Well, you cannot see through dust. and you are obviosly not seeing , or seeing something else from what I see in the videos and aftermath photos. Because there sure as heck was a more than dust left. All of this ignores the obscene amount of explosives you’d need for you alleged ‘dusitification’ to take place. Any such level explosives, even with shaped charges would resemble a true explosion…not ‘the block disappears into a cloud of dust’.

This is, quite frankly, silly.

“The videos I saw, the noise seemed pretty scary and deafening loud.”

But not the sound of explosive charges. Not like that all. There is a huge difference between the massive rumbling sounds of the collapsing towers and demolition charges going off.

Yeah, but what a big cloud of dust it is. I don’t see anything left at the bottom except dust.

The videos I saw, the noise seemed pretty scary and deafening loud.

For one thing, they never do a building as large as the WTC towers.

For another, what you are claiming to see is not was is on the videos. The buildings are not being turned into fine dust, they are being obscured as they fall into a cloud of dust made by drywall, concrete, etc.

Also, the explosives that would turn something the size of that WTC block into ‘fine powder’ would make enough noise to be heard in the heartland. None of the videos, nor does anyone in NYC say they heard sounds that loud. If you get a chance, go view a few building demolitions live. You might notice the explosives are pretty loud and sharp. They are nothing like the rumbling of the tower collapse.

alien abductees: only personal accounts of their experience usually from hypnotic regression of “missing time”. I’m not aware of videos that aren’t hoaxes or too fuzzy to be taken seriously.

twin towers: yes there are videos, the very ones that show the buildings “collapsing”. But look more carefully at them, the buildings are being turned to fine dust from the top down. Dude, what’s the biggie about demolitions? They do it everyday in Las Vegas, for heaven’s sake.

Am looking forward to comparing and contrasting the evidence

Jeff, Of these groups, please rank them in order of “Most Truthy” and “Most Deserving of Copernicus-like Revolutionary” status.

a. Creationists
b. Alien Abductees
c. the David Eicke people
d. Copernicus was a scaredy cat Truthers
e. Global Warming is a Lie R Us organisations
f. 911 Truthers (those who deny that 911 is the number for the emergency services) Not to be confused with: see below
g. 911 Truthers (Those Who think Reno 911 is the best TV show) Not to be confused with: see below-er
h. 911 Truthers (those who think two buildings collapsing on live TV was actually caused by giplosions [short hand for gigantic explosions])
i. 910 Truthers

In order of least to most truthy:

c, a, b, e, d , h.

The others may not be serious answers, so they aren’t on the list.

I use the criteria of logical/evidence to make the ranking. Yes, there are kooky ideas, and yes, also good idea.

I have. Never been published despite my letters being an order of magnitude better written than the ones that do get to print, usually stuff full of logical fallacies.

Write to your local politicians.

I have actually phoned them, and gotten rudely treated by aides and lower level hacks. Seriously, at least here is California, they DO NOT CARE anymore what people think. They are gerrymandered in until getting termed out. Well, for now, at least. We did recently pass redistricting reform, but I’m sure the new process will be bought out and corrupted in no time.

Get involved with your local community radio station.

Meh. Bunch of hippies. Or 24/7 progressive jazz.

I’ve written about 20 pamphlets, 1 to 2 pages long, giving a skeptical introduction to a range of topics such as Firewalking, Spontaneous Human Combustion, the Assassination of JFK, Holocaust Denial, the Apollo Hoax and Vaccines, for my local Skeptic group

That’s all well and good, but what this country needs is massive giga-doses of political skepticism. You know, something beyond merely picking on the Republicans. If one good thing comes out of this downturn I hope it’s a return to proper and healthy skepticism of the G-Man.

For what it is worth, I have turned over a dozen people away from Sylvia Browne. Her mining accident flub was the skeptical equivalent of a shiny new box of silver bullets. I got much mileage out of that.

Write letters to your local newspaper. Write to your local politicians. Get involved with your local community radio station.

I’ve written about 20 pamphlets, 1 to 2 pages long, giving a skeptical introduction to a range of topics such as Firewalking, Spontaneous Human Combustion, the Assassination of JFK, Holocaust Denial, the Apollo Hoax and Vaccines, for my local Skeptic group. As a result they’ve been distributed by the hundreds at various events the Skeptics have been involved in. With any luck they’ll be going up on our group’s web-site some time this year for people to download at their leisure.

Who needs a blog?

Possible answer: To ensure that it DOES collapse completely.
“Shock and awe” to borrow a quote from the Bush administration.

Anyway, I’m not hear to add fuel to a fire. My original point is that sometimes the tone of this and other blogs is that either you hold to the same skepticism as the blogger or be labeled “anti-whatever”.

For the record, I am 100% behind science of all kinds. I especially love astronomy but all science intrigues me. My kids are vaccinated, and we are atheists.

Phil is one of my skeptical heroes mostly because it was Bad Astronomy that opened my eyes to the world of skepticism, as well as providing a great resource for space science news. Other big name heroes include Randi, Adam Savage, the SGU and many more.

