated. Someone can be strolling along, sipping a latte and receiving a report from a construction site. Many people now conduct business meetings at coffee shops rather than offices. There is no "off" for cell phones for many people. Of course this annoys a great many people who don't like living inside someone else's phone-booth but that seems to be what modern life has become. Many calls are too long and too loud. Restaurant patrons get annoyed, pedestrians even get annoyed. Sports books used to ban cell phones but they rarely do anymore. Blackjack players step away briefly but more and more cell phones are a way of life. Many people no longer even have a "home phone" or "landline".
Do legislators really think a law will change driver's behaviors? We have sterile cockpit rules for airline pilots, do you think we will have such rules for car interiors? Its absurd! How could anyone have ever thought for a minute that such Drving While Texting regulations would ever make things better?
Wednesday, September 29, 2010
Wednesday, September 22, 2010
RMS Titanic Helmsman error claim debunked.
An author of a work of fiction that weaves events about the Titanic into her recently published novel has stated that a long concealed family secret was that the helmsman initially turned in the wrong direction and that Ismay, White Star representative, ordered the Captain to continue sailing after the collision.
Now it is true that in sailing ships the tiller would go in one direction so as to put the rudder over and turn the ship in the opposite direction. In steamships the wheel was turned in the direction of the desired turn. This family secret is nonsense.
First the iceberg had just turned and was so black that it was close aboard by the time the lookout spotted it and the direction of a turn was rather meaningless. Indeed, it was probably an error to attempt any turn at all since hitting it head on would generally be best. The real error was not the direction of the turn but the fact of the turn. The ship did begin to answer her helm but then soon stopped the turn. This was undoubtedly not because the helm had again been put hard over in the opposite direction but because the simultaneous order of Full Astern had been carried out. Once those mighty propellers were put into reverse, the cavitation would have created such turbulence over the rudder that it would no longer be generating any force. Think of a rudder as a vertical hydrofoil. As with any airplane wing, it stalls in turbulence and only generates a resulting moment when the flow is laminar. Its not the weight of the rudder that matters, its size and shape and maintaining a laminar flow that are important. Once the rudder was surrounded by bubbles, its effectiveness was lost.
Full Astern would have been good. Trying to turn aside might have been good. Ordering both evasive actions doomed the ship since the iceberg then scraped along the side of the vessel. The metalurgical flaws, the extremely cold water temperature helped turn the scrape into a mortal wound, but the wound might well have been sustainable if the order had been simply Full Astern with no attempt to turn the vessel or if the order had been an attempt to turn the vessel but no order to put the engines into reverse.
Of course the Captain's failure to take effective action after the collision was bad. He had climbed to the top of his profession without ever having had any incidents. Indeed all steamer traffic across the North Atlantic had only resulted in four deaths before the Titanic. Most lifeboats were used to ferry passengers to nearby vessels. It was never contemplated that all passengers would have to board lifeboats. Had the Titanic been a cargo ship, the number two would be added to the number of the crew, then twice the number of lifeboats would have to be provided that would carry that sum and then two additional boats would have been added. The British regulations for cargo ships embraced the concepts of damage to lifeboats and a need to place the entire crew into lifeboats. The regulations for passenger vessels only foresaw minimal lifeboats to ferry passengers to safety. Of course the regulations were written by a Ministry that suffered the same "revolving door" that our defense contractors and defense agencies have.
Every April the morse code signal is still sent: RMS Titanic. RIP.
Now it is true that in sailing ships the tiller would go in one direction so as to put the rudder over and turn the ship in the opposite direction. In steamships the wheel was turned in the direction of the desired turn. This family secret is nonsense.
First the iceberg had just turned and was so black that it was close aboard by the time the lookout spotted it and the direction of a turn was rather meaningless. Indeed, it was probably an error to attempt any turn at all since hitting it head on would generally be best. The real error was not the direction of the turn but the fact of the turn. The ship did begin to answer her helm but then soon stopped the turn. This was undoubtedly not because the helm had again been put hard over in the opposite direction but because the simultaneous order of Full Astern had been carried out. Once those mighty propellers were put into reverse, the cavitation would have created such turbulence over the rudder that it would no longer be generating any force. Think of a rudder as a vertical hydrofoil. As with any airplane wing, it stalls in turbulence and only generates a resulting moment when the flow is laminar. Its not the weight of the rudder that matters, its size and shape and maintaining a laminar flow that are important. Once the rudder was surrounded by bubbles, its effectiveness was lost.
Full Astern would have been good. Trying to turn aside might have been good. Ordering both evasive actions doomed the ship since the iceberg then scraped along the side of the vessel. The metalurgical flaws, the extremely cold water temperature helped turn the scrape into a mortal wound, but the wound might well have been sustainable if the order had been simply Full Astern with no attempt to turn the vessel or if the order had been an attempt to turn the vessel but no order to put the engines into reverse.
Of course the Captain's failure to take effective action after the collision was bad. He had climbed to the top of his profession without ever having had any incidents. Indeed all steamer traffic across the North Atlantic had only resulted in four deaths before the Titanic. Most lifeboats were used to ferry passengers to nearby vessels. It was never contemplated that all passengers would have to board lifeboats. Had the Titanic been a cargo ship, the number two would be added to the number of the crew, then twice the number of lifeboats would have to be provided that would carry that sum and then two additional boats would have been added. The British regulations for cargo ships embraced the concepts of damage to lifeboats and a need to place the entire crew into lifeboats. The regulations for passenger vessels only foresaw minimal lifeboats to ferry passengers to safety. Of course the regulations were written by a Ministry that suffered the same "revolving door" that our defense contractors and defense agencies have.
Every April the morse code signal is still sent: RMS Titanic. RIP.
Sunday, September 19, 2010
Extreme Irony
A manned helicopter crashed near Pike's Peak while filming the unmanned Autonomous Audi climbing the famed peak.
Extreme irony perhaps. Extreme pain for the pilot. Extremely interesting comment on our times when sensors and computers can outperform humans at complex tasks in demanding situations.
For decades military jets have really been beyond the ability of pilots thus paving the way for unmanned aircraft that can pull g's and not black out or gray out, but automobile driving?
Helicopter flying at high altitude with attention on the camera's field of focus proved beyond the task of humans. Climbing Pike's Peak without a driver was fine.
Extreme irony perhaps. Extreme pain for the pilot. Extremely interesting comment on our times when sensors and computers can outperform humans at complex tasks in demanding situations.
For decades military jets have really been beyond the ability of pilots thus paving the way for unmanned aircraft that can pull g's and not black out or gray out, but automobile driving?
Helicopter flying at high altitude with attention on the camera's field of focus proved beyond the task of humans. Climbing Pike's Peak without a driver was fine.
Thursday, September 16, 2010
Celluloid Sleuths and the JonBenet Ramsey case.
I've previously taken my readers along a twisted trail of fictional sleuths from various novels to arrive at a depiction of the personality of the intruder. I now present my readers with a brief trip to the cinema so that they may discern from certain films some cultural aspects of this horrendous crime. The films are: Human Traffic, Slacker, Stella Does Tricks and Trainspotting.
First, I'd like to borrow some of the vocabulary of what is politely referred to in Las Vegas as the "entertainment" industry. In that world there exists a certain hierarchy for the ladies. Many of the women desire to work without an agency being involved since an agency simply takes too much of their money. The problem is that if a woman works without an agency she is usually more likely to come to the attention of hotel security and vice cops. Women who drape themselves around the expensive bars of upscale hotels would generally not have an agency but no matter how well dressed they are, they will indeed get noticed by casino security personnel simply because they are alone. After all, they want to be noticed by males who are potential customers but there is no way to cloak their activities from non-customers. Casinos tend to worry about their gaming licenses and prefer that casino guests spend their money at the gaming tables and not inside their hotel rooms. So it is in the casino's interest to have the guests needs met by agency personnel who simply go directly to the hotel room and do not troll for clients on the casino property.
The actions of hotel security personnel tend to make women generally get what is referred to as hobbyists. A hobbyist, unlike what most people might think, is a man who is very often involved with prostitutes. It is a term that does not involve occasional partaking of commercially obtained pleasures. Escorts most often deal with hobbyists but do not prefer them. Escorts are often of the opinion that society condemns them to deal with hobbyists. Stella Does Tricks reveals the societal forces that trap young Galwegian girls into perpetually being On The Game. Prostitutes who escape the streets to become escorts feel trapped into perpetually dealing with hobbyists. Society condemns the prostitute and the prostitute condemns the hobbyists.
How many think the intruder in the JonBenet Ramsey homicide was a hobbyist? If he was not some sort of hobbyist, then why should his dna ever show up in a database? Perhaps the sexual activity was a whim perhaps it was planned but still more in the way of an experiment than a routine practice. Perhaps the sexual activity was more akin to rubbing salt in a wound or keying a car. It might impose far more pain on the sufferer than it provides pleasure to the perpetrator. If the perpetrator did not derive that much pleasure from his experimentation that evening, he may not be tripped up by his dna at some future date simply because his acts that night do not indicate an ongoing lifestyle.
In Canada and the UK the term "Baby Stroll" is used to indicate an area wherein very youthful prostitutes make themselves available but the age is not as young as some perverts seem to prefer. I would imagine that perverts have a variety of preferences when it comes to age or ongoing relationships versus one night stands. A pervert whose motive is homicide and whose primary goal is not the sexual perversion but is instead the act of killing his victim may be forced by circumstances beyond his control to make choices that are less than what his preferences would be. Pedophiles may be at times desperate but they still seem able to select victims with some degree of care. Even if it is a case of snatch one victim from a group of children and then drive off at high speed, the pedophile will still have an intended
destination and will drive in a manner that does not invite premature police attention. Often the inside of car door will have its handle removed so his victim can not escape during the drive to a place of seclusion and disposal.
So if we take these general principles gleaned from an amalgam of newspaper headlines and then try to apply them to the JBR murder, we run into great problems. There were hundreds if not thousands of far more vulnerable victims available to him. The degree of risk taken in obtaining his victim is rather high. There was a taunting note left at the scene which is at least a scintilla of evidence that no self-respecting pervert would voluntarily leave at the scene of a crime. The intruder chose a victim that would surely lead to intense media coverage no matter what other events happened to make the news that day. Is this the behavior of a pedophile? Perhaps it is. Yet perhaps it is not. What conclusions can we draw? How safe are we that such conclusions are even valid much less correct ones?
