Error Theory

In contrast to architect Paul Murdoch's dirty trick (trying to plant a terrorist memorial mosque on the Flight 93 crash site), Zhang Yimou's trick at the Beijing Olympics was moral, beautiful, and hilarious.

In case you missed it, the Beijing closing ceremony was an extended dramatization of the sexual act, ending with the fertilization of an egg.

Here is a still image of the final tableaux. After the circle of a thousand yellow-clad egg-girls has finally been penetrated by the couple hundred bouncing sperm-boys, the sperms rush to the center to form the nucleus of the fertilized egg, while the egg girls spread out to form the albumen:



Here is the video (two minutes):


Google won't post this video because of the NBC footage, but apparently Blogger is less picky, at least for now. If the video goes down, I have a WMV clip here. The full video has been available at uZood. I claim that the shorter clip is FAIR USE, based on news value.

Zhang Yimou's drama began with WHAT LEADS to the fertilization of an egg (1 minute):

Fair use! (WMV)

In between The Act and its result was a parade of floats, dramatizing the journey of the sperm through guess which body part:
Anatomical drawing, for comparison.

Wondering where the ovaries are? Floating 40 feet above the entire production:


No anatomical drawing needed to recognize this. Georgia O'Keefe would be scandalized.

But the performance wasn't just a sex scene followed by a biology class. The whole production is rendered out of passion and spirit, which connect to the wellspring of spirit in the middle part of the performance, where the circulatory "chi" of the Tai Chi masters is depicted by lit circular bicycles, circulating through bordered pathways around the still pulsating sexual center:


Chi bicycles circulate the pathways of spiritual energy before passing through the red center itself, presumably symbolizing the delivery of the chi to the zygotes.

The philosophy behind this representation may be Taoist or Buddhist, but the result is hardly distinguishable from Catholicism, which also sees the spirit inhabiting the body at conception (an idea that the Chi-Coms, with their policies of forced abortion, might prefer to suppress).

In all a beautiful, profound, life affirming, and wonderfully amusing practical joke. The fertilization of the egg at the end is meant to be the punch line, confirming everyone's suspicions about the obvious POSSIBLE sexual connotations of the preceding. This is not hidden folks. You are SUPPOSED to get it. (Original expose here.)

Choreographer Zhang Yimou is China's most decorated film-maker, with a long history of butting heads with Communist censors, and of making sexy female-centered movies. It is not surprising that he would find a female-centered ode to procreation irresistible.

If some of his Communist overseers were in on the trick that is great news. If they have that much humor, maybe we can feel a bit better about them. The other possibility is that Yimou was able to keep his overseers from seeing enough of the production at once to figure it out. That would be a magnificent story of defiance, which will be lost if people don't get it!


Life affirming vs. murder-cult affirming

This makes two examples of semi-hidden symbolism in a mega-scale production. We have architect Paul Murdoch's dirty trick and Zhang Yimou's wonderful, beautiful and very funny trick. Zhang is the good twin to Murdoch’s evil twin. In contrast to Zhang's life-affirming symbolism, Murdoch is hiding the most disgusting tribute to evil and murder ever concocted.

If we can break the story of the good twin, and see Zhang's production properly celebrated for what it truly is, that spotlight will shine on the evil twin as well, and reveal him for what he truly is. Zhang's trick should also be a much easier story to break, and not just because half the world saw his production. If people are loathe to witness evil, either out of political calculation, or simply because they want to give the benefit of the doubt, everybody loves a good joke.

Zhang and Murdoch (Zhang is the surname) both needed for their symbolism to be semi-hidden. If it was too obvious, the hidden meaning would erupt in controversy and threaten the completion of the project. But the meaning couldn't be too hidden. Once the production is a fait accompli, people have to get it. The symbolic accomplishment has to be demonstrable, or all is for naught.

The positive morality of Zhang's display explains how he was able to get away with it. There can't be a woman in that fertilized egg scene who, after multiple rehearsals, did not know that she was dramatizing the fertilization of an egg. There cannot be a man on spring shoes who did not know he was playing a sperm, but because it was beautiful and fun, everyone was willing to go along with the joke.

Ditto for any Chi-Coms who figured it out (probably as the performance date loomed). And why not? With such a lovely trick, if it comes out that the party knew, it will be to their credit that they let it proceed.

These dynamics of positive morality are not available to Paul Murdoch. For his evil scheme to advance, he needs a very different moral dynamic to be in play, a dynamic of willful blindness, where people look at the world in terms of what they think is most advantageous for them to see, instead of in terms of what is actually there. Unfortunately, this is the dominant cognitive style in much of America today.

