Shore thang, my interpretation.
http://home.satx.rr.com/jt3d/757Marked2x3.gif
http://home.satx.rr.com/jt3d/757_2x3.gif
It's all really hard to see without the animation so sorry. Also the nose is somewhat up for grabs. It's indistinguishable.

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You're a coward and a liar and a thOOF - Bart Sibrel

Left engine instead of wingtip is a bit more logical, as in my interpretation you would have quite a roll angle. But at least we see the same forms as the plane and smoke/dust

Mind that the arrow "tail" points to the tail area, but seemingly not directly to the tail itself as there's things in the background overthere.

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To the regular visitor of internet bulletin boards it is clear that it's an excellent idea your parents get to choose your real name.

Ah well.
Note that I asked you: which is the evidence about AA77's serial numbers having been tracked that satisfied you.
I did not ask: come up with evidence that will satisfy me - as, evidently, you regard that to be mission impossible.

Your question, of course, presumes that unless jt-3d is actually interested in whether or not the serial numbers were tracked, he's just one of the mindless "sheeple" who meekly and unquestioningly accepts the "official government fairy tale" of what happened.

Evidently you can't accept that a reasonable person (btw, jt-3d, you are a reasonable person, aren't you? ) could conclude, beyond a reasonable doubt, that based on a) the incontrovertible evidence that an airliner struck WTC 2, b) the numerous eyewitnesses who claim to have seen an airliner strike the Pentagon, c) the photographs of aircraft debris and the testimony of first responders at the Pentagon, d) the fact that four airliners are known to have been hijacked and only three of them can otherwise be accounted for, and e) the virtual impossibility of attempting, in the circumstances, to disguise a missile strike as an airliner impact, that American 77 crashed into the Pentagon.

In other words, the fact that most people here are convinced beyond a reasonable doubt is not good enough for you--you require that we prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that an airliner struck the Pentagon. Why do you require such a standard of proof? I'll tell you why. Because conspiracists thrive on shadows of doubt. No proof of any real-world event can ever be totally exhaustive, and there will always be some anomalies in the evidence. Conspiracists delight in pointing out anomalies and describing how non-anomalous evidence might theoretically have been faked, in an attempt to poke holes in the "official story," while simultaneously ignoring or attempting to paper over the inevitable numerous gigantic holes in their own versions of events. In this way, you and your cohorts attempt to claim that because the official story may not appear absolutely, 100.00000000000000000000% consistent, that your "theories" are somehow viable alternatives, and are worthy of serious consideration. "Something is wrong--therefore, I am right."

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--Doug

"When your statics problem becomes a dynamics problem, you're in trouble." --me

Moor's Law: "As you go from freshman engineering to Ph.D., the amount of work required per credit hour doubles approximately every 18 months." --me, inspired by Prof. Scott Moor

I'm reading the NIST report (45 page pdf) on the damage to the Pentagon. I don't see how what is described there can be caused by a missile.
Page 20 (pdf: printed number = page 28):
Same page:
Page 23 (printed page 34):
So something created a path of destruction 75 to 80 ft wide, with the parts of the building outside of it sustaining much less damage: that looks to me as if a plane crashed through it, causing heavy destruction, and the explosion that followed creating much less destruction.
With a missile, the path from the "plane" (missile) would be much smaller, and the damage by explosion takes another form (and would normally be bigger, but that depends on the power of the explosive of course).

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Knowledge is a curse, but ignorance is worse

Well now that was made up by the evil government or it's running dog lackys, it's obvious and I didn't even read it.

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You're a coward and a liar and a thOOF - Bart Sibrel

Thanks jt, I see what you mean now.

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All civilizations become either spacefaring or extinct.~ Carl Sagan ~

Humanity must rise above the Earth, to the top of the atmosphere and beyond, for only then will we fully understand the world in which we live.~Socrates, 500 B.C. ~

Let every man judge according to his own standards, by what he has himself read, not by what others tell him. ~Albert Einstein~

Except that, in this case, there IS proof beyond a shadow of a doubt. That some CTer's can't see that is simply willful blindness.

