a small dose of reality

I ran across this item and am considering ordering several subscriptions and passing them out.  I may keep one for swatting bugs and starting campfires.

It isn't seemly to go through this stuff on such a sad anniversary.  It is America and everyone has free speech.  Maybe this type of discussion should occur on or about Memorial Day.

For me, the focus has been on the families of all who died and on the brave passengers that took down the plane in Pennsylvania.  Can you believe the courage of those people?  The phone calls while they geared up to do it?

We live in a great country.  Thank you.

copywrite 2006 - Barry G.

The collapse of both World Trade Center towers--and the smaller WTC 7 a few hours later--initially surprised even some experts. But subsequent studies have shown that the WTC's structural integrity was destroyed by intense fire as well as the severe damage inflicted by the planes.  Delusional conspiracy theorists drink jet fuel prior to spewing ridiculous scientifically corrupt opinions. 

Widespread Damage CLAIM: The first hijacked plane crashed through the 94th to the 98th floors of the World Trade Center's 110-story North Tower; the second jet slammed into the 78th to the 84th floors of the 110-story South Tower. The impact and ensuing fires disrupted elevator service in both buildings. Plus, the lobbies of both buildings were visibly damaged before the towers collapsed. "There is NO WAY the impact of the jet caused such widespread damage 80 stories below," claims a posting on the San Diego Independent Media Center Web site (sandiego.indymedia.org). "It is OBVIOUS and irrefutable that OTHER EXPLOSIVES (... such as concussion bombs) HAD ALREADY BEEN DETONATED in the lower levels of tower one at the same time as the plane crash." FACT: Following up on a May 2002 preliminary report by the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), a major study will be released in spring 2005 by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), a branch of the U.S. Department of Commerce. NIST shared its initial findings with PM and made its lead researcher available to our team of reporters. The NIST investigation revealed that plane debris sliced through the utility shafts at the North Tower's core, creating a conduit for burning jet fuel--and fiery destruction throughout the building. "It's very hard to document where the fuel went," says Forman Williams, a NIST adviser and a combustion expert, "but if it's atomized and combustible and gets to an ignition source, it'll go off." Burning fuel traveling down the elevator shafts would have disrupted the elevator systems and caused extensive damage to the lobbies. NIST heard first-person testimony that "some elevators slammed right down" to the ground floor. "The doors cracked open on the lobby floor and flames came out and people died," says James Quintiere, an engineering professor at the University of Maryland and a NIST adviser. A similar observation was made in the French documentary "9/11," by Jules and Gedeon Naudet. As Jules Naudet entered the North Tower lobby, minutes after the first aircraft struck, he saw victims on fire, a scene he found too horrific to film.

"Melted" Steel CLAIM: "We have been lied to," announces the Web site AttackOnAmerica.net. "The first lie was that the load of fuel from the aircraft was the cause of structural failure. No kerosene fire can burn hot enough to melt steel." The posting is entitled "Proof Of Controlled Demolition At The WTC." FACT: Jet fuel burns at 800° to 1500°F, not hot enough to melt steel (2750°F). However, experts agree that for the towers to collapse, their steel frames didn't need to melt, they just had to lose some of their structural strength--and that required exposure to much less heat. "I have never seen melted steel in a building fire," says retired New York deputy fire chief Vincent Dunn, author of The Collapse Of Burning Buildings: A Guide To Fireground Safety. "But I've seen a lot of twisted, warped, bent and sagging steel. What happens is that the steel tries to expand at both ends, but when it can no longer expand, it sags and the surrounding concrete cracks." "Steel loses about 50 percent of its strength at 1100°F," notes senior engineer Farid Alfawak-hiri of the American Institute of Steel Construction. "And at 1800° it is probably at less than 10 percent." NIST also believes that a great deal of the spray-on fireproofing insulation was likely knocked off the steel beams that were in the path of the crashing jets, leaving the metal more vulnerable to the heat. But jet fuel wasn't the only thing burning, notes Forman Williams, a professor of engineering at the University of California, San Diego, and one of seven structural engineers and fire experts that PM consulted. He says that while the jet fuel was the catalyst for the WTC fires, the resulting inferno was intensified by the combustible material inside the buildings, including rugs, curtains, furniture and paper. NIST reports that pockets of fire hit 1832°F. "The jet fuel was the ignition source," Williams tells PM. "It burned for maybe 10 minutes, and [the towers] were still standing in 10 minutes. It was the rest of the stuff burning afterward that was responsible for the heat transfer that eventually brought them down."

Hopefully our conspiracy theorist friend is going to be ok.  I don't know whether posting while driving and riding while Mos was driving caused the crash.

IT LOOKS LIKE DUGG IS INVOLVED IN A FEW CONSPIRACIES HIMSELF THAT HE HASN'T SHARED

Now that I have seen the anniversary photos, I realize that I have never seen EB and Calin the webmaster together at the same time.  Are my old dead eyes bad or is there a resemblence between them.  Could they be the SAME PERSON?

IF HE IS DANCING, WHO IS MINDING THE BLOGSITE?

