# 1000 Architects and Engineers Question Official 9/11 Story - Washington Times Article



## Makalakumu (Feb 25, 2010)

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2010/feb/22/inside-the-beltway-70128635/?feat=home_columns



> A lingering technical question about the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks still haunts some, and it has political implications: How did 200,000 tons of steel disintegrate and drop in 11 seconds? A thousand architects and engineers want to know, and are calling on Congress to order a new investigation into the destruction of the Twin Towers and Building 7 at the World Trade Center.
> 
> "In order to bring down this kind of mass in such a short period of time, the material must have been artificially, exploded outwards," says Richard Gage, a San Francisco architect and founder of the nonprofit Architects & Engineers for 9/11 Truth.
> 
> ...



Thoughts?


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## CanuckMA (Feb 25, 2010)

There are about 1.6 million registered architects and engineers in the US. 0.0625% of them are on the list. 

1) Architects are NOT engineers. They are an engineer's worse nightmare. I would not trust an architect's word on structurasl matters.

2) how many of those engineers on the list are listed as software engineers, etc. IOW, not members of a recognized engineering association?

3) how many are structural, civil and/or mechanical engineers?


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## Archangel M (Feb 25, 2010)

I think this ******** has been done to death. Mostly by one poster in this forum.

http://www.martialtalk.com/forum/showthread.php?t=38315&highlight=architects+engineers

All the people who would have had to been involved in the conspiracy.

http://debunking911.com/massivect.htm


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## Makalakumu (Feb 25, 2010)

So, how many people would have to consider these questions legitimate before you would give it a second thought?  What would it take to make you question the official story?  What is your personal threshold?

Have you actually looked at and analyzed the points that are being made by the various architects and engineers in this research group?  Does it make a difference to you that an increasingly educated and professional crowd is looking at this drawing the same conclusions?


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## xJOHNx (Feb 25, 2010)

If I were American, I would support it.

This is not the drifter in the street that is shouting at the passing clouds. These are professional men and women who have questions. This is not about supporting some kind of conspiracy theory, but about basic questions concerning their bussiness, i.e. raising buildings out of the ground. 
Normally in architecture, alot of math and formulas are used based on known concepts of material. If those concepts do not longer apply when a airplane hits it, don't you think that they will start worrying? About buildings they created, which could just collapse when a helicopter should accidentally fly into it? About the loss of their carreer, about mass lawsuits?

Ok, enough ranting. All I want to say is, alot of information concerning a major world event is clouded and dubious...
If there was no conspiracy, why all the secrets, why all the silent keeping?


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## Nomad (Feb 25, 2010)

maunakumu said:


> So, how many people would have to consider these questions legitimate before you would give it a second thought?  What would it take to make you question the official story?  What is your personal threshold?
> 
> Have you actually looked at and analyzed the points that are being made by the various architects and engineers in this research group?  Does it make a difference to you that an increasingly educated and professional crowd is looking at this drawing the same conclusions?



I think the real questions are _Is the group drawing the conclusions "educated and professional"_, most especially, are they well-qualified in the particular fields of mechanical stress and failure, specifically of large buildings?  and _Is the group of said professionals actually growing?_ How fast?  1000 really is not that big a number; how many well educated, professional engineers and architects with training in the specific fields involved have looked at the question and been convinced that the collapse happened pretty much as the official story showed?

There will always be those looking for the gunmen on the grassy knoll (whether or not they existed is not something I want to go into now), whether or not there was a cover-up.


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## Makalakumu (Feb 25, 2010)

Nomad said:


> I think the real questions are _Is the group drawing the conclusions "educated and professional"_, most especially, are they well-qualified in the particular fields of mechanical stress and failure, specifically of large buildings?  and _Is the group of said professionals actually growing?_ How fast?  1000 really is not that big a number; how many well educated, professional engineers and architects with training in the specific fields involved have looked at the question and been convinced that the collapse happened pretty much as the official story showed?
> 
> There will always be those looking for the gunmen on the grassy knoll (whether or not they existed is not something I want to go into now), whether or not there was a cover-up.



You can go to their website and see for yourself.  All of the people are listed.


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## Bruno@MT (Feb 25, 2010)

I am an electrical engineer with a minor in structural engineering.

My problem with taking these people seriously is that some of the arguments that are presented are ridiculous.

for example, the 'steel does not melt at those temperatures' argument. It may be true that steel used for skeleton structures does not melt when doused in burning kerosene. But it doesn't need to. Because it will get soft. Soft enough that it will bend and deform under load. If the load gets unbalanced, all the weight will be transferred to single load bearing columns which will snap one at a time and make the problem for the other columns even worse.

So we've established that where the plane crashed, the full kerosene tanks are what caused the collapse of that section.

Now the rest: load bearing columns are designed to take static weight. Think of a raw egg. if you gently compress it lengthwise, it can take a lot of pressure. Then, using the same force, knock it on the table. The egg will smash. When the top of the WTC towers crashed down on the lower parts with a couple dozen feet to gain momentum, each individual floor from top to bottom got crushed just like the egg I mentioned.

High rise buildings depend for their existence on symmetrical load balancing and static load. If you weaken the structure with heat and then dump a million tons of concrete and steel on top of it it will collapse in on itself. There are no explosives necessary for that.

But of course, mere facts should not get in the way of a good conspiracy. And for a secret this vast and with so many people involved, it is nothing short of a mircale that it can be kept secret by a government who is considered inept in all other areas by those same people.


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## blindsage (Feb 25, 2010)

maunakumu said:


> So, how many people would have to consider these questions legitimate before you would give it a second thought? What would it take to make you question the official story? What is your personal threshold?


How many people would have to consider these questions _illegitimate_ before you would consider them debunked?  What would it take to make you question their arguments?  What is _your_ personal threshold?



> Have you actually looked at and analyzed the points that are being made by the various architects and engineers in this research group? Does it make a difference to you that an increasingly educated and professional crowd is looking at this drawing the same conclusions?


Have you actually looked at and analyzed the counter-points made to all the various '9/11 truth' groups out there?  Does it make a difference to you that the overwhelmingly vast majority of the 'educated and professional crowd' is looking and _not _drawing those same conclusions?


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## MBuzzy (Feb 25, 2010)

I'm a Structural Engineer and I'm convinced that there is no conspiracy.  Everything that Bruno said is true.  Everything that is sited in this article is easily explained by basic principles of materials and structures.

Bruno is dead on about the steel and the loading.  The steel only had to reach about 1200 degrees to start to yield and which point it would lose the strength required to support the floors above.  Each floor can only support the load of itself, subsequent floors are supported by the columns and structural members which carry the load all the way to the ground.  Those are the culprits.  When those failed, catastrophic failure.  As in domino effect, when one floor went, the rest went, exponentially faster.

A few more:


> "In order to bring down this kind of mass in such a short period of  time, the material must have been artificially, exploded outwards," says  Richard Gage, a San Francisco architect and founder of the nonprofit  Architects & Engineers for 9/11 Truth.



This is simple - as stated earlier - this guy is an architect and as such is no more qualified to comment on structural engineering issues or materials failure than anyone else who IS NOT A STRUCTURAL ENGINEER OR MATERIALS engineer.  Architects get very little to no actual structural and engineering training and what many get is just enough to be familiar with what the engineers must do.  That is why SE's and Architects are forever locked in a battle.  Architects draw pretty buildings, deliver them to engineers to design and wonder why engineers get mad about buildings are aren't feasible or practical within the given budget.  Because architects often fail to consider structural issues.  This is not true of ALL - there are architectural engineers and there are some who have taken the time to do more research.



> He is particularly disturbed by Building 7, a 47-story skyscraper, which  was not hit by an aircraft, yet came down in "pure free-fall  acceleration." He also says that more than 100 first-responders reported  explosions and flashes as the towers were falling and cited evidence of  "multi-ton steel sections ejected laterally 600 ft. at 60 mph" and the  "mid-air pulverization of 90,000 tons of concrete & metal decking."



Hmmm, apparently the person making this statement has never done a compressive failure test.  When we place concrete, we also create a series of concrete cylinders from the same batch.  Those cylinders are then tested at 7, 14, 28 days and sometimes beyond to measure strength gain.  We also sometimes keep the cylinders on hand beyond in case there are complications.  To test them, we put them under a hydraulic piston which compresses them until they fail.  The cylinders are 50mm dia and about 150mm in height.  WELL, just for fun, we used to test cylinders that were 90 days old...so the concrete had been curing for a long time.  Let's just say that it's good there was a cage.....Those things exploded like you wouldn't believe, you couldn't have put it back together and portions are turned to dust.  Now imagine the concrete on a building that has been curing for almost 40 years and remember that concrete continues to gain strength as it ages.  It is COMPLETELY feasible and probable that sections of concrete would explode as they collapsed. 

As for building 7, until we get real data on the loading caused by the collapse of the other buildings and the impact on its structure of millions of tons of concrete and steel impacting the ground near it....I'm not too convinced of anything unexplained there either. 

Bottom line - if you want a pretty model built out of balsa and paper or a drawing a building, call an architect.  If you want to examine the structure of a building or design a building, call an engineer.


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## Makalakumu (Feb 25, 2010)

Bruno@MT said:


> I am an electrical engineer with a minor in structural engineering.
> 
> My problem with taking these people seriously is that some of the arguments that are presented are ridiculous.
> 
> ...



These are all straw-men of what they are actually saying.  Think about it for a minute.  Why would a trained professional argue something so obviously wrong?  The truth is that they don't argue these straw men.  The media would have you think that this is what this group is actually saying.  Have you read any of the papers published by this group?  They are all on the website.


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## Makalakumu (Feb 25, 2010)

blindsage said:


> How many people would have to consider these questions _illegitimate_ before you would consider them debunked?  What would it take to make you question their arguments?  What is _your_ personal threshold?


 
It's a matter of looking at both sides.  I have a degree in physics and a fair amount of scientific discernment.  After looking at both sides, I can see some fair points being made.  After looking at both sides, I can say that there are some fatal issues in the official story.  My personal opinion is that we don't know what happened.  I've downloaded various papers, I even have read large sections of the official NIST report.  I've spent a lot of time looking into this.



blindsage said:


> Have you actually looked at and analyzed the counter-points made to all the various '9/11 truth' groups out there?  Does it make a difference to you that the overwhelmingly vast majority of the 'educated and professional crowd' is looking and _not _drawing those same conclusions?



