Richard Gage Blueprint for Truth Rebuttals on YouTube by Chris Mohr

[LSSBB]

You promote the asinine leverage theory [with its magically appearing massive weight] despite the total lack of data as to how it could apply to the collapse of WTC 7. That is junk [baseless] science.

The weight is the interior weight of the building. The proof is that the center of the building collapses first, plus it fits the acceleration curve whether its at g, above g, below g, and does not have to be constant. Fits better than all the columns being removed at once, when you look at it that way.

And what are Ryan's credentials exactly? He bills himself as a "NASA scientist" but what relevant courses did he take to qualify him to say he knows better than someone with a BS in physics, a masters in math, a masters in teaching and decades of experience teaching math and physics? BTW: Who are you to say he doesn't know what he is talking about? His "attack" on you was a response to your attack on him so don't cry about it. There is no reason to deny that WTC 7 fell at FFA other than not being able to accept what that implies. The attacks on Chandler are unfounded and repugnant.

I can't speek for Ryan, however I've given you my credentials, and provided verification of them to Chris Mohr. They are at least equal to Chandler's and I daresay exceed them, at least in application of them.

 

[carlitos]

To you and your ilk, anyone who doubts the official explanation of the destruction of the TT and WTC 7 is wacko, no matter how qualified they are. Your consistency in automatically trashing who doubts the official explanation is very revealing.

I (and my "ilk" I suppose) tolerate some conspiracy theories and discuss them here, as it is in essence just a harmless hobby, learning about flawed epistemology. But anti-vaccine and AIDS denial KILL PEOPLE. Margulis was on the extreme end of AIDS denial; she denied that HIV even existed, and said all AIDS was just syphilis. She and her ilk put a scientific veneer on AIDS denial that helped kill about half a million South Africans. So no, no respect from me. Dead or alive.

How cold blooded can you get?

So when you wrote "she is" and "she thinks" you meant to use the past tense, or what? Is the truth movement so dead already you can't even tell whether its proponents are breathing?

 

[tfk]

Do you have any respect for Lynn Margulis?

By "respect", if you mean, do I give the slightest credence to her opinion on the issues of mitochondrial symbiosis, the answer is an unqualified "Yup".

By "respect", if you mean, do I give the slightest credence to her opinion on the issues of 9/11, the answer is an unqualified "Nope".

For precisely the same reason the same reason that I give zero credence to the opinions of Steven Jones.

Both are absolute amateurs in ANY of the pertinent fields.

She thinks the NIST reports are NOT science.

Like the blind pig & the truffle, she happens to be right about this. Although for no reason that she ever considered.

It happens that the NIST report is not science. It's engineering.

They are not the same field.

Both Margulis & Jones lack any experience in engineering.

By their own statements, both prove beyond doubt that they lack any depth of knowledge of engineering.

She is well qualified to talk about the scientific method.

Well qualified.

But science ain't the right field.

Unfortunately, like so many amongst 9/11 truthers, well known to be driven to whack-job status by her politics.

Check out her credentials and compare them to the credentials of the posters here. Believe what you want.

She has zero credentials in any field related to structural engineering.

And, even in other very simple matters (that are in epidemiology), her politics also led her to vocally back something that is trivially, easily proven utterly wrong: her wacko rejection of the connection between HIV & AIDS.

Just like in this case, she writes "words, words, words" that are theoretically correct and pragmatically laughable due to her own tunnel vision & politics.

And she is disinclined and unable to step back and see the simple larger picture that proves her stance on HIV/AIDS to be wrong.

Here it is:

BTW, the statistic for 2009 is ~9,000 deaths from AIDS.

This proves, beyond doubt, that the researchers in the world are on the right track.

I trust you don't need to be spoon fed the rationale.

The source of her woo in issues related to HIV/AIDS research are identical to those for her woo in 9/11 issues.

Who else would you like to bring in as a failed "argument by (lack of) authority"?

Ed Asner?
Richard Gage?

 

[tfk]

And nobody has yet explained this false black line (ETA: and white line immediately outside the black line) around the edges of the building:

From numerous photos in NCSTAR 1-9, this line is clearly not on the building.

