Provenance of TIGHAR's weather scales

[Ric Gillespie]

The Radio Log is an inanimate object and as such couldn't "do" anything. A human being, a radio operator. wrote the words "we must be on you but cannot see you" and attributed those words to AE.  Whether he actually heard those words or heard them spoken by AE is unknowable to us.

You'll note that I did not write, at 07:42 Earhart DID say "We must be on you but cannot see you."  I wrote, at 07:42 the Itasca radio log DID record Earhart as saying "We must be on you but cannot see you." 

[Ric Gillespie]

[qoute]Amelia Earhart and Fred Noonan have been dead for many years.

Where is the proof they died that day? They might have been captured by a tribe and lived for decades. They might have floated to some remote island and lived for many years. Is your definitive facts or is it based on common sense and preponderance of evidence? I have seen no factual basis for that statement. Demanding absolute proof is a slippery slope isn't it?
[/quote]

There is no demand for absolute proof. Unless we want to stray into the realm of religion (which we definitely do not), absolute proof is unattainable.  The great paradox of all historical research is that we can never know anything with absolute certainty.  Were those two people really Amelia Earhart and Fred Noonan or were they impostors participating in a nefarious government plot? If the Electra is found on the ocean bottom northwest of Howand or on the reef slope off Nikumaroro was it dumped there by the Japanese?  Were the "travel size" bottles of 1930s, women's, American personal care products we've found at the Seven Site somehow dropped there by a traveling salesman whose visit to the island was never recorded? 

The trick is to keep an open mind without letting your brain fall out.  Might AE and FN have survived for years, captive of some unknown tribe or living in New Jersey under assumed names?  Maybe - but there is no evidence to suggest that they did.  Might AE and FN have flown some kind of box search pattern?  Maybe - but there is no evidence to suggest that they did.

[Heath Smith]

Maybe - but there is no evidence to suggest that they did.

This is very true. There is also no proof or evidence that they did not. I do try to keep an open mind and I am open to any and all ideas no matter how far fetched they may seem (Saipan theory for example).

I agree that I should have been more careful about labeling but I also believe that it was more likely than not that they did perform some type of improvised search. That is what Gary initially suggested when we were kicking around ideas and I think it is a common sense one. I do not think that this is a radical theory or even contrary to the Niku hypothesis. For myself it is an idea that is worth exploring as some other interesting observation could be discovered even if it contradicts the search pattern theory itself.

[Harry Howe, Jr.]

Ric
I repeat
As an inanimate object, the Itasca Radio Log did not DO anything.  A radio operator wrote (typed?) the words in the log and, apparently, attributed them to AE.  (NB, (note bene, note well)  that I didn't say she (AE) said anything, I said the operator attributed the words to AE).

[Monty Fowler]

I dunno, Harry, as a professional paper pusher, I hesitate to say paper is inanimate ... the piles just keep getting bigger with
no effort on my part and it has to happen somehow. I think some extracurricular activity is going on at night when the lights are out.

LTM, who has to desire to watch the paper do it's "thing"

Monty Fowler
TIGHAR No. 2189 CER

[Irvine John Donald]

And yet Monty, Toilet paper rolls never get bigger.  ::)

[Harry Howe, Jr.]

Monty
Yeah, I think it has something to do with the Pauli exclusion principle when applied to loose paper.  They (the papers) are inanimate until/unless all the quantum numbers line up and then the papers become animated and do whatever they please and since energy is conserved ya can't get rid of them, ya can only shuffle them off to someone else.  LOL