Cannonfire is leaving

[Hugh Manatee Wins]

Of course, compared to Einstein, Steven Jones is nothing but (I suspect) a well-meaning hack. I mean, seriously, penning a book about how Jesus purportedly visited South America 2,000 years ago isn't even remotely on the same intellectual level. So excuse me for remaining skeptical when the two champions of the so-called scientific research of Controlled Demolition are a theology professor and a Mormon.

1) Jones and another physicist wrote the 1982 (?) paper with new information on the behavior of sub-atomic particles. It wasn't just Jones. AND their findings were confirmed in 1985 by other physicists. The scientific method was used, presented in an established journal, peer-reviewed, and confirmed.

So much for your charge of "hack." You might try some research, too, nomo. Then you'd know this.

Jones quotes the Bible with this rational verse-
"Prove all things. Hold fast that which is good."

Just a reminder that there are a few things worth reading in the Bible as good advice despite lots of horrible stuff. Such are the works of men. (There's my viewpoint.)

2) No, Jones didn't "pen a book" about Jesus in South America. He wrote an essay about archaelogical evidence of Mayan cultural artifacts representing a deity figure with similar characteristics as those attributed to Jesus - hand wounds, rising from the dead, healing the sick, etc.

And he cited photographic evidence of artifacts in an examination of hypothesis using scientific methods to see if some of the claims of the Book of Mormon could be validated.
This is exactly the kind of hypothetical thinking followed by research that a scientist would use, isn't it? Yes, I know. Much more of this warranted in theology but all inquiry eventually leads to 'can't know until you die and then who can you tell?' Oh well.

Have you read this paper? I have even though the photos of the artifacts are now dead links. Too bad. It's interesting.

Here it is...allegedly. I don't have any way to authenticate it -

http://web.archive.org/web/20060114081702/http://www.physics.byu.edu/faculty/jones/rel491/handstext+and+figures.htm

I quote only non-LDS (Latter Day Saints aka Mormon-HMW) sources in this paper, by the way. And all of the artwork pre-dates Columbus by many years.

Several years ago, an idea popped into my head: Would people in the New World who also saw Jesus Christ leave memorials of this supernal experience by showing marked hands of Deity in their artwork? So I began a search with the following hypothesis-to be tested: Ancient artwork portraying a deity with deliberate markings on his hands will be found somewhere in the Americas. A crazy idea, maybe - but wait till you see the artwork of the ancient Maya!
....
The notion of a Deity who dies then is resurrected is remarkable among the Maya and reminiscent of the Christian belief. Striking indeed is the fact that the visible foot and both hands of this Deity as he died are each marked by a round spot [Figure 1].
.....
The hypothesis that started my search, that Christ's "other sheep" would have artwork depicting deliberately marked hands, has led to a remarkable conclusion: Hands (and wrists) with clear holes or marks are depicted in the art as well as the hieroglyphic writings of the Maya of Middle America, dating from within about 200 years of the time of Christ. These hands are associated with Itzamna, a kindly Deity associated with healing and teaching the people. He is shown dying in Mayan art, later to be resurrected. Finally, the Maya await the return of this great resurrected Deity in the not-distant future. [See Jones, 99]

These discoveries have provided me a deeper appreciation for the reality of the resurrection of Jesus and of His visit to "other sheep" who heard His voice and saw His wounded hands as did Thomas. My hope is that these new insights will encourage you to seriously consider the Book of Mormon, Another Testament of Christ. Why don't you start reading right away? The Apostle Paul said: "Prove all things. Hold fast that which is good." (I Thessalonians 5:21) Why not? I've done this and for me, the Book of Mormon is a remarkable new witness for Christ, standing as a companion to the Bible.

Appendix: Excerpts from a beautiful Mesoamerican poem that I believe is relevant, providing further insights into the beliefs of the Maya:


The kettle drums color of jade resound,
Brilliant dew has fallen over the earth.
In the house of yellow feathers
it pours down with force.

