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Navy destroyer collides with merchant ship

Can’t anyone here play this game? The Navy destroyer USS John S. McCain today collided with a merchant ship east of Singapore.

No word of any casualties as yet. The key quote from the article however is this:

This marked the fourth mishap for U.S. Navy ships in the Pacific since February. Aside from the USS McCain and USS Fitgerald incidents, the Navy crusier USS Antietam ran aground dumping over 1,000 gallons of oil in Tokyo Bay in Februray. In May, another cruiser, USS Lake Champlain, hit a South Korean fishing vessel.

Four incidents like this since February? Something in the Navy is seriously wrong.

Update: 5 injured and 10 missing.

Genesis cover

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136 comments

  • Garry

    I wonder if there’s some kind of electronic interference going on, perhaps by the Chinese, that’s interfering with navigation.

  • Dick Eagleson

    Agreed, Garry. Once might be accidental, twice might be coincidence, four times smacks of enemy action.

  • Dick Eagleson: I’m not sure. One must never dismiss the possibility that your opponents are throwing monkey wrenches in the machinery, but it appears that all four incidents were very different. Moreover, the investigation into the Fitzgerald collision has led to the removal of many officers with others facing possible court marshal. The evidence to me points not to enemy action but to bad management and training in the Navy.

    Moreover, based on the recent track record of most of the federal government, such incompetence would not surprise me.

  • wayne

    FYI– a Navy investigation Report was just released last Thursday (17th), regarding the collision of the USS Fitzgerald & that container ship, off Japan.

    I have not had a chance to try & track down the original PDF, but it is out there.

    There is a lengthy article in the Wall Street Journal, Saturday edition (August 19) [page A8 Midwest print-version] on the Report, but it’s lacking almost entirely in details of the collision itself.

    “‘Shortly after the reports release, the Navy relieved the Fitzgerald’s Commander citing “inadequate leadership,” and an unprepared watch crew.”

    (>I was hoping Garry might be able to translate that into civilian-speak, for us.)

    Hunt for Red October
    “This business will get out of control…”
    https://youtu.be/YZuMe5RvxPQ
    (0:32)

  • BSJ

    Scapegoating the uninvolved is a long Naval tradition. Don’t let the number of heads to roll fool you into a false sense of security… ;-)

    My first thought was ‘Is this trend actually sabotage?’

  • Commodude

    Inadequate leadership= failure to train and supervise your personnel to do their job.

    In the modern zero-defect military, with officers promoted due to their political correctness and checking the appropriate boxes for career advancement, competence at your job takes a back seat to connections and bureaucratic skill. I wonder if any of the officers involved ever told a superior to go to hell? Doubtful, that would be questioning authority. There are times it is needed, and there are times you have to to protect your subordinates (sometimes literally)

    Political correctness and the military don’t mix. You HAVE to be able to call a spade a spade.

  • wayne

    Not a navy-history guy, but I do recall the curious case of Admiral Husband Kimmel and General Walter Short, circa December 7, 1941.

    Reference the Fitzgerald:
    “USS Fitzgerald Command Triad Removed Following Early Investigation Results”
    https://news.usni.org/2017/08/17/vcon-moran-uss-fitzgerald-command-triad-relieved-following-early-investigation-results-punishments-coming

  • wayne

    Ah, here we go.
    The 41 page Report in question is located at:
    https://partner-mco-archive.s3.amazonaws.com/client_files/1503000639.pdf

    –interestingly, from a Navy Times article where I obtained the link:

    “…the report does not address the cause of the collision or how the Crystal was ever able to get so close to one of the Navy’s most state-of-the-art, AEGIS-equipped vessels in the first place. It also does not address the actions of the Philippine-flagged Crystal. Several other investigations into the at-sea disaster remain ongoing.”

    So…apparently The Wizard’s of Smart, don’t intend to ever actually tell us what happened. (and it’s going to cost $500 million, borrowed, tax-dollars, to repair this ship.)

  • wayne

    Commodude-
    Good stuff.

    “Captain America Goes SUPER GAY!!”
    Louder with Crowder
    https://youtu.be/v9JEBlfGZd4
    (6:08)

  • Chris

    See Tyler Rogoway The Warzone (at The Drive) and as a John Batchelor podcast on a commercial ship having its GPS “spoofed” by a Russian tupelov

  • Could GPS spoofing have something to do with this? John Batchelor talked about this not long ago on his show. The Russians apparently have the technology and have been using it on boats in the Black Sea region. If it’s being used against Navy ships in the Pacific, it would explain why ships would be off course. … ?

  • Chris said, “See Tyler Rogoway The Warzone (at The Drive) and as a John Batchelor podcast on a commercial ship having its GPS “spoofed” by a Russian tupelov”

    What the heck, Chris!? Beat me by ~1 minute.

  • wayne

    H. Hunter-
    -totally off thread– I really appreciate the Article 5 mention at your site! (and anyone who knows the Liberty Fund folks, is OK by me!)

    http://www.hunterlawtexas.com/news–info/texas-passes-article-v-convention-of-states-resolution

  • eddie willers

    Commodude….

    ….has the correct answer.

  • Chris

    H Hunter
    Apologies I’ll stay longer in the garage next time.

    CMcL

  • Commodude

    I sense a safety day in the near future.

    BUPERS needs to re-evaluate how they’re selecting for the command path, and the stables need a good cleaning. Where’s Hercules when you need him?

    It’s endemic in the denizens of D.C., and it’s not just the civilian bureaucracy that is the issue.

  • Garry

    BSG is absolutely right; scapegoating is one of the Navy’s most deep-seated traditions.

    A standard practice is to remove the “command triad” (Captain, Executive Officer (second in command) and Command Master Chief (senior enlisted)). The Captain is always responsible for what goes on in his command, but in many cases he inherits a less than competent crew and it can takes a long time to even realize what the deficiencies are, and months or years to train the people properly and otherwise get things back on track.

    I’ll be interested to read a final report, if it’s ever released to the public. I was going to read the report that Wayne linked to, but since it doesn’t address the cause of the collisions or the actions of the Crystal, I don’t see the point.

    i can’t speak for the Army and Air Force, but in the Navy and Marine Corps, whenever an accident, property loss, death, etc. occurs, an officer is assigned to investigate. This becomes his primary duty, but in reality, most officers in the operational forces are extremely busy, and many of them tend to rush through the investigation. I’m sure this one was assigned to a high-ranking officer, and he probably is devoting most of his time to it.

    I’ve seen many cases where investigations were corrupted in some fashion.

    The Commanding Officer, who appoints the investigating officer, sometimes gives guidance on what he expects to find, either purposefully or inadvertently. At best, the CO details what he feels is the scope of what should be looked at (who to interview, what records to check, what audits to perform, etc.), and indicates that he is merely giving a starting point and the investigator should figure out what else should be looked at, based on what he finds. The investigation is supposed to be impartial and independent of the command, but in many cases this is not.

    One law clerk once asked me for advice; the Commanding Officer ordered him to have the investigating officer change his report, and he felt this was unethical and didn’t know how to handle it. I explained the situation to the investigating officer, and he seemed very willing to change his conclusions to please the CO, although it was apparent to me it was a whitewash.

    My unit was once involved in an incident where the (Marine) Captain gave some illegal orders that were executed by Lieutenants. In the course of execution the Lieutenants and their underlings made some technical mistakes, some of them stemming from the Captain’s incompetence. The Commanding Officer was convinced he knew what went wrong (he was incorrect in this belief) and tried to put many of us Lieutenants under pressure to “confess” our “error.” In the end, two Lieutenants were punished, one with total justification, the other not so much (ultimately it didn’t affect his career, although if he were white it may have). One Corporal was also punished, with total justification, but the results of his error would not have been as bad if it weren’t for the Captain’s illegal orders.

    Months after the incident, I found a copy of the investigative report, which had been carefully hidden from public view. It had been done by a Captain who was known for his obsequiousness (great word, well worth looking up if you aren’t familiar with it; a good substitute for some vulgar terms). The report showed no evidence that he had interviewed anybody below the rank of Captain, our Captain had said some outright lies that were very transparent to anybody who knew anything about the subject matter, and his lies were never challenged. The whole investigation was an exercise in scapegoating those below the rank of Captain.

    This is just one example of several I had some personal involvement with, although this one was by far the worst.

    It was not the only unjustified punishments that outraged me, but the loss of a great opportunity to learn some valuable lessons on technical and communication aspects. Investigations like that one not only scapegoat low-ranking people, but also tend to hide systematic problems, which is a shame because that’s one of their major purposes. With 4 recent collisions at sea, there seems to be some systematic problems in navigation, and I would not bet money that any of the 4 investigations will shed significant light on the big-picture problems.

    A very bad high-profile case was the turret explosion on the USS Iowa in the late 80’s that killed dozens. Ultimately it was found to be due to faulty powder, but initially it was blamed on a sailor who allegedly cause the explosion because of a falling out of his alleged gay lover (all completely fabricated and publicized far and wide).

    I’d really like to know what happened with any of these collisions, but I think we never will.

    I’m sure some investigations are handled professionally, but I’ve never seen one that dealt with serious matters.

    I wonder how ship handling is taught these days; I suspect that over-reliance on GPS or its equivalent may have made some Navy officers less than competent at navigation.

    Sorry for my long-winded rambling.

  • Garry: Your long comment was quite informative. Thank you. It confirms my assessment that these incidents are evidence of rot in the Navy. There might be an effort by foreign powers to spoof our ships, but the Navy’s management may no longer be capable of dealing with that threat.

  • wayne

    Good stuff by all. (and appreciate the links)

    I did read the “Report,” and it does not go into causation, at all. In fact, some of it’s redacted as it is.)

    Weather looks good in SW Michigan for the eclipse!

  • Commodude

    Scapegoating isn’t the sole proprietorship of the US Navy, but the Army does have a somewhat (emphasis ….SOMEWHAT, we do have the ring knocker protective association…..) more honest investigation process. It can still be corrupted, as can anything done by humans, however, it tends to find accurate fault rather than immediate blame on the command troika.

    I’m a retired Army NCO, and I find the differences between the command climates in the Army and the Navy perplexing. While completing my business degree, my professor in a leadership class (retired senior NCO taking a course in leadership, it was amusing to say the least) suggested that I read “It’s Your Ship” by a former US Navy Officer, Michael Abrashoff. I found myself perplexed by the book, as many of the “revolutionary concepts” he came up with in his time as commander are the bread and butter of Army leadership.

    As an example, he describes the revolutionary concept of having the officers eat in the crew mess to improve the food. In the Army, officers and enlisted eat in the same mess, eat the same food, and in the field, officers and NCOs eat last to ensure the soldiers get what enough to eat. (It’s not ironclad, I’ve seen it violated, and it’s a sure way to piss off soldiers. There are some traditions that are there for a reason)

    The Army ideally practices servant leadership, under the notion that it’s impossible to push a rope. The Navy still has a giant aristocracy. Time to end that practice. The Army aristocracy disappeared during WW2 when leadership shifted to the Napoleonic concept of a marshal’s baton in every grognard’s knapsack out of the need for a massive increase in officers and a constant churn of reliefs after it was found that the aristocracy was lacking. The Navy’s command climate has been found wanting repeatedly in the last few years, from fire onboard carriers, collisions at sea by subs performing publicity stunts, and the current rash of collisions caused by poor seamanship.

    The AAR on the 507th Maint. Co. was damning, and a report I used frequently while training units. It pulled no punches, and described in detail the failures which lead up to the disaster. I literally threw a copy of it at the CO of one unit and told him to read it or he’d be in command of the next 507th. (Yes, an NCO yelling at a commissioned officer….how alarming to the aristocrats in the Navy) Unfortunately, I can’t locate a copy readily, or I’d link it here, it used to be archived at Col. Hackworth’s site, SFTT.org.

    I’m not going to hold my breath waiting for a similar document from the Navy.

  • Garry

    Commodude, what you wrote about Navy vs. Army leadership speaks to why I chose to go Marines instead of Navy; for example, we have the same tradition of NCOs and officers eating last (if there’s food left). When I was on ship, the only time I found Navy officers eating in the enlisted chow hall was when the wardroom served tuna melt and the enlisted chow hall served surf and turf.

