Cal Poly Plane Crash Report

I recently downloaded the official report on the Cal Poly football team plane crash of October 29, 1960, in Toledo, OH, which killed 16 members of the team and the team manager while injuring about as many more. I have been studying the accident for a small paper I recently wrote in one of my history classes at Cal Poly. I am now leaning towards making my senior project about some aspect of the crash. I recently got motivated to get my hands on a hard copy of the accident report both for my own research as well as to donate to the Kennedy Library Special Collections Department which has a great section devoted to the crash but lacks a copy of the official report on it. Today I had two copies of the report printed by the Cal Poly printing service in the library. I shall keep one copy for myself and donate the other to the aforementioned Special Collections department tomorrow. Photo by Kim Patrick Noyes (all rights reserved).

Scripture of the Day - Jesus Christ (Luke 13:4-5)

Yesterday while driving in town I found my thoughts drifting to the events of ill-fated Malaysia Airlines Flight #17 which was shot down over Eastern Ukraine a few days ago. In particular, I found myself wondering why those people died so. I supposed that for each person there was a different reason(s) as each person had their own unique life and their own unique relationship with their Creator (or lack thereof). Then, out of the blue, loud and clear, the passage of Scripture below rang in my mind. Not only that, but how it applied: any other plane could have taken its place and any other group of 298 people could have taken their place just as easily, including me being on the flight and it would add up the same. We are all God's children and greatly loved but we are all broken people, too, and we belong to our Creator who does with us as He sees fit. Anybody who feels this is cruel or unjust and unloving does not "get it": the problem is in their comprehension or rather, lack thereof. We don't have to fully understand these things nor can we in our current state of existence.

 "Or those eighteen people upon whom the tower in Siloam fell and killed them, do you really believe that they were sinners more than everybody else who resides in Jerusalem?  I'm telling you, absolutely not, but rather that unless you repent you will all in like manner perish." ~ Luke 13:4-5 (Kimicus ad Absurdum translation)

The point Jesus makes clear is that we all deserve to share the same ill-fate as people we hear about on the news enduring horrific outcomes to their short, ephemeral lives. As far as God is concerned we are all down in the shit together. We must not deign to think they suffer thus because of some special sin on their part more so than you or I. Indeed, in the case of some people, including small children, one can be certain they suffered thus not one iota because of any sin on their part. Perhaps unbeknownst to us they are being spared some worse fate down the road we cannot foresee.

Gruesome Flight 17 Images From Today

Today was a tragic and disturbing day on many levels as a result of the downing of Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 over the war zone that is Eastern Ukraine killing all 298 souls aboard. All evidence (and there is much circumstantial evidence even this early into the investigation) points rather damningly to the Russian separatists using a Russian-made mobile anti-aircraft missile battery either gifted from Mother Russia or captured from a feckless retreating Ukrainian military some months ago. Either way, this is Putin's Monster and he ultimately bares full "operational" responsibility as leader of his own military and instigator of the unrest resulting in his interference in internal Ukrainian politics for some time now not to mention invasion and occupation of Crimea. That combined with U.S. President Barack Obama's weakness and impotence in heretofore dealing with the Russians has encouraged Russian misbehavior which rarely needs much encouragement.

I found some of the initial images (before pixilation started corrupting them) to be rather pitiful and bleak and forlorn and lonely and melancholy not to mention stomach-turning. I could have gone to the gore websites on the internet which I'm sure have much more lurid stuff but chose not to due to the high spiritual and emotional price I'd have to pay seeing the other stuff on the margins of the webpages. Those websites are not healthy places to visit and healthy people don't visit them. At present I'm a healthy person and intend to remain so and continue to grow ever more so. Anywho, below is what I did see on conventional news sites and early Twitter postings.

Note: given the haphazard way in which many images initially swept the internet I was not able to determine attribution of these images unless it was already emblazoned on one of the margins of an image.

Update: my morbid curiosity got the better of me and I GOOGLED gore websites with footage of the plane crash so I could go directly to the images of the plane crash and avoid all the other crud and it worked. One website was enough and one thing I found there was a Russian Times video reel which is at bottom. WARNING: VERY GRAPHIC! (updated 7/30/14) 

Note right foot at wrong angle to leg... nearly detached.

Note bodies to the left and right of the Russian separatist firefighter.

Russian news footage of bodies of passengers.

I can confirm that is a carved up body at right in this image with part of the head missing.

One of the photographers surveying the crash site... perhaps this one captured one or more of the images above.

All photos copyright the photographer or their news agency (all rights reserved).

Ghost Flight

While getting caught up in one of my periodic Youtube search birdwalks wherein I forget what I visited the site for and drift off following one link after the other getting further off-track from my original intent I found this haunting video. It is consists of the final several minutes of two men's lives. During that ephemeral flight they enjoy a scenic sightseeing air tour of the Rocky Mountains in a Cessna L-19. Due to pilot error they got into a situation with the terrain in which they didn't have room to turn around as the mountains before them kept rising in altitude. At the end of their dramatic emergency 180-degree right turn which begins at about the 6:20 mark in the video they stalled thrice and dove into the trees to their deaths rolling upside down as the video violently ends. The flight went missing for three years until hikers found the wreckage with the VHS cassette contained therein and undamaged by either the crash or the elements surprisingly enough.
For more info on this crash read its NTSB report.