The day the university announced its decision to permit Kevin Barrett to teach the one course he was hired to teach, he appeared on "Hannity and Colmes," introduced by Alan Colmes as "University of Wisconsin professor Kevin Barrett." If those words had come out of Sean Hannity's mouth, it would have provided a good occasion to accuse Hannity of being slanted and out to paint UW as a bunch of radical crazies. But it came from Colmes, the show's liberal, so it's just a nice demonstration of how lots of folks don't notice the distinction between professors and lecturers, even part time lecturers like Barrett. He's teaching here. He's one of the professors as far as the general public is concerned.
Let's go to the videotape:
Colmes begins and tries to present Barrett in a fairly positive light by bringing out the facts that the course is not required, that the 9/11 conspiracy theory will take up "only about one week" of the course, that the students will not be required to "regurgitate" his theory, and that he means to inspire "critical thinking." (Smarter students, I note, may want to regurgitate.)
From the moment he begins speaking, Barrett twitches and jerks around quite oddly and speaks in a breathless, excited way. He tries to unload a torrent of words about the theory and won't stop to give Colmes a chance to get through his series of questions, which are quite clearly designed to put Barrett in a positive light. Barrett, however, is so keen on his theory, he'd rather spout conspiracy. He looks nutty even before Hannity starts the questions that are meant to trash him. That is, Barrett's a witness who mucks up the direct examination. It doesn't take cross-examination to bring out the problems.
When Hannity takes over, Barrett interrupts him in the middle of his first question. When Hannity insists on finishing the question, Barrett smugly goes "Yeah, yeah, finish up." On Hannity's show! As if he thinks the only people who are watching are folks who think Hannity's a jackass. Hannity asks him if he really believes 9/11 and other terrorists attacks were "an inside job." Barrett, inspiring no confidence that he will allow students to debate with him, says sharply, "I don't believe, I do know that 9/11 was an inside job." Barrett then tries to lay out the details of the theory. The word "thermate" comes out of his mouth. (It's supposed to be "thermite," but why be precise?) [ADDED: Apparently, there is something called "thermate," which, like thermite, has a role in the conspiracy theory.]
Hannity breaks in to say, "All right, so you believe that the buildings came down in a controlled demolition." Again, Barrett excludes the possibility of alternate theories: "Well, I don't believe it. I've looked at the evidence, and the evidence is overwhelming." Hannity's response is perfect: "All right, the evidence is overwhelming to you because you're a conspiracy nut." Hannity tries to set up his next question: "But putting that all aside..." That's perhaps the funniest line of the night, but it's stepped all over by Barrett, who motormouths conspiracy theory. Hannity goes ahead and asks his question with Barrett yammering over him. Hannity finally just lets the man babble. Then, he mutters, "Okay, I wish I had the 'Twilight Zone' music."
Hannity says, "Okay, here's my next question," and Barrett breaks in with a laugh and says "Okay, friend," and shrugs, looking quite pleased with himself, as if he believes he's getting the better of the exchange. As Hannity tries to ask the question, Barrett keeps interrupting, offering survey statistics that he seems to think show that people agree with him -- 60%! "You're in the minority," he tells Hannity. That is, we see Barrett garbling facts in real time, on camera.
Finally, Hannity gets Barrett to hear the question: Should extremists like you be allowed to teach? Barrett says: "No, you're the extremist. Fox News is the biggest bunch of extremists on the planet." He's got a huge laughing grin now. Hannity doesn't think Barrett should be teaching, and Barrett responds that he doesn't think Hannity should be on the air. "I think you guys should be taken off the airwaves, because you are the guys who are..." A desperate Colmes breaks in: "All right, we don't want to silence anybody...."
Colmes's attempt at the beginning to present Barrett in a good light by emphasizing that Barrett will bring debate and critical thinking to the classroom is all shot to hell. We've seen Barrett in action. Barrett retained his position here because we care about free speech values, but he slammed us in the face with his disrespect for free speech.
July 11, 2006
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1 – 200 of 247 Newer› Newest»Barrett retained his position here because we care about free speech values, but he slammed us in the face with his disrespect for free speech.
Well, given that he's already committed to slamming parents of students, and students themselves, in the gut with his "knowledge" this is no surprise.
I don't care much what teachers/instructors/professors say outside the classroom, but I do care what they say inside it. It seems to be that both Barrett and UW have confused the two and, in the case of the latter through its decision to retain Barrett, put its imprimatur on intertwining and tangling of the two.
I must say that Barrett is milking this for all it's worth. No doubt a book deal is in the offing -- nice supplement to his meager instructor salary.
Too bad, as you note, he garbles facts. (To put it mildly)
What qualifies someone to lecture at a university? The most I could find on Barrett's background beyond the website is some vague information that he taught at universities in the SF bay area, Paris and a course at UW
I am embarrassed for my University.
Ken Mayer
Professor of Political Science
UW Madison
ACLU
"ACLU of Wisconsin Executive Director Chris Ahmuty said today, “The University’s task was to evaluate Dr. Barrett’s qualification and ability to teach his assigned course based on the course’s requirement’s, not the content of his speech. It has apparently followed that process and applied the proper standards.”
SO what are the qualifications and standards?
Seriouslyunserious, I would only ask that you have some sympathy for the position the Provost was in trying to decide whether to fire Barrett, making him into a First Amendment martyr, once he'd been hired. As I've said in other posts, that doesn't excuse the fact that conditions here are such that he was hired in the first place, and the real test of the university is whether it finds a way to avoid hiring mistakes like this in the future. Another test for the university will come when we see how it treats others in similar positions. What if we found someone hired to teach here was a white supremacist, planning to devote a week of his course to his theory? Would he be treated with as much respect as Barrett? What if we found someone hired to teach evolution was a young earth creationist planning to devote a week of his course to his theory? These people now must be treated the same. Pretty horrible. I hate to even type that out. But this underscores why the hiring phase matters so much.
Yikes, it's like a five minute contest for who can be most annoying.
So, is thermate the smoking gun, christian anarchist?
And this is exactly why there is so much dis-respect for academics in general. A true profession polices its own ranks in its own interests. Why then do the UW professors not speak out against allowing this putz to teach?
No wonder people bitch about tuition... especially if it's paying a salary to this guy. I think the moon landing was faked..Can I teach at UW? I know who the gunman on the grassy knoll was...Can I teach at UW? I know the Jews control the media... Can I teach at UW? I think the holocaust was faked.... Can I teach at UW?
Laughing stock.
Ann, you make an excellent point -- those who are hiring the people should be the ones sweating here (and being ridiculed), not the provost. I wonder why no one has asked them why they hired such a loon -- all I've seen are vague statements that Barrett was qualified. You have to wonder how hard they looked at his qualifications and mind-set. Was there actually a serious interview, or was it conducted over beer at the Terrace?
The world is prey to invisible flying rabbits. One of them has bitten Barret the Lecturer behind the left ear, which has turned his brain to mush, so that by a process of Pharaonic mummification he lies supine in his conspiracist's sarcophagus while Sea Lilies of the Nile wash over him.
This is what UW serves up to students mulcted for $40,000 per annum on the assurance that "education" comes only at a price? Guaranteed, there are no conspiracists teaching Bill Clinton touring East Europe on a Soviet KGB passport, ratting out Iron Curtain dissidents during that year's Prague Spring. However can this be? Perhaps even in advance of Kerry's love affair with Ho Chi Minh, such treachery strikes a bit too close to home?
In 2004 or thereabouts, Popular Mechanics magazine published an extensive engineering/technical analysis of every 9/11 factor bruited by dolts such as Barrett, both before and since. Is Colmes naively trying to mute the impact of this guy, saying "conspiracists aren't all bad," or is he setting up this pathetic fool so Hannity can get a laugh? In any case, why waste our time at all?
UW actually hired this ranting imbecile? If I were an alumnus, I would league together with others in protest, if only to preserve my own tattered reputation.
Bravo to Ken Mayer for saying that. I wish we could hear from more of the faculty on this.
MadisonMan: I think the answer to your question is that Barrett was previously the TA for this class. Thus, he was the "easy" choice when the professor went on sabbatical.
Ann, Thermate is supposedly a sulfer enhanced version of thermite that Steve Jones, a physicist from BYU, is claiming was used to destroy the WTC. It is normally an military incidiary or a welding device, but with them it becomes a curious material, which tends to have whatever properties they want to at the time. One of the problems with these "scholars" going on TV, is that their plots tend to be quite complicated, and keeping up with them is essentially a full time job.
James B
Screw Loose Change
Steven Jones "evidence" is being questioned by his own physics dept. at BYU.
You might want to find a more reliable cite for your thermate theory.
Mr. Barrett was correct in his assertion that 19 boxcutters could not drop the twin towers.
You'd think somebody would tell him about those two Boeing 757s.
Now, I'd like to propose that one bullet could not have started WWI.
(The above was for Christian Anarchist, not james b.)
Now, I'd like to propose that one bullet could not have started WWI.
LOL! You're right, Buddy, IIRC, it was at least two because both the prince and his wife were shot that day.
How does a guy like this even get past the job interview? The only answer seems to be that someone in the UW administration believes this, or something like it. So, the real problem is not Barrett, who is at least a visible and identifiable loon. The problem is the loose screw you can't see.
