Peyton Manning, Tony Romo, and Tom Brady go to Heaven to visit God and watch a Monday Night game. God decides who will sit next to him by asking them each the same question.
God asks Manning first: "What do you believe?"
Peyton thinks long and hard, looks God in the eye, and says, "I believe in hard work, and in staying true to family and friends. I believe in giving. I was lucky, but I always tried to do right by my fans."
God can't help but see the essential goodness of Manning, and offers him a seat to his left.
Then God turns to Tony Romo and says, "What do you believe?"
Tony says, "I believe passion, discipline, courage, and honor are the fundamentals of life. I, too, have been lucky, but win or lose, I've always tried to be a true sportsman, both on and off the playing field."
God is greatly moved by Tony's sincere eloquence, and he offers him a seat to his right.
Finally, God turns to Tom Brady. "And you, Tom, what do you believe?"
Tom replies, "I believe you're in my seat."
Tuesday, December 14, 2010
Thursday, December 9, 2010
Just a Reminder Kids
Creepyolderguy wrote this post September 10th. He's lookin' pretty f*****g smart right about now!
You heard it here first kids, the New England Patriots will win Super Bowl XLV. In what will be his most heroic season yet Tom Brady will lead the Pats to another Super Bowl win. Overcoming the handicap of a young, unproven defense and the loss of uberlineman Logan Mankins the Pats will score at will against their baffled opponents. Who cares if the HBO Jets march downfield for seven minutes to score, for when the ball gets back to Tom it'll be bing, bang, boom touchdown Pats in a 1:25 minute, seventy five yard drive totally demoralizing the overmatched defense. I can't wait to hear the doomsayers and haters in the national media start kissing Tom's ass around week 5 of the season when the truth finally becomes apparent to those frauds. I'm backing up my opinion with a $500 bet on the Super Bowl XLV future line at 12-1. I'll be laughing all the way to the bank! Jump on the bandwagon now.
One prediction I made eight years ago that I hope I live to see: Tom Brady will one day be President of the United States.
You heard it here first kids, the New England Patriots will win Super Bowl XLV. In what will be his most heroic season yet Tom Brady will lead the Pats to another Super Bowl win. Overcoming the handicap of a young, unproven defense and the loss of uberlineman Logan Mankins the Pats will score at will against their baffled opponents. Who cares if the HBO Jets march downfield for seven minutes to score, for when the ball gets back to Tom it'll be bing, bang, boom touchdown Pats in a 1:25 minute, seventy five yard drive totally demoralizing the overmatched defense. I can't wait to hear the doomsayers and haters in the national media start kissing Tom's ass around week 5 of the season when the truth finally becomes apparent to those frauds. I'm backing up my opinion with a $500 bet on the Super Bowl XLV future line at 12-1. I'll be laughing all the way to the bank! Jump on the bandwagon now.
One prediction I made eight years ago that I hope I live to see: Tom Brady will one day be President of the United States.
Wednesday, November 3, 2010
Sanity Restored, Fear Kept Alive (Part1)
Special Correspondent Carol Florio
Well the rally is history and it was quite an interesting adventure. We booked the trip through Expedia and all reservations went through without a hitch. Up at 4AM Friday for a 6:30 flight out of Logan, we parked the car at the nearby Logan Shuttle caught the 5AM bus and had time for an overpriced breakfast at the airport. We flew to Newark to change planes with a 1/2 hour layover. We boarded a small prop plane for the trip to Washington. It was a strange looking little craft. Here it is :
As we descended into to Dulles the plane was bounced around by some pretty high winds which is why Carol looks a little green in this picture and the kid getting off was ecstatic to reach terra firma.
Dulles is a confusing, kind of sucky airport with lots of big empty spaces to be crossed and not much signage help. After fifteen minutes of wandering around we made our way to the curb to catch the hotel shuttle which promptly blew right by us. A call to the hotel got it back with the driver none to happy with us.
The Crowne Plaza Dulles was a decent place and they let us check in early which was good. After a nerve-calming libation we decided to make a dry run to DC. The hotel was about 25 miles outside the city but the bus stop was right out the front door to take us to the Metro.>
It was a smooth commute to the Smithsonian stop, total travel time around one hour. We spent the day walking all over the Capitol area looking at some of the most magnificent buildings you will see anywhere.
Of course we checked out the National Mall which was the site of the next day's rally. Final preparations were still underway but all in all it was pretty quiet. That would change.
Well the rally is history and it was quite an interesting adventure. We booked the trip through Expedia and all reservations went through without a hitch. Up at 4AM Friday for a 6:30 flight out of Logan, we parked the car at the nearby Logan Shuttle caught the 5AM bus and had time for an overpriced breakfast at the airport. We flew to Newark to change planes with a 1/2 hour layover. We boarded a small prop plane for the trip to Washington. It was a strange looking little craft. Here it is :
As we descended into to Dulles the plane was bounced around by some pretty high winds which is why Carol looks a little green in this picture and the kid getting off was ecstatic to reach terra firma.
Dulles is a confusing, kind of sucky airport with lots of big empty spaces to be crossed and not much signage help. After fifteen minutes of wandering around we made our way to the curb to catch the hotel shuttle which promptly blew right by us. A call to the hotel got it back with the driver none to happy with us.
It was a smooth commute to the Smithsonian stop, total travel time around one hour. We spent the day walking all over the Capitol area looking at some of the most magnificent buildings you will see anywhere.
Monday, October 18, 2010
Restore Sanity or Keep Fear Alive?
Corruption, greed, waste, corruption, moral decay, illegal wars, illegal foreclosures, corruption, loss of individual freedoms and corruption are sapping the country and her citizens. The rally to me is a satirical statement meant to illuminate the sorry state of affairs we find ourselves in and hopefully mobilize the start of increased citizen awareness. Should we try to Restore Sanity or will we Keep Fear Alive? Only time will tell. Here are some links if you are interested.
www.rallytorestoresanity.com/
www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=118856078167623
www.keepfearalive.com/
www.thedailyshow.com/
Thursday, October 7, 2010
Where Do They Find These Magnificent Women? A Poll
I recently discovered Stumble Upon. It's a great way to hit on interesting websites that I never would have found otherwise as well as an efficient way to fritter away hours of time. Granted many of the sites I come across are of no interest to me or too technical or just too facile to get a rise. On the other hand many of the videos I've seen are remarkable or funny or remarkably funny and I wouldn't have known about them without stumbling to them. Stumble has a page that lets you choose among many areas of interest and with each click of the button will take you to a random site based on those interests or you can just check all to get a true cross section of what is out there. Randomly bouncing around the internet with Stumble it is amazing to me how many ladies are out there showing off everything they have.
Where do they find these girls? Of all the women I know I don't think any of them have naked pictures on the web but I suppose I could be wrong and I just haven't seen them yet. Out of say 1000 stumbles my guess is 300 to 400 are ladies in various states of undress. They range from the merely beautiful to the truly spectacular in all kinds of poses, from artful to super kinky and every stop in between. I bet the population of naked or semi-naked women on the net could fill every football stadium from here to Timbuktu but where the hell do they come from? Do these girls actually walk amongst us everyday? It is fun to think about. Are they all getting paid to show us what they've got? I don't think so. Granted some of the ladies have exploitation written all over them which is depressing but most of them seem to be having a good time. A large number of pictures are obviously of the amateur variety and many are self portraits taken in the mirror or with a web cam. Could that cute chick at the convenience store have an exhibitionist streak in her? Or how about that bartender at TGI Fridays. I wish.
So here's what I would like to do in the name of science: If any of the ladies having a naked picture(s) on the net happen to read this please drop an anonymous comment with a brief description of the events leading up to your unveiling and a little about your daily life. I would like to publish the results in a later post. In the meantime I will continue my exhaustive research on the matter. Thanking you in advance.
Wednesday, October 6, 2010
9/11 Conspiricy Nuts' Outrageous Claims
Read this for the most outlandish conspiracy theory ever. There are a lot of people that still cling to this totally incredible scenario to explain what happened on 9/11.
From the August 2003 Idaho Observer:
The looniest of all 9/11 conspiracy theories by Gerard Holmgren
“Let us not tolerate outrageous conspiracy theories,” President Bush stated amid increasingly loud accusations that his administration may have allowed the tragic events of 9/11 to occur as a pretext justifying U.S. expansion of armed conflict around the world to allegedly wage war on terrorism. Curiously, most of the “outrageous conspiracy theories” to which he refers incorporate some extremely sound science, logic and witness testimony where the official version is lacking in those critical areas.
