Loose Change - Part II

[Pardalis]

I think I'm getting better at this rebuttal thing. Over at LC, Riptide hung himself twice with his own words, and I got the opportunity to set him straight both times!

I'm starting to feel a little more confident about this "logical argument" thing.....

http://s15.invisionfree.com/Loose_Change_Forum/index.php?showtopic=5207&st=0&#entry5015235

Wow, good work, nice "répartie". (I assume you are "mirts")

 

[Regnad Kcin]

Have the loosers run out of volunteers to come here and confound us w/ their proof of the 9/11 inside job? So many ninjas, so little to do...

Our little friend geggy is no doubt scurrying around for some fresh links. He'll be back.

As for anyone else, my offer still stands:

Dear Loose Change forum member:

Please take a moment and register at the JREF. Then, in this thread (or the soon to be started Pt. 17) post your "fact(s)" or question, one at a time, sticking as best you can to the subject of your choosing. You will enjoy thoughtful and interesting discussion, likely to challenge not only your point, or belief, but also your critical thinking methods.

Be advised you will not be banned (as long as you adhere to the fair and impartial forum rules), but you will no doubt be treated with a high degree of tenacity. Unsupported allegations, innuendo, leading questions, logical fallacies, and other techniques will be pointed out to you. As you should if you encounter them here or anywhere else.

This is not a "challenge," but rather an invitation. The welcome mat is out.

RK

 

[Pardalis]

Which is ironic, given the number of people over there who are promoting "V for vendetta" as some kind of prophetic documentary, instead of a work of fantasy and fiction, mind you, the same could be said about LC2E itself....

Yeah, I've noticed that too. It bothers me that so much people believe the film is an accurate portrait of our world. I wonder why there aren't that many suicides though...

It's also disturbing to see that a person who sets bombs and uses violence as a means to make a statement is a "hero" to them.

Just look at these incredibly good reviews (don't worry, alot of them are in English, you just have to sort throught them):

http://www.cinemamontreal.com/aw/cr...al/j.e/i.8531/s.0/f.V_pour_Vendetta_v_f_.html

Remember these are ordinary everyday people. It astonishes me how this paranoia is growing in the general public, how regular people can get so irrational so quickly.

I personally found the picture quite ordinary (I guess it's a matter of taste), but most of these dithyrambic reviews are largely biased by anti-american propaganda.

edited for english

 

[Pardalis]

Our little friend geggy

It is kind of hard to imagine geggy being a tall hardy guy isn't it?

 

[RandFan]

I think I'm getting better at this rebuttal thing. Over at LC, Riptide hung himself twice with his own words, and I got the opportunity to set him straight both times!

I'm starting to feel a little more confident about this "logical argument" thing.....

http://s15.invisionfree.com/Loose_Change_Forum/index.php?showtopic=5207&st=0&#entry5015235

Very good and this IS the basis for critical thinking, skepticism, science and the reason why folks like Randi who understand the psychology and human perception are so very important.

Things are not always as they appear.

 

[60hzxtl]

This is seriously the WORST job of foley work I have ever heard.

This was cooked up by an amateur. As a professional I can't imagine anyone doing such a crap job.

PS. pull the audio into a wav editing tool. Tell me if you see anything amiss...

Now I have to run it thru Adobe Audition I'd like to see the .wav image.- and let me add some first hand knowledge - the Trinity footage was camera mike, on auto level, (Panasonic DV Cam.) and let's see of anybody passes off any sound from that camera after the collapse - because the mike was torn off in the dust cloud - the camera was picked up by the mike instead of the handle.

 

[ihaunter]

In a previous post here I was saying how so many of the CTers beliefs are built around a naive trust into what we call "common sense". This post on the LC forum shows it very well:

http://s15.invisionfree.com/Loose_Change_Forum/index.php?showtopic=5207



It's funny, because he uses as an exemple "centrifugal motion", something a lot of peoples (intuitively) would describe as a "force" even if its not. It's a great exemple of something that is believed "intuitively" but is still very wrong.

