Hard as it is to believe, it’s been seven months since the Conspira-Sea Cruise, or, as I called it when I discovered it before it set sail, The Woo Boat. After it set sail and I started reading reports about it from two reporters who took the cruise in order to report on it, Anna Merlan, Bronwen Dickey, and Colin McRoberts. Reports by Merlan and McRoberts were published in due course (and, of course, blogged about by me). The cruise was about as you’d expect, of course. Particularly hilarious (to me, at least) was how far Andrew Wakefield had fallen to be reduced to being one of many cranks on a cruise atteneded by conspiracy nuts that included New World Order conspiracy theorists, crop circle believers, people who think HAARP is a form of mind control, HIV/AIDS denialists, and, of course, antivaccine loons.
Finally, a few days ago, Dickey’s article was published in Popular Mechanics titled I Went on a Weeklong Cruise For Conspiracy Theorists. It Ended Poorly. Not being a regular reader of Popular Mechanics, I’m not sure why it took so long for Dickey’s article to finally see print, but it’s certainly nice additional description of what went on during that cruise. Although there had been intimations of threats before, Dickey spells them out right at the very beginning of her article:
It was a bit after seven, and I should have been downstairs on Plaza Deck, dressed in formal attire and enjoying dinner with the conspiracy theorists. There were about a hundred of them, and they were nearing the end of their week—the last week in January—aboard the Ruby Princess. Many of them were older people, and each of them had paid $3,000 (not including airfare and beverages on board) to participate in the first-ever Conspira-Sea Cruise, a weeklong celebration of "alternative science" hosted by a tour company called Divine Travels. For the past five days, they had debated UFOs, GMOs, government mind-control programs, vaccines, chemtrails, crop circles, and the Illuminati's plan for world domination, all while soaking up the mystical energies of three Mexican tourist towns known mainly for wet T-shirt contests and Señor Frog's.But I was not on Plaza Deck. I was locked in my stateroom on Baja Deck, picking at a room-service cheeseburger. Earlier that afternoon, a pair of Conspira-Sea presenters had chased me—chased me—from a conference room. This wasn't our first confrontation, and now I feared they were tracking me around the ship, waiting to spring out from blind corners and empty doorways.
How did it get to this? Dickey backtracks to the beginning and lets the story flow from there. One detail she caught that was amusing to me is how she was able to distinguish the cruisers, the people on the Ruby Princess who were there for a typical Pacific Ocean cruise and not there to attend the conspiracy-fest and her fellow attendees. She noted that the former group tended to dress in bright colors and loud prints, complete with captain’s hats from the gift shop, while the later consisted mainly of “serious-looking senior citizens in ‘Infowars’ T-shirts,” some of whom wore casts, others of whom walked with canes, and a couple of whom relied on motorized scooters. She also noted that none of them “looked like he or she could afford to spend money frivolously.”
Then there were the introductions. Speakers included Laura Eisenhower (great-granddaughter of Dwight), who claimed that she had been invited in 2006 to join a secret American colony on Mars and that aliens are living on earth in disquise. There was also Dannion Brinkley, a best-selling author who claims to have risen from the dead three times. (Top that, Jesus!) There were crop circle mavens, anti-GMO activists, various quacks, and “holistic healers.” As I pointed out at the time, the only form of conspiracy woo missing was someone into cryptozoology. I was, indeed, surprised there were no Bigfoot fans.
Then there was, of course, the biggest name on the roster: The most famous antivaccinationist in the world, Andrew Wakefield, the man whose fraudulent 12 patient case series published in The Lancet claiming to find an association between vaccination with the MMR vaccine and regressive autism 1998 launched a thousand autism quacks and so frightened British parents that MMR uptake plummeted and the measles, once all but eliminated, came surging back. The damage is only now beginning to abate, with a recovery of MMR uptake. More recently, Wakefield has teamed up with Del Bigtree and Polley Tommey to make an antivaccine documentary, VAXXED, that is nothing but deceptive propaganda. Oh, and he’s also been trying to convince the African-American community that the MMR is dangerous and their children, particularly boys, are more sensitive to its evil autism-causing effects than Caucasians. In late January, when he was featured on the Conspira-Sea Cruise, Wakefield’s movie must have been in post-production or basically finished.
Still, according to Dickey, the conspiracy world was well represented, between tracks:
The week's seminars appeared to be split into two broad categories. There were those with a magical or highly new age component: "Astral Possession, Psychic Vampirism, and Exorcism," "Gaia-Sophia, Timelines and Global Alchemy," "How to Control the World with Mind Machines." And then there were those that detailed concrete, terrestrial dangers: "Are GMOs and Roundup Causing Disease in Millions?" "Vaccinations: Do You Really Know What's Coming Through That Needle?" A subset of the second group concerned itself with the U.S. legal and banking systems. Unfortunately, the nightly UFO watches had to be canceled because the man who was to lead them had recently suffered a stroke.
Bummer. If I were on that cruise, I’d definitely want to hang out for the UFO watches. Of course, one wonders how well the passengers could see UFOs on a brightly lit ship with a lot of regular people just there for a vacation who were likely more in the mood to party than anything else.
Besides Wakefield, there was one speaker on the cruise whom I’ve discussed before, Len Horowitz, who attended with his girlfriend Sherri Kane. When last we encountered Horowitz and Kane, they were pushing what I like to call a “zombie meme,” namely that the early polio vaccine, contaminated with SV40, caused an “epidemic” of cancer. It didn’t. It turns out that Horowitz is into a lot more quackery than that, as Dickey describes after a hilariously on point brief description of him:
Len bore a strong resemblance to the Count from Sesame Street, if you had frozen the Count in 1974 and dressed him in Hawaiian shirts. A former dentist from New Jersey with a degree in public health from Harvard, he is most well-known for writing a 1996 book that theorized the AIDS and Ebola viruses are genocidal weapons engineered by the U.S. government to depopulate the planet through vaccination programs. On the cruise, however, he would be lecturing on the key to lifelong health and world peace: the "miracle frequency" of 528 hertz.
According to Len, everything in the universe emits vibrations, and all the positive, life-affirming forces (including the green/yellow light in rainbows) "resonate" at a frequency of 528 hertz. Therefore, all music should be tuned in 528 hertz, rather than the 440 hertz of standard tuning, which he asserted was an evil plot imposed by the Rockefeller Foundation to militarize the world's populace. Len believes that standard tuning aggravates the pineal gland, making all of us emotionally distressed, sicker, and more destructive. He called this "musical cult control."
Vibrations. It always has to be vibrations with quacks.
The antivaccine movement being one of my areas of expertise and specialization, naturally that part of Dickey’s article that most interested me was her account of Wakefield’s talk. She noted early on that Wakefield observed, “The story of my life is basically how to take a perfectly good career and flush it down the toilet,” That’s very typical of Wakefield, full of self-pity but also atypical in that it demonstrates at least a little self-awareness, something you normally don’t associate with him.
Now, here’s what surprised me. Wakefield is antivaccine. There’s no doubt about it, based on his history, his utterances and writing, and, of course, his movie VAXXED. However, if there’s one thing about Wakefield, it’s that he has always tried to project a more “reasonable” (superficially, at least) image, avoiding the more inflammatory and nutty rhetoric associated with the more—shall we say—enthusiastic antivaccine activists. None of this stopped him from contributing to the creation of the “CDC whistleblower” conspiracy theory and producing a movie with one of the more fevered antivaccine conspiracy theories out there, but he made the film with plausible deniability that he is antivaccine and frequently repeats that he is not antivaccine, usually before saying something really antivaccine.
But he doesn’t usually go this far:
The seminar began. For an hour, Wakefield paced in front of a projection screen, which ballooned his shadow to giant proportions. Slides of children born without arms and others screaming in pain flashed behind him.
"Your bodies are owned by Big Pharma," he said. "It's turning into a science-fiction movie." The audience gasped and shook their heads in disbelief. "This will be the end of the United States of America." During the Q&A portion, Wakefield added, "This is a deliberate eugenics program, a deliberate population-control program."
This is hard core antivaccine conspiracy theorist territory. These sorts of statements are the purview of Mike Adams or Gary Null, not (until now) Andrew Wakefield. As Matt Carey notes, these sorts of claims might play well on a conspiracy cruise with an audience full of believers in the Illuminati, crop circles, New World Order conspiracies, and quackery of various kinds. Wakefield is usually very careful never to say something like that in public, where he can be overheard and reported on, and his statement publicized.
One of the most amusing parts of the story is how during the cruise the sea was pretty choppy for long periods of time so that many of the attendees of the Conspira-Sea Cruise became seasick. As that happened, they became crankier and more paranoid. Eventually, they became less...welcoming... of Dickey and her photographer Dina Litovsky. For instance, Wakefield asked them not to attend a screening of VAXXED, then called Injecting Lies. Some other speakers asked them to leave their panels. Then Len Horowitz confronted them:
"I want you to see something!" he shouted as he tried to force a packet of papers into her hands, then mine. They were articles from Popular Mechanics debunking bad science. Apparently Len and Sherri had been up all night Googling the magazine and printing out documents in the ship's computer center. There was also a Wikipedia entry that linked the magazine's parent company, Hearst, to the Lagardère Group.
I tried to laugh it off and go around him, but Len wouldn't let me pass.
"Look at this!" he shouted, his face contorting with rage. "Look at this! This is why you're here! You're here in bad faith!"
Larry Cook, who had also been milling around in the hallway, stepped in front of Len to keep him from lunging at me.
