Tuesday, February 24, 2009

It had to happen eventually...

Well kids, today I want to talk about September 11th, 2001, or more accurately the conspiracy theory that spawned from it.


I just watched a documentary called Loose Change (Link), and it inspired me to post my thoughts on the subject here.

Like most conspiracy documentaries, a lot of the evidence used to back up its argument was very circumstantial, the quotes and interviews often did not have the context attached, and they made a fuss over a lot on insignificant details (which in many cases seems to be lack of common sense and pisses me off more than anything else with this conspiracy. "Oh my God! That window broke as thousands of tons of steel fell on to it! That proves the government did it!"). That being said, however, the movie did make some good points. It raised some questions that made me have to think about where I stand on the issue, and I like it when someone provides an intelligent, contrary argument that does that. However after some thought and research, I have decided that my original opinion still stands; the 9/11 conspiracy is, from the evidence I've seen, not true.


Firstly, I wish to destroy the biggest part of this conspiracy: the controlled demolition of the Twin Towers. Contest me if you like, but the calculations I have are based on physics and cold hard math. They are as un-biased as I could possibly make them.

Here are few numbers about the two towers that you should keep in mind. The North and South towers were respectively 1,368 and 1,377 feet tall (excluding the antenna on WTC1). When completed in 1972 they were the tallest buildings in the world, a title they held until the completion of the Sears Tower in 1974. The Twin Towers both had 110 stories, 3.8 million sq. feet of floor space. On any given day there were about 50,000 people working at the WTC complex, which covered 16 acres. Basically I'm saying the place was huge. So huge, in fact, that it even had its own zip code (10048, dontchaknow).

Since I wasn't too familiar with how controlled "implosions" of buildings worked I did a little research. I quickly found that there are several aspects that when combined make it near impossible that a controlled explosive demolition occurred at the towers, and they happen to be the same aspects that the theorists are using to back their argument: the steel core of the buildings, the 2000F burning temperature of jet fuel, and the time the towers were standing after the impact of the plane.

Since the building was built with steel support cores, dynamite could not be used. TNT is only effective for demolition when used in concrete cores. For steel cored buildings, demolition companies use a chemical explosive called Cyclotrimethylenetrinitamine, more commonly known as cyclonite or RDX, which is of similar consistency to plastic explosives. It is quite sensitive to impact and friction, and has an ignition temperature of 500F (260C). So basically by saying it was a controlled demolition, you are saying a fairly unstable explosive could withstand an impact of a plane, and then an hour and a half of temperatures four times that of what it takes to ignite it. This is more believable than the idea that the steel support columns just got weakened and buckled? The columns that were already under more weight than they were designed to handle? (A rarely mentioned fact is that the outer walls of the towers were load bearing to take some weight off those steel supports. Yeah, the outer wall that the plane kind of flew into. That one.)

Another problem I have with the demolition theory is the rigging of the towers. Well, I never knew the exact numbers, so I did a little math using stats pulled from the demolition of the Hudson Building, and the conditions set in Loose Change. The Hudson Building, for those who don't know, the largest building ever destroyed in a controlled explosive demolition, both in height and square footage, and, like the Twin Towers, had steel support columns (more here). According to the documentary, security and bomb sniffing dogs were "mysteriously" pulled on September 6, meaning that there was a window of 5 days to rig the towers for demolition. Want to guess how many people it would take to get the job done in that time? Wrong, the answer is 282. It would take a team of almost 300 people, working without being seen, mind you, to rig the building in the time for the 11th, and that's if you did not run the det. wire through the walls, which would need to be done since miles (and it would take miles) of brightly coloured wires running all over the place would attract at least some attention in a building as busy as the WTC. And that 282 is just for the towers, you would need more for WTC7 and any others.


Then there are the other people involved. This is another thing that conspiracy theorists (conveniently) never mention. The act of hijacking a few planes and crashing them into some buildings is fairly easy to plan by itself. I do not hesitate for a second to think that fifteen guys in a cave could come up with a plan to do it, so it is obviously within the capabilities of the US government to do. The thing is, for the government to execute a plan like this on its own people would take a lot more than fifteen guys. On top of the actual hijacking, you would need people to come up with the plan to blame the fifteen guys in the cave, the people willing to give their own lives to kill people of their own country, people to keep the people outside the government who knew about the attack or could talk against the government quiet, (apparently) people to orchestrate the use of a cruise missile on the pentagon, people to "deal" with the people who were on the plane that was supposed to have hit the pentagon, people to disassemble the plane that was supposed to have hit the pentagon, and the myriad of other jobs and tasks that would need to get done on the day and in the months and years after the attacks. It would take hundreds of people (plus the 300 man demo team) to pull something like this off. Even on death row, you could not find 10 people who would even consider doing something so rapaciously evil, yet there were apparently 500 or more people involved in this conspiracy, and not one of them have come forward and said that the government did it? I don't think so.