Another thing to note about this "innate sense of how things work" is that magician's love it. It is often the case that the more confident a person is that they know what is going on, the easier it is to fool them. I would describe it as letting them fool themselves. Which seems to describe many loosers as well.

 

[60hzxtl]

It is kind of hard to imagine geggy being a tall hardy guy isn't it?

Hey! Where is he - he hasn't been here since his snipe at me:

31st May 2006, 07:46 PM
<<<Mock mock mock

It's no wonder why you can't see the obviousness of the us government's complicity in sept 11, joker.>>

Did I get him?

Can I be a honorary Ninja?

Ninja Assassin?

Or just joker. . .

 

[Pardalis]

Hey! Where is he - he hasn't been here since his snipe at me:

31st May 2006, 07:46 PM
<<<Mock mock mock

It's no wonder why you can't see the obviousness of the us government's complicity in sept 11, joker.>>

Did I get him?

Can I be an honorary Ninja?

Ninja Assassin?

Or just joker. . .

I think geggy did "arakiri" with that last statement.

 

[Arkan_Wolfshade]

I think geggy did "arakiri" with that last statement.

Is that like seppuku?

 

[Regnad Kcin]

I think I'm getting better at this rebuttal thing. Over at LC, Riptide hung himself twice with his own words, and I got the opportunity to set him straight both times!

I'm starting to feel a little more confident about this "logical argument" thing.....

http://s15.invisionfree.com/Loose_Change_Forum/index.php?showtopic=5207&st=0&#entry5015235

As RandFan said, good for you.

I'm so tired of "something about the towers falling didn't look right" line of, er, reasoning. For one thing, how many examples of 100+ story towers falling after having been struck near their tops have people witnessed before? For another, dear alternate conspiracy theorists, having suspicion something happened is miles away from having proof something else did. May you not ever have to personally experience in a court of law the kind of limited burden of prosecutorial proof you seem so quick to embrace.

Again, one of my favorite sites.

 

[Regnad Kcin]

Another thing to note about this "innate sense of how things work" is that magician's love it. It is often the case that the more confident a person is that they know what is going on, the easier it is to fool them...

Well put!

 

[Pardalis]

Is that like seppuku?

Exactly.

 

[Pardalis]

I'm so tired of "something about the towers falling didn't look right" line of, er, reasoning. For one thing, how many examples of 100+ story towers falling after having been struck near their tops have people witnessed before?

I for one was surprised on 9/11 to see this plane being engulfed inside the tower as if it entered a cake. I never would have guessed that that's how such a thing would happen.

 

[Pardalis]

Another thing to note about this "innate sense of how things work" is that magician's love it. It is often the case that the more confident a person is that they know what is going on, the easier it is to fool them. I would describe it as letting them fool themselves. Which seems to describe many loosers as well.

That's exactly how magicians operate: They do alot of fancy gestures to distract our attention while they manipulate the cards behind their back.

 

[Ducky]

Now I have to run it thru Adobe Audition I'd like to see the .wav image.- and let me add some first hand knowledge - the Trinity footage was camera mike, on auto level, (Panasonic DV Cam.) and let's see of anybody passes off any sound from that camera after the collapse - because the mike was torn off in the dust cloud - the camera was picked up by the mike instead of the handle.

Seriously, it is exceptionally sloppy. It is definately done by someone that doesn't understand accoustics or has worked very much with audio mixing.

I would imagine there are ratehr big differences in level from explosion to the rest, though I haven't pulled it in to see. It is a very canned effect, and sounds exactly the same each time (which is a physicall impossibility) as well as at times seems disproportionately levelled to the rest of what is going on in the picture.

That panasonic uses auto volume controls through compression and gain control. if when compression doesn't prevent clipping the input it lowers level, which means it should look alot like mastered audio with little change in level aside from slight peaks.

If there's serious changes, it was faked.

It's almost as if it was done by a kid who didn't know much about sound and accoustics, or mixing properly for foley work.

...almost? no, I take that back: it is exactly like that.

 

[NobbyNobbs]

I think I may have just declared war on TheQuest. I wonder if he'll ban me?

