Fine Young Cannibals' version of Elvis Presley's Suspicious Minds.

ROCK!!!

Quote from SamH :

Umm.. I did wildly profess my love for JTbo, actually, but only to scare the living shit out of him. Apparently I succeeded beyond my wildest expectations

We should all send JTbo a private message of honest, beefy man-love, just to show him he's wanted. Feel free to include HDR pics of suggestively-shaped vegetables.

Thanks Mazz4200 :up: I've heard of Dr Griffin's criticism but not read it. Now I shall depart, lest I attract more stern disapproval from the keepers of the thread.

You had me at

Quote :

This doesn't really affect PS3 users

:up:

Quote from Stang70Fastback :

Ughhh...
*sigh*

I read your posts, thanks for your concern. This thread isn't about you and my post wan't directed at you personally, but of course in a forum you're free to respond to anything you like. However, I don't see the value in sighing and groaning like some frustrated 14-year old, throwing in the odd CAPS LOCK assault and accusing me of rank ignorance. Certainly doesn't add any credibility to your content.

I expressed my doubts. That's all. Then I shared some info I found interesting and which only served to strengthen those doubts. If people are going to take that personally or as some kind of sign that I'm blatantly ignoring their sage wisdom, I can't help that. This thread's going around in facking circles anyway, like every other thread on this topic inevitably does.

Quote from Sam :

I've been meaning to mention this so many times, and yet it's never slotted in. This idea that the buildings came down on their own footprint - this is just not true. It's a myth. The buildings came down over a much larger area than their footprint. They came down like a Mr Whippy.. like a dog turd. The tops of the buildings came down vertically almost like freefall, but the structures beneath peeled out like bananas.

In a controlled demo, everything is removed from the buildings which can be removed to assist the implosion (ie provide as little resistance as possible) but still leave the structure standing. When the implosion happens they're just destroying an empty shell. The WTC towers didn't come down perfectly, there's no doubt about that. There was resistance every step of the way from walls, glass, exterior steel columns & concrete (the "peeling" effect, the great clouds of dust), interior office fixtures etc., hence the slight topple of one of the towers and the massive spread of debris on the ground. In the end though, it was about as near-perfect a footprint as you can probably expect from two fully-fitted 110-storey buildings.

Utterly regardles of the cause, the extremely fast free-fall of both towers is always going to bother me. Granted, it could be a design flaw, as someone suggested. If that's so, I'm wondering how this flaw could affect both buildings in exactly the same way (ie causing total, instant collapse) when the airliner impacts on each building were dozens of floors apart, on different angles of approach, causing different patterns of damage.

Last edited by Hankstar, Thu, 1 May 2008 02:20.

Quote from kevbo :

How the hell do demolition experts make a living when buildings just fall like that naturally nearly all the time?

Well, you could say that demolition "experts" have really been running a highly successful and high-paying scam for the last century. That, or million (plus)-ton steel-framed buildings simply don't and can't implode neatly, which begs an obvious question...

Here are reproductions of Engineering News articles from the late 60s/early 70s giving details about the WTC construction (interesting articles in and of themselves actually). I found this particularly interesting:

Quote :

Individual columns in the lower core section, measuring 52 x 22 in. in plan, are formed of 5 and 3-in, plate into almost solid steel shafts that weigh up to 56 tons.

That's a seriously hefty piece of metal. I wonder if anyone here could be bothered working out how much heat it would take to weaken just one column sufficiently to make it fail, all at once, and fall straight down, not just bend or fall over. They'd then have to multiply that by the total number of core columns (16 I think) and work out the probability of that exact same scenario happening twice, in identical buildings with exactly the same effect (I'm sure a demolition expert or a structural engineer could have a decent crack at it).

I'm sure someone will mention the "pancake theory" (one floor smacking onto the one below, perfectly flat and even, in sequence, fast enough to collapse the tower, at the same time as every single steel support column in the core fails at precisely the same time as each other) but going by what I saw (buildings almost falling from the bottom up) as well as what I've just read about the floor design & various load-bearing capacities of floors and floor supports, that seems less likely to me than ever.