    I had leadership courses every year at the Naval Academy, along with day to day leadership training, followed by more seminars at Marine Officers Basic School and in the fleet marine force, and many more in civilian life. Practical experience has taught me that 80 percent or more of leadership lies in the formulation and communication of expectations (not just one way, but also keeping on tabs on what subordinates expect from you). Much of what is taught in formal courses and seminars either supports that or is just navel-gazing.

    Let me know if you find a link of the After Action Report; I’d love to read it.

    I have and regularly read yellowed copies of MajGen Perry M. Smith (USAF)’s short articles published in the Marine Corps Gazette 20 years ago. They’re each in the form of 30 concise, commonsense principles. The first one is here http://govleaders.org/genpsmith.htm As is often the case, there are no earth-shattering discoveries in these, but they give a clear perspective of what most people already know and are good reminders.

    The Air Force was the last place I would have expected to find things like this, but I’m more concerned about content than source.

  • Commodude

    Finally found it, not in .pdf form, but evidently it has been somewhat scrubbed from the web:

    http://www.riciok.com/attack_on_the_convoy.htm

    Read what group 2 did……the entire unit wasn’t a charlie foxtrot, despite incompetent unit leadership there were competent leaders present.

  • Michael Miller

    It’s unlucky to commission a warship after a living person.

  • Commodude

    Michael, it’s named after his father, not the current poltroon in the Senate.

    As my previous attempt to correct my link above seems to have failed, the link to the cover sheet is here:

    http://www.riciok.com/attack_summary.htm

    The previous link is to a subordinate page.

  • wayne

    Commodude-
    Good stuff, and thanks for clarifying the McCain ‘thing.

    tangential inquiry:
    Are there any ships named after Jim Morrison’s dad, Admiral George Stephen Morrison??

  • wayne

    I guess we aren’t pre-emptively striking North Korea any time soon. (HA, Alex Jones is sounding more rational to me, by the week!)

    http://thehill.com/policy/defense/347347-navy-chief-halts-pacific-fleet-operations-orders-review-after-collisions

  • Commodude

    Pardon, it’s not a safety stand down, it’s being called an “operational pause”

    http://www.cnn.com/2017/08/20/asia/us-navy-destroyer-collision-singapore/index.html

    To paraphrase Adm. Beatty, there seems to be something wrong with our bloody sailors lately.

  • Ted

    I hate to begin a post with the term “I’m Sorry” but I don’t understand how all these ship collisions could happen to the most advanced Navy in the world. And maybe that’s the problem – we are too advanced! When did the Navy stop posting manned look outs? Does anyone know how to plot a course on a map with sextant and compass. My dads Coast Guard Cutter in WWII had radar – do the new ships not have radar?

    For you Navy vets my apologies but basic seamanship seems to be lacking. Basic leadership seems to be blind to the lack of basic seamanship. After the first one or two bumps and deaths I would think that the old fashioned ways of plotting and watching and using basic electronics would have been put back into place.

  • Cotour

    Just got back, saw this story, me no like. Billion dollar war ships with the “Best” (?) technology on them should not be playing bumper cars in the Pacific, ever.

    China? Russia? I also heard that story on the J. Batchelor show last week, this all has a smell about it.

    (Did not see the eclipse, timing of the flight did not work out.)

  • JWing

    I have a novel rationale that I have not heard or read that may explain the incidences of these major mishaps:

    Could a major factor be that the majority of these crews are millennials and may all be distracted with iPhones, texting, video games while onboard???
    It sounds outlandish at first, but knowing just how absorbed this generation is with texting, I can imagine the majority of the crew has iPhones and could be staring st their phones instead of the horizon.
    Just a thought….

  • Cotour

    I spoke to a former Marine today and he brought up this subject about the collisions and he said there should have been all kinds of alarms going off if a collision was possible.

  • Commodude

    JWing,

    The subject of iPhones and the ilk is a touchy subject, particularly for those of us who are former cold warriors and are anal about opsec (operational security) and sigsec (signals security).

    I forget the source, but a former cold warrior who looked at a field site with emissions detection equipment found his unit’s field site lit up like a lightbulb. The learning curve when we get back to training to fight peers is going to be steep.

    As to the alarms, they get irritating in tight quarters. Turn ’em off, they’d be going off all the time in the straights of Malacca.

  • Edward

    Robert wrote: “Something in the Navy is seriously wrong.
    Ted wrote: “I don’t understand how all these ship collisions could happen to the most advanced Navy in the world.
    And Robert mentioned (in a comment) “bad management and training in the Navy.”

    From the first article: “An active-duty Navy officer expressed concern to Fox News over the training of young Navy officers aboard ships. ‘It’s not the same level of training you used to get,’ the officer said.

    Our previous president used to complain about the mess that he inherited, but it seems that he managed to leave an even bigger mess. That is what we get when be hire a president who has never been in charge of anything. Rather than being a real leader, he announced that he would lead from (his) behind, and that is the kind of leadership and management that we got from him.

    Commodude,
    I will have to remember the terms charlie foxtrot and poltroon.

    As to alarms and turning them off for sounding too often, that would suggest that the alarms are too sensitive. On the other hand, how much warning time does a crew need in order to avoid a ship that makes a sudden turn in a tight corridor? One of the videos in the second article shows the ramming ship to have made a sudden tight left turn, apparently around the time of the ramming incident.

  • Rene Borbon

    I left the Navy in 2016 mainly due to extreme funding cutbacks. I’m not surprised that the Navy is having trouble with their personnel and ships given a 25%+ attrition rate due to sequestration. The experienced and best mostly have moved on, except for the extremely committed. I blame the politicians. Also, having served adcon with the Army, the Navy needs to evolve and follow the Army leadership model.

  • wodun

    That is what we get when be hire a president who has never been in charge of anything. Rather than being a real leader, he announced that he would lead from (his) behind, and that is the kind of leadership and management that we got from him.

    OT but I liked the part of Trump’s Afghanistan speech where he said our allies would need to pull their own weight but that America would be there bleeding with them. Obama’s leading from behind always came off as other people bleeding for our interests while we offered scant help. It is hard to get other countries to participate like this.

  • Chris

    This AM FoxNews story on the NAvy wondering if they are being “hacked” (prior note on GPS spoofing article from Rogoway). If so, does GPS then become unusable in a spoofed world?
    We should make a run to corner the sextant market now.

    I realize this is serious ,but trying to bring some levity.

  • Commodude

    I doubt GPS spoofing.

    First, one thing the US has always maintained technical supremacy in is in signals intelligence. It’s our “thing”. The Russians are excellent in HUMINT, or human intelligence, as are the Israelis.

    Second, GPS spoofing of the Navy would require hacking the secured side of the GPS transmissions. While there have been all sorts of wild claims from third world actors about hacking or jamming US communications, the reality is that it took utter treason on the part of the Walker spy ring for the Russians to hack our comms during the cold war. We’ve upped our game since then, and the US Intelligence community has a long institutional memory.

    Third, GPS spoofing would take the energy, support and direction of a nation state actor, it’s not something that joe hacker is going to do in his basement, That hacking or spoofing would throw commerce into turmoil, as aviation and oceanic shipping both use GPS. The actor would have to want to crash the worldwide economy.

    As an aside, I wish we could edit posts on here (saw a major grammatical error in my long post on this thread), and I wish someone would make a decent laptop keyboard.

  • Garry

    I tried (unsuccessfully) to call in to a local radio show that was talking about the collisions this morning. I kept listening, though, and heard a retired Master Chief discuss how the Navy has changed.

    He said that in his 30 years he’s seen an over-reliance on computers, and a deterioration of the old-school systems. As an example, he said that many ships are no longer proficient at communicating by naval flags; in fact, the rating of Signalman has since been consolidated with other ratings, so there are no specialists in signal flags, Morse code, etc.

    I agreed with him that the old-fashioned systems (maneuvering boards to plot courses and speeds of one’s own and other ships, lookouts, etc.) are always reliable and more effective than many people think; the tendency is to go with the latest technology. We have raised a generation that’s too dependent on GPS. I saw similar trends in Marine artillery; I made sure my guys were proficient at the old “charts and darts” method of fire direction, to the point where we were still able to shoot accurately even when our computers went down.

    I have a family friend who is midway through his 4 years at the Naval Academy, and I like to compare notes with him. I was shocked to find out that he has never been out on the YPs (Yard Patrol craft, maybe 70 feet long, that midshipmen use to practice seamanship). In my time at the Academy (mid 80s) were out once a week one semester per year, practicing man overboard drills, navigating by dead reckoning, finding our position by 3 lookouts taking compass bearings to know points, etc. By the time I went on my post-plebe (freshman) cruise with an operational Navy ship at age 19, I was proficient at these navigation skills, and was able to polish them during the cruise, which boosted by confidence.

    Worse than the deterioration in his Academy training, during his post-plebe cruise my friend’s ship never left the pier. He says that these things are due to budget cuts. I would submit that they’re due to misplaced priorities in reacting to budget cuts; good judgment comes from experience, and experience comes from bad judgment. If you never have an opportunity to make mistakes while under close supervision, you can’t possibly gain peak proficiency.

    I’m more concerned about the ships in the fleet not getting practice than I am about Naval Academy midshipmen not getting practice; the majority of Navy officers come from other commissioning sources, and with a good operational tempo and institutional proficiency there’s no reason why a surface warfare officer can’t gain proficiency in seamanship, no matter what his/her commissioning source.

    But I fear we’ve lost, or on our way to losing, the institutional proficiency.

    Of course, every ship has its own culture, and I have no doubt that there are many proficient crews out there. One ship I served on had an incompetent officer of the deck, but there was a high enough level of competence that they always caught his mistakes while confirming his navigation solutions (I hope he improved after my 1-month cruise). I fear that some ships have lost that baseline of proficiency.

  • Commodude

    Garry,

    In the Army the lessons of budget cuts were learned in the 1990s when we started paying (for) the “Peace dividend”. Tracks were limited to 25 miles/month, so they sat in the motor pools Tracks that sit actually cost more in maintenance than tracks that get exercised, crews lose proficiency, it’s a lose/lose proposition.

    You NEVER save money in the training budget. There are plenty of other areas to cut, start with the officer’s mess, not the basic needs for mission completion.

  • Garry

    Commodude, I’m sure that you and I can share many stories over a beer about units wasting money, wasting training opportunities, etc.

    In the late 80’s all the artillery ammunition I shot was left over from the Korean War(!) I have no idea why it wasn’t used in Vietnam. I was told that after Gulf War, there was a severe shortage of artillery ammunition, so the tubes sat in the gun park, ultimately costing a lot of money in replacing recoil mechanisms, etc. that were lost due to disuse, not to mention poorly trained crews.

    I think part of the problem is that as things get tighter and stupid decisions are made, many of the true professionals find that they can no longer tolerate the situation and they leave the service, taking a lot of institutional proficiency and wisdom with them.

  • Max

    The search for missing crewmembers has been suspended this morning.
    It has been reported that the other ship begin moving erratically and then veered into the path of the United States ship. After the collision it resumed its normal course. Apparently, it has been documented many times now ships navigating erratically, suddenly without cause. (like recent movie plots involving US missile defense codes)

  • Cotour

    I have heard it proposed that these ramming “accidents” are a result of a Chinese agenda to degrade our ability and to counter our refusal to recognize their illegal confiscation of parts of the Pacific ocean. Sounds reasonable to me.

    We are going to have to deal with N. Korea’s ambitions and we are going to have to deal with China’s ambitions. At some point the breaking of a lot of stuff and financial retribution may be necessary. And in the mean time our men are being killed.

  • Garry

    Max wrote,

    “It has been reported that the other ship begin moving erratically and then veered into the path of the United States ship. After the collision it resumed its normal course. Apparently, it has been documented many times now ships navigating erratically, suddenly without cause.”

    This is the second case (that I know of) where the other ship involved in the collision resumed its normal course after the collision; I’ve read that this is evidence that the ship was on autopilot.

    There has been speculation that the other ship this applies to had nobody on the bridge at the time of the accident, which to me is unthinkable.

    I don’t have much evidence, but what if the Chinese, or North Koreans, or whoever were somehow hacking into commercial ships’ controls and making them collide with US Navy ships? This would be almost as bad as hacking into the Navy ships themselves; there are certain situations where a collision is just about unavoidable. It would be relatively easy to set this up in a crowded shipping lane.

    Of these, there are strange situations where not only is a collision unavoidable, but by the international rules of the road it would be the fault of the ship that was made the target. During the Cold War, Soviet ships would often come close to US Navy ships and try to set up these situations (we probably did the same to them).