It is no surprise that people who could choose a memorial that is laid out in the shape of an Islamic crescent and star flag would be determined not to be concerned that the crescent actually points to Mecca. After all, the crescent and star flag configuration is obvious:


Click for larger image.

Anyone who can be willfully blind to THAT can easily ignore what seems to them to be much more esoteric, like the orientation of the crescent. It doesn't matter to them that the orientation of the crescent is actually the most important thing to Muslims, turning the crescent into the Mecca-direction indicator around which every mosque is built. What MUSLIMS think? Why that is positively arcane, to anyone who finds it advantageous to think so.


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Wonderful! Beautiful! Hilarious!

In case you didn't realize it at the time, the Beijing closing ceremonies were actually a magnificent dramatization of copulation and conception! As a teaser, here is a clip of the finale, where the thousand yellow-dressed ladies form up into an egg, before a couple hundred bouncing sperm come in and try to fertilize them.

It doesn't take long for the sperms to penetrate the egg wall, at which point they all zoom into the middle to form the nucleus of the fertilized egg, while the egg ladies spread out to fill a much larger circle, forming the albumen of the fertilized egg (2 minutes):



This isn't hidden folks. You are SUPPOSED to get it. Of course if you are just looking at the finale, you missed all the sex. Such purple subject matter is a bit off topic for this blog, so I am creating a separate blog to post the rest of my expose: The Closing Ceremony Orgasm Blog. Check it out.

It is possible that some Chi-Coms were in on this too, which would be great. I'd feel a bit better about them if I saw they had a sense of humor. But it is also possible that no overseers had seen the parts of the whole put together before, making it possible for Zhang Yimou to slip it past them. Apparently he has a long history of butting heads with Chinese censors (and of making sexy girl-centered movies).

Getting back to the subject of THIS blog, Zhang Youmin's excellent semi-hidden practical joke is polar opposite to architect Paul Murdoch's disgusting semi-hidden dirty trick of trying to plant a terrorist memorial mosque on the Flight 93 crash site.

When President Bush announced the Iraq war "surge" in late 2007, Senator Biden was incensed. The Democrats had just taken over Congress on an anti-war platform and here the president was redoubling his efforts to win the war.

In response, Biden held what he described as an extraordinary news conference:

...when I asked myself what the most effective way to accomplish what my desire is, to stop this policy in the shortest amount of time, I concluded that to start with was to make it very clear -- at least on my part, which is unusual with me; I don't think in 34 years I have ever held a press conference between Christmas and New Year's; I don't think I have ever, ever made a public statement during that time, but I did -- to make it clear and hope that others shared my view that the President's idea was a very bad idea.

Biden's answer to this "very bad idea"?

The most significant way to do that -- and I've drafted such an amendment -- is to write a new authorization for the use of force. That would constitutionally render the first authorization of use of force null and void. It would redefine in very stark terms what the Congress believed the mission to be in Iraq and could and would severely limit the President continuing down this path of escalation.

It would eliminate his ability to do that. I drafted a resolution relating to the constitutional authority the President has to call up, again, the National Guard and Reserves in our respective states, which severely limit the President's ability to put more forces into Iraq.

The idea that Congress has the power to un-declare a war it has already declared, or can dictate to the president HOW to fight a war (a power granted exclusively to the president by the Constitution), is radical in the extreme.

It speaks volumes about Biden's judgment that he was prompted to these unconstitutional extremes by some kind of visceral opposition to the surge: an eminently reasonable war-fighting strategy by any historical or rational standard, fully expressive of our best understanding of effective counter-insurgency, as borne out by its rapid and overwhelming success.


Hillary Clinton followed Biden's un-declare the war lead

Biden's lead was influential. A couple weeks later, Senator Hillary Clinton released a presidential campaign video demanding immediate pullout from Iraq, or the Democrats would un-declare the war:

Now it's time to say the redeployment should start in 90 days or the Congress will revoke authorization for this war.

Biden also took the lead in trying to turn Iraq into "another Vietnam"

Senator Shumer was the most explicit about wanting to turn Iraq into "another Vietnam":

"There will be resolution after resolution, amendment after amendment .., just like in the days of Vietnam," Schumer said. "The pressure will mount, the president will find he has no strategy." ["Senate Demos Vow Flood of Anti-war Bills," McClatchy, February 18, 2007.]

But Biden's earlier remarks were already well down that road, as he talked about what else might be done to undermine the president's war-fighting efforts:

I also looked at the funding mechanism. I've been here -- I hate to admit it, but I've been here, I believe, longer than anyone --doesn't make me right -- longer than anyone sitting at this table, including my colleague from Indiana.

