Bob and Tony and Rosie and Malice

Rosie had Bob McIlvaine and Tony Szamboti on her radio show (MP3 file) a week or so ago. It's the usual bit of nuttery; the program leads in with a lie: "How many buildings collapsed on 9-11 Mom? Three."

Well, three if you don't count WTC-3. And St. Nick's.

Bob McIlvaine talks about the explosions before the planes hit. Never mind that mop-jockey Willie Rodriguez is the only person to claim there were explosions before the plane impacts. Bob's got people from Ladder 10 who told him there were explosions, and Willie who says there was one before the planes, so therefore Bob's got numerous reports of multiple explosions before.

Tony Szamboti chips in (breathlessly--the guy sounds like he's just finished the mile run) to tell us fire can't melt steel. Oh, except for in a few cases. Left unsaid, of course, by this engineer is that fire doesn't have to melt steel for the metal to lose its load-bearing capacity.

The 9-11 Commission didn't even mention Building 7's collapse! (They didn't even mention St. Nick's collapse either, but the dolts never bring that up.)

Sigh. These morons are like a broken record.

Mackey Vs Szamboti Part III

This mostly just makes the rubble bounce, in Mackey's continuing controlled demolition of truther engineer Tony Szamboti, but educational never the less.

Ryan Mackey Vs. Tony Szamboti Part II

Unfortunately the audio quality was poor, but worth it for entertainment value to hear Szamboti's creative speculation. At one point he argues that the twin towers may have been brought down through hydraulics and cables.

Mackey Vs Szamboti Part I

The first part of the Hardfire debate between NASA engineer Ryan Mackey and truther mechanical engineer Tony Szamboti is up. Another good faceoff between reality and fantasy.

Ryan Mackey to Debate Troofers Szamboti, Chandler

On Hardfire, hosted by Ron Wieck. You know that we'll have the video up as soon as it is available. As I mentioned in that thread, I am confident that we are sending the right man into the arena, armed with the facts. Break a leg, Ryan!

Bentham Journals Get Punk'd! Again.

LOL, remember all the pride that the kooks expressed when Jones and Harrit, et. al., got their paper published in the "peer-reviewed Bentham Open Journals?" Well, turns out that's not the only BS paper published at that venue:

Earlier this year, Davis started receiving unsolicited emails from Bentham Science Publishers, which publishes more than 200 "open-access" journals – which turn the conventional business model of academic publishing on its head by charging publication fees to the authors of research papers, and then making the content available for free.

As the emails stacked up, Davis was not only encouraged to submit papers, but was also invited to serve on the editorial board of some of Bentham's journals – for which he was told he would be allowed to publish one free article each year. "I received solicitations for journals for which I had no subject expertise at all," says Davis. "It really painted a picture of vanity publishing."

Oh, but it gets better, much better. After creating their paper with a computer program that generates nutty stuff:

Davis and Anderson, writing under the noms de plume David Phillips and Andrew Kent, also dropped a hefty hint of the hoax by giving their institutional affiliation as the Center for Research in Applied Phrenology, or CRAP.

Yet four months after the article was submitted, "David Phillips" received an email from Sana Mokarram, Bentham's assistant manager of publication:

This is to inform you that your submitted article has been accepted for publication after peer-reviewing process in TOISCIJ. I would be highly grateful to you if you please fill and sign the attached fee form and covering letter and send them back via email as soon as possible to avoid further delay in publication.

The publication fee was $800, to be sent to a PO Box in the United Arab Emirates.

Of course, those of us who've been paying attention know that the Bentham Journals got punk'd the first time when they published the ridiculous paper by Harrit, Jones, Ryan and Szamboti.

Hats off to Philip Meir Davis and Kent Anderson, who pulled off the hoax. Here's a sample of the computer-generated nonsense:

In this section, we discuss existing research into red-black trees, vacuum tubes, and courseware [10]. On a similar note, recent work by Takahashi suggests a methodology for providing robust modalities, but does not offer an implementation [9].

It makes more sense than what Jones and Harrit published.

Hat tip for this excellent find to alienentity at JREF, who points us to this post by Volatile, also at JREF.

