Sunday, April 30, 2006

Loose Screw #1

For our first lie from the movie "Loose Change", midway through this farce, in an illogical attempt to prove that a crashing airplane could not have caused the World Trade Centers to collapse, the movie claims a B-52 crashed into the Empire State Building in 1945 without causing a collapse.

This is quite an accomplishment since the B-52 is a giant bomber with 8 engines, that did not fly until 1954, nearly nine years later.

The bomber that crashed into the Empire State Building was in fact a much smaller B-25 bomber that was lost in the fog. Well, maybe our filmmakers are just verbally dyslexic? So bad fact checking aside, how is this relevant? Well let us look:

B-25
33,000 lbs normally loaded
974 gallon fuel load
230 MPH cruising speed

767-200
450,000 lbs maximum takeoff weight
23,980 gallon fuel load
530 MPH cruising speed

Using the formula, F=MA, which any high school physics student should know, which of the two airplanes would have caused more damage upon impact? Discuss among yourselves

Rules of Conspiracy Theories

I would like to start by defining the rules of conspiracy theories. They differ from normal thought and logic, but they tend to follow these general rules.

1. It is only necessary to observe the evidence that you wish to.

For example, the moonbats who believe that a cruise missile hit the Pentagon. As "proof" of this they cite a man who said he saw a plane hit the pentagon "like a cruise missile", ignoring the concept of a simile, and the fact that he, along with thousands of other people saw a "plane" hit the pentagon.

2. A lack of evidence is only proof of the depth of the cover-up.

Pretty self explanatory, I would have the evidence if only they hadn't covered it up so well!

3. Anyone who doesn't agree with a conspiracy theory is either part of the cover-up (see rule 2) or just a close minded drone of the government.

4. The law of inverse proportionality of authority.

The validity of any source is inversely proportional to its authoritativeness .

Any government commission, serious academic (not those who teach humanities at Berkeley), law enforcement official, or politician, ie. the people who are in the position to actually know, are immediately suspect because they were probably involved in the conspiracy in the first place. Someone completely removed from the situation, like some guy posting on his website while watching reruns of Star Trek in his parents' basement is more likely to be untainted.

5. Occams corollary: The complexity and difficulty of a conspiracy theory is only proof of the depth and deviousness of the conspiracy.

6. The Law of Infinite Permutations: Even in the case that an infinite amount of statements are proven wrong an equally infinite amount of new statements can be made.

For example: in the discussion I had the moonbat asserted that no black boxes were found from the 9/11 crashes. When I pointed out that the black boxes from the Pentagon and Pennsylvania crashes had in fact been found, he changed his argument to "OK, well 2 of them have been found, but the data has not been released". I then pointed out that in fact they played the cockpit voice recorders to members of the families who requested. His argument then changed to, well they were probably faked. And this of course can go on ad infinitum.

In mathematical terms:

Conspiracy Theorist (CT) states 2 + 2 = 5
Level Headed Skeptic (LHS) proves this is false 2 + 2 = 4
CT counters, no 2 + 3 = 6
LHS proves otherwise, 2 + 3 = 5
CT counters, no 2 + 4 = 7...

And this of course goes on forever. Thus CT can never actually be proven wrong.

Welcome To My New Blog

I, like a lot of Americans have been offended by the idiocy of the 9/11 conspiracy theorists, people who will go to any means to smear their own country, while tacitly supporting those who want to kill us. I am particularly appalled by the misleading tactics, omissions, logical leaps, and general lies of the Internet movie Loose Change, and believe it is time someone spoke up and pointed this dishonesty out. I am dedicating this site to doing so. If anyone would like to make a contribution, please let me know.