I have looked into both sides of the issue.  How do you know that "vast majority of the educated and professional crowd" have even questioned what they were told?  Much less looked at any points against the official story?

Have you looked at both sides and really considered what is being said?


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## Makalakumu (Feb 25, 2010)

MBuzzy said:


> If you want to examine the structure of a building or design a building, call an engineer.



The arguments are FAR more nuanced then what is presented in the article.  It is detailed enough and well reasoned enough to convince hundreds of educated and professional engineers that there are some major issues with the official explanation.  Therefore, other explanations must be entertained.  

There may be no conspiracy.  Maybe the crew at NIST did a terrible job and there models can't explain what actually happened.  Perhaps a lot of people who are part of this group joined with that in mind?  Who knows.  

The point is that a large group of people, who really would know how to look at these things, looked at the issue IN DEPTH and are beginning to not only reach a consensus, but take action on it.

I don't think people are going to be able to blow this off much longer as just another conspiracy theory.


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## CanuckMA (Feb 25, 2010)

maunakumu said:


> The point is that a large group of people, who really would know how to look at these things, looked at the issue IN DEPTH and are beginning to not only reach a consensus, but take action on it.
> 
> I don't think people are going to be able to blow this off much longer as just another conspiracy theory.


 
How many are structural engineers????

I'll give you a relatively recent event of an architect not being an engineer. Remember Montreal's Olympic stadium?

When it was decided to finaly complete the tower to put the fabric roof, a much simpler static roof as opposed to the original retractable, engineers looked at the design and requirements to finish the supporting tower, and noticed that as designed, it could not support ITSELF, let alone the roof.


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## Archangel M (Feb 25, 2010)

And then there are the thousands of structural engineers who dont buy this conspiracy crap. Why don't the nut jobs listen to "their side"? I'll tell you why. This is a matter of psychology rather than an issue of physics.


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## Makalakumu (Feb 25, 2010)

CanuckMA said:


> How many are structural engineers????
> 
> I'll give you a relatively recent event of an architect not being an engineer. Remember Montreal's Olympic stadium?
> 
> When it was decided to finaly complete the tower to put the fabric roof, a much simpler static roof as opposed to the original retractable, engineers looked at the design and requirements to finish the supporting tower, and noticed that as designed, it could not support ITSELF, let alone the roof.



I see your point, but I'm pretty sure there are a few competent architects on the list.  Also, look at the website.  There are hundreds of engineering professionals listed.  I'll go and count the number of structural engineers when I have time.


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## Makalakumu (Feb 25, 2010)

Archangel M said:


> This is a matter of psychology rather than an issue of physics.



That blade swings both ways, brah.

As far as people who disagree go, does it even matter if YOU are unwilling to even consider one sides argument?  The whole "there are hundreds of unnamed engineers who have looked at the issue in depth and who surely must be out there and disagree with this" argument is really just a dodge.  

As we say in Hawaii, "try look!"  

In the end, how many more people have to join?  2000?  3000?  10,000?  Then what are you going to do?  Will you consider the arguments?


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## Ken Morgan (Feb 25, 2010)

Conspiracy theories dont hold water as too many people would have to know about them. People are just not that competent. If people were that competent, how the hell did Nixon get caught?

Its like UFOs, you have to prove a negative, which is impossible, and even if you are 100% honest, the vocal crazies will still scream conspiracy.

Look, the amount of planning, set up time, explosives, coordination that would have been necessary to bring the buildings down would have attracted some attention. Just to bring down small, vacant office building require huge amounts of logistics, equipment and time. 

Ya kinda think someone would have noticed holes drilled in the hallways and offices, filled with explosives, hooked up to wires for weeks and weeks? Some night time janitor would have got a bit suspicious.

Engineers, engineering theory, and practice are not all 100%, if that were true, no building or bridge would ever collapse, or need to be reinforced.


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## Hollywood1340 (Feb 25, 2010)

My favorite is the "Look at it! It's obvious" argument. I'm not qualified to tell you what I looking at.


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## Archangel M (Feb 25, 2010)

Ken Morgan said:


> Conspiracy theories dont hold water as too many people would have to know about them. People are just not that competent. If people were that competent, how the hell did Nixon get caught?
> 
> Its like UFOs, you have to prove a negative, which is impossible, and even if you are 100% honest, the vocal crazies will still scream conspiracy.
> 
> ...




[sarcasm]Gee man, don't ya know all it takes is few gvt "ninjas" with little blocks of C4 with red LED lights on them? Place them on a few beams and BOOM! 

Then get hundreds if not thousands of people to keep the secret. [/sarcasm]

Bah!


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## Makalakumu (Feb 26, 2010)

Ahem, do a search on 9/11 whistleblowers and see what you come up with.  It's not true to say that no one has come forward.

Anyway, before this starts getting personal, there's two points that jumped to my mind when I saw this article.

1.  It's getting harder and harder to say there is no reason to question the official story of 9/11.  With all of these architects and engineering professionals coming out en-masse and petitioning Congress for a new investigation, even the most ardent skeptic has got to take a second look.

2.  This is getting more and more attention in the media.  Now, even the MSM can't ignore this.  Hell, Glenn Beck on his radio show and on TV has said that 9/11 Truthers are violent and/or will attempt to harm the President!  Hahahahaha...

The reason this doesn't go away is because there are legitimate points here.


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## Big Don (Feb 26, 2010)

Oh For Christ's sake: KOOK THEORIES DEBUNKED


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## Marginal (Feb 26, 2010)

CanuckMA said:


> How many are structural engineers????
> 
> I'll give you a relatively recent event of an architect not being an engineer. Remember Montreal's Olympic stadium?
> 
> When it was decided to finaly complete the tower to put the fabric roof, a much simpler static roof as opposed to the original retractable, engineers looked at the design and requirements to finish the supporting tower, and noticed that as designed, it could not support ITSELF, let alone the roof.



He was paid to design it like that by the US government in order to cast doubt on all architects so that their opinions would be disregarded by the Sheeple. 

It's so clear.


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## Bruno@MT (Feb 26, 2010)

maunakumu said:


> These are all straw-men of what they are actually saying.  Think about it for a minute.  Why would a trained professional argue something so obviously wrong?  The truth is that they don't argue these straw men.  The media would have you think that this is what this group is actually saying.  Have you read any of the papers published by this group?  They are all on the website.



Well, I bet you can find all sorts of educated people arguing for anything ridiculous.
There are many scientists and engineers who argue for creationism or UFO visits, but that doesn't mean they are right.

When my brother finished his masters in computer science, one of his classmates wrote a rambling manifesto on how the shroud of turin was genuine and then enrolled in one of the strictest christian monasteries where he still works as a janitor / kitchen help because everything is done in latin and he is bad with languages. That guy was a trained professional as well, and finished one of the most difficult educations in our universities. And I could give lots of examples of teachers of mine (with masters degrees and / or PHds) which were fit for the psych ward.

Titles and degrees are no guarantee for sanity or clarity of mind.

Now, I have watched documentaries in nat geo about 911 truthers, and have seen good refutations of all major accusations. What went on politically and how much was known in advance is another angle, and one which I don't want to get into here. But when it comes to the collapse of the towers, My knowledge and experience tell me that no foul play was involved.

Or to draw another analogy: there are still people who believe that the moon landing was staged despite massive amounts of proof to the contrary. It still doesn't change a thing, and I actually know a military engineer who still says it couldn't have happened.


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## Ken Morgan (Feb 26, 2010)




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## Bill Mattocks (Feb 26, 2010)

Like a couple others have said about themselves, I too do not know enough about the science and engineering involved to know one way or another.  But I tend to doubt most 'big' conspiracy theories, on the general premise that they just don't work - people talk.  Only small secrets can be kept.

And from the point of view of expertise versus laypersons, the only conspiracy theory I can claim any expertise in is the 'fake moon landing' conspiracy theory.  As a photographer, I've examined the claims made by conspiracists that the moon landing photos were faked.  I can tell that they know nothing about photography.  I can't tell if they're faked or not, but I can say that they are exactly what a camera would be expected to record under those circumstances.  So if they are faked, the fakers got the science right regarding photography.  That doesn't mean they're real, but it does mean that the people who claim they're fake based on 'errors' they think they see don't know what they're talking about.

I suspect that many 9/11 conspiracy buffs are in a similar situation; they think they see errors where a trained professional would not.

The government is big, can be evil, and generally serves itself over the people.  That's bad enough.  We don't need to invent stories to paint the government in a bad light; the truth is awful enough.


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## CanuckMA (Feb 26, 2010)

Look at the most simple reason why it can't work.

To do a controlled demolition, you need to precisely place shaped charges on support structures.

In a building, those structures are buried behind walls.

So crews would have had to come in to the building when it was empty - impossible in an office building, there are always people working inthere.

Cut holes in walls, place and wire the charges, patch and paint the walls and be done before anybody notices. 



And regarding the famous building 7 argument. Do you know what kind of structural damage was caused by the ground vibration and air displacement of the 2 towers colapsing?


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## Makalakumu (Feb 26, 2010)

Bill Mattocks said:


> they think they see errors where a trained professional would not.



Great post.  I tend to agree, however, in this case we now have a large group of professionals pointing out that major errors have been made with the government's story.

Regarding secrets, again, most of the time, I think the secrets get out.  Even big secrets of some pretty horrible actions, performed by various governments, have eventually gotten out as time passed.  Even in this case, we've had numerous individuals from inside government coming out and saying that something untoward has happened.

The curious thing (and the news story posted seems to violate this observation) is the nearly complete MSM blackout of what these people may have to say.  I read an interview with a major report in the alternative press and he said something to the effect that if there was anything to this story, someone would have taken it and gotten a Pulitzer prize with it.

The interviewer then proceeded to lay down a large laundry list of people who have come forward, everyone from engineers to FBI and CIA agents, to firefighters and police, that left the reporter speechless.  It's fear that keeps these guys in check.  Fear of being labeled a conspiracy theorist.  Fear of retaliation.  Fear of losing face.  

The people who looked at this stuff and signed the petition put their names down and there degrees and put all of that on the line to point out that something is amiss.  Here's a list of people who have signed this petition.

http://www.ae911truth.org/signpetition.php


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## Makalakumu (Feb 26, 2010)

Bruno@MT said:


> Well, I bet you can find all sorts of educated people arguing for anything ridiculous.



