After impact it took 29 seconds for the train to stop. Engineer will need a cab ride back to the crash site.

Crash site

36°24'36.20"N
117°19'26.36"W

I agree with Mass Bike that the truck driver was responsible. Not sure that he should be criminally charged, that's a really big hammer to use on someone that almost certainly did not intend any harm. But he wasn't even cited, although he left the scene. He called the Boston police many hours later, from New Jersey.

That said, I would advise any cyclists to avoid ever putting themselves in the position that Dr Kurmann found herself in. It is dangerous to ride beside large vehicles with limited visibility, as we see. Also good to note that semi trucks frequently swing left to set up a right turn -- I don't believe she realized the danger she was in until the truck was close to actually passing in front of her.

The symbol in the middle lane is a "sharrow", which really indicates that the middle lane is not a bike lane. The sharrow is supposed to indicate to motorists that bicycles may be expected in the lane, and to remind cyclists that they are allowed to use it. The Boston police report gets this wrong, irresponsibly making the driving public stupider. At the time of the crash the right lane was used as a turn lane, and there was a bus stop just before the crash site, making it likely that cyclists would use the middle lane.

It's fun to say that you never trust anyone, but that can't literally be true. For example, I trust thousands of drivers standing at red lights or stop signs not to charge out and run me over. It would be almost impossible to move in traffic without relying on most drivers to do the right thing most of the time.

yeah maybe. i dunno, i've seen people just freeze like a deer in the headlights whenever something unusual happens on the road.

Literally last night we pulled up as an accident had occurred ahead of us, and for the next five minutes the number of people who blasted past a line of stopped cars all with their hazards on and full headlight beams illuminating the crash site and so on, was staggering. Last minute they'd realize that yes, there's a car blocking one lane and facing the wrong way all smashed to bits and yes, there's glass and oil on the road. One after anouther they'd slam on the brakes, almost hit it, then almost get rear ended.

People drive with total tunnel vision i think. It's kinda scary how little awareness some people have. On the other hand maybe they're an asshole. hard to say.

Dutch journalist Jeroen Akkermans keeps uploading scores of pictures taken at the MH17 crash site to his Flickr account. No corpses, just debris -- no warning neccessary.

A few interesting pictures, if you don't mind amateur forensics:
- left wing, top side: damaged by debris coming from the fuselage at an outward trajectory
- window panel, aft-most cockpit window, port side: shredded by shrapnel, downward trajectory?
- second door from the front, port side: no damage from shrapnel or debris
- port-side hatch of the forward landing gear: no damage

So, explosion in the foward-left quadrant, above the cockpit?

I know, I know -- wild speculation, utterly without a point. But it's infinitly less depressing than looking at the latest pictures from Gaza. Bad days to be a news junkie...

Edit: rear door, starboard side -- no damage

Local news service Interfax is reporting that nearly 500 tons of fuel from the craft has contaminated the crash site
*related=http://videosift.com/video/Russian-Rocket-Explodes-After-Launch

Power lines are very hard to see from the air. Fuck they're not easy to see from the ground either when you're going 70mph. Next time your driving down the highway keep an eye out for them and see just how close you are to them when you're able to notice them. Now imagine being in the air, landing with no power to go around and have one come into view that close.

It might look fine from up there, but with your engine out and only one chance at putting the plane down safely do you want to take a chance and go for the road then find a power line in your face or a car(s) that you didn't see before or do you go for an open field with no obstacles?

I knew a pilot that got killed landing on a road. He was a regular at the airport I worked at during the summers. He owned a construction company and would regularly fly over and inspect his construction sites. He flew in to the airport one afternoon to get fuel, the next day I was reading about his crash in the paper. After he left the airport he flew to a construction site. He had engine trouble and decided to land on a road near the construction site. A truck pulled out in front of him and he tried to pull up to avoid it, but there was a power line in the way which caused the plane to nose dive into the ground and catch fire. The crash site wasn't far from the airport, so one day I drove out there. There was a perfectly good field next to the road he could have landed on, but I'm guessing he went for the road to avoid damaging his plane.

