Posted: January 29, 2009 at 4:29 pm | Tags: aliens, ufos
I had a small discussion with a fellow who was convinced that UFOs were vehicles from another planet and were controlled by INTELEGENT forces. He had all the classic arguments, lights, people being taken aboard a UFO, all the other stories as sold to him in countless “Unexplained Mysteries” TV programs. He even said he saw a light he could not explain, but had to admit he was not sure of what it was.
My question to him was “If these UFOs are controlled by an intelligence… Why don’t they act in an intelligent manner?” Intelligence would denote the things have a purpose outside of just spooking the locals. I asked the fellow if he thought these UFOs wanted to be seen, or did they NOT want to be seen. He came up with some story about how they just may be here to observe us or they fear we can’t handle the idea of advanced intelligent life, so they don’t want us to see them.
Well being a smart-ass skeptic type I ask him “Why then if these so called intelligent being do not want to be seen do they fly around with the light on?” After all even us lowly Earthlings know if you are in the dark, “Job One” in the not being seen business is to NOT flash bright lights at people!!!!! He made up some lame excuse like “maybe their propulsion device makes the lights” But that doesn’t wash, after all we humans can fly around at night and not be heard or seen even on radar, but apparently these interstellar travelers CAN’T mimic what we do? Being seen is even easier for obvious reasons.
No, there is one conclusion you can make about your typical UFO. It is NOT controlled by an intelligence, it’s an unintelligent event that we human attach intelligence to. We do it because it is more fun to claim to have seem an alien spacecraft than to have seen a light you could not explain.
Posted: January 21, 2009 at 6:10 pm
The 9-11 Commission Report states, on Page 305, that “At 9:58:59, the South Tower collapsed in ten seconds” Well, yes, it does. The 9-11 Commission Report was tasked with looking into events leading up to attack, responses to the attack, and possible changes in procedure and policy to deal with future terrorist activities. What it does not contain is technical information about the causes of the building collapse, that was left up to the NIST report. But because truthers are by their very nature sheep incapable of independent thought they take everything they are told as gospel. Truther like to defend the party line as it comes down from the conspiracy theorist kingpins like David Ray Griffin and Alex Jones, and they wrongly assume people who are debunking them are equally as constrained. As I debunk the bunk from the nincompoop brigade I find I almost never have to reference the 9/11 Commission Report, there is plenty of real world science and just general logic to lampoon truther loons with.
This tactic of picking a small error in a papers is very familiar to anyone who has had to deal with creationist. Anti evolution people love to point out that Darwin believed evolution was a slow and steady progression, as it turns out species tend to evolve in jumps a spirts. It doesn’t negate the fact Darwin has the basics of evolution right.
But then the 911 Commission Report was not a scientific paper and insisting that ten seconds is meant to be a scientifically definitive statement shows a complete lack of critical reasoning skills.
Technical information on the building collapse is in the NIST reports, Like this chronology of the collapse once the buildings began to fall, but the NIST site has the pertinent information.
“The seismic spikes for the collapse of the WTC Towers are the result of debris from the collapsing towers impacting the ground. The spikes began approximately 10 seconds after the times for the start of each building’s collapse and continued for approximately 15 seconds.”
So according to the seismic record, the first impacts are about ten seconds after the onset of collapse. That would be the free-falling debris. Seismic signals continued for 15 more seconds. So it took at least about 25 seconds for the buildings to totally collapse. The fact dust obscured the last few seconds of the collapse the seismic records is the best way to judge the total collapse time. When I first heard the 10 second claim I did what any skeptic would do, I watched some of the videos and “counted” and it confirmed what I suspected. it took more than twice as long for the buildings to fall than the conspiracy kook tell you.
From video evidence, significant portions of the cores of both buildings (roughly 60 stories of WTC 1 and 40 stories of WTC 2) are known to have stood 15 to 25 seconds after collapse initiation before they, too, began to collapse. Neither the duration of the seismic records nor video evidence (due to obstruction of view caused by debris clouds) are reliable indicators of the total time it took for each building to collapse completely.
In other words, the momentum (which equals mass times velocity) of the 12 to 28 stories (WTC 1 and WTC 2, respectively) falling on the supporting structure below (which was designed to support only the static weight of the floors above and not any dynamic effects due to the downward momentum) so greatly exceeded the strength capacity of the structure below that it (the structure below) was unable to stop or even to slow the falling mass. The downward momentum felt by each successive lower floor was even larger due to the increasing mass.
9-11 troofers are a lot like some Biblical fundamentalists. Anything that they want to believe is to be taken with absolute literalness, and anything that contradicts what they want to believe, they just ignore.
Posted: January 20, 2009 at 9:55 am
So caller “Psychic” Sylvia Browne Misses Big in 2008. Sylvia went on on the Montel William’s show were she predicted the housing market would get stronger and the automotive industry would rebound! OK so it’s not as bad as when she made a major mistake about the West Virginia miners tragedy on a live radio. And again on Apr 26 2004 on the Montel Williams Show Sylvia predicted some sort of implant that would be used on paralyzed actor Christopher Reeve, the Superman actor died on Oct 10 2004. And who of course can forget the tragedy of her telling Shawn Hornbeck’s parents their son was dead, she still is very quiet on how she was so wrong, as you may know the boy was found alive after being held for four years. The woman does have a history of being wrong and 2008 was no different. To be fair she did say “President Bush’s approval rating will continue to drop” and Jamie Lynn Spears, 16-year-old sister of Britney, will have her baby. Well… DUH!
But why should she be any different than all the other psychics who failed to get it right last year. Soothsayer Elizabeth Joyce told us a terrorist attack will force President George W. Bush to declare martial law and postpone the election, and Al Gore will decide to run at the last minute and be voted president by a landslide. Gee, you would think with all those psychics out there you could find one who would be correct in predicting an Obama win, I have not seen one yet.
Nikki, a Toronto-based self-proclaimed “psychic to the stars” told us how George Clooney will get married and have a child. Penelope Cruz will run for political office in Spain and Sean Penn will be wounded in a visit to the Middle East. Also there will be a terrorist attack at the Beijing Olympics, a hurricane will wipe out Miami and a transvestite will compete in the Miss USA contest. Either Prince William or Prince Harry will be kidnapped in 2008. As for the presidential election, Nikki said she sees John Edwards in the White House after Sen. Hillary Clinton drops out of the race due to health problems.
Being a Medium is a very simple job, you merely sit around and make predictions. Some you base on educated guess and some you pull straight out your ass. The key here is volume, make a prediction that a passenger aircraft will crash in a major American city and make this prediction every day and sooner or latter it may happen. We just saw one crash land in the Hudson River. Make hundreds of such prophecies each day and you are bound to get a hit or something you can spin to sound like a hit.
The misses are far more telling when it comes to these charlatans because there are so many incorrect forecasts from them. It’s human nature to remember the hits, (or the bogus claims of a hit) and to forget the misses.
