Hi Dylan, This is Your Brain, Do You Miss Me?

One of the most offensive parts of Loose Change is where they mock the victims on Flight 93 making their desperate phone calls to their relatives.

A man claiming to be Mark Bingham called his mother, Alice, who was visiting his sister-in-law. The caller says, "Mom? This is Mark Bingham."

When was the last time you called your mother and used your full name?

" I just want to tell you that I love you. I'm on a flight from Newark to San Francisco and there are three guys on board and they have taken over the plane and they say they have a bomb. I'm calling you from the Airfone," and then " You believe me, don't you, Mom?"

" Yes Mark, I believe you, who are these guys? "

Then he was interrupted by someone who was speaking in a low-toned male voice, speaking what sounded like English.

After 30 seconds of muffled sounds, the caller repeats " I'm calling you with an Airfone. "

His mother asks him again, " Who are these guys? "

After another pause he returns and asks again, " You believe me, don't you, Mom? "

There was another pause, and the phone just trailed off.

The insinuation of course was that this call was faked. The arrogance involved in this is astounding though. Dylan and company pretend to know whether it was Mark Bingham, better than his mother and two other relatives, who the filmmakers can't even bother to identify correctly.

ALICE HOGLAN, SON MARK DIED ON FLIGHT 93: Yes, he did. The call came in at 6:44 a.m., which would have been 9:44 Eastern time, and we spoke for maybe three or four minutes. He actually talked to three people. He was able to tell Kathy, his aunt, my brother Vaughn's (ph) wife, "I want to tell you guys that I love you in case I don't see you again." And then, Kathy said to him, well, "we love you too, Mark, talk to your mom." And I came on the phone, and Mark -- I heard Mark's voice and he said: "Mom, this is Mark Bingham." And I could tell from that that he was a little agitated. And he said, "I want to let you know that I love you."

They claim that this is because scientists were able to change someone's voice on a tape recorder, but this is not a recorded conversation! This was a live conversation with three different people. How did whoever faked this conversation know enough about the family to fool all these people? How did they even know where to get a hold of his mom, she wasn't at home, she was at his aunt's house? How did they even know which of the women was his mom? Oh yes, applying Occam's razor the obvious answer must be that it was all faked using cutting edge voice morphing and AI technology.

And of course only seconds later it gets even stupider, when Dylan and company explain that making phone calls from an airplane was technologically impossible back in 2001.

But to be honest, none of that matters. Why? Because none of these calls could have taken place.

If so, I want my $11.99 a minute back. And don't even get me started on those ripoff in-flight catalogs...

Update: A reader says that I mischaracterized the voice morphing technology. I am a bit hampered though, by the fact that the film does not describe the technology in detail, but they do make the point that this is not real time interactive technology, so my point still stands. Here is the relevent part from the movie, at the 1:10 mark.

So how is it possible to fake a person's voice? In 1999, the Los Alamos Laboratory in New Mexico revealed their voice morphing technology. General Carl W. Steiner, the former Commander-in-Chief of U.S. Special Operations declared on tape, " Gentlemen! We have called you together to inform you that we are going to overthrow the United States government. "

Another example was Colin Powell saying, " I am being treated well by my captors. " With just a 10-minute recording of somebody's voice, they are able, in almost real time, to clone someone's speech.

Steiner was so impressed, he asked for a copy.