Imagine a basketball and a marble. The basketball represents the hard evidence gathered by researchers and investigators over the years about 9/11. The marble is what the public knows about the events of that day.
In “One True Thing” down below, I tried to bring to the front the mere fact that Newton’s third law could not be suspended, even for just a day. A jetliner , a hollow tube made of aluminum and some titanium cuts through a steel building like a knife through butter. I was told that I don’t understand physics! Here’s Kailey:
I’ve worked at MSU, one of the Northwest’s better engineering universities, for a long time now. Most of the students we have employed in my department have been proto-engineers. I have friends (and relatives) who are among the better engineers in the state. They all say the same thing. One of the most difficult courses they take is Materials and Structures. It’s a year long [sic] course of applying Newton’s Third Law. One thing that trips many of them up is that F=F is simple. F=ma is simple, except that mass and acceleration are vector forces in and of themselves. The math gets very complicated at that point, because vectors of force are complicated. Again, I urge you to consider that before claiming that your simplistic read of the situation ‘proves’ that the government lied. No, it really doesn’t.
“Proto-engineers?” The prefix means “first, as in “prototype.” Did he mean “porto?” “Crypto?” “Pseudo?”
Anyway, what a steaming pile of … wait a minute. Let’s go to the source. Let’s check out Newton’s Third Suggestion about motion:
For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction, unless F=ma, in which case simplistic statement yields outcomes of no proto-worth. If F=ma, shit, fellas, I just don’t know. It’s too complicated.”
I had not read the whole thing, short attention span and all. Goddamnit! Kailey got me again. From this day forward, his name, in honor of his statement here, shall be called “Vector.”
I maintain that the clip I showed below of the “plane” hitting the south tower is CGI. I response to this, I was shown three clips, including this one:
I am being told that because a video shows a plane hitting the building, that a plane hit the building. End of story. TV is reality. (It is worth noting that the original video, shown on CNN, did not have the sounds in the background, the screaming, an exactly duplicate of which is heard in other videos. In addition, when this clip was shown on the History Channel in a bullshit documentary, another voice track was added, this time of a man saying “Oh my God. A plane hit the building.”
I talked about “CGI,” assuming anyone who goes to movies knows what it is. Apparently not. There used to be a whole branch of the movie industry that did “special effects.” Before powerful computers as we have now this had to be done with clever trickery, but now anyone with a computer and lots of patience can produce amazing effects. Here’s a brief video showing some of that magic:
Now, here is a clip showing how CNN composited that image. You only need see the first few seconds, but the whole thing is enlightening.
We now hear from from a journalist. Here are some of his words:
I don’t “examine the evidence” of 9/11 for the same reason I have not bothered to examine the evidence for allegations that the moon landings were staged. Except that staging the moon landings would have been relatively simple, compared to the unimaginably complex achievement of actually landing on the moon.In the case of 9/11, the case is reversed. Bunch of guys hijacking some planes and crashing them into buildings vs. government operatives murdering several hundred passengers, disposing of airplanes, wiring two of the largest buildings in the world with magic explosives (and doing so undetected), manufacturing videos and getting the networks to use them, brainwashing or terrorizing some dozens or hundreds of people in on the plot so that not one of them spills the beans, etc., etc., etc.
…In the course of my career I have been begged by intelligent and well-meaning people to tell the “truth” about evolution vs. creationism, the “myth” of the Holocaust and the mortal perils of fluoridation water. In all three cases, true believers can point to mountains of evidence that “prove” evolution is a lie, the Holocaust didn’t happen and fluoride is used by the government for … well, it varies, either simply as poison, for mind control, or a means of disposing of unwanted chemicals. And believe me, the “evidence” is out there, because true believers have been compiling (manufacturing?) it for a lot longer than the truthers have been around. I dare you to dive into any one of those subjects for a couple of months and come out sane.
I have been accused of being a patsy, a sucker and a government stooge. I can live with that, and I can live with that in this discussion.
I know there is not the remotest chance in the world of shaking your inflexible certainties, and I am just as certain that I could never describe to you how it feels to engage with you on this subject. It’s like visiting someone in an insane asylum and trying to convince him that life on the outside is much, much better than being on the inside and imagining oneself to be the king of France. The king won’t listen, but I will always be happier to be outside.