"Get your hands off me!" Len shouted at him. "Get your f--king hands off me!"
Armed with a camera, Sherri darted out from behind Len and chased me around the hallway, demanding that I explain myself. As I tried to block my face from the camera, I got trapped against the wall between Len and Larry, who seemed seconds away from a full-on brawl.
"If you don't stop this, I'm calling security," Larry said. Len then challenged Larry to a fistfight in the ship's gym.
Larry Cook is an antivaccinationist and Wakefield groupie who attended the cruise specifically to meet his hero. Later, Wakefield invited them back to his third appearance, but they declined. Later they learned that his plan had been to “ambush” them with excerpts from Popular Mechanics. No doubt the conspiracy theorists probably wouldn’t have liked one of Popular Mechanics’ greatest accomplishments, its magisterial debunking of 9/11 conspiracy theories.
Basically, reading Dickey’s account didn’t really teach me anything I didn’t already know, but it was enjoyable nonetheless. It was also particularly useful for having caught Wakefield with his mask down labeling vaccines as a “eugenics program.” I’m sorry, Andy. You don’t get to call yourself “not antivaccine” if you’re promoting nonsense like that.
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So, apparently, the way to kill people with highly lethal bioweapons isn't to let the weapons do the killing, but to provide vaccines against them. Because not dying of ebola is so much more fatal than doing so.
Conspira-Sea Session 11.13: Alien Abduction: Do Anal Probes Go Too Far?
(Cruel? Sure. But my sympathy for this sorry bunch of deeply distressed and disturbed people is hard-tempered by the deep distress and injury they cause to others.)
As for Wakefield, he's not so much specifically anti-vaccine as exclusively pro-Wakefield. He may be a narcissist, but he's no dummy when it comes to selling product, be it his patented measles vaccine or his quasi-religious cult. He's just tailoring his message to whatever audience sits currently before him, be it preening neurotic middle-class or terrified gullible paranoiac. Happily, such two-facedness also plays straight to Wakefield's other great talent: hoisting himself on his own petard. So next time he tries replaying his "honest concerned physician" spiel to his mainstream Hollywood audience, just stick his screeching eugenics wharrgarble side-by-side to it and let the discordant smash speak for itself.
The frequency of yellow-green light happens to be about 528 teraherz. So he's only off by a factor of a trillion. Not bad in a domain where homeopathy rules.
However, musically 528Hz is in a precise 6:5 ratio with 440Hz, or the interval of minor third in just temperament. Two of these form a diminished fifth (36:25) -- or the Devil's Tritone. Maybe he's on to something... :-)
Once again Andrew Wakefield proves that there is only one thing he cares about: Andrew Wakefield getting paid. He will say whatever he thinks his audience will approve of, so they will continue to see him as their hero and throw him money.
What really struck me about Dickey's piece was that some of these people seem to be even more deranged in real life than they appear on the Internet.
I'm sure you can find many shades of yellow (and every other color) that are harmonics of 528 Hz. The trick is building a stable optical filter with a 1 Hz band-pass to produce it!
I'm surprised he doesn't market a low power radio transmitter that generates kHz EM waves that are harmonics of 528 Hz. It would be cheap and easy to build, and I hear you can charge a lot in that market!
"There was also Dannion Brinkley, a best-selling author who claims to have risen from the dead three times. (Top that, Jesus!)"
Dannion seems to have been one of the most popular speakers on the cruise, based on testimonials:
http://www.divinetravels.com/ConspiraSeaCruise.html
Note that the next Conspira-Sea Cruise is in the summer of 2018, when they invade Alaskan waters. No word yet on who the speakers will be, though I'm hoping Suzanne Humphries can make it (she's been resurrected, too):
https://www.amazon.com/Rising-Dead-Suzanne-Humphries-M-D/dp/0692648186
Worst eugenics program *ever* = vaccination. Only slightly less offensive than Laura Hayes August (in your August 5th RI) claiming vaccination is causing a "Holocaust". Of course Wakefield has stooped to Holocaust comparison in his early "Whistleblower" videos.
Therefore, all music should be tuned in 528 hertz, rather than the 440 hertz of standard tuning, which he asserted ... -- another way of claiming the world is flat?
I particularly enjoyed this from the Popular Mechanics article:
I noticed that, too. Specifically, since 440 Hz is the A above middle C, 528 Hz would be a full octave above middle C under a just tuning scheme. In equal tempered tuning, the note in question would be about 523 Hz, less than 1% lower.
I don't know where the Rockefeller Foundation stuff comes from, but according to Wikipedia A440 tuning is an accepted international standard (ISO 16). It is not, however, in universal use: for example, the Berlin Philharmonic uses 443 Hz, while the Boston Symphony Orchestra uses 441 Hz.
Here is Len Horowitz' and Kane's "summary" of the Woo Cruise and bios at the end.
http://www.waronwethepeople.com/larry-cook/
Two thoughts:
A.This not just show that Wakefield is willing to say blatantly anti-vaccine stuff - it shows how audience-focused he is, how willing to say whatever will get to his audience.
B. Larry Cook is radically anti-vaccine. And his intervention here - his effort to protect Ms. Dickey, which is to his credit - made Horowitz and Kane go all out on him. Eating their own.
From the 'magisterial debunking.
I wonder how they came to that conclusion???? The information is still classified as to how 'fire' brought down building 7 (as well as the others).
FINDING REGARDING PUBLIC SAFETY INFORMATION
Pursuant to Section 7(d) of the National Construction Safety Team Act, I hereby find that the disclosure of the information described below, received by the National Institute of Standards and Technology ("NIST"), in connection with its investigation of the technical causes of the collapse of the World Trade Center Towers and World Trade Center Building 7 on September 11,2001, might jeopardize public safety. Therefore, NIST shall not release the following information:
1. All input and results files of the ANSYS 16-story collapse initiation model with detailed connection models that were used to analyze the structural response to thermal loads, break element source code, ANSYS script files for the break elements, custom executable ANSYS file, and all Excel spreadsheets and other supporting calculations used to develop floor connection failure modes and capacities.
2. All input files with connection material properties and all results files of the LS-DYNA 47-story global collapse model that were used to simulate sequential structural failures leading to collapse, and all Excel spreadsheets and other supporting calculations used to develop floor connection failure modes and capacities.
~
Patrick Gallagher Director National Institute of Standards and Technology
Dated: JUL 09 2009
http://911blogger.com/news/2010-07-12/nist-denies-access-wtc-collapse-d…
Upon reviewing Powerful Healing Theta Meditation ~ 528Hz, incidental music on Star Trek TNG was beating in nice syntony with it.
There is actually something to this one. Bill Watterson covered it thirty years ago. Though I'm not sure the leader of that seminar was thinking along those lines.
On the more humours side (where appropriate):-
"... We may just be seeing the discovery of a new homids species:- Homo Etremus-theorus conspiratus ..." (Tiger quote)
"How to Control the World with Mind Machines"
Humans are mind machines. We do control the world, for better or worse. We also replicate. Scary.
Wow...I've often wondered what Wakefield and others like him "really" believe vs what's just part of the act, but now I'm beginning to think that's a false dichotomy to begin with. Part of me wishes I could get inside his head - and part of me is very, very glad that I can't.
More magisterial debunking
Yes, the windows on the level of collapse; But these 'squibs' were seen thirty floors below the crush-down front. Where did the pulverized debri in the 'puffs' originate? Surely it didn't outrun the crushdown through open stairwell and elevator doors.
Like flushing a line, clear air would blow out of the windows first. And why only one or a couple? By their mechanic, all the windows should blow out where the 'squibs' are seen. Also, there were the high-speed ejections before the initiation of collapse.
Magesterial. That is a piss-poor deferral to authority as Herst's yellow journalism rags are far from 'authoritative'.
http://www1.ae911truth.org/faqs/585-faq-8-squibs.html
Bwahahaha. So you're a 9/11 Truther as well. Why am I not surprised?
Jeez, I really hate 9/11 Truthers.....the concept of metal weakening as it heats up totally escapes them.
All that and a bag of Young's modulus, Lawrence.
Chris Hickie @ 7:
Oh, that desperately calls for a rimshot! :-D
Eric Lund @ 9:
Eh, the Rockefellers are one of the go-to groups for conspiracy theorists. And the Rockefeller Foundation has been very important in funding for the arts, particularly classical music.
When I was in college, the orchestra director told me (and perhaps its true, though this smacks of apocryphal) that some orchestras were starting to tune slightly higher than 440 in order to make their music sound brighter than other orchestras. A tactic which would, of course, only last as long as 440 was the standard.
Just for yuks: for our end-of-semester tour, somebody printed up a humorous pamphlet. After the introduction, it said "at the sound of the oboe at 440, please turn the page." :-P (As the old yarn goes, you tune to the oboe because the oboe is impossible to tune. I played bassoon, so sympathized with the plight of the double-reed.)
It's all explained here.
"There is no fiction so outlandish that the human mind cannot weave it into a conspiracy that wins many converts."
I blame it on the fact that shop classes aren't taught in high school any longer. When you actually have heated metal to make it bend easier, it's obvious that a few tons of jet fuel could soften the steel structure of a building.
Blacksmiths have been relying on the principle for years. Maybe someday these kid will rediscover it.
And get off my yard.