@blastido_factor:

There's an old Jewish proverb that runs something like this:

"A fool can throw a stone into the water that ten wise men cannot recover."

Your stones, fortunately, aren't irrecoverable. I'll offer some counterpoints to a few of your claims, and I'll leave it up to you to fish for the truth about the others.


- The alleged masterminds of 9/11 have never been produced and never put to trial, despite having supposedly been captured in 2001/02

I don't know what you mean by "produced," but here's something I do know: I started a case in small claims court earlier this year (in New York City, nonetheless), and I was told I'd have to wait at least four months to appear before an arbitrator. (It's likely that I'll have to wait longer, if, for example, I opt to appear before a judge.) Simply put, trials take time. Given the complexities of a trial involving the masterminds and perpetrators of 9/11, ten years is hardly cause for conspiracy.


- Total failure of the air defense system. The Pentagon was struck One hour and Twenty minutes after the attacks began, yet there was no response from Andrews Air Force base, which is just 10 MILES away and supposed to be in charge of defending the capitol."

The North Tower was struck at 8:46 AM, the South Tower at 9:03 AM, and the Pentagon at 9:37 AM. By my math, the Pentagon was hit fifty-one minutes after the first plane hit the WTC and thirty-four minutes after the second plane hit. The 9/11 Commission estimated that the hijacking of Flight 11, the first plane to hit the WTC, began at 8:14 AM. It's misleading, in this context, to consider the hijacking of Flight 11 as the beginning of the attack (I assume this is what you meant); it wasn't until the second plane hit the WTC that the nature and the scale of the attacks became evident. Could the communication between the FAA and NORAD have been more prompt, and, thus, more effective? Yes. (Rightly so, this is one of the major criticisms lobbied against the agencies responsible for responding to the attacks.) Is the delay of thirty-four minutes cause for conspiracy, given the lack of precedence in handling such a coordinated attack and the confusion surrounding the events of the attack? No.


- The remains of the twin towers were quickly carried off and buried before any forensic investigations could be done.

Your use of the word forensic is categorically flawed. (The first and third definitions of forensic, according to the Merriam-Webster dictionary, are as follows: (1) "belonging to, used in, or suitable to courts of judicature or to public discussion and debate, and (3) "relating to or dealing with the application of scientific knowledge to legal problems.") NIST's reports are chock-full of forensic analyses; have a look for yourself: http://www.nist.gov/el/disasterstudies/wtc/index.cfm. Forensic investigations also led to the identification of a significant number of victims. According to Wikipedia: "Within a year, medical examiners had identified the remains of 33 victims who had been on board Flight 11. They identified two other Flight 11 victims, including the lead flight attendant Karen Martin, after body fragments were discovered near Ground Zero in 2006. In April 2007, examiners using newer DNA technology identified another Flight 11 victim. The remains of two hijackers, potentially from Flight 11, were also identified and removed from Memorial Park in Manhattan." The methods used to identify these victims (DNA testing, in many cases) were nothing if not forensic.

You're also neglecting the simple fact that the removal of debris was necessary from a health standpoint. Again, according to Wikipedia: "The thousands of tons of toxic debris resulting from the collapse of the Twin Towers contained more than 2,500 contaminants, including known carcinogens. Subsequent debilitating illnesses among rescue and recovery workers are said to be linked to exposure to these carcinogens."


- Of all the cameras around the pentagon, including the security tapes taken from local gas stations, only one blurry clip was released.

Three videos, not one, were released. According to Wikipedia: "A nearby Citgo service station also had security cameras installed, but a video released on September 15, 2006, did not show the crash because the camera was pointed away from the crash site. The Doubletree Hotel, located nearby in Crystal City, Virginia, also had a security camera video, and on December 4, 2006, the FBI released the video in response to a freedom of information lawsuit filed by Scott Bingham. The footage is 'grainy and the focus is soft, but a rapidly growing tower of smoke is visible in the distance on the upper edge of the frame as the plane crashes into the building.'"


