In article <emkb0r$ihf$1@ruby.cit.cornell.edu>,
Henry <"9-11"@inside job.gov> wrote:
>Damian wrote:
>
>> It happened 5 years ago, its done, cant take it away, move on.
>
> The perpetrators have not been held accountable, so it's not
>done, and we should not "move on". Silence is complicity. Also,
>the treasonous war criminals and terrorists on the Bush regime
>use 9-11 to justify their policy of fear, hate, violence, death,
>destruction, terrorism, and oppression.
>
>> and BTW, you fucked up your own subject line...you just told us YOU are
>> on denial because you are the one stuck on the conspiracy theory
>
> There are two conspiracy theories. The official conspiracy theory
>has been proved to be physically impossible and it contradicts the
>hard evidence as well as the laws of physics. Also it could never be
>duplicated. The demolition theory is supported by the evidence, and
>could be duplicated.
>
>
>
>Look at the height of WTC7:
>
> http://www.physics.byu.edu/research/...20Picture1.jpg
>
> Then look at how it collapsed:
>
> http://911research.wtc7.net/talks/wtc/videos.html
>
> Small random fires can't possibly make a steel framed building
>do that. Not even a raging inferno can cause a steel building to
>do anything even remotely close to that.
"small random fires" ? Says who?
The fact that we don't know exactly how WTC7 came down doesn't give
you an excuse to postulate controlled explosions, Martian
Destruct-o-beams or Elves as the reason.
It is futile to try to change the minds of people that repeat this
crap. I don't write this for them; I write for all the Lurkers out
there that read this thread or may find it with Google and to give
them facts and citations for they can counter the bullshit when the
find it, next time.
WTC 7 Collapse
CLAIM: Seven hours after the two towers fell, the 47-story WTC 7
collapsed. According to 911review.org: "The video clearly shows that
it was not a collapse subsequent to a fire, but rather a controlled
demolition: amongst the Internet investigators, the jury is in on
this one."
FACT: Many conspiracy theorists point to FEMA's preliminary report,
which said there was relatively light damage to WTC 7 prior to its
collapse. With the benefit of more time and resources, NIST
researchers now support the working hypothesis that WTC 7 was far
more compromised by falling debris than the FEMA report
indicated. "The most important thing we found was that there was, in
fact, physical damage to the south face of building 7," NIST's
Sunder tells PM. "On about a third of the face to the center and to
the bottom--approximately 10 stories--about 25 percent of the depth
of the building was scooped out." NIST also discovered previously
undocumented damage to WTC 7's upper stories and its southwest
corner.
NIST investigators believe a combination of intense fire and severe
structural damage contributed to the collapse, though assigning the
exact proportion requires more research. But NIST's analysis
suggests the fall of WTC 7 was an example of "progressive collapse,"
a process in which the failure of parts of a structure ultimately
creates strains that cause the entire building to come down. Videos
of the fall of WTC 7 show cracks, or "kinks," in the building's
facade just before the two penthouses disappeared into the
structure, one after the other. The entire building fell in on
itself, with the slumping east side of the structure pulling down
the west side in a diagonal collapse.
According to NIST, there was one primary reason for the building's
failure: In an unusual design, the columns near the visible kinks
were carrying exceptionally large loads, roughly 2000 sq. ft. of
floor area for each floor. "What our preliminary analysis has shown
is that if you take out just one column on one of the lower floors,"
Sunder notes, "it could cause a vertical progression of collapse so
that the entire section comes down."
There are two other possible contributing factors still under
investigation: First, trusses on the fifth and seventh floors were
designed to transfer loads from one set of columns to another. With
columns on the south face apparently damaged, high stresses would
likely have been communicated to columns on the building's other
faces, thereby exceeding their load-bearing capacities.
Second, a fifth-floor fire burned for up to 7 hours. "There was no
firefighting in WTC 7," Sunder says. Investigators believe the fire
was fed by tanks of diesel fuel that many tenants used to run
emergency generators. Most tanks throughout the building were fairly
small, but a generator on the fifth floor was connected to a large
tank in the basement via a pressurized line. Says Sunder: "Our
current working hypothesis is that this pressurized line was
supplying fuel [to the fire] for a long period of time."
