You Won't Believe This ...

Click  on  the  link  and  despite  what  you  see  on  the  screen,  listen.

My  son  Jeremy  tuned  me  into  this.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZyvwODEjmXw

"Mountaintops made flat were for ancient UFOs": Another Argument of the "Ancient Aliens" Show Begins to Bite the Dust

For  some  time  now,  Giorgio  Tsoukalos  ("the  guy  with  all  the  hair")   and  his  associates  on  the  "Ancient  Aliens"  program  on  cable  have  shaken  up  the  Christian  world  by  arguing  very  dramatically  and  successfully  that  almost  all  traditional  religious  motifs  in  virtually  every  ancient  culture  arose  from  the  way  backwards  humans  on  earth  perceived  the  entities,  vehicles  and  cultures  of  visitors  from  outer  space  in  ancient  times.

Previously,  I  have  argued  that  their  analysis  is  slowly  falling  apart.   Giant  statues  on  Easter  Island  have  been  very  comfortably  explained.    I  argued  that  interlocking  stone  walls  in  the  southern  hemisphere  within  the  various  Polynesian  cultures   and  in  the  pacific  Rim  nations  exhibit  a  characteristic  which  stone  structures  constructed  by  man  would  exhibit  --  large  stones  on  the  bottom,   small  stones  on  top.  Ancient  Egyptian  portraits  show  Egyptians  laboriously  dragging  stone  into  place  while  another  Egyptian  lubricates  the  ground  with  water  just  ahead  of  the  stone  --  no  pi-meson  particle  beam  guns  were  needed  for  cutting  stone;    no  Higgs  boson   anti-gravity  ray  was  needed  to  levitate  the  cut  stone.

Now,  another  argument  is  starting  to  suffer  --  flat  top  mountains  in  the  Andes  as  UFO  landing  places.

For  months  now,  the  "Ancient  Aliens"   folks  have  been  arguing,  "The  tops  of  mountains  in  various  south-of-the-border  nations  have  been  flattened.   Who  would  do  that?  Why  do   that  except  as  a  landing  platform  for  ancient  flying  machines?"

It  turns  out  that  there  is  a  reason  to  engage  in  mountain-top-flattening  which  dates  from  early  times ...

Look!  Flat  mountain  tops!  For  rice  paddies!

UFO  enthusiasts  would  answer,  "Oh!  Come  on!    Rice  paddies?  In  the  Andes?  There  were  no  Asian  rice-consuming  cultures  in  the  ancient  Andes!"

Not  so  clear.     Arguments  that  there  is  good  evidence  that  the  Jomon  people  of  ancient  Japan  settled  the  west  coast  of  South  America   have  been  around  for  decades.  So  have  arguments  that  the  ancient  Maya   had  a  heavy  admixture  of  ancient  Chinese.

"But  the  Jomon  people  didn't  eat  rice!"  the  UFO  enthusiasts  would  respond.

Welllll,  near  the  end,  when  the  Yayoi   period  cultures  began  to  supplant  the  Jomon    around  300  A.D.   They  did.

UFO  enthusiasts  would  respond,  "But  there's  no  water  in  the Andes  for  rice!"

The  answer  to  that  is,  "Climates  change."    The  Anasazi,  to  the  north,     were  driven  out  of  their  homes  by  radical  climate  change.     The  great   grain-growing  cultures  of  the  ancient  Sahara  in  Africa  were  driven  out  of  their  homes  by   radical  climate  changes.

There  are  mountain-rice-paddy-type  structures  at  various  places  in  the  Andes  Mountain ...

Perhaps  the  bowl-like  structure  in  the  bottom  photo  is  a  last-ditch  effort  to  gather  water  for  rice  in  water-gathering  paddies.

No  matter  what,  isn't  there  a  little  too  much  evidence  here   to  favor  the  "Ancient  Aliens"  explanation  for  flat-top  mountains?  

The Terrible Train Crash at Frankford Junction

There  is  enough  solid  material  inside  of  the  get-the-story-out-fast-before-anyone-can-scoop-us  narratives  in  the  web  and  media  to  enable  us  to  get  a  pretty  good  handle  on  what  happened  with  Amtrak  #188  last  Tuesday  night.  My  tentative  conclusions,  with  questions  and  observations,  follow.

The  engineer  on  Amtrak  #188,   Brandon  Bostian,   32  yoa,  seems  to  have  been  mature,  well-balanced,  well-liked,  and  enthusiastic  about  his  work  as  an  Amtrak  engineer.

Whether  he  was  at  the  beginning  of  his  shift,  near  the  end  of  his  shift,  or  how  long  his  shift  was,  is  not  yet  known.