One liquor store gets robbed, but that night dozens do not get robbed despite perhaps being in worse neighborhoods or having even more lax security measures in place that night. So what conclusions can we draw? Of all the women in the bar the night Natalee Holloway came to grief, many women were far less sober and far less aware of potential danger. So should we conclude that sobriety and traveler savvy are hindrances to one's safety? That would be an absurd conclusion but it is perhaps just as valid as any other to be drawn from the facts that were presented in the newspapers.
What conclusions can we draw from the unspeakable activities in the basement of the Ramsey home that night. Now, we don't really know if the media reports are strictly accurate or not. We don't know about the use of an implement and we also do not know for sure about the occurrence of digital penetration. Sure we can speculate endlessly about brush handles and latex gloves, but we don't know and in many respects we really do not want to know. Or perhaps it is more correct to say that we do want to know about it but we don't want to actually be forced to think about it.
Central tenets of a crime are often wrong. What was once thought to be a "closing time robbery of a fast food joint" becomes a "boyfriend thing" involving the murdered manager thus rendering years of investigative actions futile. A tragic hunting accident often becomes a totally different situation once a large insurance policy is discovered to exist. Sometimes it takes a subsequent tragic firearms accident before that bereaved spouse transitions from tragic figure to prime suspect. A young boy's tragic drowning in an icy stream while on a family outing in the woods can take on a radically new meaning when a letter arrives at police headquarters advising them of the existence of a huge insurance policy on the deceased kid but no insurance at all on either of the parents or on any of the other children in the family.
The famed Craigslist killer is often viewed from the aspect of a sex addict or a sex fetishist but in reality the primary theme of his crimes was robbery in order to meet gambling debts and he was merely selecting prostitutes based on their vulnerability and ease of contact. The Craigslist killer was really the work of a hobbyist who had to bring down his gambling indebtedness promptly and in turning to robbery to do it, he selected a social milieu with which he was familiar but found himself to be a foolishly inexperienced robber and a very unlucky one. The sexual aspects of the crimes made headlines but in each incident as soon as the hotel room door was shut the Craigslist killer turned the activity into a robbery, not rape. Oh sure, you can still classify his crime spree as some sort of sexually motivated chain of events because to a large degree his losses at Blackjack were sexually related. It is not necessary to count cards at Blackjack and at Foxwoods it is particularly difficult to count cards. However, it is necessary to look at the dealer's up-card and then your own hand and to concentrate on the game, even if one is following the most simplified Basic Strategy that there is. The Craigslist killer seems fixated on females breasts and was described after the murder as throwing down hundreds of dollars while staring at a woman's breast so intently that she put her handbag in front of her as a visual barrier. With such a sense of priorities in life, it is no wonder that the Craigslist killer came to grief. His impulsive helping himself to a pair of panties as a momento is in keeping with his sex fetishist orientation, but the crime at hand was always robbery. The Craigslist killer achieved wide renown for his good looks, achievements in life, sex drive, sexual inclinations and sexual fetishes but in reality he was nothing but a two-bit stickup artist who really didn't know the first thing about conducting a robbery and who therefore quickly came to grief in his newly chosen profession. His "cyber-stupidity" sealed his fate since his telephone and email contacts with his potential victims were from his own equipment without any attempts to cloak his electronic identity or do anything to shield his tracks from a prompt official inquiry. In reality, his fate was actually sealed when he selected as his victim a beautiful but tough and very street-smart girl who would not only never give in to any mugger but who would surely never for a moment even consider giving in to some preppy punk. The Craiglist killer might have known this if he had ever interacted with a woman but it seems likely that his interactions were solely with their anatomy. Its not just the solution of crimes that turn on critically important points, its also the commission of crimes that can hinge on what would otherwise be a minor issue. In short, crimes are not always what they appear to be at first glance. Appearances often shift on the basis of one salient fact or at least the perceptions that we have about one salient fact. It is our analysis of a crime scene that can be woefully defective.
If a young attractive female advertising the availability of a massage in her hotel room is killed in the hotel doorway, the newspapers may focus on her youth and beauty and the intended massage but the cops will focus on the fact that the crime took place in the doorway area before she removed any clothing or discussed any fees that were involved. Perhaps we should include the JonBenet Ramsey murder as a crime in which the press immediately lept to a sexual motivation when perhaps that was not the primary situation that was involved. This leap is perhaps normal but its also one motivated by the economics of the tabloids. Its a very profitable leap to make and therefore the press is prone to make that leap well before there is sufficient evidence to support the conclusion. The tabloids are also prone to cling very tenaciously to such an ill-founded assumption because of the profitability that is inherent in their business.
So what are the items that indicate the murder of JonBenet Ramsey was anything other than the work of some sexual pervert? The note, the focus on the family, the time spent inside the house, the preparation time. All these items provide us with considerable doubt as to the nature of the crime. Do hobbyists leave notes? If he were a hobbyist, wouldn't his DNA be in some database by now? Sure, some perpetrators escape DNA testing and sometimes even those defendants whose DNA is taken do not actually make it into the various databases, but by now we would expect the suspect to have been tripped up by his dna. A hobbyist as it relates to such very young girls would be a repeat offender though not necessarily with any of the various trappings of the JonBenet Ramsey case.
One wonders if such trappings were indeed an integral part of that night's adventure for the intruder. He may have enjoyed various aspects of the evening so much that his more risky behavior was altered and he no longer leaves fantasy notes that call undue attention to his crimes.
I just wonder if his real goal was to hurt the parents rather than to hurt JonBenet. In such a scenario, there might be little in the way of successor crimes much less successor crimes of a sexual nature. Let us do what an investigator should not do: speculate and thereby project his own thoughts into the investigation rather than merely following the evidence.
Of course in a way we really are indeed continuing to focus on the evidence. Its simply that we are focusing on the negative. There is plenty of precedent for focusing on negatives. Why did the dog not bark in the night? Why did the insurance beneficiary not get changed? Why were there no fingerprints? Usually such negatives are considered at or about the time at which the crime took place. Here we are considering a negative after over a decade has elapsed. In that decade, no Prime Suspects have emerged other than in the tabloids or amongst the internet sleuths. The tabloids have investigative resources but no motivation to utilize them wisely. The internet sleuths have limited resources, unlimited dedication but absolutely no access to the case files. So it sort of makes sense for those who are without access to the case files to focus on a negative for they are already confronted by a great void.
In focusing on the negatives, we turn our attention to why has there been no CODIS hits? Oh sure, the perpetrator could have been so ecstatic over what he did to a helpless six year old girl that he wrapped his car around a telephone pole later that night and died in some simple little auto crash long ago written off as an accident of no consequence. That is always a possibility, but what is more likely. We know that perverts re-offend. We know that no amount of couch time is going to change his desires. No one has been able to find a trace of the intruder. Not in his modus operandi and not in his dna from crime scenes or arrestees. Did he have some instantaneous changing of his spots? We would be grateful if he were spontaneously cured of his evil desires and therefore would never re-offend, but deep in our hearts we know that does not happen. Its been more than a decade and he is not showing up in databases anywhere! Deep in our troubled sleep, sleuths fear that his dna will never appear in a database.
Perhaps we can explain this negative by reaching a conclusion that will disturb us greatly. Should we avoid the task for that reason? Many sleuths have imagined the intruder as some well disciplined type with the nerves of steel possessed by a jewel thief. In reality what did this joker do? He entered a house that was akin to a crackerjack box and left scuff marks on the wall doing it. He took a stun gun along but all he really did was briefly play with it. Was he foolish enough to think he might need the stun gun to do battle with a sleeping six year old girl? Or was he equipping himself to do battle with an irate homeowner who might have awakened in the middle of the night? Surely an experienced burglar would know to use the time making tracks rather than being combative with the homeowner. How young an intruder would we be dealing with in order for him to need a stun gun to escape a sleepy middle-aged man? He left a weird note which surely is not the sign of an experienced burglar and most definitely is not known to be associated with pedophiles. He allowed a scream to be heard and apparently he left promptly because of that scream perhaps dropping the steel grate noisily as he did so. None of this demonstrates his great skill or great experience as a burglar. He might imagine that it does indeed demonstrate his great skill and his great daring but surely he is merely lucky to have done his evil deeds in the jurisdiction of the Boulder Police Department and lucky that he selected as an opponent a sleeping six year old girl. I don't see any skill or bravery or even basic competence in this crime. I see stealth, cowardice, evil, incompetence, stupidity even childishness. I do not see skill or daring. I see bumbling incompetence. His continued lack of detection is due solely to the greater bumbling and greater incompetence of the authorities, but the obsessions of the BPD do not confer on the perpetrator any sort of skill or daring.
If this great big negative of over a decade of no CODIS hits is staring us in the face, what do we do? Ignore it? Use that lack of later crimes as evidence that he is not a pervert? Perverts re-offend. He appears not to have re-offended. Isn't this sufficient for one of those syllogism thingies? Or does the logic fail us? All we really know is that we have not found his dna at any crime scene, we don't know that it was not in fact at several crime scenes. Perhaps he has even become adept at hiding the evidence but has continued to be a pervert. We do not know. The only thing that we do know is that time has gone by during which we have not detected his dna at crime scenes and arrests have been made yet no routine dna sampling has yielded his profile. Or perhaps not. Perhaps this negative is a negative for a valid reason. He has not re-offended because he is not a pervert. The goal of that night was not sexual. We know there was no ransom, no two gentlemen, no truth behind the pseudo-political intrigue suggested by factions being foreign. Perhaps this was a crime to teach the parents a lesson that would haunt them forever. Or perhaps he was simply striking out and this had very little to do with the Ramseys.
Was JonBenet a Pedophile's Dream? Yes, I would imagine so. Does that mean that a pedophile killed her? No. Teenage girls can be killed simply because they are working a late night shift in a convenience store. Yes, they are young and beautiful and its a terrible shame if they are killed during some penny ante robbery but the motivation of the killer is financial. Youth and beauty were simply factors that happened to be present. Some armed robber may decide to take advantage of the "extra added attraction" offered him by the lone clerk in a convenience store being a young attractive female but any resultant abduction, rape or murder is really a consequence of his behaviors as an armed robber. Lou Smit realized that the Boulder Police had become fixated on parental guilt and he urged the police to realize that if they were making no progress in that direction they perhaps should look elsewhere. Well, I would like to invoke the wisdom of Lou Smit once again and make an attempt to live up to his legacy: if we have not been making progress on the pedophile target, perhaps we should shift our focus rather than remain so steadfastly convinced that we should be seeking a pedophile. We all admire a dogged pursuit but we admire it most when it finally strikes pay dirt. If that pay dirt is eluding us, perhaps it because what started out as promising color did not turn into the mother lode, the vein simply petered out. It was certainly more correct to consider the crime to be the work of a pedophile than that of the parents but it may not have been entirely correct to assume that the crime was predominantly motivated by some pervert's pedophilia.