I don't fault you, or others like you, for wanting to "think twice" about the explanations given for certain of the events surrounding 9/11. I do fault you, though, for spending so little time on your second round of thinking, and for so carelessly tossing conspiracy theories to the wind.

>> ^Stormsinger:

It constantly amazes me how few people understand what the U in UFO stands for. But whatever...we don't know what it is, so the best theory is obviously intelligent visitors from another planet who -never- leave any physical evidence.
Just another invisible man in the sky.


"Never leave any physical evidence" as far as you know, that is.

We have no idea what was pulled out of Roswell. A weather balloon? Please, I don't buy it. Perhaps a classified military vehicle. But not a weather balloon.

I have seen documentaries that show pieces of metal that were claimed to have been found by the farmer who lived there, as well as accounts from his children about the memory metal he found at the "crash site" and the "beams" with strange characters on them. There have also been eye witness sitings by military units in England in which impressions were in the ground which also produced results when tested with a Geiger counter.

Besides, maybe they have a "Prime Directive" of their own. Hence no or little evidence of their visit.

>> ^xxovercastxx:
I'm a bit shocked that he needs "another week" to finish ME2. I finished it last weekend. All of it. Side-quests too.
I played a little bit Thursday night, a few hours Friday night and, since my plans for the weekend fell through, pretty much all day Saturday and Sunday. I just checked my final saved game and it's 31 hours.
They really stripped the thing bare. Lots of features removed or simplified. Apparently nobody liked the driving in the first game so they completely removed that (unless you buy the driving DLC). The problem with the driving in ME1 was there was nothing on 90% of the planets besides a mineral deposit or two. That hasn't changed, but now you have to rub the planets with your mouse cursor in order to find mineral deposits instead of actually exploring them. It's like doing a 10' scratch-off ticket with a penny.


I actually just straight up hated the MAKO, to the point where when I Was exploring the normandy crash site, I smiled a bit when I saw its "Wreckage".

The controls were brutal, I can think of many times where the paths you were supposed to take in certain places (Liaras dig site in particular) weren't well laid out, and therefore I personally died almost every single time I got to the end because "Oh shit, I turn left theres a wall there, turn right!" and started barreling off the path into the lava, and by the time I went "Oh shit, lava!" and hit reverse, I was either too late and in the lava, or about to touch it. And for some reason, lava is an instant kill.

I did find some of it more simplified, but it took me ages to realise things from the first game were missing. I never had to worry about inventory because you never picked anything up unless it was usefull, and eventually realised I didn't have to sit there spamming clicks to sell all 150 items in my inventory, that I like. The cover system works out well, scanning works well, hacking and bypassing are 100x more fun then just the space frogger it used to be. The only true "Complaint" I have about the game, is that the biotic is borderline useless on a first playthrough, and only somewhat useful once you unlock "Reave" and can start a new game with it. Biotics don't do anything against armour, barrier, and shields. Other then that, I liked all the changes.

It’s a good thing I checked the paper besides looking at MovieTickets.com. Instead of Sunday, the last movie on the list was shown Saturday night. I called the theater confirm the schedule just to be sure.

Before I review the Horrorfest, I wanted to mention the theater where I viewed the films – Hollywood 9. It used to be part of a chain called General Cinema. Some older folks will remember the music that used brushes on a snare drum with an electric guitar to announce “Coming Soon” and “Feature Presentation.” Then stadium-seating theaters were introduced ten years ago. They managed to kill a majority of movie theaters in this area. A local family bought this theater from the chain. It continues to run first-run films. We used to have a network of second-run film-theaters. They were good for when a film left the first-run-theaters. Plus they were cheaper.

Audiences have been small for the Horrorfest – maybe four to twelve people at most. Horror films are more fun with a full theater of raucous younger folks.

And now for my rankings . . . . I organized them from most favorite to least favorite. The films included for 2007 cover certain standard genres:

The Deaths of Ian Stone (R)
Ian Stone keeps dying and jumping to another life. Each time he interacts with the same girl. Before each death a clock suddenly stops. I like this one best because the film takes time to reveal the context of events and characters.