Astute observers of history are aware that for every notable event there will usually be at least one ,often several wild conspiracy theories which spring up around it. “The CIA killed Hendrix”; “the Pope had John Lennon murdered”; “Hitler was half Werewolf”; “Space aliens replaced Nixon with a clone,” etc, etc. The bigger the event, the more ridiculous and more numerous are the fanciful rantings which circulate in relation to it.
So its hardly surprising that the events of Sept. 11, 2001, have spawned their fair share of these ludicrous fairy tales. And as always, there is -- sadly -- a small but gullible percentage of the population eager to lap up these tall tales, regardless of facts or rational analysis.
One of the wilder stories circulating about Sept 11 (and one that has attracted something of a cult following amongst conspiracy buffs) is that it was carried out by 19 fanatical Arab hijackers, masterminded by an evil genius named Osama bin Laden, with no apparent motivation other than that they “hate our freedoms.”
Never a group of people to be bothered by facts, the perpetrators of this cartoon fantasy have constructed an elaborately woven web of delusions and unsubstantiated hearsay in order to promote this garbage across the Internet and the media to the extent that a number of otherwise rational people have actually fallen under its spell.
Normally I don't even bother debunking this kind of junk, but the effect that this paranoid myth is beginning to have requires a little rational analysis, in order to consign it to the same rubbish bin as all such silly conspiracy theories.
These crackpots even contend that the extremist Bush regime was caught unawares by the attacks, had no hand in organizing them and actually would have stopped them if it had been able. Blindly ignoring the stand down of the U.S. Air Force, the insider trading on airline stocks (linked to the CIA), the complicit behavior of Bush on the morning of the attacks, the controlled demolition of the WTC, the firing of a missile into the Pentagon and a host of other documented proofs that the Bush regime was behind the attacks, the conspiracy theorists stick doggedly to a silly story about 19 Arab hijackers somehow managing to commandeer four planes simultaneously and fly them around U.S. airspace for nearly two hours, crashing them into important buildings, without the U.S. intelligence services having any idea that it was coming, and without the Air Force knowing what to do.
The daunting task of analysis
The huge difficulties with such a stupid story force them to invent even more preposterous stories to distract from its core silliness, and thus the tale has escalated into a mythic fantasy of truly gargantuan proportions.
It's difficult to apply rational analysis to such unmitigated stupidity, but that is the task which I take on in this article. However, it should be noted that one of the curious characteristics of conspiracy theorists is that they effortlessly change their so called evidence in response to each aspect which is debunked. As soon as one delusion is unmasked, they simply invent another to replace it and deny that the first ever existed. Eventually, when they have turned full circle through this endlessly changing fantasy fog , they then reinvent the original delusion and deny that you ever debunked it, thus beginning the circle once more. This technique is known as “the fruit loop” and saves the conspiracy theorist from ever having to see any of their ideas through to their (ill)logical conclusions.
The fruit loop
According to the practitioners of the fruit loop, 19 Arabs took over the four planes by subduing the passengers and crew through the use of guns, knives, box cutters and gas, and then used electronic guidance systems which they had smuggled on board to fly the planes to their targets.
The suspension of disbelief required for this outrageous concoction is only for the hard core conspiracy theorist. For a start, they conveniently skip over the awkward fact that there weren't any Arabs on the planes.
If there were, one must speculate that they somehow got on board without being filmed by any of the security cameras and without being registered on the passenger lists. But the curly question of how they are supposed to have got on board is all too mundane for the exciting world of the conspiracy theorist.
Who's on first?
With vague mumblings that they must have been using false ID (but never specifying which IDs they are alleged to have used, or how these were traced to their real identities), they quickly bypass this problem, to relate exciting and sinister tales about how some of the fictitious fiends were actually searched before boarding because they looked suspicious.
However, as inevitably happens with any web of lies, this simply paints them into an even more difficult corner. How are they supposed to have gotten on board with all that stuff if they were searched? And if they used gas in a confined space, they would have been affected themselves unless they also had masks in their luggage.
“Excuse me sir, why do you have a boxcutter, a gun, a container of gas, a gas mask and an electronic guidance unit in your luggage?”
“A present for your grandmother? Very well sir, on you get.”
“Very strange,” thinks the security officer. “That's the fourth Arabic man without an Arabic name who just got on board with a knife, gun or boxcutter and gas mask. And why does that security camera keep flicking off every time one these characters shows up? Must be one of those days I guess...”
Asking any of these basic questions to a conspiracy theorist is likely to cause a sudden leap to the claim that we know that they were on board because they left a credit card trail for the tickets they had purchased and cars they had rented. So, if they used credit cards that identified them, how does that reconcile with the claim that they used false IDs to get on to the plane?
But by this time, the fruit loop is in full swing, as the conspiracy theorist tries to stay one jump ahead of this annoying and awkward rational analysis. They will allege that the hijackers' passports were found at the crash scenes. “So there!” they exalt triumphantly, their fanatical faces lighting up with that deranged look of one who has just experienced a revelation of questionable sanity.
Hmm? So they got on board with false IDs but took their real passports with them? However, by this time the fruit loop has been completely circumnavigated, and the conspiracy theorist exclaims impatiently, “Who said anything about false IDs? We know what seats they were sitting in! Their presence is well documented!”
And so the whole loop starts again. “Well, why aren't they on the passenger lists?”
“You numbskull! They assumed the identities of other passengers!” And so on...
Finally, out of sheer fascination with this circular method of creative delusion, the rational sceptic will allow them to get away with this loop, in order to move on to the next question, and see what further delights await us in the unraveling of this marvelously stupid story.
“Uh, how come their passports survived fiery crashes that completely incinerated the planes and all the passengers?”
The answer of course is that its just one of those strange coincidences, those little quirks of fate that do happen from time to time. You know, like the same person winning the lottery four weeks in a row. The odds are astronomical, but these things do happen...
This is another favourite deductive method of the conspiracy theorist. The “improbability drive,” in which they decide upon a conclusion without any evidence whatsoever to support it, and then continually speculate a series of wildly improbable events and unbelievable coincidences to support it, shrugging off the implausibility of each event with the vague assertion that sometimes the impossible happens (just about all the time in their world).
There is a principle called “Occam's razor” which suggests that in the absence of evidence to the contrary, the simplest explanation is most likely to be correct. Conspiracy theorists hate Occam's razor.
Hijacking 101
Having for the sake of amusement, allowed them to get away with the silly story of the 19 invisible Arabs, we move on to the question of how they are supposed to have taken over the planes.
Hijacking a plane is not an easy thing to do. Hijacking it without the pilot being able to alert ground control is nearly impossible. The pilot has only to punch in a four digit code to alert ground control to a hijacking. Unconcerned with the awkward question of plausibility, the conspiracy buffs maintain that on that Sept 11, the invisible hijackers took over the plane by the rather crude method of threatening people with boxcutters and knives, and spraying gas (after they had attached their masks, obviously), but somehow took control of the plane without the crew first getting a chance to punch in the hijacking code. Not just on one plane, but on all four. At this point in the tale, the conspiracy theorist is again forced to call upon the services of the improbability drive.
So now that our incredibly lucky hijackers have taken control of the planes, all four pilots fly them with breathtaking skill and certainty to their fiery end -- all four unflinching in their steely resolve for a swift meeting with Allah.
Apart from their psychotic hatred of “our freedoms,” it was their fanatical devotion to Islam which enabled them to summon up the iron will to do this. Which is strange, because according to another piece of hearsay peddled by the conspiracy buffs, these guys actually went out drinking and womanizing the night before their great martyrdom, even leaving their Korans in the bar -- really impeccable Islamic behavior -- and then got up at 5 a.m. the next morning to pull off the greatest covert operation in history.
This also requires us to believe that they were even clear headed enough to learn how to fly the huge planes by reading flight manuals in Arabic in the car on the way to the airport. We know this because they supposedly left the flight manuals there for us to find.
It gets better. Their practical training had allegedly been limited to Cessnas and flight simulators, but this was no barrier to the unflinching certainty with which they took over the planes and skillfully guided them to their doom.
If they are supposed to have done their flight training with these tools, which would be available just about anywhere in the world, its not clear why they would have decided to risk blowing their cover to U.S. intelligence services by doing the training in Florida, rather than somewhere in the Middle East, but such reasoning is foreign to the foggy world of the conspiracy theorist, too trapped in the constant rotation of the mental fruit loop to make their unsubstantiated fabrications seem even semi-believable.
A Ryder truck with wings?
Having triumphantly established a circular delusion in support of the mythical Arabs, the conspiracy theorist now confronts the difficult question of why there's nothing left of the planes. Anybody who has seen the endlessly replayed footage of the second plane going into the WTC will realize that the plane was packed with explosives. Planes do not and cannot blow up into nothing in that manner when they crash.
