Truth Like The Dark

Those of you noticing all the “service unavailable” messages on my blog can blame image redirection service imgred, who have apparently shut down. Now I’ve got to find time to edit all those posts!!

Via: VideoSift

Great animation on the spread of world religions since the beginning of Hinduism. Too bad it doesn’t reflect population, rather than area.

Those of you who like seeing things the weird things I find on the internet might want to sign up to my GoogleReader shared items feed. Click here to go the the webpage version, and the feed is clearly labeled.

GoogleReader is awesome. You can share items this way, or share particular tags, just like blogs!

Some of my greener-thumbed readers might be interested in this exciting new product, by a friend of mine, called Growin Gridz. Basically, they are join-able templates that take some of the pain out of making life spring from the soil.

Cool beans (and tomatoes, peppers, etc.)

Boingboing just posted a story about stories that were overlooked in the media over the last year. Original source here, with details.

It’s shocking that most of these stories are virtually unknown. But number 18 is entitled “Physicist Challenges Official 9-11 Story“. The story is from minor newspapers, and the BYU website, and I can see why. The physicist involved hasn’t done his homework in a rather shocking way. Let me address the points quoted in the story, as an engineer, based on what I’ve heard and read about the WTC’s design and collapse:

No steel-frame building, before or after the WTC buildings, has ever collapsed due to fire. But explosives can effectively sever steel columns.

That’s simply because the WTC buildings were of a very unconventional, cylinder-in-cylinder design. It did not have the massive steel columns in most steel frame buildings. It derived light-weight strength from the cylinders themselves.

WTC 7, which was not hit by hijacked planes, collapsed in 6.6 seconds, just .6 of a second longer than it would take an object dropped from the roof to hit the ground. “Where is the delay that must be expected due to conservation of momentum, one of the foundational laws of physics?” Jones asks. “That is, as upper-falling floors strike lower floors—and intact steel support columns—the fall must be significantly impeded by the impacted mass.

This doesn’t makes sense. Conservation of momentum simply does not insist on the delay suggested here. Note that the specific amount of delay required by “physics” is not suggested.

But more importantly, conventional ways of destroying buildings via explosives rely on falling mass as a part of the destructive process, so that wouldn’t make the difference suggested here.

How do the upper floors fall so quickly, then, and still conserve momentum in the collapsing buildings?” The paradox, he says, “is easily resolved by the explosive demolition hypothesis, whereby explosives quickly removed lower-floor material, including steel support columns, and allow near free-fall-speed collapses.” These observations were not analyzed by FEMA, NIST, or the 9/11 Commission.

This conveys a rather severe lack of understanding of how buildings are demolished. It’s suggested that explosions “remove” steel support columns and lower floor material? Not on your life. The amount of explosives required to “remove” significant material would be enormous, and completely unconventional for demolition. In demolition, you “cut” the columns with well selected explosions (removing very little material) and the weight of the building falls onto itself, leading to the building’s destruction. If someone was trying to destroy the buildings as a part of the obviously implied conspiracy, they would certainly use such conventional techniques, as they are simpler, more stealthy, and require less explosives.

With non-explosive-caused collapse there would typically be a piling up of shattered concrete. But most of the material in the towers was converted to flour-like powder while the buildings were falling. “How can we understand this strange behavior, without explosives? Remarkable, amazing—and demanding scrutiny since the U.S. government-funded reports failed to analyze this phenomenon.”

See above, regarding both the construction of the WTC (which involved relatively small amounts of concrete) and how one demolishes a building. Are we to believe that a demolition engineer, operating as a part of one of the most clever and massive conspiracies of all time, would use so much explosive that he’d “powder” massive amounts of concrete?!?

Steel supports were “partly evaporated,” but it would require temperatures near 5,000 degrees Fahrenheit to evaporate steel—and neither office materials nor diesel fuel can generate temperatures that hot. Fires caused by jet fuel from the hijacked planes lasted at most a few minutes, and office material fires would burn out within about twenty minutes in any given location.

I don’t know what context the words “partly evaporated” came from, but the conclusion about office material fires makes absolutely no sense, given the commonly known history of the event. The fires inside the rubble were finally put out in December, 4 months after the explosions. Oven-like effects can definitely be achieved inside the confined space of a burning building. It’s commonplace.

Just for clarification, the prevailing theory of WTC collapse is as follows. The WTC design had relatively light trusses between its inner and outer cylinders, which supported the floors. Firemen hate trusses, because heat makes them bend and collapse. Since this is a well-known phenomena, building codes require insulation on the trusses. But it’s well established that the application to the WTC trusses was inadequate (due to bad contractors), which also caused it to decay as the building aged.

