snowmman

The Nash equilibrium may sometimes appear non-rational in a third-person perspective. This is because it may happen that a Nash equilibrium is not Pareto optimal. (edit) 377: I may have forgotten my favorite wind direction based on that historical wind rose I posted way back. ESE does sound too E. Maybe I meant SSE. I forget.

Ckret provided weather info but his scans were unreadable. If you believe in ESE winds near PDX like I do, and 60 knot winds at exit to 20knots surface wind, for 40knot avg, you get close to the 8 mile canopy ride I mentioned right? I know it sounds insane, but if you were drawing a buffer area around the flight path...I would go 8 miles in all directions (since wind speed and direction are kind of poorly known?) (edit) maybe go to 9, to account for flight path uncertainity. Also the descent rate was probably closer to 1200 ft/min?, so maybe 8 miles is excessive. (edit) oops I said ESE. I probably meant SSE. I forget what my favorite was back looking at the wind rose (historical probability) thing I posted back in the thread.

background info on the guy that ran the show. rehash of stuff we know, but I hadn't read about Doole before. Air America got shut down finally on June 30, 1976 when it sold all it's planes for $20M. 200 personnel lost over the years, and 36 aircraft. Doole retired in '71. from http://www.air-america.org/Articles/Doole.shtml Officially, the CIA says it has no record that Doole ever worked there, but among old agency hands, he is a legend. ... Owned by a holding company, the Pacific Corp., that was itself a CIA front, Doole's empire included Air America, Civil Air Transport, Southern Air Transport, Air Asia and dozens of small puddle-jumper lines. Together, at their peak in the mid '60s, these CIA "proprietaries" added up to an airline that was almost the size of TWA, employing nearly 20,000 people (as many as the CIA itself) and operating some 200 planes. Even the CIA was not sure just how many. Asked by then Deputy Director Helms to account for all the planes in Doole's regime, a staffer spent three months on the project before confessing that he could never be more than 90% certain. The problem, explained the exasperated staffer, was that Doole was forever leasing planes between his shell corporations and changing their markings and tail numbers. Traveling around the world, orchestrating his vast air armada, Doole kept his airplanes busy. Under the cover of legitimate freight and charter services, Doole's airlines supplied a 30,000-man secret army in the mountains of Laos for a ten-year war against the Pathet Lao, dropped scores of agents into Red China, and helped stage an unsuccessful revolt in Indonesia. Not surprisingly, all this flying about aroused curiosity. In 1970 a New York Times reporter asked Doole if Air America had any connection with the CIA. "If 'someone out there' is behind all this," Doole airily replied, "we don't know about it." ... Doole's pilots, who flew in and out of tiny jungle fields in abysmal weather and sometimes under enemy fire, were a raffish lot. They referred to the CIA as "the customer," the ammunition they dropped as "hard rice" and being under heavy fire as "sporty." Brushes with death were described as "fascinating." To be "absolutely fascinated" meant scared witless. Doole would appear from time to time at CIA bases from Vientiane to Panama City, but he stayed aloof from the pilots, many of whom regarded him as a bit of a snob. "I never saw the man without a tie on," scoffs one. Doole played bridge, flew airplanes and did business deals the same way: slowly and deliberately. "The Chinese liked to negotiate with him," recalls a former CIA official. "He was polite; he never showed any excitement. But he was tough." When the extent of the CIA's covert operations was revealed by newspaper exposés and congressional hearings in the early '70s, the agency was forced to dismantle Doole's huge aerial empire and sell off the various planes and airfields. It was done at a profit; the agency turned over $20 million to the U.S. Treasury. Doole also did well by himself. Though he earned a government salary as a CIA employee, he augmented his income by investing, shrewdly, in the stock market. His estate when he died was worth "several million dollars," according to a sister. ... In 1971 Doole retired from the CIA. Formally, that is. He kept his hand in the aviation business as a director of Evergreen International Aviation, a company that refits and charters airplanes. Though Evergreen bought Intermountain Aviation, one of Doole's CIA "proprietaries," in 1975, the company insists that it has had nothing further to do with the agency. Perhaps. But when the dying Shah of Iran wanted to fly from Panama to Egypt in 1980, he flew on a chartered Evergreen DC-8. Doole arranged the charter.

