End of the Line?

The Johnny Gosch case is in the news again, with news that the three kids featured in the photographs that turned up on the doorstep of the long-missing boy's mother have been tracked down. They're all now in their early 40's, and police have said that the man they spoke with claimed that they had been given firecrackers to pose bound for a man when they were 12 in the late 70's. Since Gosch went missing in 1982, that would seem to indicate that these photographs had nothing to do with the case in question.

Johnny Gosch's mother still claims that one particular photo, showing just one boy, is absolutely her son, and asks why the "proof" that the photos are fake hasn't been revealed to the public. At this point, I would hope that the men who posed for these photos as kids would step forward to put the matter to rest for the sake of Johnny Gosch's mother. If not, the secrecy will add yet another layer of speculation to this tragic story. If they don't step forward, even if privately to the Goschs mother, then she and the world must ask, "Why?"

Observatory Scene Investigation

Griffith Observatory here in Los Angeles wanted a video promoting a new parking arrangement at the newly expanded and restored Observatory. I decided to have some fun. This is the result.

World Premiere!

Here it is! The World Premiere of a little animation titled, "Boy in Box."

Johnny Gosch Update II

I wasn't planning on returning to this subject immediately, but a new post appeared just this morning on his mother's website. Please be aware of disturbing imagery if you visit that site.

Status: Gosch Case

I've been resisting adding yet another post on the Johnny Gosch case, but, as the old saying goes, the silence is deafening. His mother's official website, hadn't been updated since September 22nd, and then only with a thank you and current contact information. The media has been silent. There seems to have been no apparent progress in the case. No evidence in either direction - just absolute silence.

Granted,there are more pressing, current crisis in the world that the local police and FBI are working on - but shouldn't justice demand that we discover at the very least whether or not those photos are authentic?

Wickshire School

For some mysterious reason, searches for my elementary school in New York, Wickshire School, have jumped to the top of the list as the most commonly used search term used to find my blog. Either somebody's getting nostalgic, or there's a notorious graduate in the news...

Nukes

North Korea conducted an underground test of a nuclear device, despite warnings and condemnation from around the world, including Russia and China. Now, North Korea is being scolded by the world community once again. Threats and isolation didn't work earlier - I suspect they won't work now. It seems that as we attack easier targets elsewhere, we appease countries that provide a real threat.

I sometimes wonder how history will view this era. We're on a path that began in earnest with 911, and leads to an as yet unknown destination. We lurch from crisis to crisis and react with little long-term impact or long-term strategy. We can only hope that people won't have to look back on these times and ask, "Didn't they see where this was going?"

Changing Times

Tower Records, which has sold music and movies for generations and is nothing less than a Los Angeles institution, will be closing its doors in a few weeks. It's the victim of changing times, in which music is mostly sold digitally online, and movies are coming up right behind. Most major record stores have closed up or cut back dramatically, so it really is no surprise. In fact, though I think there are many who feel a tinge of regret, the closing of these stores are being met with a collective shrug. They were cool places to go, especially for those generations that learned about music by wandering up and down those aisles - but they're not reflective of how we - and especially kids - live today. "Record" stores (true vinyl records went by the wayside a long time ago), when you can find them, will join butcher shops, dry goods stores and blacksmith shops in the category of rare historical throwbacks.

We are still in the infancy of the information ago - and still undergoing the transformations that will make this new era as removed from the recent past as we are from the 1700's.

Big Malls

Today marks the opening of a major expansion to a mall not far from here. Westfield Topanga, formerly known as Topanga Plaza, is doubling in size. It's now a massive complex of high-end stores and eateries. It's also only one of a dozen projects in the immediate area (called Warner Center because it used to be the Warner Brothers movie ranch), creating incredible density and little else. Hundreds of apartments are being built or are being built. Old apartments are being upgraded and rents raised dramatically (I'm being paid to move so mine can be overhauled).

The area's representatives have seemed to have surrendered the area to developers, and abandoned the planned growth idea that once characterized this community (if it can be called that). Moving around the area any time close to rush hours is extremely difficult and time consuming. To make matters even worse, as the City of Los Angeles expands the Metrorail system throughout the city, this area has been given a new bus line along the old train route. I can pick up the bus, take it to the closest train in North Hollywood and take that train downtown. That trip will take me 90 minutes - longer then driving during rush hour traffic! Density issues in Los Angeles, I believe, will contribute to its downfall. It's one of the reasons I'll likely move just out of the City limits - I don't believe City Government is paying much attention - or has much of a vision for the future.

Predators vs. Victims

Mark Foley, the United States Congressman who has just been uncovered as sending inappropriate (i.e. sexual) emails and instant messages to fifteen year old congressional pages, also served in Congress as Co Chair of the Missing and Exploited Childrens Caucus. There are some indications that certain members of Congress may have known about Foley's "issiues" as early as a year ago, and didn't act in order to minimize potential political damage. Foley is being portrayed as a former victim of abuse himself, and a troubled alcoholic. Apparently, some don't see him as a predator.

Meanwhile, the photos in the Johnny Gosch case have yet to be disproved - yet that investigation has fallen off the face of the earth.

Conspiracies II

I've found that many of those who believe wild conspiracy theories (and who tend to become offended and scoff at skeptics with a wave of the hand and a dismissive, 'do you believe everything the government tells you?'), believe it on the local level as well. Once again, it amazes me how much faith people tend to put in conspiracies that involve real, live, breathing human beings.

An effictive conspiracy, I believe, would directly involve as few people as possible. The more who know, the more chances that the secret can be revealed. The simpler the conspiracy, the easier to hide.

The entire idea that the government would have concocted a complicated, muddled plot like 9-11 is bizarre. IF there were such a conspiracy by the governemnt, and they wanted to create a terrorist attack and bring down the towers, why on earth bring into the picture passenger jets that would by necessity involve so many more in on the plot.....

The Human Factor will get you every time.

Conspiracies!

The numbers of people who attach themselves to conspiracy theories never fails to amaze me. On a recent visit to the YouTube site, I came across numerous videos about the moon landing "hoax," including a country western tune about how it couldn't have possibly happened. The theory, as it's presented, is that the US knew it couldn't beat the Soviets to the moon, so it fabricated the whole thing to make it appear that we did. Theorists also suggest that it's preposterous that we could have gone that far into space, since the radiation would have killed anyone who wasn't insulated with four feet of lead. It goes on and on....but what these individuals don't take into account (like those who more recently suggested that the Twin Towers were destroyed by explosives), is that the human factor would have doomed any effort to disguise a faked moon landing effort.

The Apollo program employed literally tens of thousands of people across the country, not to mention the thousands who lived and worked in Florida during the years leading up to and during the mission. Are we to believe that, despite the governments leak-prone history, that all these thousands of people kept their mouths shut? Or that a terrifying effective Secret Police was able to instill enough fear in these people that the secret was never revealed? Or, for that matter, that the government was able to secretly stage splashdown after splashdown without ever having been caught? Before a launch, I suppose that the astronauts that were strapped into the space capsule and the door bolted shut on live television, then took a secret passageway off the spacecraft - pehaps they crawled through one of the fueling hoses?

Oh, wait....that also leads to another conspiracy - that, of course, the we never learned the so-called truth about the moon landing, since the MEDIA is completely controlled by the government, and so was able to control what we saw at all times. But then, there's that darn human factor again, and the tens of thousands of individuals in the MEDIA that were intimitely involved in the moon effort. And we know how stable all of us in the media are....

The problem with massive government conspiracies is that...well...they involve the government!