And then, finally, there is the one thing that I have been asking to conspiracy theorists everywhere, and not one has ever given me any answer whatsoever. If the government is capable, and willing to kill almost 3,000 people of it's own country to start a war that will kill many more, and then cover everything up, shut any significant person or expert on the subject up, how are you still here? Do you really think they would let you put up your web documentaries? Do you really think they would let you start message boards and entire websites devoted to the subject? Do you really think they would let it get this far?  If the government did what you are accusing them of doing, you would have been taken away by the big men in black suits a long, long time ago. As long as this goes unanswered I will have very serious doubts about the whole concept.


You probably won't get this from reading that, but I do adamantly think the government is hiding something. That, to me, seems fairly obvious. What they are hiding, I don't know, but I do not think it is anything nearly as big as that they were the masterminds behind the whole thing. (I was also going to mention the fact that Obama, and the new government has not uncovered or mentioned anything, but I know where that would lead and I don't feel like talking about the Illuminati. Not in this post anyways.)


So, in the words of the great gryphon, "That's all I have to say about that."


Wolf out.

Wednesday, February 18, 2009

Raccoons and Minks

I saved a life last night! Well, I helped save a life. Of an animal. Maybe. Story time.

Me and a couple friends were going to a party. We were walking down the road, and we saw what, at first glance, looked like roadkill: a raccoon laying, unmoving, in the middle of the road. When we saw it, there was the usual "aww, poor thing."s and one of my friends said, and I quote, "Oh, that thing better not be alive." I stopped because I'm a fucking furfag so I'm thus obligated to feel bad and mourn the death of any and all roadkill. It was because of this I noticed that, yes, the raccoon was still breathing. "Um, Brandon? You jinxed it." Said I, "It's still alive." Well, we couldn't just leave it there, but what do you do with a quite possibly rabid or otherwise diseased raccoon with unknown injuries? We figured the first thing we should do is get it off the road before it got hit again. So we sacrificed a T-shirt and using it to protect from bites, we picked it up and moved it off to the side of the road. Great, now what? We still couldn't leave it, it would just die slowly, but considering it was quite definitely alive, and looking like it still had quite a bit of strength left, so we couldn't "put it out of its misery". Well we're not stupid, so we had a solution. There is a Wildlife Rehab center in our town, so we'll call them, but we were nowhere near a phone at the time, so (as usual) Brandon drew the short straw and ran off to find a pay phone. Shortly after this, (and I want to know the odds of this) the Rehab center's van drove past. We flagged it down, and after a quick explanation, they took the raccoon! Yay! I'll have to phone them later and see how the raccoon is doing. It looked like he didn't have much more than a broken shoulder or leg, so I hope he's okay. At worst they were able to make his passing painless. (Oh, and if you're wondering, Brandon ended up spending about half an hour trying to call the center, while and after they were helping the raccoon. When he gave up and came back to us, we convinced him we just through the raccoon in a bush and he wasn't our problem anymore.)



Also, I noticed that minks always seem to look really pissed off. Take a look.

Anger.

More Anger

You gon get raped.

I guess being made into coats is not fun.

Monday, February 9, 2009

Random Thoughts 1

I woke up very cheerful this morning. Yup, cheerful. On a Monday. In the morning. That in itself is strange, but even stranger is the fact that fact that I was reading Jack till three in the morning. If you don't know what Jack is, you suck. It's a really depressing webcomic the grim reaper, a baby who was never born, an angel who lost her wings, and death. Did that affect me when I woke up? Nope. I think my brain is broken.


I want to start a Dream Journal. I like dreams. They're fun. TThe problem is that I don't remember many of them once I wake up. Apparently, this is because our brains are trained not to remember them, because society deems them to be unimportant. If you start to keep a dream journal, your brain is supposed to put more importance on remembering dreams, so you do. I'm going to do that.


My Grandma is now 90 years old. I know she doesn't read this (I am not sure she even knows how to turn a computer on), but I thought it is an important event to acknowledge. She has had many great experiences in life, and is actually a great, great grandma. That's not an easy thing to accomplish while you are still alive. So, happy birthday! I really respect you and your wisdom, and hope you have many more years. At least ten. You can't acheive this much and not make a century, so don't die yet. Kay?


Pie.


That is all.

Friday, February 6, 2009

Effective Advertising?

I realized today that I am messed up.


I wanted to start smoking cigarettes. That's right, not I wanted to smoke a cigarette, I wanted to start smoking cigarettes. I actually wanted to become addicted to something that would kill me. But that's not the thing that got to me, it was the reason that I wanted to start. Not because I would look cool (and don't deny it, some people simply do look cooler when they're smoking), not from peer pressure, nothing like that. I wanted to get addicted to smoking, just so I could quit.


Yeah, I'm that fucked up.


Obviously this got me thinking about myself. Why did I want to start smoking just so I could quit? Well, I know I like knowledge, so it didn't take me long to figure out that I just wanted to go through the experience of quitting. That might have been good enough for some people, but no, not me. We are constantly bombarded with PSAs and ads telling us that quitting smoking is one of the hardest, experiences you can go through, and is very, very far from fun. So why the flaming fuck would I want to go through such a hard, horrible experience? It had me stumped for a while, but I think I finally came up with an answer: Because it earns respect, and I think subconsciously I want that respect. Talk about subliminal advertising, even if it is unintended.