Update: More discussion here. Turns out that the footnotes have some hilarity in them, including a 2005 article by Alan Turing and Timothy Leary (both dead by that point--Turing had been dead for 50 years), and Noam Chomsky's work on vacuum tubes and voice over IP protocols.

Davis posts here.

What is surprising is that the assistant manager claimed that the article went through peer-review although there is no evidence that it actually did. Anyone with English proficiency — with or without a degree in computer science — would recognize that this manuscript makes absolutely no sense.

Remember Jones claiming that this was the most rigorous peer review he'd ever undergone? I'm certainly hoping that's not true.

Update: Fallout from the incident:

Bambang Parmanto, a University of Pittsburgh information scientist, resigned from his editorship at The Open Information Science Journal (TOISCIJ) after reading a story on The Scientist's website yesterday (June 10) that described a hoax paper submission to the journal. Editors at journal claimed to have peer reviewed the article and slated it for publication pending the submission of $800 in "open access fees."

"I didn't like what happened," Parmanto told The Scientist. "If this is true, I don't have full control of the content that is accepted to this journal." Parmanto said that he had never seen the phony manuscript that was accepted by TOISCIJ. "I want to lessen my exposure to the risk of being taken advantage of."

You may recall that the editor of the Journal that published Harrit and Jones' paper also resigned immediately after that paper was accepted.

By the way, Parmanto may have to wait for awhile for his name to be removed from the masthead; check out the first comment here:

Well done! I have had my doubts about that journal for quite some time. Actually, I have long ago withdrawn from the so-called editorial board because I felt something was wrong. I am actually a bit shocked to find out that my name still figures on the list!!

Steven Jones Suggests Magic Paint Took Down the Twin Towers

Richard Greene on Air America Radio is continuing his "month of truth" by bringing truther guests on his show. Bizarrely he let Kevin Barrett be in charge of producing last Thursday's, so the panel ended up being him, Richard Gage, Tony Szamboti, Steven Jones and a token debunker nobody has ever heard of named John Brown. Since the host is on their side, apparently he thought 5-1 was a fair ratio. Barrett complains the entire interview that nobody wants to debate him, but consider the source. Kev, you claim that there are no such thing as Islamic suicide bombers in Iraq, threaten anyone who supports the US government with hanging, create a website to post the locations of private individuals, and videotape yourself screaming on street corners in a Guy Fawkes mask. Did you ever consider that people just consider you a nutjob and don't want to debate you? Just put that in your mind there somewhere...

Any, most of the interview is pretty typical. Gage gives his usual speech about how over a hundred first responders reported explosions, and how massive steel beams weighing several tons were tossed 500 feet by explosives into other buildings. Curiously, he still does not address the fact that none of this was picked up the dozens of cameras trained on the buildings. I have always been perplexed about how at the Pentagon, where we have hundreds of witnesses to a plane crashing, a rather clear and obvious event not subject to interpretation, they insist that we need video evidence. At the World Trade Center though, where there is plenty of video evidence, they then ignore it, and insist we must rely on their own nebulous interpretations of what people heard.

Steven Jones of course rants on about his new "peer reviewed" paper, as if this poorly written and pointless letter were the greatest scientific work since Isaac Newton's Principia Mathematica. As usual he continues his thermite fetish, which once again takes any form and properties required by its proponent. I am half surprised he did not suggest it as the ultimate Mother's Day gift. He did surprise me with one new claim though:

Jones: Superthermite, in the nano-composite sol gel form, can be painted on the steel columns and that then can be touched off with radio controlled signals. This would not take months.

Greene: How long professor, how long would it take to put enough thermite into a building like that to be able to bring it down?

Jones: In my paper, I estimate, it depends of course on the number, you tell them this is where... they might not even know what they are painting on the columns. They have access through the elevator shafts in the towers. That's where you need to plant the explosives, primarily...

Greene: OK, interesting, John Brown...

Jones: That answer then is it would take weeks, not months.

As someone who once spent a week painting my house, I am a bit mystified at the claim that you could sneak into an elevator shaft, rip out all the gypsum wallboard, and paint the steel beams of two 110 story buildings in a matter of weeks, all without anyone noticing.

And I am looking forward to the YouTube videos of Jones demonstrating this new demolition technique.