#MH370: From The Outside Looking In

Some background.  I work in business consulting, but I can't stand advanced math.  So don't expect me to toss out a bunch of numbers and diagrams.  Gives me headaches.  I'm a "bottom line" kind of guy: What's the goal, what's the finish line?  Then I like to be the one to help get you there.  That's how my brain thinks.  It's why all of the Snowden leaks glossed over me largely until he did the interview where the guy used his phallus to build analogies.  Then it clicked.

But more importantly, I believe in four statements:

1. Anything that hasn't been disproved is possible.
2. While human tendencies and human nature can be predicted with some degree of confidence, they cannot be determined in advance with certainty.
1. better said: nobody can say for sure what a human would, could, or did do without seeing it, and nobody can say for sure why humans will, can or do things without asking them.
3. Once you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.  Sherlock Holmes/Spock
4. The simplest answer is usually (keyword: USUALLY) the correct one.  Occam's Razor

I have an unhealthy fascination with mysteries.  I still review Jon Benet Ramsey information to this day.  But Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 has fascinated me even more largely because of so many people from various arenas sharing information that, to a degree, is carefully pruned to prove their point, rather than give the factual account.  This is true even of Inmarsat and the governments.

Now, maybe you've been in my position: you saw all this stuff and it's still not clear exactly what's going on.  So here's the dirt simple.

Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 left Kuala Lumpur for a redeye flight to Beijing, that should have taken just under 6 hours to complete.  Straight arrow north.  No curves, no nothing.  It never got there.

Data released seems to indicate that the plane turned sharply left and started heading along a totally different flight path, even hitting flight waypoints.  Nobody knows why.

Certain transponders and equipment stopped communicating, which made the plane go "dark" - in other words, it'd be like it went into stealth mode.  After a point nobody knew where the plane exactly was and it wasn't responding to calls.

Military radar claimed to identify a path that led towards India, Russia, etc. from the last confirmed point.  This has been questioned as whether it was accurate or not.

Inmarsat, which is a satellite communication system company, provided data that seemed to show that the plane was still airborne for a long time (thus disproving a crash where the last known point was), and a trajectory of where the plane's last detect point was along two arcs - call them North Arc and South Arc.  The deep innards of satellite tech aren't important, but the Marco/Polo example is as good as any: A call is made, a response is provided, on regular intervals.  No response, no plane.  As long as there's a response, the plane is still in the air somewhere, and a general idea of where can be interpreted.  This "game" continued for 6-7 hours after the last known, so you figure a total flight of 7-8 hours.

The plane had just over 8 hours of fuel - thus an assumption the plane ran out of fuel and crashed somewhere shortly thereafter.

So that's the basics that I can parse, and I likely got small semantics wrong, but the gist is, the plane went missing, and based primarily on satellite pings, they started searching in given areas.

But there's been a LOT of theories as to what happened to the plane, from alien abduction to government cover up to terrorist hijacking.  I'm not going to bore you going through these theories, plenty have already done so over the past year and a half.  My intent is to share an argument that I think many are dismissing, and shouldn't.  So let's go through my numbered bullets above.

Anything that hasn't been disproved is possible.

I got a lot of flack on this one, but here's the thing and why this works.  Take the Loch Ness Monster.  

First detected in the 6th century and continued to be debated for many centuries after.  It wasn't until 2003 that a full-scale scan and debunk was done, which effectively disproved the idea of a Loch Ness Monster.  However, the 2003 scan does not disprove the possibility that a creature (of some kind) was in Loch Ness and sensationalized as a "monster", especially if said creature was at the time unknown to locals.  In other words, it's still possible that there was a Loch Ness Monster at some point, because we can't prove otherwise in the absence of time travel or some other means of detection.  It just doesn't matter if there isn't one now.

Now, the catch is, we must be able to disprove it.  Time travel is a concept we don't understand, but we assume it's not possible.  However we continue to try to do it, thus someone believes it's possible.  Should time travel become a possibility (and I fear that day), we can then (dis)prove the Loch Ness Monster once and for all. That dependency keeps both in the realm of a possibility greater than zero, no matter how small.