I find the statement “…getting the networks to use them” to be revealing. This is a good illustration of the divide between researchers and this journalist, who has obviously never heard the term “The Mighty Wurlitzer,” CIA Deputy Director Frank Wisner’s description of the worldwide CIA propaganda machine. He’s also not likely read fellow journalist Carl Bernstein’s 1977 Rolling Stone article in which he describes in detail the agency’s penetration of the media establishment. Getting the media to cooperate is a matter of issuing an order. He obviously envisions the networks as independent organizations.
This reminds me – does anyone remember this? A New York Times reporter gave the CIA an advance copy of a Maureen Dowd column.
New York Times reporter Mark Mazzetti e-mailed an advance, unpublished copy of a Maureen Dowd column dealing with the CIA to an Agency spokeswoman last year, according to newly released emails obtained by Judicial Watch under the Freedom of Information Act.
There is a name for Mazzetti – he’s a “mole.” Newspapers are crawling with them, as are the networks, as many as 400 said Bernstein, one of whom I suspect is Bob Woodward, given his easy access to power.
Russ Baker (not a “truther”) is a journalist who wrote the book about the Bush’s called “Family of Secrets.” The interesting thing about the book, from a journalistic standpoint, is that Baker went into the project without an agenda, and came out a changed man. He started out only wanting to know about W’s odd National Guard “service.
The more I learned, the broader my questions grew. And as my research deepened, disturbing patterns coalesced… To my surprise, I began to see that understanding George H.W. Bush (Senior, or Poppy, as his relatives and friends call him) was really the key to understanding the son …
Far from just understanding that W was a shirker, he came away questioning the official stories behind JFK and Dallas, and Watergate.
Contrast this with
I don’t “examine the evidence” of 9/11 for the same reason I have not bothered to examine the evidence for allegations that the moon landings were staged. Except that staging the moon landings would have been relatively simple, compared to the unimaginably complex achievement of actually landing on the moon. …Bunch of guys hijacking some planes and crashing them into buildings vs. government operatives murdering several hundred passengers, disposing of airplanes, wiring two of the largest buildings in the world with magic explosives (and doing so undetected), manufacturing videos and getting the networks to use them, brainwashing or terrorizing some dozens or hundreds of people in on the plot so that not one of them spills the beans, etc., etc., etc.
Again, I think we are encountering Vector’s conundrum – we can’t really understand Newton’s Third Law because it is too damned complicated, and we can’t really investigate this massive crime which killed thousands of people who day and led to millions more deaths because … I guess, it is too hard to believe that it is any other thing than what our government tells us. Note how absurd the 19 hijacker theory is, and how natural it would be, given, say, world history, for a government to be involved. That, in a nutshell is American journalism.
Here’s Baker from an interview some months ago:
As a more or less traditional journalist … I’ve kind of carved my own path over the years and works for a wide range different news organizations while trying to keep my independence, but I am one who has establishment credentials. And because of that I think it took me years and years to accept that there was really something wrong overall with the media in this country. And it’s harder for those of us who work for these places to see this. There is no overt censorship, there is not a cabal who sits there and dictates all of these things. It’s much more insidious than that. It’s that we ourselves … there’s a line in my book Family of Secrets which gets quoted quite a bit, [roughly] to the effect that the tyranny is in our own minds. It is not just journalists. This is all of us who are part of the corporate system. We are constantly on a day-to-day basis making sacrifices and compromises in terms of our own understanding of what is expected of us. And this is what I think is really wrong with the media. It’s not that the New York Times is officially part of something bad. It’s that there’s an understanding there that they have to be “responsible”, that they have to be “good citizens,” that they don’t want to rock the boat in a way that would destabilize the country or our society.
Many media critics make the mistake of assuming that reporters decide what gets printed. They also assume that reporters let personal prejudice interfere with their reporting. Journalism is a culture, and there are unstated rules. If our journalist quoted above were to express doubt about the official 9/11 story, he would be moved to the margins, perhaps even out. The culture is set not by reporters, but by owners, stockholders, publishers and editors they appoint, and with smaller organizations, what the larger organizations are doing. Truth, or at least stories that government does not like, does not easily filter through this system, and as can easily be seen with 9/11, the censorship regime is rigid.