The film makes a point of saying that the 727 could be flown pressurized and then depressurized for the air drop. (or was this info just from Leeker, based on the 9/8/85 Thomas C. Sailer interview by William M. Leary? I have to watch the video again) That means it's saying the 727 door could be opened in-flight right? 377 brought up the idea of how do you know if there's some kind of interlock that can't be overridden. So it's not just telling us that an air drop/jump is possible. It's telling us that the cabin can be depressurized..i.e. that the ventral exit door can be functional and opened in flight.

Okay, one thing we can theorize about, is that the '70/'71 727 jumps were static line, and the door was removed. So there was no information about opening the door, or the pressure bump, available from that test or that test film. I can't tell what the flying configuration was. It's possible the information in the transcripts about speed and flaps, is from test data on this flight that made it's way back to Boeing somehow? So it's possible that Boeing itself never did the air drop tests we see discussed in the transcripts. They might have got the info from Air America at Takhli. Based on Leeker's email, the tests were evidently done at the Takhli air base in Thailand? Probably everyone talked about it cause it would be big bragging rights for jumping the 727? So anyone passing thru or at Takhli then, might have known?

Trying to research this FMFM film from http://www.utdallas.edu/library/collections/speccoll/Leeker/laos2.pdf "...Flying Men, Flying machines made in 1970/71. Although the purpose of this documentary is unknown, the tendency to underline Air America's purely humanitarian activities is obvious" So: I think we can say the flight tests were done before Cooper's jump. It's possible the film was available somewhere on the planet before Cooper's jump, also. (edit) Humanitarian stuff was organized under USAID in Vietnam. I wonder if USAID personnel might have seen this film. It would be nice to know where and how it was distributed in '71. Or was it purely CIA internal?

again from starting around 1:08 in FMFM I don't know if the jumpers are static lining it, but the chutes are deploying right away? (edit) Yes? even a whuffo like me can see the yellow static line criss-crossed across the back of the container in the first attach as the guy's going down the ramp. So a 727 has been static-lined!? agree/disagree? I think that might discount the idea that Cooper would have been hurt by an immediate deploy out of the jet exit? Isn't that correct? There are better views in the video. should get better frame by frames in my video editor of the jumper jet exits

Okay this isn't the best selection of frames, cause I did some fast snaps while viewing. But I'll post enough so you can see the air drops and the jumpers. Again this is starting at 1:08 in FMFM

The Flying Men, Fighting Men documentary is excellent. I downloaded the 150kbps version (89.9MB) At 1 hr 8 minutes, the video of the 727 air drops starts. It's excellent. Shows the roller delivery method and door exit and chutes deploying from 727. Shows kickers wearing parachutes as they do the drop ALSO SHOWS JUMPERS SLIDING DOWN THE RAMP. and the parachutes deploying behind the 727. This has to be the first 727 jet jump????!!! Not Cooper?? I'll try to get the video snip of just this section. Maybe I can get some stills and that will be sufficient. This is amazing. (edit) at 1:08 the voiceover, who appears? to be the managing director George Doole of Air America, says they own and leases seven 727's to other operators. Yokota, Japan is mentioned. Southern Air Transport.

excellent info 377. The documentary you mention is available for download at http://www.vietnam.ttu.edu/AirAmerica/FMFM/index.htm evidently. I'll download it and see if I can get some snips of the drops mentioned.

This is just some fun photos. I've been browsing a photo album with shots from Special Operations evidently in the Vietnam forces. Not clear what years. But interesting photos. Found a nice photo of a C-47 skyhook evidently? labelled: SkyHook / TRIET XUAT Douglas C47 / LONG THANH VIET NAM / TRUNG TAM HUAN LUYEN YEN THE LONG THANH at: http://news.webshots.com/photo/1046092500031690022RGgJGg photo attached also some nice photos of evidently Vietnamese spec op parachute training? (attached) from the same album. The parachute landing doesn't look like vietnam though.