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All civilizations become either spacefaring or extinct.~ Carl Sagan ~

Humanity must rise above the Earth, to the top of the atmosphere and beyond, for only then will we fully understand the world in which we live.~Socrates, 500 B.C. ~

Let every man judge according to his own standards, by what he has himself read, not by what others tell him. ~Albert Einstein~

All I did was screencap the video which I can never find when I need it but it's backk there somewhere. I just paused it and zoomed in twice and capped the screen and pasted it into paintshop (well actually MSPaint since I was at work and that's all I had. Then I uploaded all the images to my web space and downloaded them and then pasted them into paintshop and converted them to .gif. Too much information?) In short, I didn't mess with the images.

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You're a coward and a liar and a thOOF - Bart Sibrel

I don't know--even BA says there's a one-in-a-million or one-in-a-billion chance the moon landings were faked.

Seriously, though, you can always claim a case of mass insanity among the conspirators, followed by a five-year string of Inspector Clouseau-like ridiculously good luck that their mind-bogglingly idiotic plan has somehow avoided being exposed up to now.

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--Doug

"When your statics problem becomes a dynamics problem, you're in trouble." --me

Moor's Law: "As you go from freshman engineering to Ph.D., the amount of work required per credit hour doubles approximately every 18 months." --me, inspired by Prof. Scott Moor

I've removed several images. Y'all are killing the dialup users, especially with the animations. Please just post a link.

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Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.
Albert Einstein

This exchange convinces me that turbonium is not arguing in good faith. I am convinced that he/she knows very well that no perpetrator (US, Arab, other) would hijack four planes, crash three of them into targets, but then divert the fourth while hitting its target with a missile. To claim otherwise is asinine.

That hypothesis is falsified by the lighting and shading on the police car in the Pentagon video that I already pointed out. The brightness of lighting and shading on Flight 77 debris matches that on the police car, which has a similar tone. Both examples show that self-shading does not make a light-toned object appear black in shading.

See: Which is Flight 77?

You're only proving what you assume: if the dark object is the vertical stabilizer, then it's not a lamp post. But that proves nothing. On the other hand, if the object identified by the ASCE report (see page 13) as Flight 77 is F77 as I also contend, then it is about 100 feet further back, closer to the last lamp.

However, a problem I see for the lamp theory I broached is that the dark spot is probably too high (unless the impacted lamp was thrown upwards). But this is even beside the point. The dark object not only has no attributes of the target aircraft, but has contrary attributes (ie, is black when the aircraft would be bright. Note too that if you attached a fuselage to the alleged and mysteriously dark vertical stabilizer, we should be seeing it slightly above the foreground box, but we do not). So it doesn't even matter what it is, since we know what it is not. ~Ian

Pentagon and Flight 77: an animated size analysis

I did not ask: come up with evidence that will satisfy me - as, evidently, you regard that to be mission impossible.

It is, because your conclusions are not based on evidence. They're based on what you desire, politically, to be true. Conclusions reached by a desire to believe cannot be undone or even challenged by argumentation or empirical proof.

The prototypical conspiracy theory often follows the pattern of identifying "something fishy" with occurrences or conditions that fail to meet some standard of proof. That is, the theorist expects one thing but observes another, then cries foul.

Of course that depends on the strength of the expectation. You and Turbonium have the burden to prove that your expectations are reasonable before you can read anything into suspicion. Now even if we leave aside that suspicion over one theory is not proof of another (or even necessarily a meaningful challenge to the first), we still have the problem of your burden to prove your expectations.

Typically in Conspiracyland that involves one of several variations on the begged question:

1. Appeal to "common sense". This just begs the question blatantly, which Turbonium is often fond of doing. "It seems obvious to me that this should have been the case." Stating one's belief doesn't establish that the belief is correct or binding upon others. "You don't have to be an expert to see that this is wrong," is also an example of this approach, and one that appeals to laymen.