Did the mythical Arabs also haul a huge heap of explosives on board, and manage to deploy them in such a manner that they went off in the exact instant of the crash, completely vapourizing the plane?
This is a little difficult even for the conspiracy theorist, who at this point decides that its easier to invent new laws of physics in order to keep the delusion rolling along.
There weren't any explosives. It wasn't an inside job. The plane blew up into nothing from its exploding fuel load! Remarkable!
Sluggishly combustible jet fuel, which is basically kerosene and which burns at a maximum temperature of around 800 C, has suddenly taken on the qualities of a ferociously explosive demolition agent, vapourizing 65 tons of aircraft into a puff of smoke. Never mind that a plane of that size contains around 15 tons of steel and titanium, of which even the melting points are about double that of the maximum combustion temperature of kerosene -- let alone the boiling point -- which is what would be required to vapourize a plane. And then there's about 50 tons of aluminium to be accounted for.
In excess of 15 pounds of metal was vapourized for each gallon of kerosene.
For the conspiracy theorist, such inconvenient facts are vaguely dismissed as “mumbo jumbo.”
This convenient little phrase is their answer to just about anything factual or logical. Like a conjurer pulling a rabbit out of a hat, they suddenly become fanatically insistent about the devastating explosive qualities of kerosene, something hitherto completely unknown to science, but just discovered by them, at that very moment. Blissfully ignoring the fact that never before or since in aviation history has a plane vapourized into nothing from an exploding fuel load, the conspiracy theorist relies upon Hollywood images, where the effects are always larger than life, and certainly larger than the intellects of these cretins.
“Its a well known fact that planes blow up into nothing on impact,” they state with pompous certainty. “Watch any Bruce Willis movie.”
“Care to provide any documented examples? If it's a well known fact, then presumably this well known fact springs from some kind of documentation -- other than Bruce Willis movies?”
At this point the mad but cunning eyes of the conspiracy theorist will narrow as they sense the corner that they have backed themselves into, and plan their escape by means of another stunning backflip.
“Ah, but planes have never crashed into buildings before, so there's no way of telling,” they counter with a sly grin.
Well, actually planes have crashed into buildings before (and since). None of them vapourized into almost nothing.
“But not big planes, with that much fuel,” they shriek in hysterical denial.
Or that much metal to vapourize.
“Yes but not hijacked planes!”
“Are you suggesting that whether the crash is deliberate or accidental affects the combustion qualities of the fuel?”
“Now you're just being silly.”
Although collisions with buildings are rare, planes frequently crash into mountains, streets, other aircraft, nosedive into the ground, or have bombs planted aboard them, and don't vapourize into nothing. What's so special about a tower that's mostly glass? But by now, the conspiracy theorist has once again sailed happily around the fruit loop. “Its a well documented fact that planes explode into nothing on impact.”
Effortlessly weaving back and forth between the position that its a “well known fact” and that “its never happened before, so we have nothing to compare it to,” the conspiracy theorist has now convinced themselves (if not too many other people) that the WTC plane was not loaded with explosives, and that the instant vapourization of the plane in a massive fireball was the same as any other plane crash you might care to mention. Round and round the fruit loop...
The “new math”
But the hurdles which confront the conspiracy theorist are many, and they are now forced to implement even more creative uses for the newly discovered shockingly destructive qualities of kerosene. They have to explain how the Arabs also engineered the elegant vertical collapse of both the WTC towers, and for this awkward fact the easiest counter is to simply deny that it was a controlled demolition, and claim that the buildings collapsed from fire caused by the burning kerosene.
For this, its necessary to sweep aside the second law of thermodynamics and propose kerosene, which is not only impossibly destructive, but also recycles itself for a second burning in violation of the law of degradation of energy.
You see, it not only consumed itself in a sudden catastrophic fireball, vapourizing a 65-ton plane into nothing, but then came back for a second go, burning at 2000 degrees C for another hour at the impact point, melting the skyscraper's steel like butter. And, while it was doing all this, it also poured down the elevator shafts, starting fires all through the building.
When I was at school there was a little thing called the entropy law which suggests that a given portion of fuel can only burn once, something which is readily observable in the real world, even for those who didn't make it to junior high school science. But this is no problem for the conspiracy theorist. Gleefully, they claim that a few thousand gallons of kerosene is enough to:
1. completely vapourize a 65 ton aircraft;
2. have enough left over to burn ferociously enough for over an hour at the impact point to melt steel ( melting point about double the maximum combustion temperature of the fuel );
3. still have enough left over to pour down the elevator shafts and start similarly destructive fires all throughout the building.
This kerosene really is remarkable stuff! How chilling to realize that those kerosene heaters we had in the house when I was a kid were deadly bombs, just waiting to go off. One false move and the entire street might have been vapourized. And never again will I take kerosene lamps out camping. One moment you're there innocently holding the lamp, the next moment -- kapow! Vapourized into nothing along with the rest of the camp site, and still leaving enough of the deadly stuff to start a massive forest fire.
These whackos are actually claiming that the raging inferno allegedly created by the miraculously recycling, and impossibly hot burning kerosene melted or at least softened the steel supports of the skyscraper. Oblivious to the fact that the smoke coming from the WTC was black, which indicates an oxygen starved fire and, therefore, not particularly hot, they trumpet an alleged temperature in the building of 2000 C , without a shred of evidence to support this curious suspension of the laws of physics.
Not content with this ludicrous garbage, they then contend that as the steel frames softened, they came straight down instead of buckling and twisting and falling sideways.
Laws be damned
Since they've already re-engineered the combustion qualities of jet fuel, violated the second law of thermodynamics, and redefined the structural properties of steel, why let a little thing like the laws of gravity get in the way?
The tower fell in a time almost identical to that of a free-falling object, dropped from that height, meaning that it's physically impossible for it to have collapsed by the method of the top floors smashing through the lower floors.
But, according to the conspiracy theorists, the laws of gravity were temporarily suspended on the morning of Sept 11. It appears that the evil psychic power of those dreadful Arabs knew no bounds. Even after they were dead, they were able, by the power of their evil spirits, to force down the tower at a speed physically impossible under the laws of gravity, had it been meeting any resistance from fireproofed steel structures originally designed to resist many tons of hurricane force wind -- as well as the impact of a Boeing passenger jet straying off course.
Clearly, these conspiracy nuts never did their science homework at school, but did become extremely adept at inventing tall tales for why they couldn't complete their assignments.
“Muslim terrorists stole my notes, sir”
“No miss, the kerosene heater blew up and vapourized everything in the street, except for my passport.”
“You see sir, the school bus was hijacked by Arabs who destroyed my homework because they hate our freedoms.”
Or perhaps they misunderstood the term “creative science” and mistakenly thought that coming up with such rubbish was in fact, their science homework.
The ferocious heat generated by this ghastly kerosene was, according to the conspiracy theorists, the reason why so many of the WTC victims can't be identified. DNA is destroyed by heat. (Although 2000 C isn't really required, 100 degrees C will generally do the job).
This is quite remarkable, because according to the conspiracy theorist, the nature of DNA suddenly changes if you go to a different city.
Not all DNA created equal
That's right! If you are killed by an Arab terrorist in NY, your DNA will be destroyed by such temperatures. But if you are killed by an Arab terrorist in Washington DC, your DNA will be so robust that it can survive temperatures which completely vapourize a 65-ton aircraft.
You see, these loonies have somehow concocted the idea that the missile which hit the pentagon was not a missile at all, but one of the hijacked planes. And to prove this unlikely premise, they point to a propaganda statement from the Bush regime, which rather stupidly claims that all but one of the people aboard the plane were identified from the site by DNA testing, even though nothing remains of the plane.
“The plane was vapourized by the fuel tank explosion,” maintain these space loonies, but only one of the people inside it were not identified by DNA testing.
So there we have it. The qualities of DNA are different, depending upon which city you're in, or perhaps depending upon which fairy story you're trying to sell at any particular time.
Missiles have wings, too
This concoction about one of the hijacked planes hitting the Pentagon really is a howler. For those not familiar with the layout of the Pentagon, it consists of five rings of building, each with a space in between. Each ring of building is about 30 to 35 feet deep, with a similar amount of open space between it and the next ring.
The object which penetrated the Pentagon went in at about a 45 degree angle, punching a neat, circular hole about 12 feet in diameter through three rings (six walls).
A little later a section of wall about 65 feet wide collapsed in the outer ring. Since the plane, which the conspiracy theorists claim to be responsible for the impact, had a wing span of 125 feet and a length of 155 feet and there was no wreckage of the plane, either inside or outside the building, and the lawns outside were still smooth and green enough to play golf on, this crazy delusion is clearly a physical impossibility.