I got here when we were -- and I was -- and did support funding limitations on the President of the United States -- which we constitutionally can do -- during the Vietnam War. And we can do it now. We have the constitutional authority to do that.

Over the course of 2007, the Democrats would actually vote forty times to retreat from Iraq. Senator Biden was a key player in these relentless efforts to hand the heart of the Arab world over to al Qaeda and Iran.

Senator Obama, all the while, was a fully supportive bit player, who has remained adamant that if he had it to do over again, he would still be against the surge, despite its success. Why should anyone be surprised? He is simply saying what every mainstream Democrat still believes about Vietnam: that intentionally losing the Vietnam war was the best thing they ever did.

In fact it was the most evil deed ever committed by a free people, but that is how perverted mainstream Democrat thinking is at this point in history. Obama is simply carrying that perversion forward, as the rest of the Democrat party is doing in spirit, even if they are occasionally more circumspect in what they actually say.

But Biden is not particularly circumspect. He is right there with Schumer in thinking that handing Vietnam to the Communists was a great accomplishment, and he was perfectly sincere in thinking that handing Iraq to al Qaeda and Iran would be a great accomplishment too. Obama and Biden: peas in a pod. Both are functionally on the side of our terror war enemies.

Cancel as well the urgent action alert that was going to be the subject of today’s blogburst post. The Memorial Project has just abandoned the "gala" tribute and fundraiser they were planning for almost a year. The event was to be held in Washington DC on September 11th, and yes, they actually called it a “gala,” until Flight 93 family members said NO WAY.

Last month's announcement of the event promised big:

An impressive Honorary Host Committee has been assembled consisting of over 200 members of Congress and the leadership of both the Senate and the House of Representatives. Special state delegations from Pennsylvania and California are also being organized for the event.

Assembled where? In the imaginations of Memorial Project personnel? If there really were 200 Congressmen on board, including the leadership of both parties, what could possibly prompt cancellation?


Has word gotten out that the memorial is actually a terrorist memorial mosque?

Fuggedaboudit. We are a long ways from Congress being alert to the facts. It is possible, however, that there is a growing awareness in Congress that the Flight 93 families are divided over the crescent design (now called a broken circle). Thank Tom Burnett Sr., whose efforts to stop the desecration of his son's grave drew national television coverage in May, and extensive Pittsburgh coverage this month:


Tom Sr. on Pittsburgh's KPXI channel 6, August 4th. (Click for video.)

Us critics know well the difficulty of going up against Flight 93 family members. Who would have imagined that conservative stalwarts like Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity would remain silent about the planting of a giant Mecca-oriented crescent on the Flight 93 crash site? But all it takes is some family members on the other side and nobody wants to get involved.

Maybe Tom's pleas for help are injecting the same paralysis into would-be supporters of the crescent design. If both sides are paralyzed, that is a step in the right direction, but it is nowhere near enough. Architect Paul Murdoch is still on track to stab his terrorist memorial mosque into the heartland of America. (That is the significance of a crescent that Muslims face into to face Mecca: it is the central feature around which every mosque is built.)

How big does the memorial controversy have to get before a few of these paralyzed big-wigs on either side decide to simply check the facts? All congressmen have interns they can assign to fact-check the Mecca orientation of the giant crescent (five minutes), the Islamic crescent soaring in the sky above the symbolic lives of the 40 heroes (five seconds), the 44 glass blocks on the flight path (just open up the design drawings and count).

Michelle Malkin, Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity all have interns too. If these folks are skeptical, they ought to at least want to expose our claims about these features as a fraud, so that the controversy can be put to rest. If they find that our claims are accurate, all we ask is that they join the call for a proper investigation.

Come on movers and shakers. Paralysis is not enough. Stand paralyzed as Paul Murdoch pilots a re-hijacked Flight 93 to its mark, and the heroism of Flight 93 will be well and truly betrayed.

Notice anything strange about the solar cycle predictions advanced by NASA solar physicist David Hathaway? Current levels of solar activity lie well below the confidence interval put forward in Hathaway's early 2006 projection of solar activity, but this failure of his prediction scheme has no effect on the confidence with which he continues to predict an imminent and robust take off of solar cycle 24:


Hathaway's March 2006 sunspot prediction overlaid with his June 2008 sunspot prediction.

The solid middle line in this graphic represents Hathaway's maximum likelihood prediction for the smoothed average sunspot number. The dotted lines demark the 95% confidence interval given by Hathaway's prediction scheme.

If the smoothed average sunspot number goes outside of the predicted confidence interval, we should have 95% confidence that Hathaway's prediction scheme is WRONG. (If the scheme was right, the smoothed average number would only split off from the confidence interval 5% of the time.)