I'm cuckoo for Cocoa Puffs, Cuckoo for Cocoa Puffs!
Ronin, exactly! It was *two*. I knew that!
It needs to be restated:
The left is having their turning point, like the GOP of the 1950s. The GOP had to decide whether to go with the John Birch Society and implode on communist conspiracies, or create some new ideas and an operating plan for electoral victory.
The Left now has to deal with their own smug conspiracy nuts, who claim to see Bush's face on every tortilla. Which direction does it turn? So far, I can see lots of readying for spending decades wandering in the desert, muttering to themselves about the Evil Bushco and how terrible Amerika has become and why won't we just elect them and make it all right again?
In a very important way, it's more damning to the University of Wisconsin that he is a lecturer and not a professor. A professor would have tenure and the university would have its hands tied. Look at all the difficulty Colorado has endured with Ward Churchill.
But a lecturer could be fired with a keystroke, and UW has decided to keep him on to spout this bilge. Only one week of this one particular kooky conspiracy theory? First that's too long and secondly, what reason is there to believe that the rest of the class will be any better?
Ann Althouse,
Why doesn't the university set his class size at zero? Why doesn't the university insist that the instructor deliver his lecturers to empty classrooms? Why doesn't the university enforce its rights to the intellectual property produced by the instructor for the purposes of teaching this class, including course notes and any recordings of lectures?
All of those things are rights the university has that don't abridge his First Amendment rights. Yet somehow I doubt the university will enforce them. We may reasonably ask why not.
After all, you're not a First Amendment martyr if you're not fired and your class size is zero. That's not depriving the instructor of any rights he has. The right to free speech does not include the right to be heard. I'm sure the contract he signed is mute on the question of class size -- including zero.
Too many lawyers refuse to think outside the box for other remedies when faced with an aggressive ACLU.
Why is that?
The Christian Anarchist writes exactly like the Kennedy assassination conspiracists and and Fake Moon Landing nuts. They abuse the language of science, but reject all challenges (thinking they've defeated them).
They are invincibly ignorant, and should be paid no attention at all. It's a hideous disservice to taxpayers that this man should be cut one check while Wisconin's young men and women are off in Iraq doing the real work. Shame on the school system that has no apparent adults in charge.
Christian anarchist, I don't mean to rude, but, all those items have been rigorously examined and accounted for. Including the various oxide combinations forged in the heat. Please take a look at the Popular Mechanics article.
Then, from the strain-at-gnats-while-swallowing-elephants point of view, really, what manner of demonic government would do such a thing? Think of the first meeting, where someone had to propose it. Think of the ramifications if just one of the conspirators had a change of heart and went public--would anyone capable of such a thing, be willing to take the chance?
Theories like Barrett's are for the unexplainable--they're Dark Ages 'out there be dragons' stuff.
Remember that dropping the buildings was only the one thing needing doing--the conspirators also had to set up the entire chain of evidence embodied by the hijackers, the Berlin and Florida venues just for starters, and also somehow involve all the foreign governments that participated in backtracking the several years of the hijackers movements.
How many people are involved in this, would you say? And no leakers? Even as hated as Bush & co are?
Unless all is as it seems, with the jihadis, but the US gov't was in on it, and coordinated with it.
If this is true, why hasn't that same government, you know, silenced these Barrett types?
Norton,
Don't send you children to UW or any other similar school. Send them to one of the military academies... it's one of the few last places you go to school and actually GET and education...particularly USMA. Getting in is tough....but well worth the effort.
Christian Anarchist, eh? I suppose believing that the World Trade Center collapsed because of Bush's sulphured krytonite charges isn't that big of a logical leap for someone who believes that a crucified man rose from the dead after a few days.
So how are things in Justin Raimondoland? Had any visits from any Israeli art students?
Verification code: ilnutrok. Um, yeah.
oligonicella, also, the venturi effect--
http://www.popularmechanics.com/science/defense/1227842.html?page=1&c=y
*cough*
Johnk: Do you think the Provost actually believes this crap that is Barrett promoting? Give me a break, John. The provost is stuck with the guy because if he fired him, the guy would sue (with the ACLU's help no doubt), the university would end up spending tens of thousands defending the suit, with the provost and half the administration wasting day after day giving depositions.
If this doesn't fade away by the time classes are to begin, I would not be surprised to hear that they cancelled the class because of the detrimental effect the controversy was having on the campus environment or because of concerns for campus safety. That way, they avoid firing him for his weird ideas.
BTW, It's Ann not Anne.
"He's teaching here. He's one of the professors as far as the general public is concerned."
Yup. To everyone outside the ivory tower, anybody who teaches at a college or university is a "professor." I even got called that word myself when I taught an introductory undergrad class as a grad student.
That said, I'm not sure why the distinction matters here. If anything, a full professor talking like that might reflect less badly on the university, given those pesky tenure rules.
Sigh.
It's hard to think of anything that drives good physicists up the wall than hearing "Physics proves it!" when that's just not true. ( We have a brand to protect, after all :) )
There are some real physics questions in Jones' papers, but (and this is one good thing about physics) they can be answered. There are also a few outright mistakes in important parts. As a former physics professor myself, I know of no credible colleagues who took the analysis seriously.
If Barrett were throwing this out there as something to discuss, and bringing in solid physicists to present the anti-case, then this might actually make a very interesting teaching case. (And, in that case I submit it would fall inarguably under academic freedom.)
As it's fairly clear that's not happening, it is rather an embarrasment.
I agree with our hostess that it does put the University administration in a tight spot. There is some (seriously flawed) "technical" support for the argument. It would be touchy to fire someone who had at least gone through the academic motions to gather evidence, weak though that evidence be.
But I'm a little curious: where's the department chair in all this? A professor would simply tell the chair to "go Cheney himself" (in just so many words), but a department chair has the power to lay down the law to a lecturer.
You can be sure that "lectureship budget cuts" will preclude his teaching any more courses in the future.
I've always wondered why there are so few teaching opportunities for me. I guess that I should start espousing bizarre conspiracy theories (but only the ones that the academic community likes because they expose BusHitler McChimpyHaliburton)--and then there might be a place for me!
One of these days, perhaps after a virus destroys all television sets, the masses are going to wake up and realize that they are not obligated to fund public universities.
Palladian: "So how are things in Justin Raimondoland?"
ROFL!!!
"Had any visits from any Israeli art students?" No, but I did meet a hot Israeli soldier once...
Ann, I attended the University and its law school and feel a responsibility to donate to it. (And I like you a lot.) But this is stupid hire and the approval of his study plan are yet another reason I do not contribute to general alumni funds anymore.
I won't shut my pocketbook completely, but I contribute only to special programs which receive funds directly.
It doesn't seem that the folks who oversee the admissions office(which refuses to provide me with the AA information I requested) or the hiring of nuts like this care, but I do.
Soemone earlier said that the problem with "responding" to arguments like the Christian Anarchist's is that they're so damn complex, and (I'd add) the holders of them tend to be some odd variation of intelligent, that it becomes a full time job.
That's exactly the problem. And I think it's exactly why this theory will continue to grow, and will be like a cancer on the Democratic Party especially.
I do have one specific question. Part of the overall theory is that no jet hit the Pentagon. Then what happened to the jet that supposedly did hit it, and all those people who were killed on it?
Thank you.
Amen Ed.
Even the obvious truth doesn't seem to matter much anymore. Anti-American, hate-filled, guilt-ridden losers are given credability by the left simply because they fit the agenda.
IsrAliens, paul! They're all-powerful! They can do ANYTHING!
"Christian Anarchist", and 9-11 conspiracy people in general, are a good example of the double-ended dildo that connects the ass-end of the left with the ass-end of the right.
The Pentagon jet was lured out over the sea and shot down by FEMA employees posing as F-16 pilots. These are the same guys who later shipped the WTC steel overseas where it disappeared.
Hydrocarbon fires can't melt steel?
If the conspiracy enthusiasts want to abuse science and engineering, well, acetylene is also a hydrocarbon. [From Wikipedia: Acetylene (IUPAC name: ethyne) is the simplest alkyne hydrocarbon, consisting of two hydrogen atoms and two carbon atoms connected by a triple bond.] It burns very sooty and relatively cool without the introduction of oxygen. With oxygen it burns hot enough to melt steel. Give it even more oxygen and you cut right through the steel. That's the difference between a welding and cutting torch, the cutting torch has more oxygen jets to begin with, and a trigger for an additional blast of O2 to burn and blow away the melt.
Oxy-Acetylene welding is the standard form of gas welding and is still widely used, though arc welding and its MIG and TIG derivatives are now the state of the art.
If you give it the right amount of oxygen, almost any fuel will burn hot enough to weaken and possibly melt steel. Pre-industrial blacksmiths and cutlers used wood or coal and a big bellows. A normal skyscraper produces enough updraft by convection that some have proposed installing electicity generating windmills. With the large glass windows in the lobbies broken, the fires in the WTC towers were fed w/ a huge updraft of air.
Fuel + Oxygen + Containment = High Temperatures
This hire is an embarrassment, but a revealing one. The provost has only fueled the fire of public criticism by giving this kook a platform.