It seems to me highly likely that these lines are artifacts of video compression.

The reason that it is significant is ... well ... I started to type "because if one is going to base their measurements on these locations, one damn well better know what is involved in the construction of these lines."

But then I realized that "there ain't no significance to acceleration profiles. It's just more JAQing off."

I'd be curious if someone who knows about video compression, someone with credibility, could explain the cause of these dark lines.

They look amazingly like "edge enhancement" in biological visual processing that is implemented thru neural inhibition. In this process, a sudden transition from light to dark gets transformed into a transition from light to brighter to black to dark.

This is done by spacial adjustments to the raw neural signals. At this point, I'd bet that the video compression algorithms (accidentally or intentionally) generate a similar result.

Curiosity only.

 

[MarkLindeman]

And what are Ryan's credentials exactly? He bills himself as a "NASA scientist" but what relevant courses did he take to qualify him to say he knows better than someone with a BS in physics, a masters in math, a masters in teaching and decades of experience teaching math and physics?

Naif that I am, I was actually surprised to find that a JREFer answered much the same question for you back in November 2009. (Your cogent response was: "Yes, Thank you very much.")

Mackey has an Eng. degree in aeronautics from Caltech. Whether that qualifies him to say he knows better than someone with a masters in math depends on the topic, of course -- but in a head-to-head comparison, the Eng. trumps a masters.

Now, if Chandler appeared to know more than Mackey about a particular topic, I wouldn't hesitate to say so. I don't advocate credentialism. But I'm pretty unimpressed by the double-standard of celebrating Chandler's credentials and questioning Mackey's.

 

[twinstead]

A lot of truthers seem to be totally unprepared to accept that there are so many fully-qualified experts in the relevant sciences who disagree with them.

 

[chrismohr]

You believe what you want to believe. You take the word of anonymous posters as gospel and consider the experts in the "Experts Speak Out" video to be a bunch of fools despite the fact they are highly qualified and have decades of experience.

You promote the asinine leverage theory [with its magically appearing massive weight] despite the total lack of data as to how it could apply to the collapse of WTC 7. That is junk [baseless] science.

You say that WTC 7 was leaning based on the say so of one firefighter and a second hand account of an officer saying it was leaning. The photographic evidence shows that claim to be erroneous. NIST would have mentioned it if WTC 7 were in fact leaning. If you understood physics you could figure out that if WTC 7 were leaning it would have fallen to that side. But it fell straight down for 100 feet and then a little to one side when it hit resistance. Will you continue to promote that "leaning" disinformation as fact?

You still say that every floor of WTC 7was on fire despite NIST saying only 10 floors were on fire and the floors above floor 13 had burned out by about 1 p.m. I have shown you the quotes from the NIST reports saying that it was smoke being drawn into a low pressure area created by the breeze from the north and I showed you the same phenomenon at the NE corner but nothing penetrates your steadfast faith in a few firefighters who overstated the fires.
Now hear this. The same phenomenon occurred to WFC 3 with the dust from WTC 2. Do you think every floor of WFC 3 is on fire or belching dust due to an internal collapse? Or will you retract and correct your assertion that the upper floors of WTC 7 were on fire?

[qimg]http://img109.imageshack.us/img109/7968/smokeupsideofwfc3.jpg[/qimg]

Do you have any respect for Lynn Margulis? She thinks the NIST reports are NOT science. She is well qualified to talk about the scientific method. Check out her credentials and compare them to the credentials of the posters here. Believe what you want.

And what are Ryan's credentials exactly? He bills himself as a "NASA scientist" but what relevant courses did he take to qualify him to say he knows better than someone with a BS in physics, a masters in math, a masters in teaching and decades of experience teaching math and physics? BTW: Who are you to say he doesn't know what he is talking about? His "attack" on you was a response to your attack on him so don't cry about it. There is no reason to deny that WTC 7 fell at FFA other than not being able to accept what that implies. The attacks on Chandler are unfounded and repugnant.