Hathaway's 2006 95% confidence interval ranged about 23 sunspots per year above and below his maximum likelihood prediction. The actual sunspot rate is now about 75 sunspots/year below his March 2006 prediction. Thus we can have probably about 99.9% confidence at this point that Hathaway's prediction scheme is wrong.

This evidence of an errant prediction scheme ought to prompt revision of the scheme, but it is evident from the comparison above that instead of revising his prediction scheme, Hathaway is doubling down. Notice how Hathaway responds to what was for him an unexpected year and a half lull in solar activity. He actually shortens the time horizon within which he expects the next solar cycle to erupt:


In March 2006, Hathaway's maximum likelihood prediction had solar cycle 24 turning upwards 5 or 6 months later. Two months ago Hathaway was predicting up-turn in two months.

How can this possibly be in response to the latest solar behavior (a year and a half of unexpected quiet)? Simple answer: it isn't.


Prediction schemes are SUPPOSED to be weighted by their success

According to NASA's June 2008 explanation of Hathaway's prediction scheme, Hathaway and his colleagues base their prediction of how future solar cycles will progress on a composite of different prediction schemes. Some of the prediction schemes have a theoretical basis. Some are simply statistical projections of past patterns. All are weighted commensurate with past performance. To the extent that theoretical considerations seem to improve predictive ability, they are weighted accordingly in the composite prediction.

But all of that goes out the window when it comes to predicting the length of solar minimums. Here there is no weighting of different schemes according to their performance. Rather:

At this phase of cycle 23 [the solar minimum] we now give full weight to the curve-fitting technique of Hathaway, Wilson, and Reichmann Solar Physics 151, 177 (1994).

That technique says that the shape of the down-phase of the now tailing off solar cycle 23 can be predicted by the shape of its upswing and peak (which were established by the year 2000).

That leaves no avenue for new information to enter the Hathaway/NASA prediction scheme. As NASA explains:

The two parameters for this fit (cycle amplitude and cycle starting time) have remained unchanged since early 1999.

The failure of Hathaway's prediction scheme to predict the delayed onset of solar cycle 24 ought to undermine confidence in Hathaway's scheme and reduce the weight given to it in NASA's composite scheme, but this mechanism is not operative because Hathaway's prediction scheme is the ONLY scheme NASA uses for predicting the end of a solar cycle. No matter how poorly it predicts, it is still weighted 100%.

That makes no sense. We know that extended minimums do occur, and should be included as a possibility in any prediction scheme. In the past, when a solar cycle tailed off for longer than the sharpness and amplitude of its rise would have predicted, how long did it tend to stretch out, and on what pattern? The recent failures of Hathaway's prediction scheme should prompt a shift in attention to the past behavior of such statistical exceptions. Hathaway's latest prediction may well be right. Solar cycle 24 could fire up any day now. But it can't be the maximum likelihood projection at this point.


Hathaway failure to address Maunder Minimum type solar behavior is systematic

It isn't that Hathaway is trying to give precedence to theory-based prediction schemes over mere statistical projection. (Not that that would be valid in any case. Prediction schemes should be weighted by performance, period.) Hathaway is simply giving priority to his own purely statistical model. As he wrote in his 1999 paper:

Ideally, we would like to predict solar activity using a model of the sun's magnetic dynamo along with current and past observations to initialize that model. Unfortunately, both the model and many of the important observations do not exist at present. We recognize that solar magnetism is the key to understanding the processes involved. We believe that the sun's differential rotation, meridional circulation, and large-scale convective motions all play important roles in producing the cyclic magnetic behavior that we observe. We have not yet, however, produced a theory that fully incorporates these mechanisms in a model that provides any predictive power.

This applies a fortiori to Hathaway's 1994 prediction scheme. It is all statistical projection. So why isn't Hathaway looking at the full range of statistical evidence? Why is he fixing instead on his own predictive scheme to the exclusion of any consideration of the exceptions to it?

Hathaway certainly knows that there are statistical patterns (past events) that don't fit the cycle shape he is projecting. William Briggs notes that, when Hathaway back-tests his own predictive scheme, he only looks at the sunspot record AFTER the Maunder Minimum (during which sunspot activity went into a 50 year lull). (For the date range Hathaway uses, see figure 1 here.)

Hathaway continues today in the same vein, specifically avoiding consideration of Maunder Minimum type solar behavior. According to NASA, Hathaway simply "believes" that "the quiet of 2008 is not the second coming of the Maunder Minimum."

Hathaway's predictive scheme should be weighed in NASA's composite prediction scheme according to its performance, as NASA does with the other parts of its composite. Cycle 23 is not matching the usual cycle shape, at which point a rational predictive scheme would start paying more attention to the statistical properties of past such anomalies. But Hathaway still gives 100% weight to his so-far non-performing prediction scheme.