  • Max

    Garry:
    I could not find the intelligence report that was quoted. That ships in the Mediterranean/ Black Sea/pacific have been operating recklessly /Erratically like somebody taking control for the first time not knowing how the system works. The ships, when asked, simply report “malfunction”. We don’t know what happened. Auto pilot problem.
    https://sputniknews.com/military/201706241054932111-automated-guidance-system-ship-fitzgerald/
    There is a warning implied in the article of systems encryption being outdated and possibly “others” are using normal craft as guided missiles. Not limited to sea vessels. Auto driven cars, or auto pilot aircraft are also vulnerable.
    I remember professionals stating military grade auto pilot installed on the aircraft that ran into the World Trade Centers.
    (Cotour has provided convincing evidence that I cannot explain away. A close-up of the World Trade Center’s collapsing in slow motion. Before each floor fell, there was a Flash and then an explosion that blew out the windows.)

  • wayne

    yowza…. WTC?

  • Cotour

    I know I am not alone Wayne, and I am certain that many here would never comment in the affirmative for fear of being labeled. Its always the initially classified as “crazy” that turns out to be the truth.

    If you approach the subject, any subject, objectively (scientifically), and do not first “understand” that something is impossible because no one would dare do something that immoral or at that scale, then you are doomed to someone else’s reality. Who and why are almost not relevant initially. Mathematics and physics can only be understood and not argued with.

    Pure S.O.M., anything in the pursuit of the retention of and the acquisition of power and the agenda that ensures that agenda.

    All in good time.

  • Edward

    Max,
    You wrote: “Cotour has provided convincing evidence that I cannot explain away. A close-up of the World Trade Center’s collapsing in slow motion. Before each floor fell, there was a Flash and then an explosion that blew out the windows.

    In an earlier post, I had explained the things that Cotour had pointed out. Cotour, however refused to read what I had written and continued to use them as proof of an extremely complex conspiracy that has nothing to do with foreign terrorists.

    The explanation that terrorists used airliners to punch huge holes in the buildings’s support structures and used the fuel of those aircraft to weaken the remaining structure is not only supported by the facts and evidence but is much, much more likely than a huge conspiracy that requires the victims to ignore pre-planted explosives in their offices and requires precision crashing of the airliners to align perfectly with those pre-planted explosives.

    As for windows blowing out when the structure surrounding those windows finally succumb to column failure, do you actually expect the windows to support millions of pounds of structure above them or do you expect them to burst from the extreme forces imposed upon them from the collapsing columns? Even if the interior of the building was not under pressure from the expanding gasses created by the fires or the compression of the room’s air caused by the floor above (the ceiling of the current floor) collapsing downward, wouldn’t you expect at least half the glass to burst outward, making it look like the windows blew outward?

    Cotour’s evidence may seem convincing, if you do not understand engineering or physics (as Cotour does not) and why buildings stay up as well as why buildings fall down (as Cotour does not), but for those of us who have studied these situations, his evidence is bogus poppycock.

    Rather than study the engineering, physics, or math, Cotour is content to only listen to the conspiracy theorists until the conspiracy in his mind becomes so complex that no reasonable thinking person would believe it and that he cannot begin to explain it. In order to propagate his nonsense, he depends upon others to likewise fail to study reality.

    I have found that the futility of it all is greater than the occasional pearl of wisdom, so I have stopped reading any of Cotour’s comments in order to ensure that I don’t get sucked into any more of his frustrating, one-sided non-discussions. I would feel bad about ignoring him, but it became clear that he ignores my explanations of reality, preferring his own fantasies to the real world.

    Cotour has lost all credibility.

  • Cotour

    Cotour, if you noticed, did not start out with any “complex” conspiracy theories, if indeed you have been reading what he was writing on the subject. Cotour has plainly stated that he is not interested in any conspiracy theory related to who or why, he is only interested in mathematics and physics and the characteristics of similar events, steel building fires and buildings being destroyed using explosives, very simple.

    Some people (And it is a natural bias, it makes you feel good and safe when observing things outside of your personal comfort / moral parameters) who have commented on the subject at hand start from the point of view that something is not possible for the many reasons that they can think up that its not possible. Some people offer all kinds of rational for plainly observable events that do not fit the profile of what should have been typical for the kind of event that took place.

    As to Cotours credibility, Max seems to be of the opinion that Cotour is credible and apparently reasonable. We know what is not reasonable, a commenter suggested that a plainly observable substance, with a visual / spectral signature that looks very much like 3000 + / – or so degree iron or steel pouring from a key location might have been “Molten carpet” (?). Credibility? Is molten carpet really the opinion of a credible person on the subject? Has anyone ever seen molten carpet? I never have. I tell you what I have seen, and thats molten, liquidious steel. And I do not care how many engineering degrees a person may have, buildings designed and built specifically to stand under every kind of conceivable condition, including a large plane crash and fire, can not destroy themselves, raze themselves to the ground. Three times on the same day. One time would be a holy miracle, but three times on the same day within minutes / hours of each other? Think about that for just one moment.

    To all readers of this post who need a little assistance in understanding the implications: IF (IF) there was 3000 +/- or so degree iron or steel poring from the side of the building then that can only mean one thing, energy has been added to accomplish that. That 3000 degrees does not just happen in the kind of fire that occurred, it can not happen. Just this one observation alone develops a reasonable doubt as to the credibility of how what happened happened, and there are many, many other plainly observable elements of the event that solidifies my and apparently Max’s doubts. How many others curiosity has been peaked on this subject but will not comment? And that’s fine, but at least review the information and weigh it objectively and not be limited by what you think is possible or not based within your own subjective moral parameters and comfort zone.

    That would be a mistake.

  • Max

    I like to think I have an open mind on a great many things, since I’ve been coming to Zimmerman site I have learned a lot.
    Even learn something When you and cotour banter back-and-forth. I have a great many opinions that differ with others, perhaps because I am different. I hope to think that I help make others think… because thinking has become a rarity these days. Most people feel and they feel it deeply without understanding. They need to act on those feelings without thought. “If it feels good do it,” “if it makes you mad, challenge it”.”If everyone else is doing it, then I will follow the herd”.
    There is no greater emotion than the one we all witnessed on 9/11. We all felt so strongly that it united the country for a short time. Not only did we pass legislation that undermined our constitution which never would’ve happened otherwise, we went to war with two different countries that had nothing to do with 9/11… Action promoted by nothing more than feelings.
    Watching the building fall in slow-motion, seeing the flash then the windows blow out look to familiar to me. Where I work we use explosives like this daily. I’ve showed the video to those with class III explosives license and watch their face turn white. The reactions were the same, some of them have done demolitions before and knew exactly what they were watching. The video of the “light flash” and then a body being blown out vertically for more than 100 feet out of the pictures frame cannot be done with air pressure. Here are some examples:
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eem7d58gjno
    Coast to coast AM on Friday had an author Selling his book about false flag operations. I haven’t listened to it yet but I understand he spent nearly half an hour just on 9/11.

    As for automated pilot, another worry was pointed out to me that soon drones delivering pizza could just as easily deliver bombs…

  • Edward

    Max wrote: “The video of the “light flash” and then a body being blown out vertically for more than 100 feet out of the pictures frame cannot be done with air pressure.

    Why do you discount electrical flashes as the energized wiring shorts out during the collapse of the buildings?

    I thought that you were just interested in windows blowing out, not short circuiting electrical wiring. There is far, far more than just air pressure going on in a collapsing building. Beams and columns are breaking, concrete flooring is crashing into everything and crumbling into chunks and dust, as well as windows bursting. In fact, everything within the building is being violently smashed by extremely heavy objects crashing together.

    If you believe the flashes to be explosive charges that were set in order to cause the buildings to fall, then you have to answer questions about how they got there and how they went unnoticed. Additional questions include: how were they detonated, especially without anyone knowing about the vast conspiracy? How were the airplanes flown precisely into just the right places where the explosives were planted? How did they pull off such a complex conspiracy yet leave behind no evidence of the conspiracy? How and why did the other World Trade building fall when it was not a target? If the conspiracy was to take down World Trade Center buildings, why did the conspiracy extend to the Pentagon and the Capitol buildings, complicating the conspiracy?

    In order for a story to make sense, it has to make sense, and only one version of events on that day makes any sense at all. The other versions require an amazing amount of suspension of disbelief. This is why no one believes them. This goes far beyond Occam’s razor.

    The same requirement for a sensible story applies to collisions with navy ships. Why are they happening now? As Robert noted, it looks like it could be poor training and mismanaged operations. Our previous president was very proud to lead from (his) behind, and that is the kind of stinky, undesirable leadership that we got from him.

    Max wrote: “As for automated pilot, another worry was pointed out to me that soon drones delivering pizza could just as easily deliver bombs…

    Nothing prevents today’s pizza delivery people from delivering bombs. In fact, we have seen several bombs that were delivered by truck, car, or backpack.

  • Cotour

    This is the exact wrong way to observe something as I have pointed out previously.

    “In order for a story to make sense, it has to make sense, and only one version of events on that day makes any sense at all.”

    Here objectivity has been short circuited because of the immensity of it all, and that is by specific design. But when you start to dig down only on the observable mathematics and physics, the only place where truth lies, you find other more disturbing evidence and answers.

    With all due respect, this kind of thinking of first explaining why something can not happen and then further finding all of the explanations to support that initial conclusion without fully exploring the observable evidence is self defeating and exactly what is expected.

    Physics: Watch this video https://youtu.be/0YvrKfWkxdw and just listen to the sound signature of this one explosion. That is not a gas cylinder exploding, nor is it a gas / oil tank exploding, they each have their own specific sound signatures. What you hear is IMO a very fast high explosive going off just like on the video Max posted. Exactly the same, measure it if you have the equipment to do so. Where does a high explosive come from in an unanticipated attack? And how does it go off in the middle of the confusion? That stuff is not just laying around in the middle of NYC.

    I do not take pleasure in revealing these very disturbing IMO facts to anyone, especially here. But this is the kind of place where it must be investigated and understood. If not here, then where? Pure S.O.M..

  • Cotour

    “This goes far beyond Occam’s razor.”

    Lucifer used Ocams razor to shave on the morning of 9/11/01.

    It gives a very nice and clean shave.

  • Cotour

    Related:

    This extremely provocative action from N. Korea must be met with severe actions………………………Against CHINA!

    http://news.trust.org/item/20170828223815-c8i1x

  • Cotour: Your response to Edward demonstrates forcefully why, on this subject, you have absolutely no credibility. Edward asked the following questions, none of which you have ever addressed, in the slightest.

    1. How did the explosives get there and how was it possible that they went unnoticed?
    2. How were they detonated, especially without anyone knowing about the vast conspiracy?
    3. How were the airplanes flown precisely into just the right places where the explosives were planted?
    4. How did they pull off such a complex conspiracy yet leave behind no evidence of the conspiracy?
    5. How and why did the other World Trade building fall when it was not a target?
    6. If the conspiracy was to take down World Trade Center buildings, why did the conspiracy extend to the Pentagon and the Capitol buildings, complicating the conspiracy?

    Let me add a few:

    7. The plane that the passengers forced down in Pennsylvania was obviously aimed at a target somewhere. Why were its target’s explosives never detonated, or discovered?
    8. If the Pentagon was part of the same plot, why were no explosives found there?

    You need to answer these questions with credible reasoning in order for reasonable people to take you seriously. Showing us another youtube video of the event doesn’t do it. And simply accusing Edward, or me, or anyone who disagrees with you, of observing the facts “in the exact wrong way” is not only insulting and insufficient, it reveals an unwillingness by you to analyze the entire problem objectively

  • Let me add that you are once again hijacking what had been an interesting discussion about the state of the Navy to focus on a conspiracy theory about the 9/11 bombings that almost no one finds creditable. I am getting very tired of this.

  • Cotour

    My response to Edward, considering what we are discussing, is exactly in the form that is required, exactly. (With all due respect to you both or anyone else that is in some way offended)

    I will begin by asking: How do astronomers reasonably and as reliably as they can come to the conclusions that they come to about the universe? Do they first ask God for his / her schematic for the universe and therein the answers to the questions that they want to ask? No, that is unknowable until you know it. Astronomers come to their reasonable conclusions based in understanding through observation and inference and through those observations appears reality. The mathematics is tested, established and proven as is the physics. They do not first state: Because I do not know the answers then what I observe can not be true. The reverse is actually true: What I can observe and measure establishes the reality, I just need to understand it.

