text:
New Mik Shida ~Melbourne Mural Thursday, 24 April 2014 /// Written by Trippe
MELBOURNE --- We've been fans of Australian street artist Mik Shida for years now. This MASSIVE mural in Hong Kong may take the top prize, but we also are enjoying this recent work done in Melbourne on the corner of Johnston and Wellington Streets.
Nychos Friday @Fifty24SF Thursday, 17 April 2014 /// Written by Trippe
SAN FRANCISCO --- You've seen the murals pop up around town the last week from this Austrian street artist as he prepares for his solo show at Fifty24SF opening this Friday, 4/18.
GET THE SHOW DETAILS --- a bunch of NYCHOS
Banksy's Mobile Lovers Wednesday, 16 April 2014 /// Written by Trippe
Speaking of Banksy (wait, were we speaking of Banksy?)... In any case, love his newest creation "Mobile Lovers" located in Bristol, England.
FREDONE FONE Thursday, 10 April 2014 /// Written by Van Edwards
Brazilian FREDONE FONE emailed over a recent outdoor work ~ love the style. ~wanna go back
NYCHOS Mural on Ashbury and Haight Thursday, 10 April 2014 /// Written by Trippe
NYCHOS completed this great new mural on the corner of Haight and Ashbury in San Francisco on Tuesday. Looks Amazing.
Check out this great tiger mural he did last year here in the city.
Project M/3 in Berlin curated by NUART Wednesday, 02 April 2014 /// Written by Van Edwards
BERLIN --- Last week we posted the install for the Project M, a temporary art project with the objective to improve the neighborhood in Berlin. At regular intervals Urban Nation with director Yasha Young invites a group of internationally reclaimed contemporary urban artists to re-design the facade and shop windows of a prominent residential building in Berlin, while it is being reconstructed. (PHOTOS)
Street Eraser in London Friday, 28 March 2014 /// Written by Trippe
LONDON --- tired of walking down the street and having visuals pushed up in your face? Well, Guus Ter Beek and Tayfun Serier in London are out there busy with Photoshop erasing as much as possible with Street Eraser!
Anyone who's used the software will recognise the grey and white checkerboard pattern, and we rather like the idea that it's hiding under the surface of everything around us. And there's still a lot to erase in London. PICS
Rome's Alice Pasquini ~Mural+ Wednesday, 26 March 2014 /// Written by Trippe
Rome based multimedia artist Alice Pasquini emailed over a recent mural completed in the historic working class neighborhood of Rome called Tufello.
Alice Pasquini is a Multimedia artist based in Rome: painting, illustration, installations and animation are her main tools to create poetical and hopeful artworks. Her main subject is feminity, especially strong and independent women.
Project M/3 in Berlin curated by NUART Monday, 24 March 2014 /// Written by Trippe
BERLIN --- Project M is a temporary art project with the objective to improve the neighborhood, to push creativity and to connect people. At regular intervals Urban Nation with director Yasha Young invites a group of internationally reclaimed contemporary urban artists to re-design the facade and shop windows of a prominent residential building in Berlin, while it is being reconstructed (PHOTOS)
Pose MSK in the heart of New York City Thursday, 06 March 2014 /// Written by Trippe
The L.I.S.A. Project NYC invites Pose MSK to paint a mural in Little Italy on the eve of his show at the VOLTA art fair. This week Pose MSK, who is visiting New York City from Chicago to take part in the VOLTA art fair with Jonathan Levine Gallery, painted a mural in Little Italy with The L.I.S.A. Project NYC. Pose's work combines elements of signpainting, advertising, comic books and graffiti into collage-like pop-art compositions. The mural is located at 188 Lafayette, at the corner of Lafayette and Broome, and is the only mural Pose has running right now in Manhattan, although many New Yorkers may already be familiar with Pose's work since he painted at Houston and Bowery alongside Revok last year. -CONTINUE READING
Hyuro and Vinz Mural in Valencia, Spain Tuesday, 18 February 2014 /// Written by Trippe
A collab between Hyuro and Vinz done in Valencia, Spain.
Above is a piece done by Hyuro.
Another great mural by done by Hyuro in Valencia, Spain, 2013.
A Whole Lotta Wall Work by Knarf, Mafia, and Fresh Max Thursday, 30 January 2014 /// Written by Trippe
VIENNA, AUSTRIA --- Over the last 3 months Knarf, Mafia, and Fresh Max went to town on this 3500 square meter wall complex near Vienna. Impressive indeed (PHOTOS).
We wanna skate that little indoor park. Found some footage online of some dudes skating (not too impressively, we might add- no offense. My skills are pretty rusty these days).
Ernest Zacharevic in Malaysia Wednesday, 29 January 2014 /// Written by Henrik Haven
Frequent Fecal Face contributor Henrik Haven is in Penang, Malaysia documenting Ernest Zacharevic's show "Art is Rubbish/Rubbish is Art" which opened on the 17th at Hin Company Bus Depot in Penang, Malaysia (PHOTOS).