And I disagree that he would be a 1st Amendment martyr. As others have mentioned, he could have given him a syllabus and told him to teach it or decline the class. He's just a part-time lecturer, for crying out loud! Even U of Co didn't cave that easily. And there is no doubt that any right wing nut or even rational conservative would never be allowed to present their favorites theories. Newest class at our campus? "History of McCarthyism in the US." They've beaten Vietnam to death and are moving back in time for more evidence of Amerikkkan oppression.
Further, this class is not a graduate seminar or a debate between equals; it is an intro class made up of 18-year-olds. He should be imparting basic information, not challenging children to a forensic duel when their grades are at risk.
There's a certain abandoning of intellectual inhibitions with this stuff, isn't there? You've been raised all your life not to believe stuff that's patently crazy, but then one day you try a little, and the sky doesn't fall. So you try a little more, and the next thing you know you're doing the intellectual equivalent of running down the street naked with a lampshade on your head. Most people don't consider this as an option unless they're crazy, but you really can just let loose and believe absolutely anything.
Barrett's capacity for rational skepticism went where Deb Frisch's manners went. The id is all that's left.
I'm not sure why the UW is allowing this. My current UW (Washington) got rid of an anthropology graduate student who was teaching what basically amounted to pseudoscience paleoanthropology. Such as that Homo erectus had domesticated cheetahs (!) and was using them to hunt with. The decision to can him was basically driven by the department who, rightfully I think, is obliged to maintain some control over the content of their classes.
Did anybody see Bad Lieutenant? Not a great movie, but it's the kind of thing I'm describing here.
I can't get all that excited here. The guy is a lecturer. That is not tenured, and at a lot of schools, isn't even tenure track. The easiest thing for the University to do is to just not renew his contract. This happens all the time, for much more mundane reasons than this. Most schools don't even bother giving reasons - they typically have no obligation to, and so they just don't. And, from a legal point of view, not giving reasons is much preferable - there is nothing to really be sued over.
Now, if his contract is renewed, and he continues to teach, and, in particular, if he gets a tenure track position, then UW should be put on the spot.
To all who propose there were demolition charges on the main supports that brought down both towers, there's a huge problem with that hypothesis.
Both towers were "tube" structures or "monocoque". There were no internal implosion devices because there are no internals to implode! The entirety of the building in that design is held up by the outer superstructure, one layer deep, with cantilever floors spanning clean all the way across. Demo charges will then be on the outside, causing flash and material dispersal on detonation. That's simply not there in the videos.
WTC came down because the outer shell buckled from heat and the resulting inertia of that much steel coming down broke the cantilevered floors *first*, those being the weakest link in the system, directing the falling piles of debris between momentarily standing outer structure, before tension forces pull and "wrap" those inward on top. It was like rolling a sock down inside out.
I think these conspiracy nutcases should be sent to hang out with their beloved islamofascist murderer friends, so they can have their private parts cut off before they're beheaded. If it's good enough for our brave soldiers, it's certainly good enough for over-privileged academic hippie jerks.
Why, oh, why did Syd Barrett have to die today, and this schmuck jihadi Barrett is still with us?
Shill-king, for chrissakes, who has time to shake down all them apples? Is there any place on the net where the whole crime is laid-out, in some sort of coherent time-line, with the cast of conspirators pointed out?
Your post asks a lot of heavily-loaded questions--anyone could do the same in re to the event as the world believes it to've happened, AKA the story of 911.
Where's the link to the Firemen's black-box dispute? What war games and who ordered them? Who is gagging whoever is being gagged? Who said what about #7 and where's the context? Where is the Paki intelligence link?
And far as your 'put options', that has been extensively investigated, the records are public knowledge, and the market-makers questioned have concluded that the airlines's stock movements that Fall are normal, and inside the standard deviations. Google it for yourself, look at the friggin' stock charts, volume and price. The one spike slightly out-of-ordinary was some activity on the Aussie exchange, originating from China. But even that was standard deviation, just seen as coincidence rather than any nefarious activity.
The best thing to've bought before the event would've been gold--it would've pointed no finger, as airlines would, and it spiked dramatically after the event, as like events predictably spike gold. Gold investors always make money off calamity. Maybe every bad thing that happens is set off by gold-buyers.
>Now tell us all about how WTC-7 collapsed when it wasn't hit by an airplane?
It was simply bowled over by your stupidity.
I think it needs repeating. The steel didn't need to melt. It just needed to lose its structural strength. On page 4 of the PM article:
CLAIM: "We have been lied to," announces the Web site AttackOnAmerica.net. "The first lie was that the load of fuel from the aircraft was the cause of structural failure. No kerosene fire can burn hot enough to melt steel." The posting is entitled "Proof Of Controlled Demolition At The WTC."
FACT: Jet fuel burns at 800° to 1500°F, not hot enough to melt steel (2750°F). However, experts agree that for the towers to collapse, their steel frames didn't need to melt, they just had to lose some of their structural strength--and that required exposure to much less heat. "I have never seen melted steel in a building fire," says retired New York deputy fire chief Vincent Dunn, author of The Collapse Of Burning Buildings: A Guide To Fireground Safety. "But I've seen a lot of twisted, warped, bent and sagging steel. What happens is that the steel tries to expand at both ends, but when it can no longer expand, it sags and the surrounding concrete cracks."
"Steel loses about 50 percent of its strength at 1100°F," notes senior engineer Farid Alfawak-hiri of the American Institute of Steel Construction. "And at 1800° it is probably at less than 10 percent." NIST also believes that a great deal of the spray-on fireproofing insulation was likely knocked off the steel beams that were in the path of the crashing jets, leaving the metal more vulnerable to the heat.
But jet fuel wasn't the only thing burning, notes Forman Williams, a professor of engineering at the University of California, San Diego, and one of seven structural engineers and fire experts that PM consulted. He says that while the jet fuel was the catalyst for the WTC fires, the resulting inferno was intensified by the combustible material inside the buildings, including rugs, curtains, furniture and paper. NIST reports that pockets of fire hit 1832°F.
"The jet fuel was the ignition source," Williams tells PM. "It burned for maybe 10 minutes, and [the towers] were still standing in 10 minutes. It was the rest of the stuff burning afterward that was responsible for the heat transfer that eventually brought them down."
I propose a corrollary to Godwin's Law: Bartlett's Addendum: When conspiracy theorists arrive, prancing naked wearing lampshades on their head, the conversation is over.
(with apologies to P. Froward)
How did the towers fall at freefall speed?
Of all the dumb things "Truthers" believe, this has gotta be the dumbest. Why? Because it ignores the evidence of your own eyes.
Look at photos of the towers falling. You can clearly see that the debris around the buildings is falling faster than the buildings themselves, which means what, class? That's right, that the buildings are not falling at freefall speed.
Again, from PM:
WTC 7 Collapse
CLAIM: Seven hours after the two towers fell, the 47-story WTC 7 collapsed. According to 911review.org: "The video clearly shows that it was not a collapse subsequent to a fire, but rather a controlled demolition: amongst the Internet investigators, the jury is in on this one."
FACT: Many conspiracy theorists point to FEMA's preliminary report, which said there was relatively light damage to WTC 7 prior to its collapse. With the benefit of more time and resources, NIST researchers now support the working hypothesis that WTC 7 was far more compromised by falling debris than the FEMA report indicated. "The most important thing we found was that there was, in fact, physical damage to the south face of building 7," NIST's Sunder tells PM. "On about a third of the face to the center and to the bottom--approximately 10 stories--about 25 percent of the depth of the building was scooped out." NIST also discovered previously undocumented damage to WTC 7's upper stories and its southwest corner.
NIST investigators believe a combination of intense fire and severe structural damage contributed to the collapse, though assigning the exact proportion requires more research. But NIST's analysis suggests the fall of WTC 7 was an example of "progressive collapse," a process in which the failure of parts of a structure ultimately creates strains that cause the entire building to come down. Videos of the fall of WTC 7 show cracks, or "kinks," in the building's facade just before the two penthouses disappeared into the structure, one after the other. The entire building fell in on itself, with the slumping east side of the structure pulling down the west side in a diagonal collapse.
According to NIST, there was one primary reason for the building's failure: In an unusual design, the columns near the visible kinks were carrying exceptionally large loads, roughly 2000 sq. ft. of floor area for each floor. "What our preliminary analysis has shown is that if you take out just one column on one of the lower floors," Sunder notes, "it could cause a vertical progression of collapse so that the entire section comes down."
There are two other possible contributing factors still under investigation: First, trusses on the fifth and seventh floors were designed to transfer loads from one set of columns to another. With columns on the south face apparently damaged, high stresses would likely have been communicated to columns on the building's other faces, thereby exceeding their load-bearing capacities.
Second, a fifth-floor fire burned for up to 7 hours. "There was no firefighting in WTC 7," Sunder says. Investigators believe the fire was fed by tanks of diesel fuel that many tenants used to run emergency generators. Most tanks throughout the building were fairly small, but a generator on the fifth floor was connected to a large tank in the basement via a pressurized line. Says Sunder: "Our current working hypothesis is that this pressurized line was supplying fuel [to the fire] for a long period of time."
WTC 7 might have withstood the physical damage it received, or the fire that burned for hours, but those combined factors--along with the building's unusual construction--were enough to set off the chain-reaction collapse.
brylin - Why pick on the UW engineering dept? If I were them, I'd stay as far away from this controversy as possible.
