Sep 04 2006
Proof Positive A PhD Does Not Indicate Brain Activity
The left is infested with truly bizarre knuckleheads. The sad fact is many have advanced degrees in some science, yet they cannot seem to keep their heads screwed on right. Take these 75 fellow travellers from academia, who obviously represent the Lamont-Gore-Moore wing of the insane asylum:
The attacks of September 11, Jones asserts, were an “inside job”, puppeteered by the neoconservatives in the White House to justify the occupation of oil-rich Arab countries, inflate military spending and expand Israel.
“We don’t believe that 19 hijackers and a few others in a cave in Afghanistan pulled this off acting alone,” says Jones. “We challenge this official conspiracy theory and, by God, we’re going to get to the bottom of this.”
While this sinister spin strikes most American academics as absurd, Jones, a physics professor, is not alone. He is a member of 9/11 Scholars for Truth, a recently formed group of around 75 US professors determined to prove 9/11 was a hoax. In essays and journals, they are using their association with prominent universities to give a scholarly stamp to conspiracy theories long believed in parts of Europe and the Arab world, and gaining ground among Americans due to frustration with the Iraq war and opposition to President Bush’s heavily hyped “war on terror”.
A history lesson is in order. The most educated people on the planet at one time believed the earth was flat and was the center of the universe. They believed bleeding let out the poisons and could cure people. They did not believe heart surgery was possible.
There are people who think man never walked on the moon, it was all done on a movie set. There are people who once thought aliens were coming hidden in a comet and all they had to do was commit suicide to be taken away on the mother ship. And with no disrespect meant do my religious neighbors, some do not believe evolution exists even though it has been proven over and over and over again. Some people believe human embryos are not human. And once a large group of people believed in a place called Jonestown and drank the Kool-Aid to obtain salvation.
Suffice it to say, there are always people who are wrong. I have never once successfully predicted the future in complete detail. I might have a good idea which football team might win, but get the score at each quarter? Never. So what do you do with loonies like this? You fisk them:
A neoconservative group called Project for a New American Century, which included the defence secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, and the vice-president, Dick Cheney, brought out a report arguing for a global expansion of American military and economic supremacy, and for the US to transform itself into a “one-world superpower”. The report warned that “the process of transformation, even if it brings revolutionary change, is likely to be a long one, absent some catastrophic and catalysing event – like a new Pearl Harbor”.
The group, in concert with about 20 others, orchestrated the attacks of 9/11 as an excuse for pre-emptive global aggression against Afghanistan, then Iraq and soon Iran, the academics say. And they insist that they have amassed a wealth of scientific data to prove it.
It is impossible, says Jones, for the towers to have collapsed from the collision of two aeroplanes, as jet fuel doesn’t burn at temperatures hot enough to melt steel beams. The horizontal puffs of smoke – squibs – emitted during the collapse of the towers are indicative of controlled implosions on lower floors. The scholars have collected eyewitness accounts of flashes and loud explosions immediately before the fall.
As I noted earlier, much of this have been debunked. But you don’t need a lot of gray matter to challenge these low IQ theories. (1) How is it the towers both collapsed at the point of entry of the planes? Did the sobatuers know in advance what floors where going to be hit? (2) How is it the aircraft impacts didn’t blow the charges supposedly placed on impact? (3) But the best question is this: Why go through all this effort to fake an attack and blame Bin Laden and the Taliban and attack poor, resourceless Afgahnistan? Why not implicate Saddam Hussein? Why not plant WMDs in Iraq to frame Husseing?
I am sorry to be blunt, but anyone who even considers these wackos as possibly believable are blithering idiots. And anyone who believes these people are peddles their stories as factual are a danger to themselves and others. Are people gullible? Well, we all know what PT Barnum had to say on that matter.
We lionize degrees in this society, but really… they are not that difficult to obtain. A lot of these people really think very much of themselves. And, that is what the pursuit of knowledge is to such people: it is a show. It is a ego circus.
Some of these people even are very bright. Most are not. Honestly, if you aren’t good looking and don’t have much muscle mass it might pay for you to put all of your efforts into intellectual activities.
Even with these imbalances worked out… these guys rarely have families. Because they have no value to offer society. They are genetic rejects… ironically… as what they pride most is their own self.
Further, a lot of fields have become deeply corrupted. They stand on the work of a few brilliant ones… and have nothing to show for the rest. This is how much of academia operates… there are failed theorists in every field who have no concern about evidence, even a disdain for it, but they are always willing to come up with a new theory and celebrate whatever faddish theory which is out there.
These individuals operate in science fields or not too dissimiliar ones where they spend their entire careers never once contributing anything but lies and misinformation. While such individuals are as worthless intellectually as monkeys… I think they do put in a lot of good, hard work — for the Devil.
What an informative comment by Pull, I must say. A perceptive, thougthful, discriminating, and worldly wise wise fellow indeed.
Re: AJ’s constant and actually quite amusing drumbeat re: the “looney lefties” /asylum escapees of the far left / etc. etc. etc. etc. etc. etc. (and etcetera), what evidence is there that Professor Steven Jones politically lies on the left ? None that AJ’s shared with us, and Jones’ Wikipedia entry (for what it’s worth) suggests that the good professor is a faithful member of the LDS, and until recently a supporter of GW Bush. If this is accurate, he doesn’t sound like a lefty to me.