Granted, you do have a point, but in this case we now have at least 1000 individuals with trained discernment who have looked deeply into the matter and now think we need a new investigation.  As this number grows, this argument is going to get harder and harder to make.


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## Gordon Nore (Feb 26, 2010)

Bill Mattocks said:


> Like a couple others have said about themselves, I too do not know enough about the science and engineering involved to know one way or another.  But I tend to doubt most 'big' conspiracy theories, on the general premise that they just don't work - people talk.  Only small secrets can be kept.



Like you, Bill, I don't know the science, but I also have trouble believing that any government is competent enough to manage a conspiracy such as this.


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## Bill Mattocks (Feb 26, 2010)

Gordon Nore said:


> Like you, Bill, I don't know the science, but I also have trouble believing that any government is competent enough to manage a conspiracy such as this.



Bingo.  That's an excellent point.  We're talking about the government that routinely loses laptops full of taxpayer data, gets hacked, can't manage a computer upgrade for the IRS or the FAA (look up both debacles for a huge list of money-wasting failures), and yet can create this monstrous conspiracy and keep it quiet, AND manage to completely cow the MSM into silence - in and outside the USA, and through a presidential / party regime change.  Nah.  They're not that good.  In this case, I don't think anyone is that good, but these guys, definitely not.  They can't even keep gate-crashers out of a White House dinner party.


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## Gordon Nore (Feb 26, 2010)

Bill Mattocks said:


> Bingo.  That's an excellent point.  We're talking about the government that routinely loses laptops full of taxpayer data, gets hacked, can't manage a computer upgrade for the IRS or the FAA (look up both debacles for a huge list of money-wasting failures), and yet can create this monstrous conspiracy and keep it quiet, AND manage to completely cow the MSM into silence - in and outside the USA, and through a presidential / party regime change.  Nah.  They're not that good.  In this case, I don't think anyone is that good, but these guys, definitely not.  They can't even keep gate-crashers out of a White House dinner party.



Anyone that sharp would have found the WMDs.


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## Bruno@MT (Feb 26, 2010)

Gordon Nore said:


> Anyone that sharp would have found the WMDs.



:lfao:


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## Makalakumu (Feb 26, 2010)

One thing that I would like to point out is that saying that we don't know what happened and saying that the government blew up the buildings are two very different things.  My personal opinion is that I think all of this research points out the fatal errors in the government's explanation of events.  It does not show beyond all doubt that the government was involved in a conspiracy to blow up the buildings.  It's reasonable to look at this and want a new and independent investigation.


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## Archangel M (Feb 26, 2010)

maunakumu said:


> One thing that I would like to point out is that saying that we don't know what happened and saying that the government blew up the buildings are two very different things.  My personal opinion is that I think all of this research points out the fatal errors in the government's explanation of events.  It does not show beyond all doubt that the government was involved in a conspiracy...



Oh come on! I call BS on THAT ONE. 

I read through that monster of a thread I found here and you yourself has argued the "only controlled demo could do that" theory. The "government cover-up" crap is the cornerstone of all this "truther" crap. Don't try a bait and switch now.


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## MBuzzy (Feb 26, 2010)

Here's the thing....1000 people agreeing on anything - particularly when I myself think they are wrong doesn't mean a whole lot.  Especially when you consider just how many professional engineers (and architects are out there.  Although I wouldn't even consider the opinion of an architect unless also trained as an engineer) are out there.  Figure every level of municipality in the country employs AT LEAST one Civil Engineer - and that is at all levels from town, city, state, etc - every one of them.  That doesn't include departments of transportation or state or municipality run construction entities.  It also doesn't include private industry, who employs an order of magnitude MORE than that. Until that number reaches in the order of 50,000, major new agencies and probably the government really aren't going to take notice.

Personally, when the American Society of Civil Engineers, who incidentally conducted their own investigation, comes out in favor of these doubts, it won't take ANY convincing.  To put it in perspective, ASCE is the professional organization of ALL Civil Engineers - that includes Structural engineers.  In fact, the current president I believe is a structural engineer.  This is the collection of all Civil Engineers (membership is pretty highly encouraged for everyone in our field), with the leadership being some of the best minds in the field.  If there was any substance to these doubts and accusations, the ASCE would have found them - I have no doubt of that.  Their response to the incident was very well thought out and is very respected within the community.  To be perfectly honest, I trust their collective opinion more than these 1000 and more than any architect, or for that matter most OTHER types of engineers.  I trust their opinion more than my own.

For new agencies and the government to take notice, you're going to need an authoritative, qualified entity to get on board and convincing them is going to require REAL evidence.  Everything that I've read - as a Structural Engineer - seems kind of silly to me that these people don't know how those things are explained.  Such as the collapse of Building 7 or the "explosive sections of concrete."  To ME, those things are not only normal, but to be completely EXPECTED in such an incident.  Particularly when considering the subsurface conditions on the island of NYC.  I'm surprise more buildings weren't catastrophically damaged


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## MBuzzy (Feb 26, 2010)

Another good point - as Canuck pointed out earlier, a controlled Det looks MUCH different.  Even strategically placed explosives (not requiring the visible disturbances) would have caused a MUCH different demolition profile.


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## Makalakumu (Feb 26, 2010)

Archangel M said:


> Oh come on! I call BS on THAT ONE.
> 
> I read through that monster of a thread I found here and you yourself has argued the "only controlled demo could do that" theory. The "government cover-up" crap is the cornerstone of all this "truther" crap. Don't try a bait and switch now.



I've change my mind about a lot of thing in the past and will probably change it again.  Global warming is probably the issue where I've changed my mind the most.  Four years ago, I was firmly in the Al Gore camp on that one.  Now?  Heh.  I wouldn't deny that the needle wavers back and forth, it's always in response to something I'm seeing or reading at the time.  I try to take a look at the total pool of relevant evidence when looking at these things.  

That said, my opinions will NOT be consistent.  I'm constantly revising based on new information.  Right now, I'm feeling more skeptical, but information like this tends to tip the needle back towards feeling like there really is something to alternative theories.


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## Makalakumu (Feb 26, 2010)

MBuzzy said:


> Another good point - as Canuck pointed out earlier, a controlled Det looks MUCH different.  Even strategically placed explosives (not requiring the visible disturbances) would have caused a MUCH different demolition profile.



Even in the case of Building Seven?  How would a controlled demolition be different then what was witnessed?


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## Makalakumu (Feb 26, 2010)

MBuzzy said:


> Here's the thing....1000 people agreeing on anything - particularly when I myself think they are wrong doesn't mean a whole lot.  Especially when you consider just how many professional engineers (and architects are out there.  Although I wouldn't even consider the opinion of an architect unless also trained as an engineer) are out there.  Figure every level of municipality in the country employs AT LEAST one Civil Engineer - and that is at all levels from town, city, state, etc - every one of them.  That doesn't include departments of transportation or state or municipality run construction entities.  It also doesn't include private industry, who employs an order of magnitude MORE than that. Until that number reaches in the order of 50,000, major new agencies and probably the government really aren't going to take notice.
> 
> Personally, when the American Society of Civil Engineers, who incidentally conducted their own investigation, comes out in favor of these doubts, it won't take ANY convincing.  To put it in perspective, ASCE is the professional organization of ALL Civil Engineers - that includes Structural engineers.  In fact, the current president I believe is a structural engineer.  This is the collection of all Civil Engineers (membership is pretty highly encouraged for everyone in our field), with the leadership being some of the best minds in the field.  If there was any substance to these doubts and accusations, the ASCE would have found them - I have no doubt of that.  Their response to the incident was very well thought out and is very respected within the community.  To be perfectly honest, I trust their collective opinion more than these 1000 and more than any architect, or for that matter most OTHER types of engineers.  I trust their opinion more than my own.
> 
> For new agencies and the government to take notice, you're going to need an authoritative, qualified entity to get on board and convincing them is going to require REAL evidence.  Everything that I've read - as a Structural Engineer - seems kind of silly to me that these people don't know how those things are explained.  Such as the collapse of Building 7 or the "explosive sections of concrete."  To ME, those things are not only normal, but to be completely EXPECTED in such an incident.  Particularly when considering the subsurface conditions on the island of NYC.  I'm surprise more buildings weren't catastrophically damaged



Several of the people on the list are top engineering professors at major universities.  They have filed official complaints about the NIST report to the  major licensing agencies.  They believe that these scientists should have their licenses revoked for putting out these reports with obviously flawed conclusions.  We'll see what happens with that...


----------



## CanuckMA (Feb 26, 2010)

maunakumu said:


> Several of the people on the list are top engineering professors at major universities.


 

But are they structural engineers?

An electrical engineer is no more qualified to comment on this than a taxi driver.





Wait, I take that back. The taxi driver may be a foreign trained structural engineer.:uhyeah:


----------



## kaizasosei (Feb 26, 2010)

Well, i do wonder what would have happened if those buildings came down sideways. Don't know the exact dynamics though.


j


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## Stac3y (Feb 26, 2010)

maunakumu said:


> These are all straw-men of what they are actually saying. Think about it for a minute. Why would a trained professional argue something so obviously wrong? The truth is that they don't argue these straw men. The media would have you think that this is what this group is actually saying. Have you read any of the papers published by this group? They are all on the website.


 
Because there are an awful lot of well-educated professionals who, despite their amassed knowledge, are still STUPID. Sorry to put such a fine point on it, but I know many people with Masters' degrees who haven't got the common sense or intellectual capacity of a cinder block. Knowledge and intelligence just aren't the same thing.


----------



## Archangel M (Feb 26, 2010)

And education isnt a talisman against mental illness and flawed decision making. Look at that female prof who recently went on a shooting spree. Looks like she may have killed before this event too.

The "appeal to authority" thing runs all over this thread.


----------



## Carol (Feb 26, 2010)

Archangel M said:


> And education isnt a talisman against mental illness and flawed decision making. Look at that female prof who recently went on a shooting spree. Looks like she may have killed before this event too.



Amy Bishop absolutely killed before. She shot her brother twice with a pump-action shotgun, which lead to his death.  The controversy isn't that she was the shooter, the only controversy is how two shots from a pump action shotgun can be considered an "accident".

(Hint:  her mom was on city council at the time)

IMO that is one of the reasons why PE's are licensed.  Its not just the education for the exam, the license is something that could be taken away should the decision result in injury or death.