So, to close, what have we learned? We have learned that we can learn more, if only we take the time and trouble, and that we don’t take the time and trouble. Vector says that physics is too complicated for mere mortals, another because TV cannot be anything other than real, and the journalist because he knows in advance that a story is not worth pursuing.
What follows is a link to a video of a presentation given in London by Dr. Judy Wood (not a “truther”) on the evidence at the World Trade Center on the day of the tragedy. Dr. Wood is, like so many professors I had, uncomfortable in front of a crowd and not a good speaker. The presentation is over two hours long. Her strongest point is that she lets the evidence speak for itself, and does not draw unwarranted conclusions. As citizens it is our job to hold our government accountable. This time investment would be a good place to start, unless you know in advance that it is not worth your time.
There are countless people – scientists, engineers, physicists, etc, who have “looked at the evidence” and come to a different conclusion than the ones you cite. You’ve chosen a subset of supposedly serious people who you trust, and have pretended that by doing so you have ben granted special powers of comprehension that the rest of us lack because of thought control. And then you get to play the victim because people respond to ridicule with ridicule. Cry me a river.
This is exactly the same phenomena I’ve seen when arguing with religious fanatics. They don’t have “beliefs,”. They have “knowledge.” An the only reason I don’t “know” what they “know” is because my mind is being tainted by Satan. Jesus is just waiting in a little corner of my heart but I’m just suppressing him because I’m afraid of what the truth will do to my sinful lifestyle.
The similarity here is that you and I can’t have a discussion because you will simply not admit that what you hold is not “knowledge.” It is a set of beliefs that you’ve gathered using the same deductive reasoning as the rest of us, using a different subset of the population as your trusted sources for those beliefs. What you’ve done is taken those beliefs and pretended that they constitute knowledge. They most certainly do not.
I guess the “truth” of 9/11 is hiding in that little corner with Jesus, just waiting to come out. You know, they actually make a pretty good team down there. I think I’ll leave them there.
God bless you for trying to change Mark’s thinking, Steve, but your attempt violates basic physics. You can’t shatter a chunk of granite with a wiffle bat.
Apparently, you could if the wiffle bat were made of a heavy pumpkin …
Steve T, are you arguing that the twin towers are still there? Because i’m not. The Twin Towers disappeared on 9/11. My guess is that you and I are in agreement with about 98% of the world on this point. This differs from my conversations with many Christians who believe Jesus died and then rose from the grave. I dispute that. If there was an historical Jesus, after he died he stayed dead. The Towers didn’t disappear and then reappear 3 days later. Nobody believes that.
So we are not talking about faith here. We are talking about evidence that we can view with our own eyes. The question comes down to interpretation of evidence. Not questions of faith but rather interpretation of facts,
If the buildings collapsed like NIST claimed, then one would think that the evidence would support that, including the photos, the seismic record, and the recorded testimony, personal observations of humans who were there on the scene when It occurred or shortly after.
The reason I find Dr Wood’s investigation so compelling is that she has chosen a very narrow focus (What happened to the WTC on and after 9/11) she has the background and qualifications to do the investigation, and she actually carried out an exhaustive and thorough investigation herself. We can look at her evidence and we can understand her analysis.
Have you read the final NIST report? She did. And she sued in court for science fraud against NIST private subcontractors. NIST told her they didn’t investigate the collapse. They told her they investigated up to the point of initiation of the collapse. So, according to NIST, there hasn’t been any official investigation of the “collapse.”
Here is the first page of the letter NIST sent her. As you can see in at the bottom of the first paragraph of the 1st page NIST says “As stated in NCSTAR 1, NIST only investigated the factors leading to the initiation of the collapses of the WTC, not the collapses, not the collapses themselves.”
http://www.drjudywood.com/articles/NIST/rpics/NistWoodRfcResponse_text_1.jpg
I repeat, there has been no government investigation of the collapses of the WTC Towers, according to NIST.
I was not noting the similarities in the religions, only in the patterns of their true believers. But thanks for the info!
He makes a valid point. You are saying we are “true beleivers” based on our judgment of evidence you have not even seen. That strikes me as a more religious attitude than ours. And please read the opening sentence about the marble and the basketball. You’ve not seen the evidence. You’ve only seen that that counter-critics have publicly “debunked.”
Go watch the 2 and 1/2 hour video at the end of the thread, or read her 500 page book complete with hundreds of graphs and photos and math, and then feel free to call us names. But if you’re not willing to do the legwork, let’s talk football.