WTC 7 might have withstood the physical damage it received, or the
fire that burned for hours, but those combined factors--along with
the building's unusual construction--were enough to set off the
chain-reaction collapse.
http://www.popularmechanics.com/tech...42.html?page=5
Read/view the following links. They address many of the claims made by
the "Truth Movement". You will find hard facts with citations that
contradict most of their bullshit about the events of 9-11-2001. The
focus is on WTC/1/2/7 and the Pentagon.
http://www.popularmechanics.com/tech...42.html?page=1 http://cannonfire.blogspot.com/2006/...e-vs-bull.html http://screwloosechange.blogspot.com/ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1BtLbDnUES0 http://video.google.com/videoplay?do...73182328817124 http://video.google.com/videoplay?do...32614662229339 http://video.google.com/videoplay?do...enn+teller+911 http://www.unf.edu/~tbratina/hec/exa...lingobject.htm
(Free fall from the roof of the WTC (1368 ft) would take about
9.1 seconds. The equation is 1386 = ((32 x (T squared) / 2)
For T = 9 seconds it works out to 1296 ft.
http://www.lib.umich.edu/govdocs/usterror.html
To believe the "alternative" explanations of the "Truth Movement"
about the collapse of WTC1/2/7 requires that you ignore the
conclusions from the work of hundreds of engineers at NIST, published.
The results have been examined by thousands of engineers, worldwide,
all with expertese on some aspect of the event. The raw data and the
work of NIST is published at
http://wtc.nist.gov/ and these people
have examined the NIST case and agree with the general analysis, even
if some details are unknown or subject to debate.
Yet the "9-11 Truth Movement" requires that all these people are part
of a coverup.
The "Truth Movement" has joined the people the look for Bigfoot and
that believe in UFOs and Nellie as a permanent part of the
intellectual landscape, unfortunately. I guess the ubiquity of digital
cameras has made the non-existence of these old warhorses obvious so
the people that used to hawk "Area 51" have now picked on something
that was a one-time event and, as such, can't be observed again and
there is no chance that new factual evidence can be found in support
of their claims.
I think that all the smoke generated by the "Truth Movement" people
serves to distract us from real problems with the FAA and the rest of
the government and that the energy applied by the "Truth" people could
be better applied to working in American politics and mainstream
activism to bring more transparency to our government, which needs it
badly. Instead the people that originate this crap serve people that
are not working in our interests.
http://cannonfire.blogspot.com/2006/...e-vs-bull.html
Thursday, December 21, 2006
Science Vs. Bull
Joseph Cannon
As mentioned in a comment below, my sympathies for conspiracy
theories evaporate when the subject switches from investigative
reporting to science. I'm all for tracking Lee Harvey Oswald's
spooky pals in Guy Banister's office; I'm all for telling the story
of what really went down in Allende's Chile; I'm all for sorting out
the ins and outs of the Litvinenko case; I'm all for tracking the
shadowy world inhabited by guys like Michael Ledeen and groups like
the Pinay Circle.
But when the subject turns to science, I advise extreme caution.
And that's when the conspiracy buffs become pluperfectly pissed off
with me, because many of them just love, love, love that
pseudoscience. From radionics to Roswell, they dig it.
A discursive example:
I can't tell you how many times I've argued with film-illiterate
conspiracy buffs who knew -- just bloody knew -- that subliminal
images appear in The Exorcist. Every time I encounter this claim, I
explain that, while quick cuts do exist in that movie, subliminals
are impossible. Film runs at 24 frames a second, and 1/24th of a
second is not subliminal; that's why you can see scratches and
splices in a bad print. 1/3000th of a second is subliminal, but to
flash an image so briefly requires a specialized piece of equipment
called a tachistiscope. (For the same reason, no subliminals can
ever appear on television, which has a 30 fps refresh rate.)
The usual response: "There must have been a tachisti-whatzit in the
theater!"
Actually, I've spoken with the projectionist who ran The Exorcist
during its first run at the National in Los Angeles back in '73. (In
those days, big films did not open wide.) There was no such device.
Point won? Nope. The ne'er-say-die conspiracy buff would invariably
accuse me of not knowing anything about movie technology (!) or of
being part of the conspiracy.