These conspiracy mavens will never quit--it's anarcho/entertainment, wicked and delicious. FDR colluded with the Empire of Japan to 'do' Pearl Harbor. There's evidence everywhere for cryinoutloud. Cui bono, dammit all, ciu bono!
I strongly disagree brylin. Silence is probably the only sane decision, enless one enjoys arguing endlessly with certifiable lunatics like some posting here right now.
Henry asked:
Where were all the black helicopters on 9/11? That's what I want to know.
Escorting Elvis to his new hidden home, Henry. Everybody knows that! ;-)
P.S. to Korla: Yours is my favorite reply thus far - thanks!
"So why have there been only three steel-framed skyscrapers in history that collapsed as the result of fire and all of them occurred in NYC on 9/11? Pretty weird, huh?"
C.A., a fully fueled jet to crashes into a building and you find it hard to believe that building fell down?
If you are in such a building when this occurs, do you stick around or do you leave?
Actually, it wasn't the kerosene that most likely caused the steel to lose strength, but everything else that the kerosene ignited.
It is somewhat like forest fires here in CO. The big Ponderosa pines have thick bark, and small fires don't affect them much. Five or ten years of burning needles aren't hot enough to set the big trees on fire. And, indeed, before we started managing our forests, small fires would come through every decade or two and burn out the needles and brush. But we started managing the forests, meaning in this case, putting out those small fires. The result, in many of our National Forests here is 100 years of dead needles and brush, and they can burn long enough to start the Ponderosa Pines on fire - and they burn hot enough to keep the fires going, and going, and going.
In this case, it appears that the kerosene started the furnishings burning, and that is what provided the heat to weaken the steel sufficiently for the collapse.
Brylin: To me, the Provost's decision is definitely "fair game." The engineering department's job is to teach engineering students not bail the university out of a problem, argue with lunatics, or somehow satisfy your need to embarrass them.
In all seriousness, Ann, why not call for UW engineering profs and materials science profs (especially metallurgists) to address some of these issues? It seems to me that this is the essence of belonging to a broader university community, which with its resources, and at its best, ought to be uniquely equipped to handle debates of this type.
Now, I know this isn't easy, in that engineers frequently don't like to get into debates over issues of science that have already been imbued with politics. (I know this because I'm married to an engineer--who, by the way, spent 10 years working closely with metallurgists etc. as part of his job designing process control systems and programs for specialty steel plants--who is the son of an engineer. Their eye-rolling this past week over this story has been telling, though their discussions of the technicalities have been way too abstruse to be illuminating for lib-arts major me). But as part of the UW commmunity, its seems to be that engineering, materials science and etc. faculty really ought to be willing to step up to the plate. Has anyone asked them to?
Frank ibc, anybody who thinks Ken Lay really died is just buying the gov't line. The real guy in the coffin is--OSAMA bin LADEN!!!
Alternative explanation for WTC 7:
It heard Mr. Barrett's lecture, at which point you could knock it over with a feather.
Oops! I see that people beat me to it; kept getting interrupted while trying to comment and then didn't check what had been added since I started.
I can't tell you how many times I've implored tenured physics professor colleagues to address this. It's just kryptonite. Everyone knows that once they start in on it, they will never get a moment's rest from it for the rest of their lives.
I have one physics comment: momentum transfer. It's ignored in the "free-fall" analyses and rather changes the conclusions.
If that is not enough of an explanation for you, then you don't know enough physics to judge whether Jones is right.
Brylin: LOL! No. (And definitely not against my alma mater's department.) My point is that having anyone dignify this twaddle with a response only furthers its cause. Every time someone challenges them, they get more publicity. All the evidence in the world will not change these people's minds - they will never be satisfied.
Look at this thread. Look at the response to sincere, intelligent, well-documented comments. There is NO POINT. And that is the point. There are times to just let the moonbats rage until they get bored, clean up the mess they leave behind, and carry on with life as if it never happened. Because it might as well not have.
C.A. I know this isn't going anywhere, but I'm on a lunch break -
If someone wanted to start a war, why would they have also needed to blow up the World Trade Center? Wouldn't crashing one plane into it have been enough? Would anybody have said "they just crashed a plane into it, now . . . if it had fallen down that would have been different, but since they just crashed a plane that's not enough?
Did we really need something on the magnitude of this to justify a war with the Taliban. If we had gone to war against Al Qaeda and the Taliban without this, would you say that war had been unjustified?
If this was a plot, couldn't we have crashed a plane into the WTC, and then left it at that? Was there someone behind closed doors thinking: if we crash a plane into the WTC that will get people angry, but that's not enough - we need to blow up the Pentagon also.
The people who said they got calls from their family members saying there planes were hijacked by terrorists and that these relatives ended up dying - are those guys in on the plot?
Ted Olsen, the Bush Admin official whose wife was killed on 9/11, was he in on the plot?
Were the Khobar towers, USS Cole, embassy bombings, and 93 WTC bombing hoaxes also?
The airlines that had their jets just disappear that day, are they in on the plot?
The air traffic controllers that tracked the jets that day, are they in on the plot?
"Science Proves Bush Evil"
> If this was a plot, couldn't we have crashed a plane into the WTC, and then left it at that?
If Bush wanted to dredge up reasons for a war, the Cole and embassy bombings would have been more than enough justification. But if he DID require manufactured attacks, he could have reopened the Flight 800 investigation, and "revealed" that yes it was an Al Qaeda attack.
I guess a billon people around the world were in on this conspiracy, since we all watched that second plane hit the WTC on live television.
I guess Bush just threw in the planes for dramatic effect. Saying "terrorists used explosives to demolish the WTC" wouldn't play as well in Jesusland. I guess.
>Take care.
Don't let the browser window hit you in the ass on the way out.
Bye, CA. I hope you don't think I'm one of those who suspects you of bringing an agenda into the science. Not for a minute. I know you're only interested in the truth.
Mike: I wouldn't take my comment as meaning that the information couldn't be presented in a way that could be understood. I was privy, by virtue of proximity, to conversations between two engineers who were not, in context, making an effort to "translate."
Note that I said engineers often don't like to do the latter; I didn't say they couldn't. And these two engineers are not also professors, which makes them different animals, as far as inclination.
Of course, there are exceptions. I just shot off an e-mail to a retired structural engineer (he spent 40-odd years designing materials, parts etc. for, to put it very generically, rockets, which makes him an actual rocket scientist) friend of mine, who loves trying to do such "translations." Since I happen to be in the same state as he, I'm thinking it's time to take him to lunch!
SC Said:
Everyone is arguing with the disciples of a fellow
Not everyone, SC. A lot of us are too busy arguing with each other to bother with those folks!
Brylin:
Yes, I agree that was the net result of his decision. I was hoping he'd avail himself of an escape clause in the contract, such as the ones Ben posted around here somewhere. I continue to believe that the big losers here are the students, with the university right behind them. Bartlett has what he want: publicity and the ability to put "University of Wisconsin" on his resume and publications. That is sad.
"But if he DID require manufactured attacks, he could have reopened the Flight 800 investigation, and "revealed" that yes it was an Al Qaeda attack."
dude, brilliant. Of course, this is **not** evidence that there wasn't a conspiracy but obviously just a sign of Bush's incompetence.
Plus, I don't think you send engineers etc. into Barrett's class. I just think it would be good if they put their thoughts and knowledge out there, in some forum, as a counterweight to Barrett's (OR as a support, if that's the case). Once pointed to the information, people can choose to avail themselves of it, or believe it, or not.
At the very least, UW administrators ought to be interested ... .
reader-iam said: Plus, I don't think you send engineers etc. into Barrett's class.
Not without flak jackets!
As for the forum idea, that would still be an open invitation to a lifetime of hounding by conspiracy buffs, so how about a link to the work already done by experts, like the 9/11 commission and Popular Mechanics. Anyone genuinely interested in the actual subject would be more than satisfied by this. As I've said before, the rest will never be satisfied by anything.
I still think it's a matter of UW engineers etc. taking a stand or stand(s) on a flap touching upon their own disciplines. And it would help the larger reputation of UW, which is rightly get whacked by this.
> Physical evidence trumps eyewitness evidence or speculation every time.
And your posts are physical evidence, sir, that the new aluminum foil hats don't block out even half the mind-reading rays that the old tin product of a similar design did so well.
> Actually, my degree is in aerospace engineering
I think you mean "I'm a space cadet."
I'm an engineer by trade, so I'm interested in physical evidence that is grounded in science. Actually, my degree is in aerospace engineering, so I know a little about how an airplane is designed.
Perhaps you wouldn't mind providing your name and the name of the institution you graduated from. Your claim is too hard to believe without evidence given the other claims you've made here.
CA, if you would, please, let me know which airplanes you've helped design (*breaks sweat, stretches collar*)?
The 9/11 commission report states that the South Tower fell in TEN SECONDS. As I demonstrated, freefall is 9.2 seconds in vacuum. How is that not freefall speed?
Two mistakes:
1. The 9-11 Commission apparently used seismic records to estimate the time it took for the South Tower to fall. By watching video of the collapse it is apparent that this is too short; my estimate is 15 to 20 seconds. Of course, if you want to accept the conclusions of the 9-11 Commission on other things....
2. The buildings did not collapse from the tops, they collapsed starting at the point where the planes hit.
If you're on a stopwatch, where do you click the 'end' of the 'fall'?