But hey, we've already disregarded the combustion qualities of jet fuel, the normal properties of common building materials, the properties of DNA, the laws of gravity and the second law of thermodynamics, so what the hell -- why not throw in a little spatial impossibility as well?
I would have thought that the observation that a solid object cannot pass through another solid object without leaving a hole at least as big as itself is reasonably sound science. But to the conspiracy theorist, this is “mumbo jumbo.” It conflicts with the delusion that they're hooked on, so it “must be wrong” although trying to get them to explain exactly how it could be wrong is a futile endeavour.
Conspiracy theorists fly into a curious panic whenever the Pentagon missile is mentioned. They nervously maintain that the plane was vapourized by it's exploding fuel load and point to the WTC crash as evidence of this behavior (That is a wonderful fruit loop).
Like an insect which has just been sprayed, running back and forth in its last mad death throes, they first argue that the reason the hole is so small is that the plane never entered the wall, having blown up outside, and then suddenly backflip to explain the 250 feet deep missile hole by saying that the plane disappeared all the way into the building, and then blew up inside the building (even though the building shows no sign of such damage).
As for what happened to the wings, here's where they get really creative. The wings snapped off and folded into the fuselage which then carried them into the building, which then closed up behind the plane like a piece of meat.
When it suits them, they'll also claim that the plane slid in on its belly, (ignoring the undamaged lawn) while at the same time citing alleged witnesses to the plane diving steeply into the building from an “irrecoverable angle.”
How they reconcile these two scenarios as being compatible is truly a study in applied stupidity.
Epilogue
Once they get desperate enough, you can be sure that the UFO conspiracy stuff will make an appearance. The Arabs are in league with the Martians. Space aliens snatched the remains of the Pentagon plane and fixed most of the hole in the wall, just to confuse people. They gave the Arabs invisibility pills to help get them onto the planes. Little green men were seen talking to Bin Laden a few weeks prior to the attacks. As the nation gears up to impeach the traitor Bush, and stop his perpetual oil war, it's not helpful to have these idiots distracting from the process by spreading silly conspiracy theories about mythical Arabs, stories which do nothing but play into the hands of the extremist Bush regime.
At a less serious time, we might tolerate such crackpots with amused detachment, but they need to understand that the treachery that was perpetrated on Sept. 11, and the subsequent war crimes committed in “retaliation” are far too serious for us to allow such frivolous self indulgence to go unchallenged.
Those who are truly addicted to conspiracy delusions should find a more appropriate outlet for their paranoia.
Its time to stop loony conspiracy theories about Sept 11.
Copyright Gerard Holmgren. Jan 2003 debunker@hotmail.com
From the August 2003 Idaho Observer:
The looniest of all 9/11 conspiracy theories by Gerard Holmgren
“Let us not tolerate outrageous conspiracy theories,” President Bush stated amid increasingly loud accusations that his administration may have allowed the tragic events of 9/11 to occur as a pretext justifying U.S. expansion of armed conflict around the world to allegedly wage war on terrorism. Curiously, most of the “outrageous conspiracy theories” to which he refers incorporate some extremely sound science, logic and witness testimony where the official version is lacking in those critical areas.
Astute observers of history are aware that for every notable event there will usually be at least one ,often several wild conspiracy theories which spring up around it. “The CIA killed Hendrix”; “the Pope had John Lennon murdered”; “Hitler was half Werewolf”; “Space aliens replaced Nixon with a clone,” etc, etc. The bigger the event, the more ridiculous and more numerous are the fanciful rantings which circulate in relation to it.
So its hardly surprising that the events of Sept. 11, 2001, have spawned their fair share of these ludicrous fairy tales. And as always, there is -- sadly -- a small but gullible percentage of the population eager to lap up these tall tales, regardless of facts or rational analysis.
One of the wilder stories circulating about Sept 11 (and one that has attracted something of a cult following amongst conspiracy buffs) is that it was carried out by 19 fanatical Arab hijackers, masterminded by an evil genius named Osama bin Laden, with no apparent motivation other than that they “hate our freedoms.”
Never a group of people to be bothered by facts, the perpetrators of this cartoon fantasy have constructed an elaborately woven web of delusions and unsubstantiated hearsay in order to promote this garbage across the Internet and the media to the extent that a number of otherwise rational people have actually fallen under its spell.
Normally I don't even bother debunking this kind of junk, but the effect that this paranoid myth is beginning to have requires a little rational analysis, in order to consign it to the same rubbish bin as all such silly conspiracy theories.
These crackpots even contend that the extremist Bush regime was caught unawares by the attacks, had no hand in organizing them and actually would have stopped them if it had been able. Blindly ignoring the stand down of the U.S. Air Force, the insider trading on airline stocks (linked to the CIA), the complicit behavior of Bush on the morning of the attacks, the controlled demolition of the WTC, the firing of a missile into the Pentagon and a host of other documented proofs that the Bush regime was behind the attacks, the conspiracy theorists stick doggedly to a silly story about 19 Arab hijackers somehow managing to commandeer four planes simultaneously and fly them around U.S. airspace for nearly two hours, crashing them into important buildings, without the U.S. intelligence services having any idea that it was coming, and without the Air Force knowing what to do.
The daunting task of analysis
The huge difficulties with such a stupid story force them to invent even more preposterous stories to distract from its core silliness, and thus the tale has escalated into a mythic fantasy of truly gargantuan proportions.
It's difficult to apply rational analysis to such unmitigated stupidity, but that is the task which I take on in this article. However, it should be noted that one of the curious characteristics of conspiracy theorists is that they effortlessly change their so called evidence in response to each aspect which is debunked. As soon as one delusion is unmasked, they simply invent another to replace it and deny that the first ever existed. Eventually, when they have turned full circle through this endlessly changing fantasy fog , they then reinvent the original delusion and deny that you ever debunked it, thus beginning the circle once more. This technique is known as “the fruit loop” and saves the conspiracy theorist from ever having to see any of their ideas through to their (ill)logical conclusions.
The fruit loop
According to the practitioners of the fruit loop, 19 Arabs took over the four planes by subduing the passengers and crew through the use of guns, knives, box cutters and gas, and then used electronic guidance systems which they had smuggled on board to fly the planes to their targets.
The suspension of disbelief required for this outrageous concoction is only for the hard core conspiracy theorist. For a start, they conveniently skip over the awkward fact that there weren't any Arabs on the planes.
If there were, one must speculate that they somehow got on board without being filmed by any of the security cameras and without being registered on the passenger lists. But the curly question of how they are supposed to have got on board is all too mundane for the exciting world of the conspiracy theorist.
Who's on first?
With vague mumblings that they must have been using false ID (but never specifying which IDs they are alleged to have used, or how these were traced to their real identities), they quickly bypass this problem, to relate exciting and sinister tales about how some of the fictitious fiends were actually searched before boarding because they looked suspicious.
However, as inevitably happens with any web of lies, this simply paints them into an even more difficult corner. How are they supposed to have gotten on board with all that stuff if they were searched? And if they used gas in a confined space, they would have been affected themselves unless they also had masks in their luggage.
“Excuse me sir, why do you have a boxcutter, a gun, a container of gas, a gas mask and an electronic guidance unit in your luggage?”
“A present for your grandmother? Very well sir, on you get.”
“Very strange,” thinks the security officer. “That's the fourth Arabic man without an Arabic name who just got on board with a knife, gun or boxcutter and gas mask. And why does that security camera keep flicking off every time one these characters shows up? Must be one of those days I guess...”
Asking any of these basic questions to a conspiracy theorist is likely to cause a sudden leap to the claim that we know that they were on board because they left a credit card trail for the tickets they had purchased and cars they had rented. So, if they used credit cards that identified them, how does that reconcile with the claim that they used false IDs to get on to the plane?
But by this time, the fruit loop is in full swing, as the conspiracy theorist tries to stay one jump ahead of this annoying and awkward rational analysis. They will allege that the hijackers' passports were found at the crash scenes. “So there!” they exalt triumphantly, their fanatical faces lighting up with that deranged look of one who has just experienced a revelation of questionable sanity.
Hmm? So they got on board with false IDs but took their real passports with them? However, by this time the fruit loop has been completely circumnavigated, and the conspiracy theorist exclaims impatiently, “Who said anything about false IDs? We know what seats they were sitting in! Their presence is well documented!”
And so the whole loop starts again. “Well, why aren't they on the passenger lists?”
“You numbskull! They assumed the identities of other passengers!” And so on...
Finally, out of sheer fascination with this circular method of creative delusion, the rational sceptic will allow them to get away with this loop, in order to move on to the next question, and see what further delights await us in the unraveling of this marvelously stupid story.
“Uh, how come their passports survived fiery crashes that completely incinerated the planes and all the passengers?”