His son has come down, descended there in the springtime.
He is the Giver of Life.
His songs make flourish, he adorns himself.

O friends, let us rejoice, let us embrace one another.
We walk the flowering earth.
Nothing can bring an end here to flowers and songs,
they are perpetuated in the house of the Giver of Life.
Friendship is a rain of precious flowers.
We are here, we are living here,
but we are only beggars O my friends.

Where do we go, oh! Where do we go?
Are we dead beyond, or do we yet live?
Will there be existence again?
Will the joy of the Giver of Life be there again?
Where is the source of light, since that which gives life hides itself?

Let our hearts not be troubled.
One day we must go, one night we will descend into the region of mystery.
We will have gone to His house,
but our word shall live here on earth.
Remove trouble from your hears, O my friends.
Indeed one must go elsewhere; beyond, happiness exists.

O Lord of the close vicinity, it is beyond, with those who dwell in Your house,
that I will sing songs to You, in the innermost of heaven.
My heart rises; I fix my eyes upon You, next to You, beside You, O Giver of Life!

So Jones shows here and effort to validate a comprehensive explanation for even his spirituality whether you think he succeeds or not. When determining someone's abilities and motives, as we are here, it really is "the thought that counts." And Jones shows his work, just as my math teacher urged me to when I was a kid.

Personally, I'm not happy about the irrational side of mystery religions myself and it is only from experience with many humans that I've seen that people aren't critical of religious ideas and books in the same way they are with other things.

Example:
Having a new president of the US take an oath to "defend the Constitution" by using a Bible is already a violation of that very oath and creates an intellectual and legal schizophrenia in our culture which is being exploited ruthlessly by theo-fascists called Dominionists.

So, nomo, I understand where you are coming from and even empathize but people are (usually) more complex than 'religion vs. science.'

Jones passes for rational and knowledgable in my book.

[Seamus OBlimey]

CU = (AC + P) x (LA + FB) x (4 + D) x (FE - TE) ^ (GI)

I resort to coincidence theory here... the only two major buildings ever collapsed by planes and/or fires.. within an hour... on purpose?

Not very rigorous or intuitive but not too difficult to get my head round.

I don't understand how anyone can doubt controlled demolition of some kind.

[Hugh Manatee Wins]

I resort to coincidence theory here... the only two major buildings ever collapsed by planes and/or fires.. within an hour... on purpose?

Not very rigorous or intuitive but not too difficult to get my head round.

I don't understand how anyone can doubt controlled demolition of some kind.

Bingo, SO'B. (Actually, a third building just a few hours later for no "known" reason.)

Cultists and new age disinfo encourage people to embrace the Church of Divine Coincidence to keep them from seeing things like means/motive/opportunity.

Before the DaVinci Code nonsense there was the same effort to push people away from rational thinking with the best-seller called 'The Celestine Prophecy' with a follow-up book for discussion groups to obsess on. It pushed this Coincidence Theory hoax, too.

[medicis]

Pardon my intruding.....
Regarding some comments above:

Anytime anyone ad hominem's rather than discussing the data and research I smell disfino. Anytime someone purposefully attempts to ridicule and malign and misrepresent another's work.... 'disinfo' is the first word I think of. E.g.,

["you betcha. Science and Christianity (or any other old religion) don't mix. They just don't.
And a serious look at Griffin's and Jones's previous publications should make that abundantly clear to you.]

Anytime the proposition is stated that science and religion cannot co-exist..... (particularly when used to pursue an ad hominem attack), a lack of knowledge of the philosphy of science and also psychology is evident. Intent: disinfo? "old religion" is left undefined for a purpose. It is to obfuscate. E.g., Christianity can be both old and new in its manifestations. It frequently is. There is no necessary contradiction between theism and science. These issues have been well-discussed and resolved in the philosophy of science. Thirty years ago when I was a graduate student in philosophy.

Plus, no description of Griffin's 'earlier works' is provided so we are left having to believe the writer. I don't.