What scenarios would support this crime if we downplay the pedophile issue? I've previously posted about cultural issues such as a male attendee at the Family Circle Dinner reacting to Patsy's generosity in buying copious quantities of Chinese food to supplement the obviously inadequate buffet table or some male who may have over-reacted to being asked to clear away his dinner plate. Some men would commit an "honor killing" if their daughters did such things as initiate a conversation with a male, smile at an unrelated male or give an order to any male. Demeaning a male in public by asking him to do "women's work" of clearing away or washing his dinner plate could well be an act that in the viewpoint of the intruder merits extreme punishment and the intruder might have a variety of reasons for selecting the exact manner of that punishment as being the death of the daughter. Those who might argue that such values do not pertain to Boulder, Colorado need only look at the resurgence of Belly Dancers and Hookah Clubs. Its not just the province of Dark Cabaret wherein belly dancers are newly popular. Mens clubs and hookah clubs are booming and amidst the perfumed tobacco a great many males in America are finding a re-affirmation of the Middle Eastern views towards females and their roles in society.
Would displaced anger be a sufficient explanation? If someone were angry at John Ramsey would they feel inclined to kill his daughter? Perhaps. It might be simply a cowardly way of choosing a weaker target or it might simply be a weaker target who also offered a degree of entertainment potential as well. It could be that the intruder was inexperienced with pedophilia because he was inexperienced with any sexual activity. Social misfits abound. The ransom note appears to be the work of someone who exists largely in a fantasy world and this may simply be due to his inability to thrive in the real world. There can also be a cultural inability to thrive. A male who would be competent in one culture may be incapable of adjusting his views and behaviors to our society. Someone angry at the Ramseys for some reason that to us is trivial and absurd could well select JonBenet as his target due to his inability to relate to adult females. Its not so much that he has a sexual interest in little girls, he just lacks any ability to confront an adult female and therefore selects JonBenet as a target since that would be reasonable in his own culture.
What weight should we give to this phantom non-evidence? Is the lack of his dna an indication of our investigative failures more than an indication of his not being a pervert? It is indeed possible that when we are most in need of Lou Smit's dogged determination we should indeed stay the course and not waiver from the pedophile focus. There is indeed great danger for us to ignore the pedophile aspects of this crime. Does our level of frustration allow us to take risks with this investigation? Does it compel us to take such risks?
Homicide 101 is a term used to keep the focus on what the speaker considers the most likely rule to follow. Many homicide detectives will focus on what they consider to be a primary rule. If someone comes to them about a possible murder, they will often tell the informant: don't tell me about family feuds or recent threats made in the heat of anger at some family gathering, don't tell me any thing at all about emotions between the parties. Just tell me who benefits financially from his death! The death threat made in the heat of anger is often not as valuable to a homicide investigator as the terms of the will or the existence of a life insurance policy. People cool down after stressful moments but greed persists. And nothing spurs more action than money. Some investigators therefore consider money to be the prominent Homicide 101 motivator. Often they are correct. Often they are not! The basic tenets of Homicide 101 are at all times the province of a particular homicide investigator as modified by the bureaucratic and budgetary limitations of his department. It is therefore a critical choice to select priorities. And of necessity we must each select such priorities according to the dictates of our conscience.
We can not discern any sort of financial role in the JonBenet Ramsey murder, so should we turn to a culturally induced rage felt by a man with poor social skills and thus a culturally imposed inadequate sex life? This might be tempting but it is clearly not a proper sleuthing technique, yet it may be all that we have available to us. So what cultural influences are likely? An Islamic or Middle Eastern male might well and truly be insulted by Patsy's actions at the Family Dinner. Or are we perhaps concerned with a sub-culture that is closer to home? Perhaps you've seen the movie about disaffected directionless youth in Austin, Texas. Slacker. Are the Boulder area youth condemned to low level jobs angry at reading about a Billion Dollar Sales mark? Does someone whose world is constrained by hopeless poverty strike out at a whimsically selected target who is briefly seen as representing great wealth? For some, life is akin to being a valet parking attendant. One gets to drive all these great expensive automobiles but then must face a bus ride home that is of such great duration that the thoughts that most intrude into the sleep deprived brain are the twin visions of utter economic despair yoked to a constant exposure to opulence. Slacker was a movie that presented those with "apathy,
aimlessness and lack of ambition" as somewhat admirable persons. Now one might think that such character traits as apathy, aimlessness and lack of ambition would be found on the FBI profiler's list of traits of the innocent. Recall perhaps that the movie only follows each character for a few minutes at a time and presents the audience with but a small slice of their lives. Yes, such events as are depicted are indeed indicative of their lives and their values, but it is by no means a central tenet of psychology that someone who is apathetic can not also be someone who becomes enraged from time to time. The film Slacker follows some disaffected youths around Austin but it does not represent the film as a confining portrayal of the youth's lives. Someone who is generally apathetic is not immune from a sudden storm of emotions at encountering a newspaper clipping relating to a billion dollars. Indeed, I would think it would be someone beset with apathy about the business world who would not even note the difference between a billion dollars in sales and a billion dollars in profit. Perhaps a certain apathy about the business world might allow someone to think that a ransom demand of $118,000 was a reasonable sum. And perhaps someone who leads an aimless life and lacks ambition might come to the attention of the medical or judicial segments of Boulder society. It should perhaps be recalled that the mental health professionals referred to the area as South Boulder and it should perhaps also be remembered that aimless youth who occasionally wind up in juvenile court often get assigned to menial tasks such as Trash Collecting. Perhaps such aimless youths just might refer to themselves from time to time as South Boulder Trash Collectors. Such a designation would form an alarming acronym: SBTC.
Trainspotting was a study of drug addiction and poverty amidst the culturally rich environs of Edinburgh. Lest anyone suggest that its themes are not applicable to Boulder, let us not forget that it was actually filmed in Glasgow and so surely its lessons are not at all limited geographically. Boulder was at the time undergoing a software revolution as computer programmers flocked to the city and firms prospered. Amidst all that new found wealth in the People's Republic of Boulder there are always those who are left behind. Think perhaps of the student who took mechanical drawing in school but graduates to a world in which draftsmen have been replaced by the mouse click of an AutoCad program. He was encouraged to take mechanical drawing in school and was therefore trained to be a draftsman and expected to be a draftsman. He was not trained to use AutoCad. The Ramsey company, Access Graphics, was a Value Added Retailer, a firm that bought high end unix boxes, high end monitors and the AutoCad program. What Access Graphics really sold was the combination of those items in a seamlessly integrated turn it on and use it configuration. A newspaper article talking about a Billion Dollars and AutoCad just might stimulate rage in a youth condemned to poverty by suddenly finding out that he is a draftsman in an AutoCad world. Sure his rage might better be addressed to the archaic school system or to the teacher's union that perpetuated an archaic curriculum, but we can not impose upon such youth a proper direction for their rage. We can only deal with the directions that rage in fact takes. If someone expresses his rage against redundancy by reacting to a newspaper article mentioning AutoCad we are shocked at such stupidity but have no option to remind the rage-filled youth that there are more sensible targets he could select and more sensible actions that he could take. Raging against one's lot in life is often a matter of private thoughts or else of thoughts and actions expressed within a particular subculture. Such rage and actions prompted by them are not the province of a carefully reasoned response guided by wisdom and experience.
You ask perhaps if the draftsman, redundant upon being graduated from high school might retrain. Sure. Many, however, see no hope and seek only drugs to escape the pain imposed upon them by a lifestyle bereft of hope. Yet when they try to escape from drugs, they find their social life implodes. Consider, once again, the movie Trainspotting: once Renton is off heroin the sexual desires return, but all his friends are still druggies and druggies no longer relate to him. Normal sexual desires return to the addict who has bravely gone cold turkey but normal sexual outlet is denied him because he is bored, depressed and socially isolated. He is therefore trapped in the inescapable. And just as any animal who is trapped, he lashes out in just about any direction. Its not so much the drugs that control his life as the drug culture that controls his life. The values of the drug culture provide an endless supply of youths whose directions and goals are warped. Would drugs per se make someone think that the ransom amount was a sensible figure? No, but the drug culture might well impair someone from re-considering the amount once it had been selected.
Or perhaps we might focus on the movie Stella Does Tricks which explores the world of young girls on the game. It is a world of working class backgrounds, lack of opportunities and artificially imposed constraints as humorously indicated in the scene wherein becoming a shop girl selling eclairs in a bakery is hopeless because society demands she have extensive training for such a menial position. These all condemn Stella to her life of being sexually exploited by her pimp and her customers but she nevertheless remains a young girl who needs love as well as sex. When her young boyfriend rents out Stella's body for enough money for him to buy heroin and then steals Stella's savings so as to keep her from leaving him, Stella realizes that this is as close to an act of love that she will ever have in her life. She is sexually exploited by middle aged men who are her customers and by a middle aged man who is her pimp, but she loves her young boyfriend and is indeed loved by him. She is sexually exploited by her need for money and by her need for love. She is trapped forever in the world of sexual exploitation by the despised middle aged men because she is trapped by the sexual exploitation of love for the boyfriend. Once there is that feeling of being trapped there is the desperation that leads to absurd decision making. Stella likes to scratch automobile paint or vandalize a side-mirror but she is not above escalating to torching the car though her escalated violence happens to be directed at someone who abused her. Not all the Stellas in this world are quite so circumspect in their application of violence. Did some young punk seeking spare change on Pearl Street get treated badly outside the doors of Access Graphics and then recognize that name in the newspaper? I have no idea, but there are indeed some males who are in Stella's situation. Indeed, one can view the situation as being worse for the male.