Or the beginning? Would an agenda change the start/stop points by 0%, or 50%?
I have even better evidence that the planes were not the cause of the collapse:
1. Video footage of a giant ape leaping from one tower to another, while carrying the extra weight of Jessica Lange. This obviously would be too much strain for the steel to resist.
2. I have a transcript from the official pronouncement of an official on the scene, Carl Denham: "Oh no, it wasn't the airplanes..."
3. A photo of the Manhattan skyline from 1960 that clearly shows that the alleged "Twin Towers" never actually existed.
4. Hillary standing at the podium in the Senate holding up a newspaper with the bold headline "BUSH KNEW."
Need I go on?
A full coke can against rebar the diameter of a pencil lead, whould seem more apt--so long as we're being dumbasses.
Ann,
The link at the top of the article around "announced its decision" is broken.
It's Official. Barrett is a Karl Rove plant.
...a full coke can at 400 or so mph, by the way, four times faster than a major-league pitcher throws a baseball--a baseball which could kill you if it hit you in the temple, even if your head had somehow fantastically not been pre-wired with dynamite.
Barrett truly did rock Hannity in that video clip. I completely disagree with him and I don't think he is competent to teach, but Barrett masterfully played both Colmes and Hannity to his advantage.
First off, the caption under Barrett refers to him as a 'professor', so I think Colmes's mistake can be attributed to lazy Fox researchers. This is the issue's first national exposure, and it's on a TV show that serves to rile up viewers so it's understandable that Fox would give him the wrong title. So right off the bat Barrett scores his first point by pulling a title he could never attain otherwise.
Barrett scores again when Colmes asks him if he'll teach in a 'fair and balanced' manner, to which he enthusiastically confirms and repeats 'fair and balanced'. A conspiracy theorist thrives on legitimacy and Fox did their part by feeding him their copywrighted slogan.
When Hannity steps up, Barrett immediately takes control and manages to not come off as the nut he is. While all of his 'facts' and 'evidence' are easily refuted, Hannity can't do much other than call him crazy and crack jokes. Hannity accuses him of holding students 'captive' to which Barrett objects and then Hannity pulls back, defeated. Then Barrett brings in his favorable internet poll results, which were obviously attained by harnessing the power of his paranoid sidekicks feverishly clicking and cache-clearing, to which Hannity again has no reply. Barrett repeats 'research' and 'evidence' and never mentions his overarching explanation that the US is an authoritarian regime that wishes for World War III and aspires to dominate the globe.
No need to be so secretive, CA--believe me, a christian anarchist aerospace engineer will stand out like a diamond in a goat's butt.
CA's Nemesis: - Count me in!
Conspiracy theories are like religions - most people believe in at least one.
> I am not a practicing aerospace engineer. I'm now in another field.
Hmmmm... http://tinyurl.com/krpc5
Korla, I'm sorry to have to tell you this, but when it comes to foil hats, you've fallen behind in the research.
Slartibartfest: You need to fix your last link. It leads to your profile page.
Re: Bill's link.
LOL.
Well, wondering what I could learn about "drag" from the University of Wisconsin, I Googled and got this, which is a lot more helpful than CA: http://tinyurl.com/kmhbj
> Korla, I'm sorry to have to tell you this, but when it comes to foil hats, you've fallen behind in the research.
Yes, Bill, I am way too distracted by my specialty research on peeps.
Sippican's right,
I don't know enough to argue each point put forth by CA or the lecturer. And I trust people who do know that this theory is pure crack for conspiracy buffs. It's mad as a hatter, barmy, unhinged, half-baked putresence.
And now UW Madison has had one of its "professors" interviewed on national news expounding on a theory that makes the UW look like they vetted this guy and therefore agree or at least find it merely "unconventional".
Events like this will hurt UW for a long time, I fear. Not in an obvious and dramatic way, of course, but in a slow, painful way, like erosion, or cancer.
Another thing to think about, Christian Anarchist, is those 3,000 souls in the hereafter who already know the Truth and are looking down on you this very moment.
They might not appreciate their deaths being bandied about for the sake of whatever it is you're pushing.
I know I wouldn't.
from "Little Eichmanns" to "Little murder victims of their own government" ain't that big a decency leap.
Hey, does this Barrett character have any works of art for our perusal?
Pogo:"Sippican's right"
Pogo's right.
No. NO, damn it. No freakin' references to PEEPS! I don't care if this isn't my blog!
Bill, did you conspire behind the scenes with Korla to bring up peeps? I wouldn't put it past you, you know. And you know why.
It's an outrage--we're nowhere NEAR Easter.
Peeps. Talk about conspiracies.
Sigh.
Talking about conspiracies.
LOL, Korla. Had no idear that Ward Churchill was such a great artist. Well, actually, I did--he's an artist of shamelessness. If I'd been stripped as naked as he has, on every single one of my lies, I'd hafta go hide out in the rain forest. That bird just keeps galumphing around hanging his dumbass everywhere, blaming all his troubles on Da Man.
The problem is that the speech being protected by UW isn't FREE at all. The parents of these college students are paying out big bucks to have this nonsense taught to their progeny who have been raised on a diet of self-esteem, not one of critical thinking!
Ergo, Barrett should NOT have retained his position, he SHOULD be dismissed, and he SHOULD be locked away for his own protection. The man is a babbling lunatic and not worth the time of intelligent and serious people.
Those of you who though Barrett schooled Hannity: Is there another secret clip somewhere that you watched to come to this conclusion?
How did Barrett come off any different than a run of the mill, smug conspiracy theorist?
This clip made me feel bad for Colmes.
"In all seriousness, Ann, why not call for UW engineering profs and materials science profs (especially metallurgists) to address some of these issues?"
Because that would be interpreted as creating a hostile environment against a "diverse" opinion. Only the questioning by those completely without power, the teenaged students, is permitted.
I warned you guys about arguing with these nuts. Now what do we get? Five hundred miles of cut and paste insanity.
Let's review: The internet is like a city street. Don't make eye contact with the panhandlers.
As you were.
Well, don't blame me! I'm not arguing with them. Shall we start taking wagers on the exact time that catalog of the contents of the Library of Congress gets removed?
Place your bets! Ladies & Gentlemen, place your bets here!
reader_iam, of course there's a peeps conspiracy. Everything is a conspiracy (I give you two words: gemstone files). The vacuumed peep did remind me of something, but I quick search didn't turn it up. Recently read something about a restaurant that places either a foam or a meringue in a vacuum bag to increase its size. Since breaking the vacuum would cause the thing to shrink, it's next dropped in liquid nitrogen to freeze it. Then you can unbag it for presentation. I most likely read it in reference to one of the following chefs: Achatz (Alinea), Blumenthal (Fat Duck), or Ferran (el bulli).
http://tinyurl.com/lhsxn
Wow the professor leaves for a little while and the class is out of control. Please return to your seats and start your reading assignment.
So who do we vote for in the next election, if Dems, Pubs, & AQ are all the same thing?
Kinky Friedman, maybe? ;-)
Guess it's back to square one, whoever has the best hair on tv. Any pix of OBL without the headgear?
It's hard to out-crazy people.
In my early training, I worked at a VA hospital in the psychiatry locked unit. Some of the posts here have that familiar earnest lunacy about them.
Best visual analogy occurs in the film "A Beautiful Mind", when the wife of mathematician John Nash enters his office to find a crazy quilt of unrelated newspaper and magazine article with red marker circling"evidence" and colored string tying various pieces together.
The 9/11 conspiracy theories are very much like that. It makes you gasp, the sheer idiocy, time, and waste.
Nah, the kinkster's out--the sob smokes cigars in the capitol building.
pogo, my favorite like moment was wife stopping by hubby's writing desk in "The Shining".
Forget the engineering evidence.
Consider the magnitude of the posited demolition project.
We are to believe that the Bush Administration, which began in January, 2001, chose all of its Cabinet Officials, and hundreds of political appointees, got them confirmed, got them moved in, got them briefed, took over the vast bureaucacies of the State Department, the Defense Department, FEMA, the Departmen of Justice, the FBI, the CIA and all the while planned, coordinated, orchestrated and executed an international conspiracy to wire and attach demolition explosives to every support beam of every floor of two of the largest buildings in the world, all the while assuring that four planes were taken over and flown into or towards buildings in NY and DC.
In eight and one half months -- 250 days --.
Without being detected......
I sure would like to see that PERT chard.
But then, Bush did get his MBA from Harvard Business School.
I guess Chimpy and Cheney really are managerial geniuses in disguise.
Or perhaps they had help from the outgoing Clinton Adminstration.
Or it all started in 1998.....
Oh Hell, I give up, Christian Anarchist.
Help me out of this dilemma.
pogo, my favorite like moment was wife stopping by hubby's writing desk in "The Shining".
Actually that's a good analogy. I don't think we've fully explored the possibility that the Twin Towers were evil. They were probably built on the remains of an Indian burial ground after we stole the Island of Manhattan (a la the Overlook Hotel). They drove normal men to insanity (cf. the Patrick Bateman murders of the 1980s). It was only a matter time before they collapsed in on themselves from the infusion of evil that they collected over the years.
Well, falseflagfrank wins my special award. The number of links in that post has cowed even me, an obsessive and inveterate follower of links, into a submission so complete that my right index finger refuses to make contact with the trackpad on my iBook.