[Newton's law of physics suggests that all the accumulating mass in those towers should have slowed down??

And steel beams don't melt, yet there were pools of molten metal in the debris??]

Two disinfo false propostions above.
Resistance from WTC floors would have increased the duration of collapse well above the free fall speed which was the case. That is what friction does. 47 very strong steel beams create much more 'resistance' than air alone. 10th grade physics. Empirical evidence supports CD.

Regarding melting steel. Yes, the fires were not hot enough to melt steel (per NIST). Yet the demolition materials hypothesized to have been used, clearly, easily melt steel. There is no other coherent argument backed by empirical data at this time. Either way, the official story is seen to be fallacious.

And, in all candor, it is my sense of it now that an open, full investigation and review of the evidence and the empirical data and contesting theories used to described those events could not, in the end, support the government's tale.

Undermining rational discourse with dissembling, mistating, by ad hominem is simply a sign.

[orz]

I don't understand how anyone can doubt controlled demolition of some kind.

Well I personally doubt it because it doesn't seem to me that any known kind of demolition actually fits the way the buildings fell!

For all people parrot the 'looked like a controlled demolition" meme, it looks pretty much nothing like a controlled demolition except for the fact that some buildings fell down.

And the more I look into the various claims about things that seem "wrong" the more dubious and contradictory many of them seem. Many of them even seem to be evidence against CD proposed as evidence for!

I'm gonna start reading Cannonfire which i'd never heard of till now... thanks! ^_^

[sunny]

According to Cannonfire, Steven Jones stands alone. Does he?

Joe on the firemen:

They predicted the collapse before it happened. They blamed fire, not bombs. And they were there. You were not.

From another thread:

Ground zero was a crime scene, was it not? Yes, and because many credible eyewitnesses, including firemen who were on duty that fateful day, reported that they heard and/or saw explosions, the NIST should have investigated this without bias.[22] It should have viewed this testimony as hard evidence: a starting point in its investigation. Instead, the NIST did a gloss.

Fireman: boom boom boom boom at WTC: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tEuDeU4IZjE

Why did they continue to go UP into the WTC to rescue people if they felt the buildings could go at any moment?

[JD]

First off, on CD I'm agnostic. From my perspective I see holes in both CD and no CD arguments. I don't want to belabour the points here as I think everyone is damned tired of the debate.

Some observations.

First, Jones has a pretty thin publications biography. Only a handful of papers in a couple of decades. hmmmmm. Anyone reading this a prof? I thought there was a "publish or perish" mantra which existed on campuses, and that Physics Prof's not putting out a paper or two a year wouldn't really be able to persue alternative archeology or CD studies?

Second, WTF is the big deal about all this CD or no CD issue?

For example, say you are into parapolitics but you don't believe in 9/11 CD? Then persue research in other areas. Why waste time on pissing matches with those that do believe in CD?

The converse is the truth too. Don't waste electrons trying to convince the handful of affirmed skeptics of CD of their folly.

Instead, contribute to unearthing little details and “facts” as best you can, and distributing them to others.

[orz]

I've solved the mystery!!! Turns out there was evidently a huge stash of bog roll in the WTC:

A spokesman for the fire service said the blaze had resulted in a black smoke cloud which could be seen for miles.

He added: "Intense heat buckled the steel girders holding the roof."

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/here ... 105942.stm

[isachar]

emailed Joe:

I've avoided the 9/11 morass lately, other than to point readers to Hopsicker, because it's become so damn depressing. It's as if there is nothing - NOTHING! - to hear but demolition.

Only because it is the BIGGEST hoax being used as an excuse to eliminate the Constitution with fascism. Good enough reason for ya, Jeff?

And those of us who don't buy it - well, there MUST be some reason why we don't.

You "don't buy" Sir Isaac Newton's laws of physics like Conservation of Momentum which proves controlled demolition because the towers can't fall that fast without being blown up??!!