Whether  anyone  was  in  the  engine  with  him  is  not  yet  known.  There  appears  to  have  been  a  central  aisle  from  one  end  of  the  engine  to  the  other.     Whether  the  controls  in  the  rear  of  the  engine  could  be  locked-out   or  had  been  locked-out  in  the  front   by  Bostian  is  not  known.  Whether  the  doors  to  the  engine  could  be  locked  and  whether  Bostian  had  locked  them  is  not  known.  Whether  the  business  class  car  just  behind  the  engine  had  access  to  the  engine  door  is  not  known  --  although  one  surmises  that  preserving  such  access  may  have  been  customary.

The  engine  was  an  essentially-brand-new   Cities  Sprinter  ACS-64  electric  engine  built  by  Siemens  Corporation.     Behind  that  were  7  cars.

There  are  a  few  ways  to  slow  the  train  down  --  by  electrical  resisitance  within  the  engine  wheels,   by  engine  brakes,   and  by   brakes  within   each  vehicle  in  the  1-engine-followed-by-7-car  passenger  train.  The  latter  means  of  braking  was  probably  the  safest.  It  would  distribute  the  braking  momentum  transfer  into  the  rails  and  railroad  ties  beneath  over  the  length   of  the  train.

The  tracks  appear  to  have  been  somewhat  unitized,  if  you  look  at  aerial  photos  of  the  tracks  before  the  accident,  aerial  photos  of  the  tracks  just  after  the  accident,     and  photos  of  new  track   being  carted-in  by  truck  to  replace  the  destroyed  truck.    A  simple  question;  When  track  units  are  installed,  how  are  they  anchored  to  the  railroad  right-of-way  --  or  do  they  just  "float,"  on  trap  rock  or  dirt?  In  other  words,  could  a  heavy,  suddenly-braking  engine  or  train  literally  yank  a  section  of  track  off  its  bed?  Is  there  an  amazing  secret  defect  in  the  track  design,  generated,  for  instance,  by  some  moron's  desire  to  economize  a  little  too  much  in  the  face  of  Amtrak's  ever-shrinking  federal  subsidies  and  the  really  bad  economy  since  2007?  Is  there  an  Amtrak  executive  who  is  hiding   the  fact  of  an  unwise  purchase  of  a  new  type  of  track?  

At  Frankford  Junction,  the  tracks  were  banked  for  speed,    being  higher  on  the  outside  side  of  the  curb  by  5"  per  width  of  track.   That's  a  pretty  good  embankment.   Any  calculation  of  listing  by  the  train   toward  the  outside  of  the  curve  due  to  centrifugal  force  in  turning  has  to  overcome  a  pre-existing  listing and  centripital  pulling   toward  the  inside  of  the  curve,  first,  due  to  that  track-embankment-generated  listing.

News  reports  showing  a  railroad  "expert"  claiming  that  the  train  could  jump  track  if  the  train's  speed  exceeded  the  speed  limit  by  as  little  as  5  mph  have  to  be  wildly  "over-conservative"  and  so  dead  false.

When  I  was  a  young  man,    the  Metroliners  used  to  "blow  through"   that  banked  turn   at  a  frightening  speed  --   well  over  50  mph.  I  remember  see  that  little  trash-bearing  wake  of  air   trapped  by  the  slipstream   behind   the  passing  Metroliners  headed  into  that  banked  curve.

So,  the  50  mph  speed  limit  for  what  appears  to  be  brand  new  well-banked  track  (see  next  paragraph)  is  interesting.

News  accounts  describe  the  curve  at  Frankford  Junction  as  "a  sharp  turn."  Panoramic  news  source  pictures  from  ground  level,  such  as  this  one ...

...  make  it  look  like  a  sharp  turn.

In  fact,  it  is  a  very  gentle  turn.  See  Google  Maps,   Earth  Image,   at ...

https://www.google.com/maps/@40.0013838,-75.0944874,161m/data=!3m1!1e3?hl=en

At  the  moment  of  departure,  #188  had  238  passengers  and  5  crew.  The  ages  of  those  passengers  seem  importance.  For  example,  were  there  any  kids   in  the  first  passenger  car  --  the  Business  Class  car  --  just  behind  the  engine?   Did  a  kid  cross  from  the  Business  Class  car  to  the  engine  --  even  with  a  parent's  permission  --  to  allow  him  or  her  to  experience  the  thrill  of  being  in  the  engine?