I looked at the site, they aren't looking for structural engineers, or even licensed PE's. They are looking for engineering professionals :wavey: or people that speak or write well. :wavey:

Hey I could join up, I'm an engineering professional.  In addition, I can speak and write quite well.  Think they'll kick me to the curb for not having the right kind of engineering background?


----------



## Archangel M (Feb 26, 2010)

Carol said:


> Amy Bishop absolutely killed before. She shot her brother twice with a pump-action shotgun, which lead to his death.  The controversy isn't that she was the shooter, the only controversy is how two shots from a pump action shotgun can be considered an "accident".
> 
> (Hint:  her mom was on city council at the time)
> 
> ...



Sign-up see if you get in. 

Except then you get to boost their tin-hat popularity contest.


----------



## Makalakumu (Feb 26, 2010)

Archangel M said:


> The "appeal to authority" thing runs all over this thread.



It certainly does!


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## jks9199 (Feb 26, 2010)

maunakumu said:


> So, how many people would have to consider  these questions legitimate before you would give it a second thought?   What would it take to make you question the official story?  What is  your personal threshold?



My personal threshold is simple.  Debunk the people I *KNOW* who saw a plane crash into the Pentagon.  Debunk the clear documentation that 2 planes flew into the World Trade Center.  Show me how a conspiracy of scale necessary could be carried out in the real world.  The World Trade Center was a complex, inter-related set of structures.  The impact of two large planes, with mostly full fuel tanks and no attempt to slow down played havoc with those structures.  The collapse of the buildings then further damaged the surrounding structures.

And, don't forget, none of the structures were brand new.  They'd endured decades of winds and other stresses prior to 9/11/2001.  And we're only assuming that all the materials used were even to spec initially...  

Occam's Razor suggests to us that the most likely explanation is the simplest; to construct a workable conspiracy theory requires that you invent and add lots of complexity and insert new problems.  But, of course, we cannot prove there was no conspiracy; it's impossible to prove a negative, and the reality is that if you buy into the conspiracy theory, anyone who tries to debunk it becomes part of the conspiracy.


----------



## Archangel M (Feb 26, 2010)

"Appeal to Authority"

Here it makes sense. Structural Engineers are the guys with the Authority/Knowledge to determine what happened to the WTC.

Not some assorted conglomeration of disciplines with no verification as to expertise or even validation of WHO they really are.


----------



## jks9199 (Feb 26, 2010)

MBuzzy said:


> For new agencies and the government to take notice, you're going to need an authoritative, qualified entity to get on board and convincing them is going to require REAL evidence.  Everything that I've read - as a Structural Engineer - seems kind of silly to me that these people don't know how those things are explained.  Such as the collapse of Building 7 or the "explosive sections of concrete."  To ME, those things are not only normal, but to be completely EXPECTED in such an incident.  Particularly when considering the subsurface conditions on the island of NYC.  I'm surprise more buildings weren't catastrophically damaged



Not only are some of the things reported normal to materials in that sort of stress -- but what else was legitimately in that building?  Was there any cooking facility that could have had gas tanks exploding?  Other similar materials... or combinations of cleaners and other office chemicals?  

I've had a fair amount of training and experience in investigating motor vehicle crashes.  That's included viewing high-speed footage of what goes on in controlled crashes -- as well as quite a bit of training on the dynamics of the crash.  I've worked scenes that literally seemed impossible, until I sat down and worked through each event and how it compounded into the next, leading to the final resting positions.  Based on that experience and training, I have to trust the large number of people who have appropriate training who say that the crashes, and nothing more complex, caused the buildings to collapse.


----------



## Makalakumu (Feb 26, 2010)

Archangel M said:


> Structural Engineers are the guys with the Authority/Knowledge to determine what happened to the WTC.



There are many structural engineers that are part of this group.  Look at the list I posted.  Count them for yourself...

Also, a form of the Appeal to Authority argument is Credentialism.  I don't think you want to live in a world where the only people that can speak or that people listen to are the people who are "qualified" to speak.

I'm not saying that education isn't important, but one can certainly take it too far.


----------



## Makalakumu (Feb 26, 2010)

jks9199 said:


> My personal threshold is simple.  Debunk the people I *KNOW* who saw a plane crash into the Pentagon.  Debunk the clear documentation that 2 planes flew into the World Trade Center.  Show me how a conspiracy of scale necessary could be carried out in the real world.  The World Trade Center was a complex, inter-related set of structures.  The impact of two large planes, with mostly full fuel tanks and no attempt to slow down played havoc with those structures.  The collapse of the buildings then further damaged the surrounding structures.
> 
> And, don't forget, none of the structures were brand new.  They'd endured decades of winds and other stresses prior to 9/11/2001.  And we're only assuming that all the materials used were even to spec initially...
> 
> Occam's Razor suggests to us that the most likely explanation is the simplest; to construct a workable conspiracy theory requires that you invent and add lots of complexity and insert new problems.  But, of course, we cannot prove there was no conspiracy; it's impossible to prove a negative, and the reality is that if you buy into the conspiracy theory, anyone who tries to debunk it becomes part of the conspiracy.



The no-plane and space weapon theories that are out there have made a lot of the more reasonable things people have said seem less credible via guilt by association.  None of the people in this group are arguing those things.  

Also, based on the expertise of the group, I think one can safely say that building design, materials, and stress limits were taken into account.  Based on what I have read, it certainly has been.

Lastly, Occam's Razor is relative.  People shade and apply where ever they see fit.  Occam (I think) himself warned us of this.  That's why it's just a general rule of thumb.


----------



## Makalakumu (Feb 26, 2010)

CanuckMA said:


> Look at the most simple reason why it can't work.
> 
> To do a controlled demolition, you need to precisely place shaped charges on support structures.
> 
> ...


 
 Imagine for a moment that incontrovertible evidence exists that the WTC complex was demolished with explosives.  It wouldn't matter how hard it was to rig the buildings, because we have evidence that the event really did happen.

This is the problem with this argument.  It's a logical fallacy.



CanuckMA said:


> And regarding the famous building 7 argument. Do you know what kind of structural damage was caused by the ground vibration and air displacement of the 2 towers colapsing?



Please elaborate?  I've seen the seismic data, btw.  I understand that all of the buildings were rooted in the crystalline schist that underlays that particular part of Manhattan.  I understand what kind of energy could be released in a gravitational collapse and that actually has been measured.  So, what do you think?  How would you think it made a difference?  How would you know if it made a difference?


----------



## MBuzzy (Feb 26, 2010)

maunakumu said:


> Imagine for a moment that incontrovertible evidence exists that the WTC complex was demolished with explosives.  It wouldn't matter how hard it was to rig the buildings, because we have evidence that the event really did happen.
> 
> This is the problem with this argument.  It's a logical fallacy.



Which fallacy?

A few people have mentioned the argumentum ad veracundum (appeal to authority)....The problem with that fallacy is that it is only an appeal to authority if the person being cited does not actually have the authority being attributed to them.  Example:  If I say "My structural engineer professor said that republicans are better than democrats, therefore it must be true."  Then it is a fallacy, I am arguing that something is true simply based on his authority as my professor.  But, if I say that "My Structural Engineering professor told me that the net force on every body in a system to equal to zero." well, that isn't a fallacy....he happens to BE an authority on the subject.



maunakumu said:


> Please elaborate?  I've seen the seismic data, btw.  I understand that all of the buildings were rooted in the crystalline schist that underlays that particular part of Manhattan.  I understand what kind of energy could be released in a gravitational collapse and that actually has been measured.  So, what do you think?  How would you think it made a difference?  How would you know if it made a difference?



I'm not following here, so are you saying that the seismic impact had no effect on the building?  how about other debris?  Do we have deterministic evidence as to what external factors acted on the building?  Such as falling debris, etc?

Those buildings were rooted on a very complex system of unpilings and caissons.  Concrete is VERY strong in compression (the force that most commonly acts on buildings), but very weak in tension and impact.  The impacts on the ground and resulting subsurface resonance would have seriously damaged on the integrity of subsurface supports.  Those supports are tied to the superstructure of the building through joints at the ground level, so anything that impacts those supports ends up affecting the integrity of the entire building.  I don't need any proof that the impact of the other buildings falling effected the superstructure of the surrounding buildings, just the same that I don't need proof that an apple falling off of a tree in the woods falls at 9.8m/s/s.


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## Archangel M (Feb 26, 2010)

9/11 truthers = Psychology not physics.


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## Makalakumu (Feb 26, 2010)

MBuzzy said:


> Which fallacy?



That's a different fallacy.  I can't remember the name.



MBuzzy said:


> A few people have mentioned the argumentum ad veracundum (appeal to authority)....The problem with that fallacy is that it is only an appeal to authority if the person being cited does not actually have the authority being attributed to them.  Example:  If I say "My structural engineer professor said that republicans are better than democrats, therefore it must be true."  Then it is a fallacy, I am arguing that something is true simply based on his authority as my professor.  But, if I say that "My Structural Engineering professor told me that the net force on every body in a system to equal to zero." well, that isn't a fallacy....he happens to BE an authority on the subject.



http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Appeal_to_authority

The point of this fallacy is to point out the excuses for ignoring premises/evidence.  You can be an authority and argue with an authority and commit an appeal from authority.  Check out the logical definition.

In this thread's case, we have the an appeal from authority, we have an appeal to what is popular, we have special pleading, etc.

Most of the 9/11 debunking and 9/11 truth movement are engaged in that kind of argument.

What it comes down to is what people have actually found and what has actually happened.  What people need to do, in this case, is have the guts to consider the total pool of evidence.  



MBuzzy said:


> I'm not following here, so are you saying that the seismic impact had no effect on the building?  how about other debris?  Do we have deterministic evidence as to what external factors acted on the building?  Such as falling debris, etc?



Yeah we do and it's all being plugged into a computer model with various assumptions that are being questioned by experts.  NIST refuses to release their computer modeling assumptions to the public.



MBuzzy said:


> Those buildings were rooted on a very complex system of unpilings and caissons.  Concrete is VERY strong in compression (the force that most commonly acts on buildings), but very weak in tension and impact.  The impacts on the ground and resulting subsurface resonance would have seriously damaged on the integrity of subsurface supports.  Those supports are tied to the superstructure of the building through joints at the ground level, so anything that impacts those supports ends up affecting the integrity of the entire building.  I don't need any proof that the impact of the other buildings falling effected the superstructure of the surrounding buildings, just the same that I don't need proof that an apple falling off of a tree in the woods falls at 9.8m/s/s.



