snowmman

Hi Wolf. How do you know the Tom K. video was a teaser? You think it was a stage show? I agree it is strange it sounds like he's saying the Ingrams were wrong, but doesn't back it up. We can discuss the following two snaps from the video, to go along with the SEM/EDX idea. (attached) (edit) I've never seen a real scientist be so anal about labelling with a real labelmaker. (edit) Maybe they're printed paper from a PC?. There are other questions, but the labels almost look like they're for show. The dates are 11/13/08. I thought the dream team was supposedly working on this for a while. Something does smell fishy in denmark. But not sure. Not ignoring your other comments..just wondering. (edit) Another fishy "for show" thing could be the map that's on the screen of the PC. (3rd attach) You can see the L of the columbia. It's the vicinity of the new DZ area. The dark spots I think are Vancouver Lake and ??? Unclear if there are any newly labelled areas on the map there. Can't read the postit note :)

I apologize if I used too many posts. I had never looked at the Gunther book, so it was educational for me. But I'm done. But no one was interested in analyzing the KOIN video more after my SEM/EDX post? Do people think about the Tom K. video at all as having any info? or no? or ??

Ok, well then at least we're not talking about Duane again then. (edit) What the heck would the John Collins ID have to do with Gunther? So the caller never self-identified as Clara? Max (or his proxy) decided the caller was Clara? Or the original Cooper may have never had a Clara, and that was just a random code, and Max decided that since the caller was a woman, she was Clara? How did Max make the connection, if there was one? (edit) Did the original Cooper contact him again after the ad was placed? Apparently not, or the book wouldn't have been delayed until the much later "Clara-wannabe-apparently-must-be" appeared? Was Clara a night clerk? (edit) I would note that even though there are spelling errors, the gunther letter is well laid-out for a proper business letter. The dashes are inserted at approprate places for split words? when the typewriter is close to the end of a line (remember this stuff was all done manually back then! periods, commas etc seem well placed. There's no closing though, like "Yours" or "Thank you" The salutation "Dear Mr. Gunther:" correctly has a colon for a business letter. This is all interesting, because back then, fewer men would have taken a typing course (I did in high school), and would have known how to do the letter properly? It is nicely done, isn't it? Female secretaries did a lot of the typing back then. (edit) it looks like that D is the sole correction with overstrike? (insertions not counted). Probably didn't have any erasure method? Whoever wrote it was a good typist. But not a secretary. Not good enough. But pretty good. (edit) oddly enough, even though the magazine article was 10 years old (1962), the author of the letter gets the title exactly correct (from memory?) ...including the dashes in "Fed-up" and "Do-It-Yourself"..including the correct capitalization (which probably matches the article)? I know this because the source of the cover I provided had transcribed it from the table of contents. I'm assuming he did the capitalization as in the TOC. Could Max have faked the letter himself? Seems most likely.

How did we jump to Duane? What makes you think any of that has anything to do with Duane? (edit) I don't even understand how Max made the Clara connection to the '72 letter. Did Max never publish the '72 letter? If he did, some random nutcase might have contacted him as "Clara". Do we know? Where there other communications from "D.B. Cooper". I'm totally confused. I thought Gunther had communications with Clara. Now you say he had communications with Cooper. How many?

What I don't understand is that the plate gives the postmark of the letter as Feb. 10, 1972, yet the book wasn't published until 1985. What was the delay? Why did Gunther take so long to write the book? (edit) Did the FBI compare the typewriter printing in this Gunther letter to the typewriter printing in the '71 letters I mentioned. (The one Jo said she didn't know about. That Ckret hopefully will get for us next year) (edit) I'll assume you're just randomly guessing as usual Jo. Or do you have some data?

Here's a picture of the cover of the True magazine referenced in the Max Gunther letter (attached) Issue contained the article: "Do-It-Yourself Divorce for Fed-Up Males" by Max Gunther. (edit) related: Max Gunther, “The Female Fears that Bind a Man,” True, February 1965 Max wrote many magazine articles and at least 26 books during his life? (edit) In "Bad Laws Can Make Your Wife Your Warden", Gunther told the story of "Fred W." who planned to divorce his neurotic wife when she and her psychiatrist combined forces to have him committted to an insane asylum. Once released, Fred had to obey his wife or face recommitment. (He instead drove his wife insane and had her committed, which Gunther portrayed as a heroic victory). True magazine, August 1963, Vol 49, pp 65-69. (edit) info was from http://www.lib.umd.edu/drum/bitstream/1903/3355/1/umi-umd-3155.pdf which while large can be searched for some interesting thoughts about post WWII psychology/views (it's a dissertation, caveat emptor)