I doff my hat in awe!
Uncle.
SC:
Hilarious.
Of course, there are some other questions, including (a) how does this fit into a course on introductory Islam and (b) why does anyone believe that someone so nuts can teach the rest of the course on any saner footing?
> As they say in Florida: Oh! The Huge Manatee!
Or as they say at Fox News: Oh, the Hume Hannity!
(I stole this from the EtherPundit, but I wish I had said it.)
It is, though, all a giant conspiracy--the huge manatee floats around regarding itself, and wondering, what if there was only One Bean? "Which of my parts would get it?"
I guess my comment will be OT from the arguments over the merits of the conspiracy theory.
I took a course at Cornell a few years ago that was an introduction to Islam taught by the Near Eastern Studies Dept. This survey course covered the history of the middle east just before Muhammad through the first few caliphs, the spread of Islam around the world, the central pillar beliefs, various customs of Muslims around the world, laws, Sufism, etc.
Neither 9/11 nor any Muslim terrorism was on the syllabus. Did they come up in discussion? Yes, but only when asked by students as sort of tangential discussions in the context of how certain Muslim beliefs were skewed from the mainstream.
With millions of Muslims around the world just living life, it seems insulting to dedicate a week (a considerable piece of a semester) to a single event or even terrorism in general in a general course on Islam.
I guess my comment will be OT from the arguments over the merits of the conspiracy theory.
I took a course at Cornell a few years ago that was an introduction to Islam taught by the Near Eastern Studies Dept. This survey course covered the history of the middle east just before Muhammad through the first few caliphs, the spread of Islam around the world, the central pillar beliefs, various customs of Muslims around the world, laws, Sufism, etc.
Neither 9/11 nor any Muslim terrorism was on the syllabus. Did they come up in discussion? Yes, but only when asked by students as sort of tangential discussions in the context of how certain Muslim beliefs were skewed from the mainstream.
With millions of Muslims around the world just living life, it seems insulting to dedicate a week (a considerable piece of a semester) to a single event or even terrorism in general in an intro course on Islam.
Who approves syllabi at U of W?
There must be some quality control there, even in Liberal Arts.
The upthread suggestion to limit the class size was a good one.
How about requiring certain prerequisites?
Perhaps limiting the attendance to grad students in engineering and construction management?
That should give him a somewhat interesting audience.
More on why the WTC collapsed, from the Journal of Metals.
The premise is that the upper floors lost structural integrity and collapsed not because the steel "melted" (as already stated, that didn't happen - and if TCA thinks there were "pools of molten steel" at the base of every building, I'd like to know where he got that idea apart from Stevens asserting it*), but a combination of heat-induced weakening of supports, and deformation caused by the uneven nature of the heating.
Materials scientists (Mat. Eng. and Eng. Systems, MIT) and engineers don't seem to think that a controlled demolition or conspiracy is necessary for a large, unevent, long-lasting fire to cause the WTC to collapse.
So why should the beliefs of an energy physicist with no qualifications in civil engineering or materials science be taken as authoritative over those of materials scientists or civil engineers?
("Because he asks questions they don't answer" is not sufficient; if one has faulty premises, it's easy to ask questions so baseless as to be "unanswerable" - and asking a question doesn't make it correct. There are always "unanswerable" questions and "Strange Coincidences!" in any event, if one wishes to construct them.
Oddly, most of us can accept that this does not mean the entire world is gripped in an unending onion-like layer of conspiracy.)
(* Jones' website shows red hot debris being taken out of the rubble; but steel is "red hot" at a far, far, far lower temperature than it melts at; my propane camp stove can easily make its grill glow red, and I can't imagine that won't happen in a large jet fuel fire, especially given airflow.
The JOM article suggests 750C as the likeliest temperature in the WTC fire, which is about 1350F... which is sufficient to get steel ... red hot.
Shocking!
The only obviously credible source he gives for molten metal (no evidence at all it wasn't, say, aluminum, rather than steel - he admits he doesn't know the composition, and his claims about the behaviour of metal are suspect at best, to my mind) suggests only that some metal melted at some point and was still very hot weeks later; given that a layer of ashes and similar debris is very insulative, the latter is not hard to believe... and is no evidence at all for a "thermate" fire.
The other two sources for "molten metal" appear to be third-hand reporting of anecdotes. But that's enough, isn't it? And none of them seem to say, as TCA does, that molten steel was found under every building, including WTC-7.
[I'd continue, but this isn't the place to tear apart Stevens' bad logical skills.])
falseflagfrank said:
............
Oh, hell. Never mind.
falseflagfrank, did you used to write scripts for the X-Files?? If not, you missed your calling. Perhaps you could work on the inevitable sequel.
But then again, are any one of those thoughts your own? You have certainly taken the time to collect half a zillion theories and create the links, which must have taken a week or more. But have you taken the time to think through just how much would have to go exactly right for just a few of these plots to succeed? Have you tried to even imagine just how many people must be involved to make any two of these conspiracies work? And why have NONE OF THEM leaked any CREDIBLE damning evidence to the NYT, since that is apparently soooooo easy to do?
That was perhaps the best, most completely parroted, utterly impressive waist of tinyurl's bandwidth post I have ever seen.
PS. OJ killed Nichol, we did walk on the Moon, and Elvis is still dead.
Leaving aside all the aspects of the validity or lack of validity of this conspiracy theory ....
Doesn't it all come down to whether Barrett is actually going to "teach" a course on Islam (with all the ramifications of helping the students develops critical analysis, reasoning, and communication skills) or whether he is only going to use the course as a podium to "preach" his conspiracy theories? There IS room in virtually any course for alternative-theories, as long as those theories are used to assist the students in developing critical skills. But preaching should be reserved for religions and politicians, and there is no reason for UW to be paying a lecturer to shrilly ramble on about his own theories. Since there is obviously some doubt in people's minds concerning what is going to come out of Barrett's mouth in the classroom, and since Barrett is only a lecturer, can't the University insist on oversight concerning both the lesson plan and the actual instruction of the course? How much "power" does a lecturer get now-a-days, anyway?
You want to talk about COINCIDENCES?
- At least one ARMY RANGER was killed in IRAQ.
- Before he was governor of TEXAS, BUSH owned the TEXAS RANGERS baseball team.
- The RANGERS played against the Minnesota TWINS at least once.
- A famous Minnesota TWIN was Randy BUSH.
- The BUSH TWINS spoke at the GOP convention.
- When asked what kind of tree he would be, Dubya said "I _AM_ a _BUSH_".
- Army RANGERS were killed in an "_AM_ _BUSH_".
You can see where this is going...
- The TWIN towers were HIJACKED.
- Bush called Abramhoff and said "Hi, Jack!"
It is undeniable.
I would think that "the effect of drag on collapsing towers" is not the sign of conspiracy, but reflects instead healthy sexual functioning.
Sorry.
It never ceases to amaze me the lengths to which some people will go to defend absolutely indefensible beliefs.
Two planes full of jet fuel are flown by sworn enemies of the US into some of the biggest terrorist targets in America. The buildings suffer a catastrophic strucutral failure due to unforseen and violently destructive attack. The men flying these planes are part of a group which has sworn death to America. Their allies have already attacked these same buildings and other American targets.
But none of that has anything to do with the TRUTH - that there's some massive government conspiracy to kill thousands of our own citizens out of some kind of homocidal/financial motive. This incredibly complex, super-secret plot, ranging over years, reaches the highest levels of government, yet it's been kept perfectly secret -- until now!! Yes, the President of the US and his secret inner cabal have finally been able to bring to fruition their evil plan to ... to ... Remind me again of the point of this evil plan?
Means, motive, opportunity? Anyone? Anyone?
This is so stupid it makes my brain hurt.
William of Ockham is spinning in his grave.
With all these geniuses talking about the various engineering issues concerning this, I can only offer up this disclaimer on the Channel3000 website concerning the Poll that Barrett claims shows 60% of people in Wisconsin support him: "URVEY DISCLAIMER
Please keep in mind that our polls are for entertainment and are not conducted in a scientific fashion.
We make no guarantees about the accuracy of the results other than that they reflect the choices of the users who participated.
If you have questions or comments about our polls, please e-mail us.
On a serious note (re korla's discoveries), from the comment upthread we have proof of the indian burial ground under WTC. Indian=Ward Churchill (& his infamous comment!!!). "Churchill"=Winston Churchill, who drew the the border lines of IRAQ back in the 1920s. "20s", the Bush twins are in their 20s. "Border lines", we are all borderlines.
I'm confused. If Bush's Trilateral Commission wanted to bring down the WTC with military explosives, why bother sending two airplanes into the building? If they had already wired it with explosives, they could have put the trigger in the hands of the terroist nut jobs and had their patsy without so much complication.
I'm fairly confident I saw two airplanes crash into building form multiple sources. I'm fairly confident there's physical evidence to prove we saw what we saw. I'm fairly certain there were plenty of eyewitnesses as well as hundreds of scientific experts that confirmed within good reason and logic that two jets full of jet fuel were capable of bringing down the WTC buildings.
I'm all for challenging authority, but this is a mountain of evidence and logic one has to clear.
They are becoming mainstream within the American left
Bullshit. Just plain bullshit.