    Mathematics and physics can not be argued with it can only be understood.

    Possible answers to questions posed:

    1. There is evidence that extensive elevator work was undertaken during the time between the purchase and the event as I understand. Access to the elevators and the core is key.

    2. Electronic / computer control, its used every day. The buildings, as I understand it, were both totally powered down before the events for “security reasons”, it caused a lot of documented problems for the tenents. That is curious to me.

    3. I will assume some sort of targeting / auto pilot system. We have been having conversations about self driving autos, is a self directing plane too far out of the realm of reality? Two planes piloted by 4 inexperienced pilots who were trained in Cessnas flew for over an hour and then both were able to on one pass find there targets precisely while posting 400 to 500 mph. I would like F-16 to comment on that feat, he certainly would know better than I.

    4. Dedication? Fear? Not many knew the exact reason nor method applied? Your question once again is a question out of sequence and tends to explain why it can not happen rather what did happen. At this point in time I am not concerned with who or why.

    5. Good question. Building 7 housed the CIA, NSA, Security Exchange Commission etc.. Steel framed buildings in fire conditions do not fall in symmetry. If they have a fire condition, even an extreme fire condition they will slump, sag, become disorganized, they never are able to raze themselves to street level, never. It happened 3 times in one day in the same location at around the same time. And if you observe the video of it falling, what does it resemble?

    7. You are assuming that there were explosives required at there destinations. You know what happens when you assume? Give me a reason that they would be needed.

    8. Again, you assume that. A 757 might cause just enough destruction? The Pentagon is not a sky scraper? Another question asked out of sequence that explains why what is observed can not be.

    I again point out that IF reasonable observations are made that contradict what would be reasonable assumptions related to a building being hit by a large jet then you must reformulate.

    Reasonable observations, I will only focus on lower Manhattan:

    1. The flash before impact of BOTH planes. I am not sure what they are but it is pretty certain that they were there, this is not normal for the described event. The internet is such a bitch, 10 or 15 years before and no one knows anything.

    2. The molten substance that has a remarkable visual / spectral resemblance to steel or iron pouring from the corner of the building just below where the initial failure of the corner occurs. It is reasonable that this material was not properly contained and leaked from the corner and blew through the side. A building fire in 1 atmosphere can not produce the temperatures even close to accomplish this, energy must be added.

    3. The audio recording of an explosion that has the audio signature of high explosives. Fast, sharp and booming. Someone here must have or have access to the equipment to analyze it to indicate what it is. If its a high explosive which is what it sounds like, there is a problem. And I do not think it reasonable that terrorists were able to plant anything in any of the buildings beforehand. If not them, then who?

    4. The slow motion analysis. In one you can plainly see under the cover of the falling dust and rubble that the explosive ejections lead the rubble by 20 or so floors. This is an indicator that the compressive air expulsions theory is not valid. The expulsions occur very forcefully in a straight line running down the face of the building to the ground.

    5. The flashes recorded in the long perspective. To my eye, and there are several that can be reviewed, they are fairly random and race up and down the interiors and have no correlation between collapse and electrical failure. These IMP are not electrical failures nor lights.

    6. Two 500,000 ton buildings are essentially crushed by aprox. 1/5th of a building and aprox. 1/3rd of a
    building (?). How did the buildings stand for all of those years? They were 95 percent interior air but they were brutally built. And if you watch some of the slow motion videos you can observe the top of the buildings beginning to topple and then then actually crush themselves and then continue down to street level without any resistance. Again, how did these building stand?

    7. Aerial view of the after math, a classic explosive destruction field. Total pulverization and the steel strewn in 10 and 20 foot long bits, razed to street level. The core foundation columns were massive and tapered going up, 47 of them locked together with welds, bolts and a foot of concrete. 3 times on the same day within a couple of hours of each other. Now that’s just plain greedy IMO.

    8. Numerable, credible eyewitness accounts both inside of the buildings and outside.

    If any of these reasonable observations alone or collectively are deemed to be true or out of order with the expected then there must be a reformulation of the explanation. There are many more but I will end with just these 8.

  • Cotour: Nice speculations, but you provide no sources, and most important, you ignore the biggest problem with your conspiracy thinking: Why was no evidence at all found of any of these explosive devices at the Worth Trade Center? Moreover, your entire conspiracy theory requires some evil force planting the bombs, but you haven’t suggested anyone, mainly because whoever you suggest would appear to be ludicrous.

    I agree with Edward. This is a waste of my time. It is also distracting from areas where real evil is being committed. You want to talk about governments conspiring with fascists to destroy freedom? Why don’t you focus instead on California and Berkeley, where this is actually happening, in plain sight, with ample evidence?

  • wayne

    We are up to our eyebrows with real-stuff, the fascination with conspiracy is completely counter productive.

    Alan Parsons Project – Psychobabble
    https://youtu.be/BOYXt9iUfjU

  • Mitch S

    Cotour,
    It’s fine to question an accepted theory but just because there is something about a theory that you question does not prove it is wrong, and does not prove an alternate theory is correct.
    (Wayne once posted an excellent talk by Dr Richard Feynman, I’ll try to repost it below).

    You speak about people’s biases – fine, but it seems to me you have a bias against any theory presented by “the establishment” and automatically favor alternates that fit you “SOM” viewpoint.
    Speaking of “SOM”, seems to me you feel that most people are blinded by their morality and only an enlightened few can see through the fog. Yet “SOM” is just a fancy way of saying that people lie to further their goals.
    Like when the used car salesman tells you the car was owned by a ‘little old lady” and that engine noise is ‘perfectly normal’ – yup, “SOM”.

    You mention “mathematics and physics” but when you present evidence such as the sound of the explosion, you say “What you hear is IMO a very fast high explosive” – no measurement/analysis/calculations, just opinion.
    (IMO it doesn’t sound much different than a truck hauling a container hitting a big pothole).
    Ever watch the presentation by Dr Judy Wood? She was a mechanical engineering professor, must know her stuff… yet because some stuff about 9/11 “bothers’ her, she concludes it must mean the gov’t has developed a disintegrating ray and used it on 9/11. She’s bothered that those huge towers left so little debris behind. Does she present sober calculations of the volume of the solid masses of the towers (an efficient modern structure is mostly empty space) and compare the volume of the compacted masses of the debris fields including the parts pulverized into dust? No, just pictures “look how big that is and how small that is”.
    If you start out with a theory that MUST be proven, you can always make the evidence fit (or just ignore the evidence that doesn’t), (and that doesn’t just apply to the “establishment”) but it won’t hold up when given objective scrutiny.

    Fenyman (well worth nine minutes):
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0KmimDq4cSU

    Got 2 hrs?, go ahead, check out the disintegrating ray theory:
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vadSaWyiozg

  • Cotour

    I did not at this time again bring this subject up, Max and Edward were discussing it.

    I do comment on the other more important current things that are going on in the world and in our country, every day, right here. Where have you been for the last several years?

    Zman: Do you agree that IF any one or more of the 8 items I have pointed out is so that there is a problem with the explanation? If there is 3000 degrees in the Towers then something is wrong. Where does the extra energy come from? It has got to come from somewhere.

    Sources?

    The sources are right at your finger tips, spend the time and investigate it properly. You through your own investigation refute what I am asserting. I have provided some key visual evidence, refute it one by one. It took me 2 months to see and understand then 3 more years to explain. Where do you think S.O.M. comes from? I once again suggest that this is being looked at backwards by most, and that is a part of the brilliance. Reread S.O.M. and then apply it to the events of 2001 and current events, hell all of history.

    You need to know why first then you can see it? That is not how science works, and you know that very well. What is is, I can not change that but I can attempt to understand it.

    What you are stating is that what the government proclaims is so, period, the end. Please reflect on that one thing, it should not take you very long to begin to become uncomfortable.

  • Cotour

    PS: I am not a conspiracy theorist, you are. I am not for one moment concerned with a conspiracy, I am looking at plainly observable evidence in the public realm. Your method is backwards.

    I care about mathematics and physics, I can not argue with that and neither can anyone else.

  • Edward

    Robert wrote: “And simply accusing Edward, or me, or anyone who disagrees with you, of observing the facts ‘in the exact wrong way’ is not only insulting and insufficient, it reveals an unwillingness by you to analyze the entire problem objectively

    This is why I have stopped reading Cotour. In another thread, he was emphatic about physics and math, but he has always completely failed to present any physics or math that supports his malarkey. One has to wonder whether he studied physics, math (beyond algebra — it is geometry that begins teaching logical thinking), or engineering at all. He refuses to use the sciences that he says are important; can’t answer simple questions (because he is too ignorant of the topic to understand the viewpoint that he presents); and is insulting to anyone who answers questions or who understands logic, science, critical thinking, and reality for what they are.

    Hmm. Wasn’t there a recent post about that phenomenon?
    http://behindtheblack.com/behind-the-black/points-of-information/how-to-know-youre-in-a-mass-hysteria-bubble/

    1. The trigger event for cognitive dissonance.
    — Check

    2. The Ridiculousness of it.
    — Check

    3. The Confirmation Bias.
    — Check

    4. The Oversized Reaction.
    — Check

    5. The Insult without supporting argument.
    — Check.

  • Cotour

    Mitch S:

    I have three questions for you.

    1. How many buildings can you find or do you know of that have ever disintegrated, crushed itself down to street level, totally pulverized, no structure left at all standing after some kind of isolated fire event or structural failure high up in its structure?

    2. How many times do you think that has happened in all of modern steel frame building history?

    3. If the fire was way up in the upper third of one tower and the upper fifth of the other, and there is no evidence that anything structural below the impact zone was effected and was whole, where did the support in the remaining supporting bulk of the buildings go to allow the buildings to fall entirely to the ground apparently unopposed in aprox. free fall speed of 10 seconds?

    Take some time and please answer these simple questions for me.

    (PS: I am not aware of any “secret” ray and I do not have 2 hours to find out about it)

  • Cotour

    Mitch S:

    “(IMO it doesn’t sound much different than a truck hauling a container hitting a big pothole).”

    Mitch S: This sounds like a garbage truck hitting a pot hole to you?

    https://youtu.be/_kOIvwThj-U

    How big of a pot hole are you imagining? And how big is the truck?

  • wayne

    Cotour-
    Now you are ‘analyzing’ sound, delivered over the internet, after having been encoded & re-encoded more than once.
    It’s very much akin to analyzing SpaceX explosions, from 3 miles away,

    (You can right-click on these YouTube videos you reference, to check the “statistics for nerds” display, to see what audio format YouTube is delivering to you.)

  • Cotour

    Attention all engineers, mathematicians, rockets scientists, physicists, space historians, machinists, High IQ super nerds and local internet rabble that read and participate in B2B.

    A 1000 KG weight (2200 lbs) dropped in free air from a height of 358 Meters (1176 ft), the height of the 95th floor of the North Tower takes 8.55 seconds to reach the ground, give or take a tenth of a second or so for air resistance. 8.55 seconds. This is defined as “Free Fall”. If you want to argue with Newton you go right ahead.

    http://www.angio.net/personal/climb/speed

    So drop 2200 lbs from 1176 feet in open and unobstructed air and it will hit the ground in 8.55 seconds precisely, you can bet on that.

    The time the North Tower took to hit the ground is estimated at between 10 to 12 seconds, give or take. Just behind free fall speed.

    A difference of between 1.16 seconds to 3.45 seconds, give or take. (Count off 1.16 and 3.45 seconds.)

    Q: 1. Where is the resistance of the unmolested steel structure of the building? Where did it go?

    Wayne, “molten Carpet”, Mitch S, Zman, Blair, Dick E, Patzch, Max, Orion, Jwing, somebody rationally explain to me where the entirely unmolested steel frame structure below the event went that was holding up the building for 30 years.

    And remember before you answer the building became stronger and stronger the closer to the ground the collapse progressed, with STEEL. And it happened 3 times on the same day withing hours of each other.

    One of you geniuses explain this discrepancy to me, I am certain that there are geniuses here. THINK.

  • wayne

    I’ll take the bait…(however, nothing is going to convince you to the contrary, is it?)

    “Where is the resistance of the unmolested steel structure of the building? Where did it go?”

    >The potential energy of falling converts to kinetic energy, which degrades primarily to heat energy.

