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musings of mark since 2001

It wasn’t enough for an All-American Mother like Cindy Sheehan with a dead son asking why for the MSM to awake from its slumber, but Charlie Sheen’s recent interviews and letters certainly seem to be. It was a bit of a wake up call to see the CNN poll numbers myself, at one point it was at about 84% of Americans logging on thinking that there as something fishy going on with those towers that came down in New York on 9/11.

Case in point, the fairly mainstream Miami Herald ran the piece I’ve copied below written by Robert Steinback, it’s typical of the questions now being asked so long after the actual event and the consequential deaths of tens of thousands that followed.

9/11 ATTACKS
Avoiding the hard questions

ROBERT STEINBACK

I was 8 years old when President John Kennedy was shot to death in Dallas in 1963. If grace favors me, I’ll be 62 when documents related to the assassination are released to the public, and 84 when the Warren Commission’s investigative files into the tragedy are finally opened.

That’s a long time to wait for a chance to evaluate the purported truth.

It’s a blot on the presumed sophistication of the people of the United States that any aspect of an event so dramatic and shocking should be kept from us. Perhaps it’s true, to abuse the line from A Few Good Men yet again, that we can’t handle the truth. But there cannot be genuine resolution as long as such critical information remains concealed.

Transformed by 9/11

Since Kennedy’s assassination, Americans have lurched between demanding to know and plugging their ears: The Pentagon Papers, My Lai, the King assassination, Watergate, Iran-contra, the savings-and-loan debacle, Monicagate. Lately, however, it would seem the public’s verdict is in: Don’t tell us. Keep us in the dark. We don’t want to know.

This is the worst possible time for probe-ophobia to grip us. Our nation was irretrievably transformed by 9/11 — and yet there remain troubling questions about what really happened before, during and after that day. Rather than demanding a full and fearless vetting to hone in on the truth and silence the conjecture about 9/11, many Americans remain unwilling to peer into the microscope.

An online cottage industry of theorists, theory debunkers and debunker debunkers has flourished since 9/11. Sometimes the flimsy theories are easy to spot — come on, if the four passenger jets didn’t crash where it appears they did, where did they go? More often, though, the cases aren’t so obvious.

A group of experts and academicians ‘devoted to applying the principles of scientific reasoning to the available evidence, `letting the chips fall where they may,’ ” last week accused the government of covering up evidence that the three destroyed New York City buildings were brought down that day by controlled demolition rather than structural failure. The group, called Scholars for 9/11 Truth, has a website, www.st911.org.

Unanswered questions

The reflexive first reaction is incredulity — how, one asks, could anyone even contemplate, never mind actually do such a barbaric thing? But before you shut your mind, check the resumés — these aren’t Generation X geeks subsisting on potato chips and PlayStation. Then look at the case they present.

”I am a professional philosopher who has spent 35 years teaching logic, critical thinking and scientific reasoning,” group co-founder and University of Minnesota professor James H. Fetzer told me. “When I come to 9/11, it’s not hard for me to determine what is going on. This is a scientific question. And it is so elementary that I don’t think you can find a single physicist who could disagree with the idea that this was a controlled demolition.”

The group asks, for example,

• How did a fire fed by jet fuel, which at most burns at 1,700 degrees Fahrenheit, cause the collapse of the Twin Towers, built of steel that melts at 2,800 degrees? (Most experts agree that the impact of airliners, made mostly of lightweight aluminum, should not have been enough alone to cause structural failure.) How could a single planeload of burning jet fuel — most of which flared off in the initial fireball — cause the South World Trade Center tower to collapse in just 56 minutes?

• Why did building WTC-7 fall, though no aircraft struck it? Fire alone had never before caused a steel skyscraper to collapse.

• Why did all three buildings collapse largely into their own footprints — in the style of a controlled demolition?

• Why did no U.S. military jet intercept the wayward aircraft?

• Why has there been no investigation of BBC reports that five of the alleged 9/11 hijackers were alive and accounted for after the event?

Our current probe-ophobia is due in part to the political landscape: When one party holds all the cards, any call to investigate an alleged abuse of power or cover-up — no matter how valid — will look like a partisan vendetta. Those in power never want to investigate themselves.

Maybe that’s politics; he who holds the hammer drives the nails. But the outrage of 9/11 transcends party affiliation.

We need all the outstanding questions answered — wherever the chips may fall.