The IPCC does the same thing

Hathaway's persistence in predicting a strong solar cycle 24 does not in itself suggest any agenda. If the sun resurges, it will warm the earth, allowing the global warming alarmists to continue to pretend that warming is being caused by fossil fuel burning, but a PREDICTION about what the sun will do does not expose or hide anything.

With one exception. By refusing to even consider the possibility of an extended solar lull, Hathaway himself can avoid having to address the impact that such a lull would have on global temperature. If he did address that question, he would obviously have to note that the last really long such lull seems to have caused the Little Ice Age, which would place him on the side of the "deniers" in the debate about human-caused global warming. If low solar activity caused the Little Ice Age, then the "grand maximum" levels of solar activity during the 20th century would be the cause of 20th century warming, and the hoax of human-caused warming would be exposed.

Looking at the science alone, however, Hathaway cannot be lumped with the IPCC. Most importantly, there actually is a solid body of evidence behind his predictive scheme. Past solar cycles HAVE tended to follow a particular pattern, where the shape of the up-phase predicts the shape of the down-phase.

In contrast, there is no evidence whatsoever for the theory of human-caused global warming. In theory, additional CO2 should have SOME heat trapping effect, but there is no sign of it in the geological record. What warming effect CO2 has is evidently too small to measure, and this is just what we would expect.

CO2 mostly traps the same wavelengths of infrared that the vastly more abundant water vapor, leaving very little heat trapping work for marginal increases in CO2 to perform. Thus theory itself says that the marginal effect of CO2 on temperature should be miniscule.

Where Hathaway doesn't look so good is in what he leaves out. This man's job is to study sunspot activity, and he is ignoring the Maunder Minimum???? But even here, he is not nearly as bad as the IPCC. Of course Hathaway should be highly focused at this point on the phenomenon of extended solar minima, but the truth is that we know almost nothing about these minima beyond that fact that there was a fifty year lull a couple hundred years ago.

In the case of the IPCC, the alternative prediction scheme that they consciously ignore is based on a very well defined and certain cause of global warming. The geologic record proves beyond any doubt whatsoever that global temperature has historically been driven almost entirely by the level of solar activity.

High levels of solar-magnetic activity shield the earth from galactic cosmic radiation (GCR). The level of GCR reaching earth can be measured from isotope signatures deposited in the geologic record, which also contains contemporaneous temperature signatures. Study after geologic study has found that the level of GCR "explains" statistically about 90% of global temperature variation on every time scale. (Fred Singer's book Unstoppable Global Warming: Every 1500 Years compiles the scientific evidence for laymen.)

We also have a good theory of the mechanism by which the level of GCR (and the sun's blocking of it) affects global temperature. (See Henrik Svensmark's book The Chilling Stars.) But having a working theory is just gravy. We don't need to know the mechanism in order to prove causality. A 90% correlation on all time scales over hundreds of thousands of years cannot be coincidence, and the causality can only go one way. It is not the temperature of the earth that is determining the level of solar activity, or the influx of GCR.

The IPCC's excuse for not taking solar magnetic effects into account is that the mechanism is not understood, but that is not a legitimate reason. The mechanism does not have to be understood for us to know that some such mechanism is at work, and how it will affect global temperature as solar activity changes. Any prediction that does not exploit the predictive value of that known physical relationship is unscientific.


Scientific fraud

The IPCC ought to be using the composite prediction scheme that NASA is nominally using for predicting sunspot activity (but not actually using when it comes to predicting how long a solar cycle will last). They should be exploiting the predictive value of ALL of the different available predictive mechanisms, whether they model the mechanisms behind known physical relationships, or just model the statistical relationships themselves.

In the case of global warming, MOST of the weight would go to the very well established causal relationship between GCR and global temperature, and NONE of it would go to CO2 effects for which there is NO evidence in the geologic record. (CO2 follows global temperature, as warming oceans release CO2, but there is no evidence that it has or can drive temperature in any significant way.)

Hathaway is tainted with a little of the same stain, because he too is fixating on what the evidence suggests is a failed prediction scheme to the exclusion of alternate possibilities that he obviously should be giving some weight to. He just doesn't go nearly as far in this direction as the IPCC, which gives 100% of their predictive weight to a theory for which there is NO evidence, while completely refusing to account or even acknowledge what we KNOW is the predominant driver of global temperature.

