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“The building collapsed due to fire”
I’m still waiting to see a shred of evidence to support this theory. Just “saying” that the building collapsed due to fire is not evidence or proof that it collapsed due to fire. You can bet that NIST won’t bother to explain this away:
When the hit piece comes out, this is a critical piece of evidence that NIST (I am assuming) will ignore in their report:
“Although virtually all of the structural steel from the Twin Towers and Building 7 was removed and destroyed, preventing forensic analysis, FEMA’s volunteer investigators did manage to perform “limited metallurgical examination” of some of the steel before it was recycled. Their observations, including numerous micrographs, are recorded in Appendix C of the WTC Building Performance Study. Prior to the release of FEMA’s report, a fire protection engineer and two science professors published a brief report in JOM disclosing some of this evidence. 1
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Michael Reilly writes on New Scientist:
If we ever make contact with intelligent aliens, we should be able to build a universal translator to communicate with them, according to a linguist and anthropologist Terrence Deacon of the University of California, Berkeley. Such a "babelfish", which gets its name from the translating fish in Douglas Adams's book The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, would require a much more advanced understanding of language than we currently have.
But a first step would be recognising that all languages must have a universal structure, according to Deacon. Deacon argues that all languages arise from the common goal of describing the physical world. That limits the way a language could be constructed.
An alien race could use a strange medium like scents as their language, Deacon says, but the scents would still describe objects in their world. An odour that communicates "rock" or "tree" would be analogous to our words for the same objects. So there must be an underlying universal code that can be deciphered, as in mathematics.
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Unexplained Phenomena
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The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, would require a much more advanced understanding of language than we currently have.
But a first step would be recognising that all languages must have a universal structure, according to Deacon. Deacon argues that all languages arise from the common goal of describing the physical world. That limits the way a language could be constructed.
An alien race could use a strange medium like scents as their language, Deacon says, but the scents would still describe objects in their world. An odour that communicates "rock" or "tree" would be analogous to our words for the same objects. So there must be an underlying universal code that can be deciphered, as in mathematics.">
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KMBC-TV Kansas City reports:
Doug Pelmear said he isn't toying with the engine of 1987 Ford Mustang for the money. The engineer's tinkering, however, could earn him $10 million and save him plenty more in gas money.
Pelmear, who lives in Napoleon, Ohio, has tweaked his Mustang to get 110 mpg, making the engine nearly five times as efficient as a traditional gas engine, he told the Toledo Blade newspaper.
"We redesigned a lot of different things on the [engine] block," Pelmear told the paper. "It's still a rod-and-piston engine; it just has a lot more electronics on it." Traditional gas engines operate at 8 to 10 percent, efficiency, while the engine on the Mustang, he said, is at 38 percent efficiency.
He said he could greatly increase even that number if his car used traditional gasoline instead of a mix of gas and 85 percent ethanol. Pelmear entered his car to win the the $10 million Progressive Automotive X Prize: a race to find an affordable, marketable automobile that gets at least 100 miles per gallon.
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He said he could greatly increase even that number if his car used traditional gasoline instead of a mix of gas and 85 percent ethanol. Pelmear entered his car to win the the $10 million Progressive Automotive X Prize: a race to find an affordable, marketable automobile that gets at least 100 miles per gallon.">
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Ryan Singel writes on Wired's Threat Level:
Just days before the Senate will convene to give a final blessing to President Bush's secret, warrantless wiretapping program, a federal court judge ruled that his legal justification for the surveillance has no legal merit.
He's the same judge Congress is trying to save the nation's telecoms, such as AT&T, Verizon and Sprint, from having to face in court.
Late Wednesday, U.S. District Chief Judge Vaughn Walker issued a ruling in a case against the government alleging illegal spying, finding that in 1978 Congress had clearly set out the rules for wiretapping inside the United States and that Bush's claims to have inherent authority outside of those rules did not pass Constitutional muster.