Sure! I’ll read the 500 page book and watch a 2 and half hour presentation. Unfortunately I still have to read the bible before I can sufficiently refute Catholicism, and also the Quran before I can sufficiently refute Islam. After all, the adherents to those faiths believe strongly that the ultimate truth is held within those books, and that I cannot possibly know what I’m talking about in regards to my own faith.
I’ll get right on that. In the meantime, Go Jets!
Steve T, You can lead a horse to water but you can’t make him drink, is a saying.
Dorthy Parker said, “You can lead a horticulture but you can’t make her think.” which was funny because there is an element of truth there wrapped around a pun.
If you aren’t interested in the evidence, well that’s completely understandable and not at all unique. After all, you and ” ..countless people – scientists, engineers, physicists, etc, who have “looked at the evidence” and come to a different conclusion..” already figure that somebody else looked at the evidence and came to a conclusion.
But what if they didn’t because the Jets were distracting them and they didn’t really have a lot of time?
That’s possible, wouldn’t you say?
You know, I didn’t know any of this Dr Judy Wood stuff a couple of months ago. So i can see how that could happen. Not just to me but to countless people. Even to Craig Moore and his author at the link he provided to Popular Mechanics.
As Morpheus said, ‘You take the blue pill, the story ends, you wake up in your bed and believe whatever you want to believe. You take the red pill, you stay in Wonderland, and Dr Judy Wood shows you how deep the rabbit hole goes.’
Ok that’s corny, but really, check it out. Just watch the presentation and think about it. Even Peter Jennings, George Stephanopolis and Jackie Judd saw that the rubble pile was “so small” and wondered why. But then they quit asking. Dr Judy Wood didn’t quit asking.
Whatever happened on 9/11 could be understood as the means to an end. Or, more likely it was one action in a sequence of events in pursuit of an intended end. A possible end, or something resembling an end is the passage of Public Law 107-243 (October 16, 2002), Authorization for Use of Military Force Against Iraq Resollution of 2002. We are governed by this law to this day. Where is Jesus, anyway? Congress and President Obama sure aren’t righting the marooned ship Mission Accomplished. Alexander (Bombs-Away) Hague must be smiling from his grave.
Steve K, who disappeared the towers and why is as yet unknown. In fact, what happened isn’t very well understood. So before we assume what “it” was and why “it” was done we need to first know what “it” is.
I think it safe to speculate very generally that 9/11 was a transformative event that unleashed the US Military on the world, hundreds of thousands, maybe millions dead. Cui bono is useful, and the real investigation is going on, unfortunately without legal power of subpoena.
George Carlin said in a QnA one night when asked about 9/11 that power never investigates itself, that we kind of just have to accept this shit and move on. One instance that I know of where people were held accountable – Nuremberg – maybe it will happen again?
~sigh~ You are engaging in totally willful ignorance, Mark. My “appeal to authority” didn’t say you were wrong. It simply highlighted that those who have studied the physics and engineering of materials and structures find the mathematics of it almost universally more complex than you are willing to admit. You’ve actually argued that a pumpkin had more mass than a car door that blew right off its hinges when hit. The pumpkin didn’t survive, no doubts. But the van door, with at very least 3 times the mass of the pumpkin, got blown off it’s steel hinges and pushed back to the other side of the vehicle. Given it’s light mass and relative flexibility, I can’t wait to see your explanation for how Kevlar body armor stops bullets with Photoshop.
Let’s us be clear here. You believe what you want to believe, and that’s all it is, faith. ‘Your eyes’ and what you see supports your mythology, so of course the one objective truth (the mathematics of physics) is beyond discussion for you. Okay. When I went to MSU, my major was physics, a major I studied for a year and half before switching to Philosophy and History. Of course, as you’ve well argued, no one can really understand things that you cannot. That would be an appeal to authority (of actual knowledge, however that’s beside the point of your religion.) But ultimately what I learned in the college experience is that one cannot argue with true believers, like you. You are no different than a creationist in that regard. Simply put, for you, an airplane made of aluminum with all support structure geared to forward support against the force of air resistance, full of several thousand pounds of passengers and many hundreds of pounds of fuel simply could not have pierced a building made of concrete (a porous structure), and steel beams perpendicular to their vector of support weight. Fine. Your mythology outweighs any factual argument, so I’m done here.