The blog also includes images from a satellite show held at the fabolous Eastern & Oriental Hotel, which showcase exclusive oil paintings of Penang, sketches and offset prints.
Kenor, Zosen and Mina Hamada in Miami Friday, 24 January 2014 /// Written by Trippe
At the beginning of December 2013 Kenor, Zosen and Mina Hamada from Barcelona went to Miami for paint some murals during Art Basel. We painted at Grove Studios in Coconut Grove ("Coconut Sunrise"). (PHOTOS)
Next days we created 2 big murals close to Wynwood walls: one doing a circles series ("Acid Galaxy") and other one more free-style ("El carnaval de la juventud") . Both murals are in collaboration (left side by Mina Hamada, center by Kenor and right side by Zosen).
Ernest Zacharevic in Malaysia Thursday, 16 January 2014 /// Written by Henrik Haven
I am now in Penang, Malaysia where I have have enjoyed a very interesting and busy week in the beautiful surroundings here.
I've had the pleasure to follow Ernest Zacharevic since friday while he created some of the new paintings, murals and installations for his first solo show ever, which will open on Friday January 17th here in Penang, Malaysia.
I have also included shots of his visit to the local wood carver/sign maker (since a sign above the door of a new opened store is good luck) where he picked up a sign with one of his "childish horses" which is going to be on display at the show (it's Chinese New year here and it will be the year of the horse - again for good luck), a visit to a legendary stamp maker who carved Ernest's signature in marble in the traditional Chinese way which will be added on the hand finished prints that goes along with the show and finally shots from a local Indian store that usually produce ornament for parades etc. but in this case made 2 Lego sculptures in large scale for the show (similar to the ones he made on a mural just recently that caused quite a stir and controversy in the area here). PHOTOS
Why Is A Blogger Getting Sued Over Street Art? Monday, 13 January 2014 /// Written by Trippe
BALTIMORE --- THE CREATOR OF A BLOG THAT CALLS OUT ABSENTEE LANDLORDS IS FACING LITIGATION OVER A MURAL PROJECT <-- Street art can be a powerful way to call attention to urban blight. From painting vacant houses orange in Detroit to turning an entire favela in Brazil into a canvas for bright colors, art and design interventions can offer a visible mark pointing to what's missing: a healthy, functioning cityscape. These projects can also garner a flurry of initial attention from the media, but what happens after the art goes up and the journalists go home?
In the case of "Wall Hunters," a project that brought attention to absentee landlords in Baltimore by painted murals on vacant and dilapidated housing in the city, the aftermath of the artistic endeavor has led to lawsuits. -continue reading
Broken Line by Bordalo II Monday, 06 January 2014 /// Written by Trippe
Portugal based Artur Bordalo aka Bordalo II emailed over this recent original work created with some spray paint and existing train tracks. We like.
MS DOS In Attesa Thursday, 02 January 2014 /// Written by Trippe
My newest work "MS DOS In Attesa" that was painted in Formia, Italy for the In Attesa Art project where bus stops are turned into spaces for art. It's my homage to the MS-DOS operating system from the 80s/90s. The project is appropriately named because "In Attesa" means waiting. Photo by Flavia Fiengo. --Giulio Vesprini
Sten & Lex in Rome Tuesday, 31 December 2013 /// Written by Trippe
The Italian street art duo known as Sten & Lex emailed over some massive new work they finished in Rome. For a taste of their skills, clicky here for more.
Mural by Brazilian Fredone-Fone Monday, 30 December 2013 /// Written by Trippe
Fredone-Fone emailed over this great recent mural he did in Venezuela as part of the festival "Maracay se Activa".
The self-taught Brazilian artist Fredone-Fone is a son of a bricklayer who started doing signatures in the street in '95, and with time he creates the "HumanUrbano" a being of concrete and steel who lives in a city of meat and bone-, an alive dialog between two bodies: the human being and the urban one.
Gone Fishin' Tuesday, 13 October 2015 11:39
I don't think at this point it needs to be written since the last update to Fecal Face was a long time ago, but...
I, John Trippe, have put this baby Fecal Face to bed. I'm now focusing my efforts on running ECommerce at DLX which I'm very excited about... I guess you can't take skateboarding out of a skateboarder.
It was a great 15 years, and most of that effort can still be found within the site. Click around. There's a lot of content to explore.
Hit me up if you have any ECommerce related questions. - trippe.io
SF Giants' World Series Trophy & DLX Wednesday, 04 March 2015 17:21
I'm not sure how many people are lucky enough to have The San Francisco Giants 3 World Series trophies put on display at their work for the company's employees to enjoy during their lunch break, but that's what happened the other day at Deluxe. So great.
