9/11 Troofers Puzzle Me...
Offline ...Y'know, aside from the ridiculous assertions, the cherry-picked 'evidence', the quote mining and the logical fallacies, there's still a much bigger picture regarding the whole '9/11 Truth' movement that is just... weird.
Every one of the 'big names' (Alex Jones, 'Loose Change', etc) makes the base claim that not only was it an inside job, but the fact it was an inside job makes it scarier.
On what ass-backwards world, out of curiousity, is it somehow more scary when someone does something awful to get money/power than when someone does something mostly because they just want to see the world burn?
I think at the root of the 9/11 conspiracies isn't a 'Terror Storm' of any sort; I think it's much, much more comforting for people to think, 'Ah, it's just the government doing the whole 'conspiring against it's citizens' thing again,' than it is to face the far more brutal truth:
That there is an entire culture out there that would like nothing more than to die while burning our cities and achievements to the ground.
For the occasional 'truther' that may peruse these boards, I want you to consider something. For all his faults and terrible leadership, GWB and his pal Cheney have had 8 years with full access to a terrifying arsenal of city-erasing nuclear weaponry, and never once used any part of it. If an Al Quaeda cell full of fundamentalist muslim terrorists suddenly found themselves in possession of just a single nuclear device, how long do you think it would take them before they used it to destroy a Western city?
If the 'official story' strikes less fear into you than your fantasy, your brain isn't working correctly.
(...A question just as an aside, out of curiousity: How much damage do modern, 'small scale' nuclear weapons do, anyway? Presumably one such device could not destroy, say, the entire city of Chicago? Just a large chunk of it? The raw punch of nukes always seems a tad exaggerated in the media. The one hydrogen bomb test done in the water with all those dummy ships around it that is so often shown, for example, doesn't look that powerful. It only engulfed/sank a fraction of the ships).
"Natasha has just come up to the window from the courtyard and opened it wider so that the air may enter more freely into my room. I can see the bright green strip of grass beneath the wall, and the clear blue sky above the wall, and sunlight everywhere. Life is beautiful. Let the future generations cleanse it of all evil, oppression and violence, and enjoy it to the full."
- Leon Trotsky, Last Will & Testament
February 27, 1940
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Well, here's where we get into numbers. Theoretically, you could have a 'nuke' the size of a football that would make a few Detroit blocks uninhabitable for years.
What do you got? A uranium bullet or some plutonium? What height off of the ground do you want it to detonate?
Are we talking deaths only from the initial explosion or do we get to count long term casualties as well? Can we count radiation illness of future genertions that try to live in the bombed area as collateral damage?
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Well, ;et's say the stereotypical 'suitcase' bomb (presuming such a device can credibly be created), detoned in the downtown core of Chicago. I'm not really interested in potential death tolls or even radiation; how much raw boom boom would we be talking about? What kind of crater would it leave, what kind of structural damage would be done to the city, etc?
- Leon Trotsky, Last Will & Testament
February 27, 1940
The 'boom-boom' is measured in megatons of TNT for a comparison. It works on an exponential scale. The more material, the more exponential the boom.
On the ground does much less damage than explosion in air.
A 50lb. Suitcase fission bomb(minimum critical mass of material) would essentially dig a hole in the asphalt approximately 12 foot deep and 25 yrds wide and knock down any non-reinforced structures for a 400 yard radius. Wind damage and EMP damage would stretch farther. Nothing metallic besides lead would be usable for years.
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Kevin, this is a really good point. I hadn't considered this, but I think you're right. I think there might be another element to it, as well. Americans really, really, really want to believe that the world is made of good guys and bad guys. The admission that the terrorists might have legitimate reasons for hating us is way too much than most Americans can stomach. If it wasn't terrorists, but the government, then we don't have to think about it that way.
The new Rethuglican slogan: "George W Bush. At least he didn't blow up Chicago."
Atheism isn't a lot like religion at all. Unless by "religion" you mean "not religion". --Ciarin
http://hambydammit.wordpress.com/
Books about atheism
The official story does have many holes in it. I don't think there are near as many as the fabricated conspiracies, but why would the government tell us the truth if they lied and manipulated the data to lead us into Iraq and Afghanistan? Terrorism is a much more complex entity than the religious component many try to tie it to. Islam is just a tool to recruit warriors by making crazy promises to martyrs.