I find the depth and detail of some of these woo-forms truly astonishing and bizarre. I clicked Science Mom's link to Horowitz's site, and discovered hours of potential amusement (if it doesn't disturb you that you're reading a 'real' site rather than The Onion). Horowitz is more verbose than two each of Orac and sadmar combined, but consistently delivering WTF lulz.
Along the right side of the page there are links to several 528Hz things. At the top is "Oxysilver Immune Support Hydrosol Concentrate With 528". Here's just the first part of the 3,356 word copy describing the product:
Below that is a link for 'i528Tunes Netplay' where you can purchase downloads of a variety of music albums in .MP3 form supposedly 'transposed' from 400Hz tuning to 528Hz tuning. Featured artists include Dyan, Hendrix, Springsteen, Bowie, Aretha, The Beasties, Bob Marley and Johnny Cash. The preview snippets of the allegedly transposed tracks sounded identical to the originals to me, but then I don't have Horowitz's mastery of physics... The album DLs are $20, and Horowitz is claiming 'Fair Use' under the most outre declaration you could imagine (small excerpt):
The inclusion of Hendrix may seem a bit odd for the new-agey 'vibe' of 528:
But forget Jimi, as among the vehicles for universal rainbow God's pure love 528Hz energy on offer by Horowitz are the "Fun House" and "Raw Power" albums by The Stooges. Yup, nothing heals you up like listening to 'TV Eye' or 'Death Trip'.
Hmm... maybe Horowitz has seen God after all....
No, you get off my lawn, Johnny!
To say nothing of the concept of a bow wave. As the building collapses, the air between floors has to be pushed out somehow. And that air will not be pristine: there will be soot from the fire, plus whatever dust is generated from such things as pieces of paper left on people's desks.
Nor is a building a Deacon's Masterpiece. There is always somewhere a weakest spot. That's why only one or two windows get blown out: by random chance, if nothing else, they are not held in place as securely as the other windows.
It is three black swans on the same day, Lawrence; Can you find one other example of a concrete and steel building collapsing due to fires?
@Eric As the building collapses, the air between floors has to be pushed out somehow. And that air will not be pristine: there will be soot from the fire, plus whatever dust is generated from such things as pieces of paper left on people’s desks.
This is 30 floors we are talking about here. Why wouldn't the sooty air follow the path of least resistance?
Do you really think that 2 planes can bring down 3 buildings symmetrically and at the speed of gravity?
Show me two other buildings who were also hit with Boeing 737s....suffering from significant structural damage & massive fires due to jet fuel.
Seriously, these 9/11 truthers have many screws loose.
I'd also recommend watching several episodes of "Engineering Disasters."
There are many instances of buildings - both during and after construction, which suffered from structural collapse in the exact same way - all it takes in the failure of some of the main structural supports, and the floors will pancake & collapse in the similar way.
Jeez, take your nutty conspiracies somewhere else.
Obviously, Johnny #25, that fuel mostly went down the elevator shafts to blow up people in the lobby -- or something.
That does indeed work for string instruments, because the higher tension on the string enhances the harmonics. It's less effective for wind instruments.
The oboe is sometimes called "the ill wind that no one blows good."
The difference in frequency between A440 tuning and C528 tuning is less than 1%. For comparison, the frequency difference between neighboring semitones is about 6%. You would have to have a very sensitive ear to hear the difference, especially if the transposed and original versions aren't playing at the same time. Also, IANAL, but Horowitz's claim of fair use is almost certainly bogus, given that he's charging money for the downloads--he'd better be paying royalties to the songwriters and performers, or the RIAA (who have taken people to court over much less) will be after him.
But the kerosene only initiated the fires. They were fueled by all the plastic office equipment and paperwork in it's respective metal filing cabinates.
Correct - there were literally tons of flammable materials lying around (and disturbed by the crashes) - not to mention that much of the fire-proofing was blown off of the supporting columns by the explosions as well.
The Truthers have to ignore much of what actually happened that day, to make their theories fit inside any size box.
Gotta love the ambush nonsense, complete with a chase.
Personally, had that happened to me, my cane would go behind the far knee and pressure applied to the front of the closest knee, resulting in a spectacular crash to the floor and my cane being firmly set down upon his wee knee.
I have a thing against such aggressive behavior and am infamous for responding poorly.
As for 9-11 truthers, I lost a few friends and one cousin in those towers, I'm even more intolerant of them and their inability to comprehend what needs to be done to cause a controlled implosion - massive amounts of work removing most of the support columns, then drilling through the ones to be explosively cut and explosives placed in the holes.
Yeah, one of my qualifications is in the use of high explosives, all in a military environment. I've quite literally used tons of high explosives over the course of my military career.
Leaving me to state quite often, "There is no problem in life that cannot be resolved with the judicious of copious amounts of high explosives".
And, "I hate loud noises".
Which leaves me with the desire to never touch, handle or consider utilizing high explosives ever again - too noisy. ;)
I would, however, consider utilizing Nitrowhisperin . ;)
http://getsmart.wikia.com/wiki/Spy,_Spy,_Birdie
Building 7 wasn't hit by a plane, yet it collapsed at free-fall speed in near total symmetry.
How can one explain that?
Take a look of this series of 4 skyscrapers totally engulfed in flames, but have remained standing: http://911research.wtc7.net/wtc/analysis/compare/fires.html
I believe some are still being used.
Well, it's not a building, but how about an overpass?
http://www.nbcnews.com/id/18380884/ns/us_news-life/t/tanker-catches-fir…
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_structural_failures_and_collapses
Plenty to choose from here, too.
Nice list, but I didn't see any high-rise building collapse from fire. I would say that the majority of that list is the result of earthquakes.
Free Falling
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v-27FGbpBk4
My spidey-sense is tingling . . . I sense a rolling dismissal of similar failures for not being sufficiently similar, right up to the point where only an exactly identical incident can be deemed worthy . . . .
Incidentally, I do notice use of weasel words. "Near total symmetry." So you admit it wasn't actually perfectly symmetrical? And, out of curiosity, what other speed are you expecting other than gravity? The collapses did happen on Earth, after all, and it's difficult to escape the 32 feet per second per second that it imparts on everything at the surface. If anything, you'd think an explosion lower down would have had a decelerating effect (if briefly).
You really should not be engaging in anything resembling an argument involving physics.
The acceleration of gravity. The cliche got me.
How many other buildings suffered significant damage from falling debris and massive internal fires?
Seriously, it's all moving of goal-posts....
Place: Philadelphia
Year: 1991
Building: One Meridian Plaza
Cause of problem requiring demolition: Fire
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One_Meridian_Plaza
It didn't collapse, but was rendered unsafe and prone toward collapse and was eventually demolished.
I remember that one quite well, as the building remained an eyesore for 8 years, with the prospect of collapse creating numerous problems for other businesses in the area.
And it didn't even need kerosene burning to damage the building beyond repair.
The fuel from the aircraft being around 200000 pounds of jet A, a high grade of kerosene.
Marvelous. The 9/11 Truthers have descended. Have fun with these new chew toys, my minions. Have fun.
And some trivia, the lower the octane rating, the hotter the fuel burns.
Jet A kerosene has an octane rating of approximately 20, avgas an octane rating of 100.
While the kerosene is difficult to initiate under normal conditions most are familiar with, when atomized, it's easily combusted. That in turn, caused other flammable items to be fully initiated and burn even more hotly.
As a secondary benchmark, the military occasionally uses burn-out latrines in extended usage locations. They consist of a steel drum cut 1/3 down, which is placed over a seating unit to collect excrement (you'll not be thanked if you urinate into the drum, as that'd have to boil off before the excrement can burn).
A 5:1 mixture of diesel fuel to gasoline is poured onto the excrement and the burning excrement stirred with a stick.
Hence, the origin of "Sh*t end of the stick", "Sh*t detail", "Sh*t job", etc. Yes, there is such a detail, where service members get selected, just like they'd be selected for KP (Kitchen Police) to assist the cooks, some poor SOB's get to burn poop.
Now, can you imagine how hot the fire is to ignite poop?
One of my "additional duties, as assigned" was battalion field sanitation NCO. Recommending when and how to create burn-out latrines was one part of my duties.
Chlorination of drinking water in Lyster bags and water trailers (water buffalo is the slang name for those) and mess hall inspections were also part of those duties and lead to quite a few battles with various line company cooks and disciplinary action against some of those cooks (including one instance where the majority of an infantry battalion enduring a severe food borne infection, secondary to having field feeding supplied with badly undercooked eggs, served far below safe serving temperatures.
In that instance, our division epidemiologist arrived, presenting a questioner to be filled out for each and every ill soldier, including myself (who was assisting with the investigation). The cook who was responsible was relieved for cause and reclassified into an infantry MOS.
Personally, I had advocated for his reclassification as a terminal in-flight missile guidance specialist, with many senior NCO's agreeing enthusiastically. As we really don't have a specialty where someone rides a missile into a target, you can imagine how angry we all were with that idiot's poor performance as a cook.
Trying to make scrambled eggs in a five gallon pot!
Salmonella sucks!
insolence
noun
rude and disrespectful behavior.
. . . .
So it is considered "insolence" to disagree with the indoctrinated conformist masses according to Orac the anonymous science expert and his bevy of true believers.
\\][//
@sadmar: Mr Woo just bought a membership into a woobook advertising company that assures him they will bring him "the latest research Big pHarma doesn't want him to see," every month. He assured me it was a great idea because they send him a 550-page book as their thank-you.
But they can't have that much fun, Orac. Investigation of this with prior bias to sheild from the horror can only lead to the acceptance and painful bucking of its' truthiness.
what?
what?