It's all conjecture and you don't really know anything unless you've actually taken a look at the site and analyzed all of the available evidence.  How much energy was released by the collapse?  How much damage was actually caused?  

Did you know that the NIST has said that the collapse of all three buildings occurred because of fire damage alone?  Did you know that the NIST had to introduce and artificial 43 inch sag into their computer model in order to initiate the failure of the floor and column system?  There is no physical evidence to support the artificial sag.

Also, did you know that there is no explanation for the "global collapse"?  After the first floor fell, we have no explanation as to why the next floor fell and NOBODY can explain why they fell at free fall speed.  Even NIST claims that the collapse occured at free fall speed.  There is also ample evidence that these scientists faked it for political reasons and the could lose their licenses over it.  

Here's what I can do, I can send the link to this thread to some of the people involved and I can see if they will contribute.  We have at least three structural engineers participating in this thread and I would think that these people would jump at the chance to present this info to people in the profession.

Let's see what happens and see how things progress.


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## Makalakumu (Feb 26, 2010)

Archangel M said:


> 9/11 truthers = Psychology not physics.



Do you actually have something constructive to add to this discussion?  

A statement like that is trollish at best.


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## Marginal (Feb 27, 2010)

maunakumu said:


> Here's what I can do, I can send the link to this thread to some of the people involved and I can see if they will contribute.  We have at least three structural engineers participating in this thread and I would think that these people would jump at the chance to present this info to people in the profession.
> 
> Let's see what happens and see how things progress.



Wouldn't that just be more appeal to authority? How does this only work one way?


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## Makalakumu (Feb 27, 2010)

Marginal said:


> Wouldn't that just be more appeal to authority? How does this only work one way?



Nope.  We are just attempting to see what the people in the article have to say about the matter.  

As far as the appeal to authority goes, well, it certainly goes both ways, I posted this article to see if the fact that credentialed folk could convince other credentialed folk.  The evidence existed before the credentialed folk knew about it.  This whole discussion rests on an appeal to authority.

Isn't it funny how the world works...


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## Makalakumu (Feb 27, 2010)

maunakumu said:


> Do you actually have something constructive to add to this discussion?
> 
> A statement like that is trollish at best.



Never mind, I took that personally.


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## Bruno@MT (Feb 27, 2010)

maunakumu said:


> Several of the people on the list are top engineering professors at major universities.  They have filed official complaints about the NIST report to the  major licensing agencies.  They believe that these scientists should have their licenses revoked for putting out these reports with obviously flawed conclusions.  We'll see what happens with that...



Again... being a professor does not mean anything. I have had a couple that were fit for the psych ward. I could tell stories but you would not believe I was serious. Among professors and academics you will also find holocaust deniers, moon landing conspiracy theorists, innoculation paranoiacs, bigots, racists, religious fundamentalists,... heck, there are thousands of professionals arguing FOR global warming, and thousands AGAINST.

You assume that because a thousand nutters (of which only a percentage have a qualified opinion) are complaining, their case is automatically proven. Yet there are tens of thousands of subject matter experts who say they are nuts and you refuse to give them the same weight.

What went on at the political and intelligence level I cannot say and I genuinely don't care. But after the hit, the WTC towers went down on their own.

As for building 7: A controlled demolition works by knocking out the main support columns, after which the building falls inwards. The same thing would happen if one of those major supports gets knocked  away by thousands of tonnes of debris from a collapsing twin tower. IIRC, building 7 had 4 major supports, which were in the building corners. Video footage shows that corner being knocked away.

At that point, building 7 became like a fully loaded diner table of which one of the legs is kicked away. Remember what I said about symmetrical load. When one column went down, the 2 others in adjoining corners crumbled inwards. And then the last remaining corner opposite the first one went. Voila: inward collapse 'text book demolition example'.


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## Makalakumu (Feb 27, 2010)

Bruno@MT said:


> Again... being a professor does not mean anything. I have had a couple that were fit for the psych ward. I could tell stories but you would not believe I was serious. Among professors and academics you will also find holocaust deniers, moon landing conspiracy theorists, innoculation paranoiacs, bigots, racists, religious fundamentalists,... *heck, there are thousands of professionals arguing FOR global warming, and thousands AGAINST.*



After that whole rant, this!!!  Hahahahahahahahaha  Sorry, but that's funny as hell!!!

Anyway, this argument is an obvious logical fallacy.  Why do any of those people have anything to do with the people making this argument?  Much less, what does this have to do with the argument being made?

It's a logical fallacy.



Bruno@MT said:


> You assume that because a thousand nutters (of which only a percentage have a qualified opinion) are complaining, their case is automatically proven. Yet there are tens of thousands of subject matter experts who say they are nuts and you refuse to give them the same weight.



You assume a lot of things.  That they are nutters.  That only a percentage of the thousand can give an informed opinion.  That only people with a certain piece of paper and only when the argument is in my favor, can give an opinion.  That 10,000 scientists have looked deeply into the matter and considered all of the evidence.  That I wouldn't consider the opinions of bonafide experts who have actually looked at the total available evidence.

This whole paragraph is a wasteland of assumptions that prevent a person from critical thinking about this issue.  



Bruno@MT said:


> What went on at the political and intelligence level I cannot say and I genuinely don't care. But after the hit, the WTC towers went down on their own.



So, in other words, "what went on, I don't care, the towers went down, end of story."  Seriously?



Bruno@MT said:


> As for building 7: A controlled demolition works by knocking out the main support columns, after which the building falls inwards. The same thing would happen if one of those major supports gets knocked  away by thousands of tonnes of debris from a collapsing twin tower. IIRC, building 7 had 4 major supports, which were in the building corners. Video footage shows that corner being knocked away.



How much damage do you think those photos actually showed?  Did you know that NIST claims that the fire brought down the building?  In WTC 1,2,7, they claimed this.



Bruno@MT said:


> At that point, building 7 became like a fully loaded diner table of which one of the legs is kicked away. Remember what I said about symmetrical load. When one column went down, the 2 others in adjoining corners crumbled inwards. And then the last remaining corner opposite the first one went. Voila: inward collapse 'text book demolition example'.



How do you know that is what would happen?  No steel building has ever collapsed from fire in this short of an amount of time before.  This is no precedent.


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## Archangel M (Feb 27, 2010)

_New Rule: Crazy people who still think the government brought down the Twin Towers in a controlled explosion have to stop pretending that I'm the one that's being naïve. How big a lunatic do you have to be to watch two giant airliners packed with jet fuel slam into buildings on live TV igniting a massive inferno that burned for two hours and then think, "Well, if you believe that was the cause?" Stop asking me to raise this ridiculous topic on this show and start asking your doctor if Paxil is right for you. -Bill Maher
_
If Bill Maher passes up a chance to lambaste Pres. Bush.....
​


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## Archangel M (Feb 27, 2010)

15 questions 9/11 truthers need to answer.

"What Did and Did not Cause Collapse of WTC Twin Towers in New York*"*


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## Archangel M (Feb 27, 2010)

Take a look at Randi.Orgs opinion on the subject.

http://forums.randi.org/forumdisplay.php?s=&daysprune=&f=64


Yet another peer  					reviewed paper from a respected Journal finds the towers  					were doomed to collapse.


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## Archangel M (Feb 27, 2010)

[yt]1rhY9c_iemA[/yt]

[yt]60A86cg16KQ[/yt]

This AE 911 founder is so clueless he can't even keep his own BS theories straight...watch this one.

[yt]MusSulcJwSk[/yt]


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## Archangel M (Feb 27, 2010)

[yt]NBbz2eIoVDQ[/yt]


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## Makalakumu (Feb 27, 2010)

We'll see if I can get some of these scientists to participate here.  I'm a bit busy at the moment, but I'll send an e-mail soon.  I'm very curious what they would say here since we have at least three structural engineers participating in this thread.


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## Makalakumu (Feb 27, 2010)

Archangel M said:


> Take a look at Randi.Orgs opinion on the subject.
> 
> http://forums.randi.org/forumdisplay.php?s=&daysprune=&f=64
> 
> ...



That's terrifying actually.  One column gives way in a steel reinforced concrete building and the whole thing could go down!  Talk about an Achilles Heel...


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## Ken Morgan (Feb 27, 2010)

I'm a political science/history/education person so I don't even pretend to know anything about this subject, short of not believing in conspiracies.

However I was a supervisor in a steel plant for almost 10 years, and from my experience I can tell you steel is and can be very fragile. I have seen a piece of cold rolled steel 6"x4"x12' fall three feet onto a rubber mat and cleanly snap in half. I have seen huge pieces of structural steel bend like it was made of pipe cleaners with very little force. Add in jet fuel, plus the physical damage caused by the impact of a 400,000 pound jet hitting structural steel at 300+ miles an hour.

Hell Im surprised the building stayed up as long as it did.


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## seasoned (Feb 27, 2010)

Hell I don't have a clue about steel but logic I do have. The planes hit the twin towers 3/4 of the way up, leaving 1/4 of the towers above, and a lot of weight to come down once the steel was weaken. As each floor hit the one below it, on it's way down, the force would be comparable to an explosion sending everything outward. It doesn't take rocket science to figure that out.


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## Makalakumu (Feb 27, 2010)

I posted this to point out the fact that now 1000 professionals in engineering and architecture fields are banding together and saying that there is something to question about the official story.  We have individuals with in depth highly technical backgrounds directly related to the very fields that would be required to study something like this.  That number is growing and it's getting harder to just blow it off.  We'll see what happens and we'll see how this grows.


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## Bruno@MT (Feb 28, 2010)

maunakumu said:


> After that whole rant, this!!!  Hahahahahahahahaha  Sorry, but that's funny as hell!!!
> 
> Anyway, this argument is an obvious logical fallacy.  Why do any of those people have anything to do with the people making this argument?  Much less, what does this have to do with the argument being made?
> 
> It's a logical fallacy.



No, it's not.
You argue that the point of a 1000 professionals is a good reason to put any stock in the conspiracy angle.