I caught a cable news program one night and they had a psycologist on that expressed the same opinion. Some people find the notion that the government did it more comforting than the official explanation. Personally if the government were behind it that would truly be more frightening than Bin Laden. I could see why many hate us for the foreign policies of our government, but if a government could kill its' own people that is another thing.
Lastly, I am not sure the nuke suitcase is really feasible. I'm not a nuclear physicist but from what I understand these are myths. The amount of explosive material needed to create nuclear fission would be far too much to be "portable". I guess this would also depend on the size of the fissible material and other variables. The arsenal we have in the US are mostly small scale weapons while those of many other countries were designed with bigger yields. Current research indicates that even a nuclear war between India and Pakistan would kill hundreds of millions so I think it's best we not second guess the destructive nature of just a few nukes.
"Always seek out the truth, but avoid at all costs those that claim to have found it" ANONYMOUS
I'm not going to go any further on dirty nukes for fear that someone will think I want to make one. lol.
All I will say is that we don't have the engineering limitations of yesterday. Better explosives, better housings, better materials.
Terrorists are to blame for 9/11, but how much help did they get and from whom? How much did our own people capitalize on the disaster and death of nearly 3,000 others? That's what I want to know. No conspiracy theories, just the actual 'truth' is what i wish the 'truthers' would focus on.
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Blast radius of the bomb dropped on Japan (From Wiki..)
And we've had over 60 years to improve our technology
Where are you getting this?
Did your test runs go as planned?
The 50lbs. would be 1/2 containment and reflectors, 7/16 explosive, 1/16 fuel for 10 Kt.
Asphalt supports roughly 10 tons per cubic foot when packed. Its support triples with every 1 foot layer. 12 foot deep and 25 feet wide equals 1/5 of the total force applied to the area with the additional 4/5 of force spreading in all other directions.
I suppose one could say that the force of the initial blast would change the center of the reaction due to applied force on the near solid surface which would make less of a crater.
I kept the force in the same place. The structure strength of modern buildings has to be listed with their plans. 500 mph 'winds' over the surface area of one side of buildings in Chicago downtown would only destroy the weaker taller buildings leaving the bottom partially intact with houses and warehouses still being destroyed behind them, but the force (even as per your own graph) of the blast is indirectly proportionate to the volume of area effected. At a 400 yd. radius with 4/5 of the force of a .01 Mt blast, the damage becomes absorbable by structures.
Likewise, for the electromagnetic pulse, but that is dependent upon what else is in the area.
Correct?
Haven't we talked about this before, you and I?
LMAO. They're not my tests.
On a side note: I still want to know how much anti-matter is needed to create a beam that will annihilate/'energize' any matter in its path. lol. Fuck nukes. We need something that can destroy an entire asteroid.
The 'loose change' documentary people gave some bad numbers to the engineers they interviewed I think. One of these days, I'd like to see the whole analysis of the jet hitting the building #1. Air speed, fuel, building structure rating, etc.
If possible, I'd want the next building project I get to work on be able to withstand a direct hit like that. The one I'm in now can take an eF-5 storm with a smile, but no planes, meteors, or decent rocket.
Plus, I still want to build a bunker capable of stopping an LSD bus.
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It wasn't me, but whoever it was check if they're wearing a wire.
Anti-matter is 100% efficent as opposed to the about 1% efficancy of atomic bombs. Efficent as in mass converted to energy, so you wouldn't need a lot. However producing it is very hard.
Now I'm getting concerned.
I think it's in the NIST report.
Oh and
http://wtc.nist.gov/
...Guess you thought I'd just let this bald assertion slide?
Nope.
What 'holes', exactly? Elaborate on what you think doesn't make sense about the events as originally reported.
- Leon Trotsky, Last Will & Testament
February 27, 1940
I think the WTC fall was an inside job... I don't know who personally stuffed the skyscrapers with explosives, but there is one reason why it was partially a fault of American government, and the developed world as such. Not intentional, that's sure, but the guilt is in the West.
The American, British and other governments have not
recognized that the attack on the World Trade Center and Pentagon,
and the foiled attack on the White House, have a cause.