Hypotheticals and my non-engineering background aside, these articles give a good indication of how the WTC towers were built and the methods and materials used. These things were tough as hell and, it seems to me anyway, should've taken something a little more substantial than a mostly hollow aluminium & plastic aircraft to bring down. We're talking a few hundred tons of thin aluminium plate & plastic reducing the largest skyscraper in the world, constructed on a skeleton of over 200,000 tons of solid steel columns many feet thick, to rubble in seconds. Twice. I don't have any theories myself (I'm suprised anyone does, including the government, considering the shameful lack of evidence), but that does not compute.

Last edited by Hankstar, Wed, 30 Apr 2008 23:41.

Syd Barrett: I've got a bike, you can ride it if you like, it's got a basket, a bell that rings and things to make it look good. I'd give it to you if I could, but I borrowed it.

Kurt Cobain: just because you're paranoid, don't mean they're not after you.

Quote from Stang70Fastback :

So would a plane.

I know - useless statement - but I stand by my 'theory.'

Thermite isn't my theory, it's just a theory.

Thermite's a plausible theory in my opinion (I've seen footage of the stuff in action - don't spill it on yourself ok?), but really no more or less plausible than many other theories that have done the rounds. It really just begs more questions too: if it was there, how did it get there; who put it there; who was involved & what the hell were they thinking? etc. Don't really want to go down that road tbh, certainly not without evidence.

But, unfortunately, every theory - official, plausible, foil-hat or otherwise - will unfortunately have to remain just a theory, thanks to the inexplicable, baffling removal & destruction of millions of tons of physical evidence from the biggest crime scene in US history. That is my problem with the official story. Whether I agree with it is irrelevant - it just seems that there's no way at all to ever confirm or disprove it. For someone even slightly scientifically minded that's really, really frustrating. For someone with plenty of reasons (eight years' worth) to distrust the Bush administration it's definitely something (else) that needs to be investigated thoroughly. For someone who's a flat-out paranoid I guess would practically be an admission of guilt. For the record, I only fall into the first two categories.

Last edited by Hankstar, Wed, 30 Apr 2008 03:29.

Theoretically, you don't need mini-nukes. Thermite charges would do it.

Theoretically.

The Pentagon's just a front anyway - practically an empty shell. Everyone knows it's the cap of a massive silo which contains the Presidential "In Case Of Nukular Apocamalypse" Escape Ark and all the equipment needed to start a New America on Mars (including vital brush-clearing tools, golf clubs and plenty of room for the Saud royal family and the Fox News team). Clearly the attackers meant to expose this Ark and cut off the President's last escape option before unleashing all those Iranian A-bombs. Maybe it was successful. Maybe the Escape Ark is what They don't want you to see on that videotape!

The footage from all the cameras around the Pentagon is one thing that could conceivably end a lot of this speculation. It's simple, really: show unambiguous footage (ie not 5 frames of something that might be ... something) of an actual plane hitting the actual Pentagon or people will continue to invent their own reasons for the damage. They can't seriously claim "security reasons" or anything else for keeping it secret - everyone in the world knows what the Pentagon looks like from the outside. If the footage is there and clearly shows an airliner and not (as some alternative theories state) a missile, UAV or something other than a passenger aircraft, let the world see it. There's really no reason not to. Unless, of course, there is a reason not to. Which I'll leave to the theorists to discuss.

I still wonder why anyone hijacking a plane for a kamikaze mission in Washington DC would attack the Pentagon and not aim it squarely at the Whitehouse anyway. Surely the decisions made in that building are the main source of hatred of the US in the Mid East. The Pentagon's just the muscle, not the brains.

Wish I could see the world in black & white absolutes like some people on this forum. Life would be so much simpler. I certainly wouldn't have to think before I said anything. I'd just see a world full of "good guys" and "bad guys": good guys only do good things, bad guys only do bad things. No shades of grey anywhere: no good guys doing bad things; no good guys bribing, bullying or coercing bad guys to do bad things to other bad guys (until it no longer suits the good guys, at which time the deal's off and the bad guy is finally treated as such); no bad guys doing the same; no bad guys doing good things (oh, heavens no); no bad guys who might actually have a legitimate complaint about how they're being treated by the good guys (who ignore them - they're only bad guys after all); no countries full of a mix of good and bad guys, nothing like that at all. Nothing that actually resembles the world we live in.