I cite an example where thousands of professionals take completely opposite views, proving thereby that at least half of them are wrong. Since that is a direct response to your argument, I don't see how that would be a logical fallacy.



maunakumu said:


> This whole paragraph is a wasteland of assumptions that prevent a person from critical thinking about this issue.



No, I don't mind critical thinking. I welcome it.
But as long as the arguments do not get beyond 'steel does not melt like that' and 'see the debris going outwards, it must be an explosion', I don't consider that critical thinking. I consider that grasping at straws.



maunakumu said:


> So, in other words, "what went on, I don't care, the towers went down, end of story."  Seriously?



Pretty much. The US were warned by many other countries that something was going to happen. There was also some suspicious stock trading right before the crashes, and some of the evidence presented afterward was rather unlikely.

However, that does not mean I believe for a second that the government organized 9/11. They ****ed up royally, granted, but that is something we'll never get the details of. Organizing 911 would require a lot of people and a lot of secrecy. Even during the manhattan project with draconian securoty measures in place, the soviets were able to get intelligence out of it.

Since I don't see any reason to believe that a conspiracy on this magnitude could be kept secret, I can only conclude they messed up royally, and that is not of any interest at all.



maunakumu said:


> How much damage do you think those photos actually showed?  Did you know that NIST claims that the fire brought down the building?  In WTC 1,2,7, they claimed this.



1 and 2 are the twin towers right?
Of course it was fire. It was the thousands of gallons of burning kerosene which weakened the structure.



maunakumu said:


> How do you know that is what would happen?  No steel building has ever collapsed from fire in this short of an amount of time before.  This is no precedent.



Plenty of buildings have been imploded. The techniques used for that are well documented. I've seen plenty of documentaries about them.
Demolition implosion is done by knocking out or weakining the support columns.

But why are we even bringing this up again.
We know that blazing fire weakens steel.
We know that if thousands of tons of building fall on top of an unharmed structure designed to bear only static load, it will crumble.

Also, wiring and preparing a single casino size building for demolition takes days, assuming the building is already stripped of furniture, false walls, etc. It takes drilling thousands of holes in support beams for shoving explosives in. Then everything needs to be wired together with det cord. hundreds of miles of the stuff. And the explosives give off noxious fumes (nitorglycerin) which causes headaches and other symptoms.

If that building was wired in advance, people would have noticed it during the weeks it would have required. And don't forget, people claim it was wired all the way up.


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## Bruno@MT (Feb 28, 2010)

maunakumu said:


> That's terrifying actually.  One column gives way in a steel reinforced concrete building and the whole thing could go down!  Talk about an Achilles Heel...



It's the only way to build that high.
the physics dictate that load must be distributed evenly or the thing cannot get past a couple of floors. Even the Romans knew this and things like the Colosseum were built accordingly.

The only way you could survive the total loss of a major column is to make sure that all columns can take double their calculated load, and have so many of them that a single one going down does not cause a big balance difference.

This is all but impossible, and it would also mean that your entire building consists of support structure and load transfer structure, and that of course defeats the purpose of building a high building.


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## jks9199 (Feb 28, 2010)

maunakumu said:


> How do you know that is what would happen?  No steel building has ever collapsed from fire in this short of an amount of time before.  This is no precedent.



Nor is there precedent for fully loaded jetliners deliberately flying into a building of that size.  Therefore, we have to look at modeling and material dynamics and other fields to understand what may have happened.  I think the bigger problem people are having is that NIST didn't share all the details of their modeling process.

And that it is, to me, a legitimate point to question.  But they may have had solid reasons for not doing so, too.  It may have taken classified data...


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## Bill Mattocks (Feb 28, 2010)

Carol said:


> Hey I could join up, I'm an engineering professional.  In addition, I can speak and write quite well.  Think they'll kick me to the curb for not having the right kind of engineering background?



When I was in high school, I was a 'retail petroleum transfer engineer' (yeah, I pumped gasoline).  I'll bet I could get on the list.  I know all about stuff falling apart.  Story of my frickin' life.


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## Makalakumu (Feb 28, 2010)

Bruno@MT said:


> I cite an example where thousands of professionals take completely opposite views, proving thereby that at least half of them are wrong. Since that is a direct response to your argument, I don't see how that would be a logical fallacy.



That is not what you said and is not what I was responding to.  You essentially said that I had a professor that was stupid or crazy once therefore there is no way these guys can be correct.  That's a logical fallacy.

Here's what you said...



> Again... being a professor does not mean anything. I have had a couple that were fit for the psych ward. I could tell stories but you would not believe I was serious. Among professors and academics you will also find holocaust deniers, moon landing conspiracy theorists, innoculation paranoiacs, bigots, racists, religious fundamentalists,... *heck, there are thousands of professionals arguing FOR global warming, and thousands AGAINST.*



That is not a direct response to what is being said.  Neither is saying that because I or others have a piece of paper that makes them correct or more correct.  Neither is saying that it's too hard and therefore could not happen.  Neither is saying a thousand people can agree to anything therefore these guys are wrong.  Neither is making any assumption without looking at the data and attempting to pass that off as an explanation.  Anyway, I'm not going to use any more of my time rehashing this, but that's a short list of the logical fallacies used in this thread.

You make a very good point about thousands of engineering professionals agreeing that there is nothing wrong with the official story.  We have three here with technical knowledge in the matter and have concluded that it seems to make sense.  I'm willing to bet if I went around and interviewed a 1000 professionals randomly, most of them would probably agree.

Here's what I am wondering about, however.  How many of these professionals have actually looked at the reports, looked at the evidence, and really spent some time trying to understand the issue?  In this case or in any case, when you come to a conclusion without doing this, it gives a person "crippled epistemology" where your information is limited and you don't really know about a topic.  Yeah, you can make a guess, but in the end, that is all it is, a guess.

In this article's case we have a thousand engineering professionals including people with advanced technical knowledge who have really looked into the matter and have signed their names to a document, verified their credentials, and have put themselves on line.  

Can you find a similar independent group that has done the same for NIST?  That would be a comparable group and would actually act as a rebuttal for the article.


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## Makalakumu (Feb 28, 2010)

Bill Mattocks said:


> When I was in high school, I was a 'retail petroleum transfer engineer' (yeah, I pumped gasoline).  I'll bet I could get on the list.  I know all about stuff falling apart.  Story of my frickin' life.



They apparently have a vetting process.  You could join, but you wouldn't be listed as part of the architects and engineering group.


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## Makalakumu (Feb 28, 2010)

jks9199 said:


> Nor is there precedent for fully loaded jetliners deliberately flying into a building of that size.  Therefore, we have to look at modeling and material dynamics and other fields to understand what may have happened.  I think the bigger problem people are having is that NIST didn't share all the details of their modeling process.
> 
> And that it is, to me, a legitimate point to question.  But they may have had solid reasons for not doing so, too.  It may have taken classified data...



That could be a legitimate reason to not widely disseminate the details of the modeling process.  There could be a lot of reasons why they didn't share the information.  The end result is that they obfuscated the "how to" in regards to their results.  Since all experiments are supposed to be repeatable, this cripples the scientific process.


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## Bill Mattocks (Feb 28, 2010)

OK, let's look at the possibilities here, ignore the arguments.

First - the buildings fell down.  I think we can all agree with that.

Having established that they fell down, they did so for one of the following reasons:

1) Planes flew into them.
2) Planes flew into them and other causes were present as well.
3) Other causes entirely.

For either #2 or #3 to be true, a massive conspiracy and physical intervention must have taken place, necessarily involving many people and much material.  I do not believe that such a secret can be kept for any meaningful period of time.  I also do not see any logical reason why the US government or any other agency would gain by #2 or #3.  Therefore, I reject those as logical possibilities.  Yes, they could still be true, but absent actual evidence and a convincing reason why another agency (other than Al Qaida) would have instigated and pre-arranged the attack,  I can't support those arguments.


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## Bill Mattocks (Feb 28, 2010)

http://www.wired.com/magazine/2010/02/pl_print_conspiracy/



> Are you kidding me? _[ event ]_ was a total sham! Think about it! Everyone knows that _[ appeal to precedent ]_. And have you noticed that _[ ruling elite ]_ has started to act very strangely? They obviously dont want this story getting out. I mean, what would happen if people began asking _[ disturbing question ]_? Well, they may be able to fool the sheeple, but the members of _[ dedicated group of truth-seekers ]_ arent swallowing their story. Look, dont take it from me; _[ expert endorsement ]_ is convinced as well. But we have to act fast, because _[ suggestion of imminent threat ]_. I just wanted you to be aware of this, in case I disappear.


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## Makalakumu (Feb 28, 2010)

Bill Mattocks said:


> Therefore, I reject those as logical possibilities.  Yes, they could still be true, but absent actual evidence and a convincing reason why another agency (other than Al Qaida) would have instigated and pre-arranged the attack,  I can't support those arguments.



A group of the top explosives experts in the world discovered signature explosive evidence in the debris.

http://www.bentham-open.org/pages/content.php?TOCPJ/2009/00000002/00000001/7TOCPJ.SGM

This is why I said before, it doesn't matter how hard it could have been.  If the evidence is there, as improbable as it seems, it happened.  I realize this paper doesn't prove the case beyond all reasonable doubt, but at least I can hope people can see a legitimate reason to question.

BTW - the e-mail is off, we'll see if anyone comes in to respond.


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## Bill Mattocks (Feb 28, 2010)

maunakumu said:


> A group of the top explosives experts in the world discovered signature explosive evidence in the debris.
> 
> http://www.bentham-open.org/pages/content.php?TOCPJ/2009/00000002/00000001/7TOCPJ.SGM
> 
> ...



If the evidence is there, it may have happened. Not must. That's a frequent problem conspiracy buffs seem to share. Possible does not mean probable, and especially does not mean 'must have'.


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## Makalakumu (Feb 28, 2010)

Bill Mattocks said:


> If the evidence is there, it may have happened. Not must. That's a frequent problem conspiracy buffs seem to share. Possible does not mean probable, and especially does not mean 'must have'.



I think in degrees of "may" have happened.  Science doesn't "prove" anything.  I agree with you on this point.  Adding to this is an equally large problem where people refuse to even accept the possibility of certain explanations despite the fact that evidence does exist to give said explanations some merit.

The term "conspiracy buff" or "conspiracy theorist" is often use as a pejorative ridicule and shut down debate.  I've seen it here and I've seen it elsewhere, especially in the Global Warming debate.  It gets used to shut down alternative points of view by a larger group holding a more popular view.