Did you see my post just now about the s in "disapear-" (I didn't realize only one p was there till after I posted) What do you think? do you agree on the possibility of hand-penned (you noted the lack of serifs) I don't think hand-penned is likely. The place to have hand-penned was in "diapear" and instead there is the distinctive "s" (lower left missing) squashed in. "diapear" is only one letter away from "diaper." Sometimes my fingers type automatically -- how about the letter writer's? Mark good thought. I know when I type, I just have a conversation in my head..I think the words and don't think about my fingers...they kind of go by themselves. Sometimes I read what I wrote afterwards, sometimes not. But yeah, I've posted with wrong words before. "their" "there" etc. synonyms I guess for me. Sometimes spelling errors. I always have a problem with the right number of i's in possibility.

very good detail Mark. Did you see my post just now about the s in "disapear-" (I didn't realize only one p was there till after I posted) What do you think? do you agree on the possibility of hand-penned (you noted the lack of serifs)

I did a little cutout of the words around "disapear-" in the Max Gunther letter Sluggo provided. From what I can see, I think the s was written in with pen or pencil after the typewritting. This, if true, could explain the weird u-like thing after the crossed out D. Just speculating. There is another typewritten s in this attach. You can see the clear font difference (as well as the spacing problem) (edit) There is a p missing in "disappear-" also (edit) updated this post to use single p in "disapear"

reading the max gunther letter, I may be misremembering, but wasn't 1962 the last time someone at DZ.com got laid? JOKE!

examining the suspected "Du" crossout. IBM selectrics Composer introduced proportional fonts in typewriters. This detail was at the base of the analysis of the fake supposed National Guard letter regarding George Bush (faked with Microsoft Word !) But the typewriter used in the "Happy Birthday ..." jpg above, seems to have fixed letter spacing? Except for the weird half-u after the D-x combo? If that was really a u, it would be spaced further from the "D" wouldn't it? It doesn't seem to make sense? Can someone explain a scenario? Sluggo: when I blow up the Happy Birthday jpeg, it doesn't look like it was scanned from a book. Was it? If so, can you provide a lower resolution scan of the page it was on? (edit) or maybe it wasn't created with a typewriter? was it typeset? where the heck did it come from? And why would the guy who rejected reading all Cooper books, have access to a Max Gunther book?

First we have the FBI acknowledging an investigative error (the flight path comment on the KOIN video) Then we have Jo confessing: Next you're going to tell me the US economy is actually going to make a full recovery in the future.

There are a number of things we can discuss about what's in the Tom K. video. I don't know if these things were presented as things people would like us to see or imagine or what, but we can discuss it. What's real or fake is a different story. I'll start it off with a discussion of the apparent liquid nitrogen Tom seems to be handling and pouring. Apparently, one use of liquid nitrogen with scanning electron microscopes (SEM) is to cool x-ray detector crystals that are used in EDX: Energy Dispersive X-ray microanalysis. From looking at the SEM in the video, I "think" there's a tank on the side of the SEM for the liquid N2. Comparing it to an SEM set up for EDX, it does look similar. EDX is used to analyse the elemental content of a sample. There is further info in the video that suggests that might be the focus also. At first blush, I would have thought microbial decomposition might be a focus, but there's a number of things that say not. We can discuss the mason jars next. Pics of apparent liquid N2 handling by Tom attached. (snapped from the KOIN video)