    …”the building became stronger and stronger the closer to the ground the collapse progressed,…”

    by definition, it collapsed, so it’s impossible for the structure to have become “stronger.”

  • Cotour

    “(however, nothing is going to convince you to the contrary, is it?)”

    If you, through reasonable and lengthy objective study and focus, came to understand something that you objectively and reasonably understood to be a truth, could anyone ever “convince” you otherwise?

    If you can refute my position please do, I look forward to it. But do not have your interpretation of the events be based in first beginning to list why what we can plainly see and understand is “Impossible” which is based in a preconceived notion of what reality “should” be as opposed to what it is, no matter how offensive it is to your comfortable and accepted model of reality. That is a key part of the confusion.

    I realize reading the energized comments on this subject that no one here has really spent much time on the subject. I know that this is a BIG subject and its implications are BIG in many ways, but if objective truth is what we in the end absolutely need to understand then I challenge you or any other high IQ nerd, scientist, engineer, rocket scientist etc. that reads these posts to mathematically and through observation of the physical evidence in the form of a vast collection of video recorded evidence readily available and on the internet and other places to demonstrate how my conclusions are incorrect.

    Given my last example the mathematics indicates that you could drop a 2200 lb. weight straight through the center of the building and not encounter nothing more than aprox. 1.16 to 3.45 seconds of resistance from the entirely unmolested remaining structure. Drop two weights one through the center of the building and one next to the building and there is barely any resistance, they hit the ground almost at the same time.

    “The potential energy of falling converts to kinetic energy, which degrades primarily to heat energy.”

    The building was brutally built from the ground up, a full building within a building, 500,000 tons each, how does one third of a building (136,363 tons, 30 floors above the event, S. tower) or one fifth of a building (68,000 tons, 15 floors above the event, N. tower ) crush to the ground floor a 500,000 ton building, in the exact same way? Yes the energy primarily degrades into heat and when that energy is equalized the event stops. There was nothing of consequence below the event that effected the steel structure in any way, so says the official narrative. Understand the structure and and the math and understand the impossibility.

    “by definition, it collapsed, so it’s impossible for the structure to have become “stronger.””

    How did it collapse? Did the foundation give way under the collapse event? No, the building fell top to bottom at just behind the rate of free fall. There was barely resistance from the steel structure, how can that be? There was an entire 47 column brutally interconnected steel supported building built within the outer steel shell, its like it was not even there. If these building were built so flimsily (they were engineered to withstand 140 mph + sustained winds and take a hit and fire from a large air liner) they should have fallen over long ago.

    And it happened 3 times on the same day involving two very differently constructed steel framed buildings, minutes / hours apart.

    You or anyone else take your time, as you know, I am very patient.

  • wayne

    Cotour-
    -if your conclusion is “9/11 was an inside job,” nothing anyone could say, will sway you.

    Engineering: How do Columns Fail?
    https://youtu.be/-ONVGO-iU4g
    (7:38)

  • wayne

    Highly recommend anything by this guy:

    Physics Mechanics: Stress and Strain
    (1 of 16)
    Michel van Biezen
    https://youtu.be/IyvFpuFeDYc
    (7:17)

  • Cotour

    A good start.

  • Cotour

    “-if your conclusion is “9/11 was an inside job,” nothing anyone could say, will sway you.”

    Once again, I do not come to the issue from that point of view, I only am concerned with the mathematics and the physics. Please stay focused on those two issues, the who and why do not concern me the how and its resulting measurable and inferable effects are my only focus.

    Just the mathematics and physics, after that is reasonbaby understood then you can wade into the much more complex who and why.

  • Cotour

    That clip is disingenuous Wayne.

    Where did the resistance of the remaining unmolested steel structure go?……. X’s 3, on the same day, in lower Manhattan.

    And if you spend the time and look, the tops of the building actually peal off to where there is very little left to drive the collapse to the ground.

  • Cotour

    That clip is disingenuous Wayne.

    Where did the resistance of the remaining unmolested steel structure go?……. X’s 3, on the same day.

    And if you spend the time and look, the tops of the building actually peal off to where there is very little left to drive the collapse to the ground.

  • wayne

    Cotour–
    The entire “9/11 Collapse Violated Fundamental Laws of Physics – Explained” narrative that you have bought into, is junk science. You should know better. Dude, it’s all made up “sciency-truthiness.”
    I would put forth the proposition, you are making fundamental error’s in logic.

    Zeno’s Paradox – Achilles And The Tortoise
    aka Why Motion is Impossible
    https://youtu.be/3vNlf2zGLaE
    (3:07)

  • Cotour

    Its out there, this to me objective investigation is from 2006.

    https://youtu.be/cZ4dVo5QgYg

    He interviewed 500 firemen that were on the scene, plus the audio is very informative.

  • Mitch S.

    Cotour I view this as a respectful conversation so I don’t agree with posting the Queeg clip (though it is a great performance by Bogey – bet nowadays they would have made him dye his teeth yellow or done it electronically).

    As far as the speed of the collapse, think dominoes.
    One little push starts the whole collapse. Hundreds of dominoes (or 30,000!) falling yet the rate of collapse doesn’t visibly slow down.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_1x99bOX7Yo

  • Cotour

    Yes, Wayne is being childish, but that is OK with me, I still love him. This is a difficult subject, he goes to his “safe” space. Some lead and some follow.

    We are not talking about toys and plastic dominoes here, we are talking about buildings constructed to never fall down, ever, and all three fell at just behind free fall speed, razed entirely to the ground.

    What would happen if those dominoes were glued or welded to the floor? If you wanted to knock them over you would have to add energy to them to over come their being welded / glued to the floor. Now your analogy is correct.

    You just keep reading, listening and watching you will see it eventually. I encourage you to ask as many questions as possible.

  • Edward

    wayne wrote: “I’ll take the bait…(however, nothing is going to convince you to the contrary, is it?)

    “’Where is the resistance of the unmolested steel structure of the building? Where did it go?’ [Presumably from Cotour]

    “>The potential energy of falling converts to kinetic energy, which degrades primarily to heat energy.

    wayne also wrote: “Cotour– The entire ‘9/11 Collapse Violated Fundamental Laws of Physics – Explained’ narrative that you have bought into, is junk science. You should know better. Dude, it’s all made up ‘sciency-truthiness.’ I would put forth the proposition, you are making fundamental error’s in logic.

    Cotour’s main problem seems to be that he believes buildings to be monoliths rather than towers, a fundamental error in logic and reality. He likes to think that hollow steel-framed towers should fall more like trees than like brick buildings. Reality mystifies him, so he retreats to his fantasy safe-zone of a mass hysteria bubble, where huge government conspiracies are out to get him. Apparently he can handle that fantasy better than the reality that Islamic fanatics are out to get him.

    Cotour also suffers from not recognizing that the upper portions of the towers are at least three orders of magnitude more massive than the airliners that punched huge holes into the sides of the buildings. Instead, he believes that the floor below any collapsed columns should be able to stop millions of tons of steel and concrete, as though the mass of each floor is capable of withstanding the forces (the resistance of the unmolested steel structure of the building?) of dozens of times more mass falling 10 feet or 20 feet or 30 feet or … or 500 feet onto them. he believes that the beams and girders should withstand the huge energy of a falling building even though minutes earlier they could not withstand the relatively small energy of a relatively lightweight plane. This is intuitively obvious to even casual observers (non-mathematicians, non-physicists, non-engineers), so one has to wonder why Cotour refuses to see the obvious.

    Concrete is brittle and especially weak in tension. That is why it is used in areas of compression (such as columns) and heavily reinforced by steel “re-bar” (reinforcing bar) anywhere it will see tension; the steel, not the concrete, carries the tension forces in those locations. Yet Cotour would have us believe that a concrete floor should be able to stop entire buildings from falling any farther than that floor, rather than rapidly crumble under the enormous kinetic energies of the falling building crashing into it (E = 1/2*M*V^2, where M is thousands of tons, V is 26 feet per second for the first 10 foot one-story drop and faster for the next floor, and E smashes the concrete without the fall of the building being slowed any noticeable amount). Apparently Cotour has never been in a room or a laboratory in which a sign is posted informing the maximum floor-load per square foot; too much more than that and the floor will crack and may collapse.

    But Cotour does not understand how or why buildings are built the way that they are and won’t study the subject, despite his insistence that we spend weeks studying what we have already studied — the nonsense that he advocates. He does not even want to understand why firefighters insisted that the steel frames of buildings be protected from heat by using asbestos (only now they use something less effective). He thinks that steel buildings never fell before 9/11, but he is wrong — the suddenness of collapse was well known for about a century before 9/11/01, and these sudden collapses surprised firefighters who had used the creaks of wood structures to warn them when it was time to get out. Steel does not creak as much before collapsing.

    Cotour refuses to understand that steel weakens with heat, even though someone, in another thread, linked to a graph of the phenomenon. Steel does not weaken only when it melts, it anneals (weakens) as it gets hot. You do not have to melt it for it to soften and fail to hold up its load: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kp69PmhELZA (1/2 minute); the bang in the video is the sudden failure of the steel. Notice how the overpass had weakened before the collapse, bending under its own weight, yet only a few minutes earlier it had been able to carry the load of cars and trucks during heavy stop and go traffic. Similar to the World Trade Center, this fire started when a tanker truck full of gasoline crashed on the middle overpass, right below the upper deck, which is seen collapsing in the video.

    These are the fundamentals and the realities of mathematics, physics, material sciences, and especially engineering. Civil engineers and mechanical engineers are carefully taught the effects of tempering (strengthening) materials and how these tempers can be annealed under the influences of high temperatures. This is one of the reasons that jet engines and rocket engines are so impressive; they hold up under extreme stresses at high temperatures, yet weigh relatively little.

    But, of course, Cotour will not be swayed by reality. Instead he clings to the of the mass hysteria bubble that he uses as “warm fuzzy kittens” of a safe space. He always will.

  • Cotour

    Lots of letters after these guys names.

    https://youtu.be/NZIksq5QyI8

    Its really very simple but very complex, but the general rule is to never argue with the numbers, its always a losing bet.

    First you will be embarrassed, then you will be scared (or visa versa).

  • Cotour

    Dear “Molten Carpet” (Thats what I think when ever I see your name now :) you said that there we plenty of examples of buildings, I assume steel frame buildings falling down, and you post and an example a video of a bridge, which is a horizontal structure in a fire condition and having a failure. (?)

    Does anyone see a problem with that? I suggest you request that Wayne find an appropriate example for you given his impressive savant like video acquisition capabilities. Not even Wayne with his video acquisition super powers can help you. You will see it eventually, like I have stated, I am patient.

    Fail.

  • wayne

    Edward-
    good stuff.

    Cotour–
    What I’m ‘hearing’ these clowns propose;
    “It could not possibly have collapsed, the way it did, collapse, so therefore 9/11 was an inside job.”
    I’m in the behavioral-sciences, but even I know enough about structural engineering to be able to generalize horizontal and vertical structures. It’s all distributed loads and physics.
    (The Eiffel tower for example, it might as well be a “bridge,” part of the reason it stands erect is precisely why bridges don’t collapse under their own weight.)

    You’re condescending, preachy, and border on clinicality.

  • Cotour

    Stick to the behavioral sciences Wayne.

  • Cotour: And I think you should stick to retail sales, which I believe is your work. You continue to embarrass yourself here on this subject, which serves to discredit everything else you write.

  • Cotour

    Just let it play out, if its a big nothing then its just meaningless words typed by fools, or a fool. This is about common sense and seeing through an “approved” narrative, which surprises me that you are not more sceptical seeing where the narrative comes from. (Or maybe you are and are keeping it to yourself?) I am not at all embarrassed, 100 percent comfortable and confident, you seem to be very concerned about the embarrassment aspect of this discussion for me. Not to worry. If I am making a fool of myself then so be it. I am being factual from my perspective, I am being civilized and disciplined, other than some good natured sarcasm being thrown around it is just a conversation about a controversial subject.

    Review the material, watch and listen, ask questions, use your common sense and you will eventually understand and see it. Yes, even you. Then a whole different conversation will ensue, Waynes head will explode.

    If you have reviewed the last few videos, how do you, the Zman, pursuer of truth, explain the engineers and professors of engineering and their much more professionally qualified opinions then mine? Are they also to be “embarrassed”? Are they frauds? How do you explain a building falling at such a rate?