"Grand maximum" levels of solar activity during the 20th century easily explain the small amount of late 20th century warming, leaving little or nothing to be explained by alternative mechanisms like human burning of fossil fuels. The IPCC's particular fraud, for which there is no analog in Hathaway's work, springs from the coincidental correlation between solar activity and the human burning of fossil fuels over the 20th century.

When an explanatory variable is omitted from a statistical estimate, the explanatory power of the omitted variable will be misattributed to any correlated variables (however causally unrelated). The IPCC intentionally omits the solar-magnetic variable, knowing full well that its overwhelming explanatory power will be misattributed to the coincidentally correlated increase in atmospheric CO2. They then knowingly project this misattributed explanatory power forward in order to create a dishonest political attack on fossil fuel burning.

(I traced this ruse through the 4th IPCC draft report in the comments that I submitted for draft review.)

This scientific fraud by the IPCC is evil. In this context, it is disappointing that Hathaway is not eager to discuss the Maunder Minimum, and explain how every solar scientist knows about the well established correlation (and the implied causal relationship), between sunspot activity and global temperature. That he dodges this question by unscientifically failing to address Maunder Minimum type episodes in his analysis of our present solar lull does not speak well for his integrity.


UPDATE: Tim Ball also slams IPCC for omitting solar-magnetic mechanism, despite overwhelming evidence for it

The IPCC's excuse for omitting solar-magnetic effects from their prediction scheme is that the mechanims is not understood. Ball rejects this on the grounds that we actually have from Svensmark a very good theory:

...they studiously avoided any discussion of the clear relationship between sunspot activity and temperature. They claimed there was no mechanism to explain the correlation so it could not be included, but that is incorrect. A very valid mechanism known as the Cosmic Theory (Svensmark and Calder, “The Chilling Stars”) has been in the literature with increasing detail since 1991. The date is important because IPCC claimed it was excluded because it was not published in time to meet their cut off date for consideration.

This is a very important deception to expose, but the scientific failure of the IPCC at this point actually goes much deeper. At the risk of sounding like a broken record, even if we did not understand the mechanism, the causal relationship between solar-magnetic activity and global temperature is fully proven by the close correlation between the two over hundreds of thousands of years.

The IPCC's position is like saying that, prior to Newton's and Einstein's theories of gravitation, the best prediction for what a rock would do when released into the air is that it would waft on the breeze. After all, we understand the mechanism of the air pushing on the rock, but we don't understand the mechanism of this invisible force that pulls a rock towards the earth, so it ought to be omitted from our predictions.

I discussed this last month in my post about the pair of frauds from the American Physical Society who claim that hundreds of thousands of years of close correlation between solar activity and global temperature does not imply causality. The hell it doesn't!


Other related posts

This post shows how the expected environmental impacts of CO2 burning are actually positive, and by a wide margin. Thus the proper micro-economic tax on fossil fuel burning, if there is to be one, would be negative (a subsidy), not the perverse high taxes and cap-and-trade systems that are expanding today.

My posts on the basic science of the global warming fraud here and here.

Joanne Hanley, superintendent of the Flight 93 Memorial Project, cannot answer the damning facts about the crescent design (now called a broken circle), so she has decided to slander the people who are pointing them out. In a speech at the Memorial Project's August 2nd meeting, she cited a list of "threats" she had received from critics, saying for instance that her "career would be destroyed."

In defense of Superintendent Hanley, Flight 93 family member Calvin Wilson expressed his disgust at the violent threats and charged that critics were acting like the terrorists themselves. Three Pennsylvania newspapers covered Hanley's claims to have been threatened, one editorialized against the uncivilized critics, and a Memorial Project press release highlighted Wilson's outraged response to the supposed threats.

It is all a lie. Here is the Letter to the Editor that Alec Rawls just sent to the duped Pennsylvania newspapers, exposing Superintendent Hanley's deception:


A warning is not a threat. A warning is to protect against a threat.

As the lead organizer of the movement to stop the crescent design, I can tell you who made the statements that Superintendent Hanley was complaining about. I recognized every one of the phrases she cited as coming from myself. It is ME who Joanne Hanley is accusing of making threats, an accusation that is not just false, but grotesquely dishonest.

What Joanne Hanley is casting as threats were WARNINGS, trying to alert her to the threat posed by architect Paul Murdoch and his scheme to plant a giant Mecca-oriented crescent on the Flight 93 crash site. This is one of Superintendent Hanley’s excuses for refusing to heed warnings about the crescent design. She pretends that warnings are threats and hence SHOULD NOT be listened to.

When I couldn’t get Hanley to look to the facts for the country’s sake, I tried to appeal to her instinct for self-preservation, warning her of the personal consequences of Murdoch’s attempt to stab a terrorist memorial mosque into the heartland of America. (That is the meaning of a crescent that Muslims face into to face Mecca: it is the central feature of a mosque.)