The cause is complex, but put very simply, it is the extreme
difference in living standards between the developed
Western world and the developing world. One-third of the
world — mainly America, Europe, Japan, Australia, and
Canada — usurp and greedily waste three-quarters of the
world’s food, and some 83 per cent of all other resources. The
developing world, the so-called Third World, has to make due
with the rest, distributed among two-thirds of the world’s population.
This division is the result of greed, lack of compassion,
and complacency. It is unfair and extraordinarily dangerous
for the security of the world. The developing world will not
for ever put up with this state of affairs. They will demand
their fair share of the world’s resources. The first steps in
that direction were the attacks on America. The greatest
danger to the world was not the existence of Iraq, with its
dictatorship, nor is it Iran with its fundamentalist Muslim
attitudes and lack of respect for America, or North Korea
with its military potential. The greatest danger is the
discrepancy in living standards between the developed and
the developing world.
Humanity is taking a long time to understand these problems,
the true problems that beset it today. But unless it understands
these problems, there will be no hope for the future
of the world. The tensions existing in this discrepancy of living
standards have within them the seeds of a third world war.
That war would be nuclear and would destroy all life on the
planet.
Quote by Benjamin Creme, Osaka, Japan
It's that simple. The attack on WTC was an inside job, in the sense, that we did it the wrong things to other countries, and the wrong things returned to us, and will keep returning. The buying power of coutries like USA is an economic weapon of mass destruction, and we used this weapon on our neighbours without provocation and relentlessly, just to be rich and fulfill the american dream.
Another lesson to the world, that a harm done is a harm self-inflicted.
Beings who deserve worship don't demand it. Beings who demand worship don't deserve it.
Benjamin Creme, Lumey? Are you fucking serious? You'll be quoting Lord Maitreya next, I assume?
"The whole conception of God is a conception derived from ancient Oriental despotisms. It is a conception quite unworthy of free men."
--Bertrand Russell
As for M, I have no quotes from him I'd know of. The articles on Creme's page are by someone else.
Beings who deserve worship don't demand it. Beings who demand worship don't deserve it.
Ok I am really really shocked that someone who strickly adheres to the scientific method such as youself, would come to this conclusion!
/sarcasm
People who think there is something they refer to as god don't ask enough questions.
You all know by now the strategy I like employing. When I encounter a creationist and we are arguing over evolution, I first make them run a gauntlet of questions about evolutionary biology. Anyone truly versed in the subject could answer in seconds. Anyone not would be weeded out. This strategy is called filtration. A similar strategy should be employed when having a discussion about mechanical engineering or physics with a 9/11 conspiracy theorist:
Interlocutor: I hold that aircraft could not bring the WTC down.
Me: OK. Solve the following:
I made this problem using a word document just now. It's an extremely simple dynamics problem. If you can't solve it, it's sort of hard to argue that you could have a serious discussion about the physics behind building collapse, which is very complex and involves much more intricate mathematical modelling. The problem I wrote in the other thread, while not a mechanical engineering problem, should be comprehensible as well.
Most can't solve the above, which is why I put them in the same category of stupidity as creationists.
"Physical reality” isn’t some arbitrary demarcation. It is defined in terms of what we can systematically investigate, directly or not, by means of our senses. It is preposterous to assert that the process of systematic scientific reasoning arbitrarily excludes “non-physical explanations” because the very notion of “non-physical explanation” is contradictory.
-Me
Books about atheism
Beings who deserve worship don't demand it. Beings who demand worship don't deserve it.
Yes I am shocked again.
Speculative emotional utterances of the United States' economic predominance by an idiot is not evidence.
People who think there is something they refer to as god don't ask enough questions.
Shortly after 1988 Creme succesfully predicted Asian financial crisis. (through his magazine)
Isn't that an evidence of his insight?
Quote:
One of the first of these predictions was that
there will be a world stock-exchange crash that will begin in
Japan. That seemed an extraordinary statement at the time. In
mid-1988 the Nikkei average stood at 40,000 points. In 1990
it began to fall. And the Japanese who know these things said
that if it comes to 18,000 points, that is the end. It came down
to 10,000 points and then 7,000 points. As a result, like dominoes
followed all the countries of the Pacific Rim —
Malaysia, Indonesia, Hong Kong and Singapore. They all
began to crash as a result of the Japanese crash. And then Russia,
Brazil and Argentina.