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## Bruno@MT (Feb 28, 2010)

maunakumu said:


> A group of the top explosives experts in the world discovered signature explosive evidence in the debris.
> 
> http://www.bentham-open.org/pages/content.php?TOCPJ/2009/00000002/00000001/7TOCPJ.SGM
> 
> ...



I just read the report. Actually, to be honest, I skimmed it and went to the conclusion, which I did read. I didn't see who collected the samples though, and there is no mention of independent verification and sampling I could have missed it or it could have been a stuy which was not repeated by anyone on independently collected samples.

They did mention all sorts of things indicating active thermite. Otoh, they also mention that they did not find similar things in debris of other demolition sites. So that does not automatically point to controlled demolition.

It would also be very interesting to calculate the amount of thermite which survived its alleged use. Because if it is that prominent in such small samples, given the wide distribution, that could be a lot, which would be strange if thermite had been ignited at some point or other.

And given that it was unburned in all samples, it suggests that there was no ignition at all. So it could be thermite which was on-site somewhere in one of the 3 buildings and got distributed by the implosion. There were reports of work being conducted in the towers shortly before the attack. That might be a source for it.

All in all, this report indicates that there are some more questions that need answers if it can indeed be independently verified, but that does automatically mean that something nefarious went on that caused the towers to collapse other than the jetliners and the fuel.


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## JDenver (Feb 28, 2010)

My major problem is that building 7, not hit by any planes, also fell straight down.  How does that happen?  Some have supplied great explanations about the two towers and the kerosene softening the steel, but building 7?  It wasn't even hit.

In a British interview directly after Sept. 11, the CEO of building 7 told them that he received a phone call from, I believe the fire dept., about how structurally the building was unsafe.  He told them to 'pull it', a common term for demolishing the building.  It fell about an hour later, not even enough time to lay the explosives.  So....what exactly is going on there?

I dunno...the physical evidence would require that there be some further investigation for me.

Oh, plus this little dooozy for me - The U.S air force was conducting an exercise in hijacked planes flying over American cities.  The date of the exercise?  September 11, 2001.  That doesn't strike anyone as odd?


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## Archangel M (Feb 28, 2010)

All that "study" claims is that red chips were found that had traces of aluminum, iron, oxygen, silicon and carbon. in them. 

When a building full of all sorts of materials is struck by large aluminum planes full of fuel and catches fire; Im sure you can find all sorts of melted clumps of stuff with various things in them. Not to mention Im very skeptical of the legitimacy of their samples. Where, when and how did they get them?

AND...read WHO produced this "paper". It's right at the top.

1Department of Chemistry, University of Copenhagen, Denmark
2Department of *Physics and Astronomy*, Brigham Young University, Provo, UT 84602, USA
3S&J Scientific Co., Provo, UT, 84606, USA
4*9/11 Working Group* of Bloomington, Bloomington, IN 47401, USA
5*Logical Systems Consultin*g, Perth, Western Australia
6*Architects & Engineers for 9/11 Truth*, Berkeley, CA 94704, USA
7*International Center for 9/11 Studies*, Dallas, TX 75231, USA
Abstract: We have discovered distinctive red/gray chips in

YAWN!


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## Archangel M (Feb 28, 2010)

This Neils Harrit is a whackjob..."nanotechnology thermite" indeed. This guy is a "truther" looking for evidence to support his preconceived belief. Hardly good science. 

[yt]yJy_LdHMmaM[/yt]

[yt]ZcJ_HpFro-k[/yt]

[yt]6wbWepx1SAs[/yt]


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## Archangel M (Feb 28, 2010)

http://ronmossad.blogspot.com/2009/...howComment=1240512420000#c9075632420741694240



> I'd like to address a couple points about Steven Jones and his latest farcical flights of fancy.
> 
> Finding Iron oxide and aluminum in a tower built from steel with an aluminum facade is not unexpected.. On top of that, there's nothing in this paper that's not been restated before in previous articles. *This is a total recycle. They found Iron oxide (rust, the &#8220;red chips&#8221 and Aluminum. *As already noted, all elements were present in large quantities in the WTC buildings.
> Finding iron oxide and aluminum from the Twin Towers is like finding water in the ocean i.e. fully expected.
> ...


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## Bill Mattocks (Feb 28, 2010)

maunakumu said:


> I think in degrees of "may" have happened.  Science doesn't "prove" anything.  I agree with you on this point.  Adding to this is an equally large problem where people refuse to even accept the possibility of certain explanations despite the fact that evidence does exist to give said explanations some merit.



I accept the possibility.  But I also have an opinion, and that opinion is that there is nothing to this particular conspiracy theory.



> The term "conspiracy buff" or "conspiracy theorist" is often use as a pejorative ridicule and shut down debate.  I've seen it here and I've seen it elsewhere, especially in the Global Warming debate.  It gets used to shut down alternative points of view by a larger group holding a more popular view.



Indeed.  I was searching for a better term that was non-pejorative, and which recognized the fact that it seems some people are attracted to more than one conspiracy theory.  I've noticed this, and I think many others have as well.  I did not mean it to be insulting, but I also note that many who support this particular theory also support others.

It has also been my observation that people who hold to certain conspiracy theories seem to be rather fixed on the notion of their theory being correct; and to that end, if one line of reasoning does not pan out or is debunked, they more smoothly to the next.  As long as the particular point supports their overall belief, they're OK with it.  This to me seems the opposite of rational thinking, where one is willing not only to admit the possibility of being wrong, but the probability that they are, or even to abandon a theory when it becomes clear that the facts don't fit it.

It is difficult to not make certain comparisons. For example, although I hold you in high esteem and respect your intellect, I have to note that some aspects of 9/11 conspiracy theory resemble other conspiracy theories; for example, the Elvis Lives people.  For them, it does not matter what evidence is produced that Elvis is dead; they have a need for him to be alive, and they'll grasp any theory that tends to support it, any shred of evidence, odd fact, or coincidence that seems out of place.  The point for them is not the body of evidence that there is a body, so to speak, but the conclusion that Elvis still walks the earth.

No, I don't think that you believe Elvis is alive.  But I have to make comparisons that seem valid - the idea that the belief is more important that the facts is common to both.

I generally don't get this involved in discussions with people who believe 9/11 was a hoax or a government conspiracy; I haven't the cycles to give up to this sort of thing.  I accept that it could have happened the way they believe it did; but I assign that probability a low number, find that I can live with that, and continue on with my day.  I can't be sucked into this sort of mind trap and continue to function.


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## Archangel M (Feb 28, 2010)

_"Adding to this is an equally large problem where people refuse to even accept the possibility of certain explanations"

_Don&#8217;t be so open minded that your brains fall out. 

It's _possible _that alien gremlins with death rays teleported into the WTC and cut support beams. And conspiracy theorist "scientists" could find (read create) evidence to prove it and print it in some pay to play Pakistani publishing house.


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## Archangel M (Feb 28, 2010)

The Truth is OUT there.


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## Makalakumu (Feb 28, 2010)

Archangel M said:


> http://ronmossad.blogspot.com/2009/...howComment=1240512420000#c9075632420741694240



While it's an interesting counterpoint, I don't think it's the final word.  For one thing, he constructs a pretty elaborate strawman of what was actually found.  But that's the problem when you argue anything on the internet.  Anyone can say anything they want, for the most part, and not really be held accountable for it.


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## Archangel M (Feb 28, 2010)

Whatever man. Look at the moonbats you are holding us as "experts".


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## MBuzzy (Feb 28, 2010)

maunakumu said:


> In this article's case we have a thousand engineering professionals including people with advanced technical knowledge who have really looked into the matter and have signed their names to a document, verified their credentials, and have put themselves on line.
> 
> Can you find a similar independent group that has done the same for NIST?  That would be a comparable group and would actually act as a rebuttal for the article.



As I mentioned before, here is all that I need.  Unfortunately, I don't have ASCE's full report, but I know that it is out there.  I might spend more time looking later.  ASCE is the American Society of Civil Engineers.  THE professional organization for Structural and Civil Engineers.  THE technical experts on the subject.  They did an independent review and came to the conclusion that the buildings came down due to the impact of the planes, and the resulting fire.  

I wish I had a good analogy of what ASCE is....but they are the people who TRAIN many Civil Engineers.  Most of my continuing education comes from them.  They organize conferences, publish papers, manuals, journals, tech reports, etc etc etc.  THEY are the authoritative organization...and they think the planes did it.  That's enough for me.  Plus, I pay them a lot of money every year to be a member!  haha  (yes, bias)


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## Archangel M (Feb 28, 2010)

_In this article's case we have a thousand engineering professionals including people with advanced technical knowledge_ 

...In fields like chemical engineering, electrical engineering, computer science, etc. and "advanced technical knowledge" in fields that have nothing to do with structrual engineering, demolitions or anything to do with the matter. Man they have "Landscape Architects" in there FOR GOD'S SAKE!!

Not to mention that I have seen various reports that this "list" is unverified and it's possible to bluff your way onto.

First it was "we will get 1,000 licensed AND degreed architects and engineers." Then they settled for licensed or degreed architects and engineers, now all you need to be is an "engineering or architectural professional." Which appears to include anyone who works in an architecture or engineering office, draftsmen, office managers, etc...

There should be an investigation. I want an investigation as to why AE911 keeps shifting their goal posts about their membership.


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## Archangel M (Feb 28, 2010)

MBuzzy said:


> As I mentioned before, here is all that I need. Unfortunately, I don't have ASCE's full report, but I know that it is out there. I might spend more time looking later. ASCE is the American Society of Civil Engineers. THE professional organization for Structural and Civil Engineers. THE technical experts on the subject. They did an independent review and came to the conclusion that the buildings came down due to the impact of the planes, and the resulting fire.
> 
> I wish I had a good analogy of what ASCE is....but they are the people who TRAIN many Civil Engineers. Most of my continuing education comes from them. They organize conferences, publish papers, manuals, journals, tech reports, etc etc etc. THEY are the authoritative organization...and they think the planes did it. That's enough for me. Plus, I pay them a lot of money every year to be a member! haha (yes, bias)


 
Government shills man..they are in on it...:shrug:


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## Bruno@MT (Mar 1, 2010)

MBuzzy said:


> I wish I had a good analogy of what ASCE is....but they are the people who TRAIN many Civil Engineers.  Most of my continuing education comes from them.  They organize conferences, publish papers, manuals, journals, tech reports, etc etc etc.  THEY are the authoritative organization...and they think the planes did it.  That's enough for me.  Plus, I pay them a lot of money every year to be a member!  haha  (yes, bias)



They must be in on it too...