2. Appeal to irrelevant expertise. "Theology is just like accident investigation, and in theology we would apply a certain line of reasoning." That's the approach generally taken by S9/11T. It begs whether the conventions of one field apply to another. And no, not all examples of philosophy belong in an accident investigation.

3. Appeal to irrelevant comparison. "When TWA Flight 800 crashed, this is what they did. Therefore they should have done the same thing." Begs the question whether the two examples are comparable, and this often requires expertise. You can't argue that it was improper to have done or not to have done something unless you can speak with proper knowledge on why those things are done and what they attempt to accomplish.

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"Facts are stubborn things." --John Adams
Clavius Moon Base

Aren't you being a tad bit hypocritical, Michiel?

After all, you belong to an organization whose standards of evidence allow it to make this statement with neither evidence or proof to back it up: "Physics research establishes that only controlled demolitions are consistent with the near-gravity speed of fall and virtually symmetrical collapse of all three of the WTC buildings."

And nary a whisper of protest from you.

Except that, in this case, there IS proof beyond a shadow of a doubt.

No, but perhaps beyond reasonable doubt. Every inductive argument (of which any investigation after the fact is an example) allows for inductive skepticism and overcomes it with an inductive leap. The question in most of these cases then becomes just how wide the gulf of inductive skepticism is or should be. Thankfully in actual investigations there is a lot of past practice on which we can establish what "reasonable" means. This is why it is necessary to have some background in relevant investigational practice in order to engage in it or to criticize what others have done: you need to know when enough skepticism is enough.

Conspiracists who are inexperienced investigators will, for example, talk about the alleged inconsistency in eyewitness testimony. This implies they believe eyewitness testimony of a true even should always be consistent. This, of course, is laughed at by the professional investigator. But even then the question is still how much inconsistency should be allowed without legitimate question arising? And in practice that depends on quite a large number of factors. And that's where expertise comes in. "Expertise" in investigation encompasses (and forestalls the tedious enumeration of) the various ways in which eyewitness testimony is handled.

That some CTer's can't see that is simply willful blindness.

This still holds. Logicians still consider "denial of the inductive leap" to be a fallacy, but the principle is not quite as cut-and-dried as this.

Arguments of the form, "You say X happened, but you don't have evidence to show that Y didn't happen instead," deny the inductive leap. When a jury convicts someone, they acknowledge that it's possible that all the evidence against him could still be true, but that he is nevertheless innocent.

Most conspiracy theories taken the approach of trying to widen the inductive leap required in the prevalent theory. That is, they say, "There are so many anomalies and inconsistencies that you really have to stretch your imagination in order to believe that X happened." Or, as I sometimes call it, the FUD (Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt) approach. The goal is to so erode faith in X that any alternative Y, no matter how ludicrous, starts to look better by comparison. Often Y can explain individual anomalies with much greater facility, but that isn't sufficient as we discover below.

Remember that the goal of conspiracy rhetoric is to bog down the discussion, not to make progress toward a solution. As long as conspiracy theories simply "call for more research" or assert that "it remains an open question," their proponents will continue to enjoy attention.

As we discover, the alleged "anomalies" and "inconsistencies" almost always turn out to be a failure to meet the ignorant and ill-founded expectations of the conspiracy theorists. And so it's tempting to spend a lot of time arguing whether those expectations are right or wrong. Hog-heaven for the conspiracist. By quibbling over just how wide that inductive leap is, the argument becomes endlessly subjective and fails to acknowledge that the absolute width of the leap is utterly irrelevant.

Whether one's inductive leap is trivial or strenuous is irrelevant if it's still the shortest one. That is, the theory to which we rationally subscribe is always the best theory, regardless of how objectively good it is. If the inductive leap for one theory is long, we can still hold to it if the leap in other theories is still longer.

