Mr Green Clarifies His Challenge

[Guest fenris]

The tracks shown were made in the same type of substrate under the same conditions.

Now we have more than one method being employed to make tracks at the same time and track to track in one trackway?

This is typical psuedo-argumentation: just keep coming up with ad hoc hypothesis after ad hoc hypothesis, each more elaborate than the last as the previous ones get rebutted.

It sounds like a whole lot of assuming actually, have you actually ever been there?

[Guest]

Thanks guys, this thread needed a bit of humor. Oops, spoke too soon. please lighten up a bit guys.

[Guest Blackdog]

Basic science. Yes, tracks will tend to vary their depth based on the condition of the substrate, whatever it may be (dirt compresses more than firm clay, clay more than rock, etc), but the point is, that within a single substrate, the higher the surface area that supports a weight, the less depth the impression will have. Therefore if you have a surface area much larger than a human foot that leaves tracks of the same or deeper depth in the substrate than the human foot, it must be that the creature leaving the object track MUST way more than the human.

Whatever... You have no idea what the substrate was and it seems it doesn't matter to you.

And I'm sorry but you're talking a lot of rhetorical gibberish.

Edited February 20, 2011 by Blackdog

[Guest LAL]

wrong assumption, you need to realize that blind belief is exactly that...... you get the body you get the proof, you make a bunch of half baked assumptions, throw in some idol worship and refuse to look beyond your faith in something and you have proof of squat.... critical thinking is your friend.....

There may be a difference between thinking and being critical.

[Guest Blackdog]

And there is a difference between truth and "image".

[Guest ajciani]

From the photos, the substrate appears to have been recently disturbed sandy soil. It was clearly loose or soft enough for humans to leave prints, while wearing shoes. What is lacking is when or if it rained. If there was a late day rainfall, then the tracks may have been formed in a more malleable substrate than the human prints near them.

The formation of a print is mostly dependent on the maximum pressure applied, but it depends some on the substrate. A tamping jig consisting of a 100 lb weight dropped a few inches could apply the same maximum force as a static 600 lb load. BUT, a tamping jig will not produce the features of a walking method.

There are two types of dynamics features in a footprint. The variation of the spacing of the toes and conformation of the soft tissues around solid objects, and the pressure ridges created by the kinetic processes of walking. The pressure ridges hardly ever show up in photographs. They are 3D, and need to be seen that way. The variation of the shape of the foot and spacing of the toes is something that can be seen in a photo, BUT we would need overhead shots of multiple prints, and I do not know if those are available for the BCM. Without such photos, we can only accept the observations of the witnesses, which are that dynamic processes where visible, unless we have good reason to believe that the witnesses were incapable of identifying such processes.

It would be unreasonable to replace the statements of those who directly observed the evidence, with photographs which are incapable of either validating or invalidating their statements, but this is what seems to have happened. Until photographs are produced which can be used to compare multiple prints, we will be unable to make our own determinations, and we must therefore rely on the determinations of those who crouched down, inspected, cast, and studied them first hand.

edit: sp

Edited February 20, 2011 by ajciani

[Huntster]

That's ok, honor or dishonor really doesn't have anything to do with it

Thanks for that acknowledgement. It pretty much settles any question on your "side".

so take out the personal element and look at the evidence.

I have. I've even considered the 50 year late analysis. I even find the late analysis interesting.

However, I don't find it compelling enough to either determine that Green was "duped", that the prints were created by Wallace, or that Green's description of where the tracks went and how difficult it would be to fake them was incorrect.

Forget about sides, accusations of accusations of lying, etc. and what do we have here?

Green's documentation, his memory, the Wallace family's claims, and a bunch of speculation some 50 years after the event.

We have photos comparing the wooden feet to the tracks. They look the same.

And you do not have any reliable evidence that those wooden feet were created in the year the tracks were found, you have no reliable evidence that those wooden feet made the tracks, and you have Green discounting the possibility that wooden feet made all the tracks, if any.

We have a statement by Green that he saw dynamic foot movement. I'm sure if we looked deep enough in Meldrum's book, we'd even see that Meldrum is convinced the tracks are real based on the numerous photos of the event and casts showing the dynamic foot movement. On the old forum, numerous photos were posted that were said to show dynamic foot movement, I disagreed but regardless those photos aren't up now.

Agreed. I'd love to see some, if they exist. I've seen others from another trackway that clearly illustrated dynamic footprints, and you (among others) pooh poohed those, too.

It's the same, old pattern from "your side".

So take this conversation to the next level. Find these images that show the dynamic foot movement. Post them.

I don't have them, don't know if they exist, and will not seek them. I don't need to. I accept Green's statements. I believe him. If you don't, perhaps you should find them.