Fortunately, or unfortunately, it depends, Japanese businessmen are very disciplined and on an immediate signal from the government, they poured a large amount of finances into the stock market, which eventually stabilized this crisis. That's a history.
Beings who deserve worship don't demand it. Beings who demand worship don't deserve it.
We 'usurp' it? What a joke. We are net exporters of food. We give more than we take. And by 'take' I mean 'purchase on the international market.' That is not my definition of 'usurp.'
I would disagree. Extreme differences in living standards to produce hatred, but for this specific subject (9/11) the mastermind of it (Osama) was a very rich man. Osama is far, far too rich for economic jealousy to be the cause of this. Also the attackers themselves lived in the US; they were allowed to experience our plenty and still carried out the attacks due to non-economic ideological reasons.
They have no choice but to put up with it. They have no means to harm us except through terrorist attacks. If they push us far enough then they will just play into the hands of the Republicans; who will then 'shock and awe' them right out of existence. They can not demand more resources because they lack the modern militaries needed to seize our resources. At best they can run guerilla campaigns to try and get us off of their land. But for every group willing to try and drive us away (Iraq) there will be more welcoming us (or to be more precise: welcoming our money and protection) with open arms (Saudis Arabia, Qatar, Kuwait).
Nope. Those attacks were not due to our higher standard of living. Don't get me wrong, plenty of people do hate us because of our higher standard of living, but the 9/11 attacks were for other reasons. I feel as though this passage is conflating one reason that some people have to hate us, with any and all forms of hatred against the West.
What militaries will be fighting in WWIII? What third world countries have militaries that can reach the US? Without ships and transport planes, even third world countries with large militaries can never use them on our mainland. Even IF third world countries get nuclear arsenals the same problem would apply: how are they going to get their nukes to us? Building the bomb is easy, deploying it half way around the world on the other hand is very, very hard. Raising armies is easy, transporting them all the way to Europe or North America is not.
Lets all try and aim a little higher than people like Creme in the future. I know we can do better than this.
"You say that it is your custom to burn widows. Very well. We also have a custom: when men burn a woman alive, we tie a rope around their necks and we hang them. Build your funeral pyre; beside it, my carpenters will build a gallows. You may follow your custom. And then we will follow ours."
British General Charles Napier while in India
Oh no Luminon, I think that we all realize that the North America, Europe and Japan are much more rich than the rest of the world combined. I don't think anyone was disagreeing with that fact. The disagreement is over whether or not that fact leads to terrorist attacks. Look at some videos used to motivate terrorists. Terrorist leaders don't focus on our high standard of living, they focus on ideological (religious) reasons to strike at us. They don't say that they will be rich if they can defeat us, they say that they will serve the will of their god. Our wealth is only used against us in the sense that they think we are too materialistic and not devout enough.
Nope. He predicted that a stock market would crash? Hell, I predict that ALL stock markets will crash. And the crashes will be spectacular. And I am 100% assured of being correct. Given enough time, any stock market will crash. Stock markets are especially vulnerable after periods of high growth. So he 'predicted' that the Asian stock market would crash after its high period of growth? If the Asian stock market didn't crash something would be wrong. For that matter I can't wait for China's big crash to come. After their recent period of development there must be a crash in their future. Their government is already trying to slow down growth in an effort to make the imminent crash less severe.
Well, yeah, that makes perfect sense. Rapid growth tends to build houses of cards. Once one starts tumbling it takes out others with it. This seems very obvious to me. Everyone should have a clear understanding of these economic facts. What Creme has to say is neither deep nor insightful; he points out facts that are apparent to any amateur student of economics.
"You say that it is your custom to burn widows. Very well. We also have a custom: when men burn a woman alive, we tie a rope around their necks and we hang them. Build your funeral pyre; beside it, my carpenters will build a gallows. You may follow your custom. And then we will follow ours."
British General Charles Napier while in India
Like I said, to believe the government is telling the truth regarding the events of 911 verbatim is ridiculous. They lied and manipulated data to attack Iraq and Afghanistan this much is agreed upon. Okay, so many holes may be a stretch but there are questions that need answered.
Evidence pinning the blame on Bin Laden is sparce at best. Bin Laden never accepted responsibility to the attacks other than a questionable video found in a safe-house in Afghanistan. The point of terrorism is to take responsibilty for an action to cohearce people into making changes.