The only meaningful challenge to one line of induction is another line of induction whose inductive leap is shorter. The question is thus not that X isn't proved sufficiently to remove the inductive leap altogether and thus reject Y categorically. It isn't that X's inductive leap is so long that you're just better off believing Y on general principles. The question -- the only proper question, that is -- is whether the inductive leap associated with Y is greater or lesser than X's leap.

That's why you never get a coherent Y out of conspiracists. That's why they'll have individual scenarios that explain individual anomalies (thermite on the steel, missiles at the Pentagon, etc.) but no coherent full-scale theory. Why? Because by giving you just bits and pieces, or by claiming they don't have or need a Y because they're only "raising issues", they don't give you anything whose inductive leap can be measured against X's.

It's blindness, for sure, but it's blindness in the sense that they don't understand why their approach will never be given equal consideration alongside a testable theory.

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"Facts are stubborn things." --John Adams
Clavius Moon Base

What's saddest of all is that so many are willing to accept the story that a Boeing 757 hit the Pentagon without worrying about insignificant details like actual proof.

No.

First, we are not willing to put up with increasingly absurd levels of skepticism.

"How do you know it was a plane if there's no wreckage?"
"How do you know that wreckage is from an airliner?"
"How do you know that is the wreckage of the right kind of airliner?"
"How do you know that was a part from the specific aircraft alleged to have hit the Pentagon?"
"How do you know that part wasn't planted there?"

FUD is not an argument.

Second, you insist upon your own subjective standards of proof. You say there's "no proof" without being able to demonstrate what is generally accepted in this type of investigation as a standard of proof. Your "common sense" is not a standard of proof.

Third, the question is not wheher some particular explanation is objective credible or incredible according to some independent, absolute standard of proof. Instead it's whether there is more and better evidence for one theory than for another. You seem to think the only reasonable course of action is to hold out for some supposed "critical mass" of proof, and that any conclusion drawn or held in the meantime is folly. We're quite willing to change our minds if the evidence suggests, as we have for example in the case of the Titanic. But just because you find grounds to quibble with what we currently believe doesn't compel us to stop believing in it unless you can provide something better on the whole.

Your standards for satisfactory evidence seem to consist primarily of providing links to photos of a small piece of crumpled up metal or whatever and saying "See - there's the undeniable proof!" That's laughable, frankly.

Hogwash. No one is claiming it's "undeniable" proof -- it's just better proof for our theory than any you've been able to come up with for your theory. If you even have a theory.

These aircraft are built to mil-std. specs.

No.

That means an aircraft assembled with thousands of parts, each stamped with a unique identifying number which can be traced back to the exact aircraft to which they belong.

An airliner has millions of parts, and only certain ones are so marked. And there is much more to military standards than simply part numbers.

It is simply impossibile for a Boeing 757 to crash into the Pentagon and not be able to prove it beyond a shadow of a doubt from the debris.

Your estimation of what is required for proof is simply your opinion. Since not every scrap of metal that can be obtained at a crash site will bear Boeing's markings, you can't necessarily demand that evidence is unacceptable unless such a thing is done.

They have failed to show that they have any such evidence for over five years now.

Begs the question of the necessity to show it.

I refuse to accept that a Boeing 757 hit the Pentagon simply because they say it did.

You're not being asked to. You're being asked to accept it because the evidence as a whole favors that explanation more easily than it favors any of the others that have been offered.

Why do most of the others here accept it without verifiable, conclusive proof?

Because our definitions of "conclusive" and "verifiable" differ from yours, and you don't seem able to justify your definitions. You ratchet up the standards of proof in order to make us seem unreasonable or overly trusting, when in fact we're simply favoring the best of all currently existing theories.

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"Facts are stubborn things." --John Adams
Clavius Moon Base

Thanks Jay. While you probably realize my remark was flippant, I am glad it gave you another opportunity to elucidate the salient points.