Let me help you with that one, Lawrence; The brown cow had speckled spots, some of which were malignant but dissapeared after consuming large amounts of passiflora incarnata and rubbing povadone iodine on it.
Sorry, I thought you were trying to speak English....
But, since you are a Truther, it explains everything.
Mandarin Hotel on fire: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3B1OnhSucP8
However Rem Koolhaas said that "they are simply rebuilding it as it was, because there was no structural damage."
The complex's main building, the doughnut-shaped structure, was not damaged.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beijing_Television_Cultural_Center_fire
" the lower the octane rating, the hotter the fuel burns."
~Wzrd1
Not so. Octane has nothing to do with how hot fuel burns, it has to do with the ignition point of a fuel.
\\][//
I blame it on the fact that shop classes aren’t taught in high school any longer.
Where? They're about all my brother took in high school a decade or so ago; well, besides work release.
...and now he works for the railroad on bridges, knows enough from construction jobs to build his own garage, makes good money, etc... and then there's me.
Mathematicians and physicists have now proven 528 vibrates at the heart of the universe, rainbows, God’s heart and yours. 528 “LOVE Hertz” vibrates pure “LOVE energy” to heal what ails you!”
It's like a far less endearing version of Dr. Bronner's word.
("ALL-ONE OR NONE! ALL-ONE! ALL-ONE!")
Gilbert and John Hutchinson:
For every fire fighter who died going up the stairs:
Go. To. Hell.
Your desire to be special by being the only ones "in the know" about 9/11 degrades the heroism and suffering of all the people who were there that day. Have you no decency to have some respect for the dead?
Have you ever spoken with a survivor? Heard their experience in their own words? You play with other people's pain.
And your ignorance is *astounding*. Stone castles have collapsed from the damage from fire; why shouldn't a steel building?
Thanks for the nightmares, I really love people bringing this stuff up again.
@Justatech
Obvious controlled demolition. Don't appeal to emotion, it has no place here. Thousands of Architects and Engineers will go on record agreeing with me, and probably tens of thousands more who agree but won't go on record.
Your ignorance is astounding Justatard. Name one steel building that was brought down by fire; you can't! It has never happened.
Name one building that has collapsed symmetrically into it's own footprint without the judicious use of explosives?
John, what I want to say is something so thoroughly laced with obscenities as to melt most computer screens.
However, I'll also mention, I am retired military and an explosive demolitions expert. I have worked with, quite literally, many, many tons of explosives over the decades.
First and foremost, one has to remove many, many (read: most) support columns in a structure to be imploded. We're speaking of thousands of dump truck loads of concrete and steel being somehow removed and never observed by workers in the building, over the course of weeks, as removal must occur at each floor of the structure.
So, someone removed all of the walls on each floor, removed the columns, replaced the walls and left det cord strung invisibly all throughout the entire structure, without anyone working there not tripping over it.
Det cord, aka detonating cord, is typically an RDX explosive core cord, used to tie explosives together, so that all detonate at essentially, the same moment. Timers and blasting caps just don't cut it, too variable in the amount of time needed to synchronize detonation.
Oh, BTW, I still have a security clearance, I've held one for my entire adult life and frankly, I find it laughable that no workers have "spilled the beans" in a nation infamous for its sheer inability to retain a single secret and that secret, somehow being hidden from me. I'm on so damned many bigot lists, it's actually a topic of humor among my peers!
Your conspiracy theories are about as a pure example of Dunning-Kruger as can be found, laughable as the "mini-nuke" conspiracy theory (odd, no radiation at all, no residual radiation and indeed, contact with a fissioning mass would cause transmitted radioactivity. Maybe it's antimatter? A gram would do great, if you ignore the resultant 42 kiloton blast that'd have leveled Manhattan.
Thermite, another perennial favorite, burns downward, not sideways, so you'd need antigravity.
As I said, one removes alternate columns throughout the entire structure, drill and emplace explosives inside of the remaining columns (multiple devices per column to cut it effectively, tie the entire mess together with miles of det cord, all while having that quarter inch det cord being invisible, the concrete and still removal also concealed, no dust left about or even dusty boot prints - on every damned floor of the building!
Oh, to add to that, silently doing so, which cutting concrete and steel columns most certainly is not!
And the cases and cases of mythical explosives all disappeared once the explosives were removed, an entire warehouse load of boxes disappeared. Teleported?
No, I know! Magic!
All, while paralyzing our economy until Wall Street set up temporary operations offsite, billions of dollars of lost trade, billions of dollars of missing gold stored in the building, all because of Christ knows what?
Rather than following Occam's Razor, the simplest explanation is the correct one.
Excuse me, but the word jackass has repeated crossed my mind in reference to you and I really must apologize to the beast that owns that name by associating you with it.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skyline_Towers_collapse
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harbor_Cay_Condominium_collapse
So, how exactly "is" a building supposed to collapse?
The Twin Towers were struck by large commercial aircraft traveling at several hundred miles per hour, resulting in near immediate fatal damage to the towers internal structure....luckily, there was enough support left to keep the buildings up for a lot longer than the engineers would have thought they'd be.
The resulting fires, combined with the impact damage, was more than enough to result in complete structural collapse - which proceeding in the way that any structural engineer would expect - straight down.
As each floor collapsed on to the one beneath it, it caused a chain reaction of failures, over and over again.
Building 7, on the other hand, suffered significant damage from debris from both towers - which was exacerbated by large scale fires.
All available evidence & all reputable structural engineers agree that the buildings did exactly what they were designed to do, until the stresses of the damage to their internal structure became too great.
http://www.popularmechanics.com/military/a49/1227842/
John Hutchinson @59:
Thank you for being so very clear that all you care about is your theory being 'right'. Also, points for a new way to turn my 'nym into an insult!
One of my observations of the topics from the Woo Boat is that they tend to fall into two categories: generally harmless, and harmful to the believers and those around them. Bigfoot? Harmless (you'll get some exercise). Taxes are optional? Harmful (you'll go to jail). Antivax? Harmful to yourself and others (spread and suffer from diseases).
9/11 Truthers are in the middle - they are very harmful to the people who suffered directly or indirectly from the 9/11 attacks, but no one will get sick, spend out their life savings, or go to jail about it. It is like the woman quoted in the PM story, who was distraught after another cruise-goer insisted that the Holocaust her mother survived never happened.
So I get it John, you (and Gilbert) enjoy the emotional rise you get out of the rest of us when you deny the basics of the most deadly terrorist attack on American soil. Or maybe you say it because you genuinely can't imagine that other people would try to kill ordinary people like you and me. Hopefully very few of us here know what that feels like. So you choose to diminish that feeling by saying that it was all faked.
Guess what? It's been 15 years and you're still wrong.
Skyline Towers: Cause; Building collapse due to premature removal of shoring.
Harbor Cay Condominiums: The collapse was due to numerous errors in design and construction. The concrete slabs were only 200 mm (eight inches) thick and should have been 280 mm (eleven inches) thick to satisfy the American Concrete Institute's Building Code minimum. The plastic chair spacers used to support the slab steel were 108 mm (4 ¼ inches) high, which coupled with the thin slabs led to a very small effective depth.[1]
The Harbor Cay building was not a steel-framed building. This was just reinforced concrete with terrible engineers. The Skyline Tower had a collapsed balcony section. This is truly a terrible example.
You asked the question, not my fault that you don't like the answer....
Wzrd1@49: Poop Fires Can't Melt Truther Brains!!!!!1!1!!!
John Hutchinson@59: "Don’t appeal to emotion, it has no place here. Thousands of Architects and Engineers will go on record agreeing with me, and probably tens of thousands more who agree but won’t go on record."
Hahahahah. You'll never guess what else has no place here. Twunt.
Lawrences copypasta from Popular Mechanics; with Marinara Sauce:
….luckily, there was enough support left to keep the buildings up for a lot longer than the engineers would have thought they’d be.
Not these engineers: http://www.ae911truth.org/about.html
The resulting fires, combined with the impact damage, was more than enough to result in complete structural collapse – which proceeding in the way that any structural engineer would expect – straight down.
No engineer would expect this to happen. As the tallest building in the world, these buildings were designed to withstand a Boeing 747 impact.
As each floor collapsed on to the one beneath it, it caused a chain reaction of failures, over and over again.
Dumb. There was not enough energy for the top 1/3rd to collapse the lower 2/3rd. Even if there was, say the planes hit half-way up, then would not get a free-fall acceleration.
Building 7, on the other hand, suffered significant damage from debris from both towers – which was exacerbated by large scale fires.
Not nearly as significant of the four infernos that I had listed previously. This building fell in an odd manner, like the bottom beams were severed first. If this were the case, it would be the first case of a steel-framed building collapsing from fire. Smurfs don't even believe in this sh!t.
All available evidence & all reputable structural engineers agree that the buildings did exactly what they were designed to do, until the stresses of the damage to their internal structure became too great.
Not true. Her are 2,609 reputable engineers that disagree completely with the NIST whitewash: http://www.ae911truth.org/about.html
How thrilling, Johnny!
2609 "engineers", out of between 300000 and 400000.
Hey, what is a minority again?
Why is ignoring explosive demolitions experts a bad thing when discussing explosive demolitions again? Hogan's Heroes nonsense claiming to prevail, perhaps?
Or worse, an entire repeal of the laws of physics.