With MH370, for example, we haven't disproved alien abduction.  I know how outright silly it sounds.  But realistically we have not disproved extraterrestrials.  We're trying, in the form of sending rockets to other galaxies.  But that's a lot of ground to cover.  So despite it being a minuscule possibility, it's still possible, as it has not been disproved (and won't be until we find the plane, at which point it will have been 100% disproved if it's located on Earth and not affected by elements or damage scientifically unknown to us).

None of the theories put forth about MH370 have been fully disproved, thus I consider all of them possible, with varying degrees of probability based on other factors.  It is this that bothers me about some of those who are releasing their opinions: they're ignoring this basic tenet.  (There are quite a few sites that speak to this notion, to be fair.  I'm targeting the ones that are blatantly ignoring it.)

I wish I could do a beautiful table with these probabilities, but again, I'm not an advanced math guy, and I couldn't back any of it up with significant data.  It'd be totally subjective, and thus useless.  I'm just saying we should not ignore any of these scenarios until we have disproved them - which unfortunately for the greater majority of these theories, can't be done until we find the plane.

While human tendencies and human nature can be predicted with some degree of confidence, they cannot be determined in advance with certainty.

Picture this:  You're driving on a freeway at midnight.  It's a single-lane two direction freeway with no barrier.  In the extreme distance you see a pair of lights that appear to be swerving in and out of your lane, headed your way.  What's your first instinct?  This 'something' will hit you if you don't do something.  So you pull off to the side and wait it out.

As the 'something' gets closer you see it's a truck.  It stops swerving after a minute and stays in the opposite lane, eventually passing you without incident.  Confused, you get back on the road and keep driving.

After a few miles you see that there's something in the road.  It looks like debris is scattered throughout the road.  There's a clean path through the debris and it zig-zags both lanes.  

In that scenario you initially made an assumption that this was some sort of nut driver, drunk or otherwise who was going to hit you because of careless driving, when in reality the other driver was extra alert to a road hazard and took steps to avoid it.  But you couldn't have known that, because it was too far away to make that decision.  Hindsight then kicks in telling you that your initial assumption was wrong.  You might even have been affected by bias telling you that some drunk kid was out late night, rather than remaining neutral until you could verify what was going on.

This is where we see that you simply cannot make a leap about what a human would, could, or did do, without specifically seeing the activity first hand.  You can assume, but you must accept that your assumption has a 50% chance of being wrong, and thus, the opposite remains possible.

In MH370, theories have surfaced that imply possible hijacking, suicide, mass murder, etc., all as human motivating factors to explain what happened.  The data from satellites and radar have also been criticized as potentially being intentionally faulty and/or outright misleading.  These have been criticized by so-called "experts" whose only rebuttal is that these are trained professionals, and that this somehow makes these impossible suggestions.  Why?

• Doesn't mean they retained the knowledge. They may have forgotten, had a lapse in judgment, etc.  Unless you were on the plane - which of course, is impossible - you can't disprove this as a possibility.
• Doesn't mean they followed the rule book when in the air, whether intentionally or not.  Again, the only way to disprove this possibility is for that person to have been on the plane.
• Doesn't mean they were actually trained.  You assume they had to have been, you might have even been given data from the airline/satellite/radar company stating they were.  But were you in the classroom with that person?  Did you see them go through the motions?  If not, it remains possible they really weren't trained.
• I know a natural rebuttal to this is, "but they'd get in trouble for falsifying!" to which I would respond that it doesn't matter.  Especially because the punishment is extremely light anyway.  Said company would just absorbed by another company (see Trans World Airlines fka TWA) with the old C-level execs getting golden parachutes.

In other words, human error, human malfeasance, human oversight, human judgment, are all considerations that can't be ignored.  In fact, even after finding the plane, we still can't ever know for certain what happened in the human part of the equation.  We can speculate, or even derive from whatever evidence we locate.  But in the end, it's still not 100% confirmation.

Once you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.

This one pretty much speaks for itself.  