Oh come on Seven (and a few others) nut jobs and conspiracy theorists come from all parties. Just mentioning Vincent Foster or some podunk airstrip in Arkansas is enough to make some people foam at the mouth or get that certain cuckoo gleam in their eye.
Seven Machos said, "Also, I suspect that you will be hearing more than a few gripes from alumni soon, and that this is the kind of thing that will cause many to contribute less."
About a year ago I was talking with the Director of Planned Giving, or some such title, for the University of Colorado - you know, the Fatcat Extractress. Every major university has a least one. Caught her in an unguarded moment.
"So, how's your job?"
"Ward Churchill is KILLING US. We're down, oh, I don't know, some huge percentage. 60?"
"Personally, I don't care if you fire him. And I'm assuredly not one of your big accounts. But until I see a system in place to make sure you don't get another one, I'm dried up."
"I know. God, do I know. That's what most of them say, except for a few of the bigger ones who say they won't give a penny till he's gone."
Pretty soon CU had a special Ward Corner of its website, and the head of the CU Alums was emailing us all. We remained adamant. We are just now softening.
Contracting your own Ward Churchill is a monotonic loser for the university. Only downside. You have a lot of us donors evaporating, and in our place you never have a substitute throng appearing to say, "By God, we'll teach those rednecks a lesson they won't soon forget. We'll be endowing a chair for Barnett, and raising a building to hold it."
SevenM, I think you are understating here. No great university can get along without a few people who understand practical economics, and those people are shakin' like a dog shittin' peachpits right now. It's going to get worse for them before it gets better.
damn good point, ronin. Miss Beth, how's the weather down Noo Awlins way?
Seven, of self-described Democrats? I'd doubt any more than self-described Republicans. In either party, there are folks waaay on the fringes that hold bizarre views about the government, and as we fight across the aisle we tend to try to tar the other side with them. But once we start to say "this is becoming the mainstream view," we're full of bullshit. I don't think Republicans in the main think we ought to hang five SCOTUS justices, but I can find that written on a widely read rightwing blog today.
Gerry, it's not my job to to purge or do penance for any excesses you note on the left, anymore than it's your job to personally and publicly once a day disavow Ann Coulter, or Mike Savage or any of the other legion of idiots who identify on the right. Let's just speak for ourselves and if we're coherant, that ought to suffice.
Frank: you're right! Why didn't I think of that? Say, would you like to join Ben & I when we go on the lecture circuit with all of this?
O'Reilly show--coming on now--teased a segment on Barrett. Gee, wonder if O'Reilly is going to agree with Mr. Barrett? Tune in quickly--
I must have missed your stirring denunciation of Pat Robertson's comments about 9/11, Gerry. And I'm sure you stood right up to Pat Buchanan's thinly veiled anti-Semitism, as well, not to mention walking precincts to make sure David Duke didn't get the GOP nomination for Louisiana Governor. I mean, you were there weren't you Gerry? Gerry?
Main scheme is to sell that Reynolds Wrap.
Ben: That slipped my mind for the moment, thanks for reminding me. I must say that it is very sad, very sad indeed, that Chief Justice Rhenquist didn't live to see the plot come to such glorious fruition. He played such a pivotal role in its development, as I am sure you already know.
Yes, Buddy - I hope you placed those orders for your options before this story broke. You know, the ones mentioned in Elizabeth's secret memo telling all of us what to do. That reminds me that I have to do something to show just how much I admire her incredible performance here at Althouse. I'm not sure about the etiquette involved here and Miss Manners won't answer her cell phone.
Does one send flowers to a lesbian?
Or would that be just a tad...
Anyone?
I wouldn't know--I'm too young for Medicare and too old for women-to-care.
Ben: How about a link? I find the CNN site impossible!
This nut claims he teaches "critical thinking".
What's important about this is that it either discredits critical thinking, or he really isn't using it.
Ann: Not CNN - MSNBC.
Here's the link:
http://msnbc.msn.com/id/8063292/
Wow. More comments than a gay topic thread.
Oops - Look for "Academics Gone Wild" on list of videos.
one of your state congressmen, Scott Suder, was on the O'Reilly show saying that his office intends to see to it that Barrett "never gives a lecture" at UW. He and O'Reilly were rather savage toward John Wiley.
I dunno--now that the sun is shining on him, what harm can he do? Hate to see him "martyred" as the spin will be. That'd really get the future book sales up.
Ronin: Thanks. I found the clip but it told me I needed some plugin and had to click on some link to get it and I couldn't find the link. I hate MS.
To be specific, it told me I needed "Microsoft© Internet Explorer 6, Microsoft© Media Player 10, and Macromedia Flash 6."
I hate MS!!!
Sorry Ann, couldn't find a way to copy it, either. As Ben said, Down "provides a balanced evaluation of the provost's decision and the rationale for allowing him to teach."
Carlson opened with the Provost's letter and sounded outraged that the Provost termed Barrett's views "unconventional." He closed by suggesting other, more appropriate words such as "repugnant" should have been used, and the Univ. admin. sounded like wimps.
IIRC, Carlson asked if the taxpayers didn't have a voice in this.
I think the most compelling error they made is that they received "a small sample of WTC steel."
How would one obtain a small piece of WTC steel? I would assume it would be CUT OFF of a larger piece of WTC steel.
What do we use to cut steel class? Welding stuff, that would look an awful lot like thermite/mate,
Checkmate
I have no idea who Christian Anarchist is or what his background is. However, as a graduate of BYU who majored in physics and astronomy. I am deeply embarrassed by Jones' involvement in the 9/11 conspiracy movement. I do not believe it is representative of BYU, the BYU physics department, or its former students.
I almost choked over this statement:
Stop using your eyes and use the priniciples of physics.
Noting that smaller objects fell faster than the towers, and that the towers therefore could not have been moving at free fall, is using the principles of physics. As well as your eyes. Given the implausibility of the conspiracy theory, on other grounds, I suppose it should not surprise me that the physical arguments of the 9/11 conspiracy theorists are this risible.
Yes, I can see 'em in Nuremburg, Moscow, Rome, Peking, Tokyo; it's 1936, and they're lost in the vast crowd standing stock-still, glass-eyed, open-mouthed, listening to the tiny gesticulating figure on the distant podium as he pushes their buttons, one at a time, and the warm tickly frisson spreads upward and into the belly.
Ann,
I'm coming late to what may be a record setting posting. do tell :)
Let's put aside the fact that Barrett is an idiot for a second. Let's talk about the LCA department.
Barrett apparently was a TA for Memon,Muhammad U, who is the normal instructor for LCA 370, the course in question. In fact Memon is teaching the course right now in Summer school, so the operative questions might be:
1. What does the Memon syllabus look like?
2. Does he believe and teach 9/11, the Conspiracy in his class this week?
3. If not why not?
4. Did he recommend Barrett for the position as his stand in for LCA 370?
5. Who beyond Rafferty, the Chairman, was involved in the decision?
Elsewhere the other day, I saw a Barrett quote that basically said, They are going to let me teach the truth at UW, what I'm saying must be true. The Provost is insane himself to allow the UW to be used in this circular argument.
If I were Provost I would have laid this law down.
1. Engineering theories have are not the proper topic for an Islam Culture course. Teach the Syllabus provided by the normal professor, no major deviations are expected or desired.
2. LCA Department, watch this guy and ensure that he does no further harm to your reputation, the reputation of UW or Islam.
3. Barrett, we understand freedom of speech here at UW, so we'll arrange a debate between 3 of your advocates and 3 professors, chosen 1 each from the Physics, Chemistry and Civil/Structural Engineering departments. You can express your opinions in a free and open dialog as we winnow through this. I will moderate. In the mean time, go reread the syllabus and lets get on with teaching.
Good for you, Gerry! Good for you. Interesting site, too, BTW. That said, we and others could go back and forth all day about who has or has not distanced themselves from this or that extremist, conspiracy theorist, bigot, or whatever. No party has a monopoly on virtue and all parties have some extremely odd members that they would rather forget about than talk about.
Caveat emptor. [See also Poke, pig- in-a-] ;-)
and we're just chopped liver.
Re: "...(budget cuts) will make the university and the state worse off. If he were wise, he would admit defeat..."
The only corrective available to the state is through the mechanism of funding. There is nothing else it can do with much effect.
Would the state be worse off, or better off, reducing funding to a system that makes questionable hires? That's the debate.
This is not a small error. The downstream effect will likely prove to be larger than anyone here anticipated, especially as this lecturer's classes proceed. He's quite the attention-seeker, and revels in the controversy.
I predict the provost makes a Barrett voodoo doll, and it runs out of room for pins.
Was Flight 93 also a "controlled demolition"?
Personally, I think it's FABULOUS that lefty academics are tying themselves to this wacky conspiracy theory that Bush is responsible for the Sep 11 attacks. Mr. Lefty Genius Lecturer goes on to claim that America is to blame for all the terrorism around the world, blowing up trains in London and Madrid with false flag operations and even doing bombings in Zarqawi's name.
And there are a lot of fully baked lefty nutcases who eat this stuff up. At the last anti-war demonstration in DC last September, there were perhaps ten banners carried by people promoting various Sep 11 conspiracy theories, all of which blamed the government or the Illuminati or some such.