Oh no, it was shalana millard

p.s.  none of this material is mine.  It was emailed to me by Dugg and Moss

Conspiracy theorists have been right all along.  Castro is dying a slow pudding eating death while the rulers are planning a Cuban Civil War behind the scenes.

These guys are so ruthless they even eat steak for dessert

What convenient timing.  When was the corrosion discovered, who knew about it, when, who authorized the shutdown and immediate repair, does it have to be now and how much MORE money will the Saudis blackmail us for now?

THIS DEAL SMELLS AND SO DO THE SAUDIS

Is this the next step in taking over the Arab's oil, selling it to the Japanese, Chinese, French, Russians, etc. for $300 a barrel while seizing all the flying carpets, solving America's dependence on oil for transportation?

I HOPE SO BECAUSE I AM READY TO FLY TO WORK ENERGY FREE ASAP GEORGE JETSON STYLE

Quite a few people have taken an objective look at the facts and what they actually saw at the time.  Wasn't Castro behind the JFK assasination?

by Paul Boutin and Patrick Di Justo

[UPDATE: Agence France-Presse story is here. Patrick and I were also on Toronto's International Connection radio show earlier.]

Paul Boutin is a freelance technology writer and former engineer in San Francisco. Patrick Di Justo is an astrophysics educator at the American Museum of Natural History in New York City who writes for Wired magazine and Wired News.

To be clear: We believe that American Airlines Flight 77 hit the Pentagon on 9/11/2001 because we know far too many friends and colleagues in Washington who saw the plane come in over the freeway - some right over their heads - and felt the earth shake as it disappeared into the Pentagon. And we think people who believe they can uncover the truth about anything by surfing the Web are deceiving themselves in a dangerous way.

But we couldn't help taking up the challenge anyway.

As lifelong propellerheads who firmly believe in asking questions, we found Hunt the Boeing an engaging puzzle, despite its tragic subject matter, but one full of obvious errors and misleading questions. Since many of our friends continue to ask us if we've seen the site, we decided to document our answers to it, which we wrote separately. As might be expected, Patrick focused on the math and science (you may remember his widely circulated napkin math on the WTC attack), while Paul picked apart the wording of the questions.

See the original site for photos that accompany the questions.

Question N^o 1

The first satellite image shows the section of the building that was hit by the Boeing. In the image below, the second ring of the building is also visible. It is clear that the aircraft only hit the first ring. The four interior rings remain intact. They were only fire-damaged after the initial explosion. Can you explain how a Boeing 757-200, weighing nearly 100 tons and travelling at a minimum speed of 250 miles an hour* only damaged the outside of the Pentagon?

Paul: The question and photos are misleading: Parts of the plane penetrated the ground floors of the second and third rings of the building. These photos show only their intact roofs. Eyewitnesses and news reporters have talked about the twelve-foot hole punched through the inside wall of the second ring by one of the plane’s engines.

More importantly, the question focuses on the plane’s size and weight, making it sound extraordinarily heavy, but leaves out the size and weight of the Pentagon – America’s largest office building with three times the floor space of the Empire State Building - as well as the difference in relative stiffness and energy absorption between a building and an airplane. Each side of the Pentagon contains over 100,000 tons of Potomac sand mixed into the steel-reinforced concrete under its limestome facade. There are nearly 10,000 concrete piles anchoring each side of the building. And in the wake of bombings in Oklahoma City and Saudi Arabia, that portion of the Pentagon had just been reinforced with a computationally modeled lattice of steel tubes designed to prevent it from collapsing after an explosion.

By contrast, the plane is only 100 tons of custom alloys stretched thin enough to fly. It’s not like a giant bullet; more like a giant racing bike. Even so, the plane knocked down 10,000 tons of building material - 100 times its own weight - in the crash and subsequent collapse. Another 57,000 tons of the Pentagon were damaged badly enough to be torn down. The Brobdingnagian scale of the Pentagon makes the total area of damage seem small, but it would hold several Silicon Valley office buildings, or an airport terminal.

Patrick: Watch the videotapes of the planes hitting the World Trade Center. They were traveling at approximately 400 mph, and they hit an aluminum and glass building. An entire plane went in, and hardly anything came out the other side, 208 feet away.

Here we have a plane traveling at nearly 250 mph (just over 1/2 the velocity of the WTC planes, meaning just over 1/4 of their kinetic energy), hitting the ground (which would absorb much of that energy), and only then sliding at a much slower speed into a steel-and-kevlar-reinforced concrete and brick building. Obviously, it's not going to go very far. Still, parts of the plane penetrated into the C ring.

Question N^o 2

The two photographs in question 2 show the building just after the attack. We may observe that the aircraft only hit the ground floor. The four upper floors collapsed towards 10.10 am. The building is 26 yards high. Can you explain how a Boeing 14.9 yards high, 51.7 yards long, with a wingspan of 41.6 yards and a cockpit 3.8 yards high, could crash into just the ground floor of this building?

