Jet Fuel Doesn’t Melt Steel? So?

December 18, 2015 · Joseph Nobles · 2 Comments
Posted in: Common Myths

Architect Magazine: Architects Shy From Truther 9/11 Conspiracy Theory

From Architect Magazine, this recent article on the distance the American Institute of Architects wisely puts between Richard Gage and AE911Truth:

What is more interesting than these bizarre and debunked conspiracy theories is the way that Gage places his AIA membership front and center in his presentations. He seems to be attempting to cloak his organization in the officialdom of the venerable 155-year-old professional institution, even as AIA wants nothing to do with his organization. At the start of his latest film, he explains that he is “a licensed architect of over 20 years and member of the American Institute of Architects.”

Gage often seems to wield his AIA status in promoting his conspiracy theories. In making his case, he also regularly cites that more than 100 AIA members and at least six AIA Fellows have signed his petition calling for a new investigation. In total, Gage says that more than 1,700 of the petition’s roughly 16,000 signatures are from architects and engineers.

During the screening, Gage was at the very least intimating that his organization had been invited to AIA officially.

…Aside from Gage, though, there was not a single other architect in the room, much less an official from AIA, or even another member. The 80-strong crowd was made up largely of members of the local 9/11 Truth movement and other political activists.

There is and never will be an AIA endorsement of these foolish and anti-rational theories of Richard Gage and AE911Truth. Buyer, beware.

It was rather nice of the author to point out the borderline anti-Semitic theories of some of Gage’s followers, theories that Gage only half-heartedly holds away from himself and AE911Truth. Can’t bite the hand that feeds you, right, Richard?

July 26, 2012 · Joseph Nobles · Comments Closed
Tags: , ,  · Posted in: AE911Truth

Fantastic Engineering Basics Course from Teaching Company

Everybody needs some product placement in today’s world, right?

Well, instead of sending cash to AE911Truth and their buddies, why not spend some money and actually learn something about how buildings work?

The Teaching Company’s Great Courses are something I’ve enjoyed several of. Now they’ve released an engineering basics course that quite good. It’s called Understanding the World’s Greatest Structures: Science and Innovation from Antiquity to Modernity, and it’s taught by Stephen Ressler, an instructor at West Point. Boy, you can’t get any more government-sponsored than that, can you?

I’m on lecture 7 now, as Ressler works his way through the six basic structural pieces. Yes, he will eventually get to the World Trade Center buildings and even discuss their collapse, which I’m looking forward to. But he’s such a great instructor that you’ll be impressed by a late 19th century British textile mill as easily as the Brooklyn Bridge or the Great Pyramid of Giza. He occasionally wades out into the deep water, but not so far as to get completely esoteric. It’s true: the better your advanced math skills, the more you will get out of it (I also recommend the Great Course calculus fundamentals class). But you don’t have to know trigonometry to appreciate the way structures have grown and innovated over the years.

Anyone interested in the controlled demolition theories of Architects & Engineers for 9/11 Truth will benefit immensely from this course. And if it’s full price, just wait a couple of months. They always put every course on sale throughout the year at some point. But it’s worth full price if you’ve got the room on your Visa!

March 28, 2012 · Joseph Nobles · Comments Closed
Posted in: Shoutout

Independent Study Confirms Red/Gray Chips in WTC Dust NOT Thermite

A thread at the James Randi Educational Foundation has previewed a new paper done by an accredited forensic scientist. After extensive study of the WTC dust and red-gray particles found within it, Dr. James Millette has conclusively demonstrated that the particles are not thermite in any shape, form, or function.

The red/gray chips found in the WTC dust at four sites in New York City are consistent with a carbon steel coated with an epoxy resin that contains primarily iron oxide and kaolin clay pigments.

There is no evidence of individual elemental aluminum particles of any size in the red/gray chips, therefore the red layer of the red/gray chips is not thermite or nano-thermite.

The red layer is an epoxy resin containing primarily iron oxide and kaolin clay pigments. Paint, in other words. The gray layer is the carbon steel.

Many thanks to Chris Mohr who went out on his own to get this work done.

March 27, 2012 · Joseph Nobles · Comments Closed
Posted in: AE911Truth's Arguments

Hey, wha’ happened?

See, I leave this place alone for a long while and crazy things happen. Sorry about the broken site. I’ve no idea how long it was up, but it’s fixed now.

September 8, 2011 · Joseph Nobles · 2 Comments
Posted in: Uncategorized

ATM Paper Reviewer: “Perhaps Victims on Planes Alive in Tahiti”

Pat Curley over at the Screw Loose Change blog points us toward the identity of a reviewer of the “Active Thermitic Material” paper touted by the 9/11 Truth Movement and AE911Truth. It’s David L. Griscom, who revealed his identity on September 11 of this year, and as Curley shows us, he has had some interesting notions about how the 9/11 attacks went down:

I envision a similar 9/11 scheme, but one where the passengers boarded under their true names. Indeed, the seat occupancies on all four aircraft allegedly hijacked on 9/11 were very much lower that industry average (averaging 26% of capacity vis-à-vis 71% for all domestic flights in July 2001). So, here I extend my “all passengers survived” postulate to all four 9/11 “hijacked” flights on the notion that this small number of passengers might have been considered by conspirators as the minimum number for public credulity, while at the same time not exceeding the maximum number of “true believers in the cause” willing to accept long separations from their loved ones (sweetened by handsome Swiss bank accounts).