If you think I'm being a jerk then consider yourself a jerk for all the insulting things you say about Richard Gage, David Chandler and the architects and engineers of AE911Truth. If you can't take it, don't dish it out!

Cool your jets man. I'm not going to even take the time to answer all your hostile charges here, most of which are sooooooo nasty untrue. I will say this: after reading many of the articles and reports here: http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/showpost.php?p=8380815&postcount=5543, I can't take seriously the charge that the NIST Report is not science. If indeed Lynn Margulis was a biologist, that gives her better scientific training than me but a statement like that is not credible. That, however, does not mean I am "trashing" her. Did she die last November? If so, Carlitos I have to agree with C7 that your remark was cold-blooded.

 

[femr2]

And nobody has yet explained this false black line (ETA: and white line immediately outside the black line) around the edges of the building

We discussed this in 2010. Again, it is likely a halo or ringing artefact...

In video circuits, electrical ringing causes closely spaced repeated ghosts of a vertical or diagonal edge where dark changes to light or vice versa, going from left to right. In a CRT the electron beam upon changing from dark to light or vice versa instead of changing quickly to the desired intensity and staying there, overshoots and undershoots a few times. This bouncing could occur anywhere in the electronics or cabling and is often caused by or accentuated by a too high setting of the sharpness control.

It seems to me highly likely that these lines are artifacts of video compression.

It is very unlikely to be a compression artefact.

I'd bet that the video compression algorithms (accidentally or intentionally) generate a similar result.

What compression algorithms are you referring to ?

 

[Oystein]

... If indeed Lynn Margulis was a biologist, ... Did she die last November? If so, Carlitos I have to agree with C7 that your remark was cold-blooded.

Yes, Lynn Margulis was indeed a biologist, even probably one the best-known and most accomplished contemporary biologists in the world (at least she is among the probably less than 10 biologists^*) in the world that I could have named from memory even before I first saw her mentioned in connection with 9/11), and yes, she died last november, aged 73.
Bit of trivia: As a young woman she was married to Carl Sagan for 8 years!




*) The others being Ernst Mayr, Steven Jay Gould, Richard Dawkins, Mark Ridley, Jared Diamond (not even sure if he is a biologist)

 

[Oystein]

Regarding smoothing, I'm no expert, but...



Am I right that we are talking about an event (measured portion of a building collapse) that took around 5 or 6 seconds? And in femr2's charts, we are "smoothing" that data by taking a moving average of 50 "fields" taken from 25 frames at 30 fps?

And that some are now "zooming" in to look at periods of a few tenths of a second within that data?

Am I right that the moving average taken over 0.83 seconds can't say much about a specific period of 2 tenths of a second? Or am I over-thinking this?

Yes, you are overthinking this, for SG is a "clever" kind of moving average. It seems to preserve many features of the original curve without seriously cutting out certain feature. However I think your doubt is in order when it comes to reading microfeatures, for example, and in particular, gradients.


I recommend you read the article that femr2 linked to a little earlier, it explains in some detail, and fairly readably, what SG does, what it is good for, and when it is not as good:
http://www.wire.tu-bs.de/OLDWEB/mameyer/cmr/savgol.pdf

 

[W.D.Clinger]

Yes, you are overthinking this, for SG is a "clever" kind of moving average. It seems to preserve many features of the original curve without seriously cutting out certain feature. However I think your doubt is in order when it comes to reading microfeatures, for example, and in particular, gradients.

Since the purpose of smoothing algorithms is to remove micro-misfeatures, no smoothing algorithm will preserve all microfeatures. In this context, the real danger of smoothing algorithms is that people may place too much trust in misfeatures that remain after many of the smaller micro-misfeatures have been removed.

When properly implemented and applied, the Savitzky-Golay algorithm should have not have any particular problem with gradients.

You should not judge the Savitzky-Golay algorithm by femr2's graphs. Although I have one hypothesis in mind, I don't really know what femr2 did wrong, and I prefer not to speculate about the precise nature of his error(s) until I know for sure. What I can say with confidence is that the Savitzky-Golay algorithm is not responsible for the macro-scale inconsistency between femr2's SG acceleration curve and his velocity curve.

