Geoffrey Gray's Blog, page 4

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Efek Negatif Anggur Merah

Melepas penat dengan menenggak anggur merah ternyata memiliki dampak buruk bagi kesehatan.

Sebab, mengonsumsi anggur merah ternyata bisa sangat berbahaya bagi tubuh, khususnya bagi kesehatan kulit.

Meskipun ada banyak penelitian untuk mengungkap manfaat kesehatan dari menenggak anggur merah, nyatanya meminumnya secara berlebihan justru meningkatkan risiko demensia dan menyebabkan peradangan.

Ahli penyakit dalam, Mark Menol Juga berpendapat, konsumsi anggur merah berlebihan dapat meningkatkan risiko kanker, depresi, dan penyakit jantung.

Parahnya, dokter naturopati atau ahli pengobatan alami bernama Isabel Sharkar menyebut anggur merah sebagai minuman terburuk untuk kulit daripada semua jenis alkohol lainnya.

Jus anggur yang difermentasi tanpa filter, menurut Isabel Sharkar, dapat berdampak negatif pada kulit, terutama jika kita memiliki kondisi seperti rosacea atau kondisi yang menyebabkan benjolan kemerahan pada kulit.

Selain itu, anggur merah cenderung menyebabkan kulit kemerahan, dan jerawat.

Alkohol adalah vasodilator, yang berarti membuka pembuluh darah—yang membuat kulit kemerahan dan bengkak.

Gula dalam minuman alkohol lainnya juga sama buruknya bagi kesehatan karena menjadi penyebab utama peradangan.

Karena itu, koktail, yang biasanya dicampur alkohol dan ditambah dengan zat pemanis seperti sirup atau jus, juga berefek negatif pada kulit.

Meskipun minuman ini memiliki rasa yang nikmat, efek gula di dalamnya dapat meningkatkan kerusakan sel dan jerawat.

Sharkar juga mengatakan, mabuk bisa juga disebabkan oleh gula di dalam koktail.

Menurut dia, konsumsi koktail manis dapat menyebabkan kulit kusam dan mata merah.

Bir, wiski, dan rum juga berdampak negatif pada kulit. Jika kita ingin bangun tidur dengan mata yang cerah dan kondisi prima, lebih baik kita menghindari alkohol.

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Hold On, Folks. The Cooper Case Isn’t Actually Closed.

As many of you have been informed, FBI agents from the Seattle Field Office held a press conference earlier today, closing NORJAK, the official name of the D.B. Cooper case, known here unofficially as Danny Boy.

This is major news, and a monumental day in Danny Boy history, but the move by the FBI raises almost as many questions as answers. Most importantly: What does it all mean for the case?

Let me break this down. First off, we know that Danny Boy has for years been a pain-in-arse for field agents in the Seattle Bureau, most of whom have not only had to inherit the annoying and endless harangue of tippers and Cooper sleuths that have flooded their lines for decades, but also the serial Cooperites that have banked off the hijacking to get their own suspects (and personal fame) into the limelight.

With each enticing or bogus lead depending on the author (remember Marla Cooper anyone?), the FBI has been forced to spring into action, issue statements, test guitar straps for fingerprints, and on. Agents make a fair point that assigning a field agent to field requests on Danny Boy is a waste of time.

But here’s where the FBI’s announcement gets hazy.

While field agents claim they are “closing the case,” reps also say they will consider newly emerged physical evidence. According to a Bureau spokesperson:

“Although the FBI will no longer actively investigate this case, should specific physical evidence emerge — related specifically to the parachutes or the money taken by the hijacker — individuals with those materials are asked to contact their local FBI field office.”

So is the case closed or isn’t? If a tipper contacts a local FBI field office, then who back in Seattle is that local field office agent supposed to contact?

At best, the Bureau’s announcement feels rushed and timed to coordinate with a host of new Cooper shows in the works, and doesn’t even address the criminal indictment still open in the case. Can the Bureau close the case and keep the indictment against Danny Boy open? Will they move to dismiss?

Along with a host of other reasons, as I point out in this post, the Bureau still has the best lead of all, and one they don’t appear to have even tested.

When they plane was searched in Reno, agents uncovered eight Raleigh filter tipped cigarette butts, evidence that could contain the genetic profile of Danny Boy. However, it appears the cigarette butts appear to have gone either missing, or have been lost by Bureau agents.

