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This message was self-deleted by its author (damnedifIknow) on Fri Nov 8, 2013, 10:27 PM. When the original post in a discussion thread is self-deleted, the entire discussion thread is automatically locked so new replies cannot be posted.
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It came straight down except for leaning, huh? 
In fact, quite a bit of debris fell to the north and damaged the Verizon building, which is certainly NOT "exactly what you'd expect a competent demolitionist to arrange":
In fact, the NIST hypothesis explains what the "competent demolitionist" hypothesis fails to explain: Whereas a "competent demolitionist" would have taken out the lowest floor or two in a way that the entire building fell to the south, the NIST simulation showed the building shell buckling between the 7th and 14th floor following a progressive horizontal collapse across those floors, sending debris in all directions, including the parts of the north wall that caused that damage to the Verizon building. The building above the 14th floor then tipped toward the south as it fell.
In fact, this is just one of many details that the NIST hypothesis explains but the "competent demolitionist" hypothesis does not. Another is the collapse of the east penthouse six seconds before the building shell fell. Another is the 1.5 seconds of less-than-freefall of the building shell that happened before the 2.25 seconds of freefall that the "competent demolitionist" hypothesis focuses on. Another is WHY that freefall was 2.25 seconds, which agrees well with the 8-floor buckling in the NIST simulation, whereas there would be no need for a "competent demolitionist" to blow out 8 floors to bring down the building, and certainly not after the building was already falling. Another is why there was nothing remotely resembling the sound, window-shattering shock wave, and seismic disturbance that blowing out 8 floors with explosives would have produced.
In short, when ALL the details of the collapse are considered, it's completely absurd to claim that it's "exactly what you'd expect a competent demolitionist to arrange." Yammering about stiffener plates and shear studs doesn't come close to making controlled demolition a plausible theory.
> The fact that NIST's models did not show the curtain wall is meaningless unless you are going to claim that a) the floors pulled loose from the perimeter columns, which remained standing for 600 feet without distorting (despite the presence of a breeze from the NW)
You were doing pretty good with "the floors pulled loose from the perimeter columns," until you threw in the unnecessary claim about "remained standing for 600 feet." There's no reason for that. The videos that show a wave of breaking windows rippling across and up the building indicate that the shell began falling very soon after the interior structure collapsed. And I'm not sure why I have to repeat this, but what I said was I believe the floor girders fell away from the perimeter columns, beams, and curtain wall, and considering the wind loading the exterior was designed to take, there is no reason to assume it was as flimsy as you suggest.
Again, the simple and obvious point: The NIST simulation did not include the curtain wall, but that's all we can see in the video, so there is no logical reason to expect the two to look the same. But you fail to grasp the idea -- deliberately? -- that the purpose of the simulation was to investigate collapse initiation scenarios and simulate how the structural elements behaved immediately thereafter, not to create a video that superficially LOOKED like the curtain wall shell falling. That happened AFTER the things that the simulation was designed to study, so it's irrelevant. One does not need to be a structural engineer to see why that's so; one only needs rudimentary familiarity with the principles of valid logic. The reason I don't believe you're going to find any competent engineers who are interested in redoing the simulation to include the curtain walls is I would expect a competent engineer to understand that it's completely irrelevant to the collapse. And doing so in an attempt to appease conspiracy theorists would be a complete waste of time, anyway; that simply isn't possible. Their cries for an "honest investigation" is a dishonest, since ANY investigation would be dismissed exactly like the NIST report if it also concluded that demolition theories are abject bullshit.
> You have not demonstrated that a cracking sound is an unavoidable presence in controlled demolitions. That's like claiming that slaying is always done through lethal injection or firing squads or hanging, and thus someone could not have been slain with the jawbone of an ass.
Given that explosives destroy things by creating large shock waves, and a shock wave in air IS a loud cracking sound, then yep, I claim that sharp cracking sounds will be heard in any demolition that involves explosives. The lack of such sounds is why some "truthers" started fantasizing about thermite demolitions, which have never been demonstrated. But there's a problem, as shown by Richard Gage's cognitive dissonance: When he wants to explain why there weren't any sounds resembling high explosives, he claims thermite was used, but when he wants to explain the "sudden onset" of the collapse he claims explosives were used. He will do that in nearly back-to-back sentences and not bat an eye. (Oh, I forgot; that's a sign of superior intelligence in your world. )
... but you seem to have a vested interest in not understanding what I'm saying.
> We are not discussing NIST's model of collapse initiation and propagation.
"We" aren't? Do you have a mouse in your pocket? But yes, the fact that your aren't discussing the initiation and propagation is exactly the problem.
> We are discussing the fact that NIST's model bears no resemblance to reality, because it shows the perimeter structure folding up like a wet paper bag and we can see in the videos that it doesn't do that.
Given that the curtain wall was not included in the model, that's not a mystery, even to those of us not possessed with superior intelligence. Your love of mysteries seems to include a strong aversion to having them solved. You were challenged to explain why that even matters if it happened after the interior had already collapsed, and the best you can do is:
> If you would bother to look at the 30-second video of the sims, you would see that the east wall starts folding up like a wet paper bag 3 seconds before the building starts "going down".