The answer of course is that its just one of those strange coincidences, those little quirks of fate that do happen from time to time. You know, like the same person winning the lottery four weeks in a row. The odds are astronomical, but these things do happen...
This is another favourite deductive method of the conspiracy theorist. The “improbability drive,” in which they decide upon a conclusion without any evidence whatsoever to support it, and then continually speculate a series of wildly improbable events and unbelievable coincidences to support it, shrugging off the implausibility of each event with the vague assertion that sometimes the impossible happens (just about all the time in their world).
There is a principle called “Occam's razor” which suggests that in the absence of evidence to the contrary, the simplest explanation is most likely to be correct. Conspiracy theorists hate Occam's razor.
Hijacking 101
Having for the sake of amusement, allowed them to get away with the silly story of the 19 invisible Arabs, we move on to the question of how they are supposed to have taken over the planes.
Hijacking a plane is not an easy thing to do. Hijacking it without the pilot being able to alert ground control is nearly impossible. The pilot has only to punch in a four digit code to alert ground control to a hijacking. Unconcerned with the awkward question of plausibility, the conspiracy buffs maintain that on that Sept 11, the invisible hijackers took over the plane by the rather crude method of threatening people with boxcutters and knives, and spraying gas (after they had attached their masks, obviously), but somehow took control of the plane without the crew first getting a chance to punch in the hijacking code. Not just on one plane, but on all four. At this point in the tale, the conspiracy theorist is again forced to call upon the services of the improbability drive.
So now that our incredibly lucky hijackers have taken control of the planes, all four pilots fly them with breathtaking skill and certainty to their fiery end -- all four unflinching in their steely resolve for a swift meeting with Allah.
Apart from their psychotic hatred of “our freedoms,” it was their fanatical devotion to Islam which enabled them to summon up the iron will to do this. Which is strange, because according to another piece of hearsay peddled by the conspiracy buffs, these guys actually went out drinking and womanizing the night before their great martyrdom, even leaving their Korans in the bar -- really impeccable Islamic behavior -- and then got up at 5 a.m. the next morning to pull off the greatest covert operation in history.
This also requires us to believe that they were even clear headed enough to learn how to fly the huge planes by reading flight manuals in Arabic in the car on the way to the airport. We know this because they supposedly left the flight manuals there for us to find.
It gets better. Their practical training had allegedly been limited to Cessnas and flight simulators, but this was no barrier to the unflinching certainty with which they took over the planes and skillfully guided them to their doom.
If they are supposed to have done their flight training with these tools, which would be available just about anywhere in the world, its not clear why they would have decided to risk blowing their cover to U.S. intelligence services by doing the training in Florida, rather than somewhere in the Middle East, but such reasoning is foreign to the foggy world of the conspiracy theorist, too trapped in the constant rotation of the mental fruit loop to make their unsubstantiated fabrications seem even semi-believable.
A Ryder truck with wings?
Having triumphantly established a circular delusion in support of the mythical Arabs, the conspiracy theorist now confronts the difficult question of why there's nothing left of the planes. Anybody who has seen the endlessly replayed footage of the second plane going into the WTC will realize that the plane was packed with explosives. Planes do not and cannot blow up into nothing in that manner when they crash.
Did the mythical Arabs also haul a huge heap of explosives on board, and manage to deploy them in such a manner that they went off in the exact instant of the crash, completely vapourizing the plane?
This is a little difficult even for the conspiracy theorist, who at this point decides that its easier to invent new laws of physics in order to keep the delusion rolling along.
There weren't any explosives. It wasn't an inside job. The plane blew up into nothing from its exploding fuel load! Remarkable!
Sluggishly combustible jet fuel, which is basically kerosene and which burns at a maximum temperature of around 800 C, has suddenly taken on the qualities of a ferociously explosive demolition agent, vapourizing 65 tons of aircraft into a puff of smoke. Never mind that a plane of that size contains around 15 tons of steel and titanium, of which even the melting points are about double that of the maximum combustion temperature of kerosene -- let alone the boiling point -- which is what would be required to vapourize a plane. And then there's about 50 tons of aluminium to be accounted for.
In excess of 15 pounds of metal was vapourized for each gallon of kerosene.
For the conspiracy theorist, such inconvenient facts are vaguely dismissed as “mumbo jumbo.”
This convenient little phrase is their answer to just about anything factual or logical. Like a conjurer pulling a rabbit out of a hat, they suddenly become fanatically insistent about the devastating explosive qualities of kerosene, something hitherto completely unknown to science, but just discovered by them, at that very moment. Blissfully ignoring the fact that never before or since in aviation history has a plane vapourized into nothing from an exploding fuel load, the conspiracy theorist relies upon Hollywood images, where the effects are always larger than life, and certainly larger than the intellects of these cretins.
“Its a well known fact that planes blow up into nothing on impact,” they state with pompous certainty. “Watch any Bruce Willis movie.”
“Care to provide any documented examples? If it's a well known fact, then presumably this well known fact springs from some kind of documentation -- other than Bruce Willis movies?”
At this point the mad but cunning eyes of the conspiracy theorist will narrow as they sense the corner that they have backed themselves into, and plan their escape by means of another stunning backflip.
“Ah, but planes have never crashed into buildings before, so there's no way of telling,” they counter with a sly grin.
Well, actually planes have crashed into buildings before (and since). None of them vapourized into almost nothing.
“But not big planes, with that much fuel,” they shriek in hysterical denial.
Or that much metal to vapourize.
“Yes but not hijacked planes!”
“Are you suggesting that whether the crash is deliberate or accidental affects the combustion qualities of the fuel?”
“Now you're just being silly.”
Although collisions with buildings are rare, planes frequently crash into mountains, streets, other aircraft, nosedive into the ground, or have bombs planted aboard them, and don't vapourize into nothing. What's so special about a tower that's mostly glass? But by now, the conspiracy theorist has once again sailed happily around the fruit loop. “Its a well documented fact that planes explode into nothing on impact.”
Effortlessly weaving back and forth between the position that its a “well known fact” and that “its never happened before, so we have nothing to compare it to,” the conspiracy theorist has now convinced themselves (if not too many other people) that the WTC plane was not loaded with explosives, and that the instant vapourization of the plane in a massive fireball was the same as any other plane crash you might care to mention. Round and round the fruit loop...
The “new math”
But the hurdles which confront the conspiracy theorist are many, and they are now forced to implement even more creative uses for the newly discovered shockingly destructive qualities of kerosene. They have to explain how the Arabs also engineered the elegant vertical collapse of both the WTC towers, and for this awkward fact the easiest counter is to simply deny that it was a controlled demolition, and claim that the buildings collapsed from fire caused by the burning kerosene.
For this, its necessary to sweep aside the second law of thermodynamics and propose kerosene, which is not only impossibly destructive, but also recycles itself for a second burning in violation of the law of degradation of energy.
You see, it not only consumed itself in a sudden catastrophic fireball, vapourizing a 65-ton plane into nothing, but then came back for a second go, burning at 2000 degrees C for another hour at the impact point, melting the skyscraper's steel like butter. And, while it was doing all this, it also poured down the elevator shafts, starting fires all through the building.
When I was at school there was a little thing called the entropy law which suggests that a given portion of fuel can only burn once, something which is readily observable in the real world, even for those who didn't make it to junior high school science. But this is no problem for the conspiracy theorist. Gleefully, they claim that a few thousand gallons of kerosene is enough to:
1. completely vapourize a 65 ton aircraft;
2. have enough left over to burn ferociously enough for over an hour at the impact point to melt steel ( melting point about double the maximum combustion temperature of the fuel );
3. still have enough left over to pour down the elevator shafts and start similarly destructive fires all throughout the building.
This kerosene really is remarkable stuff! How chilling to realize that those kerosene heaters we had in the house when I was a kid were deadly bombs, just waiting to go off. One false move and the entire street might have been vapourized. And never again will I take kerosene lamps out camping. One moment you're there innocently holding the lamp, the next moment -- kapow! Vapourized into nothing along with the rest of the camp site, and still leaving enough of the deadly stuff to start a massive forest fire.
These whackos are actually claiming that the raging inferno allegedly created by the miraculously recycling, and impossibly hot burning kerosene melted or at least softened the steel supports of the skyscraper. Oblivious to the fact that the smoke coming from the WTC was black, which indicates an oxygen starved fire and, therefore, not particularly hot, they trumpet an alleged temperature in the building of 2000 C , without a shred of evidence to support this curious suspension of the laws of physics.
Not content with this ludicrous garbage, they then contend that as the steel frames softened, they came straight down instead of buckling and twisting and falling sideways.