#188  left  30th  Street  Station  at  exactly  9:09  p.m.,  according  to  Amtrak's  schedule.  Bostian  moved  the  train  north  out  of  the  station  up  the  tracks  on  the  west  bank  of  the  Schuyhkill River,  past  the  west  side  of  the  Philadelphia  Zoo,  and  then  eastward  across  the  Schuylkill  River  over  the  old  stone  arch  Connecting  Railway  Bridge,  to  the  Northeast  Corridor  tracks  running  diagonally,  northeast  across  North  Philadelphia,  to  North  Philadelphia  Station  at  Broad  Street  and  West  Glenwood  Avenue,  between  Lehigh  and  Allegheny  Avenues.

The  train  apparently  did  not  stop  at  North  Philadelphia  Station.   Did  someone  at  North  Philadelphia  Station  make  improper  entry  into  the  engine  from  the  platform  between  the  engine  and  the  Business  Class  car  as  the  train  slowed?  Is  this  possible?

The  train  continued  northeast  across  North  Philadelphia,    and  swung  rightwards,   behind  St.  Christopher's  Hospital  at  Front  Street  between  Eire  and  Tioga,  so  that  it  traveling  east,  toward  Frankford  Junction  and  the  Frankford  Junction  curve.

As  stated  above,  the  "terrible"   curve  at  Frankford  Junction  is  a  leftward  turn  toward  the  Northeast   at  the  rate  of  about  3.3  degrees  per  100  feet  (so  that  in  the  1200  feet  between  the  point  of  intersection  with  Frankford  Avenue  and  the  point  of  intersection  with  the  line  through  Wheatsheaf  Lane,    the  track  has  turned  about  40  degrees  north  northeast).  If  you  plug  that  into  the  formula  for  achieving  balancing  speed  --   the  speed  along  a  track  banked  for  speed  where  the  train  is  in  equipoise,  falling  neither  toward  the  inside  of  the  curve  nor  toward  the  outside  of  the  curve ...

...  where  "Vmax"  is  mph,  "Ea"  is  the  number  of  inches  the  outside  rail  is  higher  than  the  inside  rail,   and  "d"  is  the  number  of  degrees  turned  per  100  feet,  you  get  58  mph.

Now,  clearly,    if  the  train  can  lean   in   toward   the  inside  of  the  curve  without  derailing  and  falling  inward,  at  1  mph,    where  the  tracks  are  so  seriously  banked  that  it  has  to  go  58  mph  before   it  reaches  equipoise,   it  would  seem  to  be  able  to  rather  easily  take  the  curb  at  even  116  mph    --  twice  58  mph  --  without  derailing  outwards,  toward  the  outside  of  the  curve.

Bostian  seems  to  have  had  #188  cruising  along  at  roughly  70  mph  as  he   began  to  close  in  on  the  Frankford  Junction  curve,  where  the  posted  speed  limit  is  an  inexplicable  50  mph  (where,  again,  58  mph  is  equipoise,  given  the  grade).

Instead  of  slowing  down  to  the  posted  speed  limit,  after  that,  #188  inexplicably  increased  its  speed,  so  that  it  reached  a  maximum  of  107  mph  before  it  reached  the  curb.

Why?

Was  Bostian  fatigued,   so  that  he  forgot  that  he  had  not  even  passed   Frankford  Junction  yet,  and  thought  that  he  was  on  the  straightaway  northeast  of  Frankford  Junction  along  the  Delaware?

Did  he  actually  begin  braking  the  train,   so  that  momentum  spilled  his  water  bottle  into  the  apparatus,  short-circuiting  the  accelerator  slide  and  generating  a  sudden  increase  toward  maximum  speed?

Did  a  water  bottle  left  by  someone  on  the  controls  at  the  other  end  of  the  engine  do  this?

Unknown  to  all,  did  a  vandal  tossing  a  rock  "get  lucky"   and  pierce  the  windows  next  to  the  controls   and  slam  the  accelerator  slide  to  the  "maximum  speed"  position?  In  other  words,  was  Bostian  shocked  and  puzzled  by  the  velocity  increase?

Did  a  child  or  malicious  teenager  from  the  North  Philadelphia  platform  or  from  the  Business  Class  car  tamper  with  controls?

Who  knows?

That  is  the  question  of  all  questions.

In  judging  this  question, remember  four  (4)  words  --  the  "Toyota  Unintended  Acceleration  Problem."

In  other  words,  was  Bostian;'s  Cities  Sprinter  ACS-64  electric  engine  merely  the  first  one  to   do  this,  with  fatal  results.

This  is  not  an  idle  question.

Here's  another  angle  worthy  of  investigation:    One  problem  with  today's  nuclear  power  plants  is  the  layering  of  safety  systems   upon  the  basic  mechanism,  and  the  layering   of  second  layer  safety  systems  upon  the  first  --  generating  a  mechanism  so  frighteningly  complex  that  no  human  being  is  safe  around  them.  With  that  in  mind ...