In the first place, that did in fact happen AFTER the interior structure went down on THAT SIDE of the building, as evidenced by the disappearing penthouse. Second, there aren't any videos that show a clear view of the east wall, so what you're really claiming is that the sim doesn't match imaginary videos.
If that's too hard to come up with a valid logical reason for why your "wet paper bag" matters, you could just drop that dodge and attempt to find some other excuse for rejecting the NIST hypothesis.
> Why couldn't thermite achieve sudden onset? You're claiming that fires can achieve sudden onset through a process of heating the steel. Why can't thermite achieve sudden onset through the same process?
Obfuscation. The claim is not that "fires can achieve sudden onset" but that fires can trigger a progressive collapse and progressive collapse can cause relatively sudden global failure. Yes, if the NIST hypothesis is correct, you might achieve the same result by using thermite to take out just the girders spanning to column 79, but to chose that as a demolition method you were sure that it would lead to global collapse. I recognize that that isn't a problem for a spinner of "just so stories" but ...
> There is a rational reason for sudden onset: to maintain control.
Ah. of course, they must have had some reason to do it exactly the way they did it. So now you just need an ad hoc explanation for why they needed to maintain control.
> If you want to bring a building down symmetrically, you have to weaken the columns symmetrically, and that means sudden onset.
... and an ad hoc explanation for why they wanted to bring down the building symmetrically, and another one to justify claiming that only a sudden onset could produce that result.
> If you had gradual weakening you would run the risk of one part starting to collapse before another, and that could cause chaotic happenings.
Oh, I see, after two of the largest office building had just collapsed, they of course wouldn't want any "chaotic happenings."
> Most structural drawings show H-beams for the columns, because that's what they were. Most of them eliminate the flange plates on Column 79, even though we know they were there (See NCSTAr 1-9 Fig. 2-23)
(Ahem) The page I linked to has the original structural drawings for the building construction, including "as-built" notes. There are no hollow columns. I don't expect you to admit that you were wrong, but I should think that a superior intelligence would at least drop the subject to avoid further embarrassment.
> As soon as you've finished denying that your claim is that while the interior of the building fell down the non-structural curtain wall remained standing and fell retaining its form without distortion, you're back to asserting the claim you denied you were making.
Your reading comprehension difficulties seem to be making this harder than it needs to be. For at least the third time, I believe that the interior framing most likely fell away from the exterior framing, which included not just the curtain wall panels but also the exterior columns and beams -- i.e. structural elements -- that they were attached to. I further believe that the curtain wall panels had enough rigidity to hold the box shape of that assemblage, so there is absolutely no logical reason to expect the attached columns and beams to look like the simulation. Do you really not understand what I'm saying, or do you simply find it too difficult to refute, so you attack a strawman misrepresentation instead? And is all of that just a dodge to avoid the issues of the collapse initiation and propagation?
> Why you should devote so much verbiage to something you clearly know nothing about is a complete mystery.
... sez the guy who didn't even realize that the curtain wall wasn't part of the sim, and is now handwaving like a madman to dismiss the significance.
> The usual reason for bringing a building down symmetrically in a controlled demolition is to avoid damage to adjacent structures--which can lead to messy insurance claims and the like--and to ensure complete destruction of the building, which otherwise might have a partial collapse or topple and leave substantial portions of the building intact.
And once again, we can conclude that that must have been what "they" wanted to do because that's what they did, huh? Sorry, but your ad hoc "just so story" is still missing some details, such as why there WAS damage to adjacent structures, and why you believe the only way to bring the building down symmetrically is with sudden onset, and why "sudden onset" really only applies to the shell, since the collapse of the penthouse began six seconds before that, unsymmetrically on one end of the building.
> Column 79 was a hollow column in the lower stories in that it was an H-column with welded plates from flange to flange (See NCSTAR 1-9 Fig. 2-23, and also Fig L-17 in the Appendix L report).
Fair enough, I'll accept that as evidence that there were some hollow columns, somewhere, but I can't find any details about which columns and where. But anyway, I suppose that does mean that we will now need to discuss your absurd hypothesis that small charges were somehow placed into those columns to cause just enough damage to thermite-heated steel that they buckled. Please provide an example of that so we can judge the plausibility.
> Your lazy assumption that you know everything is incompatible with the quest for truth.
Bullshit, I make no such assumption, and I give you every opportunity to teach me something. So far, that amounts to the fact that at least some of the columns had additional plates attached. If you think I'm bullshitting about anything, I give you every opportunity to prove it, and if I think you're bullshitting, I'm gonna call bullshit. As I've said many times here, bullshit never did anyone any good. And as long as you would now like to turn to personalities, I think this is a good opportunity to point out another characteristic you share with the conspiracy theorists, despite your denials: After claiming to be oh-so much more driven to find the truth about the oh-so important events, conspiracy theorists become apoplectic about any attempts to weed out the bullshit. If the shoe fits...