Yep, as good guys (the only other option being a bad guy), we must destroy the bad guys and no rules shall ever apply to how we conduct ourselves. If you're not with the good guys, you're with the bad guys, and the only good bad guy is a dead bad guy. So saddle up & pick a side. Simple. Yeah, I really wish I could see the word like a goddam Chuck Norris film.

Last edited by Hankstar, Sun, 27 Apr 2008 02:59.

Thanks Halo :up:

th84: I hear it can be difficult being a godless heathen in the south (I assume "Ga." stands for Georgia). Really sad that your folks were scaring your kid's pants off about hell (devil-belief & hell stories are why my mother removed my brothers and I from sunday school when I was about 5 - that's freaking awful shit to teach kids and our local church was actually pretty mild. I'd hate to think what really devout kids get taught).

Ever copped other kinds of holy crap from your pious neighbours?

Northwoods is a grim, evil chapter in American history and considering the paranoid secrecy and depraved indifference to life, foreign or domestic, of the current regime (which puts even Nixon's reign to shame) I really wouldn't put any nefarious, Machiavellian machination past them. But, naturally, I reserve judgement until evidence is presented

Gracias Rocks, you will be the first person in Spain to know when we're coming
We're very happy with the production on these and we're very excited about how the album will sound. I better go have a nap, we're playing in four hours.

Then you have more faith in Bush than he deserves.

9/11 theories aside, you said it yourself: al-Qaeda took responsibility for the attacks (not the Afghan regime - and no, the Taliban sheltering al-Qaeda does not consitute grounds for an invasion any more than Iraq's non-existent WMDs or non-existent links to al-Qaeda did) and the hijackers were Saudi (not Iraqi, not Afghani) - so why the hell are there a million dead Afghans & Iraqis and why have 4000 more Americans died in those countries? People opposed to the war(s) want those questions answered and they're angry that a straight answer from the Whitehouse is harder to come by than a bacon sandwich in Jerusalem. When people are angry and denied the truth, they start asking themselves why the truth isn't forthcoming. A side-effect of not knowing and really wanting to know is providing one's own answers, filling in the blanks in the form of speculation and theorising, which can sometimes get out of hand. Religions do that kind of gap-filling all the time - got a hole in your knowledge? God can fill it. But that's another thread.

Last edited by Hankstar, Thu, 24 Apr 2008 05:54.

WTC 7 may be a small issue in and of itself, especially compared to WTC 1&2, the Pentagon and Pennsylvania, but it's still an unanswered question. As such it's one of many unanswered questions regarding 9/11 and is also symptomatic of the massive culture of inexplicable governmental secrecy and enormous pressure to find a scapegoat & go to war that immediately sprang up in response to it. Once you think about the "2+2=5" of WTC 7 you start noticing many other questions haven't been addressed sufficiently and before you know it, you're not sure who to believe - but you know you can't believe what's being pushed at you, whether you want to or not.

Your mam's an instant messenger.

Or something.

Pfft.

Quote from flymike91 :

Everything I've ever seen him write is anti-american whether it be the policy or the people.

I just get sick of all the anti-American stuff on this forum. Sorry if i have a little patriotism.

There's a difference between loyalty to a government (nationalism) and loyalty to a country (patriotism). I love my country and would defend it if I needed to but my government, made of people, is fallible. As such its decisions and policies need to viewed skeptically. It just seems to a lot of the rest of the world that many - not all, perhaps not even most - Americans aren't nearly as skeptical & critical of their government as they clearly need to be, especially given how the Bush team has conducted itself domestically and internationally.

Quote :

But no, you hate America and Americans too much to look at that stuff....

Yes of course, disagreement with stated opinions and official governmental theory = white-hot paranoid hatred. Sure. Everyone knows that.

:zombie:

Shared the stage many a time with an Aussie band called PreShrunk, the two-bass band (lead & rhythm bass, duh). Both guys had Warwicks and Warwick rigs too, best sound I've heard from a bass in my life! Our bassist (and the bassist from my previous band) has himself a brand new Fender Jazz (and a backup Stingray) which suits our sound perfectly. A really nice sturdy axe, that.

Good night. May you not dream of Poison Alien Zombie Robots.

FYI "pull it" is an industry term for a controlled demo. The guy says "pull it", not pull out or up or anything else iirc...