As I put it in a March 2006 email to both Superintendent Hanley and Project Manager Jeff Reinbold:

I have been trying to save your lives and your careers for six months. It is not too late for you. You can still do your jobs and investigate the basic facts I have warned you about, like the Mecca-orientation of Murdoch's original Crescent of embrace, and the continued presence of Murdoch's original crescent in the redesign.

Shortly after this email, Joanne Hanley told me why she was not concerned about the almost-exact Mecca orientation of the giant crescent. In a conference call with Jeff Reinbold, she told me that: “It isn’t exact. That’s one we talked about. It has to be exact.” (The giant crescent points 1.8° north of Mecca, ± .1°.)

If she had admitted to the public what she was admitting in private—that the giant crescent does indeed point almost exactly to Mecca—it would have been okay. The people of Pennsylvania would be able to decide for themselves whether a giant Mecca-oriented crescent makes an acceptable memorial to the victims of Islamic terrorism, so long as it does not point EXACTLY at Mecca. Instead, the Memorial Project decided to deceive the public, sending an academic fraud from the University of Texas to assure the press that there is no such thing as the direction to Mecca:

Daniel Griffith, a geospatial information sciences professor at the University of Texas at Dallas, said anything can point toward Mecca, because the earth is round. [Post Gazette, “Flight 93 memorial draws a new round of criticism,” August 18, 2007.]

Just as I warned Superintendent Hanley that her career was in jeopardy, I also warned Dr. Griffith that his career would be destroyed if he did not correct this blatant disinformation. Like Hanley, Griffith too interpreted my warning as a threat, as if it would be ME who was responsible for the harm to his reputation, when he was covering up evidence of an enemy plot by lying about basic geometry, pretending that there is no direction between two points on planet earth.

In spite of the Memorial Project’s active cover-up of Murdoch’s plot, I continued to treat Superintendent Hanley as what she is: a fellow countryman aboard a hijacked airplane who is in need of rescue. As I put it in another email to Superintendent Hanley last November:

I don’t want you to be hurt here. There is only one bad guy in this story: Paul Murdoch. I want to help everyone else get off of this hijacked airplane. … I am not your enemy. I am your friend. I am the one who has been trying to save you, for two damned years, and I still am, despite your persistent public slanders against me.

Is it even POSSIBLE to be clearer? A warning is not a threat. A warning is to protect someone from a threat, as my communications spelled out over and over. For Joanne Hanley to pretend that these warnings about the threat she is facing were threats in themselves is deliberate dishonesty. For her to tell Calvin Wilson that these attempts to protect her from Murdoch’s plot were violent threats against her, prompting Wilson to use his status as a family member to attack critics on this dishonest basis, is even worse.

Joanne Hanley is not the only person I am warning. Every Pennsylvanian is aboard this hijacked airplane. How can the newspapers of Pennsylvania let stand a fraudulent claim that there is no such thing as the direction to Mecca? How can the educated people of Pennsylvania, the math teachers, the college students, the politicians, let such a fraud stand, when every one of you knows that Muslims face Mecca for prayer?

If Pennsylvanians continue to be willfully blind to easily verifiable evidence of an enemy plot in your own back yard, history will not be kind to you.

Alec Rawls
Palo Alto CA
August 12, 2008


Morality requires trust in truth
Imagine if one of the passengers on Flight 93 was told that if they did not retake the airplane, they would be killed when the terrorists flew the airplane into a building. If the passenger was Joanne Hanley, she would say: "Stop threatening me!"

Any excuse to avoid the truth, no matter how nonsensical or even suicidal. A photo-negative of the fighting spirit of Flight 93.

Asked by Pilate to account for himself, Jesus answered: “To this end was I born, and for this cause came I into the world, that I should bear witness unto the truth.” (Jn. 18:37.) Jesus wasn’t a witness for the truth only sometimes, or only about matters of salvation. He proceeded from the factual truth of every situation that crossed his path, and called upon the rest of us to similarly trust in truth.

Secular moral reason demands the same thing. Anyone who thinks that it can somehow be right or in their interest to avoid or suppress the truth will through that avoidance of the truth become divorced from reality, with the inevitable effect that their ideas about what is right or in their interest can only be wrong. This is the irrationality of the Memorial Project. They proceed on the assumption that the crescent design is innocent, while self-consciously covering up evidence that it is not.

This malfeasance puts the rest of our society to the test. All of the people who we pay to check and report the facts: government, academia and the media, are all desperately trying to suppress the truth. That leaves it up to the rest of us to witness and communicate the truth about Murdoch's plot. (Some basic facts, and how to verify them for yourself, posted here.)

