View From the Bushes:

My old blogging standard was an new entry every weekday. A while ago that was relaxed to "I'll blog whenever I feel like it and you'll be happy about it!" But my unstated commitment was to not miss two days in a row (excluding weekends, of course), so I was somewhat chagrined when I didn't post anything on Thursday or Friday. Mostly it came about because, having abandoned the apolotical character of the blog, I wanted to engage in some political commentary, but because of the divisive nature of that sort of activity, I wanted to really have my ducks in a row, which I didn't have either the time or the energy for. I still don't have the energy for it, but I guess I'll proceed anyway.

First off, there are a couple of articles which everyone should read; which I won't offer any opinion on (though the very nature of the pieces gives you some idea as to my opinions). The first was originally published in Commentary Magazine but has since been picked up by the WSJ and goes into the idea of whether Bush lied. The second is titled Five questions non-Muslims would like answered and ran in the LA Times. Both are at the very least thought provoking, but mostly I think they cut through quit a bit of FUD.

Finally, I want to mention a BYU professor who believes that the WTC collapsed due to pre-positioned explosives, rather than being hit by a 767 (his actual paper). Having looked at the paper, it seems that much of it hinges on the collapse of WTC7 (a building which was not hit by a plane). As a University of Utah graduate I'm under contract to speak derisively about anything coming out of BYU, but as you can imagine, that hardly matters -- this would be a stupid idea regardless of where it originated.

I will survive
Ross

Posted by direkobold at November 14, 2005 01:07 PM

I read the BYU professor's actual article and was underwhelmed. It is more polemical than scientific. His frequent appeals to the Second Law of Thermodynamics and High School physics equations are sophomoric and his invocation of parsimony and Occam's razor are ironic.

As I understand it he posits a conspiracy that requires close collaboration with highly skilled people on the inside to set various demolition devices and ill-trained Muslim terrorists on the outside to create a diversion.

A minimum of three active buildings have to be completely wired with explosives (probably more since there was also a DC plane and the Pennsylvania plane). These explosives are apparently on every floor and set up so they can be remotely detonated. The South Tower in particular had explosive charges in the basement to initiate collapse. Then they triggered explosions on the floors where the plane hit, then as the building was falling they triggered explosions floor by floor as it fell to disintigrate each floor in turn. Meanwhile they used thermite to melt columns -- enough thermite so that puddles of molten metal were in the rubble for weeks after. This is a lot of thermite, and since thermite is not an explosive, the timing of the thermite reaction probably required massive modeling and simulation runs to make it come out perfect.

Occam's razor indeed! As my old boss used to say, "I've seen a duck fart underwater before, but I've never seen him turn around and snap at the bubbles."

Posted by: sti at November 14, 2005 05:34 PM

The Commentary article fits into the tradition of using a subset of the facts/opinions out there to reach a conclusion on who did or didn't lie (and both political parties are guilty of this). Hopefully there'll be more Fitzgerald-type investigations, for I feel that the situation is so complex and covered in half-truths that it may require another two years of work from professional prosecutors to get to any truth.

Posted by: rob at November 15, 2005 09:28 AM