Another hero of mine is my friend Desiree who hosts a skeptical call in radio show called “Skeptically Speaking” (formerly Q Transmissions). The show regularly interviews scientists and experts in many fields (PZ Myers, Greg Laden, Stephen Kent, Jeremy Whitlock). I look forward to Fridays when the show airs where I can get the opportunity to call in and ask meaningful questions of great minds.

http://skepticallyspeaking.com/

Standing up and making yourself heard is the first step to instituting real positive change in the world.

Well, I’m sceptical, but open to evidence other than the usual anecdote. Any decent homeopath would refer to a conventional doctor, and anyone self-treating for serious problems, well, that happens every day with conventional OTC medicines.

who are your skeptical heroes?

Sextus Empiricus

How do you know the 911 truthers are brave revolutionaries, and not David Eicke and his secrets of the lizard people?

How do you know the global warming deniers are not brave revolutionaries, and will soon be proven right when the ice caps freeze up again and the polar bear population thrives again?

How do you know the Holocaust deniers aren’t the brave revolutionaries they are? After all, I didn’t see 6 million bodies. Did you? Doctors say that you can only declare somebody dead when you see their body. Where are the bodies? Coincidence? I don’t think so.

How do you know that you’re not a brave revolutionary declaring the truth about Copernicus, about how he secretly protected his work from the Evil Inquisition. The rest of us dumbos still think that Copernicus freely shared his theories with people across Europe, including senior Archbishops in Rome who were very encouraging about it, but you Sir, are fighting the brave fight and letting the truth be known!

Jeff, Of these groups, please rank them in order of “Most Truthy” and “Most Deserving of Copernicus-like Revolutionary” status.

a. Creationists
b. Alien Abductees
c. the David Eicke people
d. Copernicus was a scaredy cat Truthers
e. Global Warming is a Lie R Us organisations
f. 911 Truthers (those who deny that 911 is the number for the emergency services) Not to be confused with: see below
g. 911 Truthers (Those Who think Reno 911 is the best TV show) Not to be confused with: see below-er
h. 911 Truthers (those who think two buildings collapsing on live TV was actually caused by giplosions [short hand for gigantic explosions])
i. 910 Truthers (those who think it actually happened in 9/10 but the footage was delayed a day by “The Government(tm)” so they could insert shots of CGI planes into the news feed

Thats quite a list. I’m looking forward to your answers, so I know which group to support.

Thanks

-

OK, that comparison is just plain ridiculous.

1) The world’s national engineering institutes are not the Catholic church 300+ years ago. They base their work on evidence and not a religious doctrine. When they studied the failure of the WTC they learned a lot they didn’t know before. But what they learned is not considered ‘sexy’ by the Conspiracy Theorists. There is no evidence whatsoever for the use of demolitions in the towers. So that is why engineers do not give such ‘theories’ any credence.

2) You are basically invoking the Galileo Fallacy. Look it up.

3) Think about what you are saying right now: You are essentially saying that a majority or at least a decent size minority of engineers, et al. are happier to let someone get away with the mass murder of 3000+ citizens for fear of being labelled a ‘kook’. You seem to feel that the majority of engineers are cowards. That is reprehensible.

Data is all that matters. Galileo, Copernicus, Einstein etc. had copious data that survived rigorous testing. That’s all that matters.

Politics, character assassination, and personal testimony all fade into the background compared to data.

So these 911 truthers instead of being “kooks” are brave revolutionaries .

The fact that they are still alive disproves this. Actually, the fact that they are still alive disproves their points entirely. If they can talk about this stuff as much as they want with no negative ramifications, then what is stopping those who know about the conspiracy from doing the same thing?

Imagine in the days of the Copernican Revolution, were there a lot of Galileo’s and Giordano Bruno’s coming out of the woodwork to support Copernicus? No, because the inquisition would have burned them at the stake. Even Copernicus himself waited until his deathbed to publish his paper, and Galileo recanted half-heartedly to save himself.

So these 911 truthers instead of being “kooks” are brave revolutionaries .

I’m sorry, that is just patently ridiculous. These are engineers from all walks of life , from all around the world, with all levels of education and the ones who claim explosives were used are a fraction of a fraction of a fraction. That’s not a minority opinion being suppressed, that just the expected level of crankery to be found in almost any profession. In fact, its kind of low for the crankery level.

@Jeff, about conspiracy theories:
I have noticed that most government involving conspiracy theories are coming from the US. Here people are not so into that and trust me our government is evil to your face (170,000 USD a year for a fracking secratary for every EU senator? Thats what I call evil!).
Anyway, in regards to the 9/11 conspiracy (and also to the JFk- assasination conspiracy- theory), I have the following explanation as to why they emerged and why they became so popular:
The thought of an all powerful government that is very evil is less unsettling to people than the thought of a government that was incapable of preventing this from happening. The idea that there was no Jack Bauer, James Bond, McGyver or A- Team to stop the 9/11 attacks, or the JFK- assassination does not fit the picture of the mighty super power USA. People would much rather believe that the stuff was ordered by the government for whatever reason.
That is at least my theory.

Saw it on broadcast news, actually. We got word that a plane had hit one of the towers, so a bunch of coworkers and I headed to one of the TVs to see what was what…we were watching that when the second plane hit. Still brings shivers.