champu

That article is really annoying as it's two stories mashed together, they have half a dozen photos that are unrelated to the story in the headline, and only a few blurbs randomly interspersed about the story the photos are related to. I really don't like it when the media does that. Here's a little better article about the attack

If it were as easy to get to the other side of a security checkpoint by completely circumventing it regardless of what type of screening was involved as it is to get a firearm by circumventing whatever registration and background checks are required by law, I would put off buying half-million dollar body scanning machines until I got some more walls put up and some more door locks installed.

Jan 01, 2000 at 8:30 am I was showing up to work (technical service desk at a CompUSA) It was interesting to see the cross-section of people who were nerdy enough to be dealing with their computer in any way on a holiday but not nerdy enough to avoid pinning mundane issues on the y2k bug.

Agreed... ...except that not everything democrats want is left-wing, not everything republicans want is right-wing, and compromises involving the "worst of both worlds" probably deserve their own moniker apart from "centrist."

So... giving you the benefit of the doubt, if there's any left, and assuming you may want to have a discussion about sourcing... this string of posts made me think of something. People often talk about left-wing, right-wing, or centrist ideas. The problem being that things are relative, and so to automatically refer to something opposed to an arguably right-wing idea as centrist or to refer to something opposed to an arguably left-wing idea as right-wing is to be disingenuous. You can try to create the image of an "average person" or "average country from some subset of countries", but average doesn't necessarily mean centrist. And if you're trying to argue that the views you hold are closer to centrist, and that makes them somehow more normatively palatable, then that's important to understand. In short, it's entirely possible to be in a very large group of people, standing far out on one of the wings, and to all be in agreement about doing something that's incredibly stupid.

Personal responsibility.... does that ring a bell???? No shit And most of those people voted Obama Well, to tie this thread a little more constructively to Obama... How many people with no health care have actually researched options available to them, pricing out what certain plans would cover given what they might need it for? How many people with health care are actually aware of what it does and doesn't cover, can tell you readily what they're paying for it, and that there aren't better plans available to them?

...well, if that post doesn't draw the surrendering liberty for security quote that so many people love to throw out there... While I agree with your conclusion, your reasoning is easily bypassed altogether if someone finds it offensive or in disagreement with their ideals. Given the newer image processing available it Is arguably less invasive to have a body scan than it is for a TSA person to pat you down. And if the former is actually more effective, why still put up with the latter? ...in any event... my flight is boarding... :)

Loans, fees, taxes, titles, tips, "sale" prices, driving = gas = money, lines of credit and credit scores, retirement investing, unit price vs item price at the supermarket, commute times and distances, credit card reward programs vs. debit cards. The list goes on... ...you think you know people and that they're smart...

http://m.apnews.com/ap/db_16026/contentdetail.htm?contentguid=oBFdwl3C In light of the failed Detroit attack and word of a Somali man caught a month ago with the same components, it looks like the Dutch are going ahead with millimeter wave body scanners. My question is, given the (largely human) problems with resolving alarms using metal detectors, their overall shortcomings at detecting bomb components, and the nature of the new software used in the scanners (discussed briefly in the article) that displays stylized images rather than detailed images of the body (potentially aleviating privacy concerns?), is there a downside to this? I'm of the opinion that general complacency of the operators has made the walk-through detector -> wand -> pat down approach completely useless, and that this may remove some of the "theatre" aspect of airport security. (written from my phone... sorry for the run-on sentences.)

jakee already replied to this post but I have a few comments as well... This is something I can't readily find a source for. I looked for it for a while and the closest I came was a link to what appeared to have been an e-mail attachment on a webmail account (which is obviously now a broken link.) I understand this was supposedly in the context of a court case, which makes the details important. The only info I can find about the FBI and these phone calls states that four phone calls took place and not enough information was available to determine which two were the ones the Olsen's spoke of. (this is in the notes of section one of the 9/11 commission report) I made an allusion to the availability of these videos in a previous post. Are you referring to anything beyond what's available here? That site is generally a good place to read through if you want more information about the flight 77 crash. These are the kinds of questions that, when listed one after the other like this, lend a sense of incoherency to the conspiracy theory. I don't even know what the conspiracy theory is anymore. I actually watched fahrenheit 911 and loose change (the first edition and one of the more recent ones) and with everyone referencing everyone else, and everyone updating and changing their story every two years, I have no idea what is being argued anymore. I have no idea what the conspiracy theorists still believe the US government was trying to accomplish. I have no idea what all these individual arguments about phone calls are trying to lead up to. The whole discussion seems hollow and painfully academic at this point.