Access Graphics was located on Pearl Street. Ever since the late sixties Pearl Street was part of the club and concert scene. Many of the acts appearing on Pearl Street also appeared in the off-the-grid hippie haven of Nederland. And amidst the software and real estate boom in Boulder, the club scene continued unabated. So let us now consider the film, Human Traffic. It is a great representation of the drug scene and the club scene, though much of its greatness is due to the lack of any commentary or moralizing about the drug-filled club scene. Amidst the rave's glow sticks and ecstasy consumption the over-riding theme of the drug scene and the club scene is the intergenerational void and the total rejection of the work ethic. The robotic-like fast food worker only has the club scene for relief from misery and poverty. Rejection of their parents and the parent's work ethic is but a representation of the necessary rejection of all such values that are rendered archaic by being trapped in poverty. What little money that is earned in a high stress, low-level job is soaked up by the drugs needed to dull the pain of that existence. A prisoner can think that "any day now, I shall be released" but a person trapped by low wages, lack of hope and lack of options is truly a prisoner forever and does not hope to be released back into the real world. The wage slave knows that there will be no release for him. By day he is a lowly fast food robot. By night he escapes the pain of his work situation by embracing the drugs available at the raves. Come morning, there is no hope of escape, only acceptance of his fate. The lesson for us to learn is exemplified in the film's lack of condemnation. Once we accept that the youth caught up in the drug-filled club scene have utterly rejected our values then perhaps we can be more prone to embrace the horrendous acts in the Ramsey home that night as being a part of a lifestyle of a significant segment of our population.
Or perhaps we should focus on the movie: Slackers. A slacker would not be expected to get his dna into CODIS. The Slacker is not necessarily a pedophile. Its more likely The Slacker is simply lacking in direction in life and lacking in the education necessary to give him skills sufficient for a job that provides him with any sort of hope for improvement of his lot in life. The Slacker might want success but its hard to read about a Billion Dollars while slaving away at a dead-end minimum wage job. A slacker lives in a world where even an obviously forged documentation bestows real value on a urine sample because the forgery links it to an empty-headed Hollywood starlet. In a world of such perturbed values, pedophilia would hardly be exceptional. However, the full gamut of other emotions would hardly be exceptional either. Strike out at a Billionaire due to a newspaper feature? Just as rational as any other behavior in a world devoid of a work ethic or sense of values. One can not spend nights focused on the various hip nightspots wherein a drunken Hollywood starlet has vomited and then expect behavior that comports with the values of church-going worth-ethic oriented computer entrepreneurs by day. Slackers have made choices. They have made commitments!
So if we consider the molestation to be a red-herring or some sort of partial red-herring, what are we left with? A fantasy note that bespeaks a fantasy world? We can go down to the local probation office and look for perverts that were recently paroled but that may be just as sensible a direction for us to take as going to some foreign shore and looking for a non-existent faction that doesn't even pretend to be large and to represent the will of the people.
Are any of these suggested scenarios more valid than another? Recently a good many murder cases have become such darlings of internet sleuths that the police have formally pleaded for an end to false statements. Many tips called into detectives drive the investigation into wasteful directions that drain available resources. Are we doing the right thing in considering that the murder of Jonbenet Ramsey just might be a murder without an overriding pedophilia factor? We have the words of wisdom from Lou Smit echoing in our ears. We have the example of his dedication and we have the demonstrated effectiveness of his emphasis on crime scene analysis. Yet we also have that great big void: no hits in CODIS. No suspects.
Do we have an obligation to go further afield in our quest for the intruder? Internet stimulated tips about a crime can be a great hindrance to the police but often internet sleuths are the only oversight there is to a criminal investigation. I've presented several noteworthy endeavors of the film industry to convey the inner workings of certain cultures and how those cultural values can conflict with our usual views. It is for internet sleuths to find a balance between the dedicated plodding of a detective wading through the evidence and the effects of avant-garde films on our collective wisdom of alternative cultural values. Lou Smit was right. It all harks back to shoes. Its just that sometimes in order to stand in the shoes of the victim, you must try to stand in the shoes of the perpetrator as well. Seeing things from the viewpoint of a different culture can be an aid to the investigation, or it can be a senseless tangent, but what is the use of standing in someone else's shoes if we don't try to take some steps in them as well? People who feel marginalized and oppressed by society will strike out in defense of both real and imagined wrongs. Their violent acts need not be precisely rational and need not be fully in keeping with their usual and customary values. Not all sexually motivated violence in our society comes from demented perverts.
First, I'd like to borrow some of the vocabulary of what is politely referred to in Las Vegas as the "entertainment" industry. In that world there exists a certain hierarchy for the ladies. Many of the women desire to work without an agency being involved since an agency simply takes too much of their money. The problem is that if a woman works without an agency she is usually more likely to come to the attention of hotel security and vice cops. Women who drape themselves around the expensive bars of upscale hotels would generally not have an agency but no matter how well dressed they are, they will indeed get noticed by casino security personnel simply because they are alone. After all, they want to be noticed by males who are potential customers but there is no way to cloak their activities from non-customers. Casinos tend to worry about their gaming licenses and prefer that casino guests spend their money at the gaming tables and not inside their hotel rooms. So it is in the casino's interest to have the guests needs met by agency personnel who simply go directly to the hotel room and do not troll for clients on the casino property.
The actions of hotel security personnel tend to make women generally get what is referred to as hobbyists. A hobbyist, unlike what most people might think, is a man who is very often involved with prostitutes. It is a term that does not involve occasional partaking of commercially obtained pleasures. Escorts most often deal with hobbyists but do not prefer them. Escorts are often of the opinion that society condemns them to deal with hobbyists. Stella Does Tricks reveals the societal forces that trap young Galwegian girls into perpetually being On The Game. Prostitutes who escape the streets to become escorts feel trapped into perpetually dealing with hobbyists. Society condemns the prostitute and the prostitute condemns the hobbyists.
How many think the intruder in the JonBenet Ramsey homicide was a hobbyist? If he was not some sort of hobbyist, then why should his dna ever show up in a database? Perhaps the sexual activity was a whim perhaps it was planned but still more in the way of an experiment than a routine practice. Perhaps the sexual activity was more akin to rubbing salt in a wound or keying a car. It might impose far more pain on the sufferer than it provides pleasure to the perpetrator. If the perpetrator did not derive that much pleasure from his experimentation that evening, he may not be tripped up by his dna at some future date simply because his acts that night do not indicate an ongoing lifestyle.
In Canada and the UK the term "Baby Stroll" is used to indicate an area wherein very youthful prostitutes make themselves available but the age is not as young as some perverts seem to prefer. I would imagine that perverts have a variety of preferences when it comes to age or ongoing relationships versus one night stands. A pervert whose motive is homicide and whose primary goal is not the sexual perversion but is instead the act of killing his victim may be forced by circumstances beyond his control to make choices that are less than what his preferences would be. Pedophiles may be at times desperate but they still seem able to select victims with some degree of care. Even if it is a case of snatch one victim from a group of children and then drive off at high speed, the pedophile will still have an intended
destination and will drive in a manner that does not invite premature police attention. Often the inside of car door will have its handle removed so his victim can not escape during the drive to a place of seclusion and disposal.
So if we take these general principles gleaned from an amalgam of newspaper headlines and then try to apply them to the JBR murder, we run into great problems. There were hundreds if not thousands of far more vulnerable victims available to him. The degree of risk taken in obtaining his victim is rather high. There was a taunting note left at the scene which is at least a scintilla of evidence that no self-respecting pervert would voluntarily leave at the scene of a crime. The intruder chose a victim that would surely lead to intense media coverage no matter what other events happened to make the news that day. Is this the behavior of a pedophile? Perhaps it is. Yet perhaps it is not. What conclusions can we draw? How safe are we that such conclusions are even valid much less correct ones?
One liquor store gets robbed, but that night dozens do not get robbed despite perhaps being in worse neighborhoods or having even more lax security measures in place that night. So what conclusions can we draw? Of all the women in the bar the night Natalee Holloway came to grief, many women were far less sober and far less aware of potential danger. So should we conclude that sobriety and traveler savvy are hindrances to one's safety? That would be an absurd conclusion but it is perhaps just as valid as any other to be drawn from the facts that were presented in the newspapers.
What conclusions can we draw from the unspeakable activities in the basement of the Ramsey home that night. Now, we don't really know if the media reports are strictly accurate or not. We don't know about the use of an implement and we also do not know for sure about the occurrence of digital penetration. Sure we can speculate endlessly about brush handles and latex gloves, but we don't know and in many respects we really do not want to know. Or perhaps it is more correct to say that we do want to know about it but we don't want to actually be forced to think about it.
Central tenets of a crime are often wrong. What was once thought to be a "closing time robbery of a fast food joint" becomes a "boyfriend thing" involving the murdered manager thus rendering years of investigative actions futile. A tragic hunting accident often becomes a totally different situation once a large insurance policy is discovered to exist. Sometimes it takes a subsequent tragic firearms accident before that bereaved spouse transitions from tragic figure to prime suspect. A young boy's tragic drowning in an icy stream while on a family outing in the woods can take on a radically new meaning when a letter arrives at police headquarters advising them of the existence of a huge insurance policy on the deceased kid but no insurance at all on either of the parents or on any of the other children in the family.
The famed Craigslist killer is often viewed from the aspect of a sex addict or a sex fetishist but in reality the primary theme of his crimes was robbery in order to meet gambling debts and he was merely selecting prostitutes based on their vulnerability and ease of contact. The Craigslist killer was really the work of a hobbyist who had to bring down his gambling indebtedness promptly and in turning to robbery to do it, he selected a social milieu with which he was familiar but found himself to be a foolishly inexperienced robber and a very unlucky one. The sexual aspects of the crimes made headlines but in each incident as soon as the hotel room door was shut the Craigslist killer turned the activity into a robbery, not rape. Oh sure, you can still classify his crime spree as some sort of sexually motivated chain of events because to a large degree his losses at Blackjack were sexually related. It is not necessary to count cards at Blackjack and at Foxwoods it is particularly difficult to count cards. However, it is necessary to look at the dealer's up-card and then your own hand and to concentrate on the game, even if one is following the most simplified Basic Strategy that there is. The Craigslist killer seems fixated on females breasts and was described after the murder as throwing down hundreds of dollars while staring at a woman's breast so intently that she put her handbag in front of her as a visual barrier. With such a sense of priorities in life, it is no wonder that the Craigslist killer came to grief. His impulsive helping himself to a pair of panties as a momento is in keeping with his sex fetishist orientation, but the crime at hand was always robbery. The Craigslist killer achieved wide renown for his good looks, achievements in life, sex drive, sexual inclinations and sexual fetishes but in reality he was nothing but a two-bit stickup artist who really didn't know the first thing about conducting a robbery and who therefore quickly came to grief in his newly chosen profession. His "cyber-stupidity" sealed his fate since his telephone and email contacts with his potential victims were from his own equipment without any attempts to cloak his electronic identity or do anything to shield his tracks from a prompt official inquiry. In reality, his fate was actually sealed when he selected as his victim a beautiful but tough and very street-smart girl who would not only never give in to any mugger but who would surely never for a moment even consider giving in to some preppy punk. The Craiglist killer might have known this if he had ever interacted with a woman but it seems likely that his interactions were solely with their anatomy. Its not just the solution of crimes that turn on critically important points, its also the commission of crimes that can hinge on what would otherwise be a minor issue. In short, crimes are not always what they appear to be at first glance. Appearances often shift on the basis of one salient fact or at least the perceptions that we have about one salient fact. It is our analysis of a crime scene that can be woefully defective.