Well, there must be some reason. Care to spell it out?

It sickens me. The bad guys won again. 9/11 Truthers think they have them cornered over here, while actually they're dancing the hokey-pokey over there.

Both dances of deceit and destruction are being done, the one over here enabling the one over there.

You're awfully clever on other topics, Jeff.
What's blocking your respect for the laws of physics? Too obvious for parapolitics, perhaps?

Squinting through a microscope can make it hard to focus on the elephant in the room.

Hugh, thanks, a most excellent post. Those who accuse those who have concluded the WTC's were victims of CD do so by calling them "unscientific". Yet the only methodical so-called 'scientific' investigation of their collapse fails to explain several observed phenomenon:

1) 14 second collapse time

2) Complete and utter failure of the massive core

3) Offer any explanation whatsover for observed behavior of the structure after the 'initiation' of collapse,

4) Surface temperature hot spots of up to 1,800 F observed from satellite imagery days after the collapse - a temperature more than 1,000 degrees MORE than NIST was able to model in their curve-fit modeling of temperatures inside the WTC's prior to collapse

5) Numerous documented instances of highly capable individuals observing molten steel, and relatedly failure to examine the 'meteorite' chunk of molten/compressed metal and assorted debris that was recovered from the site.

6) Failure to explain or much less care about the eutectic reaction (the virtual evaporation of structural steel recovered from the WTC's) documented by materials science professors Ronald R. Biederman and Richard D. Sisson Jr. scientists in the Journal of Minerals, Metals and Materials (see below).

7) The complete ignorance of the collapse of WTC7.

Any one of these invalidates the so-called scientific analyses of the WTC's collapse that have concluded these structures collapsed because of heat and loss of fire-proofing from the impact. I won't even bother to add to the list the well-documented eye-witness of reports of explosions BEFORE impact, and the damage in the first floor lobbies when not a single elevator shaft ran all the way from there to the floors where impact occurred.

Denying CD is actually what is absurd. Failure to investigate it is the true conspiracy.

Article on the documented 'eutectic reaction'

http://www.wpi.edu/News/Transformations ... steel.html

Acid rain, contents of building, influence of marine/sea environment. Yeah, right, if those were the explanations for the eutectic, this would have been observed dozens of times before hand. Yet such a reaction has been found by forensic fire investigators only ONCE - at the WTC's.

Regards.

p.s. - on edit, it is interesting that among those who promotes 'shapeshifters', UFO's, JFK/RFK/MLK assassination theories, know of Project Northwoods, and do much to document other para-political theories there are those who dismiss even the possibility of CD out of hand.

[erosoplier]

This will probably sound arrogant to non-cd-believers, but I have to assume that non-cd-believers just haven't nutted out the physics side of it all, and that's why they are non-cd-believers. You learn something new every day. I finally cottoned on to the Conservation of Momentum idea upon reading this from Infernal Optimist:

It [the question "how fast should the buildings have fallen?"] kind of depends on how much energy is absorbed to snap the floors from what's holding them up. So assuming a normal world the answer is: a lot slower.

Even assuming that nothing's holding the floors up and they're just ready to fall the answer is: about twice as slow [as they did fall] due to conservation of momentum...

Imagine you've just jumped off a 10 metre diving platform. Now imagine that there are some 4 inch thick slabs of water (just like concrete slabs in a building) suspended at intervals between you at the top, and the pool of water below. Do you think these slabs of water would slow you down any as you fall towards the pool?

As Hugh said:
"If dropped at the same time, which would reach the ground first?"


The core structure held up its share of all of the weight of the building 24/7/365 for 30+ years. Why should it behave as if it wasn't there on the day that a small portion of it (in the case of the second collapse) dropped down onto the rest of it? Nothing in the collapse scenario can explain why the intact structure below the level of fires/impact should all-of-a-sudden provide almost no resistance what-so-ever to the mass above it.

If it was a collapse, then the only way the collapse could occur at near freefall speed is if the core structure was left standing - and it wasn't left standing.