I lost several friends in the WTC collapse, I also lost a cousin there as well. I lost more friends in our wars.
So, it's a major sore point with me, as sore as telling a holocaust survivor's family members that the holocaust never happened.
As in, had you said this to my face, you'd be dead. I'm being very, very serious here. I'd crush your trachea, then torture you while your airway is blocked.
I try to be a nice guy, but there's a part of me that is far from nice, it's a true monster that I previously only released on occasion in war.
I've rarely been this angered online, as in, numbering on one hand and still having room to type 45 WPM.
You've added to that number today.
Perhaps, it's wise to retire from the field.
So on another somewhat depressing but totally unrelated tangent, here we have antivax from Jamaica:
http://www.jamaicaobserver.com/columns/Let-s-hear-the-details-of-the-va…
To follow the example of Anthony #69, the US Army is testing a Zika virus candidate out of Wally Reed.
http://www.defense.gov/News/Article/Article/795226/walter-reed-scientis…
Hopefully, it'll be a winner! We don't need more born tea party. :P:p:P:p
Agreed. Hopefully the trial will be successful.
@Wzrd1
A death threat? Seriously?
I am just saying that a fire wasn't sufficient to take down Building 7. How many architects can you list that endorse the NIST report? If you want to crush someone's trachea, why don't you go after the people responsible for the attack.
Just because only 2600 have come forward, does not mean that the amount of Engineers that don't believe the NIST report is only 2600
This is likely much, much higher.
Oh, all, please do excuse my general irritability.
For one part, erroneous instructions that appear to have been a duplicate communication on thyroid medicine dosage reduction occurred, quartering my dosage, where halving it was desired.
On another part, my wife had her gallbladder removed and a umbilical hernia repaired, secondary to a 30+ year c-section scar suddenly failing and "unzipping" itself. She fell, after return to home after day surgery and I managed to catch her, causing a possible disc herniation of a previously 30 year plus bulging disc. That's resulted in painful spasms in both calves, falls that are only prevented via the aforementioned cane and overall, misery. That's checked with hydrocodone, 10 mg caplets provided, half or one, I'm sticking with 5 mg and am ignoring the "muscle relaxer" tablets, as both are CNS depressants and as that's the mode of operation of a "muscle relaxer" and the pain medication is effective in refracting spasms *and* some severe personality alterations with the "muscle relaxer", yeah, it sucks, we're dealing and I'm staying away from the tizanidine.
So, I'm feeling out of sorts and worse, some SOB turned up the gravity on me. ;)
I like the "nice me" over the other creature that I do my level best to keep buried.
Indeed, I hate that side of me intensely. It's a part of me, that doesn't mean that I have to like that part, just acknowledge it and refuse, to the best of my ability, to let it out to cause harm.
Add in, my wife has advanced osteoporosis, something previously hidden by our former primary physician and it's caused several vertebral fractures that have healed and two new fractures, stress is at an all time high.
For, she also has every cervical disc impinging upon her spinal cord and L5-S1 is trying its level best to crush the cauda equina (in lumbar spine land, there is no spinal cord, it branches, but is in the same sheath as the spinal cord and hence, isn't considered spinal cord). Without surgery, there's a real chance of either death via asphyxiation or paralysis.
Surgery that's impossible until the osteoporosis is successfully treated.
So, I'm rather a bit, erm, tense. In this, I've noticed how that nearly got the better of me, resulting in harm to a couple of others.
For, I very nearly did offer a reward for logs, head and hands of two individuals. Something not out of character in a military environment against terrorists, but entirely out of character for me at home.
I thought I had that critter chained up in adamentine chains and encased in concrete and left in an abyssal trench.
So, it seems, I have some more work to do, repressing that part of myself.
For, I far prefer the side that babies trust, even a dik-dik trusted me to feed it from my very own hands and everyone loved to be around.
A fire can damn well take down a building if it burns hot and long enough. Heat from the plane fuel and secondary fires weakened the metal/joints in buildings 1 and 2 within 1-2 hours, causing their collapse. The building 7 fire burned much longer about 9 hours--plenty of time to bring it down. As someone with a bachelor's degree in physics, what parts of heating metals (softening them greatly) and gravity (wanting to pull down all buildings and able to do so once a building has been severely structurally weakened) do you stupid truthers not understand? It's amazing every building in that whole area didn't come down that day, and it doesn't take some stupid ridiculous gubmint 'spiracy to make it happen.
@ Chris Hickie
What part of no precedent don't you understand?
There have been hotter and longer fires in steel framed buildings that are still used! The Mandarin Oriental was completely gutted, but the architect decided that the main steel was undamaged.
I think the University should revoke your Bachelors Degree in Physics with that comment.
Please look at videos of Building 7's collapse. There is no way to explain this collapse by a relatively small fire.
Herr Doktor Bimler won't comment because he knows that I am right.
Or, more likely, Herr Doktor knows the Dunning-Kruger problem and being not within an associated field, declines participation in things he knows little to nothing about.
"Hotter and longer" is rather subjective. Do you have thermal readings of the heated beams to discuss, or just a vague and subjective claim?
Death threat? I said, say that to my face, it's unlikely that I'd retain control and the results would be unfortunate.
There's another side of me, paying for assassination, I've rejected that as beyond unacceptable, as I'm not dealing with a terrorist, just an idiot.
Again, 2600 vs between an order of magnitude and spare change more and greater. Are you trying to tell me that 300k - 400k engineers are silent, but represented by a sparse 2600?! Seriously?! See that idiot part again, look up idiot, then learn what precisely Dunning-Kruger effect actually is.
Seriously! This is worse than having a double helping of moron milk poured onto a triple helping of stupid flakes in the morning.
As, you've entirely failed to grasp the concept of a minuscule minority vs a majority.
You've also failed to note, I have a clearance, I review classified information each and every day, not a hint of such a massive operation is present and our nation is infamous for being incapable of retaining any significant secret.
Hell, Congress has been leaking all manner of classified data in the Clinton mail server nonsense, resulting in one loss of life.
Oh wait, the space aliens really wanted him dead or something.
Seriously, I'm in a battle of wits against the unarmed.
Meanwhile, I have to be at work at midnight Eastern time.
You're not worth the effort and I do need at least a resident's amount of sleep.
Or ignoring the part where large sections of the building was damaged by the collapse of the Twin Towers.
Do you think that any vertical steel beams were severed by that damage, or just windows?
Did you know that Building 6 had much more damage but remained standing?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mamvq7LWqRU
If anyone can watch this building and believe in the NIST report, then there is something amiss...
Feel free to write Harvey Mudd College in Claremont California and tell them you wish to have them rescind my BS in physics because you're too f*cking stupid to understand physics. They will agree with my that your brain is approaching maximal entropy.
Anyone that believes in the NIST report rides the short bus.
Definitely not the designer of Two Shell Plaza: http://khan.princeton.edu/images/twoshellplaza1.JPG
Who is a member of Architects and Engineers for 9/11 Truth.
Did you know that there was thermite detected in the rubble?
http://benthamopen.com/contents/pdf/TOCPJ/TOCPJ-2-7.pdf
This article features electron micrographs and flame spectrometry of rubble samples.
Ah, I touched on that earlier. Antigravity thermite.
It burns away from the force of gravity, in any direction that is convenient, as long as it isn't just straight down - like *real* thermite does.
Here, a primer:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermite
Here, before you move the goalposts:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermate
Hint, a metal and its oxide will become a molten mass and flow... Downward, moved by the force of gravity. Nothing at all will make it go in any other direction.
Meanwhile, a concrete and steel building collapsed, shocking to see steel filings and oxidized steel in the rubble! It's gotta be magic or something!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Or it's steel ground the hell up by millions of pounds of collapsing steel and concrete.
Oh, don't try using magnetism to move molten steel, at that temperature, magnetism won't attract iron at all. Electrons being so overly excited and all.
@Johnny, my apologies. You're entirely correct on all points.
Back to the point, 2600 "engineers", out of between 300000 and 400000. That's a modest minority of cranks, I can find a similar number of cranks that still dispute germ theory in medicine, that doesn't make either minority correct.
Meanwhile, you ignore a report from well respected engineering teams, mathematicians and explosive demolitions experts, one here speaking of explosive demolitions and one who oddly found zero hint of any conspiracy, but has access to our most closely guarded secrets.
Including how to make a white hot, molten metal pour sideways, ignoring gravity.
@Chris Hicke
Can you explain how a localized fire can collapse an entire steel-framed building symmetrically?
Without using the NISTian Rube-Goldberg approach?
If anybody read my comment and thought I meant to say that there are no industrial arts classes taught in high school any longer, I apologize.
However, the number of classes have been much reduced, and it's been going on for a while.
There's this from the mid-80's
http://articles.latimes.com/1986-04-27/local/me-24213_1_shop-teacher
And this report form 2013
http://www.mprnews.org/story/2013/04/03/ground-level-skills-gap-high-sc…
I'd offer up more, but the 3 link rule would get me.
Et tu, Chris Hickie?? Small world.
@Wzrd1 - Please to not call the idiot 'Johnny'. We had another guy show up here a while back who used that 'nym, and I was about ready to change my handle when our host finally dropped the ban hammer on the guy.
Also, the violent rhetoric is over the line. I'm a firm believer that violence is like technology - if it doesn't solve your problem, you aren't using enough. But that really doesn't apply on this sort of forum.
@John Hutchinson
Are you this guy?