On willfullness, while I understand completely what you are saying, I also believe that most, if not all, of the conspiricists are willfully ignorant of "facts" when confronted with them. Not to pick on him, but turbonium is a prime example. His complete disregard of factual evidence is apparent, however his is the easier argument to provide counter point to.

Brumsen's method, IMO, is much more insidious, and therefore much harder to counterpoint. That you are able to do so with such alcruity is a testiment to understanding of the method he employs. Unfortunantly, most people do not have your insight and experience, and are therefore more easily swayed (at least initially). I, for one, truly appreciate your efforts to throw the cold light of reason on these arguments. Furthermore, I appeal to you to continue, as I believe such insightfulness is the only truely effective weapon against such madness.

Kudos!

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All civilizations become either spacefaring or extinct.~ Carl Sagan ~

Humanity must rise above the Earth, to the top of the atmosphere and beyond, for only then will we fully understand the world in which we live.~Socrates, 500 B.C. ~

Let every man judge according to his own standards, by what he has himself read, not by what others tell him. ~Albert Einstein~

And nary a whisper of protest from you.

But that's not entirely true, and so that's entirely the problem. Brumsen does on occasion take issue with S9/11T people and what they say. He has no problem telling us he thinks they're sometimes overzealous, or underscientific. And he says he hopes to reform them from within, or some such nonsense.

The problem is that by sitting on the fence like that he can convince each camp he is on their side. When S9/11T statements become too hot to handle, he drops them like a hot potato. But if we decide not to listen to them or give them any credibility, then we're just being obstinate and self-absorbed or otherwise improperly dismissive.

Brumsen is the rhetorical chameleon. We can never know his true color, so he has the ability perpetually to say we've got him all wrong. If he would state a belief rather than a disbelief, there might actually be some point to talking to him.

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"Facts are stubborn things." --John Adams
Clavius Moon Base

Brumsen's method, IMO, is much more insidious, and therefore much harder to counterpoint.

Agreed. I try to cut Turbonium some slack because I think he really doesn't know any other way of debating than what he follows here. That doesn't mean I let him get away with it, but I'm not going to remark on why he argues that way.

Brumsen has no such sympathy: he purports to be well-qualified in the arts associated with making and refuting points. That he obfuscates and evades is therefore likely to be calculated rather than by default. I think Brumsen is just yanking our chains -- debating because he likes to debate and not because he has anything substantive to say.

While it's one thing to speculate on why people do what they do, it's another thing to evaluate the propriety of their actions based on less subjective criteria. If their approach simply isn't going to work, it doesn't largely matter why we think they're doing it.

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"Facts are stubborn things." --John Adams
Clavius Moon Base

I, for one, truly appreciate your efforts to throw the cold light of reason on these arguments. Furthermore, I appeal to you to continue, as I believe such insightfulness is the only truely effective weapon against such madness.

I believe someone has suggested that we should clone Jay (I seem to recall some comment about The Boys from Utah ). I have to say that I hope some of the clones would become engineering professors, though, and not just debunkers.

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--Doug

"When your statics problem becomes a dynamics problem, you're in trouble." --me

Moor's Law: "As you go from freshman engineering to Ph.D., the amount of work required per credit hour doubles approximately every 18 months." --me, inspired by Prof. Scott Moor

Hey, Duane, how long do they have to answer my direct questions? (Since you're here, I thought I'd ask.)

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Gillian

"Now everyone was giving her that kind of look UFOlogists get when they suddenly say, 'Hey, if you shade your eyes you can see it is just a flock of geese after all.'"

"You can't erase icing."

"I can't believe it doesn't work! I found it on the internet, man!"

Hmm...we can never know his true color. Hey, we could call that "ability", Brumsenism.

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"The facts gentlemen, and nothing but the facts, for careful eyes are narrowly watching." Isaac Asimov

I second that thought. In these various threads I have repeated Gillian's "big f-plane" theory and asked for proof otherwise. I would like to see some direct answers.