I am not a member of such an organization myself, but I know their Belgian equivalents. If there is anything you can rely on, it's that if these guys publish papers, the mathematical and physical underpinnings are accurate. Still it won't change anyone's mind, because the 911 truthers have already made up their mind and are just looking for things to support their cause. the strategy seems to be to throw as much mud around as possible, and see if anything sticks.

I have stated my technical reasons for believing the official collapse story, and stated my reasons for not caring about the political / intelligence angle because I don't believe it is a massive conspiracy. Ergo, what happened behind the scenes is just the usual backstabbing / insider trading / taking advantage of things.

It seems the argument is going to be circular and intangible from now on in a hunt for proof of the negative. That is of course impossible. So on these words I bow out of this thread and bid thee goodnight.


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## Archangel M (Mar 1, 2010)

If the conspiracy nuts were arguing that the hijackers were "assets" of some sort that were manipulated by the gvt..that would at least be plausable IMO.

First we have to believe in the controlled demo of THREE downtown NYC buildings with tens to hundreds of tons of "therimte/explosives" wired into them without detection. Not only did they have to be secretly wired they had to be timed to coinside with the strikes of the planes and perfectly synchronized and intert enough to not be ignited by the crashes and resultant fires. Not to mention the fact that the crashes had to be in a precise location of the building; otherwise the "show blow" wouldn't look right.

Then there is all the rest of 9/11...missiles launched into the pentagon...faked flight 93 crash/shoot down...all the investigators and people involved kept quiet????

And as to "professionals" and their sanity...

In the UK an MI5 employee thinks that the planes flown into the WTC were really missiles....we all saw planes because they were shrouded by holograms....

.....

....yeah...holograms.

Please. Go peddal that all this crazy elsewhere.


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## punisher73 (Mar 1, 2010)

Anyone here who has had to work with an architect in making a building actually happen?  Only one time for me, and those guys don't know crap about the building structure or the mechanics of it running.  They might come up with fancy ideas of making it look nice, but that's about it.  You need OTHER experts to make it happen.

Saying an architect is an expert on structural loads and building structure etc. is like saying because I am a police officer, I am an expert on the law decisions of the US Supreme Court.  Why would anyone buy that argument?  They wouldn't, they would realize I had training in a specific area of law and it's enforcement, but NOT the training in other aspects of the law and interpreting it that a Supreme Court justice does.

Until the leading organization for structural engineers comes out and says that there are some errors in the official report, I'm not buying the story.


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## Ken Morgan (Mar 1, 2010)

Archangel M said:


> In the UK an MI5 employee thinks that the planes flown into the WTC were really missiles....we all saw planes because they were shrouded by holograms....
> ....yeah...holograms.


 
OMG, WTF?

I think all the conspiracy theories are not so much about what "really" happened, I think they take a pulse on what people think about government in general. Many people, especially in the US just don't trust government, from any party. 

I think government is inefficient, incompetent, spend happy group of people, but I also believe that government is absolutely necessary for our survival and I have serious doubts as to the validity of any conspiracy theory, government is just not that competent


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## Makalakumu (Mar 1, 2010)

Archangel M said:


> Whatever man. Look at the moonbats you are holding us as "experts".



Moonbat chemists, chemical engineers, and other scientists...


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## Makalakumu (Mar 1, 2010)

Archangel M said:


> If the conspiracy nuts were arguing that the hijackers were "assets" of some sort that were manipulated by the gvt..that would at least be plausable IMO.
> 
> First we have to believe in the controlled demo of THREE downtown NYC buildings with tens to hundreds of tons of "therimte/explosives" wired into them without detection. Not only did they have to be secretly wired they had to be timed to coinside with the strikes of the planes and perfectly synchronized and intert enough to not be ignited by the crashes and resultant fires. Not to mention the fact that the crashes had to be in a precise location of the building; otherwise the "show blow" wouldn't look right.
> 
> ...



I do agree with you here.  There is so much craziness, it's hard to take any of it seriously.  Your first sentence, if anything, is probably the most plausible.  Then again, maybe 19 hijackers really did do it and a whole bunch of really freaky stuff happened, and that's that.


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## jks9199 (Mar 1, 2010)

maunakumu said:


> I do agree with you here.  There is so much craziness, it's hard to take any of it seriously.  Your first sentence, if anything, is probably the most plausible.  Then again, maybe 19 hijackers really did do it and a whole bunch of really freaky stuff happened, and that's that.


It's kind of interesting how often freaky stuff and weird coincidences start showing up when you look for them around an incident.  Especially a really big incident...

Don't take my word for it -- give it a try.  Take some locally significant (or insignificant) incident, and spend a bit of time looking for odd things around it...  Once you start, you're going to find 'em.  Someone who called off right before the copier broke down...  and the copier being broke meant you had to go to Kinkos to make copies for the meeting, which made you run late, and you got in a crash because you were somewhere you wouldn't have been had it not been for all that...  So, clearly the guy who called off wanted you to crash, right?  (No, I don't really think you'd make that mistake of causation; it's just a plausable chain of events as an example.)


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## MBuzzy (Mar 1, 2010)

punisher73 said:


> Anyone here who has had to work with an architect in making a building actually happen? Only one time for me, and those guys don't know crap about the building structure or the mechanics of it running. They might come up with fancy ideas of making it look nice, but that's about it. You need OTHER experts to make it happen.
> 
> Saying an architect is an expert on structural loads and building structure etc. is like saying because I am a police officer, I am an expert on the law decisions of the US Supreme Court. Why would anyone buy that argument? They wouldn't, they would realize I had training in a specific area of law and it's enforcement, but NOT the training in other aspects of the law and interpreting it that a Supreme Court justice does.


 
Exactly - the process works like this:  Architect creates a conceptual design of a building - what it will look like, sometimes floor plans, some exterior aesthetics issues, etc.  

He then sends that design to an Engineer (this usually happens either between two firms, and Architecture Firm and an Engineering Firm or a consolidated A/E firm).  First stop is the Structural Engineer.  He takes the conceptual design and creates a skeleton, then passes off to the Mechanical and Electrical guys to size and design the Electrical and HVAC systems.  Then through a series of Design reviews with the Owner, Architect, Engineers, and other interested parties, they iterate the design down to the final plans and it is built.  That is of course a VERY loose interpretation and pretty simplified, with the creation of Design Build and other cool construction methods, but that's the jist.  The bottom line is that the guy who says what a building LOOKS like and the guy who designs it are two different people.  

So basically the point is that this 1000 people number need to be cut down to ONLY those with the authority to comment, then let's see how many and compare that to the total number in the country.



punisher73 said:


> Until the leading organization for structural engineers comes out and says that there are some errors in the official report, I'm not buying the story.


 
Yep, ASCE has stated their opinion years ago and they found that it was the fire and the planes.  Nothing else.  Until they retract their official opinion, I probably wont' change mine, simply because they are the experts.  Those guys are by far, the smartest in the country....as I said, they teach the rest of of how to be structural engineers.

Here's my other problem with the doubts to the Official Story....

If it WASN'T the planes and the fire, I have yet to see a convincing story as to what actually DID cause the buildings to collapse.  A controlled detonation just isn't feasable.  The amount of explosive needed to bring those things down is huge and would have been noticed.  It is true that a single support will take down the buliding, but the collapse would have looked MUCH different.  you would need charges on EACH of the primary supports and have the buliding wired going up the supports as well to make them fall how they did.  the only way to make them come straight down like that is from a vertical load.  Exactly what happened when the heat made the steel reach its yield point and caused each floor to progressively collapse, increasing the dead load on the floor below and causing catastrophic failure.  Present a BETTER argument, not simply holes in what is out there and I'll believe it.

I have no doubt that there are holes and unexplained portions of the official story, but with an event this big and very little way to investigate after the fact, that is to be assumed.  I just have a hard time believing this stuff when all I've seen are doubts and no better explanations!


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## 72ronin (Mar 1, 2010)

I dont know much about 9/11 at all.  May i say that this thread has only addressed the building(s) collapse etc.

    What about opinion on the other points raised in the OP. Like eye-witness statements.
I remember seeing a plane hit the pentagon during the tv coverage, whats with that now?

    I almost feel like apologising for commenting here on this issue, as i dont live in America and certainly dont wish to throw my opinion at this as i dont have one, only that my heart goes out to all the Victims and Families and rescue workers etc.


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## Makalakumu (Mar 1, 2010)

72ronin said:


> I dont know much about 9/11 at all.  May i say that this thread has only addressed the building(s) collapse etc.
> 
> What about opinion on the other points raised in the OP. Like eye-witness statements.
> I remember seeing a plane hit the pentagon during the tv coverage, whats with that now?
> ...



OMG, I don't know where to start.  Just type 9/11 conspiracy into google video and you'll get an eyeful.


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## Archangel M (Mar 2, 2010)

Ken Morgan said:


> I think government is inefficient, incompetent, spend happy group of people


 
Yeah. Which seems to preclude the ability of gvt to pull of an operation of this scale, complexity and secrecy without ****ing it up doesn't it?

And at the same time this gvt couldn't pull off planting some "weapons of mass destruction" in the vast unwatched Iraq desert.

:shrug:


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## 72ronin (Mar 3, 2010)

As an observer, i dont believe America would do this to its own citizens.  Not for a second would i entertain that theory.

     It was an attack on America, has the viewpoint of "other" powerful groups been contemplated?  And im not talking about who the finger was pointed at either.

    Seems to me that it really hasnt paid off for the so called "terrorists" hey.  For the results of the attack are having his cause/country lose everything etc.  That doesnt make sense hey, he has lost all he was apparently fighting for!!

    Perhaps a third party orchestrated the whole thing?
Like i have stated earlier, i dont know enough about it all, but a third party pulling strings here and there does make more sense.  

    Considering the alternatives are a handfull of terrorists basically writing off their whole apparent cause and countries for that matter --  Or even more ridiculous than that, an inside job!.

     A third party makes more sense than the two versions that are contemplated..


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