I really don't have time right now to generate the graphs necessary to support my assertions above, but I promise to discuss the SG algorithm in the thread on "Discussion of femr's video data analysis" on the schedule I mentioned earlier.

 

[ozeco41]

... Jared Diamond (not even sure if he is a biologist)

Multi stranded career across (specialities in the fields of) biology, ecology, history and geography. If we trust the source:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jared_Diamond

 

[ozeco41]

...Mackey has an Eng. degree in aeronautics from Caltech. Whether that qualifies him to say he knows better than someone with a masters in math depends on the topic, of course -- but in a head-to-head comparison, the Eng. trumps a masters....

Forgive me for using your post as a launch pad Mark but all the recent discussions have given little credence to the true "trump" and your post states concisely some of the issues I would reinforce.

The real "trump of all trumps" is being right. The "Joker" if you like but I won't push the analogy - it might break.

So being right trumps being wrong.

Being right whilst having no degree trumps being wrong whilst holding multiple PhD's

Being wrong remains wrong even if the claimant has multiple PhD's. And that is true whether or not the Doctorates are in the relevant field or in selling chocolate ice-cream in Antarctica. Wrong is wrong. Right is right. And consideration of qualifications only comes into play when confronted by experts and the issue of "right or wrong" are not resolvable by evidence and valid argument.

From what I have seen bar a few minor nuances Ryan is generally right. And Chandler is usually wrong - has been in every big claim of his that I have examined.

So that is what I see Mark referring to when he says:

...Now, if Chandler appeared to know more than Mackey about a particular topic, I wouldn't hesitate to say so....

...agreed except I would place the barrier higher than "appeared to know". I would look for "draws on objective evidence applies sound reasoning relevant to the technical field of the topic and derives valid conclusions".

...But I'm pretty unimpressed by the double-standard of celebrating Chandler's credentials and questioning Mackey's.

Me too but we can be assured that no matter how many times C7 shoves Chandler's name in parallel with NIST he will neither drag Chandler up to credibility nor reduce NIST credibility down towards the depths of chandlerism,.

 

[ozeco41]

Deleted Duplicate Post

 

[R.Mackey]

Naif that I am, I was actually surprised to find that a JREFer answered much the same question for you back in November 2009. (Your cogent response was: "Yes, Thank you very much.")

Mackey has an Eng. degree in aeronautics from Caltech. Whether that qualifies him to say he knows better than someone with a masters in math depends on the topic, of course -- but in a head-to-head comparison, the Eng. trumps a masters.

Thanks for finding that and saving me the search. Christopher Sarns periodically returns to that old canard, to the point that it's hard to say if he forgot the answer, or if he's hoping that all of you did.

For those who are wondering, the Caltech "Engineer's Degree" is what's known as an "ABD" degree (All But Dissertation). It follows and is more in-depth than a Master's. My project was interesting, patentable even, but it was too thin for a Ph.D. and diverging rapidly from the department. So I opted out and joined JPL as a scientist.

As for the coursework in my background, between my work in undergrad and grad school I covered quite a few relevant topics:

• Calculus, Vector Calc, Linear Algebra, etc.
• ODEs, PDEs, systems of ODEs, control theory
• Probability theory, statistics, combinatorics, error analysis
• Complex analysis, perturbation theory, chaos theory
• Mechanics, statics, solid mechanics, fluid mechanics
• Electrical engineering, digital logic design, semiconductor theory
• Finite element analysis of structures, CFD, and thermodynamics
• Statistical mechanics, inorganic chemistry, organic chemistry, biochemistry, combustion theory
• Instrumentation and experiment design, data analysis, and experimental technique -- and instructed same at the graduate level

... plus lots of irrelevant stuff like E+M, nuclear physics, quantum mechanics, abstract algebra, and numerous trifling humanities.

Now while I may not be a Dr. Bazant, Astaneh, or Quintiere, I am properly trained to respond to many 9/11-related technical questions as a generalist, and some as a bona fide expert. Not that this matters, of course. It's much better to simply find out if what I've said is right or wrong. Even the best educated make mistakes, or sometimes go nuts.