Well, I've only read two of the Cooper books out there, Norjak and Tosaw's. The various summaries I've seen of Gunther's made me think there was no way there would anything interesting in his book. Doesn't mean there isn't, just seemed unlikely. At the last auction, I cropped some of the better high resolution photos of bills and posted them here. You have to click thru a couple of appropriate places at the auction site to get the highest resolution photos, and unless you're diligent, you might miss the best they have. So I grabbed the "best" looking one and cropped it and it's attached. In all the bills from Ingram that we get, I've been looking for evidence of rubber bands around the bundle. I don't know what that might be, but maybe compression, or differing decomposition around the area of the rubber band, or different discoloring. I'm wondering if this bill might be showing something. As a guess, I'm wondering if the rubber bands were very narrow, like 1/16", instead of say 1/4". And the rubber bands maybe were sized to fit around the bundle just once..i.e. you know how long rubber bands you double them up? I'm thinking the rubber bands on these bundles were narrow and not doubled up. Just guessing. Take a look at the bill. (first) Dark bills, I'm guessing, are more likely to show rubber band marks, since I'm guessing the darkness means they were near the top or bottom of the actual bundle. (edit) I say this because the occurence of dark bills is apparently less than that of light bills. (edit) The amount of rubber in the rubber bands is important to understand, if we're to create a mental model of the decomposition of the rubber vs the currency, and also the compression caused by the rubber band over time. (edit) Bid? Why bid when you can hire some DZ.com jumpers to do a night jump onto the roof of the auction house, make their way thru vents and....uh, take pictures of the bills? (edit) two more of the new auction bills attached. Note the last one has a small amount of the brown staining we've seen on other bills, which I also wonder if it might be related to the "leach" stains on the folder the FBI uses to store their bills (which was weird since Tom K has his now in plastic evidence bags. A little late!)

thanks skywhuffo looks to be 15 of them? not sure if these are resales of the previous bills auctioned or sold or whether these are new ingram bills. He didn't sell everything he had at the last auction to see 15 http://shop.ebay.com/?_from=R40&_trksid=m38&_nkw=d.b.+cooper+ransom+money to see what I think is the best one (it's a darker one too, which is rarer? It's a pretty full one) http://cgi.liveauctions.ebay.com/47224-D-B-Cooper-1971-Ransom-Money-1963A-20-PCGS_W0QQcmdZViewItemQQ_trkparmsZ72Q3a1205Q7c66Q3a2Q7c65Q3a12Q7c39Q3a1Q7c240Q3a1318QQ_trksidZp3286Q2ec0Q2em14QQhashZitem260315708620QQitemZ260315708620QQptZLHQ5fDefaultDomainQ5f0 (edit) higher resolution photos are available directly at the auction site http://www.ha.com/common/search_items.php?txtSearch=d.b.+cooper&chkAuctions=1&chkInventory=1&ic=homepage_search&hdnSearch=true&optGlobalSearch=1

OK, given my background: I was unsurprised to see a Pareto reference, but interested in the other places (outside of economics) he shows up? Google is your friend!

Hey Orange1 thanks for that reference. wikipedia had a nice quick summary http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_rider_problem I was surprised to see a Pareto reference. I'm always interested in how many places that guy shows up. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pareto_efficiency "A weak Pareto optimum (WPO) satisfies a less stringent requirement, in which a new allocation is only considered to be a Pareto improvement if it is strictly preferred by all individuals (i.e., all must gain with the new allocation). In other words, when an allocation is WPO there are no possible alternative allocations where every individual would gain." "A common criticism of a state of Pareto efficiency is that it does not necessarily result in a socially desirable distribution of resources, as it may lead to unjust and inefficient inequities"

yeah, I don't really like lurkers who freeload. "ggjumpshot" sent me a PM with a nymag email address. A couple weeks back I think?? 11/3/08 He mentioned some stuff that I told him was novice level Cooper thinking...Level 0. He went away. I'm surprised he never posted here. I told him to go research when night vision goggles first arrived in Vietnam! (for 377). He was on about Dan Cooper comics and NATO bases or something. Didn't talk much with him. Why do random lurkers think I would care about keeping any PMs "private"? Is there some law of the jungle that if I violate I get constipation for the rest of my life? It's like walking up to a crazy nut in the parking lot, ranting about Cooper, and thinking the nut will just forget what you just said. It's like "Oh yeah, I have a nymag email address, so I get some respect" ...not! Get a clue! the internet is full of kooks..don't send out your phone number! (okay I had a heart and didn't include his phone number) Another example of his "deep" thinking. He sounds more interested in getting a cutesy story than anything else... Like duh, like we don't know who wrote the Dan Cooper stuff.

ah man. I had the street cred of being the last guy banned here. Now I'm just the 2nd to last? (2nd place is first loser?)