Laws be damned
Since they've already re-engineered the combustion qualities of jet fuel, violated the second law of thermodynamics, and redefined the structural properties of steel, why let a little thing like the laws of gravity get in the way?
The tower fell in a time almost identical to that of a free-falling object, dropped from that height, meaning that it's physically impossible for it to have collapsed by the method of the top floors smashing through the lower floors.
But, according to the conspiracy theorists, the laws of gravity were temporarily suspended on the morning of Sept 11. It appears that the evil psychic power of those dreadful Arabs knew no bounds. Even after they were dead, they were able, by the power of their evil spirits, to force down the tower at a speed physically impossible under the laws of gravity, had it been meeting any resistance from fireproofed steel structures originally designed to resist many tons of hurricane force wind -- as well as the impact of a Boeing passenger jet straying off course.
Clearly, these conspiracy nuts never did their science homework at school, but did become extremely adept at inventing tall tales for why they couldn't complete their assignments.
“Muslim terrorists stole my notes, sir”
“No miss, the kerosene heater blew up and vapourized everything in the street, except for my passport.”
“You see sir, the school bus was hijacked by Arabs who destroyed my homework because they hate our freedoms.”
Or perhaps they misunderstood the term “creative science” and mistakenly thought that coming up with such rubbish was in fact, their science homework.
The ferocious heat generated by this ghastly kerosene was, according to the conspiracy theorists, the reason why so many of the WTC victims can't be identified. DNA is destroyed by heat. (Although 2000 C isn't really required, 100 degrees C will generally do the job).
This is quite remarkable, because according to the conspiracy theorist, the nature of DNA suddenly changes if you go to a different city.
Not all DNA created equal
That's right! If you are killed by an Arab terrorist in NY, your DNA will be destroyed by such temperatures. But if you are killed by an Arab terrorist in Washington DC, your DNA will be so robust that it can survive temperatures which completely vapourize a 65-ton aircraft.
You see, these loonies have somehow concocted the idea that the missile which hit the pentagon was not a missile at all, but one of the hijacked planes. And to prove this unlikely premise, they point to a propaganda statement from the Bush regime, which rather stupidly claims that all but one of the people aboard the plane were identified from the site by DNA testing, even though nothing remains of the plane.
“The plane was vapourized by the fuel tank explosion,” maintain these space loonies, but only one of the people inside it were not identified by DNA testing.
So there we have it. The qualities of DNA are different, depending upon which city you're in, or perhaps depending upon which fairy story you're trying to sell at any particular time.
Missiles have wings, too
This concoction about one of the hijacked planes hitting the Pentagon really is a howler. For those not familiar with the layout of the Pentagon, it consists of five rings of building, each with a space in between. Each ring of building is about 30 to 35 feet deep, with a similar amount of open space between it and the next ring.
The object which penetrated the Pentagon went in at about a 45 degree angle, punching a neat, circular hole about 12 feet in diameter through three rings (six walls).
A little later a section of wall about 65 feet wide collapsed in the outer ring. Since the plane, which the conspiracy theorists claim to be responsible for the impact, had a wing span of 125 feet and a length of 155 feet and there was no wreckage of the plane, either inside or outside the building, and the lawns outside were still smooth and green enough to play golf on, this crazy delusion is clearly a physical impossibility.
But hey, we've already disregarded the combustion qualities of jet fuel, the normal properties of common building materials, the properties of DNA, the laws of gravity and the second law of thermodynamics, so what the hell -- why not throw in a little spatial impossibility as well?
I would have thought that the observation that a solid object cannot pass through another solid object without leaving a hole at least as big as itself is reasonably sound science. But to the conspiracy theorist, this is “mumbo jumbo.” It conflicts with the delusion that they're hooked on, so it “must be wrong” although trying to get them to explain exactly how it could be wrong is a futile endeavour.
Conspiracy theorists fly into a curious panic whenever the Pentagon missile is mentioned. They nervously maintain that the plane was vapourized by it's exploding fuel load and point to the WTC crash as evidence of this behavior (That is a wonderful fruit loop).
Like an insect which has just been sprayed, running back and forth in its last mad death throes, they first argue that the reason the hole is so small is that the plane never entered the wall, having blown up outside, and then suddenly backflip to explain the 250 feet deep missile hole by saying that the plane disappeared all the way into the building, and then blew up inside the building (even though the building shows no sign of such damage).
As for what happened to the wings, here's where they get really creative. The wings snapped off and folded into the fuselage which then carried them into the building, which then closed up behind the plane like a piece of meat.
When it suits them, they'll also claim that the plane slid in on its belly, (ignoring the undamaged lawn) while at the same time citing alleged witnesses to the plane diving steeply into the building from an “irrecoverable angle.”
How they reconcile these two scenarios as being compatible is truly a study in applied stupidity.
Epilogue
Once they get desperate enough, you can be sure that the UFO conspiracy stuff will make an appearance. The Arabs are in league with the Martians. Space aliens snatched the remains of the Pentagon plane and fixed most of the hole in the wall, just to confuse people. They gave the Arabs invisibility pills to help get them onto the planes. Little green men were seen talking to Bin Laden a few weeks prior to the attacks. As the nation gears up to impeach the traitor Bush, and stop his perpetual oil war, it's not helpful to have these idiots distracting from the process by spreading silly conspiracy theories about mythical Arabs, stories which do nothing but play into the hands of the extremist Bush regime.
At a less serious time, we might tolerate such crackpots with amused detachment, but they need to understand that the treachery that was perpetrated on Sept. 11, and the subsequent war crimes committed in “retaliation” are far too serious for us to allow such frivolous self indulgence to go unchallenged.
Those who are truly addicted to conspiracy delusions should find a more appropriate outlet for their paranoia.
Its time to stop loony conspiracy theories about Sept 11.
Copyright Gerard Holmgren. Jan 2003 debunker@hotmail.com
Tuesday, October 5, 2010
Nine Years Gone (Part 2)
I took over driving somewhere near Cleveland, in a light rain and headed south down I-71 towards Columbus. The news was all 9/11 and speculation was rampant about what would happen next. Rolling on with a feeling of solidarity for other travelers, a sign outside Columbus proclaimed St. Louis 375 miles. That would be a good days work, to make St. Louis and get some rest, over a thousand miles in about 24 hours. Stops were for gas, coffee, candy bars, soda and bathroom breaks, just pit stops. A tank of gas took us about four hours to burn and it was pedal to the metal all the way.
Making St. Louis I was feeling pretty strong and figured to drive until exhaustion took over but with the ol' adrenaline pumping Kansas City was in my sights. By now I felt like we were embracing the whole country with a hug of compassion. Everyone had a story and mine was really kind of trivial compared to those trying to get home to their families; we rolled on. Roaring by Arrowhead Stadium we were in the Sunflower State of Kansas and Denver was "only" 575 miles. If we drove until nightfall we would be just about there with a good leg up on this cross country journey. Streaking across the heartland of Kansas, with its unending waves of grain, my ass was getting mighty sore in the smallish seat of the Trans-Am but we kept on truckin'. Coffee, gas, take a leak and back on the road. I-70 is awesome to drive here, straight and flat with the cruise control set at 85. The Rockies came into view and looked amazing. We were cookin' now so at the next pit stop I grabbed a twelve pack to celebrate since we would be stopping soon for some well deserved rest before continuing the next day. Denver was beautiful in the setting sun, the wheels kept turnin', and suddenly we were at the top of the Continental Divide. Man, that is one steep drop coming down the western flank of the Rockies and in the dark was pretty scary. We just kept going sore ass not withstanding. Crossing Colorado the exits became spaced further apart, the piss breaks more urgent so at the western end of the state we stopped in Grand Junction to get a room finally. No room at the inns! All filled up with worn out travelers so now what? Yep, keep going on into Utah and pick up I-15 south to Las Vegas. It was now around two AM and the exits were like 70 miles apart with not another soul to be seen. We finally pulled into a rest area, locked the doors and slept fitfully for three hours. As daylight broke it was time to get moving so we did. 15 was empty of any other vehicles in either direction and with the cruise set at 90 we passed through some of the most forbidding, beautiful landscapes it has ever been my privilege to see.
Las Vegas is a huge city with gargantuan hotels but approached from the north its just a speck compared to the unending panorama of mountains and desert that surround it. We had done it! We rolled into Caesar's Palace at 11:30 Saturday morning weary but triumphant. 2500 miles in 48 hours! Our room was ready so up we went, filled up the beautiful hot tub, ordered six Buds from room service, soaked the road out of our bones, made love and crashed. It was a somber Vegas as rumors swirled that the city was on the short list of terrorist targets. With all the canceled travel plans employees in the hotels and casinos were being laid off in droves and those left standing were scared they would be next. It was unreal.