If I threw 5 hammers into a lake, waited 2 weeks, and told someone to go and retrieve them, I can't expect they will find all 5.  If they find 6 hammers, I know that at least one of them cannot be mine.  But if I look at all 6 and only 3 match the hammers that I threw, there are only a few possibilities:

1. I'm lying about not being able to match the other two hammers.
2. I'm lying about how many hammers I threw in the lake.
3. I forgot which hammers I threw.
4. I forgot how many I threw.
5. It's not the right lake.
6. Two of my hammers were taken from the lake before the search.

Recall my #2 statement above.   

We can only disprove possibilities 1 and 2 if someone were there who watched me throw hammers.  5 can be proven if and only if I didn't recognize at least 1 hammer, given possibilities 1 and 3 are disproved (i.e. assuming the hammers were the same, I should be able to identify them).  6 can only be proven if someone saw this happen, given possibilities 2 and 4 are disproved (i.e. I truly did throw 5 hammers).

So we know that 5 and 6 are fundamentally impossible, because it's the right lake (by virtue of me recognizing at least 1 hammer), more hammers were found than the number I threw (which implies that no hammers were removed) and nobody saw anyone take any.

We know possibility 3 is improbable (remotely possible) by the fact that I was able to identify at least 1 hammer.  We can consider it impossible (not possible at all) if all hammers were the same.

We know possibility 4 is impossible if I was able to determine that 1 out of 6 couldn't be mine.

Given that, it can only mean I'm lying somewhere.  Either I threw more than 5 hammers, less than 5 hammers, or I recognized a different number than I threw.  It seems improbable (especially if people don't consider me a liar), but it can only be the case if all others are impossible, based on all other known facts.  

What makes this tricky is getting to a point that the rest is rendered impossible.  This is where the #1 statement above comes into play.

With MH370, we can't rule out a situation where pilot and/or co-pilot killed the other and then set a course to oblivion.  We can't rule out a situation where a plane was flown to a covert base in the Indian Ocean and somehow prevented from communication, with pieces of the plane creatively placed to divert suspicion.  We can't rule out that another Boeing 777 was actually lost but just never reported by Boeing or other airlines.  And we certainly can't rule out the so-called "false flag" scenario. 

The reason we can't rule these out is because, while these scenarios are highly improbable, we've nearly eliminated all other scenarios as impossible.

The simplest answer is usually (keyword: USUALLY) the correct one.

Which brings me to the most controversial of them all. 

Given statement #3's conclusion, what else is there to consider?  Well, that the plane crashed.  We don't know why, but that seems to be the simplest answer, right?  Problem is we can't prove - or disprove - this.  A plane part found on Reunion Island gives us hints, but the problem is a mysterious one: the single piece of evidence that would definitively tie the part to the plane...a stamped plate with a serial number...was missing.  I find that mighty strange - and convenient.

The other mysterious factor is that the plane continued to fly for an additional 6-7 hours.  Or more apropos, the plane continued moving within the satellite range for an additional 6-7 hours.  This time delta has caused people to dismiss the notion of a suicide hijacking, because they assume that anyone who would want to kill a bunch of people on the plane would just crash it into the water or into a mountain.  In truth I agree with this logic.  But that conclusion doesn't disprove the alternatives, either.

That the transponders and recorders were cut off, led people to assume intent (i.e. hijacking/suicide), or some other sort of event happening on the plane.  But that these happened so early in the flight seems to debunk these theories, especially if the plane kept going for so long thereafter.

That the plane apparently climbed to 45,000 feet (well outside of its upper range, a key factor) led people to assume intent (i.e. depressurization to kill everyone) or an event such as a fire.  But that the plane then went quickly back down to just under 25,000 feet and continued happily (?) on for so long seems to debunk these theories.

That the plane's flight path and altitude changed at all seems to debunk the theory that everyone was knocked out, at least at that time.  Autopilot, to my knowledge, cannot adjust altitude without pilot intervention (for example, to commence landing procedure), but would just head to the programmed destination.  That destination can of course be changed, but again, to my knowledge, that would require pilot intervention.

If the plane wasn't heading for any airport, it would seem to imply that autopilot was disengaged after a fashion.  Again, that's assuming it wasn't heading for an airport, which is unverified, of course, but the data seems to point that way at least on the surface.

