News Story from Chattanooga Times Free Press, 11/16/11.

RE: 11/15/11 seminar at University of Tennessee at Chattanooga

Questions should be asked about the science behind the falling of the World Trade Center buildings 10 years ago, panelists agreed Tuesday night.

The University of Tennessee at Chattanooga hosted the event, "The Science of 9/11," which began with a moment of silence for the families who lost loved ones.

The discussion "is an opportunity to illustrate the application of the scientific method to a real life event that most Americans remember exactly where they were," said UTC professor of anthropology Lyn Miles, one of the event's coordinators.

There are also more than 1,500 architects and engineers who have raised scientific questions over the collapse of the World Trade Center and are calling for a full investigation of 9/11, and it's worthwhile to discuss why, she added.

The school showed the documentary "Architects & Engineers 9/11 Truth," also the name of the nonprofit that says the collapse of the buildings was not caused by the impact of the planes but by explosives or controlled demolition.

Close to 300 people attended the event, many university students, who often cheered the comments made from one of the panelists, David Johnson, a University of Tennessee at Knoxville urban planning professor emeritus and urban engineering expert, who also calls for a new investigation of what happened on that day when almost 3,000 people were killed.

Public Lecture - The Collapse of the Seventh Tower: A Physical & Chemical Analysis
Niels H. Harrit, Copenhagen University

When: Wednesday, November 16, 2011 @ 7:15-9:15 p.m.
Where: Morrison Hall 007
Departmental Sponsors: College of Arts and Sciences, American Studies Program

Abstract:
To most people, the image of the World Trade Center (WTC) is confined to the famous twin towers, which dominated the New York skyline until September 11th, 2001, when they collapsed after each one being hit by an airliner. However, the trade center was an assembly of seven buildings around a plaza. The youngest of these, WTC7, was a huge office building, reaching 186 meters and 47 stories into the air. The ground-plan area was little less than a soccer field.

WTC7 was not hit by an airliner. Still, it collapsed seven hours after the twin towers in a totally symmetric movement with free-fall speed. It was the most unexpected collapse in the history of modern building construction.

The talk outlines the factual circumstances around this event. These facts are held up against the official account of the event as it has been presented in a report from National Institute of Standards and Technology. According to this report, WTC7 collapsed due to fire. But never before - or since - in history has a steel-framed high-riser collapsed due to fire.

In the second part of the talk it is proposed that the collapse of WTC was due to controlled demolitions using explosives. In addition, unambiguous evidence points to the use of thermite, which is an energetic material used to cut and weld steel. The newest findings in the dust include still-reactive remains of so-called nano-thermite.

http://themester.indiana.edu/events/harrit.shtml

Probably getting a bit bored of it all by now!

Here is a long article from the Independent so here is a selection:

Conspiracy theories are cultural viruses. Once they infect the zeitgeist, it is extremely difficult to stamp them out – no matter how solid the evidence against them is. Studies have shown that people who are prone to believe in conspiracies display an innate bias towards information which supports that conspiracy, no matter how spurious that information is and no matter how solid the evidence against the conspiracy is.

Today, there are more conspiracy theories and more conspiracy theory believers than ever before. They range from the simply fanciful – such as the theory that Kentucky Fried Chicken is owned by the Ku Klux Klan which laces the food with a drug that makes only black men impotent – to the labyrinthine, such as the intricacy of theories around 9/11 and the death of John F Kennedy.

...

Once the quaint preserve of anoraks (think JFK) and X Files fans (alien abduction, faked moon landings and Area 51), they have now become a malevolent modern-day tool which nefarious organisations use to further their aims. Jamie Bartlett, head of the Violence and Extremism Programme at independent think tank Demos, has studied this worrying trend.

...

There are several reasons why conspiracy theories are increasing. Mainly it is because the internet has made it easy to propagate rumour and supposition on a global scale. Social networking sites allow conspiracy theorists to seek out and link with like-minded individuals. Whereas past conspiracies, like those surrounding the death of JFK, took years to formulate and disseminate, today's conspiracies develop almost organically. Immediately after 9/11, the internet was abuzz with individual voices questioning the official version of events. These nebulous ideas were able to crystallise as theorists discussed and developed their ideas and formed into a set of theories adopted by groups such as the 9/11 Truth Movement.

...

The number of people who believe conspiracy theories is staggering. According to various recent surveys, a third of Brits believe Princess Diana was murdered (a Daily Mail survey), a quarter believe the moon landings were faked (from Engineering and Technology magazine), nearly half of all Americans do not believe global warming is man-made (a Yale University survey) and 84 per cent of them believe 9/11 was an inside job (a New York Times/CBS poll).

Posted on November 9, 2011 by WashingtonsBlog