This is just a nice historical photo from 1975 http://news.webshots.com/photo/2977516180031690022lDAECJ Funny coincidence, there's a northwest orient plane in the background. So NWA must have flown to vietnam in '75? I think the photo album implies they are from Vietnam i.e. Hinh Anh Viet Nam Truoc Nam 1975

well the transcripts imply boxes were sent out, possibly during some testing. Do you remember that book on Boeing history, where I quoted a review saying that Air America "inquired" about air drop possibility before they made their purchase of 3 or 4 727s. We've previously documented the use/ownership of 3-4 727s by Civil Air Transport (connected to Air America). I think maybe some talk during the purchases and/or testing by Boeing, may have created some of this mythology. I don't have a copy of the book I mentioned. I posted the title before. Maybe I should hunt again. (edit) nice little site on cia airlines '54-'75 in Laos http://www.vietnam.ttu.edu/airamerica/best/ nice stuff besides the planes, for instance this copy of a 1970 from the Vietnam embassy in Wash. D.C. http://www.vietnam.ttu.edu/star/images/1653/16530103007.pdf It mentions that Air Vietnam had 727s in its commercial fleet. "Commerical airlines on domestic runs carried 1,510,700 passengers in 1969, averaging nearly 4,200 a day. In addition, the planes carry fresh vegetables and flowers from Dalat to the big city markets; fish and shrimp from the coastal areas; as well as emergency rice shipments to deprived communities. Newspapers and medical supplies are flown regularly to the provinces, providing the people in remote areas with a vital link to the Saigon Government. The government-controlled airline, Air Viet-Nam, now has a fleet which includes two Boeing 727 jets, and a third is about to be added. It also operates seven DC-3s, six DC-4s, and a number of smaller aircrafts, including helicopters. In addition to its domestic service, the line flies weekly to Kuala Lumpur, Phnom Penh, Bangkok, Vien... (edit) will list some good book references here: The Boeing 727, John A Whittle et al, Air-Britain (Historians) Ltd., 1976, ISBN 0 85130 047 2. Legend & Legacy: The Story of Boeing and Its People, Robert J. Serling http://www.amazon.com/dp/031205890X?tag=allinterviewscom&link_code=as3&creativeASIN=031205890X&creative=373489&camp=211189 "According to Robert Serling's book about the Boeing Company, three Boeing 727s were acquired by Air America, which was operated by the CIA. Indeed, the head of Air America inquired about how much cargo could be dropped down the rear stairs before Air America purchased its 727s."

Jo is in on the cover up. That is why your statement is not being published. That's why you didn't get to meet Ckret during your Portland visit. I am your only hope. PM me. -snowmman p.s. Do you want to pet my iguana?

While I was reading some of the psych studies about risk-seeking/enjoying personalities (true or false whatever), I noticed one mention where there was a comment about "playfullness" or something like that. It made me think about the Cooper reaction when he got the money. We've used that description to make him sound a little idiotic. I wonder if it actually could be part of a profile for a risk enjoying individual? I also wondered if Cooper survived whether he might have accumulated injuries in his life thru other "risk taking" behaviors. (either before or after the hijack) Or, if he dropped skydiving, then took up other sports, that had similar perceived risk attributes? http://www.sciencedirect.com/science?_ob=ArticleURL&_udi=B6V9F-3Y6GX1D-S&_user=10&_rdoc=1&_fmt=&_orig=search&_sort=d&view=c&_acct=C000050221&_version=1&_urlVersion=0&_userid=10&md5=e58442263b3fdf3e2ed77a3bd128aa87 "Risk sportsmen scored significantly lower than safe sportsmen on the TDS total score and on the Serious-Mindedness and Arousal Avoidance subscales, but there were no significant differences in Planning Orientation. Risk sportsmen scored significantly higher than safe on total NDS and on the Proactive subscale but not on the Reactive subscale. Analysis of T/PSI scores showed that both groups remained in their dominant state throughout the time course of the investigation. Risk sportsmen received more frequent and more serious injuries throughout the period of study and both TDS and NDS scores were significantly correlated with number of injuries. Discussion of high-risk sport as a way of meeting arousal, escape and control needs, and as expressing rebellion is related to values and stereotypes involved in risky sports and to implications in identifying possible addictions and preventing injuries."

