Re: The Loose Change guys versus the Popular Mechanics guys The physics behind the WTC 1, 2, & 7 collapses, as well as the Pentagon hit, are well documented by Dylan et al. They have video, eye witness comments, and scientific analysis behind them. The Popular Mechanics had only one defense and that was to call the makers of "Loose Change" conspiracy theorists. It is an age old dodge that works even though it is not valid in a debate. They never addressed the dozens of questions surrounding the attacks such as: How do random hits on two buildings and no hits on a third building, all steel structures, cause complete symmetrical collapse at freefall speeds? Where is the video that shows a 757 actually striking the Pentagon? There were several cameras in the area whose tapes were confiscated. Why wasn't the Pentagon protected? How can a human being stand at the edge of the gash in one building if a fire is burning at temperatures hot enough to melt steel? Why is there molten steel at the bottom of the WTC? If the floors in WTC 1 and 2 pancaked, why didn't more of the core, and even the outer shell, remain standing? Why did the buildings not only collapse, but pulverize? What fueled the fires that were hot enough to melt steel throughout all the buildings? Why was the steel from the WTC collapses removed before an investigation could take place? Why did Silverstein, the WTC lease holder, say that they had decided to "pull" WTC 7? Why did the EPA declare the area safe within days of the attack when it was well known that asbestos, as well as many other toxic substances, permeated the dust from the demolition of the towers? The asbestos alone would have cost hundreds of millions to remove safely even before the attacks and has made the area a toxic dump to this day. My God, there are dozens and dozens of unanswered questoins about the physics of the damage and collapses, much less the political and financial motives that have become obvious since the attacks. I mean really, who has truly benefitted from 911 financially and politically? It surely wasn't Osama Bin Laden. All the Popular Mechanics guys had to say was, "Well, you're just a conspiracy nut who didn't do your research". Well, my answer to that is that WTC 7 did not collapse perfectly into it's own footprint due to fire caused by debris from across the street. Giving the official story the benefit of the doubt on all the other issues, I simply cannot believe that the WTC 7 collpase was not a controlled demolition. It was this collapse that made me question 9/11. Check it out at: http://911research.wtc7.net/talks/b7/videos.html Oh, and by the way, Silverstein successfully sued for double his insurance by claiming the two planes counted as two seperate terrorist incidents. He was awarded over $7 billion in that case. I've heard the award was dropped to over $2 billion since that time. Even so, receiving a couple billion dollars for a few million invested in a business center that was losing money is a great rate of return. Wow, that pesky asbestos issue sure took care of itself. No worries. Indeed.

After watching all five parts of the WTC debate, I feel nothing but frustration because the debate paints my generation as angry, hot-headed conspiracy theorists and my parents' generation as skilled, evidence-citing debaters. I'd have enjoyed that debate more if the conspiracy theorists weren't such blow-hards, trying to sell their product.

I love the idea behind the MADD posters. Where I live, you don't see much besides the occassional MADD or SADD bumper sticker, so I'd like to see these around town. Any idea where one might be able to obtain one of these posters, if possible?

John, yes, that's a nice demonstration of how 9/11 doubters work themselves into a confused fog with questions, but it doesn't help draw conclusions or actually find the answers. Physics problems aren't solved by financial motives. These kinds of questions work great for solving crimes on Law & Order, but a genuine argument for 9/11 as a deliberate domestic act would be dense with physics and science and explanations, not questions. And looking at your question list, some the premises aren't even correct. Part of the problem with listing questions for the sake of dramatic effect is that the questions themselves are poorly formed.

I find it interesting that you failed to mention the Charles Goyette radio call-in show where Davin Coburn of Popular Mechanics got caught in lies. I have a blog http://blog.myspace.com/119971297 I'm tired of gawking, lets roll! Ask those painful questions and lets see who stands to demand answers... answers to which I feel I form rather clearly and await the answers to. This fog of confusion was not created by the people.

I just watched that loose change vs. popular mechanics.... Pretty surreal, litlle young looking punks actually presented their argument better. Watch the clip for yourself. And will, i respectfully have to disagree with your conclusion, it was the popular mechanics men that couldn't answer questions. You can see the skinnier of the 2 popular mechanics men actually laughing while his partner tries to rationize and spin unsubstatiated answers.

A comment about the Check Engine light. There's something called an OBD II scanner that will let you do the same thing at home. It is a small device with an interface that looks like an old parallel printer cable, and it plugs into a port under the dash on all cars 1996 and newer. You can buy one from Pep Boys for $75 or online for about $25. It'll let you get the code or reset the light.

I have removed my blog so ignore the link mentioned above. Thnx!