Mulberry Street (R)
This could have easily been called “Rat People.” The film is set in New York City in a rundown apartment building. Rats across Manhattan bite people spreading a contagious “rat virus.” Once bitten, people morph into rat-faced-like-humans. This flick has a style similar to “28 Days Later.” These carnivorous rat-people move fast and gnaw at their human prey. The newscast vaguely covers events as the infection becomes widespread. Other than the rats spreading the virus, there’s not much of an explanation for the virus’s existence.

Crazy Eights (NR)
Six young adults gather together after the death of someone they all knew. Twenty years earlier their parents left them at mental institution as guinea pigs for human experiments. The name given to their group was “Crazy Eights.” Prior to the group reuniting, they started having nightmares. A last request by the deceased takes them on an odyssey to locate a time capsule they made years ago. OK, that’s seven people; so what about the eighth one?

Borderland (NR)
Of the eight films this is the only one based on a true story. It is more consistent than some of the others. Three American guys in their early twenties cross the border into Mexico. In the course of seeking young women, they cross paths with drug dealers who perform Santeria human sacrifices. In this area near the border, the drug dealers have police intimidated. There is one cop, however, who helps two of the guys when the third one goes missing. He’s been investigating the drug dealers for a while. Also, They killed his partner.

The murders in this film are brutal. Sean Astin plays a bad guy – I was expecting him to yell for Frodo. He has a beard that helps a little with his baby face.

Tooth and Nail (R)
Set in the year 2012 (how Mayan ), civilization has collapsed because there is no more gas. People are forced to survive without technology. Two guys and a girl are exploring when they rescue a girl from an armed man. They bring her back to their group. Right away the group does not trust her. Then one night the group’s leader is murdered. Soon group learns that cannibals are intent on feeding on them. Considering the beginning of the film I expected more cleverness in the lines and the battles to survive. I would have thought the hospital, where they are living, would have some neat props and/or rooms to do battle in – I felt like more could have been done. The cannibals dress like medieval warriors. Axes, knives, swords, spears all make for a bloodbath. There are some later twists in the plot that redeem this movie a little. Otherwise, the film just has a body count.

Mike Madsen and Vinnie Jones ham it up a bit.

Unearthed (R)
Unless I missed it, I’m not sure what group of Native Americans the characters are descended from in this movie. Anyway a young male Native American is digging in a cave where a sacred burial ground is located. Unfortunately his efforts release a monster that his ancestors managed to knock out for many centuries.

A female Native American is sheriff. She’s still trying to live down a circumstance in which she was not able to prevent a young girl from being shot. She investigates a vehicle crash site involving a truck. She locates a piece of something that was caught in a truck’s grill. When a biologist analyzes this something, she determines that it is not of this earth and it has been collecting samples of living things.

As the body count adds up, the sheriff does her best to protect those left. In the course of things she becomes covered in some black liquid in the cave. This stuff ends up protecting her in a close encounter with the creature. She and the guy, who unleashed the creature in the first place, figure out that uranium is what they need to make the protective liquid. Someone else will have to comment on the science or lack of science involved here.

The creature behaves a bit like the ones from “Alien.” It is scarier when you don’t see it. However, it does move fast.

Nightmare Man (R)
A woman orders her husband a primitive mask with horns. She gets more than she bargained for in this tale. Although this one starts off hokey, filmed with video, it does improve with some plot twists. This couple runs out of gas on the way to a mental hospital. He leaves her alone while he goes for gas.

She becomes scared by a demon in the darkness. After a bit of cat ‘n’ mouse, she manages to run to a house in the woods. Two couples are enjoying each other’s company until this woman arrives frantic about what is chasing her and the pills she dropped in the forest in the dark. Listen when someone tells you that pills help control a demon inside. : )

Lake Dead (NR)
A grandfather to an incestuous family is killed. Three granddaughters want travel to see the property they inherited. Their father warns them not to go. The kids are mad at him because saying their grandfather was dead long before he actually was dead.