Mayor Willie Brown was contacted before 911 not to fly as referenced in this San Francisco Chronicle article http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2001/09/12/MN229389.DTL If someone knew something was going on then why not shut the airports down and save innocent lives even if the chance was just remote?
I don't believe typical tin foil hat wearing conspiracies, but to state that everything took place as it is advertised is just ludicrous as well. Since when do skeptics accept dogma at face value? It doesn't matter whether it's religious or political someone had something to gain by drawing us into an unwinnable global war on terrorism.
"Always seek out the truth, but avoid at all costs those that claim to have found it" ANONYMOUS
I have discovered that I am no good at fire and metal interactions. lol. Be glad I'm not a fireman or a steelworker.
I can do temperature expansion of steel and brass on my equipment here, but we only have high strength steel here.
Thanks, cpt., for the link.
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Osama can hardly be a terrorist - he is, in fact, a friend of Bush family, as his father was. He herds the fanatics to a slaughter, and leaves their oily countries helpless against invasion. He'll be probably never caught - who would kill a goose, which lays golden eggs? Well, maybe they will catch and execute a double, as it probably was with Saddam.
You think, that a half of world can't put together one good nuke and smuggle it into USA? It's just a question of time. Desperate people uses desperate measures.
All other reasons are just secondary effects of this one cause.
You probably never had enough hunger, diseases, hatred or empathy to understand that. It's a typical superior indolence, which supports this unbearable suffering.
You can't say that they just have to put up with it, they are living and feeling people, and they are not capable of that, just like you or any other human. If someone in enemy's military uniform would shoot your family, would you put up with it?
"effort".
Jihad is a noble declaration of effort to make something better, there's a jihad for everything, the great jihad against own poverty, a jihad to get on university, to defeat own flaws of character, and so on. And, there is also jihad to become a martyr.
But every man going on this kind of jihad needs agreement of his mother, otherwise the martyr after death will not get to paradise.
If an Islamic mother is poor, suffering, uneducated woman, then she is VERY likely to give her son an approval to become a martyr. On the other side, humanitary help, education and affordable medicine, reduces the hatred and very effectively reduces a number of Islamic martyrs.
If it would be so easy, everyone would predict that a particular stock market will fall at a specific time, but at these times, it was a very bold claim.
Beings who deserve worship don't demand it. Beings who demand worship don't deserve it.
No way. No f*cking way. I tried. I really did. I tried to reasonably present my opinions on this matter. And Luminon proves in these two sentences that what I did was a waste of time. You think that the person we killed was only a double of Saddam? You really think that? How can I express my dismay of someone being that stupid without insulting you? I try not to throw out insults over the internet, but it is hard when I am confronted by this brand of stupid. Is there some well of bad ideas that conspiracy theorists dip their buckets into when they are low on crackpot theories?
He is a terrorist. I'll admit that many people throw around the word 'terrorist' far too often these days, but Osama definitely is a terrorist.
They could, but our retaliation would be like nothing before ever seen. Like I said: they would be playing into the hands of US warmongers. The first group to do that to us will no be allowed to exist for long. The whole "we will turn their land into radioactive glass" threat would be carried out. I would hate to think how violent and irrational our response to such an act would be.
Perhaps I was not clear enough: I am not saying that they should have to put of with it. They clearly, in a fair world, would not have to. Unfortunately, due to their military weakness, they do HAVE to put up with it. I am not saying that this is right or moral in any way. I am just saying that the fact of the matter is that they have no choice to do put up with it until they can challenge us militarily or build themselves up economically. And of course we will do everything to prevent that from happening (and again, I don't mean that this is a moral or fair thing, I am just pointing out how things are).
Nope. I pointed out basic economic truths. Periods of rapid growth are followed by periods of recession. This holds true for your example of the Asian market crash, and it will hold true for future markets. This just isn't a deep or insightful economic lesson; it is elementary.
Yep. It is kind of odd to think that before I was even born, Creme was pointing out blindingly obvious economic facts as though they were insightful analyses.
"You say that it is your custom to burn widows. Very well. We also have a custom: when men burn a woman alive, we tie a rope around their necks and we hang them. Build your funeral pyre; beside it, my carpenters will build a gallows. You may follow your custom. And then we will follow ours."