Sad to say but the shared experience of our epic journey turned out to be the high point of our marriage, within five years we were acrimoniously separated with hard feelings all around. But I will always be grateful for the bravery and loyalty she showed in those days after 9/11.
Making St. Louis I was feeling pretty strong and figured to drive until exhaustion took over but with the ol' adrenaline pumping Kansas City was in my sights. By now I felt like we were embracing the whole country with a hug of compassion. Everyone had a story and mine was really kind of trivial compared to those trying to get home to their families; we rolled on. Roaring by Arrowhead Stadium we were in the Sunflower State of Kansas and Denver was "only" 575 miles. If we drove until nightfall we would be just about there with a good leg up on this cross country journey. Streaking across the heartland of Kansas, with its unending waves of grain, my ass was getting mighty sore in the smallish seat of the Trans-Am but we kept on truckin'. Coffee, gas, take a leak and back on the road. I-70 is awesome to drive here, straight and flat with the cruise control set at 85. The Rockies came into view and looked amazing. We were cookin' now so at the next pit stop I grabbed a twelve pack to celebrate since we would be stopping soon for some well deserved rest before continuing the next day. Denver was beautiful in the setting sun, the wheels kept turnin', and suddenly we were at the top of the Continental Divide. Man, that is one steep drop coming down the western flank of the Rockies and in the dark was pretty scary. We just kept going sore ass not withstanding. Crossing Colorado the exits became spaced further apart, the piss breaks more urgent so at the western end of the state we stopped in Grand Junction to get a room finally. No room at the inns! All filled up with worn out travelers so now what? Yep, keep going on into Utah and pick up I-15 south to Las Vegas. It was now around two AM and the exits were like 70 miles apart with not another soul to be seen. We finally pulled into a rest area, locked the doors and slept fitfully for three hours. As daylight broke it was time to get moving so we did. 15 was empty of any other vehicles in either direction and with the cruise set at 90 we passed through some of the most forbidding, beautiful landscapes it has ever been my privilege to see.
Las Vegas is a huge city with gargantuan hotels but approached from the north its just a speck compared to the unending panorama of mountains and desert that surround it. We had done it! We rolled into Caesar's Palace at 11:30 Saturday morning weary but triumphant. 2500 miles in 48 hours! Our room was ready so up we went, filled up the beautiful hot tub, ordered six Buds from room service, soaked the road out of our bones, made love and crashed. It was a somber Vegas as rumors swirled that the city was on the short list of terrorist targets. With all the canceled travel plans employees in the hotels and casinos were being laid off in droves and those left standing were scared they would be next. It was unreal.
Sad to say but the shared experience of our epic journey turned out to be the high point of our marriage, within five years we were acrimoniously separated with hard feelings all around. But I will always be grateful for the bravery and loyalty she showed in those days after 9/11.
Thursday, September 30, 2010
Nine Years Gone (Part1)
Reflecting back to September 11, 2001, watching archived news feeds from that fateful morning, brought back the feeling of stunned disbelief I felt that day. The anger, confusion and shock we all felt came rushing back. But rather than discuss and review the events of 9/11 I would like to relate my adventure of a few days after. Looking back now it all seems a dream.
I was, at the time, Secretary-Treasurer of the Tunnelworkers Local Union 88 out of Quincy, MA and as such was elected as a delegate to the Laborers' International Union of North America Convention in Las Vegas. The Convention is a once every five year event where the Constitution of the Union is amended by vote of the 2,500 or so delegates. It is a big deal. The Convention was to open with a welcoming dinner on Saturday night September 15th. I had already secured airline tickets for my wife and I to arrive on the 14th but in light of everything that happened I expected the Convention to be cancelled. I called the Regional office to check and to my surprise was told that the Convention would go ahead as planned. Of course all the airports in the country were closed so how was one to get his ass to Las Vegas from Quincy? How about drive?
With no flights and thousands of people stranded you know rental cars were scarce but after a few calls I managed to get the last car available in eastern Mass. It was a Pontiac Grand-Am and it would have to do. So about 11:00AM Thursday the 13th we picked the car up in Dedham and took the next exit to I-90 heading west to begin a cross country odyssey. I told the wife if she got us past Buffalo (400 miles) I would take us the rest of the way. She did better than that and got us past Buffalo and down I-90 almost to Cleveland. The drive was surreal. Every state's troopers were out in force and every other car you passed had a rent-a-car sticker on its back bumper. Speed limits were not enforced by the police and zipping by the mounties at 80 MPH soon became the norm. I thought for sure there would be roadblocks at some point as the whole country was on alert but so far that was not the case. We were all in this together. Since this post is going to be kind of long I'll finish the story in a second post.
I was, at the time, Secretary-Treasurer of the Tunnelworkers Local Union 88 out of Quincy, MA and as such was elected as a delegate to the Laborers' International Union of North America Convention in Las Vegas. The Convention is a once every five year event where the Constitution of the Union is amended by vote of the 2,500 or so delegates. It is a big deal. The Convention was to open with a welcoming dinner on Saturday night September 15th. I had already secured airline tickets for my wife and I to arrive on the 14th but in light of everything that happened I expected the Convention to be cancelled. I called the Regional office to check and to my surprise was told that the Convention would go ahead as planned. Of course all the airports in the country were closed so how was one to get his ass to Las Vegas from Quincy? How about drive?
With no flights and thousands of people stranded you know rental cars were scarce but after a few calls I managed to get the last car available in eastern Mass. It was a Pontiac Grand-Am and it would have to do. So about 11:00AM Thursday the 13th we picked the car up in Dedham and took the next exit to I-90 heading west to begin a cross country odyssey. I told the wife if she got us past Buffalo (400 miles) I would take us the rest of the way. She did better than that and got us past Buffalo and down I-90 almost to Cleveland. The drive was surreal. Every state's troopers were out in force and every other car you passed had a rent-a-car sticker on its back bumper. Speed limits were not enforced by the police and zipping by the mounties at 80 MPH soon became the norm. I thought for sure there would be roadblocks at some point as the whole country was on alert but so far that was not the case. We were all in this together. Since this post is going to be kind of long I'll finish the story in a second post.
Wednesday, September 29, 2010
Right On Tom
Thomas Jefferson On Banksters, Yes, In 1802.
BeforeItsNews.Com
“I believe that banking institutions are more dangerous to our liberties than standing armies. If the American people ever allow private banks to control the issue of their currency, first by inflation, then by deflation, the banks and corporations that will grow up around the banks will deprive the people of all property – until their children wake-up homeless on the continent their fathers conquered.”
Man, that Thomas Jefferson was a smart guy. Here it is 200 years later and his warning has come true! The banks and corporations of 21st century America are raping the people with the government's blessing no matter which party is in power. The "hope" Obama sold us has turned to the sickening realization that it's just business as usual in Washington. Foreclosures, homelessness, unemployment and corruption continue apace while Congress fiddles. People are fighting so hard just to keep their heads above water they don't have the time or energy to confront the daily assault on their pocketbooks or their rights. Where it will end or how it turns out in the near future should be up to the people but it really isn't. Big money rules the day, corporate media clears the way and the peons fall in line.
Wednesday, September 22, 2010
Tuesday, September 21, 2010
This Just In
University of Massachusetts Rated One of the Best Universities in the World by Times of London
September 16, 2010by Office of Communications
University of Massachusetts only New England public university to make “gold standard” listThe University of Massachusetts was rated as one of the best universities in the world in the 2010 World University Rankings released today by the Times of London newspaper – the only public university in New England to make the prestigious list.
UMass ranked 56th in the Times of London’s Top 200, which the newspaper describes as “the gold standard for world-class research institutions.”
In announcing this year’s World University Rankings, Times Higher Education editor Ann Mroz said: “We would like to congratulate the University of Massachusetts for its performance in this year’s rigorous rankings. Being ranked 56 in the world top 200 is an impressive achievement. The top 200 universities in the world represent only a tiny fraction of world higher education and any institution that makes it into this table is truly world class.”
In this year’s World University Rankings, the University of Massachusetts:
• Is the only public university in New England to make the Top 200
• Ranks fourth in Massachusetts (behind Harvard, MIT and Tufts), and sixth in New England (after Harvard, MIT, Yale, Tufts and Brown)
• Is the 14th highest-rated American public university and is the 33rd highest-rated American institution public or private
Just goes to show you what I said in my previous post. UMass is BOSS!
Friday, September 17, 2010
Missing School
A great university in a beautiful setting with a distinguished faculty. Many of the professors and graduate students are involved in leading edge research in a number of diverse fields. Real strong in the sciences and a leader in environmental study. I met a lot of hard working kids carrying full class loads and holding down a job (or two) so next time someone says this generation of kids
is lazy I beg to differ. I'm proud to call UMass/Boston my alma mater.