Think about it. If you quit smoking (as long as you don't become a pretentious snob about it) you earn a certain respect that not many other people have. If someone says, "Yeah, I smoked for 10 years, but I quit and haven't touched one in eighteen months!" How do people respond? "Oh, wow, congratulations! that must have been tough!". Sure it would encourage people who already smoke to quit, but what else does it say? Maybe instead of congratulating them we should be saying something along the lines of, "What? You smoked? That is disgusting. You damn well better have quit."


The problem about this is that I thought that if I figured out what was making me want to do it, the urge would go away, and sure, I could say it has, but since this is my journal, I'm not going to lie to myself or anyone reading this. It hasn't. And that is starting to scare me.


I thought I was going to be able to resist the advertisements, resist the pressure, and avoid smoking all together, but now I'm not so sure. What if I can't quit? I know for a fact that quitting is one of the hardest things to do in life. Unfortunately for me, not only do I like knowledge, I like challenges too. Fuck me.


So now it seems to be a battle between two different parts of my brain. The part that is going, "Hey, come on! It will be an adventure!" And the part that it going, "No it won't. It will kill you, you dumb fuck." The classic devil and angle scenario.


So basically what I am saying is this: If I do start smoking (which I hope I don't) and die from it (which I really hope I don't), know that I knew the risks going in and will come back from the grave to punch any fucker who feels bad for me in the teeth.


On a completely unrelated side note, I've noticed how all travelers from the US seem to say how friendly the culture is, no matter where they are visiting. So my thought to you is this. Perhaps it's not the other cultures that are friendly, maybe it's your culture that is unfriendly.

(Though it sounds like it, I have no real personal connection with this. Just pondering.)


Wolf out.

Wednesday, February 4, 2009

Am I God?

Holy crap! Two posts in as many days? What the hell is going on? Well I've decided that I'm going to use this thing a little more often. Starting now.



Something I read today about humans "playing God" got me thinking. What is a god? Most people would describe it as an all powerful being, and I would agree, but what does "all powerful" mean? "All powerful" is kind of abstract. I mean I've never really heard a good definition of what it means. So, what is a god? If you asked a religious person, they would say a god is something that affects, or at least has the power to affect everything in everyday life. A god can create and destroy life as it pleases. A god has limitless knowledge.


Now, maybe I'm going to go to hell for saying this, but by our own definition, wouldn't we as humans be considered gods when compared to anything else on Earth? Let's go through the list shall we?


-We have the power, and really do, affect everything on Earth. Global warming, wars, clearing vast swathes of land to create farms and suburbs, etc.

-We can create life through cloning and other bio-sciences.

-We could kill anything (or even everything if we wanted to) in apocalyptic ways. Look at the nuclear bomb.

-To any animal we would seem to have unlimited, incomprehensible knowledge. You would never in a million years be able to make, say, a dog understand quantum physics, or even more basic sciences such as forces or where babies come from.


That all seems fairly god-like to me. Hell, we even have the technology to create planets! We don't have the resources, and it would take a lot more than seven days, but theoretically we could do it.


I dunno. Just a random, useless thought I had.

Tuesday, February 3, 2009

Face Eating

I guess this isn't a huge issue, so I'm not going to blow the world up about this, but all the same, I think the world would be a much more livable place if this just stopped. So, since I am bored and have absolutely nothing better to right now, I'm going to bitch.


PDA's. That's public displays of affection. I've had enough of them, they are gross, and they need to stop. Now, I'm not saying everything you do in public with your mate is gross, I don't mind holding hands, hugging, or a quick peck if one is coming or leaving, in fact those things can be quite cute. The thing that has been pissing me off is the heavy, steamy, my-parents-are-out-of-town-for-the-weekend-type stuff that people will do as if there is no one else around.

What got me started on this was something that happened yesterday morning. I was walking through the mall, minding my own business, when suddenly in front of me there was a couple that was just going at it. Right in the middle of the mall with people everywhere! And when I say going at it, I don't mean they were just making out, I mean they were going at it. They were lying on a bench in each other's arms, trying to swallow the other's head, moaning, and, like--writhing. There is a line, people, as to what is acceptable in public with your mate. If we were in an airport, the line would be at security. These guys were in fucking red China. I don't want to see it, and I doubt many people would disagree with me. Save it for the bedroom.

Plus on top of it, when I gave them a funny look, the guy noticed and got all defensive about it. Apparently what he does with his girlfriend is not anyone else's business. Listen, if you are going to break the rules of social behavior, than you give up all rights you have to get pissy and offended when someone happens to agree with said rules. What you do in private is your own damn buisness and I couldn't care less, but once you bring it into public it does become my business, and everyone else's who happens to be there. If you don't like that, Hefner, then that's too bad, but it's the way the world works. Get over it.

Listen, people! I don't care what your gender, orientation, age, race, whatever is, sexually stimulating your partner in public is just plain gross.


So stop it already.


Gawd.