I just wanted to point out that in this thread alone, TheQuest has
1. Called another poster a liar (repeatedly).
2. Called another poster a shill
3. Claimed that another poster is without a conscience.
4. Suggested that another poster "get a life".
5. Insinuated that other posters are trolls.
6. Insinuated that another poster had the mental ability of a child.
7. Said that another poster was not forthcoming.
8. Claimed that another poster was intentionally trying to discredit the "truth movement".
9, Heavy-handedly threatened to ban several posters (repeatedly).

And then has gone on to complain about the use of the word "fool". This seems like quite a double-standard to me. Can someone please try to justify it, so that I may better understand what's happening here? Thanks.

 

[RandFan]

I think I may have just declared war on TheQuest. I wonder if he'll ban me?

The guy has no business being a moderator. I tangled with him a few times. I'm glad I got outa there. I couldn't take the dearth of intellectual honesty, understanding and grasp of logical argument and the inability to logically bitch slap morons without getting banned.

 

[Gravy]

I think I may have just declared war on TheQuest. I wonder if he'll ban me?

Yeah, Nobby!
(Yes, he will ban you, but maybe he'll also ban himself for breaking so many rules.)
How long will it be before there's no one left to ban over there?

 

[ktesibios]

Seriously, it is exceptionally sloppy. It is definately done by someone that doesn't understand accoustics or has worked very much with audio mixing.

I would imagine there are ratehr big differences in level from explosion to the rest, though I haven't pulled it in to see. It is a very canned effect, and sounds exactly the same each time (which is a physicall impossibility) as well as at times seems disproportionately levelled to the rest of what is going on in the picture.

That panasonic uses auto volume controls through compression and gain control. if when compression doesn't prevent clipping the input it lowers level, which means it should look alot like mastered audio with little change in level aside from slight peaks.

If there's serious changes, it was faked.

It's almost as if it was done by a kid who didn't know much about sound and accoustics, or mixing properly for foley work.

...almost? no, I take that back: it is exactly like that.

It has some dynamic range. In the 100 ms preceding the second "explosion" the peak levels are -2.75 to -3 dBFS; in the 100 ms after the attack of the "explosion" they go up to -0.7 to -0.8 dBFS. The RMS values increase too, but only by a little more than 1 dB. It also doesn't have the "pushed through an L2 set on stun" look I'm familiar with from mastered musical material, nor does it appear heavily squashed in general.

It also lacks the artifacts I'd expect from the sort of limiters you're likely to find in a camcorder- tight slope above threshold, fast attack and relatively slow release times- when confronted by the pressure waves from explosions. The arrival of a loud bang should cause the recorder to reduce gain and exert a ducking effect on the background sounds, but this doesn't seem to happen in this clip. Just before the first "explosion" there's an odd falling tone that sounds like it starts at about 800 Hz and sweeps downwards. The "explosion" has no effect on its level. That strikes me as wrong.

Another observation. If you listen to the original video, it's stone mono, which is quite consistent with a camera mic.

Not so the audio clip from mediumrecords. It's genuine stereo. The really interesting thing about that is that the spatial characteristics of the two "explosions" are very different. The first one is quite narrow and up the center while the second one is very wide and hasn't much of a center component.

Now, if you had set up a stereo micing arrangement where the camera was and then recorded two explosions a couple of seconds apart high up on the tower, the acoustic path between the blasts and the mics wouldn't change significantly between explosions. If local reflections produce an impression of space on the second explosion, they would do exactly the same for the first. For the two to take place in what are audibly different acoustic environments is just plain wrong and suggests the use of canned effects which weren't chosen carefully.

There's another thing. The "explosions" reverberate. While the recording didn't take place in a perfectly free field, outdoors comes fairly close. I would expect large buildings nearby to produce discrete echoes, and reflections from one's immediate surroundings to be audible, but the kind of crashing, several-second-decay-time, gymnasium-like reverberation I hear on the "explosions" is just absurd.

Phony as a Mexican shilling.

Of course, these are neither measurements nor calculations, nor have I got any degrees to wave. They're just the observations of an old sound man; take 'em for whatever you think they're worth.