I say let's chain the Sep 11 conspiracy theories to the Democrats like a big dead donkey for them to drag around. I hope they make it a plank in the Democratic platform that Bush attacked America on Sep 11. Embarass the sane Democrats until they can't stand the loonies to the left of them. Make the Democratic Party into a laughingstock.
I have nothing to add.
I feel like I needed to post here to make sure I was part of the all time most commented to post at ALTHOUSE.
If I were a student in this guys class, I would bring in my circular saw and cut my desk apart in protest.... (Wait, someone already did that...)
Gerry, David Duke was in college in 1976; he ran for offices in Louisiana in 1989, 1990, 1991, 1996, and 1991. He actually won office as a state legislator in the 1989 race.
The College Republicans with whom I regularly jousted were on the same streets as I was, holding up signs for his competitors, in all those races. Good for them.
Like I said, you speak for yourself and I'll speak for me. You can twist that into "Not my job" but I am quite tired of the rightwing blogger rhetoric that demands leftists denounce someone daily. We get called on to denounce people we've never heard of, who have no public significance whatsoever until they turn up in some blogger drama or crackpot episode. It's a crappy tactic and I'm not falling for it anymore.
Wow, Blogger goes down for maintenance, I head out to the French Quarter for a lovely meal followed by some good Irish music, and all sorts of things happen here in the meantime.
Buddy! The weather is hot, hot, hot. Sunny and hot. I'm about ready to carry a little shade umbrella as I walk around campus, like a real Southern belle. How's by you?
Ronin, this lesbian loves flowers. Your verbal roses are much appreciated.
re: David Duke, that last number should be 1999, not a repeat of 1991.
Mena!!! That's it!!! THAT'S where they hid all the passengers on the four planes!!!
Any John Varley fan (Millenium) knows what they did with the passengers on the four planes! And if you haven't read any Varley, well, you ought to.
I really wish you people would take an interest in this topic...
Who do I call to be considered as a lecturer? Have subject will travel.
Will work cheap.....
I do a few imitations (Frank Sinatra, Dom DeLuis, Leonid Brezhnev), play the harmonica, and fart "Dixie"--and would LOVE a UW gig.
DrillSgt, I like your ideas, but alas, the chances of the bureaucracy at the UW adopting them? Nil.
I recall--cold-fusion in-a-jar. Cover of Time Magazine. It was around the time of NewsWeek warning of the new ice age bearing down on us.
Buddy, branch out a little. If you can do Leonid Brezhnev, you can do Leonid Brezhnev's wife, too.
Buddy, you need to recalibrate your memory. Cold Fusion was on the cover of Time in '89 -- the talk of the coming Ice Age was mid 70s.
The government can't spy on foreign bank accounts or perform a rendition without agents coming out of the woodwork to spill the beans. But a plot which killed almost 3,000 Americans gets total secrecy?
*making circling motions around ears*
If Bushco is so smart, why is Barrett still alive? Loose ends? Poor attention to detail?
Has anyone seen Qxxxo and Barrett in the same room?
If this guy is merely felt -by administrative types- to hold "controversial" (as opposed to flat-out-crazy-and-reprehensible) views, who is teaching at UW Madison with lunatic templates like Barrett?
And given the radical socialist agenda promulgated by UW's Havens Center, how did the law school escape this folly?
My god! You people are still at this?
I wonder if this post holds the record on Althouse for longest comment thread?
falseflagfrank has not read much (if anything) about terrorist sleepers, and the way they do not wear beards or go to mosque, and drink, gamble, and screw around to deflect suspicion from themselves. Whether or not this is a way of having your cake and eating it too -- getting an Allah-sanctioned, ends-justify-means taste of the forbidden infidel pleasures you're about to punish the West for -- it's certainly good cover and is a published part of their strategy.
The U of Wisc. now has its very own Ward Churchill. Maybe the psych dept. would like to hire Barbara Frisch while they're at it.
amba is talking about a certain cult, or organization, within the jihad (wish I could recall its name), sanctioned by some paragraph in the holy book, wherein one is allowed to do whatever will blend one into the enemy camp--if the objective is to defeat that enemy.
The #2 AQ, the Egyptian MD Zawaheri, is said to be the leader of that pack.
I'm surprised that falseflagfrank, putting as he does so much 'proof' emphasis on the Atta gang's 'wrong' behavior, seems to've never heard of it.
...especially, being the man of ten thousand links.
Alan,
Yes, it's the same Steve Jones, of cold fusion "fame."
Some perspective. At the time of the cold fusion furor, Jones was making fairly unspectacular claims about his cold fusion research. He was reporting a signal at the bare limit of detectability, and he was making no claims about its practical value as a source of energy. Unlike Pons and Fleischman, Jones came across to much of the physics community as a sober researcher trying to do things by the book. He had previous experience in this field, and his publications on muon-catalyzed fusion seemed legitimate.
There were, nonetheless, some red flags. Some were in the work itself. Jones reported a signal that was orders of magnitude greater than existing theory predicted -- but not the additional half an order of magnitude that would have brought it unambiguously out of the background noise. This is a whopper of a coincidence, but Jones seemed oblivious to it.
In addition, red flags concerning Jones' personal philosophy and sense of mission were brought out by science writers like Gary Taubes. I don't refer to Jones' Mormon beliefs per se, which I share, but to his quite personal belief that he was "destined" to find a cheap, unlimited source of energy.
Now it is true that a lot of scientists, including some very good ones, have had monumental egos. There is a joke about the late Nobel laureate Paul Dirac: He is out walking when God appears and offers him a set of papers outlining the Theory of Everything. Dirac begins reading ... his brow furrows ... and he finally blurts out, "But this isn't right!"
But such a strong sense of destiny, in someone who is clearly not the equal of Paul Dirac, is a definite red flag.
It is also true that one ordinarily is expected to attack arguments rather than the arguer, and pointing out the weaknesses in Jones' resume may seem a lot like an ad hominem. But Jones is being presented by many 9/11 conspiracy theorists as an expert; he is being appealed to as an authority. It is perfectly legitimate to critique his expertise when this is being done.
If Jones got it wrong in a field in which he had genuine expert credentials -- nuclear fusion -- how reliable is he as an authority in a field in which he has no such credentials -- civil engineering?
Question: wouldn't Jones have known that his 'cold-fusion' work would be examined/debunked?
I can't quite see his purpose in either of these similar-circumstanced 'discoveries'--other than a moment's notoriety.
The truth can now be revealed about the downing of Flight 93:
The secret unredacted transcript has just been leaked, and it contains the "terrorist" piloting the plane making an announcement to the passengers, which is what drove them into a frenzy that brought the plane down.
It's muffled, but It sounds like he's saying "Ladies and gentlemen . . . there are mother [unintelligible] . . . SNAKES on this . . . [unintelligible] plane!"
> Gerry, it's not my job to to purge or do penance for any excesses you note on the left...
This is the same attitude that Muslims around the world present about terrorists. "Why should I condemn these acts? Not all Muslims are terrorists."
But you see, when the entire Muslim world remains silent, aside from the many factions that speak out in FAVOR of terrorism, you then can't blame people for thinking that all Muslims condone or are at least not horrified by terrorism.
It's the same with Democrats. When Howard Dean hints that Bush is a mass murderer, you only hear other Dems applaud and talk about "chimp" this and "Hitler" that. It verifies that the party of JFK and Truman is long dead.
The few examples that do go on record in support of this country against its enemies, like Zell Miller or Lieberman, are stamped HERETIC and are driven out of the party, while Klan leaders like Byrd are embraced, and shakedown artists like Sharpton are considered heroes.
The right DOES disclaim its loudmouthed nutjobs. That's why Trent Lott stepped down. That's why David Duke was disowned. That's why Rush refused to fan the Vince Foster conspiracy flames on his show. Part of this is that mainstream Republicans are allowed to disagree with the fringe, unlike Dems, but it's also that they seem to know what will get them kicked out of office.
Unless we're talking about pork. But tinfoil hat conspiracies are not as sacrosanct and to be treated as just an "unconventional" perspective.
A. A. states:
To be specific, it told me I needed "Microsoft© Internet Explorer 6, Microsoft© Media Player 10, and Macromedia Flash 6."
I hate MS!!!
That should be "I hate M$.
I don't HATE M$, but find them annoying. I use both windows and Linux OS's. I run Quickbooks for my business, so I still need XP, though Linux now has some very nice accounting software that is compairable. You can install linux without having to ditch windows. More info here and here.
I use Debian Etch and SuSE, and would recommend new users migrating from XP to try Kubuntu or Knoppix. Knoppix is especially good for new users as it runs off the CD and you don't have to install anything to use it.
I wonder if the distinction between "lecturer" and "professor" is less important to the general public because it is less important to the real world of a student. An "A" in this guy's class is as good as an A in another class on the old transcript. Of course, professors think it is important (this is the old sociological concept of "social closure")
By the way, as we spend time thinking about this guy, a lot of good teaching is going on at the UW.
"I hate MS!!!"
Hear, hear! I've already run into the same message trying to watch one of their videos, but, since I'm now on Mac OS X, I couldn't use IE if I wanted to (not that I do).
Want to hear another weaselly thing? While I do have to use some Office applications, their thirty-day "test drive" won't even let you print! Wouldn't that be like test-driving a car that wasn't allowed to, say, turn right?
Sorry, OT, but the MS reference pushed my buttons...and I too had to be a part of this record-setting comments section. ;-)
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