Walker, the chief judge of the Northern District of California, affirmed that the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act is the exclusive legal method for conducting surveillance inside the United States against suspected spies and terrorist. The Bush Administration argues that Congress's vote to authorize military force against Al Qaeda and the president's inherent war time powers were exceptions to the exclusivity provision.
Not so, according to Walker...
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James Randerson writes in the Guardian:
Peter Higgs rarely gives interviews. The 79-year-old might be a shoo-in for a Nobel prize if the LHC finds evidence for the fundamental particle he proposed in 1964 — known as the Higgs boson or, more colourfully, the God Particle — but he is a reluctant rock-star scientist, too self-deprecating to even refer to the particle by name. He prefers to call it the "boson named after me".
Finding the Higgs boson is probably the only thing many people outside physics know about the impending experiments at Cern. And until recently, the man behind it has been as mysterious as the missing particle.
The Higgs boson is the particle that is thought to give everything else in the universe mass, but that bit of theoretical physics is unlikely to be the reason most people have heard of it. Its theistic nickname was coined by Nobel-prize winning physicist Leon Lederman, but Higgs himself is no fan of the label. "I find it embarrassing because, though I'm not a believer myself, I think it is the kind of misuse of terminology which I think might offend some people."
Physicist Peter Higgs. Photo: Murdo McLeod
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Finding the Higgs boson is probably the only thing many people outside physics know about the impending experiments at Cern. And until recently, the man behind it has been as mysterious as the missing particle.
The Higgs boson is the particle that is thought to give everything else in the universe mass, but that bit of theoretical physics is unlikely to be the reason most people have heard of it. Its theistic nickname was coined by Nobel-prize winning physicist Leon Lederman, but Higgs himself is no fan of the label. "I find it embarrassing because, though I'm not a believer myself, I think it is the kind of misuse of terminology which I think might offend some people."
Physicist Peter Higgs. Photo: Murdo McLeod">
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Stephen Duncombe and Steve Lambert write on Reality Sandwich:
“The Good Life” was the mantra of the United States in the 1950s. The country had emerged from a devastating economic depression and brutal world war into a era of seemingly unbounded plenty. The economy was in high gear from the war: there were new products for well paid workers to consume as factories switched from military to civilian production. A suburban expansion was financed by the federal government. The Utopia promised — and not delivered — by intellectuals and political leaders in Europe, Asia and beyond throughout the late 19th and into the 20th centuries seemed to be almost within the average American’s reach.
Nothing symbolized “The Good Life” more than the backyard Bar-B-Que. A well kept backyard, a modern charcoal or propane fired grill, and bountiful processed food, along with family, friends and leisure all combined for an idyllic afternoon.
And yet, when seen in another light, there is plenty wrong with the American backyard Bar-B-Que. Public resources were channeled from healthcare, education and urban development to — quite literally — pave the way...
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The Chinese communist regime, led by Hu Jintao, claims that Tibet is an inalienable part of China. For more than half a century, the CCP has done almost everything in its power to destroy the cultural, religious and ethnic identity of Tibet in order to erase it as a nation and swallow it whole. Why such determination on the part of the Chinese regime to possess this semi-desert mountainous region which had been inaccessible for so many centuries?
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Geopolitics & Globalization
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A three-foot-tall tablet with 87 lines of Hebrew that scholars believe dates from the decades just before the birth of Jesus is causing a quiet stir in biblical and archaeological circles, especially because it may speak of a messiah who will rise from the dead after three days.
If such a messianic description really is there, it will contribute to a developing re-evaluation of both popular and scholarly views of Jesus, since it suggests that the story of his death and resurrection was not unique but part of a recognized Jewish tradition at the time.
The tablet, probably found near the Dead Sea in Jordan according to some scholars who have studied it, is a rare example of a stone with ink writings from that era — in essence, a Dead Sea Scroll on stone.
It is written, not engraved, across two neat columns, similar to columns in a Torah. But the stone is broken, and some of the text is faded, meaning that much of what it says is open to debate.