If a young attractive female advertising the availability of a massage in her hotel room is killed in the hotel doorway, the newspapers may focus on her youth and beauty and the intended massage but the cops will focus on the fact that the crime took place in the doorway area before she removed any clothing or discussed any fees that were involved. Perhaps we should include the JonBenet Ramsey murder as a crime in which the press immediately lept to a sexual motivation when perhaps that was not the primary situation that was involved. This leap is perhaps normal but its also one motivated by the economics of the tabloids. Its a very profitable leap to make and therefore the press is prone to make that leap well before there is sufficient evidence to support the conclusion. The tabloids are also prone to cling very tenaciously to such an ill-founded assumption because of the profitability that is inherent in their business.
So what are the items that indicate the murder of JonBenet Ramsey was anything other than the work of some sexual pervert? The note, the focus on the family, the time spent inside the house, the preparation time. All these items provide us with considerable doubt as to the nature of the crime. Do hobbyists leave notes? If he were a hobbyist, wouldn't his DNA be in some database by now? Sure, some perpetrators escape DNA testing and sometimes even those defendants whose DNA is taken do not actually make it into the various databases, but by now we would expect the suspect to have been tripped up by his dna. A hobbyist as it relates to such very young girls would be a repeat offender though not necessarily with any of the various trappings of the JonBenet Ramsey case.
One wonders if such trappings were indeed an integral part of that night's adventure for the intruder. He may have enjoyed various aspects of the evening so much that his more risky behavior was altered and he no longer leaves fantasy notes that call undue attention to his crimes.
I just wonder if his real goal was to hurt the parents rather than to hurt JonBenet. In such a scenario, there might be little in the way of successor crimes much less successor crimes of a sexual nature. Let us do what an investigator should not do: speculate and thereby project his own thoughts into the investigation rather than merely following the evidence.
Of course in a way we really are indeed continuing to focus on the evidence. Its simply that we are focusing on the negative. There is plenty of precedent for focusing on negatives. Why did the dog not bark in the night? Why did the insurance beneficiary not get changed? Why were there no fingerprints? Usually such negatives are considered at or about the time at which the crime took place. Here we are considering a negative after over a decade has elapsed. In that decade, no Prime Suspects have emerged other than in the tabloids or amongst the internet sleuths. The tabloids have investigative resources but no motivation to utilize them wisely. The internet sleuths have limited resources, unlimited dedication but absolutely no access to the case files. So it sort of makes sense for those who are without access to the case files to focus on a negative for they are already confronted by a great void.
In focusing on the negatives, we turn our attention to why has there been no CODIS hits? Oh sure, the perpetrator could have been so ecstatic over what he did to a helpless six year old girl that he wrapped his car around a telephone pole later that night and died in some simple little auto crash long ago written off as an accident of no consequence. That is always a possibility, but what is more likely. We know that perverts re-offend. We know that no amount of couch time is going to change his desires. No one has been able to find a trace of the intruder. Not in his modus operandi and not in his dna from crime scenes or arrestees. Did he have some instantaneous changing of his spots? We would be grateful if he were spontaneously cured of his evil desires and therefore would never re-offend, but deep in our hearts we know that does not happen. Its been more than a decade and he is not showing up in databases anywhere! Deep in our troubled sleep, sleuths fear that his dna will never appear in a database.
Perhaps we can explain this negative by reaching a conclusion that will disturb us greatly. Should we avoid the task for that reason? Many sleuths have imagined the intruder as some well disciplined type with the nerves of steel possessed by a jewel thief. In reality what did this joker do? He entered a house that was akin to a crackerjack box and left scuff marks on the wall doing it. He took a stun gun along but all he really did was briefly play with it. Was he foolish enough to think he might need the stun gun to do battle with a sleeping six year old girl? Or was he equipping himself to do battle with an irate homeowner who might have awakened in the middle of the night? Surely an experienced burglar would know to use the time making tracks rather than being combative with the homeowner. How young an intruder would we be dealing with in order for him to need a stun gun to escape a sleepy middle-aged man? He left a weird note which surely is not the sign of an experienced burglar and most definitely is not known to be associated with pedophiles. He allowed a scream to be heard and apparently he left promptly because of that scream perhaps dropping the steel grate noisily as he did so. None of this demonstrates his great skill or great experience as a burglar. He might imagine that it does indeed demonstrate his great skill and his great daring but surely he is merely lucky to have done his evil deeds in the jurisdiction of the Boulder Police Department and lucky that he selected as an opponent a sleeping six year old girl. I don't see any skill or bravery or even basic competence in this crime. I see stealth, cowardice, evil, incompetence, stupidity even childishness. I do not see skill or daring. I see bumbling incompetence. His continued lack of detection is due solely to the greater bumbling and greater incompetence of the authorities, but the obsessions of the BPD do not confer on the perpetrator any sort of skill or daring.
If this great big negative of over a decade of no CODIS hits is staring us in the face, what do we do? Ignore it? Use that lack of later crimes as evidence that he is not a pervert? Perverts re-offend. He appears not to have re-offended. Isn't this sufficient for one of those syllogism thingies? Or does the logic fail us? All we really know is that we have not found his dna at any crime scene, we don't know that it was not in fact at several crime scenes. Perhaps he has even become adept at hiding the evidence but has continued to be a pervert. We do not know. The only thing that we do know is that time has gone by during which we have not detected his dna at crime scenes and arrests have been made yet no routine dna sampling has yielded his profile. Or perhaps not. Perhaps this negative is a negative for a valid reason. He has not re-offended because he is not a pervert. The goal of that night was not sexual. We know there was no ransom, no two gentlemen, no truth behind the pseudo-political intrigue suggested by factions being foreign. Perhaps this was a crime to teach the parents a lesson that would haunt them forever. Or perhaps he was simply striking out and this had very little to do with the Ramseys.
Was JonBenet a Pedophile's Dream? Yes, I would imagine so. Does that mean that a pedophile killed her? No. Teenage girls can be killed simply because they are working a late night shift in a convenience store. Yes, they are young and beautiful and its a terrible shame if they are killed during some penny ante robbery but the motivation of the killer is financial. Youth and beauty were simply factors that happened to be present. Some armed robber may decide to take advantage of the "extra added attraction" offered him by the lone clerk in a convenience store being a young attractive female but any resultant abduction, rape or murder is really a consequence of his behaviors as an armed robber. Lou Smit realized that the Boulder Police had become fixated on parental guilt and he urged the police to realize that if they were making no progress in that direction they perhaps should look elsewhere. Well, I would like to invoke the wisdom of Lou Smit once again and make an attempt to live up to his legacy: if we have not been making progress on the pedophile target, perhaps we should shift our focus rather than remain so steadfastly convinced that we should be seeking a pedophile. We all admire a dogged pursuit but we admire it most when it finally strikes pay dirt. If that pay dirt is eluding us, perhaps it because what started out as promising color did not turn into the mother lode, the vein simply petered out. It was certainly more correct to consider the crime to be the work of a pedophile than that of the parents but it may not have been entirely correct to assume that the crime was predominantly motivated by some pervert's pedophilia.
What scenarios would support this crime if we downplay the pedophile issue? I've previously posted about cultural issues such as a male attendee at the Family Circle Dinner reacting to Patsy's generosity in buying copious quantities of Chinese food to supplement the obviously inadequate buffet table or some male who may have over-reacted to being asked to clear away his dinner plate. Some men would commit an "honor killing" if their daughters did such things as initiate a conversation with a male, smile at an unrelated male or give an order to any male. Demeaning a male in public by asking him to do "women's work" of clearing away or washing his dinner plate could well be an act that in the viewpoint of the intruder merits extreme punishment and the intruder might have a variety of reasons for selecting the exact manner of that punishment as being the death of the daughter. Those who might argue that such values do not pertain to Boulder, Colorado need only look at the resurgence of Belly Dancers and Hookah Clubs. Its not just the province of Dark Cabaret wherein belly dancers are newly popular. Mens clubs and hookah clubs are booming and amidst the perfumed tobacco a great many males in America are finding a re-affirmation of the Middle Eastern views towards females and their roles in society.
Would displaced anger be a sufficient explanation? If someone were angry at John Ramsey would they feel inclined to kill his daughter? Perhaps. It might be simply a cowardly way of choosing a weaker target or it might simply be a weaker target who also offered a degree of entertainment potential as well. It could be that the intruder was inexperienced with pedophilia because he was inexperienced with any sexual activity. Social misfits abound. The ransom note appears to be the work of someone who exists largely in a fantasy world and this may simply be due to his inability to thrive in the real world. There can also be a cultural inability to thrive. A male who would be competent in one culture may be incapable of adjusting his views and behaviors to our society. Someone angry at the Ramseys for some reason that to us is trivial and absurd could well select JonBenet as his target due to his inability to relate to adult females. Its not so much that he has a sexual interest in little girls, he just lacks any ability to confront an adult female and therefore selects JonBenet as a target since that would be reasonable in his own culture.
What weight should we give to this phantom non-evidence? Is the lack of his dna an indication of our investigative failures more than an indication of his not being a pervert? It is indeed possible that when we are most in need of Lou Smit's dogged determination we should indeed stay the course and not waiver from the pedophile focus. There is indeed great danger for us to ignore the pedophile aspects of this crime. Does our level of frustration allow us to take risks with this investigation? Does it compel us to take such risks?