So the heat bent the trusses, the floors fell one on the other, leading to the symmetrical collapse (clearly beginning at the impact floors, and proceeding down) that we all saw on TV. I can’t see how you could have achieved this with explosives, unless they were conveniently located on the impact floors.

Molten metal found in the debris of the WTC may have been the result of a high-temperature reaction of a commonly used explosive such as thermite. Buildings not felled by explosives “have insufficient directed energy to result in melting of large quantities of metal,” Jones says.

See above. 4 months of fire in confined spaces. Metal melting common in building fires. What is this guy thinking?

Multiple loud explosions in rapid sequence were reported by numerous observers in and near the towers, and these explosions occurred far below the region where the planes struck.

I’d sort of expect multiple explosion sounds, given the prevailing theory the WTC collapse, wouldn’t you?

Moreover, thousands of people saw the collapse start on the impact floors. You can see it again by going to CNN.com

It’s great that people are trying to get little-covered stories out there. But please, don’t believe everything you read, and believe the evidence of your eyes, rather than wacky conspiracy theories like this one.

I’m removing a9 (amazon’s column-based search front end) from my list of recommended software today. Without any announcement to their users, they’ve switched the “Google” web search to “Windows Live”. To understand why this is bad deal, you don’t have to be of the opinion that Google’s search results are better (they are). All you have to do is understand the direction that a9 seemed to be headed in, and how they’ve strayed from that promising path.

a9 worked through the idea of “opensearch” allowing for lots of columns that accessed different search engines. Now, rather than adding Windows Live as a new level of flexibility, they’ve shoved Windows Live down all users throats as the “default web search”, adding no options to still use google as an alternative, and lost other useful columns, like Google Images.

I haven’t dropped a9 completely yet. I’m hoping they haven’t hooked themselves into a restrictive deal with Windows Live, and that they’ll provide renewed functionality (including Google options) soon.

I’ve gots to get me one of these! All the videos of SlashBuster (love that name, could say it all day) are compelling, but be sure and check the one where it destroys a minivan.

Why is this stuff so much fun to watch?!

froginside

Originally uploaded by re6smith.

Fullfilling everyone’s deepest desire.

What I love about America is National Public Radio.

When I come to America, I rent a car (I haven’t owned a car since I moved to the UK 8 years ago). Since my Europeanization, I’m completely maddened by any time spent sitting behind SUVs bearing John Lennon and Bob Marley bumperstickers.

Yeah, pal, give this piece a chance!

I hate the necessity of driving in America. All except for drivetime NPR.

NPR is the best radio in the world. Yes, Russell, it kicks the BBC’s ass (specifically the ass of Radio 4). NPR strikes an amazing (and particularly American) balance of the intelligencia and the common man.

Don’t believe me? Well, start off my getting one of the copious NPR RSS Feeds. Note the amazing array of feed topics. One of NPR’s many virtues is its thorough embrace of the blogsphere.

Take the music category, as an example. For interesting, obscure music, NPR can’t be beat. Over the past two days, I’ve discovered Savina Yannatou (Greek woman who sings in 13 languages) Petra Haden Sings The Who Sells Out (yes, the whole album, every instrument via acapella interpretation) and a Swiss Alpine Horn Electronica Band (that I now can’t find any signs of, dammit. I think it was mentioned on a local Boston program).

The RSS feeds will give you a feel for topics. But you can’t get the real experience without listening in.

I guess I could listen to the internet feeds of NPR. But then I wouldn’t have as much to look forward to when I come home.

Check out my new project, roundtuit.

Roundtuit is a moderated community blog to connect people who have great ideas with people who have the desire and wherewithal (skills, time, tools, etc.) to make them happen. We call these ideas roundtuits, and there are three things we want to help you do with them:

1. Give a roundtuit: You have an idea, and share it here.
2. Claim a roundtuit: You see an idea that you will make real.
3. Get a roundtuit: You do it (and share your success with us here)!

A roundtuit is an idea that you know can be done, wish would be done, and that you’d just do yourself, if you could ever get a roundtuit. Note those criteria! Give a roundtuit if:

* You know it can be done. In fact, you can see exactly how. “Develop transporter technology” or “create a world without war”, despite some merit as ideas, are not roundtuits, and they don’t belong here (sorry).
* You wish it would be done. You, and hopefully the multitude, would find it wonderful, or at least slightly useful, if someone ever gets a roundtuit. Feel free to explain why, with as much entertaining detail as you can muster.
* You, personally, will never get a roundtuit. Specifically, you won’t mind if someone else gets a roundtuit, even if they give you no credit whatsoever! There shall be no legal battles when someone gets a roundtuit here!

A roundtuit need not be a technical idea. We’d like to see roundtuits on art, gardening, literature, juggling, music, whatever.

Roundtuits are submitted by email to givearoundtuit@gmail.com.