If the pilot and/or co-pilot were trying to head back due to some sort of disaster, there were at least 4 airports I can count that would seem to have been better alternatives than the known flight path.  Additionally, one would assume that either would have contacted air traffic control (intent) to inform them of the situation.

I express one concern:

Stop speaking in absolutes, and remain objective about possibilities - even remote possibilities - until those possibilities have been 100% disproved.

I know some people are just quick to ridicule those conspiracy theorists that think the passengers of MH370 were beamed up to some ship and have been getting probed for the past year and a half.  I know it's fun to make fun of people who swear the plane must have landed at Diego Garcia.  I know it makes you feel good to debunk suggestions by throwing a bunch of random numbers and charts at people designed to prove why you're right and they're wrong.

Grown ups should be equipped with enough maturity to accept the four statements I started this post with, as I have accepted them.  Once they are accepted, learn how to address each one in an orderly fashion.

If you asked me, I would say that everything points to something between the pilot and co-pilot that resulted in a ghost plane situation.  But I'm not qualified to give any evidence to back that up.  I can only say that I'm open-minded about the possibility that one of the two human beings reacted to something, something that cost nearly 240 people their lives.  When the plane is found we likely still won't know whether I was right or wrong for sure.  But we can hopefully quiet those with superiority complexes.

#ChristianTaylor Is Not The Same As The Others

The situation has grown well beyond any semblance of control at this point.  Even Serena Williams is just adding fuel to the fire instead of quelling what is, in this case, a totally different situation that requires a totally different view of the facts.

If you've been missing news, Christian Taylor was killed at Classic GMC, in Arlington, TX.  He was caught on their external surveillance tapes walking freely around the dealership, vandalizing cars and ultimately crashing into the dealership showroom.  When police arrived, there was an "altercation" (I'll get to this later) and Taylor was shot 4 times by one of the cops.

This of course sparked media outrage over the fact that a "white" cop killed an "unarmed black" teen.

Unlike Brown and Bland and others, what makes this different is that we don't really know what happened.  All we have to go on is the surveillance video (which I'll get to later) and the statements from the Arlington Police Department.

The police chief, a Mr. Will Johnson, has been almost completely transparent from the start with what information he does have.  Unfortunately, the media at large has poured fuel on a situation that, when you analyze it deeper, isn't anywhere near what Bland or Brown were and still has gaps in the equation.

First though let's talk about what we know.

1. Christian Taylor broke into Classic GMC.  This can't be refuted, it's on record.  That's breaking and entering private property, trespassing.
2. Christian Taylor vandalized at least one vehicle that we can see.  There might be others due to the way the security camera system works (more on that later) but on tape, at least one.  He crashed his SUV into the dealership, shattering doors and walls.  That's vandalism and major property damage.

Normally these are just situations where you arrest the perpetrator.  However, there are exceptions, and most any police officer will rattle off more official versions of these.

1. If any other person is in danger due to these actions and the only way to save that person is to shoot.
2. If the police officer feels their life is in danger or they feel otherwise threatened (this is the subjective one that has triggered almost all of the recent deaths, by the way)
3. If a person flees.  (this is not subjective, but it's controversial.)

Now, let's talk about what we don't know.

1. We don't know why Christian Taylor went to the dealership.  The police statement indicates that Taylor held up keys and admitted trying to steal a car; but there are holes in this story (not necessarily intentional ones.  More later)
2. We don't know why Christian Taylor picked that Mustang.
3. We don't know why Christian Taylor decided to drive his SUV into the dealership.  Police statement seems to imply that he was trying to get keys, but again, there are holes in this story.
4. Christian Taylor walks the length of the dealership, as if totally oblivious to all of the various security cameras in plain view.  Why?
5. Christian Taylor is wearing sunglasses at night.  Why? (I don't want to hear the "tweet" theory)
6. Christian Taylor pulls out the windshield with his bare hands, even cutting his hand at one point.  If his intent was to get keys, why bother?  If the car is locked the key is not inside.
7. Why was Christian going to steal a car yet drove a vehicle to the dealership to steal said car?  (more on this later)
8. We don't know why a rookie cop was sent to this assignment.  
9. We don't know why a rookie cop was fully armed.
10. We don't know why a rookie cop was allowed to be in the position to shoot Taylor (more on this later)
11. We don't know what really happened inside the dealership (more on this later)

There are too many unanswered questions; true.  But what really burns me is that a lot of people online only care about feeding their already fragile emotional states with more hatred of white people.  All the while, they don't realize that their reactions to the situation aren't helping the matter, and the greater majority of them are not focusing on what really matters: the truth.

