I
have to wonder about ABC News. When I heard that an airplane had vanished on a
flight from Puerto Rico to Miami, I knew it wouldn’t be long before someone had
to mention it was another mysterious disappearance in the Bermuda Triangle. A
solution for that mystery has been available for decades and some of the planes
listed as having vanished, in fact, did not. Wreckage has been found. I
mentioned much of this a long time ago on this blog, and have, of course,
promoted the book, The Bermuda Triangle
Mystery – Solved by Lawrence Kusche a number of times. For those earlier
posts see:
In
this latest tragedy, ABC was the first that I saw that mentioned the Bermuda
Triangle complete with a map showing the anchors of the triangle at Puerto
Rico, Bermuda and Miami. They also mentioned the number of crashes of aircraft
and sinking of ships in the area, never mentioning that the numbers are not
significantly higher than those for other heavily traveled sea lanes.
From
the information readily available, it seems that the aircraft crashed, though I
have nothing to suggest why that happened. Wreckage identified as coming from
the lost aircraft has been recovered by the Coast Guard. That tells me that the
aircraft crashed, not that it disappeared.
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| A 440th Tactical Airlift Wing C-119. |
Once
again, I will note that while I was assigned to the 928th Tactical
Airlift Group, which was a unit subordinate to the 440th Airlift
Wing, I had an opportunity to talk with the pilots, crew, and command post
staff about the loss of one of their aircraft in the Bermuda Triangle. They had
wreckage from the aircraft that was identified with the unit numbers on it, not
to mention the serial numbers of some of the parts recovered. The aircraft
crashed; though it is still listed in many of the books about the Bermuda
Triangle as having disappeared.
I
suggest that the news media try to be a little more topical and get off their
lazy butts and use Google. There they could learn that the Bermuda Triangle is
a manufactured mystery that was the result of incomplete facts, flawed research
and an abundance of imagination. Rather than fan the flames of mystery, try to
learn the truth so that the story doesn’t become one more sensational chapter
in a tale that is untrue.
It is not even a triangle anyway. It can be any shape you like - a quadrilateral, a pentagon, trapezium, etc. Moreover its size can be anything you like. If perchance a few 'disappearances' occur outside your chosen 'triangle', you simply extend the sides of the said triangle to make a larger one so that it includes the excluded few.
ReplyDeleteBy the way, this is NOT a geometry lesson!
At one time ABC News was considered the most trustworthy of the big three network news organizations. Clearly those days are over.
ReplyDelete'Fake news'? That's what it's come to?
ReplyDeleteBack in the day, when there were -real- journalists, writing for -respected- newspapers, we had another, more meaningful, term: LIES!
Just for the halibut, I searched 'bermuda triangle' in duckduckgo.
wikipedia came up first. They have a well-documented article with lots of references.
(IMO, wikipedia is not a good reference for extremely controversial subjects)
. .. . .. --- ....
Your American news channels are rank amatuers when it comes to "fake news".
ReplyDeleteThe BBC managed the ultimate in "fake news" when it reported WTC7 had collapsed without even being hit by a plane.
Miraculously WTC7 did eventually collapse, 17 MINUTES LATER, (or should I say, was "pulled")...in order to save the BBC's blushes, presumably.
Paul Young -
ReplyDeleteAlthough this drags us off topic, I'm not sure that we're rank amateurs at fake news...
ABC announced after the attempted assassination of President Reagan that James Brady had died of his injuries. Thirty minutes or an hour later, they announced that he was still alive, but said they weren't reporting rumors. Four sources had confirmed that Brady had died. I thought, immediately, if he was still alive, no matter how they attempted to spin it, if he wasn't dead, they were reporting rumors.
NBC, to prove the saddlebag fuel tanks on pickup trucks were dangerous, crashed a car into the side of the pickup. When the gas from the tanks failed to ignite after a number of attempts, they attached small model rocket fuel igniters to the truck so that when the car hit the truck, the gas tanks would explode.
CBS, in a investigative piece aired within weeks of the presidential election in 2004 used faked documents to prove that President Bush had not properly fulfilled his obligations to the Air Guard. In their zeal to prove their point, they didn't listen to the questioned documents examiners who said they couldn't authenticate the documents because they only had copies and they read them to a one-time highly ranking member of the Texas Air Guard who said they sounded right but retracted his statements when he actually saw them. This fake news resulted in Dan Rather and Mary Mapes losing their jobs at CBS...
The New York Times just published a story about a memo that suggests that President Trump might have interfered with an investigation, but they didn't have the memo and it was read to them over the phone by an anonymous source... does this smack of true journalism or more of the "gotcha" journalism of tabloids such as the National Enquirer.
The Des Moines Register, jumping on the Pintos explode when rear ended bandwagon, published a story with a headline that said that another woman have been killed in a Pinto crash, the implication being that her gas tank exploded... in the story we learned that she had been killed when thrown from the car because she hadn't been wearing a seat belt.
I don't think the BBC has a corner on fake news... they're just caught up in the same nonsense that drives too much journalism today... get there first then find the facts, and if you don't like President Trump print and say everything you can that will cast him in a negative light.
You know, if you draw any sort of shape over any part of the globe, in particular a land mass, then go hunting for statistics on accidents, thefts, murders, crashes, etc., you can create your own "triangle" lore quite easily.
ReplyDeleteHowever, I once worked for a retired USCG colonel who spent most of his career in the triangle and who stated, when I asked, that parts of the Caribbean are known to display weather patterns, roge waves, and magnetic displacement that can unexpectedly overtake some craft. He also mentioned kidnapping, drugs, and modern pirates as being the culprits to many sea vessels he saw which were mysteriously missing their crews.
Brian -
ReplyDeleteDidn't know the Coast Guard had colonels.
Well, Kevin if you want to be technical the equivalent rank is "Lieutenant Commander" but I suppose most people wouldn't know that so I used "colonel" instead. You know, LTC = LC = O5.
ReplyDeleteBrian -
ReplyDeleteNothing technical about it. The rank of colonel is equivalent to commander, not not lieutenant commander, though you do have it right in noting that a lieutenant colonel and a lieutenant commander are noted as O-5, but a colonel and a commander are O-6. Always appreciate a lecture on military protocol from those who don't have things quite right.
My name is Ansh Kapoor I study in class 6b Saint Paul school I had solved the mystery of Bermuda Triangle this is how it works :
ReplyDeleteI had studied that every ship/ airplane that had gone to Bermuda Triangle never came back and I had also studied about Nicholas Copernicus . When he was going towards Bermuda Triangle his magnetic compass started reacting wierdly .So I connected both thoughts and figured out that there is a strong magnetic field that is why all ships /planes attracted towards core of Bermuda Triangle.Pls confirm if my understanding is right .
Reply