Or this thread could just go the usual route with people squabbling among themselves over which side they are on, who believes who or what and who accuses the other, and just general pettiness and boredom.

Yup. And/or continued speculation, sniping, doubt, denial, etc.

Or both.

[Huntster]

How can you claim to know the method used for producing the fake tracks?

By the supposed hoaxer's statements? He claimed to run along the side of the road with the stompers on while being pulled by a truck in order to perform the long stride, didn't he?

Without slipping himself or skidding the large, flat, wooden sandals he was wearing.

You assume the tracks were produced by weight. What if they were produced via a striking method or hard impact.

Hundreds in a single night? With little enough sound so not to attract attention?

[Huntster]

Mulder, on 19 February 2011 - 06:19 PM, said:

The tracks shown were made in the same type of substrate under the same conditions.

Now we have more than one method being employed to make tracks at the same time and track to track in one trackway?

This is typical psuedo-argumentation: just keep coming up with ad hoc hypothesis after ad hoc hypothesis, each more elaborate than the last as the previous ones get rebutted.

It sounds like a whole lot of assuming actually, have you actually ever been there?

Have any of those casting doubt in Green's documentation or memory (and thereby "assuming") been there?

[gigantor]

Thats great ajciani, and technically you are correct. But what about the heal line clearly shown in the pics below?

Often, plain common sense can conclusively reach a solution to a question where technical requirements for a proper scientific description may be lacking.

Edited February 20, 2011 by gigantor

[Guest Fister Crunchman]

Green is making a claim unsupported by the documented evidence. So does Bob Heironimus. Green says other people back him up? So does Bob.

But who backs Bob H up? Who ever said they saw him at Bluff Creek or in Nor Cal in the right timeframe? Nobody. Sure, some Yakima people say he was out of Yakima for two or three days in or oround the right time frame but so what?

Equating Bob H's dubious claims with the informed and supported opinions of Green is a non-starter.

Fister

[Guest]

How can you claim to know the method used for producing the fake tracks? You assume the tracks were produced by weight. What if they were produced via a striking method or hard impact. I was able to make deep impressions with a rigid fake foot by simply smashing the foot into a soft substrate during some of my casting experiments. The fact is you can't rule such a technique out.

I think I replied to this once, but I had an additional point I remembered.

It is the WALLACE's claim that Ray faked his tracks by strapping big crude carved feet forms to his own feet and ran behind (and being towed in part by) a slow moving vehicle. Aside from the fact that that method has been shown to be impossible to pull off, it isn't the method you just proposed (hand pressing the forms into the substrate). So there's two different methods right there.

So look at how the Wallace theory has grown: from a simple claim of wooden stompers worn on the feet while running behind a vehicle to a whole series of stompers/forms in multiple sizes and toe positions, etc being hand pressed into the dirt of the side of the road. Never mind that such a feat would take all night to produce the hundreds of tracks in the BCM trackways (every moment of which risks discovery by a happenstance passerby), if someone were to definitively refute THAT hypothesis, you fall back on "How can anyone know what means they used to fake the tracks?" and come up with ANOTHER ad hoc hypothesis that takes into account the newly refuted method.

You can string this along indefinitely, with an ever ending stream of "Yeah, but what if he did [x}?" statements, but the more methods are taken off the table, the more that position reeks of desperation.

At what point does your string of "What if Wallace did [x}?" statements become so convoluted and so untenable that you are forced to admit the most likely explanation is not a Wallace hoax, but the passage of three bf down that road in the middle of the night?

[Guest]

It sounds like a whole lot of assuming actually, have you actually ever been there?

I don't need to have been there in person, I have the statements of people who WERE there that there is no evidence to suggest are wrong.

Unlike some here, I assume people are being honest and as accurate as they are able to be unless I have reliable reasons to think otherwise.

[Guest]

Whatever... You have no idea what the substrate was and it seems it doesn't matter to you.

And I'm sorry but you're talking a lot of rhetorical gibberish.

No, I'm not. I'm not letting you get away with trying to "compare apples with oranges". In a common substrate (in this case soft soil), the broader area foot will leave a shallower print if the weights of the track makers are the same. For the tracks to be as deep or deeper, the larger footed maker MUST be heavier than the smaller footed track maker. That is self-evident, and basic.

That's not "rhetorical gibberish", that's basic science.

[Guest]

But who backs Bob H up? Who ever said they saw him at Bluff Creek or in Nor Cal in the right timeframe? Nobody. Sure, some Yakima people say he was out of Yakima for two or three days in or oround the right time frame but so what?

Equating Bob H's dubious claims with the informed and supported opinions of Green is a non-starter.

Fister

Bob H's own inconsistencies in story (what kind of suit, purchased/rented/made, the "hole" that never was) are more than sufficient to dismiss his claim, whether he can be established to be in OR out of Yakima.