(Before you say it: Yes, I know all about Vicary's stunt in the
1950s. He used a tachistiscope, and his results had no scientific
value due to the lack of controls. And yes, I know about the
Silverman/Weinberger experiments of the 1980s, which have been
questioned due to some unsuccessful attempts at replication.)
All of which is my way of coming back to Dylan Avery, director of
Loose Change, the film which many controlled demolition believers
consider the Matrix-style "red pill" that awoke them to the
horrible, horrible truth of what really happened on 9/11. In a
recent comment, Dylan revealed that his film is a religious
enterprise, not an attempt at scientific inquiry.
The giveaway quotation comes from a debate between Dylan Avery,
partner Jason Bermas, and debunker Ronald Wieck. You can see the
debate here; a partial transcript is here.
The revelatory words:
Wieck: I want to ask both of you quickly, what would falsify your
beliefs? What would it take? What would we need to change your
mind about this?
Avery: There is nothing.
Nothing could falsify this belief? Then -- by definition -- we have
left the edifice of science and entered the realm of religion.
The existence of God is the most commonly-heard non-falsifiable
assertion. If you're as ancient as I am, you may recall this
exchange from an old Bill Cosby routine, which demonstrates the
principle:
Dad: Don't step out the bed. I've placed a dozen poisonous snakes
on the floor.
Young Bill: I don't see no snakes...
Dad: They're invisible!
What would falsify my assertion that controlled demolitions did not
take down those buildings? A commenter on the Screw Loose Change
blog offered some sensible suggestions:
- a consensus among structural engineers and demolition experts
that there was a demolition
- peer-reviewed research supporting twoofer claims
- whistleblowers from within the massive conspiracy
- a logical narrative would be nice too
Actually, I find it odd that we haven't yet had any putative
whistleblowers. The hard-core JFK buffs can name about a dozen guys
who, over the years, have made dubious "confessions" that they were
either one of the shooters or one of the mystery tramps.
Back to the main point. My standards for falsification are less
demanding. I'm not asking for a consensus of physicists -- a mere
twenty would be nice. When the CD-ers can count among their number a
certain number of demolition experts -- twenty? Fifteen? -- I will
listen respectfully. Right now, the number of demolition experts who
believe in the CD theory of 911 is an embarrassing zero.
The CD-ers claim that their writings have passed muster in a "peer
reviewed" journal, But that publication, The Journal of 911 Studies,
does not count among its peers a single person with professional
expertise in the area of controlled demolition. And yet it is
devoted to "proving" the controlled demolition hypothesis!
Why have the editors not recruited any experts in the very field
under discussion? Perhaps because those experts would say things
that the CD believers may not wish to hear.
The fact is, no pro-CD theories have appeared in any peer-reviewed
scientific periodical founded before the events in question
occurred. As far as I know, all articles published in actual science
journals have led readers in a very different direction.
Some conspiracists will counter: The editors of those journals must
have been paid to print lies! Welcome to the wonderful world of
non-falsifiability.
If dozens, hundreds of eyewitnesses see a commercial jet smashing
into the Pentagon, those witnesses stand damned as liars. Welcome to
the wonderful world of non-falsifiability.
"The buildings came down at free-fall speeds!" bleat the
CD-ers. That argument has been refuted more than once. See here and
here and here. Also see the Screw Loose Change video itself -- or
any video of the collapse, which shows rubble free-falling at a rate
faster than the building collapse.
Doesn't matter: Those rebuttals were written in bad faith, and any
video evidence that challenges the theory must have been
Photoshopped.
Welcome to the world of non-falsifiability.
Should we extend Avery and Bermas the excuse of youth? Could it be
that they did not know how the concept of falsifiability works in
science?
My High School Science teacher explained the basic principle to me,
just as yours probably told you. One can only hope that Avery and
Bermas had a similar instructor. Beyond that, everyone must admit
that Avery and Bermas are playing with the big boys now. They made a
film which spoke to millions about scientific questions, and (unlike
most actual scientists) they feel quite comfortable speaking in
terms of definitely instead of perhaps.
If they did not make it their business to learn the scientific
method, they deserve contempt.
--
a d y k e s @ p a n i x . c o m
Harrison for Congress in NY 13CD
www.harrison06.com
Don't blame me. I voted for Gore. A Proud signature since 2001
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