    PS: I am very good at what I do, as you are at what you do. Enjoy the weekend, the weather here in old NY was exceptionally beautiful today, bright, sunny and September cool, Im not sure about tomorrow. But how sure can we be about tomorrow?

  • wayne

    C–
    What is your best single piece of evidence for what you are claiming? and what would it take to show you are wrong?

    Joe Rogan and Neil deGrasse Tyson on Flat Earth and Conspiracy Theories
    https://youtu.be/RX4g7y3i19o
    (14:04)

  • Cotour

    Wayne,

    The one single over the top tell is the rate of descent, you can not argue with Mr. Newton nor can you argue with the engineering that remained unmolested under the events (the mathematics is incorrect). Everything else, the nature of the total field of destruction, nothing remaining all the way to the ground, X’s 3, the pulverization of all of the internal materials, the high velocity ejections as the towers fell that led the collapse by speed (much faster than free fall speed) and concentrated only on the corner straight down to the ground, the characteristic flashes as the towers fell recorded from several angles, the plainly observed in slow motion flashes just before both planes struck (I still do not understand exactly what that is), the now famous 3000 degree “molten carpet” pouring out of a spot just down and to the right of where the initial corner collapse occurred, the massive audio recordings that have the signature of high explosives, the first person testimony from people both inside the buildings and outside, this includes firemen and police officers who are trained observers who’s testimony was officially ignored, this is not a complete list but for the sake of time and space I will stop it here.

    Any one of the above listed items gives someone pause in understanding how these buildings fell (steel framed buildings do not fall down to the ground, I do not care what hits them) put them together and you must step back and shake your head as you understand what actually happened. The human nature of how someone who witnesses such an unbelievable and massive event, and we all witnessed it if not in person through technology, is stunning and confusing and so we automatically construct in our minds how things went down. Giant buildings, hit by giant planes, fuel, fire, smoke, of course equals total destruction. Until if you have access to actual recorded real time evidence what really happened can be understood. And understood directly or inferred because we understand Mathematics and Physics. Thats the only place that truth lies, but some truth we really do not want to know.

    Re watch the Gordon Ross video, that is a qwick and fairly comprehensive and honest interpretation of the ensuing events from the point of view of an engineer. 10 to 15 years before and the internet does not exist and its all good, the internet certainly is proving to be a two faced bitch of truth and deception.

    Put this stuff in it proper place in your mind, although there may not be a space constructed for it as of yet. Enjoy your weekend, I hope you are well.

  • wayne

    (“steel framed buildings do not fall down to the ground, I do not care what hits them”)

    >>Well, they did fall to ground. Any claims to contrary are pure bunk.

    (” you must step back and shake your head as you understand what actually happened”)

    >>So, what “actually happened?” Cut to the chase, make your claim.

    (” the massive audio recordings that have the signature of high explosives,”)

    >>Audio on YouTube is encoded with the H.264 or MPEG-4 Part 10 codec. Which in most instances utilizes lossy compression. How you are able to “analyze” sound-files off the internet, is beyond me.

    (“the plainly observed in slow motion flashes just before both planes struck”)

    >> Video on YouTube is encoded using the MPEG-4 Part 14 codec. The frame-rate is generally 29 frames per second, which is too slow to accurately record the impact of the planes.
    (Even if the source-file was 1080p at 50 frames per second, when it was uploaded to YouTube the quality was altered.)

  • Cotour

    As to your second question: What would it take to convince me otherwise.

    A: God himself appearing to me and explaining that the common sense that he / she / or what ever gave me is all false and there is a new reality that I must now come to understand. And my mother did not raise me to be a fool.

    As to your third contribution, the Joe Rogan interview with De grass tyson.

    I consider Joe Rogan an affable entertainer and interviewer, and if De grass Tyson (Or any other media contributing personality. Consider this a warning to all in the media that do interviews or give opinion in any major media market) were to on any form of media, including the internet, cable or broadcast TV, blog, what ever, in any serious way question the official narrative they would never be seen again on major media at all. Think about who really controls major media and what is pumped through it.

    I challenge De grass Tyson to one by one refute the things that I have listed. Have him start with challenging Mr. Newton, who I am sure is one of his high IQ nerd heroes. We all do things in our own self interests and for a media personality to publicly ponder such disturbing to the force issues would not be in their interests. I totally understand this and forgive it. Degrass Tyson’s (Or any other major media contributor’s) private conversation might be very different from his public conversation.

    Truth only lies in mathematics and physics and not in the words of man. We can not argue with it we can only understand it.

    (Do you see the counter intuitive way that sentence works out? “Truth only lies”)

  • Cotour

    Wayne,

    The ultimate quality of what is generally available in video and audio is not as important as what they show. Even at the degraded level they show what they show.

    As to your other questions, you are going to have to ruminate with them until they clarify themselves to you. It takes a while. The who and why is a brain complicating and distractionery element, forget about them, understand the mathematics and physics first.

  • wayne

    B-25 Mitchell bomber crashes into the Empire State Building
    July 28, 1945
    https://youtu.be/EpXLez9BT34

    -upon painstaking examination utilizing algebra & geometric exactitude, clearly visible at frame 798, for all to see, is a man on the grassy knoll and what appears to be a puff of smoke. For a brief instant before impact, the B-25 and the outer wall of the building were in superposition with each other, both in contact and not, simultaneously!
    Failure to generate an inverse tachyon burst from the bomber’s radar-array, undoubtedly caused a phase-shifting between the airplane and the concrete, temporarily negating the downward force of gravity by 1/2 of the distance squared.

  • Cotour

    A B-25 is a relatively small plane and the Empire State building is built is a very brutal manner. Boxed steel I beam construction more like building 7 and much, much more concrete and stone. Its going nowhere any time soon.

    If the B-25 was fully loaded with a full compliment of bombs and they exploded the greater mass of the building would still have stood.

    All that other stuff is just your brain in panic mode trying to make sense of what is not meant to be made sense of.

  • Garry

    Cotour, I admit I haven’t done all the research you have done on 9/11, but you keep writing over and over (paraphrasing): “you’ll be shocked at what you find, and then embarrassed by having been so ignorant.”

    You sound an awful lot like the half dozen or so people who have tried to persuade me to join what I considered to be cult-like churches at different points in my life.

    I have no doubt you’re good at retail, but I find your sales approach here to be very off-putting.

  • Cotour

    When I say ” First I was embarrassed, then I was scared”. I am just communicating what I honestly felt when it became apparent to me. I was, thinking about it now, scared first, I stepped away and I turned my computer off. I thought ” They know I am looking at this” (a healthy dose of paranoia). Then I was embarrassed that I was unable to put together what I felt uncomfortable about from the start. A failure on my part, but to be honest politics and the like was not my primary area I was concentrating on at the time. That was the beginning of a very different kind of education for me that I had to develop myself. It took a long time to put in an organized structure that I was able to share. That you know as S.O.M., strangely comforting to me.

    Other people were sharper than me in understanding something that was right in front of my eyes, that was embarrassing for me, and that is what drove me to properly understand. Its like watching a magic trick and just accepting it, but this is not on a stage and real people die in this magic trick. And the rationalized justification is that they are only expendable collateral damage, a number related to the big picture. That is you and that is me, in the wrong place at the wrong time and you either better run fast or pay the ultimate price.

    I am not trying to be off putting, if I was then please forgive me. This is difficult enough.

  • Garry

    I’m beginning to think that S.O.M. stands for “strawberries out missing”

  • Mitch S

    Allow me to digress a bit to discuss why I think this conversation is worthwhile (other than naked curiosity) and fits with the original post as well as other current topics.

    Cotour’s admonition not to blindly accept “official facts’ is a good, but we are left with the question of how do we figure out what is really happening when “official’ sources be they “professional journalists”, ” accredited scientists” or other “experts” cannot always be trusted?
    We have to develop an internal common sense/intuition and base our conclusions on the best evidence.
    Physical occurrences must fit the known rules of physics, human actions must be judged on out (fuzzy) knowledge of how people behave.

    No conclusion is absolutely airtight, they are all “best hypothesis” and may be modified or overturned IF another hypothesis is better supported by the evidence or if better evidence is found that contradicts the original hypothesis.

    So while the official accepted wisdom is that Donald Trump is a racist/white supremacist who supported the nazis in Charlottsville, when I view the video of what trump actually said I find now evidence to support that conclusion. Certainly nothing to counter the fact that Trump was a public figure for decades (in NYC), starred in a TV show on a major network, and was accused of a number of things but not racism.
    Sure some may have a “gut feeling” trump is racist, and not like the way he spoke about Charlottsville, but I still have to judge based on observable evidence and I see none that Trump is racist.

    Fourth navy mishap since February.
    Is that a reason to raise an eyebrow and wonder if there is more tan just coincidence? – sure, but that doesn’t prove it isn’t coincidence.
    And if there is an underlying cause it could be GPS spoofing or poor training or perhaps navy ships are operating in crowded shipping lanes more than they used to or something else.
    As Feynman said, first we guess, then gather evidence, see how it fits our guesses and go on.

    (i’ll add comment on 9/11 when i get a chance… yes, dominoes!)

  • Cotour

    ” but we are left with the question of how do we figure out what is really happening when “official’ sources be they “professional journalists”, ” accredited scientists” or other “experts” cannot always be trusted?”

    You examine the physical and mathematic evidence, if it does not fit, you must reformulate. What about the accredited scientists, engineers, architects, experts, professional journalists (Oh wait a minute, they are no longer working) and the like who have plainly said in the public square what they believe based on measurement and known physical ways things that are being discussed should behave ?

    Begin to pull the string, do your own investigation and it will become apparent.

  • wayne

    Mitch–
    interesting take.

    From my recent reading– resources for training all branches of the military have suffered greatly under sequestration. Worse than we know, and worse than they media will ever tell us.

    Garry-
    good stuff.

    Cotour–
    “the Empire State building is built is a very brutal manner.”
    What exactly, does that mean?
    It’s a steel beam building and the stone panels hang on the frame.

    What I’m hearing you say on the WTC;

    Airplanes did not crash into the buildings. If they did, the burning jet fuel is irrelevant.
    Somehow, strategically placed explosive charges imploded the buildings.
    The laws of gravity apparently vary on the WTC site.
    None of the buildings could fall, so therefore they didn’t, but they did, but they can’t.

  • Cotour

    The Empire State building was built much heavier than WTC 7, it was constructed more like the core of the towers without the outer curtain wall. I beams in more of an interconnected box like manner, very, very strong. Find a video of it being built and you will get a better idea of how it was constructed. Amazingly built in 1928, I think in only 18 months.

    I never stated that planes never struck the towers. I plainly see planes striking the buildings, I do not know where you got that from, I never said it.

    The majority of the jet fuel burned off in the first several minutes and it set the fires within the building at the event sites, the 80th or so floor and the 95th or so floors. The majority of the time the fires burned at aprox. 500 or so degrees as evidenced by the black smoke. The jet fuel related to the buildings collapsing is not relevant other than it looks nasty. The towers were constructed for such a plane / fire scenario / eventuality.

    If the mathematics is incorrect related to the subject matter than extra energy must be added to accomplish what was observed.

    The laws of gravity are what they are, Newton defined them, mans activities have no effect on them related to what we are discussing. If gravity is being calculated related to an object the answer must match the prediction or something has been “adjusted”.

    The collapse either would not have happened, and then there would be a huge unstable mass sitting at 1200 feet + above the street, or it would have collapsed to a point where the remaining unmolested building would stop it. One potential is that the top would have probably tilted and fell to the street because of the chaotic nature of steel under load weakening in a fire condition.

    Oh no, the buildings fell, all three, two of the same design and one a different design, all fell into a pile, razed to ground level. All on one day, within minutes / hours of each other. Have you found “molten carpets” example of a steel framed building destroying itself completely using your video acquisition super powers? (don’t bother, I have looked, it does not exist. It can not happen, not without help anyway.)

  • Edward

    Wayne wrote (apparently from Cotour): (“steel framed buildings do not fall down to the ground, I do not care what hits them”)

    I suppose that now Cotour is arguing that steel has antigravity properties or is so strong that airplanes cannot punch holes in buildings, or for that matter the bow of a tanker made of steel cannot punch a hole in the side of a US warship made of steel. I can see Cotour’s advertisement: “Steel, the magical material; hit it with airplanes or high explosives, and your building will remain standing.”