Tom Burnett Sr. entered the lion's den on Saturday to oppose the crescent memorial to Flight 93 (now called a broken circle). An excerpt from the beginning of the Somerset Daily American's banner headline story about division amongst the families:

“Tom Burnett Jr. led the effort to take the plane back,” his father said. “When I was on the design jury, I saw the red crescent of embrace and realized it was an obvious and blatant symbol of Islam. It does not properly honor our people — those Flight 93 heroes. I think it’s a travesty that it’s moved along so fast.”

He called for an investigation into the design. When he has brought up his concerns, some of the task force and advisory commission members have dismissed him, he said.

“This is a cataclysmic mistake,” he said. “I’m going to save you from yourselves. I’d like to ask for an unbiased, transparent, honest investigation. This is just a terrible, terrible mistake. I’m asking every American — we must stop this mistake. This panel doesn’t own the design, I don’t own it, Pennsylvania doesn’t own it, all of America and all of the world own it.”

He said he is also tired of the controversy, but that they must honor the heroes properly. It will reverberate in history.

“I’m not going to stop fighting this thing, it is very, very bad,” Burnett said. “Wake up. Get your heads out of the sand.”

Other Flight 93 family members roared back. What is usually a three hour quarterly meeting of the Memorial Project stretched to five hours as over twenty people signed up to speak on both sides.


One side wants scrutiny. The other is desperate to avoid it.

The pattern at the meeting was simple and consistent. Critics of the crescent design pointed out damning facts and called for independent investigation. Defenders of the broken circle insisted that there is nothing to investigate, and cried out for critics of the design to stop putting them through this agony.

If the claims of the critics are not accurate, independent investigation would end the agony. If the crescent/broken-circle does not actually point within two degrees of Mecca, then put this explosive claim to rest by showing where the crescent does point. If there are not actually to be 44 inscribed translucent blocks emplaced along the flight path (matching the number of passengers, crew, and terrorists), it is a simple matter of opening up the design drawings and counting.

If the defenders of the crescent had truth on their side, they would be eager to have it exposed. Unfortunately for them, the giant crescent does point to Mecca, and somehow they don't want the public to know it.


Todd Beamer's father is on the side of the crescent?

The highest profile defender of the crescent design was Mr. David Beamer, whose son Todd issued the "Let's roll" signal to re-take Flight 93. Mr. Beamer, beloved by conservatives for his opposition to Congressman Murtha, had not previously taken a public position on the crescent design. He has apparently gotten involved in fundraising for the memorial, and announced at the meeting that he has undertaken two months of due diligence, looking into criticisms of the design.

Listeners expected Mr. Beamer to continue with a report on his fact-checking efforts, but he did not have a single word to say about any of the claims that Mr. Rawls and Mr. Burnett have put forward, launching instead into an extended condemnation of Alec Rawls for his "obsessive" persistence.

If he found that the giant crescent does not point to Mecca, surely he would have said so. Similarly for the terrorist memorializing block count, or the placement of the 9/11 date in the exact position of the star on an Islamic crescent and star flag. What better way to be rid of this dastardly Rawls fellow than to expose his claims as a fraud?

Mr. Beamer's silence about what he found speaks volumes, and not just about the crescent design. Who could fact check these claims and then be silent about his findings?


Don't look at the design drawings!

Every defender of the crescent had his own scheme of evasion and obfuscation. Patrick White, Vice President of Families of Flight 93, took Alec Rawls to task for holding up a 2005 graphic of the top of the Tower of Voices, where an Islamic shaped crescent soars in the sky above the symbolic lives of the 40 heroes. This old graphic should not be taken as indicative of the current design Mr. White suggested, as the design has evolving for three years now. Yet the exact same graphic was brought to the meeting by the Memorial Project itself, and was on display right outside the courtroom where the meeting was held.

That's going to make some great video, as will one particularly scurrilous attack on Mr. Burnett, and the victim card played by Project Superintendent Joanne Hanley. Several videographers will be sending raw footage, which Alec will start putting together when he returns to California next week.


Big enough to check the facts yet?

How big does the conflict have to get before some major media outlet is willing to do their jobs and actually check the facts for themselves? David Dunbar and Brad Reagan of Popular Mechanics were willing to fact-check the "9/11 truth" morons, finding that most of their evidence is deliberately taken out of context, and that none of their claims stand up to the least bit of scrutiny.

Come on PM. If we are a bunch of frauds then we are just as much in need of debunking. We've even got Flight 93 family members at loggerheads and crying out for relief. What are you waiting for? (A handy dandy list of damning facts to check here.)