I always wondered why people shied away from creating a profile of Cooper as terrorist. It's the fashionable label nowadays, a la Kaczynski et al. Why doesn't every article about Cooper call him "terrorist"? We've agreed it was a violent act. I also wonder why the profile of "know-it-all" would be appealing to Ckret. What the heck is a "know-it-all" anyhow? It has the appealing "you know one when you see one" feel, but are there "know-it-all's" that commit crimes? Are lots of bank robberies or bombings or ?? committed by people with half-knowledge, trying to show they have more knowledge? for some odd reason? And why would the profile of career bank-robber be appealing to Agent H? There is the robin-hood profile, from the press, which just seems dumb. There is the middle-aged manager profile, escaping the drudgery of a hemmed-in life. But why not the more dramatic profile? The tragically flawed anti-hero? The Heath Ledger as Joker standing on the stairs, embracing the rain in his business suit. Is the idea of the Joker just not real? Did Heath Ledger just make it up from nowhere? Is Heath Ledger really not dead? Why reject comic book mentalities? Are people somehow disgusted with the idea that they actually mirror/motivate people's psyche and want to hide from that thought? Or what? In a world where every thinkable thought, motivates someone, why dismiss any? Jumping out of an jet with a parachute in 1971 was not rational. How can a rational thought process decode Cooper?

John Nash would love this thread. John Nash would hate this thread. Why? Because he was insane, of course. (paranoid schizophrenic) http://www.rh.edu/~stodder/BE/IntroGameT.htm 1st concept of non-cooperative equilibrium: "When everyone’s playing their best move to everyone else's best move, no-one’s going to move." 2nd concept: "Think forward, then reason backward" 3rd concept: "When everyone’s playing their best move conditional on expectations of everyone else’s best move, then no-one’s going to want to move."

Okay, I got page 400 from Son of the Rough South by Fleming. the previous 3 pages aren't available, so I can't get the full story. But he gives some details on the hoax. here he says he was shown two twenties. So my description of the Xerox may not be fully correct? Have to research that more. It's also interesting that the hoax story involved 3 radio beacons arranged in a triangle, that were supposedly used along with a radio receiver by Cooper on the 727, to figure out a DZ. (around prior planted car). (attached) (edit) I looked at the USA vs Murphy and Lewis complaint in the FBI FOIA file(s). It does seem to say that only copies of bills were exchanged. So my initial memory seems correct. (attached)

http://articles.latimes.com/2005/jul/10/books/bk-garrow10 Covering white segregationists’ attacks on black protesters was dangerous for journalists, even for a burly, white Southern tough guy like Fleming. When James Meredith desegregated the University of Mississippi in October 1962, with dozens of federal marshals fighting off a violent white mob, Fleming was in the midst of the action. Two bystanders were killed, and Fleming writes, “I had four bullets stitched in a white wood column six inches from my head that night as I watched the Ole Miss riot from the entrance of the administration building.” Neither that nor any other confrontation in the South represented Fleming’s closest brush with death. After his move to Los Angeles, Fleming covered the Watts riots unscathed in August 1965, but nine months later he returned to the neighborhood when Stokely Carmichael, a firebrand leader of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, helped energize angry new protests. At one rally, Fleming found himself being “fingered as a white intruder in Watts” by “none other than my old friend – or so I thought – from the South, Stokely Carmichael.” Fleming was justifiably proud of his civil rights journalism record, so Carmichael’s verbal assault was a rude surprise. But far worse was in store when an unknown attacker took advantage of the turmoil on the streets later that day to club Fleming from behind with a 4-by-4-inch piece of lumber. The blow to his head knocked Fleming unconscious, fractured his skull and broke his jaw. A wire-service photo showing him lying prone in a pool of blood appeared in countless newspapers. Oddly, that picture was Fleming’s greatest moment of fame, for in the 1960s Newsweek did not use bylines. “Except in the places where we lived, and worked,” Fleming recounts, “news magazine reporters were all but anonymous,” and his courageous reporting appeared in Newsweek’s pages without his name ever being attached.

No, he is avoiding us and our questions. The FBI WON'T investigate the Hendrix link, and we have asked them to. It must be a cover-up! maybe in the midst of investigating the Morrison connection, he got confused about the description of which was the good acid, and which was the bad acid? (edit) Note Jim's mom was named 'Clara' http://www.morbid-curiosity.com/id153.htm Sidewalk crouches at her feet Like a dog that begs for something sweet Do you hope to make her see, you fool? Do you hope to pluck this dusky jewel?