Good luck storming the castle! (It would take a miracle.)
Why do I have to know the math when I know that the relative mass of one object is greater than another, and that velocity does not matter? It’s not only an appeal to authority, but obfuscation.
Rob, you are assuming that was a pumpkin in the video because they told you it was a pumpkin. Did you see a pumpkin? I didn’t. How do you know “it” was a pumpkin? So then how do you solve the question? What did the pumpkin you didn’t see weigh?
Steve, I watched the whole thing on the Discovery network. It was a pumpkin of approximately 15 to 20 pounds. I’ve shot a potato out of a potato gun that went 200 yards. This is the same bunch of folk who’ve won the pumpkin chucking competition for 3 years running. Are you seriously religiously deluded enough to think that a bunch of folks claiming to shoot a pumpkin for fun didn’t actually do it? More to the point, are you seriously stupid enough to think I can’t recognize a pumpkin? Even Mark was smart enough to do so, but you don’t think I am?
Quit insulting my intelligence, you moron.
Got a link Rob, since you have a reputation as a liar I would prefer documentation to your unreliable word. Thanks. By the way, why does the van in the video have a black outline all the way around it?
I’m sure there is a good explanation, but since you claim to have seen it on tv i thought maybe they explained it to you at the time. That looks like a green screen artifact to me. But i’m sure a smart guy like you knows what it is, right?
What goes shooting off to the right in the video? Did the pumpkin bounce of after it bent the door? Did they tell you what that was on TV? Since you know, if they said it was a pumpkin then it has to be a pumpkin. Right?
CGI is pretty easy to spot when you are looking for it, which is why I don’t like most movies these days. I wasn’t looking for it in the pumpkin video, but you are right Steve – it could be a pumpkin, it could be a bladder of some type, and it does fly off to the right. Further, the black outline around the van is suspicious, as that does look like it was digitally inserted. I think you nailed it. I’ll put that video up tomorrow and let everyone have a look at it, if for no other reason to show how easily I was fooled, let the air out of the place a bit. People assume they are under attack when we are only asking them just to visit the evidence.
You must be engaged in self-mockery here. This is mind-blowing.
Just between us, you guys did not read the post, even look at the videos, and you would no more check out Dr. Wood than bathe with Rosanne Barr. Right? But it is me, and not you that have heads of granite? At least I have invested time and brain power, such as it is, sifting through the many many people who claim expertise in this area, and looking for common threads. I have tried my best to understand the day’s events, even as most of it is still shrouded in secrecy. I don’t know who to trust, and make tentative assessments. I have weighed the available evidence, not even knowing that evidence can be trusted, as there is so much fakery and deceit.
I have done my job as a citizen while you have not, fellas. Your opinions are of considerable weight if you have done the same legwork and then we have differing opinions, as would be normal. But not to have even looked, and then discredit, is … stubborn is a nice one. What I am sensing from you is more that you think that everyone can be fooled, but not you. That’s how we all think. That’s why we’re so easily fooled.
I was there in 1988, Russ Baker went through it too, that awakening of the senses. That first moment, when you see the light, is terrifying. You lose your grounding, your security of belief. It’s like learning there was no Jesus. But trust me guys, it gets better.
Mark, I have watched the videos. I also watched the “Dateline” episode interviewing the architect of the twin towers where he explained very precisely how a significant impact combined with the extreme heat of igniting airplane fuel inside the building would structurally compromise the towers. I just thought you ought to know.
That’s a side issue. We are talking about Newton’s Third Suggestion, and how a jet airliner can enter a building without resistance even as it has less mass than the structure it hits. The pumpkin video was real, and each body was severely damaged. Steve did not know, nor do you, that you are making my case.
Dr. Wood does a good job evaluating the evidence regarding the collapse of the towers and destruction of five other buildings that day. If you don’t invest time in her demonstration, then we are at opposite poles, me having been immersed in evidence, you not.
PS: She presents but does not dispose, and urges people to think for themselves. She does not claim to have answers, only evidence.
Mark, go back and look at that video in the last thread where they tell you it’s a pumpkin. I can’t see a pumpkin, i see something hit then it looks like it ricochets off to the right. Also, the van has a black outline around it. Why is that?