What say you AJ? “Facts, we don’t need no stinking facts!”, perhaps?
DGF:
I do not understand the disdain for AJ’s argument. True, this individual may actually be something other then far left. If so, then he is an extreme anomaly amongst the conspiracy theorists. He now represents the far left in this movement.
A lot of the posters on Daily Kos and such didn’t have any kind of political beliefs and many were conservatives just a few years before their professors at college persuaded them to think their way.
Does this mean that they are now not really far left, because they once voted for a Republican?
And how many voted Republican, belong to some “conservative” religion, but have held leftist ideas?
This man has a story. His story is unique among his leftist buddies and leftist fans. The story appears, on the surface, that he is just a scientist who is objective about the issue politicallly… and that he is simply disturbed by the scientific mechanics of the crash.
(ref, the wiki source: http://chronicle.com/free/v52/i42/42a01001.htm )
Now, I do not have proof of this. I haven’t read either of these full articles. But, I have a good suspicion that this man is lying. That he is either mentally deranged… or there is some other malicious motive for him to be arguing this case — most probably, but not definitely, that he has some deep seated hatred of the Jews and wants to blame it on them… or maybe… who knows?
I also am wondering what his previous experience is in this area. What makes him such an expert in this particuliar area of physics? Why does he not answer those experts who have brought up criticisms of his arguments?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steven_E._Jones
According to that: “Jones specializes in Metal-catalyzed fusion, Archaeometry and Solar energy [5].”
So, what is he doing talking about demolitions and thermite?
And what is this work of his? Is this true, too? “Jones has written a paper entitled “Behold My Hands: Evidence for Christ’s Visit in Ancient America” in which he used archeological evidence to support the claims of Joseph Smith Jr. (founder of the Latter Day Saint movement) that Jesus had visited the Native Americans after his Resurrection, an event chronicled in the Book of Mormon. The evidence pointed to is Mayan depictions of deities which have stigmata like markings on their hands. [6]”
Why is it I am thinking of the book “Mormon Murders” here?
This guy is either deranged or a liar. If that does not persuade you, what will?
DGF:
I have known a lot of folks in academia, and they are not all that bright outside their area of expertise. I know a woman with a PhD in abnormal psychiatry who has been bedridden for years because she has become so obese she can not ambulate. She can not control her eating, but she is not stupid.
The problem with a lot of people is that they just do not understand how things work. They live in a world where no one fixes their own cars or hangs drywall or puts a roof on a house…so they have no idea how jet fuel burning inside a building like the WTC can melt steel and bring the thing down. They also have no idea that people who implode buildings have to remove weight bearing walls and set explosives, etc. Add to that a form on mental illness or mass hysteria and you have the possibility that a well educated person can say something real bizarre.
Speaking of facts…. there have been eye witness accounts, photographs, tens of thousands of pages of reports, human remains, black boxes, all manner of physical evidence to point to the fact that the official story is the real one and yet the deranged hang onto their illusions like some sort of pathetic security blanket. After all, if it was the Bushies what done the deed we don’t really have anything to worry about do we? Well maybe a few hundred black Africans will get killed in an embassy but who cares about that? And if they target our military, dying is their job so that’s ok.
I think these people are paranoid and weird and that only a moron would think that the US government with its tens of thousands of permanent civil servants and its elected officials would deliberately do something like this just so they could go to war. That is stupid on its face no matter how many initials the guy or gal has behind their name.
DGF,
All the conspiracy theorists come at their little fantasies from their opposition of war. There are rare occasions where someone on the right like Pat Buchannan can go off the deep end, but so far I have never heard of one of these form a true conservative.
As to your claim he was supposedly once a GW supporter, that means nothing. I used to be a proud and dedicated Democrat. N ow I know what drives the left and it is pathetic.
DGF
Just for fun, could you please give us your estimate of the number of people who had to be involved at all phases of this conspiracy?
How many shooters had to eliminate all the participants to cover it up?
How many other shooters had to erase the original shooters as a deeper cover?
Geez Merl, I dunno. But here’s my estimates: 192; 61; 4 (including two red-bearded dwarves, which I counted as “one”). What’s yours? (and why are we doing this, again?)
DGF
That last comment was just weird.
Truth is the people into conspiracies are not about facts. I heard one of the editors of the Popular Mechanics book debunking 9/11 Myths say that whenever he would prove them wrong, the reaction was always the same, How convenient. Everything is fodder for their illusion.
I don’t know DGF, but what he did point out was that this one particuliar conspiracy theorist may not have been far left. He provided references for that which I checked up on. That does not mean he was defending the conspiracy theorists.
It is crucial, when arguing with “conspiracy theorists” – political slanders – to use evidence to prove them wrong. Ultimately, that is what any such debate is: truth and against lies.
The details otherwise are just details.
My argument as for why these guys get into conspiracy theories is the same as I have had for years now.
What are conspiracy theories? Lies.
What type of lies are conspiracy theories? Slanderous lies, that is false accusations.
What is the ultimate false accusation? To accuse someone of murder.
Why is it useful to falsely accuse someone of murder? Because that justifies one’s hatred of them.
The conspiracy theories – a nice name for them – are nothing but a natural extension of inner hatred the left have for us.
I hope people understand this. These are not “love your enemy” Christians you are talking about here. These guys are bad.
Don’t let their looniness fool you.