Is  it  possible  that  the  federal  government's  own  Positive  Train  Control  System  mandate  interface  mechanism  somehow  caused  the  problem?

In  any  event,  just  as  #188  was  entering  the  Frankford  Junction  curve,    Bostian  threw  on  the  brakes.

Now,   again,  I  believe  that,  contrary  to  all  media  reports  and  executive  speculation  within  Amtrak  and  the  National  Transportation  Safety  Board,    in  my  opinion  #188  could  have  easily  taken  the  curb.

However,   when  Bostian  threw  on  the  brakes  --  something  every  human  being  in  his  position,  including  every  Amtrak  executive,    every   National  Transportation  Safety  Board   investigator,    Mayor  Wilson  Good  and  the  District  Attorney,  and  everyone  else  who  has  opened  his  mouth  in  angry  criticism,   would  have  done  in  this  case  --  the  passengers  felt  a  terrible  vibration.

That  would  have  been  the  brake-frozen  wheels  vibrating  their  way  down  the  curb.

I  believe  that  the  vibration  is  what  derailed  the  train.  Suddenly,    the  net  effect   of  all  of  those  wheels   bbbbbbbbbbrrrrrrrrrrpppppppppping  their   way  down  the  track,  so  that,  on  the  average,   the  train  was  somewhat  "airborne"  during  every  second  of  breaking,   markedly  decreasing  each  railroad  vehicle's  right  wheels'  flanges  on  the  inside  surface  of  the  outside  rail,     at  104  mph  --  the  train's  last  known  speed  before  departing  from  the  railways  over  the  outward  side  of  the  curve  --  contributed  heavily  to  the  derailment.

I  would  also  be  interested  in  the  relative  integrity  of  the  brake  pads  in  the  cars  behind  the  engine.

The  engine  was  effectively  brand  new  --  with  new  brakes.

If  the  railroad  cars  behind  it  only  had  older  brakes  that  only  held  "half  as  good,"     their  would  have  been   a  "ramming"  effect  by  the  momentum  in  the  rear  cars.     Just  as  you   can't   push  a  length  of  rope  into  a  mouse  hole,     the  cars  in  the  rear  aren't  going  to  happily  slow  down  for  the  engine   if  the  engine  stops  better  than  they  do.

They  are  going  to  want  to  pile-up  against  the  engine's  rear.

I  believe  that  that  contributed  very  heavily  to  the  derailment   --   and  that  that  is  why  the  first  passenger  car  behind  the  engine   was  bent  into  the  shape  of  a  giant  horse  shoe.

Perhaps  it  was  the  passenger  cars  slamming  the  engine   from  behind  because  of  their  inferior  brakes  that  pushed   the  violently  vibrating  engine  off  the  tracks.

So,   Bostian  threw  on  the  brakes.

#188  began  bbbbbbbbbbrrrrrrrrrrpppppppppping  its   way  down  the  track,  into  the  curb.

The  cars  begin  the  Business  Class  car,  the  first  passenger  car,  rammed  it  hard  and   bent  it  into  a  horseshoe  shape.

As  this  was  occurring,   the  engine  derailed,  and  simply  proceeded  in  a  straight  line  from  the  point  of  derailment.

The  cars  behind  the  Business  Class  car  cast  the  Business  Class  car  to  the  left,  making  those  cars  bounce  right  well  off  the  track  as  the  train  continue  forward  from  momentum.

And  then  it  all  ground  to  a  halt.

We  should  not  pre-judge  Bostian.

Candidate Christie's "Big Tax Cut Plan" Flirts with National Financial Calamity

In  New  Hampshire,   presidential  hopeful  New  Jersey  Governor  Christie  tried  to  attract  flies  to  his  fly  paper  with  promises  of  more  across-the-board  tax  cuts,   even  as  he  criticized  President  Obama's  handling  of  the  economy.

Massive  deficit-generating  tax  cuts   was  Governor  Christie's  plan  for  recovery,    despite  the  fact  that  the  National  Debt   has  exploded  like  a  nuclear  bomb   since  President  Obama  took  over  --  from  $10  trillion   to  $18  trillion  --   and  continues  rushing  skyward,  up,  up,  up,  up  up ...

http://www.usdebtclock.org/

...even  at  the  present  moment,  and  interest  payable  on  the  dept  is  about  one-half  trillion  dollars  per  year,  a  debt  burden  that  chokes  the  life  out  of  our  economy  and  keeps  millions  jobless  the  same  way  that  $50,000  worth  of  credit  card  debt  can  destroy  a  home's  budget.

To  put  it  another  way,  Dr.  Christie's  prescription  for  the  "drunk  drivers"  behind  the  wheel  today   is,  "MORE  ALCOHOL!"