Homicide 101 is a term used to keep the focus on what the speaker considers the most likely rule to follow. Many homicide detectives will focus on what they consider to be a primary rule. If someone comes to them about a possible murder, they will often tell the informant: don't tell me about family feuds or recent threats made in the heat of anger at some family gathering, don't tell me any thing at all about emotions between the parties. Just tell me who benefits financially from his death! The death threat made in the heat of anger is often not as valuable to a homicide investigator as the terms of the will or the existence of a life insurance policy. People cool down after stressful moments but greed persists. And nothing spurs more action than money. Some investigators therefore consider money to be the prominent Homicide 101 motivator. Often they are correct. Often they are not! The basic tenets of Homicide 101 are at all times the province of a particular homicide investigator as modified by the bureaucratic and budgetary limitations of his department. It is therefore a critical choice to select priorities. And of necessity we must each select such priorities according to the dictates of our conscience.
We can not discern any sort of financial role in the JonBenet Ramsey murder, so should we turn to a culturally induced rage felt by a man with poor social skills and thus a culturally imposed inadequate sex life? This might be tempting but it is clearly not a proper sleuthing technique, yet it may be all that we have available to us. So what cultural influences are likely? An Islamic or Middle Eastern male might well and truly be insulted by Patsy's actions at the Family Dinner. Or are we perhaps concerned with a sub-culture that is closer to home? Perhaps you've seen the movie about disaffected directionless youth in Austin, Texas. Slacker. Are the Boulder area youth condemned to low level jobs angry at reading about a Billion Dollar Sales mark? Does someone whose world is constrained by hopeless poverty strike out at a whimsically selected target who is briefly seen as representing great wealth? For some, life is akin to being a valet parking attendant. One gets to drive all these great expensive automobiles but then must face a bus ride home that is of such great duration that the thoughts that most intrude into the sleep deprived brain are the twin visions of utter economic despair yoked to a constant exposure to opulence. Slacker was a movie that presented those with "apathy,
aimlessness and lack of ambition" as somewhat admirable persons. Now one might think that such character traits as apathy, aimlessness and lack of ambition would be found on the FBI profiler's list of traits of the innocent. Recall perhaps that the movie only follows each character for a few minutes at a time and presents the audience with but a small slice of their lives. Yes, such events as are depicted are indeed indicative of their lives and their values, but it is by no means a central tenet of psychology that someone who is apathetic can not also be someone who becomes enraged from time to time. The film Slacker follows some disaffected youths around Austin but it does not represent the film as a confining portrayal of the youth's lives. Someone who is generally apathetic is not immune from a sudden storm of emotions at encountering a newspaper clipping relating to a billion dollars. Indeed, I would think it would be someone beset with apathy about the business world who would not even note the difference between a billion dollars in sales and a billion dollars in profit. Perhaps a certain apathy about the business world might allow someone to think that a ransom demand of $118,000 was a reasonable sum. And perhaps someone who leads an aimless life and lacks ambition might come to the attention of the medical or judicial segments of Boulder society. It should perhaps be recalled that the mental health professionals referred to the area as South Boulder and it should perhaps also be remembered that aimless youth who occasionally wind up in juvenile court often get assigned to menial tasks such as Trash Collecting. Perhaps such aimless youths just might refer to themselves from time to time as South Boulder Trash Collectors. Such a designation would form an alarming acronym: SBTC.
Trainspotting was a study of drug addiction and poverty amidst the culturally rich environs of Edinburgh. Lest anyone suggest that its themes are not applicable to Boulder, let us not forget that it was actually filmed in Glasgow and so surely its lessons are not at all limited geographically. Boulder was at the time undergoing a software revolution as computer programmers flocked to the city and firms prospered. Amidst all that new found wealth in the People's Republic of Boulder there are always those who are left behind. Think perhaps of the student who took mechanical drawing in school but graduates to a world in which draftsmen have been replaced by the mouse click of an AutoCad program. He was encouraged to take mechanical drawing in school and was therefore trained to be a draftsman and expected to be a draftsman. He was not trained to use AutoCad. The Ramsey company, Access Graphics, was a Value Added Retailer, a firm that bought high end unix boxes, high end monitors and the AutoCad program. What Access Graphics really sold was the combination of those items in a seamlessly integrated turn it on and use it configuration. A newspaper article talking about a Billion Dollars and AutoCad just might stimulate rage in a youth condemned to poverty by suddenly finding out that he is a draftsman in an AutoCad world. Sure his rage might better be addressed to the archaic school system or to the teacher's union that perpetuated an archaic curriculum, but we can not impose upon such youth a proper direction for their rage. We can only deal with the directions that rage in fact takes. If someone expresses his rage against redundancy by reacting to a newspaper article mentioning AutoCad we are shocked at such stupidity but have no option to remind the rage-filled youth that there are more sensible targets he could select and more sensible actions that he could take. Raging against one's lot in life is often a matter of private thoughts or else of thoughts and actions expressed within a particular subculture. Such rage and actions prompted by them are not the province of a carefully reasoned response guided by wisdom and experience.
You ask perhaps if the draftsman, redundant upon being graduated from high school might retrain. Sure. Many, however, see no hope and seek only drugs to escape the pain imposed upon them by a lifestyle bereft of hope. Yet when they try to escape from drugs, they find their social life implodes. Consider, once again, the movie Trainspotting: once Renton is off heroin the sexual desires return, but all his friends are still druggies and druggies no longer relate to him. Normal sexual desires return to the addict who has bravely gone cold turkey but normal sexual outlet is denied him because he is bored, depressed and socially isolated. He is therefore trapped in the inescapable. And just as any animal who is trapped, he lashes out in just about any direction. Its not so much the drugs that control his life as the drug culture that controls his life. The values of the drug culture provide an endless supply of youths whose directions and goals are warped. Would drugs per se make someone think that the ransom amount was a sensible figure? No, but the drug culture might well impair someone from re-considering the amount once it had been selected.
Or perhaps we might focus on the movie Stella Does Tricks which explores the world of young girls on the game. It is a world of working class backgrounds, lack of opportunities and artificially imposed constraints as humorously indicated in the scene wherein becoming a shop girl selling eclairs in a bakery is hopeless because society demands she have extensive training for such a menial position. These all condemn Stella to her life of being sexually exploited by her pimp and her customers but she nevertheless remains a young girl who needs love as well as sex. When her young boyfriend rents out Stella's body for enough money for him to buy heroin and then steals Stella's savings so as to keep her from leaving him, Stella realizes that this is as close to an act of love that she will ever have in her life. She is sexually exploited by middle aged men who are her customers and by a middle aged man who is her pimp, but she loves her young boyfriend and is indeed loved by him. She is sexually exploited by her need for money and by her need for love. She is trapped forever in the world of sexual exploitation by the despised middle aged men because she is trapped by the sexual exploitation of love for the boyfriend. Once there is that feeling of being trapped there is the desperation that leads to absurd decision making. Stella likes to scratch automobile paint or vandalize a side-mirror but she is not above escalating to torching the car though her escalated violence happens to be directed at someone who abused her. Not all the Stellas in this world are quite so circumspect in their application of violence. Did some young punk seeking spare change on Pearl Street get treated badly outside the doors of Access Graphics and then recognize that name in the newspaper? I have no idea, but there are indeed some males who are in Stella's situation. Indeed, one can view the situation as being worse for the male.
Access Graphics was located on Pearl Street. Ever since the late sixties Pearl Street was part of the club and concert scene. Many of the acts appearing on Pearl Street also appeared in the off-the-grid hippie haven of Nederland. And amidst the software and real estate boom in Boulder, the club scene continued unabated. So let us now consider the film, Human Traffic. It is a great representation of the drug scene and the club scene, though much of its greatness is due to the lack of any commentary or moralizing about the drug-filled club scene. Amidst the rave's glow sticks and ecstasy consumption the over-riding theme of the drug scene and the club scene is the intergenerational void and the total rejection of the work ethic. The robotic-like fast food worker only has the club scene for relief from misery and poverty. Rejection of their parents and the parent's work ethic is but a representation of the necessary rejection of all such values that are rendered archaic by being trapped in poverty. What little money that is earned in a high stress, low-level job is soaked up by the drugs needed to dull the pain of that existence. A prisoner can think that "any day now, I shall be released" but a person trapped by low wages, lack of hope and lack of options is truly a prisoner forever and does not hope to be released back into the real world. The wage slave knows that there will be no release for him. By day he is a lowly fast food robot. By night he escapes the pain of his work situation by embracing the drugs available at the raves. Come morning, there is no hope of escape, only acceptance of his fate. The lesson for us to learn is exemplified in the film's lack of condemnation. Once we accept that the youth caught up in the drug-filled club scene have utterly rejected our values then perhaps we can be more prone to embrace the horrendous acts in the Ramsey home that night as being a part of a lifestyle of a significant segment of our population.
Or perhaps we should focus on the movie: Slackers. A slacker would not be expected to get his dna into CODIS. The Slacker is not necessarily a pedophile. Its more likely The Slacker is simply lacking in direction in life and lacking in the education necessary to give him skills sufficient for a job that provides him with any sort of hope for improvement of his lot in life. The Slacker might want success but its hard to read about a Billion Dollars while slaving away at a dead-end minimum wage job. A slacker lives in a world where even an obviously forged documentation bestows real value on a urine sample because the forgery links it to an empty-headed Hollywood starlet. In a world of such perturbed values, pedophilia would hardly be exceptional. However, the full gamut of other emotions would hardly be exceptional either. Strike out at a Billionaire due to a newspaper feature? Just as rational as any other behavior in a world devoid of a work ethic or sense of values. One can not spend nights focused on the various hip nightspots wherein a drunken Hollywood starlet has vomited and then expect behavior that comports with the values of church-going worth-ethic oriented computer entrepreneurs by day. Slackers have made choices. They have made commitments!
So if we consider the molestation to be a red-herring or some sort of partial red-herring, what are we left with? A fantasy note that bespeaks a fantasy world? We can go down to the local probation office and look for perverts that were recently paroled but that may be just as sensible a direction for us to take as going to some foreign shore and looking for a non-existent faction that doesn't even pretend to be large and to represent the will of the people.