It's also difficult to tell from photos after the fact what kind of mangled mess was being held up by the columns. There may have been constraints on accessibility to the base of the column, or on how the debris could fall without destabilizing the surrounding area (or just falling on someone.)

Julie always kinda looks like that too, I've noticed...

I was thinking of "faster, better, cheaper" as associated with Daniel Goldin (Director of NASA, 1992-2001) and his quest to improve cost, schedule, and reliability of space missions all at the same time. I thought the term was originally attributed to him, but I could be wrong. The "pick two" trade off tends to be even more clear in the commercial world because the obvious question, "than what?" is more readily answered. If your cheaper and faster spacecraft has a reliability of 0.9 vs. another design that has a reliability of 0.99, and both manage to get the one-time only job done, which one was "better"?

"Faster" in the context of the axiom means "sooner" (i.e. faster to market.) It doesn't mean "faster performance," that would fall under "better." For example, the 2009 camcorder is 19 years "slower" than the 1980 model. If someone paid me a little more or gave me some more time I'm sure I could come up with an axiom that didn't have that ambiguity. If you want something better and cheaper, wait a while. If you want something better, right now, pony up. If you want something right now, and don't want to pay top dollar, you get what you pay for.

I think he's talking about these little guys. I always assumed they were vestigial cargo door hinge components, left over from the Otter's evolution into a skydiving aircraft.

You and I apparently subscribe to different definitions of the word "imploded."

Ted Olsen was (at the time) a 61 year old man (9/11 is actually his birthday) with a law degree who hadn't been in school for 30 years. The finer points of wireless communication eluding him does not arouse my suspicion. I guess once the footage from the Citgo Station and the Doubletree hotel was made publicly available, something you folks were ravenous for, I guess you had to move on to something else. But, speaking of doing research, if you're going to post things like this you might want to check and see if the person you're promoting has recanted his story. My favorite quote on that page is the following... ...except the one about... well, you know... the phones not being there. How asinine do these arguments have to get for you to give up on them? That's a serious question. And what is he even arguing anymore? That we don't know for sure whether they used knives or box cutters?

5) (or maybe 4a) Do regular neck strengthening exercises and always stretch before jumping.

Why do you attach your belief that officials in the US government put their own interests ahead of the country when going into the middle east to completely indefensible interpretations of physics and material science? Is it not outrageous enough to present a conspiracy amongst people in response to an event they themselves had nothing to do with? Are you worried people won't buy the story unless one group took the whole plot from cradle to grave?

Not as of yet, but perhaps someday, an autopsy may actually answer that question. Of course, if someone were to request such a procedure on a deceased loved one, it would probably be more interesting to look into their brain's biochemistry. Life is like going to see a magician. You may find your friend who keeps explaining to you how all the tricks work incredibly annoying, but that doesn't make him wrong.

I actually used to think that WTC7 was a controlled demolition but thanks to that new video I can see that the debris plumes don't actually exit the building until just an instant after it starts collapsing. Wow, I was dead wrong. There's no way that was a controlled demolition. Thanks for opening my eyes!

2600 jumps. 3 cutaways. 3 reserve rides. So including jimmytavino, airtwardo, BillyVance, dragon2, Bip, linestretch, and champu: 35/43 (or 32/43 if you don't count cutting away after an aad fire as a "cutaway")

Better, faster, cheaper... pick two.

:rollseyes: You MIT people...

Much like products in infomercials. "As I have come to see it" and "undeniable" are incompatible. Oil and water. It is completely possible for me or anyone else to deny that which you've come to see.