Posts by Rich Lock
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Certainly seems that way from the numerous Lego towers my son has collapsed recently. Once a collapse starts, all bets are off about how it will fall. What happens at the top will affect all of the structures below.
Naturally I haven't tried creating a collapse that will crumble Lego blocks to dust, so it's not a perfect model, just an observation that not-even-very-complex structures can collapse in unpredictable ways. My favorite was where all of the pieces afterward were in a perfect circle around the base - I can't explain how it happened, somehow the thing fell in a spiral.
Another good point. It's not as if there's a whole heap of data lying around which can be used to predict how skyscrapers will react when large jets are flown into them, given that it's happened in real life exactly twice....
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The trouble with the 9/11 conspiracy theories is that there are actually a lot of unanswered questions around 'who knew what and when' on that day. There was an awful lot of post-attack duck-and-covering going on within the US establishment, and the official investigation and report was actually pretty feeble. The vacuum that this feeble official response created has left enough unanswered questions for Gage, the 'Loose Change' mob and other idiots to seed all sorts of frankly vile and distasteful crap* from.
Which has had the effect of almost utterly obscuring the serious points that need addressing. If I was of a paranoid frame of mind, there's enough material in that fact iteself to make me start wondering who pulls the strings of these guys....
In relation to the unanswered questions, we have this, for example, from this article:
By the time the Jersey Girls travelled to FBI headquarters in June 2002 they seemed to know more than their official counterparts. Sheehy described Breitweiser's unrelenting interrogation of senior FBI agents that day: "I don't understand, with all the warnings about the possibilities of al-Qaida using planes as weapons, and the Phoenix memo from one of your own agents warning that Osama bin Laden was sending operatives to this country for flight-school training, why didn't you check out flight schools before September 11?"
"Do you know how many flight schools there are in the US? Thousands," a senior agent protested.
"Wait," Breitweiser persisted. "How is it that a few hours after the attacks ... FBI agents showed up at Embry-Riddle flight school in Florida where some of the terrorists trained?"
"We got lucky," was the reply.
Breitweiser then asked the agent how the FBI had known exactly which cash machine would yield a videotape of Mohammed Atta, the leader of the attacks. The agent got some facts confused, then changed his story. When Breitweiser wouldn't be pacified by evasive answers, the senior agent parried, "What are you getting at?"
"I think you had open investigations before September 11 on some of the people responsible for the terrorist attacks," she said.
"We did not," the agent said unequivocally.
A month later, before the scathing congressional report on intelligence failures was released, Breitweiser and the three other mums from New Jersey learned that, in fact, the FBI had open investigations on 14 individuals who had contact with the hijackers while they were in the US.
[my emphasis added in bold]
More info on the Jersey Girls here.
Don't tell me I've been missing the shareholders' meetings.
Too bad for you. We all got our ponies at the last one.
*Gio - thank you for your moving and eloquent article on Gage's Te Papa presentation. It reminded me exactly how I feel about these lunatics.
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Probably not connected to the Centurion Men's Sauna though
steaming up Queen St
But on the other hand, maybe they were....?
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is there any evidence that the actual spend came close to the $450k they talked about??
For those who don't get the print version of The Herald, there have also been a number of full-page ads in the last couple of weeks, running on either pg3 or pg5. I don't know how much that would run to, but I'd guess several tens of thousands for the dozen or so that have run.
Being smacked in the eye by a full-page flourescent orange sheet of newsprint first thing in the moring before the coffee's got to work should be illegal in New Zealand.
It will be Tea Parties next, you mark my words.
Sweet. I've been waiting for an excuse to break out my dormouse costume.
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the entire audience realises what it is at the same moment and screams with joy as we all realise they're actually doing a version of the theme from Dr Who.
I think there's a live version on the b-side of one of their singles. I've got a copy somewhere.
They also used to mix in Belinda Carlisle 'heaven is a place on earth' in their live shows. Which always used to make me giggle, in terms of the 'great happy single organism' thing.
WRT earplugs: I've found a a decent and low-cost option to be 'Alpine' earplugs.
They come with swappable inserts that are tuned to remove or damp down certain freqency ranges - the ones that actually do the damage. I've only used them a few times at gigs, but I haven't really noticed any appreciable loss of sound quality, just raw volume. Pretty comfortable, too - much better than the foam crap you get at the chemist.
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There's an urban legend that one of the first wave of rave acts - Altern8, 808 State, or someone like that - played a gig once where their bass was so powerful that a number of ravers inadvertently voided their bowels....
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brave speakers of... whatever.
truthiness?
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people who look like Beowulf
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Hebes
Bloody Catholics!
WASPS are truly nasty bastards
Well, my bingo card is filling up quickly.
How's everyone else doing?
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The British drugs advisory bust-up has been fascinating -- if unnerving -- to watch this past week.
Although I have had to giggle at the references in the UK press to 'Nuts sacking'.
Journalistically irreseistable, I suppose.