Still, its authenticity has so far faced no challenge, so its role in helping to understand the roots of Christianity in the devastating political crisis faced by the Jews of the time seems likely to increase.
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James Sherwood writes:
LCD TVs, praised as being greener than old-style tellies because they consume much less power, may actually be speeding climate change, a chemical expert has warned.
Michael Prather of the University of California at Irvine has completed a study which claims that atmospheric quantities of the gas Nitrogen Trifluoride (NF3) are booming. He reports his findings in the latest issue of the journal Geophysical Research Letters.
NF3 is 17,200 times better at trapping heat in the atmosphere over a hundred-year period than is carbon dioxide, the best known greenhouse gas. NF3 has a characteristic mouldy smell and is thought to be highly harmful to the liver and kidneys.
The chemical is used in the production of flat-panel displays which, in turn, are used to make today's TV screens. Prather believes that exploding demand for HD TVs around the world has created a huge need for NF3, and that's sending emission levels sky high.
The problem is, NF3 emission levels aren't being measured by the worldwide greenhouse-gas monitoring programme put in place by the Kyoto Protocol on climate change.
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Michael McCarthy writes in the Independent:
A group of islands with the potential to develop into a tourist paradise has been named as the country least equipped to withstand the effects of climate change.
The Comoros Islands in the Indian Ocean, between Mozambique and Madagascar, are a small nation of sparkling blue lagoons and picture-postcard beaches. But the country is politically unstable and a report published today says it is the world's most vulnerable country to the future impacts of global warming such as increased storms, rising sea levels and agricultural failure.
At the other end of the scale, Canada is the best place to move to if you want to be a climate change survivor in the decades ahead (although Britain is also a good place to be as a warming atmosphere takes hold).
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Rebecca Smith writes in the Telegraph:
A generation growing up with social networking websites such as Facebook and MySpace are unable to form lasting relationships and are at increased risk of behaving impulsively, an expert has warned.
Teenagers who were born in 1990 or later have never known a world where you can't surf online and could have a distorted view of the world and their own identity because of that, the Annual Meeting of the Royal College of Psychiatrists heard.
Dr Himanshu Tyagi, a psychiatrist at West London Mental Health Trust, said social networking sites like Facebook and MySpace have fostered the idea that relationships and friendships can be formed and destroyed quickly and easily.
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Mike Rudin reports for the BBC:
9/11 is the conspiracy theory of the internet age.
Put "9/11 conspiracy" into Google and you get 7.9 million hits. Put in "9/11 truth" and you get more than 22 million.
Opinion polls in the US have picked up widespread doubts among the American people. A New York Times/CBS News poll in 2006 found that 53% of those questioned thought the Bush administration was hiding something. Another US poll found a third of those questioned thought government officials either assisted in the 9/11 attacks or allowed them to happen.
In the UK a survey by the BBC's The Conspiracy Files, carried out by GfkNOP in 2006, found that 16% of those questioned thought there was a "wider conspiracy that included the American government".
This summer will be a key moment for those who question the official explanation of what happened on 9/11, the self-styled "9/11 truth movement". Nearly seven years after 9/11, US authorities are due to publish the final report on a third tower that also collapsed on 9/11. Unlike the Twin Towers, this 47-storey, 610-foot skyscraper was not hit by a plane.
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Opinion polls in the US have picked up widespread doubts among the American people. A New York Times/CBS News poll in 2006 found that 53% of those questioned thought the Bush administration was hiding something. Another US poll found a third of those questioned thought government officials either assisted in the 9/11 attacks or allowed them to happen.
In the UK a survey by the BBC's The Conspiracy Files, carried out by GfkNOP in 2006, found that 16% of those questioned thought there was a "wider conspiracy that included the American government".
This summer will be a key moment for those who question the official explanation of what happened on 9/11, the self-styled "9/11 truth movement". Nearly seven years after 9/11, US authorities are due to publish the final report on a third tower that also collapsed on 9/11. Unlike the Twin Towers, this 47-storey, 610-foot skyscraper was not hit by a plane.
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