It a perfect example of[people seeing what they are told to see.
Damn that’s good. I’m doing exactly what these guys are doing. Thank you!
I hope that the irony of your last paragraph is not lost on you given the similarities I noted earlier between this discussion and those I’ve had with religious fanatics. That must have been intentional, right?
Like religious fanatics, you cannot possibly believe that someone is looking at the same evidence as you and coming to different conclusions. Like religious fanatics, you believe that something in our brains must be “tainting” our thought patterns. (Satan?) And like religious fanatics, you cannot possibly have a rational discussion on this issue. You have “knowledge,” not “beliefs.”
I’m not interested in changing your mind here. I’m interested in getting you to admit that rational people can come to different conclusions than you without having their thoughts controlled. And I’m honestly not sure why I’m still trying.
Who said
Oh yeah, that was me. So now, you’re not reading the post, looking at the videos, won’t go near Dr. Wood, and not reading the comments, but are getting on me in the usual manner?
I’ve read the 9/11 Commission report, found it to be mostly convincing – especially because they interviewed people who were actually there and family members of the survivors. And scientists. But that doesn’t hold any weight because those guys were all in on it, and none of the people who died actually died.
So all of my legwork was not actually legwork, as it was mostly a product of me denying the real truth which is hiding in a dark corner of my heart. With Jesus.
Mark, I was actually writing a comment laying the math out for you. You know, v=s/t, and a=ds/dt. You’re not interested and Steve W is worse than a retarded teapeep idiot. It’s not worth anyone’s time.
Please. Enough, lame ass. Even a child and see through your crap.
Ha ha ha little Robby K. Why is the van outlined in black? Why does the “pumpkin” shoot off to the right? You saw a pumpkin because you were told to see a pumpkin. What do have against alter-abled people you fucking bigoted asshole?
Are you developmentally disabled, Steve? No. I didn’t think so. You’re just a willful idiot, a retarded jackwad. You are one who thinks that his religious belief in eebil gubmint actually is beyond question. No it isn’t, and neither is your willful stupidity.
If your moma never taught you not to engage in hate speech then I feel sorry that your upbringing was so shitty. It shows.
Bigotry is bigotry and it’s quite clear. Listen to those Glee women and clean up your act you bigot.
It’s not OK. It’s not acceptable.
And it’s on the record. Forever. See you around, smart guy.
Steve W,
“…what happened isn’t very well understood.” Agreed.
” So before we assume what “it” was and why “it” was done we need to first know what “it” is.” You can misconstrue my comments anyway you wish. I assume nothing and there is no “we” in that opinion. I also reject your suggestion that linear thinking is required to solve the 9/11 riddle. Criticize, disagree, speculate however you like. I respect your right to express your own views. There is no need really to unecessarily expanding mine.
Again with that hollow tube nonsense. http://adg.stanford.edu/aa241/structures/structuraldesign.html
Craig, you keep bringing pictures of hollow tubes to buttress your case that an airliner is not a hollow tube.
It’s an expression of relative mass, building versus airliner, that the airliner is essentially a hollow tube. Yes, we realize it weights several tons, is reinforced, and very sturdy. That is not the point. It is made at the price point for weight versus strength, an engineering marvel. But if it crashes into a building, it will not be sucked in without resistance.
Calling it a hollow tube is like calling an I-beam to be just 3 pieces of steel. You completely disregard the wings. Disregarding the internal structures seems to be a willful avoidance of the answer to your head scatcher. Don’t confuse the aircraft skin appearance as to what makes the aircraft strong, sturdy, and more than just 3 pieces of metal arrange to intersect at their edges and middle like an I-beam.
Craig, ever squish an aluminum can? Ever try to squish a tin can? Can you imagine squishing a steel can? I can’t. Not without something a lot more heavy duty than my foot.
Steel is much stronger than aluminum. Your foot would know even if your brain forgot.
Think about it.
Then watch Dr Judy Wood’s presentation and lets talk.
Another fake! That CIA sure is wily.
That looks real to me. How much do you think that pumpkin weighs? About 200 to 300 pounds?
Here’s an exercise.
If you jump up and down on the roof of a van what happens?
If you jump up and down on the roof of a steel framed sky-scrapper what happens?
Let me know when you figure out the answers.
How much do you think that van weighs?