Al Klein wrote:

On Thu, 14 Dec 2006 05:25:22 -0500, "Fester" <not@home.com> wrote:

"Uncle Vic" <address@withheld.com> wrote in message
news:Xns9897DF0478FA5vicman@66.75.164.120...

http://tinyurl.com/yhzsz6

Some pretty convincing stuff, especially in the light of W's comment near
the end. I don't trust this administration to be feeding the public any
truth, in light of the lies that have been told in justifying the wars
we've fought since 9-11. Do you?

And to think that you can say this and still accuse religious nutters of
being kooks.

So the weapons of mass destruction are where?

You know, this has got to be one of the fucking weirdest things I've
ever seen in my entire fucking life. I admit that right now, I'm just
too fucking tired to check and see if someone's spoofing their asses
off, but if these aren't spoofs, I think I'll die.

I mean.....I'm seeing what appears to be what I've considered a voice of
reason for some time now, gushing conspiracy theory *****. Then, if that
isn't fucking bizarre enough, someone that I've recognized as seriously
cracked starts making intelligent noises in refutation.

I'll wake up tomorrow, and I'll find that it was all just a really
fucked up dream.

I mean.....I'm seeing what appears to be what I've considered a voice of
reason for some time now, gushing conspiracy theory *****. Then, if that
isn't fucking bizarre enough, someone that I've recognized as seriously
cracked starts making intelligent noises in refutation.

...

9/11 hoax theorists, like creationists, moon hoax theorists, AIDS
dissidents, etc., have many arguments. Every time you debunk
one, they just pull another from the pile. Sometimes they try
to win by inundation: they blast you with 20 arguments at once,
and watch as you run yourself ragged trying to respond to all 20.

Perhaps its better to respond only to the first argument.
They will inevitably say "what about the other 19 arguments?"
The best answer, perhaps, is "when you're writing an article
containing both correct and incorrect arguments, please move the
correct arguments up to the top."

In article <Xns9898E6238804Evicman@66.75.164.119>,
Uncle Vic <address@withheld.com> wrote:

Once upon a time in alt.atheism, dear sweet David Canzi --
non-mailable (dmcanzi@remulak.ads.uwaterloo.ca) made the light shine
upon us with this:

In article <Xns9897DF0478FA5vicman@66.75.164.120>,
Uncle Vic <address@withheld.com> wrote:

http://tinyurl.com/yhzsz6

Some pretty convincing stuff, especially in the light of W's comment
near the end. I don't trust this administration to be feeding the
public any truth, in light of the lies that have been told in
justifying the wars we've fought since 9-11. Do you?

I seem to recall some 9/11 videos claim jet fuel burns at 800C:
not hot enough to account for the destruction of the twin towers.
This video claims jet fuel would have burned at over 1600C: too
hot to account for the apparent lack of heat damage to objects
seen in an image of the damaged part of the Pentagon. Apparently,
jet fuel burns at whatever temperature the maker of a 9/11 video
wants it to burn at.

Good point. But the video goes on to ask how a 757 would have fit
into a hole the size of that in the Pentagon before the roof
collapsed.

Going only by what I saw in the video, the hole in the side of the
Pentagon seemed large enough to include the fuselage and engines.
Wingtip to wingtip the plane was wider than the hole. Wings are
largely hollow: they contain the fuel tanks. The inner parts of
the wings need to be strong enough to hold up the engines, which
are genuinely hard and heavy. Not so much strength is required of
the wingtips. Do you know for a fact that the relatively flimsy
wingtips wouldn't have folded backwards and thus fit into the
hole made by the fuselage and engines? Do you know for a fact
that the wingtips wouldn't have sheared off and crumpled into two
mangled bits of aluminum too small to see, much less recognize,
in a distant shot with obscuring smoke and a foreground cluttered
with firefighting equipment? Or do you take the video maker's
word for what airplane wings would do under such conditions,
without requiring any justification?

I can't respond to all of the arguments. There are many of them.
Probably nobody could respond to all of them unless he was being
paid to respond to all of them -- and then the fact that he
was being paid would be used against him. (Even if he wasn't
being paid, many people would assume he was. In my experience
of arguing with AIDS dissidents, I have often been accused of
being a paid stooge of the drug companies.)

What I would suggest is to practice a little quality control on
what you accept and believe. In a factory, a few items from a
production run are picked at random and subjected to more thorough
examination and testing than the rest, in order to detect problems
before a batch of defective products have been sold to customers
and have to be recalled. Similarly, when you are reading or
viewing controversial material that presents a large number of
arguments, pick a few of those arguments and examine them more
carefully. Is that blurry bulge really a bomb on the bottom of
the plane? (If you can't tell, neither can the video maker.)
Is that strangely neat break in the building, giving you a view
into offices, really explosion damage or is it what's left after a
demolition crew has removed the explosion wreckage? If the sampled
arguments are dependent on unstated or unjustified assumptions,
cherry-picked facts, or particular interpretations of ambiguous
words or blurred images, throw them all out.

9/11 hoax theorists, like creationists, moon hoax theorists, AIDS
dissidents, etc., have many arguments. Every time you debunk
one, they just pull another from the pile. Sometimes they try
to win by inundation: they blast you with 20 arguments at once,
and watch as you run yourself ragged trying to respond to all 20.

Perhaps its better to respond only to the first argument.
They will inevitably say "what about the other 19 arguments?"
The best answer, perhaps, is "when you're writing an article
containing both correct and incorrect arguments, please move the
correct arguments up to the top."

On Thu, 14 Dec 2006 06:37:25 GMT, Uncle Vic <address@withheld.com>
wrote:

South Tower, which looked like a bomb of some kind. A witness claimed to
be able to see that there were no windows on that plane, but I doubt that -
a plane travelling at full speed close enough to make out windows would be
a blur.

As someone who sees jetliners traveling at "full speed" close up all
the time (the plane approaching the building isn't going at cruising
speed, it's going at low altitude speed),

I can tell you that you can
not only make out windows, you can see which ones have the shades
pulled down, which ones have the shades pulled partially down and
which ones have people looking out of them. It would be very evident
if the fuselage had no windows in it.
From underneath, and sixty stories or more below?

On Thu, 14 Dec 2006 06:37:25 GMT, Uncle Vic <address@withheld.com>
wrote:

South Tower, which looked like a bomb of some kind. A witness claimed
to be able to see that there were no windows on that plane, but I
doubt that - a plane travelling at full speed close enough to make out
windows would be a blur.

As someone who sees jetliners traveling at "full speed" close up all
the time (the plane approaching the building isn't going at cruising
speed, it's going at low altitude speed), I can tell you that you can
not only make out windows, you can see which ones have the shades
pulled down, which ones have the shades pulled partially down and
which ones have people looking out of them. It would be very evident
if the fuselage had no windows in it.