Many are falling back to the simple, easy excuse: "but did they have to kill him doe!?" not understanding (because they've never put on the uniform) that in all but one case I can see, we're not dealing with total racist cops here.  Stereotyping has been status quo across the country for decades.  The idea that Mexicans and Blacks must be criminals and thugs; that Asians are nearly perfect and do flawlessly in school; that "white privilege" surpasses all; and that females are "not suited" for certain jobs like stock room.  It's all the same thing.  A person passes judgment based on a trait of a person that has nothing to do with their capacity to do something. 

The cops are in many cases making a decision in their head that someone of a given race is going to do something.  Good or bad, right or wrong.  You can't scale equivalent the incident with Dylann Roof (White) versus Michael Brown (Black).  The decision isn't "well, this white kid shot a bunch of people, so we need to shoot him".  The decision isn't, "Well this kid broke into X so we need to shoot him".  The decision is almost always, "I told him what to do.  He didn't do it.  I got mad and reacted."

This has a name: resisting arrest, a very subjective term implying that a person is given instruction that they don't follow, thus allowing the officer to increase their measure in order to "control the situation".

Dylann Roof was taken without incident and without getting killed not because he's white, but because he did not resist.  He complied after he did his deed, allowing the officers to do things their way, rather than his way.  If you look at nearly every black person ever killed in the past year and a half by a police officer, they resisted in some way.

Let me be clear.  I don't care about scale.  I don't care whether it's right or wrong.  I'm stating a fact.  They resisted in some way, which unfortunately opened the door for the police officer to do whatever.  

Sandra Bland, as an example, got "uppity" with the officer.  It didn't matter that her stop was not routine and was really silly.  It didn't matter that she was in her own vehicle.  You get stopped, you're told to exit the vehicle, you do it.  Don't argue it.  You're told to put a cigarette out; do it.  Don't argue it.  Answer their questions directly.  Don't get smart with them. Don't validate the "ghetto black" mentality by acting a fool.  Don't give them a reason.

As an African American myself I used to get stopped by police on many occasions, some suspicious ("weaving freeway lanes"), some not ("failure to stop completely at a stop sign").  I don't fight the police, I don't argue the police.  Let them use their power however.  I show no fear of them and they know it.  But I don't purposely pick a fight just because I feel the stop is unjustified.  

I was once temporarily restrained due to an alleged domestic issue, cuffed and put in the back of a squad car while the officer talked to the claimant.  Mind you, at the time I was 160lbs soaking wet, this gal was easily over 250, had self damaged her face (think "Thin Line Between Love and Hate"), and claimed I "tossed her around".  The police officer, as white as white can be, laughed in her face and said, "really?" then released me and allowed me to get my stuff so I could leave (which was what I was trying to do at the time she called police).

The difference with me and those killed: I was not committing nor have I ever committed a felony.  Those killed committing felonies just gave the police reasons to react.  Good bad right or wrong.

With Christian Taylor, it's different.  He was committing a felony, but we don't know why.  We have no story up to the surveillance video.  Was he acting alone?  Did his friends put him up to it?  Was it just him in that SUV or did someone else go with him that never got out (thus not seen by the cameras), but after it crashed into the dealership, escaped without being noticed?

The video shows that after breaking into the Mustang, he turned on the lights.  This is common with parking lot thefts where you want to "flag" a car that you intend to steal.  The problem is it was unnecessary.  If you have the keyfob, you simply need to walk the aisles and look/listen for a reaction.  If it didn't have keyless entry, it doesn't have an alarm; no alarm, no need to break the front windshield and you might as well go through the side window (he started doing this, but decided against it.  Which seemed to imply that he noticed an alarm).  It just doesn't make sense to then ram your vehicle into the showroom.