    Wayne wrote (apparently from Cotour): (“the plainly observed in slow motion flashes just before both planes struck”)

    As I explained in another thread, it is visible in the Cotour-supplied video that the flash he writes about is the nose of the plane striking the building. The flash does not come just before the plane strikes, it is the plane striking. The nose struck just before the wings – with the fuel tanks – struck, thus it is the nose causing the “flash” and the fuel tanks causing the big explosion. But Cotour ignores this clearly visible occurrence, just as he ignores the buildings having had fallen down.

    For Cotour, common sense has left the building (apparently because it knew the steel-framed building was about to be taken down by airliners, if I may offer my own conspiracy theory). His arguments are becoming more and more bizarre, requiring complete suspension of disbelief. Antigravity steel does not exist. Infinitely strong steel does not exist. We engineers have a term for such a material: unobtainium. And we sure wish that we could obtain some.

    Garry wrote to Cotour: “you keep writing over and over (paraphrasing): ‘you’ll be shocked at what you find, and then embarrassed by having been so ignorant.’

    When I look, the only things that I find that shock me are stupid, ignorant arguments like Cotour’s, arguments that even a child can see through. It is too bad that Cotour is not embarrassed by having so much ignorance. It is too bad that he pretends to understand — yet cannot explain — the nonsense that he spouts off. Just how much research has Cotour done, anyway?

    So far, it looks like he only does research that confirms his biased notions and rejects all other evidence, even twisting evidence into yet another ignorant misinterpretation of facts, such as pretending that the airplanes didn’t have noses that struck the buildings before the fuel tanks did, or declaring that steel buildings cannot fall, no matter what hits them.

    When reality is explained to him, he rejects it, because it does not fit into his safe-zone, fantasy, confirmation-biased belief system, a belief that steel cannot fall to the ground, steel is infinitely strong, and planes do not have noses.

    He has refused to look into the reasons that buildings are designed as they are, as well as why they stand and why they fall. Heck, I even pointed out to him an entire book dedicated to “Why Buildings Fall Down: How Structures Fail.” Did he bother to read that book? No. Why not? Because he does not want to “be shocked at what [he] find[s], and then embarrassed by having been so ignorant.” Steel buildings actually can fall to the ground, and it does not take anything hitting them in order for that to happen.

    Instead, he displays his complete ignorance on the topic. It is too bad that he has been fooled by his need for confirmation of his biases.

    No wonder I no longer read any of his comments on any topic.

  • Cotour

    “No wonder I no longer read any of his comments on any topic.”

    And I should be embarrassed after “molten carpet” makes an absolute statement like that? And then he comments. (?)

    Your personal dislike for me is clouding your judgment. I suggest you actually do what you say and save yourself from reading what I write. And it is apparent that even though you say you don’t, you read every word.

    Aside from the general occasional sarcasm this really is not personal for me, why is it for you? Just sit back, get yourself a beverage and let it play out.

    (And I do have that book “Why buildings fall down, an architect friend gave it to me.)

  • Cotour

    I found another steel framed building that fell in a similar way, its the only one that I could find. It is the Plasco building in Tehran, I believe 25 firemen died in the event. Interestingly it just happened on Jan. 23rd 2017, it was kind of old, built in 1968, not very pretty. The Iranians are really making the best of all that money that Obama slid their way, time to build! I wonder what will be built in its place?

    As a matter of fact it looks soooo very much like 2001 that someone took the time to analyze it. And what do we find? First notice that some major steel columns were not cut and just fall whole and intact right out of the pile. This is more what the towers should have looked if they were to actually have collapsed as advertised. Strip the horizontal beams from the verticals and they would scatter in mostly full lengths. Instead they were cut up, you can not have 1500 foot steel columns falling willy nilly into the city. Then we see flashes and the now familiar ripping down the side of the building before collapse. Watch it carefully several times and also listen.

    https://youtu.be/SVZDtsl51dM

    This is not “normal”, the building collapses into itself and disintegrates into a pile. Oh, did I mention that 25 firemen were inside. There were I believe 343 NYC firemen in the towers, I knew some of them.

  • Edward

    I was just reading a recent copy of Space News, and an essay in it was talking about the importance of preparing today’s students for the challenges of the economy of tomorrow by making them more than conversant in matters of science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM). Cotour is an excellent example of what happens when we do not teach enough of these topics to our students.

    Those who do not understand even the basics are prone to lose perspective. In Cotour’s case, he begins by questioning official sources. This seems good, however, in his ignorance and narrow mindedness, he focuses on possibilities that are unlikely, then takes his focus into biases that reject the very STEM topics that he thinks that he uses in his own analyses. Finally, his obsession takes him into the ludicrous, believing that steel buildings cannot fall to the ground no matter what they are hit with. Reason, logic, and common sense are all lost, because basic STEM topics were not taught to him.

    He loses the perspective that airplanes have length, that the nose of the plane leads the wings by a second or so. He loses the common sense that a building that can have huge holes punched in it can succumb to gravity. He never had the knowledge that there are limits to the strengths of materials, even when they are as strong as steel.

    Maybe the Superman (Man of Steel) comics also contributed to that misconception. After all, if a man of steel (and his Superman outfit) can withstand being hit by a lead bullet then why can’t a steel-framed building withstand collapsing in upon itself?

    Cotour is not conversant enough in matters of STEM to engage in reasonable discussion of falling steel towers or the strengths of the materials of those towers. This ignorance allows him to cling to denial of reality without realizing his folly. He does not know enough to pay attention to the data that he has on hand, therefore he misses the obvious fact that the nose of an airplane reached the tower before the wings did. He misses the obvious fact that a structure that is easily punched with a huge hole from an airliner has no chance of withstanding the forces and energies of thousands of times the airplane’s when the top of the building comes crashing down upon the lower part. When he claimed that steel-framed buildings cannot fall to the ground, he missed the fact that he himself, in another thread, had presented us with the collapse of three World Trade Center buildings; obviously buildings can fall to the ground, meaning that he knew better when he made his ludicrous assertion.

    If you don’t know what it takes to get the electricity, gas, and water to your house, you are likely to insist upon policies that hamper that supply, as California has done in this century; once for electricity, and again more recently for water.

    If you don’t know what it takes to keep a naval force in operational shape, then you are likely to elect a president who allows its capabilities to degrade so much that the navy can’t even avoid collisions into or by other ships.

    In Cotour, we see a living, breathing example of why STEM education in school is necessary for any citizenry that must make educated decisions about how its society is to be run.

  • Cotour

    You read every word of every post.

    Just sit back, pay attention and maybe you will actually learn something about how things actually are.

    Don’t kill the messenger.

  • Cotour

    I now officially consider you, “Molten Carpet”, a groupie.

    I never had a groupie before. (it feels kind of creepy)

  • David

    AA flight 11 that struck the north tower was a 767-200ER with a max takeoff weight (MTOW) of 395,000# and a max fuel capacity of 24,140 US gallons. The south tower was struck by UA flight 175, a 767-200 with a MTOW 315,000# and a max fuel capacity of 16,700 US gallons. I don’t know what the actual takeoff weights were for these two doomed aircraft; I do seem to recall that they were both carrying close to max fuel as they were both headed for the west coast. Since neither flight was in the air for hours before their end, they would have each still been carrying huge amounts of jet fuel; amounts that would have NOT burned off in just a few minutes as has been stated.

    There are a number of grades of structural steel used in the construction of the Twin Towers. The most common is A-36 or SA-36 carbon steel. A36 melts at north of 2,700 F, BUT the thing that needs to be remembered is that it loses much of its strength at temperatures far less than its melt point. Temperatures that occurred in that hell (fuel plus all the other materials burning) where more than sufficient to weaken the steel in a large enough area to a point of failure that in turn lead to the collapse of each tower.

    The evil act by the terrorists was all that was needed to murder all those folks in those two buildings.

  • Cotour

    David:

    Your assumptions about the planes are very reasonable, they had significant amounts of fuel, a good proportion of which it is also reasonable to assume that burned off upon impact in the ensuing fireballs. Even so say there was significant fuel left and some of that volume poured down some of the elevator shafts besides burning on the floors breached. What ever its effects on the rest of the building was there is no evidence of any significant burning of anything below the events. (?)

    And your assumption about the strength of steel is also reasonable, steel in a heated condition becomes weaker. However, again, where is the evidence of major heating below the events? There is none, the building is unmolested as one would expect. There is evidence of explosions in the lobby, and I believe there is some evidence of people being burned while riding in the elevators because of fuel dumping down it, but other than that, and it is expected and reasonable, there is no evidence of any major fire or fire at all below the events.

    Your other stated fact that A-36 steel is molten (Not weakened but liquidious) you sound like so I will assume you might have some knowledge about steel, can you give me a best guess as to what this looks like in the video below?

    https://youtu.be/m0qW6–1XX4

    And the location is key. If you look just above it and to the left you will see the double tube steel corner of the building where the initial failure begins. What appears to be going on is that the corner is being destroyed to initiate the failure and some of the material used in that process has leaked away and has poured down to the concrete floor and then has melted its way through the facade of the building to pour out in what looks like significant amounts. What does that visual / spectral signature tell you it is?

    So lets look at the numbers, A-36 melts at 2700 degrees, the best that jet fuel burning it free air with a wind blowing on it is probably in the 1400 degree range? And that is not sustained because we can clearly see that for the majority of the events there was primarily black smoke which indicates a fire in the 500 degree range or so. If you think that the material pouring out of the building could be steel, and that is what it plainly resembles to me, then where did the extra energy come from ( + 1300 or more degrees) to accomplish that? Specifically in that corner where the failure commenced. Attaining the temperatures to melt steel is unattainable in an ordinary fire.

    And then we ask: What happened to the rest of the support from the unmolested building? Where is the resistance that kept the building standing? Would you expect the building to be razed to the ground floor? I would not.

    Things to think about for sure, and I appreciate your contribution. One more thing, you mentioning of “The Terrorists” is distractionary, concentrate on the mathematics and physics in order to properly first understand what went on physically, after that the conversation about who and why is appropriate, but right now the physical only please.

  • Cotour

    ” When he claimed that steel-framed buildings cannot fall to the ground, he missed the fact that he himself, in another thread, had presented us with the collapse of three World Trade Center buildings; obviously buildings can fall to the ground, meaning that he knew better when he made his ludicrous assertion.”

    Thats the point which is evading you, three buildings of two different design types fell to the ground on the same day within minutes / hours of each other. (That in itself does not indicate some level of planning to you? One has never happened before and three happen on the same day) Think about that logically for a minute. Two fell in exactly the same manner after being struck by large planes and one to the ground after only a standard fairly unspectacular fire and the official explanation is “The discovery of a new phenomenon in building fire”s”. And they all three fell as if by demolition, very organized X’s 3. The effects of fire on steel framed buildings is chaotic not organized. This is basic.

    And your lowering your self to attempt to discredit me and my “faulty” or lacking education is desperately childish. Raise the conversation, don’t lower it, you either contribute to it or ignore it, one or the other. Its probably a good idea to ask questions and not make statements about something that you obviously have not spent any real time delving into. I know most reading and participating have not looked as close as they need to, I have.

  • Garry

    Cotour, when you first posted on this topic I kept an open mind and clicked on your videos. The first one I watched was the one where you say there’s an explosion just before the plane hits. I hadn’t read any rebuttal to this, and as soon as I saw it I realized that the “explosion” was the nose of the plane hitting the building.

    But playing the devil’s advocate for a second, what if I’m wrong, and it was an explosion within the building just before the plane hit?

    What could that possibly be? Certainly it would have to be something already in the building. In that case, we can all be grateful that the pilots died in the attack; their ability to hit precisely where the explosives had been planted would be the greatest feats of precision flying I’ve ever heard of, outside of a Buck Rogers comic I read as a child.

    Even if they could fly that precisely, what wold have set off the explosions? A small radar set on the explosives? Radio waves sent by the airplanes?

    If these weren’t the only explosives set, thereby nullifying the requirement for ultra precision flying, how did they get in there without anybody noticing?

    Or was there an accomplice in the building wearing an explosive vest that he detonated just before the plane came? If so, how did he know precisely where the plane was going to hit? I can believe that he could run side to side to adjust, but how would he move between floors in real time? How could he have been so precise in his timing?