Are any of these suggested scenarios more valid than another? Recently a good many murder cases have become such darlings of internet sleuths that the police have formally pleaded for an end to false statements. Many tips called into detectives drive the investigation into wasteful directions that drain available resources. Are we doing the right thing in considering that the murder of Jonbenet Ramsey just might be a murder without an overriding pedophilia factor? We have the words of wisdom from Lou Smit echoing in our ears. We have the example of his dedication and we have the demonstrated effectiveness of his emphasis on crime scene analysis. Yet we also have that great big void: no hits in CODIS. No suspects.
Do we have an obligation to go further afield in our quest for the intruder? Internet stimulated tips about a crime can be a great hindrance to the police but often internet sleuths are the only oversight there is to a criminal investigation. I've presented several noteworthy endeavors of the film industry to convey the inner workings of certain cultures and how those cultural values can conflict with our usual views. It is for internet sleuths to find a balance between the dedicated plodding of a detective wading through the evidence and the effects of avant-garde films on our collective wisdom of alternative cultural values. Lou Smit was right. It all harks back to shoes. Its just that sometimes in order to stand in the shoes of the victim, you must try to stand in the shoes of the perpetrator as well. Seeing things from the viewpoint of a different culture can be an aid to the investigation, or it can be a senseless tangent, but what is the use of standing in someone else's shoes if we don't try to take some steps in them as well? People who feel marginalized and oppressed by society will strike out in defense of both real and imagined wrongs. Their violent acts need not be precisely rational and need not be fully in keeping with their usual and customary values. Not all sexually motivated violence in our society comes from demented perverts.
Wednesday, September 15, 2010
DH Lawrence and Love of Citrus Fruits
From DH Lawrence:
"I got the blues thinking of the future, so I left off and made some marmalade. It's amazing how it cheers one up to shred oranges and scrub the floor."
This is actually not about citrus fruits and scrubbing the floor. This would be described as a comment on the difference between depression and depressiveness. One being a psychological state and the other being more related to the over telegraphing to others of the existence of that psychological state.
In DH Lawrence's life he recognized that prompt and immediate action was the cure for depression. Make marmalade rather than contemplate the woeful state of one's situation in life. However, if in the act of making marmalade one spills some sweet citrus fruit it is the necessity for immediate action that prompts one to focus on the sharp knife blade and the need to avoid ant infestations. Action. Not contemplation.
I've often given this advice to people and explained to them that the first thing to tackle is depressiveness. If a young woman does not look quite "together" then that is the first focus. A more stylish outfit, perfume, make-up! That is the key!
Waiting to be inspired to tackle a boring task is futile. No one is ever inspired to mop the floor! If you want to be inspired to clean simply invite your friends over for Poker Night. You know your lady friends will only show up if the bathroom is spotless so the Poker Night invitation is your motivation to clean house!
"I got the blues thinking of the future, so I left off and made some marmalade. It's amazing how it cheers one up to shred oranges and scrub the floor."
This is actually not about citrus fruits and scrubbing the floor. This would be described as a comment on the difference between depression and depressiveness. One being a psychological state and the other being more related to the over telegraphing to others of the existence of that psychological state.
In DH Lawrence's life he recognized that prompt and immediate action was the cure for depression. Make marmalade rather than contemplate the woeful state of one's situation in life. However, if in the act of making marmalade one spills some sweet citrus fruit it is the necessity for immediate action that prompts one to focus on the sharp knife blade and the need to avoid ant infestations. Action. Not contemplation.
I've often given this advice to people and explained to them that the first thing to tackle is depressiveness. If a young woman does not look quite "together" then that is the first focus. A more stylish outfit, perfume, make-up! That is the key!
Waiting to be inspired to tackle a boring task is futile. No one is ever inspired to mop the floor! If you want to be inspired to clean simply invite your friends over for Poker Night. You know your lady friends will only show up if the bathroom is spotless so the Poker Night invitation is your motivation to clean house!
Thursday, September 9, 2010
Well, Here it is ... again.
So once again. It is September 10th. I wake up a bit after two in the morning. Its very quiet. I guess its a good time to contemplate death. Death and cowardice. Oh, don't get me wrong, its not the only time of the year that such thoughts descend heavily upon me. It is, however, that anniversary wherein such thoughts are inescapable and overwhelming.
I know I am likely to survive this day. I have in past years and it does become easier as time goes by, yet guilt feelings overwhelm me this day each year. I engage in the usual tricks of avoiding as much as possible the thoughts of all the media comments there will soon be. I think of my own problems. I scream silently about my rage on other matters and I declare to myself that I am not to blame. Others have of course told me that it is not my fault. I know that they are right yet my knowledge of the correctness of their views brings little solace.
I face this anniversary. Its inescapable. I long for escape of course. Given my age and health I will indeed find an escape at some point in time. It may well be soon. I look forward at times to my escape of this day. I often hope that such escape will indeed come soon to me. It will be a good thing when I no longer have to experience this day each year. I mentally re-live some moments of dread. I mentally trek to a pay phone and imagine myself actually making the anonymous call that I had contemplated. In my mind on each anniversary I get past that apartment door threshold without thoughts of criminal charges or insufficient evidence. I re-live the looking up of a phone number and nearly making that non-anonymous call. I re-live the disorientation and physical collapse of utter exhaustion. Yet amidst all the thoughts of this anniversary I still experience the hopeless rage of my failure.
Time heals all wounds? No. Time diminishes their intensity but it does not heal them.
I know I am likely to survive this day. I have in past years and it does become easier as time goes by, yet guilt feelings overwhelm me this day each year. I engage in the usual tricks of avoiding as much as possible the thoughts of all the media comments there will soon be. I think of my own problems. I scream silently about my rage on other matters and I declare to myself that I am not to blame. Others have of course told me that it is not my fault. I know that they are right yet my knowledge of the correctness of their views brings little solace.
I face this anniversary. Its inescapable. I long for escape of course. Given my age and health I will indeed find an escape at some point in time. It may well be soon. I look forward at times to my escape of this day. I often hope that such escape will indeed come soon to me. It will be a good thing when I no longer have to experience this day each year. I mentally re-live some moments of dread. I mentally trek to a pay phone and imagine myself actually making the anonymous call that I had contemplated. In my mind on each anniversary I get past that apartment door threshold without thoughts of criminal charges or insufficient evidence. I re-live the looking up of a phone number and nearly making that non-anonymous call. I re-live the disorientation and physical collapse of utter exhaustion. Yet amidst all the thoughts of this anniversary I still experience the hopeless rage of my failure.
Time heals all wounds? No. Time diminishes their intensity but it does not heal them.
Wednesday, September 8, 2010
Kyron Horman "Missing" in Oregon. Revisited.
Yes, I used quotation marks around that word: missing. Its often referred to the Elephant in the room situation. We all know that sometimes abducted children are kept as prisoners but we all know that in most situations they are killed and that often they are killed quite promptly.
So do we even know for certain that it was actually an abduction? No. We do know, however, that he was unlikely to have left the school on his own and become lost. We know there was an intensive search in the nearby rugged terrain and that the search was conducted by experienced SAR volunteers who were well trained and well briefed on the mission.
Do we know it was a parental involvement situation? It would seem that the answer to that question would be an emphatic yes if the question was addressed to any newspaper or television editor in the area. We only have rumors, innuendo, and accusations but no facts that establish parental involvement.
Do we know a friend of the step mother provided some sort of logistical support to the endeavor? No. We have no facts that would establish a friend knowingly aided in an abduction and murder, but once again it seems that news editors do not really need facts they only need to know how to type "sources close to the investigation". Once those magic words have been typed it seems that we live in a world where friends help friends commit child abductions and child murders in an open and notorious manner in the middle of the day while using their own vehicles after having communicated over cell phones that will clearly prove linkages.
We know where the cops are clearly focused, but we don't know why the cops are so certain they are looking in the right direction. Perhaps its based largely on sexually explicit emails. I guess in Oregon women only send sexually explicit emails if they are guilty of murder.
Much has been made in the press of a discrepancy between where the step-mother claims to have been and where the cell phone signals indicate she may have been. Perhaps that five-mile distant cell tower often picks up pings from the claimed area. I do not know and apparently no tests have been performed or atleast none have been disclosed. Cell phones do handshake with multiple towers and in a rural area the lack of closer towers and the lack of any terrain obstruction may allow for a five mile distant tower to pick up signals. Also there are some indications that the signals were picked up only briefly which might indicate proximity but a lack of approach or withdrawal, thus emphasizing that it was probably a spurious signal.
Well, maybe it was a parental abduction. I'd sure like to see the evidence though. Evidence. Not innuendo, not conclusions drawn from risque email content, ... evidence!
So do we even know for certain that it was actually an abduction? No. We do know, however, that he was unlikely to have left the school on his own and become lost. We know there was an intensive search in the nearby rugged terrain and that the search was conducted by experienced SAR volunteers who were well trained and well briefed on the mission.
Do we know it was a parental involvement situation? It would seem that the answer to that question would be an emphatic yes if the question was addressed to any newspaper or television editor in the area. We only have rumors, innuendo, and accusations but no facts that establish parental involvement.
Do we know a friend of the step mother provided some sort of logistical support to the endeavor? No. We have no facts that would establish a friend knowingly aided in an abduction and murder, but once again it seems that news editors do not really need facts they only need to know how to type "sources close to the investigation". Once those magic words have been typed it seems that we live in a world where friends help friends commit child abductions and child murders in an open and notorious manner in the middle of the day while using their own vehicles after having communicated over cell phones that will clearly prove linkages.
We know where the cops are clearly focused, but we don't know why the cops are so certain they are looking in the right direction. Perhaps its based largely on sexually explicit emails. I guess in Oregon women only send sexually explicit emails if they are guilty of murder.
Much has been made in the press of a discrepancy between where the step-mother claims to have been and where the cell phone signals indicate she may have been. Perhaps that five-mile distant cell tower often picks up pings from the claimed area. I do not know and apparently no tests have been performed or atleast none have been disclosed. Cell phones do handshake with multiple towers and in a rural area the lack of closer towers and the lack of any terrain obstruction may allow for a five mile distant tower to pick up signals. Also there are some indications that the signals were picked up only briefly which might indicate proximity but a lack of approach or withdrawal, thus emphasizing that it was probably a spurious signal.
Well, maybe it was a parental abduction. I'd sure like to see the evidence though. Evidence. Not innuendo, not conclusions drawn from risque email content, ... evidence!
Tuesday, September 7, 2010
Enough on those SpanAir Trojan headlines!!
When will it ever stop? All these misleading headlines and in many cases totally misleading stories.