[Occult Means Hidden]

I don't get why CD is considered such a divisive or distractionary issue. What else could have possible brought down those damn buildings? Its distractionary and divisive when we say things like beams from space or gremlins. Ok, fine, but its simple sense.

I think its the strongest arguement to wake people up to the issue. Just appeal to their common sense concerning whether such a structure can act in that way without an added destructive agent.

Why did level 16 collapse? Same weight load. Why did level 60 collapse? Same weight load. How fast did the fires go out? How did they all collapse uniformily and without resistence?

Some apologists on the net actually fucking believe the steel structure on the WTC was put together with loose "clips". That explains the collapse to them. Insane. As if we would build a building that high, with as much expected weight and stress on it, on clips!

[Jeff]

I recently got to witness first-hand why one researcher suggested the 9/11 [b]"Truth Movement" might more accurately be called the 9/11 UFO Cult,[/b] due to the presence of an absurdly-large contingent of people with truly bizarre belief systems. (sunny: so according to Hoppy's logic, everything else Jeff writes is suspect, because he also writes about UFO's)

MadCow links to Rigint. I expressed surprise to Hopsicker because, as I told him, I was just a guy trying to figure out some crazy shit, but he was an honest to God investigator. He replied that he respected Rigint's intelligence and insight. I'm not horn-tooting here; I'm just saying, in Hopsicker's defense, the distinction he makes is in the systems of belief, not the subject matter.

Hopsicker has an attitude, but I think of all 9/11 researchers, he deserves one. He's ignored on one side and reviled on the other, and yet he's done
more to puncture the myths of the cover story than, say, Loose Change, which substitutes one myth with a dozen more contradictory ones. See his latest story on Atta associate Bohringer, and how his recent arrest in the South Pacific was reversed "after he told authorities responsible for his capture that he works for the CIA." Shouldn't something like this be news, rather than CD's perpetual circle jerk? What has more evidentiary value?

[chiggerbit]

Hopsicker and Cannon are just suffering from flea fatigue. Give them a break.

[chiggerbit]

And WHO spread the thread?

[isachar]

I recently got to witness first-hand why one researcher suggested the 9/11 [b]"Truth Movement" might more accurately be called the 9/11 UFO Cult,[/b] due to the presence of an absurdly-large contingent of people with truly bizarre belief systems. (sunny: so according to Hoppy's logic, everything else Jeff writes is suspect, because he also writes about UFO's)

MadCow links to Rigint. I expressed surprise to Hopsicker because, as I told him, I was just a guy trying to figure out some crazy shit, but he was an honest to God investigator. He replied that he respected Rigint's intelligence and insight. I'm not horn-tooting here; I'm just saying, in Hopsicker's defense, the distinction he makes is in the systems of belief, not the subject matter.

Hopsicker has an attitude, but I think of all 9/11 researchers, he deserves one. He's ignored on one side and reviled on the other, and yet he's done
more to puncture the myths of the cover story than, say, Loose Change, which substitutes one myth with a dozen more contradictory ones. See his latest story on Atta associate Bohringer, and how his recent arrest in the South Pacific was reversed "after he told authorities responsible for his capture that he works for the CIA." Shouldn't something like this be news, rather than CD's perpetual circle jerk? What has more evidentiary value?

Jeff the answer to your question is that they BOTH have equal evidentiary value. When Hopsicker's discoveries (which are impressive) receive as much attention as did the impact of planes hitting the WTC's, you'll see an equal amount of disinfo, attacks, and disappearance of info down the memory hole as is being directed against the legitimate and far more scientific and fact-based arguments for CD - as compared to the official conspiracy theory (ray beams and pods excepted - those being among the fairly obvious disino tactics).

I would urge you to buy his DVD on the train murders - which blow the lid off the Mena/CIA cocaine running operation which seems to have morphed into the Rudy Dekker/Magic Dutchman Flying Circus.