    Suppose I’m missing a logical explanation on how the supposed explosives were set off. In that case, what was the purpose of setting off the explosives at that particular time and place? Time I can rationalize; the impact of the plane would be a diversion. But place? What would an explosive do at that place, that the plane wouldn’t do on a bigger scale?

    Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. I see your extraordinary claims leading to extraordinary feats.

  • Cotour

    Gary:

    Like I said, I can not honestly figure out what they might have been, the flashes appear to me to be external and not internal.

    This is a pretty good shot of the first one slowed down a bit https://youtu.be/BfrMx8JAlIE it appears to be external to my eye and it appears to happen in advance of the nose contacting the building. Put your curser on .03 sec let the video play and click it back and forth to see if you can see better. (?)

    Again, from the beginning I have stated that I have no reasonable explanation as to what that is. It does not look normal to me. The flash seems too bright and specific and too fast to be any part of the plane contacting the building. Its still and unknown to me.

  • Garry

    I’ve watched it about 8 times, and it still looks like it happens when the nose of the airplane hits the building.

    As far as the flash being “too bright” “too specific” and “too fast,” let’s break those down.

    What standard are you using to judge whether it’s “to bright”? Have you studied high-energy collisions? Are you 100% confident that it appears on video at the same brightness it appeared in person, after all that processing? Sometimes materials give off flashes upon high-speed collision (I know from editing papers on experiments on high-speed collisions).

    What does “too specific” even mean? Do you mean it happens at a precise time, location, or with surprising brightness or speed?

    What do you mean by “too fast”? Assuming the plane is going 180 mph (I’m just pulling that out of the nether regions as the slowest speed I think might be reasonable), that’s 264 feet per second. Why would the flash not appear right away?

    Or do you mean that the flash disappears fast?

    I really don’t know what you mean by your questions, and they seem to rely on instinct rather than deep knowledge.

  • Commodude

    I’m eminently amused by the direction this discussion has taken.

    Analysis of video from the web is beyond laughable. Every time you convert video to another format, change the resolution, or increase/decrease frame rate, artifacts are introduced. The videos in theory are from 2001, which means no HD video, and the formats have been changed repeatedly to keep in step with the changes of formatting on the web.

    Unless you have access to an unaltered copy of original digital video file played with the original codec, analysis is impossible.

    If anyone wants to discuss training failures, failures of discipline and other issues relating to the original article, I’d be more than happy to join in that discussion.

  • Cotour

    Gary:

    The flash appears to me not centered on the nose and the flash seems too fast. You want to throw it then throw it our, I have no problem with that. I am unable to understand with a certainly what it is. There is plenty more.

    And the planes were traveling probably upwards of 480 mph or so. I think at 180 they would have bounced off.

    Common:

    As to the video quality of anything on the web from 2001, yes the quality is not as good as it could be, but it still shows what it shows. If we were in a court of law you would absolutely want the best and most original version to view. But we have what we have, that does not mean that you dismiss what ever information that is able to be reasonably gathered. If you don’t have the original version of something you just ignore what the degraded version reasonably indicates? Its just not ideal, not laughable.

  • Commodude

    Cotour,

    No, it doesn’t show what it shows. I’ve done photo editing, and it’s incredibly easy to accidentally introduce artifacts into a picture or video accidentally in the simple process of, for instance, doing an unsharp mask on a photo or converting to higher resolution. The major issue with conversions is that once the artifact is introduced, it is tough to remove unless you go back to the original file. Moire pattern errors become actual things in the video or picture, and as files are transposed, they just get worse.

    Not having the original media isn’t “not ideal” it’s absolutely laughable given the artifacts and errors which get introduced.

  • Cotour

    I will go with your expertise on this issue of the flash before the impact / during the impact, but the flash does appear present in the several different angled recordings of the second plane (?). Throw it out.

    Like I have stated on this issue I have no idea what either might be if indeed they are true recordings. Both are “interesting” from either perspective, whether true or manipulated, if manipulated maybe that’s why they are not understandable?

  • Cotour

    And we continue:

    https://youtu.be/iiwpj7aa9c8

    This video once again illustrates some very fundamental points. And I want to point out something that becomes very obvious, the symmetry of how the collapse initiates on the successive floors below the event. Each successive floor blows out at exactly the same time, boom, boom, boom, boom as it descends, you can plainly hear the synchronization. As you watch the ejections oh so exactly timed together, does that appear to be normal in such a chaotic environment?

  • Cotour

    The top of the buildings are in chaos and basically disintegrating and falling over in a spray of debris but there is perfect symmetry below as the floors blow out in unison, one by one, all the way down to ground level. No resistance from any of the unmolested building. I find that very counter intuitive.

    https://youtu.be/qhyu-fZ2nRA

    Sorry to be a pest about this but we all have an obligation to understand it. Watch these videos as many times as it takes until you see the symmetry that should not be there. Watch the top of the building tilt to one side thereby creating an asymmetrical weight on the unmolested remaining building as it symmetrically falls to the ground as if dropped as if nothing was supporting it for 30 years.

  • Commodude

    Cotour, you continue to use inappropriate terminology. There is no chaos in the physical sense. It’s all very predictable, and able to be modeled. Heat weakens structure, floor pancakes into lower floor, weight overcomes fasteners, that floor pancakes, rinse and repeat.

    From a human POV it seems to be chaos, from the world of physics, it’s very orderly.

  • Cotour

    Common;

    The collapsing floors collapse in unison all the way to the ground indicated by the synchronized ejections. The signature of fire is chaos not symmetry, period, that is an incorrect theory you are working under. Watch the second video (as many times as you need), it is only orderly because of the organization that has been loaded into it. Watch the bulk of the building tip over, it did not stay centered to produce this “orderly” event as you state.

    And there is nearly zero resistance from the remaining entirely intact building. ZERO. Think about that. Does that make sense to you? Really? Please explain that to me how that happens. You are creating a model in your head that does not match the observable facts nor the physics nor the mathematics.

  • Commodude

    Actually, it matches the physics neatly, and fire is a very, very predictable event.

    As to the lack of resistance, when a steel fastener exceeds its shear rating by many times the rated force, they snap, and do so in a very predictable manner. There is no APPARENT resistance, apparent being the key word.

  • Cotour

    “Actually, it matches the physics neatly, and fire is a very, very predictable event.”

    This is a generally correct statement, although entirely incorrect related to the subject at hand. Fire may be fairly predictable in certain instances and environments, except its not “fire” that that is collapsing, its the buildings. The effects of fire / heat on the complexities of, in this case steel framed buildings is chaos and not order. I am very sorry but your internal model that explains this is incorrect.

    You and everyone else here is obligated to understand this. If it can not be understood here at B2B then it is truly a lost cause and we are captive. Just like in due time Hillary must be brought to justice so this subject must also be understood and resolved in some manner. If not, just like Hillary and her making everyone who surrounded her and who judges her guilty by association this situation is exponentially politically much more powerful.

  • Commodude

    Cotour, I’m not “obligated” to understand anything.

    You are using very, very imprecise language to describe something which is readily understandable in the world of physics. Until you become conversant with the basics of mechanics, physics, and engineering, it will continue to elude you as an explainable event.

    (I apologize to other readers in advance for the following comment, however, it is needed…)

    To quote Arthur Clarke,

    Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.

    Evidently physics, mechanics, and engineering are in the realm of magic for some.

  • Cotour: We are not in any way “obligated” to accept your poorly documented, incoherent theory about the World Trade Center being taken down by explosives, set on each floor (with no one noticing their installation or no one ever finding any evidence of these explosives afterward) and timed to explode shortly after the building was hit by a plane. Nor are we “obligated” to accept your theory, based on your utter lack of understanding of engineering and physics, as very carefully documented by a number of real engineers commenting on this site.

    I really hope you do a better job selling your products in retail sales. If you do the same there as you have here, you will go bankrupt quite quickly. I suspect however that you do do a better job, because in the case of retail sales, you actually understand the product you are selling. In the case of 9/11 and the engineering involved, however, you come off as someone who hasn’t the slightest understanding of engineering or construction and refuses to learn from those who do it professionally. Worse, you then compound that bad impression with a terribly condescending attitude.

    And as Edward said, this impression is hurting your often very cogent analysis of politics. Why should anyone take that analysis seriously, since it comes from someone who looks so foolish here?

  • Cotour

    You are obligated to understand this, and so is everyone else and thats why I am discussing it.

    “When a distinguished but elderly scientist states that something is possible, he is almost certainly right. When he states that something is impossible, he is very probably wrong.” Guess who? (No apology.)

    You have to understand it, I can only point it out to you, I can not understand it for you.

    Q; Why are you apologizing? Do you think what you pasted is so outrageous that it would injure me or upset others? I assume we are all adults here.

    Please find me an example of another building that falls at free fall speed to demonstrate your proposal.

  • wayne

    The Strawberry Scene From The Caine Mutiny
    https://youtu.be/nndGGnOFvMk
    (3:04)

  • Cotour

    I will give you and example of a sky scraper in an extreme fire condition.

    https://youtu.be/j4MjsVnasLA

    Show me where the organization due to fire is revealed in this example. The building burned through the night, lots of chaos, some of the building fell of and its all twisted up. As one would expect. No falling to the ground, no total destruction. What we see is a burned out hulk of a steel framed building, again, as expected.

    I will wait for your example of a building in free fall due to fire. And if you can not find an example what does that say about your reasoning? If there is no example then where do you get your position from? Just making contrary statements has no meaning without you providing real world proof.

  • Cotour

    Wayne, use your video acquisition super powers to find evidence of Commons assertions, not foolish distractionary clips of classic movies. This is real life not the movies.

    If you can not find the supporting evidence for Common then no one can find it and it does not exist and so there must be a reformulation. Go ahead Wayne, do your thing.

  • Commodude

    Cotour, you’ve hit the point of revealing yourself to be willfully ignorant, and demanding other share in your ignorance.

    As such, I’m done here.

  • Garry

    Cotour, you insist that all of us read all that you have. Yet, Edward has pointed out a book that would give you a foundation of understanding of how buildings collapse, you say that you have it, and apparently you haven’t bothered to read it.

    So why are we obligated to read what you want us to, yet you seem to think that just owning your book is sufficient?

    The book sounds like fundamental info that will help you understand dynamics of building collapse, as opposed to a hodgepodge of videos that have collected artifacts in their various transformations and about which you and others have come up with unconventional theories.

    I own several magazines in foreign languages that I can’t read. I apparently get more out of them than you get out of your book, because I’ve taken the time to look at the pictures.

  • Cotour

    ” The First and Only Steel Skyscraper in the World to Have Collapsed Due To Fire”

    https://archinect.com/forum/thread/127485298/the-first-and-only-steel-skyscraper-in-the-world-to-have-collapsed-due-to-fire

    This is the subject of is Architecture discussion forum, read some of their posts.

  • Cotour

    Gary, you are obligated to understand this, if you understand nothing else, understand this. Think about what is being discussed here. This is not an Edward / Coutor pissing contest, although it may seem that way occationally.

    Understand it, see it, know it.

    I am rarely this insistent about anything. Stop taking sides and be objective.

  • Commodude: I am done as well. Cotour, and others, you have three hours to post to this thread. It will then be closed, and I will delete all comments, unread.

    I am sure Cotour will find a way to insert his off topic and absurd conspiracy theories in another post, but I want this thread ended, now. I’ve had enough.

  • Garry

    Cotour, it’s obvious you are a true believer in this instance. I have watched some of the videos you referenced, and read the forum you linked to earlier tonight, and they didn’t introduce enough doubt in my mind to justify pursuing things further.

    Insist all you want, but like everybody else here, I’m under no obligation to submit to your demands. It must be frustrating to you, and I can tell you it’s frustrating on my end as well. You’re not alone; I have a friend who makes similar points to yours, and thankfully we respect each other’s beliefs enough to not let it devolve into mutual insistence or counter accusations.

    I can’t make you stop talking about it, but seeing that this is Mr. Z’s blog, I hope you recognize that it’s well within his rights to insist that you stop posting about it here, if he so chooses. For my part, I’m not going to answer in the future, and I recognize that perhaps some of my responses were too sarcastic. I’ll do better in the future, and I hope you come to terms with this issue.

  • Please note: I said last night that as of 10:30 pm (Pacific) this thread was closed, and all subsequent comments would be deleted by me, unread. I have just deleted two. Please do not waste your time posting here. As soon as I see it, I will delete it.

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