One of the girls skips the funeral and goes to Lake Dead by herself – bad news. Lake is the family’s last name. Anyway the two girls arrive with a couple and another guy. There is a shallow manmade pond on the property. Characters in the story refer to it as a lake.

So then the body count starts. The gene pool in this town is a bit shallow too.


OK, there are the “8 Films to Die for.” When I’ve seen the eight from 2006, I’ll do a synopsis and ranking of them as well.

I'm not really sure if that article does anything to debunk the information presented in the documentary. It just seems to gripe about how they don't like Mark Bowden.

Their comment, "Why is it called ''The True Story''? Is someone spreading a false story?" doesn't really hold water. The feature film of the same name was only based on the actual events. For example, Sgt. Eversman who was one of the focal characters of the story, was never trapped on the ground at the crash site. He was actually on the convoy that made it out of the city with the prisoners (The one where Sgt Pilla was shot while manning the Humvee's Browning).

This documentary was cataloguing the events more closely to what happened according to Bowden's research, which I would assume is as accurate as can be.

In reply to your comment:
“Well, this video focuses on the allegations of "missed warnings" and of Pentagon staff apparently lying to cover up their mistakes in dealing with the hijackings. Both of these allegations, of course, are completely incompatible with your claims of bogus plane crashes, thermite and controlled demolitions. So, it seems slightly odd to see you espousing an investigation into them. It appears that even your own fantastical beliefs are internally contradictory.”

To clarify, here are some declarations of what I believe:
Par, I never claimed that planes did not hit the towers. I do believe that those planes hit the towers. I saw the 2nd plane hit on tv that morning like most people. I am just not sure if thermite was used to assist the collapse. I just don't know like many others. I do find it unusual that absolutely none of the tower's core structure survived in-tact based on the public pancake theory one would expect some of the core to be standing. Building 7 seems to be an anomaly that even none of the experts can agree upon.

I do believe that it wasn't a 757 that hit the pentagon but rather a cruise missle hit it since the titanium engines would have been visible at the pentagon site... I'm sorry.. but an entire airliner woudl not vaporize. Especially the engines and they would have left distinct marks.

Also the supposed flight 77 hijacker pilot(Hani Hanjour) was a horrible pilot and couldn't even control a cessna and a seasoned pilot would have had a hard time controlling a 757 above the ground for such a distance. I'm a pilot with about 150hrs and I can easily land a 737 in the simulator but accurate approaches in a 757 are much more difficult and highly unusual that a person with crappy piloting skills (according to the aviation school that Honjour attended) could execute the maneuvers. He couldn't even maintain a Cessna according to them. Most noteable is the corkscrew descent to the pentagon - a very difficult maneuver in a 757 and the subsequent leveling off at 20ft. above the ground, striking the first floor of the bldg, not damaging the lawn and leaving no traces of the engines. Also, the amount of confiscated videos around the pentagon just minutes after the incident and utter refusal to release such videos that should corroborate the official story.

I believe that flight 96 was shot down (based on the scattering of small debris at the crash site).

I believe that our govt definitely knew about the attacks and it was not only not-thwarted but used to their advantage by the creators of the PNAC (Project for a New American Century) that claimed they needed "a new Pearl Harbor" in the PNAC document. Therefore it was in their best interest to have the catalyzing event that would allow them to enact the Patriot Act (which was already written and ready to go in case of such an event) and allowed Bush to call for war with almost unanimous public, senate and house consent.

Um, with respect to the so-called smoking gun, the only thing "smoking" in this case was the rubble of the crash sites.

Note that WTC was affected by more than fire - there was the matter of jets crashing into them as well. So your statement that "No steel-framed building has ever collapsed due to fire before or since 9/11" can also be stated as "No steel-framed building has ever collapsed due to fire, ever. But it has happened with the additional impact from being rammed by a fast moving jetliner."

Now let's say I agree with the assertion that "Steel-framed buildings can only collapse at freefall speeds into their own footprints when subjected to controlled demolition."

Um, okay. So if I agree that means there must've been a controlled demolition, and if I disagree, it's because that's not what happened in this case?