British General Charles Napier while in India
I can't answer it either, and I'm not stupid. So bite me.
Wish in one hand, shit in the other, see which one fills up first.
It's interesting hypothesis, and if Saddam was really killed so early, then it may be true. But, I don't believe that Saddam is alive, he's dead one way or another.
Fanatics surely likes to have someone like that, but he's not really beneficial to the affairs of Islamic cultures. It seems like he's a double agent, seemingly an islamic extremist, (as his corny records demonstrates) but he herds the martyric cannon fodder into perdition.
Tell me, what nation do you vaporize, when the villain is an international terrorist organization? All nations except of USA and allies? Remember, they have both allies and nukes too, and it would end in a worldwide nuclear war. Nuclear fallout doesn't care about state borders, it affects everyone, so USA would get a retaliation from neighbours. One nuke in the air, all nukes in the air.
I don't want to get my or anyone's ass fried in a politicians' idiotic desk game for a world domination. I express my right to do everything to stop that unfair practice, by awakening a need for JBE (justice, brotherhood, equality) and demanding that from politicians.
Humanitary help can end all wars, not bombs. A bomb may kill everyone within it's radius, but it only creates more enemies from the undecided people around. On the contrary, food, medicine, water, education, and shelter, effectively eliminates a threat, in form of hatred, which otherwise quickly gets much more substantial forms. Who cares about capitalistic excesses, when we can use them as a shared humanitary help, and save hundreds of millards on weapons!
Beings who deserve worship don't demand it. Beings who demand worship don't deserve it.
I didn't say "if you can't answer, you are stupid". What I did say was "if you can't answer, and you try to argue that planes can't bring down towers, then you are stupid". Not only would you be stupid, you'd have to be remarkably arrogant. Anyway, here's the answer:
Initial data:
m=3.0kg
g=9.81ms-2
incline=30 degrees
kinetic friction coefficient=0.4
Solution:
W=(9.81)(3)=29.43N
Fnormal=29.43cos30=25.49N
Ffriction=(0.4)(25.49)=10.19N
Fslope=29.43sin30=14.72
Fresultant=14.72-10.19=4.53N
a=4.53/3=1.5ms-2
"Physical reality” isn’t some arbitrary demarcation. It is defined in terms of what we can systematically investigate, directly or not, by means of our senses. It is preposterous to assert that the process of systematic scientific reasoning arbitrarily excludes “non-physical explanations” because the very notion of “non-physical explanation” is contradictory.
-Me
Books about atheism
This is a very basic exercise in using Newton's second law. I teach this one to the kids in introductory physics class at university (that class is not even aimed at the engineering students). After some practice, almost all of them will get this one right. Which makes them experts on physics compared to your average conspiracy theorist.
With apologies to those with mastication fetishes, this is exactly what Sam Harris was getting at in his recent article in Newsweek. I am no physicist, and I would not have been able to solve that problem. Do you see me bitching about elitism or telling DG to bite me? No. What you see is very simple. I DON'T TALK ABOUT THE 9/11 CONSPIRACY PHYSICS. I'm not qualified.
The thing is, I'm really interested in human nature and evolutionary psychology. I'm qualified to answer many questions, and so I do. If you want to talk about the psychology behind 9/11 Troofers, I can weigh in, but I can't weigh in on whether or not jet fuel can melt iron or whether cascade failures, or whatever they're called, are consistent with plane crashes into big buildings.
Everyone -- atheists, theists, and Tin Foil Hatters, would do well to examine this basic idea very carefully. Advanced science knowledge takes a lot of work and dedication, and nobody, no matter how intrinsically intelligent, can answer every question. There's no reason to feel offended when someone who is qualified speaks up, and there's no reason to speak up when one is unqualified, unless its to ask a question of someone who is.
In other words, you've got a theory on the physics of the 9/11 attack? Back it up with real science, or don't try to pass it off as anything other than an uneducated shot in the dark. You don't have to apologize for not knowing, or get your panties in a bunch. If you're really that interested in knowing for sure, go get some physics books and learn to do physics. If you're just interested in believing something despite not understanding the evidence I'm going to have to call you irrational.
As a final jab, I'm going to offer my opinion on this subject, so you can see what a reasonably well educated person with no physics knowledge can say with epistemological justification:
I don't know. I tend to trust deludedgod on matters of physics, as his qualifications are well known to me. I suspect that he's probably correct, and if you put a gun to my head and told me to guess, I would side with him. Outside of that, I just don't know, and I wouldn't bet a dollar on any of it.