Griscom shows a predilection toward loopy theories, as his revelatory blog post links to Jim Hoffman’s ceiling tile theory as a “very plausible scenario” of how the *therm*te could have gotten into the building.

It’s Stephen Jones’ reaction that is the most illuminating to me.

As one of the authors of this paper, I can say that Prof. Griscom’s twelve pages of review were very well thought-out and required us to do considerable further work on the paper, which improved the final version significantly.  This was one tough review, more challenging than any other review I have received, excepting perhaps peer-reviews of papers in Scientific American (1987) and Nature (1989) on which I was co-author.  I should also add that I have never met Prof. Griscom personally and that I just learned of his blog disclosing himself as a peer-reviewer today (thanks to Dirk Gerhardt).

And yet Griscom says that he couldn’t find anything to criticize about the ATM paper! 12 notes of suggestions he has that makes Harrit, et al. sweat and strain to meet (according to Jones), but none of these are criticisms? Just like the 9/11 Truth employs the famous Hush-a-Boom *therm*te whenever they wish to argue for explosive sounds or against them, we now have peer review that’s both rigorous and non-critical at the same time.

The bias of this “referee” of the ATM paper is palpable. Jones says that he has never “met” Griscom, nor knew explicitly that Griscom was a reviewer of the piece, but the Bentley Open review process allows, indeed requests, that authors suggest reviewers for the piece. Jones has not categorically denied that Griscom was not one of the suggested reviewers by the authors of the paper, and I’m afraid such a categorical denial is required in this case. If it turns out that Jones and Griscom have communicated over the Internet, or if Griscom is well-known by other authors of the paper (like Harrit) and was suggested by them, this will be another blow to the objectivity of the review process beyond what has already been revealed.

And here’s an idea! Why not have Griscom release his 12 pages of suggestions so that we can examine this rigorous non-critical review? It certainly would be interesting to read over.

(Please note: the term *therm*te is my own to keep from having to type out every iteration of thermite 9/11 Truth advocates employ in what I interprest as their shell game. We’ve seen nanothermite, super nanothermite, regular thermite, thermate, etc. It gets old qualifying every single statement about the thermite arguments.)

December 3, 2010 · Joseph Nobles · 2 Comments
Tags: , , , , , , ,  · Posted in: AE911Truth, Other 9/11 Truth Advocates

Harley Guy Identified, Full Interview Now Available

One of AE911Truth’s key talking points is a suggestion that the official story was inserted into the media with the use of people like this person. He’s called the Harley Guy because of his T-shirt, and his very vivid and precise way of describing the attack is seen as suspicious. However, only a short clip of this interview has ever been displayed by AE911Truth or other 9/11 Truth advocates.

Now the full interview is available, and Harley Guy is identified as Matt Walsh, a “freelancer for Fox.” So this is a person who has thought very carefully about how to describe the event he just witnessed because he works in the video news business and knows what is expected. His interview sounds like a sound bite because he works with sound bites all the time. There is nothing remotely suspicious about this, and suggestions that Mr. Walsh is a government plant dishing out the official story to fool the world are ludicrous.

ETA: A quick note – Mr. Walsh is used in the AE911Truth presentation. He’s part of the first 911Mysteries clip. As I recall, he’s also been used in other AE911Truth short videos, and that recently, like at the National Press Club vanity mock debate. I’ll check into it.

November 30, 2010 · Joseph Nobles · 2 Comments
Tags: , , , ,  · Posted in: AE911Truth, Common Myths

$75,450

Richard Gage’s salary in 2009 from Architects & Engineers for 9/11 Truth. That’s according to the 2009 Form 990-EZ available right now at Guidestar.org, an online organization that helps track non-profits.

The total revenue for 2009 – $344,570. Salaries for Gage and others topped out at $107,417. That means salaries constitute 31% of AE911Truth’s expenses.

In other words, Richard Gage’s salary is 21% of all revenue received by AE911Truth in 2009.

I’ll post a more detailed analysis of this (and the 2008 Form 990-EZ) later.

ETA: My detailed look at the 2007 Form 990-EZ for AE911Truth is available at the link.

November 9, 2010 · Joseph Nobles · 9 Comments
Tags: ,  · Posted in: AE911Truth

Oh, No

Thanks to Orphia Nay at JREF!

November 9, 2010 · Joseph Nobles · Comments Closed
Tags:  · Posted in: Uncategorized, WTC 7

Building What Ads Hitting the Air

A post at Democratic Underground says that the Building What? ad just played on MSNBC. So here’s a couple of links at my site dealing with the issues raised at their site:

Building What is Up! – and it looks like a lie on every page.

7 Facts about Building 7 – and how cherrypicking gets you the answer you want every time.

Of course these family members deserve answers to their questions. However, they don’t deserve the answers that they prefer. We owe it to all the victims of the 9/11 attacks to deal with the truth, and the presentations of Architects & Engineers for 9/11 Truth and this front group simply are not dealing with the truth. Deception and craft followed by a way to donate money to promoting more deception and craft doesn’t honor anyone’s memory.

November 2, 2010 · Joseph Nobles · One Comment
Posted in: Other 9/11 Truth Advocates, WTC 7