Let's go with that:
1. the towers fell at a speed slower than freefall b/c the building wasn't wired to explode, so there was kinetic energy loss as it fell, and
2. they exceeded footprints while collapsing - common knowledge from viewing the events live on TV, plus, if you want permanent evidence that debris hit other structures, note that it's part of the reason why WTC7 collapsed as well.

http://911myths.com/WTCREPORT.pdf

Physics say it'll take *at least* 9.1 seconds (square root of (2 times (416-10) divided by 9.81) for an object fall down from that height.

Observations, calculations and measurements indicate that it took around 12 or 13 seconds for the towers to collapse, so they didn't fall at "freefall speeds" at all.

The report goes into detail about resistance/kinetic energy, concluding on how much energy you need to crush concrete (the towers had energy that exceeded that requirement by a factor of 10). Air resistance is 1.5% of the crushing force. And each floor slowed descent by no more than .015 seconds.

Interesting note that these "A325" bolts used in constructing the buildings weren't strong enough - the columns could've withstood a little more stress before using up their full strength.

Sounds like a reliable source to me: http://911myths.com/html/dr_frank_greening_bio.html

It's disturbing to read such a cold dispassionate, dare I say it, scientific examination of the input energies required to crush concrete to 60 micrometre particles, but it's all well within the physical realm of possibility.

There's two interesting conclusions from these readings.
1. they claimed the buildings could withstand impact of airplanes
2. they did, for a while - enough time to evacuate a whack of people out; sadly not all - obviously not those above the impact floors, and not the firefighters who bravely ran inside to try and help - but until the building succumbed to all that damage, it stayed up.

Let me know if you find any errors in Dr. Greening's calculations.

Here you go swampgirl and cobalt... I am in NO WAY a proponent of the conspiracy theories surrounding the attack on the Pentagon, but from what I've gathered here are some of the main points leading people to believe there is a cover-up afoot;

- the "secrecy" surrounding videos of the crash; FBI agents secured a number of video tapes from nearby businesses that could have captured the event, and upon litigation for their release under the freedom of information act only the two 1-frame-per-second videos taken from the entrance gate were handed over. This has been explained as the request not being specific enough, and could be the FBI being overly cautious to release to the press footage they don't hold copyright to (they got in trouble for the JFK footage). As with anything held classified, people's imaginations tend to wander, and beliefs that they're hiding a terrible truth begin to form.

- the plane was not intercepted, and there was what appears to be a complete breakdown in what the FAA and the Airforce were supposed to do in this situation.

- the side of the Pentagon that was attacked was "under construction" and not fully staffed; also it was opposite the side occupied by the higher-ups, like Rumsfeld.

- the plane skips over the White House in favor of the larger Pentagon, and is then noted (I have not read the official accounts) to have quickly dove thousands of feet while banking a large turn in order to hit the Pentagon, and this maneuver would be difficult if not impossible in that aircraft, certainly for a pilot of little experience (again, this is what they say, and I don't know what the officially tracked flight path was).

- this huge plane was piloted extraodinarily well by the hijackers (as morbid and terrible as that is to say), and hit the building at practically ground level, after diving very low and clipping a number of highway lights, while flying 350mph, leveling off, and not hitting the ground.

- there is a line of dead grass in the lawn of the Pentagon before the attack that is only a few degrees off of tracking the direction in which the airplane struck (I thought this was an interesting coincidence, and is clearly visible in a video I submitted before, but has very reasonable explanations; http://www.videosift.com/story.php?id=2812 )

- the appearance of the crash site: looking at pictures of the event, you don't see much of an airplane, nor any damage to the ground, nor much of a hole in the building (atleast at first, before fire crews begin tearing away damaged sections). This lead to accusations of a missile attack or a smaller airplane piloted remotely and precisely. This is the claim that this video is addressing; that the appearance of the site actually matches what could be expected in a computer model.

So there you go. Pretty lame, I know, but those are the big ones. If anybody knows ones I missed, I guess you could share them if you feel like it.