Above anything, losing or mishandling the most critical piece of evidence might be the best reason of all to close the Cooper case. But dealing with annoying tipsters is not.

The Cooper Canadian Spy Conspiracy

Cooper Sleuthers,

Happy Anniversary. I know technically the caper involving a certain Northwest Orient plane and suited hijacker was really the 24th of November, though it’s always been the Wednesday before Thanksgiving to me.

Why? The Wednesday before Thanksgiving, the holiday before the holiday, is always an anxious and introspective time that encapsulates the year thus far. In the fall of 1971, Cooper and this moment fell in sync, and propelled his parajack into myth. It’s also a a good day to make news: the majority of editors and reporters are on vacation.

So far, this year has been a breathing year for me, and have been Tena Bar-sand deep in a new and all encompassing project that I look forward to sharing with you all soon. However, I have been in touch with several sleuths around the world, looking at different leads and theories. In honor of this year’s anniversary I wanted to share the following tip I received over the transom, and believe it’s the best thus far. It’s author disappeared during further questioning (Could he be involved somehow in the case?). Either way, until he resurfaces, I’ll call him Zimmy.

Here is Zimmy’s take.

“He was a spy,” Zimmy writes about old Danny Boy.

And not any spy.

“A Canadian Spy, and member of CSIS [Canadian Secret Intelligence Service], at the time the RMCP [Royal Mountain Canadian Security Service.]”

For Zimmy, the big clue is context.

“Let’s look at what was going on at the time,” he writes. “RMCP Security Service was known to conduct highly illegal activities… Bomb threats, dummy bombs, and planting actual bombs was known be one of their tactics.”

These Canadian spies had political motives. They were fighting the Marxists in Quebec, Zimmy writes, and one tactic was to frame the Marxists for terrorist acts and turn public opinion against them.

“There are two distinct possibilities,” Zimmy says.

The first is an overt-covert operation. As Zimmy sees it, the RMCPSS could have used an operative to commit the hijacking, and, like planting drugs on an innocent victim, stash the Cooper ransom money with the Marxist groups like the Front de Liberation de Quebec and falsely link them to the hijacking. Zimmy sees a secondary benefit too. The Canadian intelligence agents could also “dupe the US government and more specifically the FBI into helping them keep tabs on FLQ.”

To Zimmy, the Canadian Intelligence angle also fits a major clue in the case: the discovery of Dan Cooper as a French comic book character fighting in the Canadian Air Force.

“They used the Cooper alias because it would come back to a french language comic book and thus a slight bread crumb trail towards a french speaking marxist, or member of the FLQ.”

The cover was convenient.

“As a Canadian he could have been on international flights or drives crossing the border at the closest point of Alberta or BC so he would recognize the airport from above, as an RMPCSS member he likely would have been highly trained, likely in weapons, tactics, and skydiving.”

There’s also Zimmy’s second possibility.

“A few members of RMCPSS were fired for being Marxist sympathizers,” Zimmy says.

“As a former member, he would still have been highly trained but with a grudge against RMCPSS…The use of the alias Cooper was possibly meant to be a slap in the face of the agency that called him a french Canadian sympathizer. The comic would have been readily available in french speaking areas of Canada, and the crime committed in America because for someone like him it would have been nearly impossible to commit in his own country without attracting the full force of the governments attention.”

So there you have it. Canadian Intelligence. Operation-ready Canadian spy with a grudge. And potentially a Marxist with a connection to a French comic book.

Not bad Zimmy. See you up in French Canada?

And a successful and merry Cooper anniversary to all…

Happy Official 42nd Anniversary!

Sleuths, not sure if you checked the calendar, but today is the day: November 24th, when, on a gloomy overcast afternoon, our sky pirate boarded the 305 Northwest Orient flight to Seattle with a master plan…

The rest, of course, we all know…or don’t know. Definitely, we want to know.

A reminder that this year’s Symposium is fast approaching: actually, it’s next Saturday, less than a week away. In conjunction with the Washington State Historical Society, a group that’s put on an incredible exhibit this year in Tacoma, the Symposium will feature a host of speakers and discussions about the hijacking.

Including one very special surprise guest…See you in Tacoma!

The (2nd) Symposium Cometh

Cooper sleuths: It’s getting to be that time of year again. Falling leaves. Brisk winds. Early darkness. A missing skyjacker clutching a $200,000 bag of cash….