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLjNk9PAZAMx16L7ueugIDliF7TJ3knsVB
Do you and your associates sometime spell your name 'Hutchison'?
No I do know who you are talking about. For all of you physics buffs out there, here is a short demonstration of the anti-gravitational Hutchinson Effect :https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xeUgDJc6AWE
No idea how this works. This is certainly bizarre.
http://skepdic.com/hutchisonhoax.html
This Hutchison guy is freakin' nuts ...
@Wzrd1
I think that this classifies as longer and hotter:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3B1OnhSucP8
Again, this building still stands to this day. The architect used the original steel beams when it was re-built. No damage to the steel.
So why don't most engineers sign up for Architects and Engineers for 9/11 Truth? I think it is because this was made taboo by the mass media. They lump 9/11 truthers in with the flat-earth and the alien crown, that's why.
Being a 9/11 truther invites a good deal of ridicule from certain authoritarian groups, as can be plainly seen here.
If the AMA endorsed the controlled demolition theory, would you endorse it too?
See, this is why I was confused. In your post, you say "Hutchinson Effect", but the page in the link is titled "hutchison effect".
Are you the guy in the video you linked to?
As far as how it works, I offer this (slightly edited for readability) -
http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/John_Hutchison
Scolds for using an appeal to emotion and in the same paragraph uses an appeal to popularity and appeal to a secret popularity.
You'd do well to choose your insults more wisely around here.
Hutchison has allied himself with Judy Wood, the most lunatic of all 9/11 "researchers" who is so far out that even the truther engineers and architects have disassociated themselves from her. Her crackpot theory is that a death ray from outer space "dustified" the WTC buildings. Apparently this space beam uses Hutchison's effect or something something energy something.
http://911debunkers.blogspot.ca/2011/05/architects-and-engineers-for-91…
Of course everyone knows it was the Jews, not a space beam.
Wzrd1 said: And some trivia, the lower the octane rating, the hotter the fuel burns.
I don't think so. The octane rating is a very particular anti-knock measurement specific to combustion engines, it is more related to volume (compression) than it is to enthalpy. Here are the flame temperatures of short-chain alkanes: http://www.vias.org/genchem/orgcomp_alkanes_reactions.html
Flame temperature is completely independent of the anti-knock compression measurements of Octane Ratings.
Note that n-heptane has an octane rating of zero. Keep that in mind when looking at these adiabatic flame temperatures:
http://www.engineeringtoolbox.com/adiabatic-flame-temperature-d_996.html
Hehe, Orac is "anonymous"
"Vibrations. It always has to be vibrations with quacks."
Well, yeah...Its the vibe of the thing....
https://youtu.be/wJuXIq7OazQ
Another at least part 'woo-cruise, this one given by the Chinese:
https://warisboring.com/your-health-my-pursuit-chinas-hospital-ship-pro…
Figured someone here might be interested.
Gilbert: Quit lying. From the general tone of your posts- and your general inability to think- I'd be surprised if you passed high school. Also, most physicists understand how gravity works. You don't.
PROPAGANDA & PROPAGANDISTS
“The conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized habits and opinions of the masses is an important element in democratic society. Those who manipulate this unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power of our country. …We are governed, our minds are molded, our tastes formed, our ideas suggested, largely by men we have never heard of. This is a logical result of the way in which our democratic society is organized. Vast numbers of human beings must cooperate in this manner if they are to live together as a smoothly functioning society. …In almost every act of our daily lives, whether in the sphere of politics or business, in our social conduct or our ethical thinking, we are dominated by the relatively small number of persons…who understand the mental processes and social patterns of the masses. It is they who pull the wires which control the public mind.”~Edward L. Bernays, Propaganda
. . . . . .
THE HEGELIAN DIALECTIC & THE STRATEGY OF TENSION
* Thesis/Antithesis/Synthesis
> Cop Killer/Killer Cop
> Terrorist/Antiterrorist
> War/Peace
> Truther/Liar
> Tension/Sedation
> Denial/Lucidity
> Past/Future
> Fiction/Fact
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
* Synthesis = FULL SPECTRUM DOMINANCE
\\][//
Conspiracy Theories
Cass R. Sunstein*
Adrian Vermeule**
Abstract
“Many millions of people hold conspiracy theories; they believe that powerful
people have worked together in order to withhold the truth about some important
practice or some terrible event. A recent example is the belief, widespread in some parts of the world, that the attacks of 9/11 were carried out not by Al Qaeda, but by Israel or the United States. Those who subscribe to conspiracy theories may create serious risks, including risks of violence, and the existence of such theories raises significant challenges for policy and law. The first challenge is to understand the mechanisms by which conspiracy theories prosper; the second challenge is to understand how such theories might be undermined. Such theories typically spread as a result of identifiable cognitive blunders, operating in conjunction with informational and reputational influences. A distinctive feature of conspiracy theories is their self-sealing quality.
Conspiracy theorists are not likely to be persuaded by an attempt to dispel their theories; they may even characterize that very attempt as further proof of the conspiracy. Because those who hold conspiracy theories typically suffer from a “crippled epistemology,” in accordance with which it is rational to hold such theories, the best response consists in cognitive infiltration of extremist groups. Various policy dilemmas, such as the question whether it is better for government to rebut conspiracy theories or to ignore them, are explored in this light. ”
http://www.law.uchicago.edu/files/files/387.pdf
Also see: CIA Document #1035-960 as well as Sunstein on Conspiracy Theories:
\\][//
I need look no further than Operation Ajax, a real conspiracy to overthrow the democratic government of Iran and install the Shah as leader, who was friendly toward UK oil interests.
A Top Secret, with full alphabet soup in caveats, which remained secret until just before the ink dried on the pages documenting the operation.
Do fuck off, Fendlesworth. Maybe you could keep Timmeh as a pet.
Thanks Narad..that was hilarious. I intend to do a conspiracy bingo card later,so my friends and I, can read the article together and play.
Dammit! I wasn't going to drink tonight, but Laura reminding me of the Jameson in the pantry.
Jameson's alright, but I personally prefer Black Bush. Not quite as sweet, but super smooth.
That Oxysilver 528 stuff: anyone any idea why silver would be OK, but mercury and aluminium and the like pollute precious bodily fluids?
Would gold be OK? And would it make any difference if it was white gold, rose gold or that very yellow gold they often use in Greece?
And what about palladium or platinum?
Yours,
Confused of Northumberland
Silver was and still is used for its antibiotic properties, but it's largely phased out in favor of antibiotics for infections. The 528 crap is just that, crap marketed as magical woo to sell their product.
The use of silver as an antibiotic also runs the risk of causing argyria, which is a permanent condition.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argyria
Mercury was used in the form of thiomersal as a preservative, in trace quantities. It's not biologically available and it is 50 times more effective as phenol against staphylococcus aureus.
Aluminum compounds are used as an adjunct in some vaccines, again, in trace quantities and much is made about the most common metal on the planet, for no readily apparent reason. Seriously, after oxygen and silicon, aluminum is the most abundant metal on earth, so if it were toxic, we should be quite extinct! Using the aluminum salts means that one can use less vaccine to accomplish immunity.
Gold is gold, white gold just has white metal, such as nickle in it. Gold salts are injected for the treatment of arthritis, no clue how that works pharmacologically , but it apparently is helpful for some patients.
Rose gold merely has copper added to the gold.
I'm aware of no medical usage of platinum or palladium salts and honestly, they're so expensive, it's unlikely anyone will try to use them for any form of drug. That said, both are extremely valuable catalysts in industry and even catalytic converters in motor vehicles.
Oxaliplatin.
@Herr Doktor Bimler #110, thanks! I didn't know about that platinum based medication.
I consider a day successful if I learn something new. :)
Just landed in Madrid. Faced with the choice between the Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza collection or many beverages at Irreale.
Dear HDB: If you go by the Prado, raise a glass or two to La Maja (my very favorite painting in the world - I have 2 hanging in my house - an oil copy and a poster). Seeing her in real life was a highlight of my (long ago) high school years, and I'm hoping to get back to see her again one day.
I’m aware of no medical usage of platinum or palladium salts
Cisplatin has been around for a long time, but that's real chemotherapy – does that count? Approved in the US according to Wikipedia in 1978.
@Chemmomo, already addressed. That made my day a success, as I learned something new! :)
I honestly didn't know that. But, I don't track chemotherapy drugs, it's far outside of my lane these days.
Just as I was surprised to learn of Methimazole for hyperthyroid disease, as that didn't exist all that long ago.
Now, it's saving me from thyroid ablation and by extension, saving my life.
I presented, after what my endocrinologist and I agree, was likely a long occult case of Grave's disease, a course of 25 - 30 years before I finally decompensated enough to show significant symptoms.
Weight loss, quite non-specific and sudden. BP was slow in elevating, but it took off like a rocket at the end of last year! Mental symptoms, I was worried that I might have something more dire going on, such as dementia.
First surprise, blood pressure of 200/100, pulse 128. I couldn't achieve that pulse the year before if I was walking in a forced march of 15 miles with my 50 pound pack! Then, the ECG strip was run, LVH and atrial flutter. Labs confirmed hyperthyroid.
Now, it's well controlled, my beta blockers are BID now at humanly sustainable levels (I was at 350 mg per day, divided in half(ish)).
But, the drug was far outside of my lane. I did battlefield EMS type of treatment, small clinic treatments, etc.