See how easy that is? Try it. It feels good.
Atheism isn't a lot like religion at all. Unless by "religion" you mean "not religion". --Ciarin
http://hambydammit.wordpress.com/
Books about atheism
The problem above was reasonably easy since it only takes a few simple steps to solve and a simple free-body diagram. If you want to see a hard problem, you should see the one I set for the poor bastard in this thread, who conveniently left after I set the problem:
Smoking gun found by independent 9/11 scientists, proves World Trade Center brought down with explosives.
And even that problem wasn't so bad since the field is conservative. If I wanted to set him a really hard problem on the subject matter, it would have been one involving an entire failure analysis. [Note to self]: Actually, this is quite a good idea. Insofar as the discussion basically pertains entirely to failure analysis, I should find a real failure analysis problem and see if my interlocutor can solve it. Everyone can save time and energy in debates by employing such strategies.
Indeed it does. And, if everyone in the world subscribed to that principle, there wouldn't be any foil hatters...or creationists, or anti-vaccine groups, or global warming conspiracy theorists, or quantum mystics, or...well, you get the idea.
You know why there wouldn't be any of these groups? All of these groups have mechanisms for distributing arguments propogating their ideas. Nothing wrong with that. However, what all of these groups have in common is who they try to convince, which makes all of them suspect. All of these people will frame their arguments in terms of scientific ideas which, if grasped in full, require years of training. But in all above cases, the primary target audience for these arguments is not the community of people who are in a position to evaluate those arguments. Virtually all the material is there to convince non-specialists. This is why I said "all these groups would vanish" if everyone subscribed to the principle above. It would be impossible to convince somebody of nonsense framed in terms of complex scientific ideas because:
1) If the person attempting to be convinced grasps these complex ideas fully, then they will recognize the arguments as nonsense
2) If the person attempting to be convinced does not grasp these complex ideas fully, they will recognize that they are not within their epistemic rights to decide whether the argument is nonsense or not, in which case they will do one of the following
a) Achieve status (1) in which case they will recognize it as nonsense
b) Not partake in the controversy, in which case there would be no audience for these groups and so they would wither away
Here is an example. Evolutionary biologists are the ones in the lab and doing field work who write primarily to convince other biologists in a process which requires them to run through a brutal gauntlet of review, often toiling in obscurity. Creationists form advocacy groups and distribute material across websites aimed at people who are not biologists. That's precisely why you see people coming back here again and again with arguments from thermodynamics or the impossibility of "chance processes".
Actually, all of that information above is expressed in my signature.
"Physical reality” isn’t some arbitrary demarcation. It is defined in terms of what we can systematically investigate, directly or not, by means of our senses. It is preposterous to assert that the process of systematic scientific reasoning arbitrarily excludes “non-physical explanations” because the very notion of “non-physical explanation” is contradictory.
-Me
Books about atheism
Don't even get me started on those anti-vaccine idiots. They'd rather listen to a washed-up at one time somewhat funny actor and a bimbo who was on a moronic game show than to doctors and other experts.
Matt Shizzle has been banned from the Rational Response Squad website. This event shall provide an atmosphere more conducive to social growth. - Majority of the mod team
Thanks for clearing that up. The original post did seem to me to imply otherwise, even though it didn't. (I assume I was the only one to make this stupid mistake, so no need for others to write "well I knew straight away what he meant, it was obvious, as plain as the acne on my chin" ) Sorry for the "bite me" request.
P.s. for the record I'm not a 911 troofer
Wish in one hand, shit in the other, see which one fills up first.
He was talking about the 9/11 truthers who make the claims that there was no way the towers could have fallen from getting hit by planes and burning.
He's right.
I'd like to find the simplest piece of the whole thing that explains to them that a big jet hitting a piece of stacked concrete covered metal will burn and fall in terms they will understand. If that can be found then the entire conspiracy 'theory' goes away and the more political aspects of why terrorists would do that can be the emphasis of the conversation.
Unfortunately, when it requires explaining rivets, beams, expansion, and contraction it gets tiresome for them to keep up. Yet they still cling to their original assertion despite learning why it was false. Even when you include graphics.