Yep. In a few weeks, we’ll be celebrating the second annual D.B. Cooper Symposium, and the 42nd anniversary of the mysterious airplane hijacking and escape via parachute that continues to defy sleuths and gumshoes. This year’s symposium will be a special one, as our host will be the Washington State Historical Museum, and who have put on a tremendous exhibit on the hijacker (including real aft-stairs!)

I’ll be posting some more information on the Symposium events, but mark off your calendars for November 30th, the Saturday after Thanksgiving. Get a good night’s sleep because we’ll be starting early at the Washington State Historical Society (1911 Pacific Avenue, Tacoma, WA 98402.) then heading off to Ariel for the annual Cooper Days party at the Ariel Tavern. Stay tuned. More here soon.

Earl Cossey, Parachute Rigger, Murder Victim

As many of you hard core Cooper sleuths know, Earl Cossey was an instrumental if not curious player in the D.B. Cooper affair. He was the packer that put together the parachutes the hijacker jumped with, and he met with the FBI at various times over the years to discuss the case.

What’s always been most interesting to me about Cossey is that he was an optimist. During a time when many in the Bureau were convinced that Cooper never survived the jump, Cossey met with with agents and told them the jump wasn’t as perilous as they thought. Cossey’s opinion was that Cooper could have survived the jump, even with minimal parachuting experience.

Now, over the weekend, it appears that Cossey was murdered in the garage of his home in Woodinville, Washington. The details from the police are still sketchy, but reports suggest he was hit in the head, perhaps with a blunt instrument. He was 74.

We met once. I forget the name of the casino, but Cossey asked me to meet him there early in the morning for a cup of coffee. A casino was an odd place to meet for a morning interview, I thought then.

We spoke about the parachutes he packed. He was upset the FBI never returned them. Cossey was amenable enough, but seemed annoyed that so many reporters over the years kept calling him to ask about the chutes.

It’s early on in the investigation, so perhaps we’ll know more details in the coming days or weeks. I don’t see any connection to the Cooper case—just a coincidence that Cossey was involved in such a noteworthy moment in Pacific Northwest history, just another strange development in Cooperland.

A Time for Thanks, A Call to Action

Sleuths, it’s that time of year again.

I was on a plane just yesterday, feeling the cold air blow through the maw of the cabin, the same way it must have blown forty-one years ago on this day, the Wednesday before Thanksgiving, when a gentleman calling himself Dan Cooper boarded the Northwest 305 flight to Portland.

We all know what happened next, and the massive man hunt after that, and over 1,000 suspects and persons of interest later, we still have no clue as to Mr. Cooper really was, and what made him make that epic leap in the annals of American crime. In some respects, I think we should be thankful we still don’t know who he is. So many of the mysteries of modern life nowadays are gone. We know so much thanks to our machines, so let us celebrate what we don’t know: the true identity of D.B., Danny Boy, Dan Cooper, Coops, whatever you want to call him. Who are you guy? What a chase it has been!

But let us celebrate the not-knowing for only a moment.

Okay, now the celebration is over. What we should really be thankful for in the Cooper case is all the great clues that have come up over the past few years, and thanks to the courage of FBI agents (ahem, Larry Carr) and the hard-work and sleuthing of folks like yourself. We need to consolidate our efforts and refocus them on breaking new parts of the case open to generate even more new leads.

Next year is a big Cooper year. The Second Annual Symposium is officially on for November 30th, at the Museum of Washington History in Tacoma, which is curating an incredible Cooper exhibit. Now is the time to map out our blueprints so we can gather and present more incredible findings.

More on all this later. Regretfully, I won’t be in Ariel this year—so send along pictures if you have them. Tonight I leave for Guadalajara. Have an assignment down there. But who knows who you can run into in Mexico? Hopefully Old Danny Boy is still down there, waiting all along.

Annual Cooper Festivities Begin: This in from Portland

Kicking off the anniversary week of the hijacking, Doug Kenck-Crispin at Kiss Ass Oregon History held his second annual D.B. Cooper Spectacular the other night. The event was a movie showing, along with a talk by Marla Cooper, a showing of The Pursuit of D.B. Cooper, and some submissions by local filmakers. Kiss Ass Doug (and behind the scenes ace Kick Ace Melissa) always throw a good party, and if you couldn’t make it there this year (like me) have a looky-loo at the shorts that were submitted here and here.