The scenery is spectacular and not just the ocean views, but the thousands of lovely women that go there, especially those first warm days of spring when the flowers shed their bulky coats and sweatshirts to absorb the warmth of the sun's rays and the "buds bloom" after a long, cold winter. Truly a phenomena not to be missed. 
Thursday, September 16, 2010
It's Like Everything You Buy
This ad says it all about the junk we spend good money on and what we really get.
Everything you buy these days is junk. Nothing delivers on its promise. Cheesy materials, unfathomable instructions,planned obsolescence and idiotic design are not what we paid for but that's what we get. Well, you tell yourself, I'll spend a little extra to get more quality,but do you? No. You just end up with more expensive junk.
I bought a gas can at Home Depot a couple of weeks ago. I could not for the life of me figure out how this thing works; a friggin' GAS CAN. It has a green twisty device on the neck that is on lock or unlock but what it locks I have no idea. But the best part is, the lower end of the neck has a pinhole for the gas to go through, locked or unlocked. I showed it to two salty old dudes who have been around and they were clueless also. I got a funnel and pour the gas out the large hole and forget about the neck piece.
What is really grinding my stones is this: I totally renovated the house I live in to bring it into the 21st century. In the process I decided to go with a Corian countertop in the kitchen with the sink all moulded into the counter. Very sharp looking. Corian is supposed to be the Cadillac of counter materials and as such carries a hefty pricetag. Well yesterday as I was wiping down the sink I noticed what I thought to be a hair in the corner of the sink. It wasn't; it was a crack. A CRACK in this miracle material after two years of light usage. It carries a ten year warranty but still how does something like this happen? If I had opted for a plain old stainless steel sink it wouldn't have happened. Now we will see if duPont honors their warranty or jerks me around. Stay tuned and caveat emptor.
Letter to the Editor (Secret Ingredient Revealed)
Dear Creepyolderguy,
I don't think it's fair for you to tease us with this so called awesome pasta sauce recipe and then withhold the "secret ingredient" from us. What kind of person does that? You're just like every other man.
Signed,
Pissed in Peoria
Dear Pissed,
Yikes! I did not mean to aggravate you by holding back my secret ingredient so without further delay I'll give it to you now. You must be careful about telling loved ones what it is, as it is my experience that most people turn up their nose at the idea of ingesting this stuff. It will give your sauce a depth you never could of imagined. The envelope please... it is ANCHOVY PASTE. Yes that's right squeeze one inch of anchovy paste into the onions as they are sauteing, stir it good and it will dissolve in the oil with no one the wiser. Anchovy paste comes in a tube and can be found at grocers everywhere in the canned fish section. Mangia!!
PS: I'd be pissed in Peoria too. The recipe is here.
I don't think it's fair for you to tease us with this so called awesome pasta sauce recipe and then withhold the "secret ingredient" from us. What kind of person does that? You're just like every other man.
Signed,
Pissed in Peoria
Dear Pissed,
Yikes! I did not mean to aggravate you by holding back my secret ingredient so without further delay I'll give it to you now. You must be careful about telling loved ones what it is, as it is my experience that most people turn up their nose at the idea of ingesting this stuff. It will give your sauce a depth you never could of imagined. The envelope please... it is ANCHOVY PASTE. Yes that's right squeeze one inch of anchovy paste into the onions as they are sauteing, stir it good and it will dissolve in the oil with no one the wiser. Anchovy paste comes in a tube and can be found at grocers everywhere in the canned fish section. Mangia!!
PS: I'd be pissed in Peoria too. The recipe is here.
Wisdom
"Absence diminishes mediocre passions and increases great ones, as the wind extinguishes candles and fans fires."
Francois de La Rochefoucauld
Francois de La Rochefoucauld
"When you are through changing, you are through."
Bruce Barton
"All tyranny needs to gain a foothold is for people of good conscience to remain silent."- Thomas Jefferson
"By a lie a man throws away and, as it were, annihilates his dignity as a man." - Immanuel Kant
"Let us live so that when we come to die even the undertaker will be sorry." - Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens)
"Be fearless. If you don’t ask, the answer is always no."
Graham Hill
I love quotations.
"All tyranny needs to gain a foothold is for people of good conscience to remain silent."- Thomas Jefferson
"By a lie a man throws away and, as it were, annihilates his dignity as a man." - Immanuel Kant
"Let us live so that when we come to die even the undertaker will be sorry." - Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens)
"Be fearless. If you don’t ask, the answer is always no."
Graham Hill
I love quotations.
Friday, September 10, 2010
Patriots to Win Super Bowl XLV
You heard it here first kids, the New England Patriots will win Super Bowl XLV. In what will be his most heroic season yet Tom Brady will lead the Pats to another Super Bowl win. Overcoming the handicap of a young, unproven defense and the loss of uberlineman Logan Mankins the Pats will score at will against their baffled opponents. Who cares if the HBO Jets march downfield for seven minutes to score, for when the ball gets back to Tom it'll be bing, bang, boom touchdown Pats in a 1:25 minute, seventy five yard drive totally demoralizing the overmatched defense. I can't wait to hear the doomsayers and haters in the national media start kissing Tom's ass around week 5 of the season when the truth finally becomes apparent to those frauds. I'm backing up my opinion with a $500 bet on the Super Bowl XLV future line at 12-1. I'll be laughing all the way to the bank! Jump on the bandwagon now.
One prediction I made eight years ago that I hope I live to see: Tom Brady will one day be President of the United States.
One prediction I made eight years ago that I hope I live to see: Tom Brady will one day be President of the United States.
Thursday, September 2, 2010
Rachael's Hot Poppers
ItalianRach in a more playful mood away from the kitchen! Love those poppers!
Italian Poppers from the world's sexiest cook
Slice the tomatoes in half across the middle, making two tomato cups per tomato. Scoop out the tomato guts and discard.
Place a small skillet over medium-high heat with two turns of the pan of EVOO, about 2 tablespoons. Sauté the onion and garlic until soft, 3-5 minutes Transfer to a medium size mixing bowl and let cool.
Add the mozzarella, prosciutto, breadcrumbs, basil and parsley to the bowl, then season with salt and pepper and stir to combine. Divide the mixture among the tomato cups. Transfer the tomatoes to a baking sheet, then transfer to the oven and bake until the tops are golden brown, about 15-20 minutes.
- 10 small plum tomatoes
- 2 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil (EVOO)
- 1 small Spanish onion, cut into small dice
- 2 cloves garlic
- 1/2 cup mozzarella cheese, shredded
- 6 slices prosciutto, chopped
- 1/4 cup breadcrumbs
- 1/4 cup basil, chopped
- 1/4 cup flat leaf parsley, chopped
- Salt and freshly ground black pepper
Preparation
Pre-heat the oven to 400ºF.Slice the tomatoes in half across the middle, making two tomato cups per tomato. Scoop out the tomato guts and discard.
Place a small skillet over medium-high heat with two turns of the pan of EVOO, about 2 tablespoons. Sauté the onion and garlic until soft, 3-5 minutes Transfer to a medium size mixing bowl and let cool.
Add the mozzarella, prosciutto, breadcrumbs, basil and parsley to the bowl, then season with salt and pepper and stir to combine. Divide the mixture among the tomato cups. Transfer the tomatoes to a baking sheet, then transfer to the oven and bake until the tops are golden brown, about 15-20 minutes.
Wednesday, September 1, 2010
Miners over 18.
 | ||||
| Ah the good ol' days. |
WTF?
It's incredible to think that we need a law against texting while driving. How can anyone in their right mind imagine they can responsibly operate a car weighing two tons with a couple of hundred horsepower while typing on a tiny keyboard. It's bad enough when people are talking and driving. You can spot these idiots a half a mile away weaving, hitting the brakes for no reason, sitting at a green light or holding up traffic with their erratic acceleration and braking. Most of my driving is in heavy traffic and the cell phone gabbers and texters contribute mightily to the logjam. How can you use your turn signal when you have one (or both) hands on your cell phone, ah why bother. I think some of it has to do with the general inconsideration for others that's part of our culture today.
I am against any laws that infringe on our rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness of which there are far too many these days, but cell phone usage should be banned while driving a car although I suppose hands free units might be OK. Please try to pay attention while driving and save your insignificant messaging until the car is shut off. Come on people wake the fuck up.
I am against any laws that infringe on our rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness of which there are far too many these days, but cell phone usage should be banned while driving a car although I suppose hands free units might be OK. Please try to pay attention while driving and save your insignificant messaging until the car is shut off. Come on people wake the fuck up.
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