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At night the stars put on a show for free (Carole King)

One Earth, One Sky - IYA 2009
All moderation in purple

Unfortunantly, at this time, the rules regarding a direct question apply only to the Against the Mainstream section. Although we have discussed expanding that (and a few other ATM rules) to this section, to date we have not reached concensus. So, for now, the answer is: as long as they want.
(psst--don't tell anyone! )

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All civilizations become either spacefaring or extinct.~ Carl Sagan ~

Humanity must rise above the Earth, to the top of the atmosphere and beyond, for only then will we fully understand the world in which we live.~Socrates, 500 B.C. ~

Let every man judge according to his own standards, by what he has himself read, not by what others tell him. ~Albert Einstein~

I think you just hit the nail on the head, Jay.

Unfortunantly, at this time, the rules regarding a direct question apply only to the Against the Mainstream section. Although we have discussed expanding that (and a few other ATM rules) to this section, to date we have not reached concensus.

Well since this is a sort of ATM section, I wouldn't mind seeing those sort of rules impossed. Perhaps we could have a vote on it.

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Howling from the Shadows

It must be fun to lead a life completely unburdened by reality. --- JayUtah

You can't reason an irrational person out of an irrational belief. --- Noclevername

Apollo: The History and the Hoax
Enter the World of Athran

Perhaps we could have a vote on it.

I'll put it to a vote

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All civilizations become either spacefaring or extinct.~ Carl Sagan ~

Humanity must rise above the Earth, to the top of the atmosphere and beyond, for only then will we fully understand the world in which we live.~Socrates, 500 B.C. ~

Let every man judge according to his own standards, by what he has himself read, not by what others tell him. ~Albert Einstein~

Well, regardless, I'd like to ask either Brumsen or turbonium (preferably both) to explain how the following evidence fits into their "no 757" assertion:

The Generator
Pictures: 1, 2, 3, 4

The "official story" is that the right engine of Flight 77 took out a section of the fence and clipped the generator, angling it toward the Pentagon. The pattern of damage is consistent with such a claim. How would something other than an airliner duplicate this damage?

The Street Lights
Pictures: 1, 2, 3

The "official story" is that these street lights were clipped by the plane's wings or engines as it bore down on the Pentagon. The pattern of damage is consistent with such a claim. One of the light posts even hit a city cab, shattering its windshield. How would something other than an airliner duplicate this damage?

Pentagon Damage
Pictures: 1, 2, 3, 4

Conspiracy theorists claim that the Pentagon suffered very little damage, and only a small hole. Even cursory examination of available evidence shows this claim to laughably inane. How would anything other than an airliner duplicate the damage seen in the pictures above?

The Lawn Debris
Pictures: 1, 2, 3, 4

We can see from the two released videos that it was only a matter of a couple minutes before people began arriving at the scene. If the debris was planted, some of it not exactly small, how is it possible that it was done in such a short time, all under the watchful eyes of those folks on the highway who stopped to gawk at what just unfolded?

Very nice list Cl1mh4224rd. I would add the need to explain DNA evidence from bodies found at the scene to those from people on the flight and radar tracking of the flight (I don't have quick links, but others have discussed).

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At night the stars put on a show for free (Carole King)

One Earth, One Sky - IYA 2009
All moderation in purple

So now, in addition to the Big Frickin' Plane theory, we have the Lots of Frickin' Evidence Pile?

And, yes, I'd like to see people having to answer direct questions around here. It's not like we're asking personal stuff (though I'd say "it's none of your business" would be a pretty direct answer), so it seems pretty reasonable to me.

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Gillian

"Now everyone was giving her that kind of look UFOlogists get when they suddenly say, 'Hey, if you shade your eyes you can see it is just a flock of geese after all.'"

"You can't erase icing."

"I can't believe it doesn't work! I found it on the internet, man!"