The question came up whether hotels were visited/employees questioned, back in 1971. So we rustled all the PhD's out of bed here, and sent them off with clipboards and donuts to interview all the blog-owning-night-clerks we could find. Some were in Brazil. One interview took place at a dance club called "Help" just outside Rio. Bribes etc were exchanged as necessary. Substance abuse when deemed proper. This is what we came up with. So apparently agents went to the Carlton.(edit) It's no big mental leap to assume the same scene played out at every hotel etc. Don't know if they confiscated any Che Guevera panties. (the stuff below is verbatim from the blog) http://housesoncedarstreet.blogspot.com/2008/11/was-he-or-wasnt-he.html "I went to work at the Carlton on December 17, 1971, only about three weeks after this famous nights. The people at the Carlton were still buzzing with what they perceived as truth that DB Cooper had been a guest at the Carlton Hotel just days before his famous night. According to the guests, the FBI had been all over the hotel looking for clues. I don't know for sure that he was or had ever been a guest at the Carlton.We did not require picture Id's in those days to register. But, for some strange reason, I feel a special bond with DB Cooper because I feel that he had been in the Carlton, and I could feel his presence. Maybe it was just my imagination, or maybe it isn't. I do not know for sure any more than the FBI knows who he was or if he survived that historical night."

1) I and I are not Tom K. 2) I wouldn't join a cadre that would accept me as a member. 3) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xzkd_m4ivmc

I just realized there is one brass ring, that millions dream of, but only few can ever attain. Getting your story on the front page of Digg No. that's not possible. There's no way, it's the impossible dream. That's A-list way beyond Angelina. (edit) So I jump ship in Hong Kong and make my way over to Tibet, and I get on as a looper at a course over in the Himalayas. A looper, you know, a caddy, a looper, a jock. So, I tell them I'm a pro jock, and who do you think they give me? The Dalai Lama, himself. Twelfth son of the Lama. The flowing robes, the grace, bald ... striking. So, I'm on the first tee with him. I give him the driver. He hauls off and whacks one – big hitter, the Lama – long, into a 10,000-foot crevice, right at the base of this glacier. And do you know what the Lama says? Gunga galunga ... gunga – gunga lagunga. So we finish the 18th and he's gonna stiff me. And I say, "Hey, Lama, hey, how about a little something, you know, for the effort, you know." And he says, "Oh, uh, there won't be any money, but when you die, on your deathbed, you will receive total consciousness." So I got that goin' for me, which is nice.

:) no not even going to look. Tom gets a pass. Anyone who's willing to put themselves out there in the media deserves some slack.

kudos to everyone. Sluggo's flight path work was seminal and the extensions off it he did, amazing. Tom, you reminded me of a mad scientist guy whose lab I happened to see in the '80s in Tempe. (his wife showed me :) ) He had his own private forensic lab, mostly worked for lawsuits. He bought used gear and had it all set up like a mad frankenstein lab. It was like you looked around his lab and thought "Is it legal to own all this gear?" ...He had a big hang glider he was analyzing that failed at the time. (edit) Funny Tom! you got me, yeah the first thing I did while watching the clip was a quick google. But unless you worked as a night clerk sometime in the past...:) a blog entry http://blogs.king5.com/archives/2008/11/cooper-case-age.html "You've got to hand it to Larry Carr. The Seattle FBI agent volunteered to take over the DB Cooper investigation last year. It's a stone-cold case and lower than low on the FBI's priority scale. Carr is the lone case agent and even he is a part-timer. His day job is chasing bank robbers for the FBI. That's why Carr deserves credit for making the most of what he's got. He realizes the one powerful tool at his disposal is continuing public interest in the Cooper case. When he started releasing previously secret evidence about the case last year, reporters (including this one) came running. Along with the expected kooks, a contingent of talented citizen sleuths has responded. As our story shows, those volunteers are performing work at their own expense and developing exciting new leads. It reminds me of that scene where Mark Twain's Tom Sawyer is dreading painting the picket fence, so he cunningly convinces the other kids that it's fun and then lets them do the job. Fortunately for Carr, there are many of us who are all too happy to help the FBI with its chores." (edit) I would note a popular myth propagated by the media: that there is a distinction between "kooks" and "talented".

Agreed. But, if you extend that to say TV, plus the current state of the art gaming consoles, with maybe non-US games, does that cover the real world? I mean doesn't it work if you get the Soul Stone with +500 manna and a Divine Intervention Shout? Ah man. This is the kind of thing that turns people to the old school stuff, like religion. JOKE!