I don't remember that, but in the FOIA files there is some magazine that ran a story where they interviewed Cooper... It was Karl Fleming that got hoaxed. He was at Newsweek but left in '72 to found his own mag. He grew up in a Methodist Church orphanage in North Carolina. I think Karl was a good journalist. He was very involved in reporting on civil rights things in the South. Wrote a book (maybe books?) about the south/black/civil rights stuff of the '60s/'70s. Newsweek "point man" on civil rights stuff in South from '60-'65. He got beaten at Watts http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=4675388 "Son of the Rough South" got good reviews. from http://www.thenation.com/doc/20050815/mcwhorter/1 "'Son of the Rough South' is Karl Fleming's memoir of how he transcended an "uncivil" boyhood in an orphanage to bear intrepid witness to the civil rights struggle as a Southern correspondent for Newsweek in the 1960s" "Karl Fleming, the date with Movement destiny turned out to be a prelude to personal descent: alcoholism, mental breakdown and professional humiliation when the Los Angeles weekly he founded folded in 1972 after he published an interview with a con man claiming to be the legendary skyjacker D.B. Cooper. Looking back across the wreckage, Fleming sees his Movement days as a postponement of the inevitable reckoning with his fate as an orphan of history. "

it is REALLY hard to fake a photoshop thing. People think it's easy, but it's usually detectable. Remember all the fake Sarah Palin images with her in the bathing suit and rifle, etc. They were found out. I was doing some work for a tshirt design, and I had a logo I wanted color reversed, and I was looking at how people merge images. There's all these halo fringe effects etc, due to pixelization. Luckily I figured out how to invert the image without doing anything complicated. And that guy that tried to fake the Bush National Guard Letter with Word, right? detected, and Dan Rather flushed. Basically, technology lets you fool stupid people. But any concerted effort can still detect counterfeit photoshops today. (I think). In fact since there's so much extra info (lighting effects, shadows etc), digital images work against you. (remember the analysis stuff georger was doing decomposing the tics on the flight path map!!) Jo knows that to tell a good story and not get found out, you have to keep all details fuzzy. When a detail is sharp, it's easy to tell if it's true or false. (edit) Another example of "hard" was when I did that fake Seattle FBI business card for Sluggo that I posted. Note that it was "fuzzy" on purpose. (edit) Since "stupid" sells, I'm going to put the following up for sale on ebay: "The PC Laptop DB Cooper Used to Write His Ransom Note: $1250"

I was mulling over the theory I had that the found money could have been counterfeit. The auction presented the nice data of very high resolution photos of the ingram money. I've zoomed into a lot of them, and I think I can see the telltale threads in the paper. And the printing seems to have the sharp features that distinguish real vs counterfeit. I've also checked for alignment of the serial numbers. I always assumed the FBI verified this, cause it's obvious. But you could imagine, that would have been an interesting plan in 1980. Counterfeit Cooper Bills, with the right serial numbers. Decompose them to make them hard to distinguish real/counterfeit. And collect your reward! Of course, today it would be "Sell on Ebay!" (edit) p.s. 377 I think on that Newsweek swindle, the theory was the counterfeits were cheaply done with a cut and paste job and rubber cement. I think the only thing the journalist ever saw was a Xerox copy? Never a real bill?

I've been musing about how various lit themes get introduced by different folks at different times. I always muse about how the conscious or unconscious mind pushes them out to a post. Ckret introduced Huck Finn. I introduced Moby Dick. In this encyclopedia: http://www.questiaschool.com/read/108780072?title=U "A paradox of nineteenth-century American society is that it was at once deeply homophobic and homoerotic, a function perhaps of the segregation of the sexes into separate spheres. As Leslie Fiedler scandalously pointed out in his classic study "Love and Death in the American Novel", first published in 1960, homoerotic friendships between men of different races occupied a central place in nineteenth-century American literature. Canonical examples include Natty Bumppo and Chingachgook in James Fenimore Cooper's Leatherstocking Tales, Ishmael and Queequeg in Herman Melville's Moby-Dick, and Jim and Huck in Mark Twain's Huckleberry Finn. "

I got to thinking how most out there haven't seen the seamier side of some D.B. "literature" I attached a snip from page 63 of the new book "D.B." (fiction) by Elwood Reid (just released this year) (it's those faded tube tops!) Interview with the author http://www.failbetter.com/15/ReidInterview.php (edit) You can get random pages from new books at amazon.com if they're not in google books. This one: http://www.amazon.com/gp/reader/0385497385/ref=sib_dp_pt#reader-link