The SpanAir crash at Madrid was not in any way caused by a computer that had trojan horse software on it. The computer at the airlines headquarters which managed repair scheduling was later found to be laden with trojan malware. Its not a computer that was onboard the aircraft or had anything to do with the operation of the flight.
SpanAir flight from Madrid to Las Palmas in late August of 2008 crashed on takeoff because the crew failed to set the slats for takeoff, an absolutely critical procedure that was called out in the checklist but not actually performed. The automatic warning systems concerning the flaps and slats settings failed to sound an alarm because they are not supposed to sound when the plane is flying at high altitude. The alarm systems that did sound prior to the takeoff dealt with a pressure sensing system that is only supposed to sound at high altitude.
Physically that plane was on the ground. Electronically that plane "thought" it was already at high altitude. The pilots were not mentally there at all, but the plane did not crash because of any memory-choking malware on a maintenance-scheduling computer at SpanAir's headquarters! Why can't editors and re-write men get that straight?
On-Edit: Please note that the above rant about unprofessional journalism standards relates to the mis-reporting of the malware infected computer at SpanAir's headquarters as having had some effect on the crash.
For those interested in the crash:
It was, as they all are, pilot error. Errors that would be absurd for even a student pilot to have made.
The crew appear to have misinterpreted the stall warning as a fire warning. Well, each is serious perhaps but a stall warning is a well known sound and the remotest possibility of a stall takes precedence over any other sort of sensory input. The misinterpretation robbed the crew of a few moments of recovery time. Well, they had precious few moments to begin with and would have been unlikely to have recovered anyway. One would not expect such a lackadaisical crew to have performed a low level stall recovery correctly.
The crew failed to realize that if an alarm had been sounding an hour previously that only sounds when the plane is at high altitude then that meant they were on notice inquiry to investigate the "weight on nosewheel" switch. Yes, switch, not relay! Its the switch that is most likely to fail. Its the switch that is relatively exposed to the elements and debris accumulation. Just because the plane was obviously on the ground does not mean the various avionics systems knew that!
With a failed "weight on nosewheel" switch, the utterly critical alarm for "Idiotic Pilots Trying To Take-Off Without Slats" is automatically disabled. So there was no alarm for the one absolutely critical take-off setting on that plane! The lack of an electronic alarm however had absolutely nothing to do with the crew's failure to properly set the slats and properly check the slat setting in accordance with the checklist procedures.
The SpanAir crash at Madrid was not in any way caused by a computer that had trojan horse software on it. The computer at the airlines headquarters which managed repair scheduling was later found to be laden with trojan malware. Its not a computer that was onboard the aircraft or had anything to do with the operation of the flight.
SpanAir flight from Madrid to Las Palmas in late August of 2008 crashed on takeoff because the crew failed to set the slats for takeoff, an absolutely critical procedure that was called out in the checklist but not actually performed. The automatic warning systems concerning the flaps and slats settings failed to sound an alarm because they are not supposed to sound when the plane is flying at high altitude. The alarm systems that did sound prior to the takeoff dealt with a pressure sensing system that is only supposed to sound at high altitude.
Physically that plane was on the ground. Electronically that plane "thought" it was already at high altitude. The pilots were not mentally there at all, but the plane did not crash because of any memory-choking malware on a maintenance-scheduling computer at SpanAir's headquarters! Why can't editors and re-write men get that straight?
On-Edit: Please note that the above rant about unprofessional journalism standards relates to the mis-reporting of the malware infected computer at SpanAir's headquarters as having had some effect on the crash.
For those interested in the crash:
It was, as they all are, pilot error. Errors that would be absurd for even a student pilot to have made.
The crew appear to have misinterpreted the stall warning as a fire warning. Well, each is serious perhaps but a stall warning is a well known sound and the remotest possibility of a stall takes precedence over any other sort of sensory input. The misinterpretation robbed the crew of a few moments of recovery time. Well, they had precious few moments to begin with and would have been unlikely to have recovered anyway. One would not expect such a lackadaisical crew to have performed a low level stall recovery correctly.
The crew failed to realize that if an alarm had been sounding an hour previously that only sounds when the plane is at high altitude then that meant they were on notice inquiry to investigate the "weight on nosewheel" switch. Yes, switch, not relay! Its the switch that is most likely to fail. Its the switch that is relatively exposed to the elements and debris accumulation. Just because the plane was obviously on the ground does not mean the various avionics systems knew that!
With a failed "weight on nosewheel" switch, the utterly critical alarm for "Idiotic Pilots Trying To Take-Off Without Slats" is automatically disabled. So there was no alarm for the one absolutely critical take-off setting on that plane! The lack of an electronic alarm however had absolutely nothing to do with the crew's failure to properly set the slats and properly check the slat setting in accordance with the checklist procedures.
Friday, September 3, 2010
25 year old Ph D candidate killed in glider.
A 25 year old archeology student died on impact after her glider's wings suffered a catastrophic separation at one thousand feet during a university glider competition. Such gliders are normally trailered to and assembled at the site. The young lady successfully completed a test flight just prior to the fatal flight. Her boyfriend who witnessed the accident saw nothing amiss in the configuration or operation of the aircraft prior to the abrupt separation of the wings from the fuselage. The young lady was known to be active in white water rafting and gliding and was known as a competent and experienced glider pilot.
No cause of the wing separation has been determined. It is expected that the British Air Ministry will delegate the responsibility for the investigation to the on-site university officials who were conducting the Inter University Gliding Competition. The glider design first appeared in the early 1960s. The wood glue used in this particular glider is unknown. Apparently some of the earlier casien based glues are subject to deterioration due to fungal growth. Later gliders are said to use plastic adhesives that are stronger than the wood to which they bond.
I would have been interested in seeing her PhD dissertation published since the topic was trace elements in soil and cancer distribution. I of course have my own opinions on the subject but am more interested in linking barium content of drinking water to later diagnoses of Multiple Sclerosis. Mainly its a more prompt though less specific diagnosis since cancers tend to appear later in life with the much debated "aging causes cancer" and "cancer causes aging" controversy still unresolved.
ADDENDUM: The official cause of the fatal accident was the failure of the lower bevel bolt to be installed properly. It is impossible for the pilot to inspect such bolts or the manner in which they have been inserted. The glider pilot had ten years of experience and was president of her collegiate gliding club. Her boyfriend who had the misfortune to have to watch her rapid and uncontrollable near vertical descent from approximately 1,000 feet was an experienced glider instructor. The accident was of course totally unsurvivable even if the lower but less reliable estimate of 600 feet is assumed.
I do so hope her unfinished PhD work on the geographic distribution of trace elements in the soil and the pattern of cancer diagnoses gets published. I remain particularly interested in barium distribution rates and the subsequent diagnosis of Multiple Sclerosis.
No cause of the wing separation has been determined. It is expected that the British Air Ministry will delegate the responsibility for the investigation to the on-site university officials who were conducting the Inter University Gliding Competition. The glider design first appeared in the early 1960s. The wood glue used in this particular glider is unknown. Apparently some of the earlier casien based glues are subject to deterioration due to fungal growth. Later gliders are said to use plastic adhesives that are stronger than the wood to which they bond.
I would have been interested in seeing her PhD dissertation published since the topic was trace elements in soil and cancer distribution. I of course have my own opinions on the subject but am more interested in linking barium content of drinking water to later diagnoses of Multiple Sclerosis. Mainly its a more prompt though less specific diagnosis since cancers tend to appear later in life with the much debated "aging causes cancer" and "cancer causes aging" controversy still unresolved.
ADDENDUM: The official cause of the fatal accident was the failure of the lower bevel bolt to be installed properly. It is impossible for the pilot to inspect such bolts or the manner in which they have been inserted. The glider pilot had ten years of experience and was president of her collegiate gliding club. Her boyfriend who had the misfortune to have to watch her rapid and uncontrollable near vertical descent from approximately 1,000 feet was an experienced glider instructor. The accident was of course totally unsurvivable even if the lower but less reliable estimate of 600 feet is assumed.
I do so hope her unfinished PhD work on the geographic distribution of trace elements in the soil and the pattern of cancer diagnoses gets published. I remain particularly interested in barium distribution rates and the subsequent diagnosis of Multiple Sclerosis.
Luke Mitchell case to be reviewed by SCCRC.
The Scottish Criminal Convictions Review Commission has notified Luke Mitchell, now a prisoner serving a Life Sentence for the murder of 14 year old Jodi Jones that his case will be reviewed. The communication from the SCCRC did not indicate any dates but this usually takes at least six months and in a case that has achieved such notoriety it is likely to take longer.
For those unfamiliar with this case:
Jodi Jones put up a great struggle yet her boyfriend, Luke Mitchell, had no scratches and was shown to be calm and normal when interacting with his friends about twenty minutes after the alleged time of the murder. Three men whose dna was found on, in or near the corpse were never arrested or considered suspects; Luke Mitchell whose dna was not found at the scene was convicted of murder. Two of the three men concealed themselves and altered their appearance soon after the murder. The sister of the deceased victim later married the man whose semen was on Jodi's shirt and bra. A third man stated that he had deposited his semen in a condom found near the corpse while he was alone in the woods with no one nearby. He stated that he did not see the naked corpse at his feet and he claimed that this event took place at a time when local reports indicate it was raining heavily. Despite his semen being found near the corpse of a 14 year old girl, he was not arrested or charged with her murder as the Lothian and Borders Constabulary apparently believed his statement about his using a condom despite there being no one else present at the time.
For those unfamiliar with this case:
Jodi Jones put up a great struggle yet her boyfriend, Luke Mitchell, had no scratches and was shown to be calm and normal when interacting with his friends about twenty minutes after the alleged time of the murder. Three men whose dna was found on, in or near the corpse were never arrested or considered suspects; Luke Mitchell whose dna was not found at the scene was convicted of murder. Two of the three men concealed themselves and altered their appearance soon after the murder. The sister of the deceased victim later married the man whose semen was on Jodi's shirt and bra. A third man stated that he had deposited his semen in a condom found near the corpse while he was alone in the woods with no one nearby. He stated that he did not see the naked corpse at his feet and he claimed that this event took place at a time when local reports indicate it was raining heavily. Despite his semen being found near the corpse of a 14 year old girl, he was not arrested or charged with her murder as the Lothian and Borders Constabulary apparently believed his statement about his using a condom despite there being no one else present at the time.
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