Paul: Again the question contains incorrect facts in its setup: As reported in the New York Times, the plane struck between the first and second floors of the building. The high-res version of the photo shows a two story high hole in side of the building. Don't look where the fire truck is directing its water, but towards the center of the photo – two floors out of four are knocked out of the outside wall.

Patrick: The plane hit the ground first, then slid into the building. If the landing wheels were not down and locked, the full height of the plane would extend upwards into the second floor of the building, which is what happened.

Question N^o 3

The photograph above shows the lawn in front of the damaged building. You'll remember that the aircraft only hit the ground floor of the Pentagon's first ring. Can you find debris of a Boeing 757-200 in this photograph?

Paul: : Yet another leading question ("you'll remember..."), but one looking in the wrong place anyway. At 250 mph, the plane did not stop at the outside of the building. Security camera photos and eyewitness accounts from many credible people, including AP reporter Dave Winslow, agree that the plane completely disappeared into the building. If you’ve seen photos of airline crashes after the fire is out, they often look more like landfill sites than anything recognizable as having been an airplane.

But since the question more literally asks for a photo showing airliner debris on the lawn, here's one. Here's another.

Patrick: The Pentagon burned (or at least smoldered) for several days. Was this photograph taken on September 11? Or was it taken after the wreckage was moved away?

Question N^o 4

The photograph in question 4 shows a truck pouring sand over the lawn of the Pentagon. Behind it a bulldozer is seen spreading gravel over the turf. Can you explain why the Defence Secretary deemed it necessary to sand over the lawn, which was otherwise undamaged after the attack?

Patrick: My father was a construction engineer. He would only put a crane onto a grass lawn in an extreme emergency, and only after getting indemnified against damages. No, the first thing he would do is to lay down a pathway of steel plates, then cover them with gravel, to prevent his equipment from getting bogged down in the soft earth. When you see in that picture is a roadway being built to bring the heavy equipment across the lawn.

Paul: You don’t have to be a construction worker to recognize a road being built over the lawn, to support the vehicles dismantling the damaged building and hauling away debris. I can’t find any news reports (or people who remember any) about Donald Rumsfeld personally ordering this work done. I suspect the statement is false, and was added to make the activity seem more suspicious.

Question N^o 5

The photographs in Question 5 show representations of a Boeing 757-200 superimposed on the section of the building that was hit. Can you explain what happened to the wings of the aircraft and why they caused no damage?

Patrick: I'm not certain the models are to scale, and they're certainly not in the correct orientation. Since the plane hit the ground and skidded into the building, enough energy was lost by the initial impact and friction with the ground that the engines probably did not penetrate the building.

Paul: If you’re going to doctor evidence, do it right: Eyewitness accounts say the plane hit from 45 degrees to the side. Adjust the silhouettes properly, and fix the parallax effect in the second photo. The plane fits the impact area pretty well: Don't look at the collapsed upper floors, but at the wider swatch knocked out of the ground floor. I would expect the wings, being weaker than the building, to collapse on the way in. But with no previous crashes of the sort to guide us, we can't possibly predict what should have happened. If there's anything we learned that day, it's that we are poor judges of what is and isn't possible.

Question N^o 6

The quotations in Question 6 correspond to statements made by Arlington County Fire Chief, Ed Plaugher, at a press conference held by Assistant Defence Secretary, Victoria Clarke, on 12 September 2001, at the Pentagon.

When asked by a journalist: "Is there anything left of the aircraft at all?"

"First of all, the question about the aircraft, there are some small pieces of aircraft visible from the interior during this fire-fighting operation I'm talking about, but not large sections. In other words, there's no fuselage sections and that sort of thing."

"You know, I'd rather not comment on that. We have a lot of eyewitnesses that can give you better information about what actually happened with the aircraft as it approached. So we don't know. I don't know."

When asked by a journalist: "Where is the jet fuel?"

"We have what we believe is a puddle right there that the -- what we believe is to be the nose of the aircraft. So -"

Can you explain why the County Fire Chief could not tell reporters where the aircraft was?

Paul: Quoting people verbatim to make them sound like they are dissembling is an old journalists’ trick, as any Doonesbury reader knows. I think Chief Plaugher answered the question pretty well: There’s a puddle (of melted metal, not jet fuel – he’s not directly answering the reporter’s idiotic question) that was the nose, and a few small pieces visible, but no large sections.

Patrick: Are any government officials telling any journalists anything these days?

Question N^o 7

The two photographs in question 7 were taken just after the attack. They show the precise spot on the outer ring where the Boeing struck. Can you find the aircraft's point of impact?

Paul: The answer is front and center in the photo, maybe to make us think it can’t be that obvious: The two-story high impact hole (also seen in the photo for Question N^o 2) is immediately to the right of the fireman, partly hidden by the spray of water from the fire truck. Look at the second high-res photo and you can't miss it. Are we supposed to think it’s a two-story archway of some sort? See pre-crash photos or the surviving sides for comparison.

Patrick: In enlargement #1, the impact hole fits in the rectangle formed from pixel(1232,1088) to pixel(1492, 1545).

After that, I didn’t bother to look at enlargement #2.