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Let's suppose, that a building may really fall if hit by an airplane.
But the real problem is, how does it coincide with the strange circumstances which were on that place. You know, 911 Mysteries is stuffed with them, these small secondary explosive bursts, just in front of the falling wave of metal, explosions below the towers, and within, the sulphury haze surrounding their base, the photographs of sloping cuts on main steel pillars, and my favorite, molten steel, flowing in the ruins a month after the fall.
Does a normal plane-hit building produce such an effects?
Are these effects just made in Photoshop (including the seismograph records), or were they really filmed on the place?
Beings who deserve worship don't demand it. Beings who demand worship don't deserve it.
The photographs of the sloping cuts on main steal pillars were taken during the clean up. The clean up crew cut the pillars that were remaining upright after the disaster into smaller pieces, and the sloping cuts were all their work.
The small explosions had something to do with elevator shafts, though I can't quite remember the nuts and bolts of the explanation.. I know these things, even though the facts are a bit blurry in my head right now, thanks to google. I researched that shit. Type in "9/11 conspiracy debunked" and see how those wee mysteries have been explained by people who know better than you or I about these things. I also found shitloads of info on youtube. The internet is a great thing.
Wish in one hand, shit in the other, see which one fills up first.
What is assumed to be explosions on the video is actually the interior coming out. The structure just inside of the walls is supported by the outside of the building just as much as the interior structure.
Rapid temperature rise in all of the structure due to fire followed by the cooldown of the initially affected floors(of all three buildings) causes reinforced concrete to buckle, but not collapse under its own weight. The weight of all of the interior floors above the one where the "explosion looking" event happened is added to the stress placed on the levels not impacted.
We're not talking about just the largest building to be hit by a jet, but the heaviest. Now for sheer wind force resulting from the 'explosion looking' would require us to know the speed at which the floors above the 'explosion looking' floor fell.
There were different grades of steel used in the structure and as anyone can guess, steel heats, expands, cools, and contracts at different temperatures. Under extreme pressure, steel will effectively melt when it comes in contact with a steel of the same hardness and properties(carbon content) This is the melted steel. Not heat caused per se, but pressure caused.
In train wrecks, we see this same thing happen. Cargo cars effectively welded together.
On my machine that I 'play' with every day, a temperature of 475 degrees farenheit will cause a 1 1/4" shaft to 'mic' out at 1 23/64"(gaining nearly 7/64" diameter). If the brass bushing it rotates in reaches 275 degrees farenheit, the steel shaft will cease rotating until the steel returns to operating temperature. That's not what we'd do for tensile strength of the steel in the building, but I am using that to give you an idea. If we bump those numbers up with jet fuel heat(1,200 degrees) my brass bushing would probably shatter. lol. I'm not into testing that.
Does that help?
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One could make dissenting argument concerning the internet with regard to the fact that 'loose change' was only seen thanks to the interwebs. lol.
It's 95% user, 5% machine.
Atheist Books, purchases on Amazon support the Rational Response Squad server, which houses Celebrity Atheists.
The 9/11 Truthers are deluded. If the government were willing to slam planes into buildings and kill thousands of people...
You mean to tell me that that same government wouldn't " silence " the handful of Pseudo-Scientists running around with their 9/11 powerpoint presentations?
The government would at least send a CIA agent into the presentation and unplug the projector!
I think someone should also tell the truthers that watching a youtube video does not grant them any special qualifications to hold these ludicrous beliefs.
Molten metal. We know that the glowing metal being pulled out of the wreckage in the excavator footage wasn't at some 2,000 ' farenheit, because the damn excavator is holding it up! If it had been that hot, it would've ruined the excavator.
It may have been heavily oxidized steel, it may have been lead or aluminum, it may have been a number of other things (perhaps steel whose melting point was lowered by the sulfur that everything was choked in, from all of the finishings / drywall that had been pulverized), but it was not steel that had been brought over a couple of thousand degrees (Aside: I'm curious. In what way would this support a controlled demolition by explosives, anyway? Dynamite squibs certainly don't produce molten steel. Thermite - which isn't even used in demolitions anyway, but troofers keep bringing-up - will cut through steel and melt it, but doesn't keep it molten).
- Leon Trotsky, Last Will & Testament
February 27, 1940