A quick 2-second search on the failure modes of the World Trade Center reveals a number of reputable research papers and documents by universities both public and private (cause we both know public universties are under the govt and therefore lie). Here's a quick and easy one to read, and it's from the University of Sydney (that's in Australia if you didn't know, but Australia is on good terms with the US, and therefore the US govt, so you may have to watch out for these lies): http://www.civil.usyd.edu.au/wtc.shtml Notice that theories of failure are presented based on "incontestable" mechanics (if you want to argue mechanics, then you might want to be wary of the buildings we structural engineers have been designing for you for well over 200 years now). One simple thing that rang clear in my mind is the "steel couldn't melt because it wasn't hot enough" argument. Yeah, they're right. Popular Mechanics agreed with them. Problem solved. But that is not the failure mode according to FEMA (go read the report, yeah,it's long, and it's the govt, i know, but the point is LC is saying the govt is lying when the govt isn't making the assertion they are saying it's making. hmm, doesn't that then sound like slander or lying on the part of loose change? i dunno, i digress). Heat weakened the steel, and any sophomore civil engineering student in thermodynamics can explain to you the relationship of heat to yield stress and strength. Not to mention the impact of an 11 ton Boeing 757 goin 500 mph at an elevation of...hell, i'll let you get the numbers from the LC boys, they like to number drop. It takes thousands of man-hours to design a building as complex as the WTC. Hell, it's taken me 2 months to design a wood theater at a middle school and i'm still not done. Don't get up and tell me that since the fire wasn't hot enough for long enough, it couldn't have melted the structural steel, and therefore the building should never have collapsed after an airliner slammed into the middle of it. Especially when you can't present to me how it SHOULD have stayed up despite the impact, and I need a little more detail than the steel couldn't have melted. They use one dude's quotes from a testing lab (NOT a structural engineer either, mind you) as their evidence. Oh, and he got fired, so I should probably believe him. Guy got fired at my office the other day... cause he was a F*** UP. If they want, I can get quotes from every professor at the UC Berkeley and Stanford structures departments telling you that it wasn't a "controlled demolition" (if you think sentiment at either of these institutions is with Bush and Co., well, stop reading here, I have nothing more to say to you.) On a side note, i think controlled demolition could be the next buzz-acronym, like WMD. Let's get it rolling here. I'll start: It wasn't a CD. These kids don't debate well (and I call em kids even tho I'm only a few years older), they number drop, they ask questions with dramtic tones and then call people liars when they get answers with no conspiracy attached, they quote people who were still getting over the fact they nearly died minutes before and had no idea what was going on anyway, they show news clips of Tom Brokaw saying things he's hearing as they happen. How can you include in your argument this stuff? Particularly when we know these same news shows have lied before? Because they support your argument as opposed to presenting the facts, it's so easy and tempting to do. I can't blame Popular Mechanics, i have to give him props, I would've just laughed. Every question these kids asked required the complex answers that have been presented a number of times, and PM had 15 seconds, not to mention they had to speak over the scoffs and jeers and interruptions of the LC boys. C'mon, admit it, these LC cats are the pompous and arrogant tools you couldn't stand in high school, and now the bought macs and used imovie to make a fun little film to make the news. LC gives the poor liberals a bad name. (Not that I am a liberal, i'll stick to the Libertarian side of things, I don't want anyone up in my business, but puts me in the same boat as these guys not liking the govt administration.) Please, this is no way to go about getting support among the public. Let's not be stupid in the fight against the cronyism that is the cancer of our country right now.

Thank you Matt. It's nuts that these LC guys are getting this much press. Anyone with internet access can find support for the PM report. What I challenge anyone to do is find SUPPORT for the claims of the LC guys. Things like proof, physical evidence, mathematical analysis, anything. Any lawyer will tell you how unreliable eyewitness accounts can be, throw in a disaster, the likes of which we have never seen, and you end up with a lot of contradictory sound bites from the early moments. Go figure! The PM people and plenty of others don’t have to rely on eyewitnesses and speculation. They use research, facts, pictures, and analysis to determine what happened. The best thing I can get out of LC guy's movie is this: Half the population of the world has below average intelligence. I just identified two of them. If only the rest of the idiots would raise their hands so we would know in advance and avoid them.

There is no 9/11 coverup http://www.911myths.com http://www.lolloosechange.co.nr http://www.debunking911.com http://www.loosechangeguide.com http://screwloosechange.blogspot.com

"Related: How many Iraqi civilians have died as a result of the war?" - Why link to a 2 years old article? The death count is now, according to a recent sudy, over 650,000. (http://edition.cnn.com/2006/WORLD/meast/10/11/iraq.deaths/index.html) US casualties in Iraq: http://www.antiwar.com/casualties/

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