That's why they make doctors. :)
While, I did have an interest in becoming a physician at one point, one look at what I'd owe the student loan sharks convinced me otherwise. One look at what insurance companies put practices through justified that dismissal. :/
Cisplatin has been around for a long time, but that's real chemotherapy – does that count? Approved in the US according to Wikipedia in 1978.
Yes, platinum-based chemotherapy has been around quite a long time. Cisplatin was the first. Now there are several: Oxaliplatin, Carboplatin, Nedaplatin. There are several more in clinical trials, as well.
But, but, but...Wzrd @109 aren't they all still metals and some of them even heavy and all kemikulz?
I must make my sarcasm more obvious in some posts than just using oblique references to Strangelove and old British newspaper gags...
Well, we must preserve our purity of essence. :)
I actually didn't know about the platinum chemotherapy drugs, but then, those are far from my experience base. My bag was trauma care, preventative medicine, field sanitation, etc.
I'll have to shoehorn in some reading on the drugs, to learn of the pharmacology of them. :)
Chris @82: Fellow Mudder! I knew there was a reason you sounded extra smart! :)
Hey JH: So, if your ridiculous assumption that the buildings were rigged to explode is true, who did it? The US government? Or Al Qaeda? (Who, you should note, had already tried to blow up the WTC.) Occam's razor: use it.
So, I was tempted to respond to the 9/11 Truther again....but I realize that it is a waste of time, given how far down the rabbit hole a person like that has to be.
So instead, I'll just leave this here again:
http://www.popularmechanics.com/military/a49/1227842/
http://www.debunking911.com/pull.htm
Pfft. That's what Everyman, Harley Shirt Guy knows
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p34XrI2Fm6I
WTC7 collapse reported 20 minutes before it did
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ltP2t9nq9fI
Oh, wow. The press fucked up a report. That never happens!
Oh, say like when ABC news reported fireworks in Baghdad, at the start of Gulf War I.
And many other egregious errors before and since.
Now, riddle me this. How is it that a nation infamous for its inability to keep a secret has somehow magically managed to keep just this singular secret? Out of a cast of literally thousands of workers that'd be required, not a single one ran his mouth.
Indeed, why isn't any conspiracy reported on JWICS or SIPRnet (Google them)? I can find nuclear launch codes easier than this alleged conspiracy!
But, most importantly, how did they get gravity to go sideways to make thermite ignore the law of gravity?
Oh, if you're going to go with thermate, it's really SSDD, same principle, gravity drags the molten stream downward.
I've used both quite a bit and even in civilian life, I'm known to mix up some thermite to destroy a stack of hard drives. I set it up in a clay flower pot, with a sand reservoir to distribute the heat a bit.
Or how thousands of dump trucks would have had to cart off cut columns, requiring the removal of walls throughout every floor, but the walls were reinstalled and perfectly in place each weekday morning?
Or even, howinhell det cord that'd have to be strung from each column to be cut with explosive, wasn't noticed? It's not like you can make 90 degree bends with it, it'd interrupt the shockwave propagation within the jacket.
If you don't know what det cord is, it's used to tie multiple charges together so that they essentially go off at nearly the same time (microseconds apart), typically, it's RDX in a plastic jacket a quarter inch in diameter.
RDX, of course, being a high explosive and indeed, is part of both Semtex and C4.
Even better, how was a blast initiated? Electric blasting caps? Non-electric blasting caps? Chemical initiators to trigger the blasting caps?
More importantly, why is it so hard to believe that a quarter million pounds of kerosene could initiate a major fire in a building chock full of paper? Not to mention wood used in some parts of interior construction and desks.
I'll not wait up for your response. Midnight shift sucks, but I'll not ask others to work a shift that I wouldn't work.
But, an upside, tonight is my "Friday".
Although, tomorrow, I have to go with my wife to another specialist's appointment right after work. :/
We're both eager to learn what the hematologist thinks is causing her red blood cells to be high, hematocrit to be high and iron levels to be high, plus a high white blood cell count. Tis a head scratcher!
I'd think hemochromatosis, but the white cell count is highly anomalous.
Oh well, that's why there are hematologists, to figure out things that this old SF medic can't figure out. ;)
We don't need no steenking platinum-based drugs.
I hope everyone here is heading to Grapevine, Texas in October for the Truth About Cancer symposium, starring luminaries like Stan Burzynski, G. Edward Griffin, Mike Adams and many many more. It's only $497 per ticket for the three-day event, and you get a signed copy of Ty Bollinger's book!
Hurry, tickets are going fast.
@DB #123, screw you! No collected rainwater or grain alcohol?! Commie!!!
So anyway, it's been noted more than once that AoA has been boring as hell lately. Aside from Kostoff finding himself trying to argue that no, AGW isn't like the other conspiracies, just sad.
I am thus cheered to be able to report the following self-parodic derring-do interspersed among the comments in yet another installment of Anne Dachel Has No Talent for (Post-) Apocalyptic Narrative:
Yes, social supports are necessary in a deinstitutionalized world. No, making up weird-ass stereotypes does not suggest the presence of relevant thought.
Len Whorowitz? OMG.
Did he ever try to explain how SV40/HIV targets only relatively young gays, prostitues, and IV drug users when the polio vaccine was given to an epidemiologically representative population?
Can he tell me why my plants died when I tuned my guitar to 528Hz?
This man is the epitome of shock-journalism, who manufactures stupidness out of whole cloth.
Perhaps when his followers realize that 528Hz doesn't make them any happier than 440Hz, he will start speculating that polio is actually SV20 that had contaminated the diptheria vaccine in the 30's. That, or some other BS.
Just fake it. Present fiction as reality.
Oh they're just getting 'round to noticing adult autistics and need for supports? What on Earth would they do without stereotypes though? Only head-banging, incontinent, non-verbal people are the only true autistics after all. /sarcasm.
Jesus of Naradeth, you're right!
Moreover Narad at AoA seems either to have forgotten his quirky sense of humour or may just have run out of exclamation marks, so here's a bunch of 'em you might want to pass on: !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
If anybody read my comment and thought I meant to say that there are no industrial arts classes taught in high school any longer, I apologize.
It is entirely possible that our rural school district, with its single high school, was a throwback; we had at least wood, metal, and electrical shop, and I might be missing something.
Please to not call the idiot ‘Johnny’. We had another guy show up here a while back who used that ‘nym, and I was about ready to change my handle when our host finally dropped the ban hammer on the guy.
I believe this was one of Phildo's sockpuppets, if memory serves.
Dachel seems to be unaware that War Dogs is not a children's movie, at least if she still claims that there are no supports for autistic adults yet because "wave of autism."
Please send Ducados at your earliest convenience.
Have you tried Gauloises?
It was more of a sentimental thing than a serious request.
Please send Ducados at your earliest convenience.
Have you tried Gauloises?
And then there are these.
Yesterday good old Mikey-boy perseverated upon the various crimes of Hillary Clinton.
I find that the other idiot ( prn.fm) similarly carries on about politics rather than health ( which might after all be a good thing as he won't be misleading anyone into not vaccinating or using SBM).
Interestingly, the candidate herself is about to speak about the alt-right and all of its fringiest hangers on.
I am enjoying this so much as I have spent the last several years ( starting during the financial crisis reading how the woo-meisters picked up alt-politics** as well as alt med ( in their alt media stylings).
This crap has goner mainstream.
** usually linked to in the darkest, dustiest corners of their despicable carp-laden sites.
has GONE
Yiii! that should be CRAP-laden.
altho' carp are nearly as bad
re AoA
Right, boring as h3ll.
Both they and TMR are serving up Paul Thomas and Jennifer Margulies's latest tome.
raise a glass or two to La Maja (my very favorite painting in the world – I have 2 hanging in my house – an oil copy and a poster).
If you look closely, the clothed version has larger pupils than the nude one, so in theory she is sending stronger signals of interest. And yet more people are looking at the nude version. It is a mystery.
Wzrd1 #123, I guess there is no such thing as linear thermate (the sulfer is eutectic lowering melting temperatures) cutting charges, hu?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wn-MCCZ3O1M
@Gilbert, cute, a 200 millisecond or so burst from what essentially is a small rocket engine magically scales up to cut steel girders that are many times larger than that rebar.
Did you know that solid rocket motors are frequently thermate type devices. One reason that they're so unweildy is all of the additional shielding to keep the propellant exiting the rocket nozzle.
So, rather than have a spider's web of det cord, we have a web of det cord and six foot minimum rocket engines being invisible in those offices!
Are you sure you don't want to instead go with condensed antimatter devices? Otherwise, you'll end up with devices larger than the building itself!
But, do keep on trying.
Ever use a termite grenade? I have, many times. The jet comes out of the bottom and directs downward at 32 feet per second squared.
That reminds me, I have to pick up some iron filings and other goodies, got a bunch of hard drives to destroy.
Off topic, I now know why I was having spasms in my legs all afternoon. Got a large thunderstorm raising merry hell overhead.
Of course, my wife, for once, wanted to go shopping... :/
Denice, I thought carp _have_ gone mainstream.
They're even leaping into the woo boats.
@DB # 143, damn! I need to get a bigger boat (or actually, a boat).
Carp can be some mighty fine eating! Right up there with catfish, of which I can never get enough of (although, cleaning them is one of the more disgusting experiences one can have, nearly as bad as cleaning squid).
As I think back, I recall that not only was trying to bum squares in Spain a dicey proposition (harmonica helped), but that I saw one fellow sporting a T-shirt that expressed hostility toward so much as being asked for a light.