One prevailing theory is that he was doing this intentionally to get attention and get police out there for some reason.  Seems crazy, but if that's what he was doing, why a dealership and why in the middle of the night?  

These are important questions to answer.  An interesting factoid about Classic GMC in Arlington, TX is that there are no security cameras inside the showroom floor.  None.  Thus, there isn't video footage of the actual shooting.  Some wild-eyed theories that the Arlington Police are suppressing it, but this is debunked if you just go to Google Maps.

Around 5-ish years ago, dealerships reached out to Google Street View to offer internal shots of their dealership, so that customers could actually walk the lot and the showroom floor, in full high definition.  Classic GMC is one such dealership, and you can go inside yourself to verify that there are no cameras whatsoever in that building.  

Google Street View - See Inside Classic GMC, Arlington, TX

Arlington PD isn't covering anything up, because there's nothing to cover up.  No video of the actual shooting.  More likely is that the dealership put heavy security on the perimeter (the lot) thinking that they'd be able to identify and catch anyone who was spotted, and it would be unlikely anyone would try to break into the showroom after being spotted.  Christian did, to the extreme, and it got him killed.

Some have criticized the media for using terms quoted from the PD like "scuffle", "altercation", etc.  There was a "verbal altercation" in that Taylor apparently confronted the police officer through a glass wall and even started cussing at one point.  That's an altercation, an avoidable one.

Better questions are: why did the training officer, who was the senior that night, not corral the rookie cop?  Why was the rookie cop allowed to go on his own in the first place?  Who knows.

This is a very unfortunate situation that deserves answers.  I'm not interested in getting all angry about "white cop kills unarmed black teen".  I care about the truth.  The full truth.  

We need to know, for sure:

1. Why Christian Taylor decided to go to that dealership?
2. Why Christian Taylor decided to rob a dealership at 1am?
3. Why Christian Taylor thought he could steal a car when he already had a vehicle (how was he going to get it out of there?)
4. What was Christian Taylor doing with his cellphone (seen at one point in the surveillance video)?  
1. Was he texting someone to tell them what he was doing?  Who was that person and what was sent?  
2. Was he taking photos?  Were they sent to the cloud maybe?  
3. Where's the cellphone now?  Has it been analyzed for more information?
1. Did he make any calls or texts or IMs just before going to the dealership (accomplice, peer pressure, blackmail)?
2. What activities happened before, during and after this?
5. What does ballistics say?  
1. Do they show that Taylor was facing the officer and heading towards him (threatening gesture)?
6. What does forensics say?  
1. Do they show that Taylor had his hands up?  
2. Do they show anything Taylor might have had that was misconstrued as a weapon?
3. Are there any fingerprints in the office Taylor was shot in, not belonging to dealership staff (this is a big one)?
4. Was there anything helpful or incriminating inside the SUV?  Did they find evidence that someone else was in there the night of this incident?
1. Freezing the surveillance video when he crashed through the gate reveals what appears to be someone in the passenger's seat, but it's too blurry to verify.
7. What do detectives say?
1. Had Christian Taylor been to that dealership before (casing the place)?
2. Did anyone at the dealership know him personally (inside job...?)
3. Do any of his friends know anything at all (the cell phone should help this one)

A lot has been made of this incident and many people only care that a black kid was killed.  But the search for truth means much more to the public.  Until we put the story together, we can't assume that this is just some racist cop.  On the surface it looks like a rookie panicked and reacted, but until we learn what put Christian Taylor in that situation in the first place, we can't pass judgment.  Whatever it was that put him in that dealership is where anger should be directed, not at the police.  Had he never gone there, he'd still be alive.  We now need to know why he went there.

The Arlington Police Chief has been clear and open the entire time and it's obvious he wants to make sure the right information gets out rather than speculation.  He is to be commended for that as it's rare in police departments across the country.  Rallying for a "cleanup" of the department is silly and short-sighted at this point.  Let them do their job and hopefully, answer all of the burning questions I put up there.  Let's hear the truth before we find the pitchforks.