As far as dealing with Mr. Chandler goes, since his claims are slap-yourself-with-a-wet-fish idiotic, no particular expertise is needed at all.

 

[ozeco41]

...I can't take seriously the charge that the NIST Report is not science....

I think you are misreading tfk but I will let him confirm - I don't want to read his mind.

The main point he makes is that the NIST report is engineering. That is a point that I have made many times. There is a lot of reference to the "Scientific Method" in these 9/11 discussions. The issue being that the scientific method is intended to allow hypotheses to be progressively tested until the successful ones become theories - or at least survive as the accepted hypothesis. It is set in a context where successive replications of experiments "prove" (yeah I know, wrong word,..) or refine to better and better hypotheses.

But the 9/11 events are one off and not testable by successive replications. They are IMO better seen as exercises in "forensic engineering investigation". A lot of the standards of the "scientific method" apply, some do not BUT there are more appropriate - read that as "better" - ones available.

Now "engineering" is by definition "applied science" ( and probably a lot of "applied art" ) and the methods of forensic engineering are therefore scientific if they follow the relevant standards of the scientific method. PLUS they add a few of their own. So for the intended application the techniques of forensic engineering - as applied to 9/11 WTC - are science and are better science for that job.

So when he says:

...It happens that the NIST report is not science. It's engineering...

I don't in any way see tfk as diminishing the validity if NIST as science - rather explaining that engineering is more appropriate and better suited to the job. And in my opinion, a higher standard that the general scientific method which doesn't quite fit. (And that is my neck protruding a long way....) (Please read what I said folks before reaching for the axes... )

But that is reflecting my viewpoint so I will let tfk correct me or add more if he wishes.

 

[Christopher7]

Naif that I am, I was actually surprised to find that a JREFer answered much the same question for you back in November 2009. (Your cogent response was: "Yes, Thank you very much.")

And thank you very much. Excellent research. I had forgotten that.

Mackey has an Eng. degree in aeronautics from Caltech. Whether that qualifies him to say he knows better than someone with a masters in math depends on the topic, of course -- but in a head-to-head comparison, the Eng. trumps a masters.

No, the subject is physics and Mr. Chandler used the the accepted method as did NIST.

 

[Christopher7]

I will say this: after reading many of the articles and reports here: http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/showpost.php?p=8380815&postcount=5543, I can't take seriously the charge that the NIST Report is not science.

Have you read this yet? One does not need a college education to see the unscientific elements and fraudulent tests in the final NIST report on WTC 7.
http://truthphalanx.com/chris_sarns/

You have been informed that NIST lied about the width of the girder seat and omitted the stiffeners to get their walk-off theory to work.

If you write those fraudulent factors off as innocent mistakes, you are either lying to yourself or to me.

If indeed Lynn Margulis was a biologist, that gives her better scientific training than me but a statement like that is not credible. That, however, does not mean I am "trashing" her.

She was highly qualified to say that NIST report is not science. Have you watched this?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O0fkDmi78Og\
If not, you cannot properly judge her relevance. You have not heard her explanation of how science works and why the NIST report is not science.

You may not agree with her but don't say she isn't qualified to say the NIST reports were not science.

Condemnation without investigation is the height of ignorance. -- Albert Einstein.

 

[Christopher7]

FEMR, Can you explain the dependencies between your acceleration line and your velocity curve? Will you give start and stop times for each change in g for both lines please?
http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/showpost.php?p=8430145&postcount=5790

Major Tom, Would you post the multiple trace points showing the interesting interplay between the nw corner of the building and the nw corner of the penthouse please?
http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/showpost.php?p=8427966&postcount=5782

 

[Christopher7]

The weight is the interior weight of the building. The proof is that the center of the building collapses first, plus it fits the acceleration curve whether its at g, above g, below g, and does not have to be constant. Fits better than all the columns being removed at once, when you look at it that way.

That is all conjecture and speculation without any data as to how it could occur in WTC 7. It is not science and not a valid argument or rebuttal.