This at least led to a frothing, deranged rant from Laura Hayes, but Cynthia Parker seems to feel compelled to interject her droning script, thus derailing the amusement train.
@ Narad and other Ciggie Fans
Indonesian hand-rolled Kreteks also are lovely. Some of the best are Djarum 76's and GG Djaja.
These two have so much clove they will make your mouth numb.
@Ted Striker #147, I had Djarum 76's, yeah, plenty of clove in them.
I rather enjoyed them.
I didn't buy more though, as I was wanting tobacco, rather than clove. But, it was an interesting experience.
By your own arguments, Wzrd1, the steel did not need to melt but only be 'weakened'. Watch that six second video again and know that it scales upward pretty well. I'm sure a 'demolitions expert' such as yourself can see the implications of this.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OmuzyWC60eE
@Gilbert, yes, I can indeed see how it'd scale up to a six to ten foot long rocket, occupying most of each floor and still requiring concrete by the hundreds of tons to be removed.
BTW, molten aluminum flows the very same way and oxidizes in a manner that can make it appear to be thermite.
All that video shows is that it got hot enough for softer metals, like aluminum to melt, flow and ignite when it reached open air.
Oxidizing to iron III oxide isn't difficult. I also don't need nano powdered thermite, I'm not building a damned rocket! It just has to burn through the drive casings and platters. :)
That said, all of the stuff I used in the military was made by the lowest bidder. Even my "custom" M1911, (which I ordered a stock GI model). I shot as well as everyone else, with their custom race guns. :)
Fail. You need iron III oxide such as the scale that forms on top of a wood stove. A good way to make it otherwise is through electrolysis of steel (ac, dc doesn't matter) and then aluminum gutter nails or score some aluminum-based radiator stop leak and pulverize that futher.
Making the components through electrolysis yeilds nano-thermite and it is orders of magnitude above the stuff ya'll used in the military.
I should just stop. This is no place to talk about cigarettes.
But I will say just one thing in response to Wzrd1; all Kreteks have cloves, but they are still predominantly tobacco. The 76's represent the maximum in clove concentration, but there are others that are significantly less clovey.
I have tried over 30 types. This is too many, because some are so outclassed that there is only about a 15 types worth smoking.
Well, that is a bitch and a half. But 'spasms'?? I can understand bursitis flaring up as the pressure drops but 'spasms'?? Psycosomatic. Talking from a mesoscale perspective, the pressure doesn't drop that much under a single summer storm. My sympathy anyways.
Couldn't be psychosomatic when I didn't know that weather was coming in hours later.
It could be due to barometric pressure changes and edema causing a loss of equilibrium in pressures within the injured region and compressing nerve roots.
I injured my back a couple of weeks ago, after I caught my wife from falling after laproscopic gallbladder removal surgery and a repair of a c-section abdominal scar, which had created a umbilical hernia.
Since, I've had spasms in my calves (mostly), with one calf having spasms so severe and lateral in attempted motion, I was wondering if my upper ankle was going to twist off.
Doctor prescribed hydrocodone, 10 mg, split caplets or a single caplet. I had to take precisely two over the past two weeks and change, the rest have been the 5 mg dosage. He also prescribed a "muscle relaxer", which is a CNS depressant.
As opioids are by nature CNS depressants, I held off on the tizanidine, to excellent effect. The one time that I did try a dose, shortly after injury, left me with personality changes that I loathed.
That all said, the spasms have altered in range, moving also into one thigh.
I'll still have to give it a bit more time before an MRI would be revealing of problems.
However, I've had an L4-L5 disc that has been bulging for 30+ years. It's entirely possible that that disc has finally given up the ghost under the strain of moving so rapidly and out of balance to catch her.
Most of the time, a good hot bath resolves the usual minor spasms. Since injury, not so. :/
Excuse me as we enjoy dinner. Smoked pork chops, green beans and mashed potatoes.
Several of my preferred leafy greens are still prohibited, due to their iodine content.
Are you implying that thermite was used to take down the 3 WTC towers?
Actually, Ted Striker, I hold that it was overpressured water heaters floor by floor with the crowning jewel of the depleted uranium mass damper burning for months afterward.
Wait. What? Yes, Thermate does come to mind.
@ John Hutchinson #69:
You're an idiot. In the first place there were no 747s when the WTC was designed. It was designed to withstand impacts from 707s.
Secondly, the key word is impact. Nobody even thought about burning fuel. Aside from the 757 being much larger, the planes had just taken off and were completely full of fuel--a possibility that nobody would have contemplated even if they had thought of the fuel problem.
@The Very Reverend Battleaxe of Knowledge #158, indeed, hence my earlier mention of 200000 pounds of fuel or even "a quarter million pounds of fuel".
Airlines and pilots use the weight of the fuel, rather than the liquid measure of it, to balance the aircraft and keep the aircraft within its performance envelope when taking off.
But, long haul flights, both across the continent and transatlantic, carry one hell of a lot of fuel.
Ignoring that, as well as all flammable items within the offices being accelerated into brish fires is as idiotic as claiming that the building was hit with a "mini nuke" (yet another version of the conspiracy theory, which finally did die off).
Dunning-Kruger is strong in some folk. :/
In response to #158
This is from the Managaer of the WTC's construction:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9fQlC2AIWrY
Here he speaks of 707 collisions on the integrity of the buildings.
In response to #69
Here are size differences between members of the 7X7 class of passenger jets: https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/736x/a7/29/0e/a7290e20dad3528a5f5b…
Notice how the 747 is the largest, and the 717 is tiny by comparison.
Excuse me. That was not a good graphic. This one here shows the difference between a 707 and a 767, the plane that hit the WTC.
For what it's worth to the conspiracy theorists.
Add in the fact that the 767-300ER carries 25,165 more pounds of payload than the 747-400. Payload carried is revenue for the airline, so they pack in cargo, mail and every other revenue item that can bring a return on the investment on the aircraft.http://planes.axlegeeks.com/compare/275-285/Boeing-747-400-vs-Boeing-76…
As I recall, the entire 767 class also was constructed with, at the time, far more composite elements than the 747, which was largely all aluminum.
Baggage capacity for a 747-400, 999 cubic feet, 767-300ER, 3771 cubic feet. That's a *lot* more to burn as well!
The 747-400 did have a higher fuel capacity, but as it carried twice as many passengers in a much larger area (don't get me started on leg room these days, or lack thereof), the additional fuel wasn't necessary.
@HDB: actually, one thing I like about La Maja is that she's supposedly the first painted nude with pubic hair. You look at most of the nudes and they have no body hair at all. The story of the 2 Majas, naked and clothed, is also amusing. I enjoyed my trip to the Prado. We had a great guide (who tolerated 11 US high schoolers quite nicely).
I injured my back a couple of weeks ago
I can commiserate with that one, Wzrd1 #155; I to have recently messed up an old strain to where when I bent down to spit out the toothpaste I all of a sudden nearly couldn't get back up.
I suspect I have some herniated disks myself -- my arm will go tingly sometimes when driving. Back in the day riding a motorcycle would set it off like that in the same distance along my commute; There's the overpass. Yep, there goes my arm.
It is an old skateboard injury as I flipped backward on the slick garage floor. I didn't think anything of it until the bell rang in 9th grade english class and I just could not get up -- sitting there as the next class filed in. Then there was the time a neighbor was at the door offering two cleaned squirrels -- I reached out to take them and down I went like I was boughing to him!
@ Dangerous Bacon:
I always remember my mother bringing home smoked carp along with other Jewish fish delicacies - none of which I'd ever eat. I even would refuse lox!
( what was wrong with me?)
@ Gilbert
Then there was the time a neighbor was at the door offering two cleaned squirrels
What?
If I want to eat a squirrel every now and again, that's my buisiness.
Tree rats, get in mah belly.
I love squirrels! You big meanie!
Have you ever made a PVC squirrel trap? I have.
Set a PVC tube at 45° to the vertical; like this "/" against a tree. Cap the bottom and run peanut butter down the length of the inside. The squirrel will eat the peanut butter until it cannot reach anymore.
Then, get this, the squirrel will actually slide down the tube in an attempt to retrieve more peaunut butter. He is now trapped.
I have always let them go.
Gilbert, careful about squirrels in the West of North America. Sometimes they carry plague, and the fleas will jump on you when you kill them.
Yea, I like them to; I've not been squirrel hunting in many, many moons. They are pretty entertaining when they're not doing that two-step thing in front of a moving truck. While I've never intentionally trapped one, I have had the occasion to pull the french drain from the gutter as they sometimes fall in -- It's torture to listen to them trying to get traction back out.
I didn't know about the flea thing, JustaTech. Though we did wash with alcohol after cleaning to prevent rabbit fever (tularemia).
@Gilbert.............Do you eat opossums too?
Fascinating pictures of high-rise fires by the way; I had no idea that these happen frequently.
I looked and found a partial collapse from fire. The Windsor Tower in Madrid was totally engulfed in 2005!
I've never eaten 'possum that I'm aware of... Though I'm not sure about roadkill and school lunch programs.
https://www.prisonlegalnews.org/news/1993/may/15/road-kill-for-washingt…
Mmm, mmm. Something good, straight from the hood. Here we have tasty venison shot with a Buick less than four days ago...
The Windsor was mostly concrete and rebar (reinforced concrete) with outer steel perimeter columns.
http://www.debunking911.com/madrid.htm
Ok. I'll give them that one. Still, there was no total crushdown(?) of an obviously weakened, fully engaged building.