There is a comprehensive overview of the studies that brought scientists to re-jig their glacial ice sheet models that show that by the end of this century sea levels won’t rise 3 inches as predicted, but by about 20 feet.

The Oven Door Bakery is burnt to a shell this morning, firefighters did a good job of containing it to the one building, as they were arriving the structure next door was starting to sizzle and smoke according to its’ owner. No word yet on how it started, looks like the southeast corner where the big oven was located could be a likely candidate with that part of the building’s roof caved in completely.

The Oven Door was operated by a couple well-liked local women, and with The Snug coffee shop next door it was a hub for the cove and at any time you could see someone hanging out drinking a coffee or having something to nibble on. It’s a little early to know if they are going to rebuild or not and if it will keep being referred to in the past tense. Going to be a bit of a surprise when buddy Brenda from Burns Lake shows up on Wednesday for sure

Meanwhile, it *is* the first day of spring, and a sunny day here for its’ arrival at 10:26am Pacific Standard Time. I’ve managed to work out a deal to trade time working on the yard and garden around here in exchange for rent for next month. There’s about a couple weeks worth of the usual spring stuff that needs to be done, blackberry bushes to pull and debris to rake and put in the burn barrel, that sort of thing. Mister Landlord has a reputation for not being the best employer, but as this is a one-shot deal and no actual money is going to be involved and I’ll be taking most of my directions from Mrs. Landlord, (she’s a real nice person to work with), things should hopefully work out.

Sooner or later need to do income tax forms too, haven’t been able to buy the software for that yet and not looking forward to doing it by hand, so have been procrastinating compared to previous years. Income last year was the biggest in the last six at about 16K, this year is on track so far to be a sub 9K year and closer to the average, need to look into somehow deferring part of this year ahead as anything that I’m sure to owe still has to be earned somehow. And no, I don’t save part of any income for taxes later because there is no extra to save. The difference between the two years percentage wise is a lot, but when it’s a choice of putting the percentage difference in the bank or getting some more tobacco, food or taking a trip to my Dad’s for his 70th birthday, the tax man comes dead last for immediate priorities.

The headline in the NY Times this morning said “Largest Oil Spill in Alaska went undetected for days” - The largest oil spill to occur on the tundra of Alaska’s North Slope has deposited up to 267,000 gallons of thick crude oil over two acres in the sprawling Prudhoe Bay production facilities, forcing cleanup crews to work in temperatures far below zero to vacuum and dig up the thick mixture of snow and oil.

That’s the first sentence of the article, and the next to last one is in part, “…said the leak was “smaller than our system would detect,…”. Ouch, that can’t be good for the environment.

Found out something interesting about those that are evangelists for a cause but use the cause for their own ends. In this case, the web site for MG Web Services was held up as not “embracing high resolution” monitors and one of the tutorials was “…not holding well. These screenshots are at 1280 with min font-size at 24px.”

Some thing didn’t seem right about this to me, it would seem most people simply don’t use text at 24 pixels high unless they are reading their monitor from across the room and using a wireless keyboard/mouse. I use a Bluetooth keyboard-mouse myself, but a Ctrl+ once or twice to increase the text size is usually more than enough to make something big enough to read when a little further away from the screen, and my eyes are not good. Having a web site layout get a little mucked up when someone re-sizes the text has never bothered me, but seeing it completely blown out with someone just visiting it was bothersome, but no more.

The answer came from one of the tutorials itself, writing the first two have been an invaluable learning exercise for myself and they are still leading to new stuff. For this one, the CSS 1 Spec had the answer right on page one no less. If you have another look at the screenshot in question, notice where it says “One inch = 160DPI”. The problem is, 160 DPI is not yet a “typical” computer display as far as I know. No problem, the CSS spec has an answer for that too, and it’s called a “reference pixel” and that’s about a 90 DPI one, not 160 and things work just fine at the recommended size. The User-Agent is the one that needs to rescale, not most of the world that is already and still using the 90 DPI reference model.

Pixel units…… are relative to the resolution of the canvas, i.e. most often a computer display. If the pixel density of the output device is very different from that of a typical computer display, the UA should rescale pixel values. The suggested reference pixel is the visual angle of one pixel on a device with a pixel density of 90dpi and a distance from the reader of an arm’s length.

And then I went back and revisited the other comment about it “not holding up well”, and it’s like doh! The reason it’s not holding up well is because the screen shot is of the example site we’re trying to fix, not the sample site that is fixed! Note to myself, always look at the address bar and make sure criticism is coming from where you think it is.