Alexis Anne Mackenzie - 2/28 Wednesday, 25 February 2015 10:21
SAN FRANCISCO --- Alexis Anne Mackenzie opens Multiverse at Eleanor Harwood in the Mission on Saturday, Feb 28th. -details
The Death of the Artist—and the Birth of the Creative Entrepreneur Wednesday, 21 January 2015 10:34
When works of art become commodities and nothing else, when every endeavor becomes "creative" and everybody "a creative," then art sinks back to craft and artists back to artisans—a word that, in its adjectival form, at least, is newly popular again. Artisanal pickles, artisanal poems: what's the difference, after all? So "art" itself may disappear: art as Art, that old high thing. Which—unless, like me, you think we need a vessel for our inner life—is nothing much to mourn.
Hard-working artisan, solitary genius, credentialed professional—the image of the artist has changed radically over the centuries. What if the latest model to emerge means the end of art as we have known it? --continue reading
"Six Degrees" @FFDG Friday, 16 January 2015 09:30
"Six Degrees" opens tonight, Friday Jan 16th (7-10pm) at FFDG in San Francisco. ~Group show featuring: Brett Amory, John Felix Arnold III, Mario Ayala, Mariel Bayona, Ryan Beavers, Jud Bergeron, Chris Burch, Ryan De La Hoz, Martin Machado, Jess Mudgett, Meryl Pataky, Lucien Shapiro, Mike Shine, Minka Sicklinger, Nicomi Nix Turner, and Alex Ziv.
In Wake of Attack, Comix Legend Says Satire Must Stay Offensive Friday, 09 January 2015 09:59
"[Satire] is important because it brings out the flaws we all have and throws them up on the screen of another person," said Turner. "How they react sort of shows how important that really is." Later, he added, "Charlie took a hit for everybody." -read on
Solidarity Thursday, 08 January 2015 09:36
SF Bay Area: What Might Have Been Tuesday, 06 January 2015 09:36
The San Francisco Bay Area is renowned for its tens of thousands of acres of beautiful parks and public open spaces.
What many people don't know is that these lands were almost lost to large-scale development. link
1/5/14 - Going Back Monday, 05 January 2015 10:49
Jacob Mcgraw-Mikelson & Rachell Sumpter @Park Life (5/23) Friday, 23 May 2014 09:22
Opening tonight, Friday May 23rd (7-10pm) at Park Life in the Inner Richmond (220 Clement St) is Again Home Again featuring works from the duo Jacob Mcgraw-Mikelson & Rachell Sumpter who split time living in Sacramento and a tiny island at the top of Pudget Sound with their children.
Jacob Magraw will be showing embroidery pieces on cloth along with painted, gouache works on paper --- Rachell Sumpter paints scenes of colored splendor dropped into scenes of desolate wilderness. ~show details
NYPD told to carry spray paint to cover graffiti Wednesday, 21 May 2014 10:37
NYC --- A new graffiti abatement program put forth by the police commissioner has beat cops carrying cans of spray paint to fill in and cover graffiti artists work in an effort to clean up the city --> Many cops are thinking it's a waste of resources, but we're waiting to see someone make a project of it. Maybe instructions for the cops on where to fill-in?
The NYPD is arming its cops with cans of spray paint and giving them art-class-style lessons to tackle the scourge of urban graffiti, The Post has learned.
Shootings are on the rise across the city, but the directive from Police Headquarters is to hunt down street art and cover it with black, red and white spray paint, sources said... READ ON
////////// Wednesday, 16 June 2010 17:39
Advertise Here
© 2017 FECAL FACE DOT COM Material published on FECAL FACE DOT COM online service is copyrighted by Fecal Face or its licensors, including the originating wire services. Such material is protected by U.S. and international copyright laws and treaties. All rights reserved. Users of the Fecal Face online service may not reproduce, republish or redistribute material found on the web site in any form without the express written consent of the copyright holder.
Material published on FECAL FACE DOT COM online service is copyrighted by Fecal Face or its licensors, including the originating wire services. Such material is protected by U.S. and international copyright laws and treaties. All rights reserved.
Users of the Fecal Face online service may not reproduce, republish or redistribute material found on the web site in any form without the express written consent of the copyright holder.


text:
It's September, the first week of school; the sunny classrooms are full of new students learning how to draw, how to make paste, how to follow instructions on a worksheet. But this is not kindergarten. It's a new semester at Boston's North Bennet Street School, where aspiring craftsmen come for accredited two- and three-year programs in piano technology; bookbinding; carpentry and preservation carpentry; locksmithing; and furniture-, jewelry-, and violin-making. North Bennet Street School, which started in 1885 as a trade school for immigrants, is nationally known for the caliber of its programs. "It's like the Juilliard of furniture-making," one student says, explaining why, at age 63, he's just moved to Boston from Baltimore to enroll.
I am interested in the new students. What drew them to apply to a rigorous, fulltime craftsmanship program? Many have left successful careers in other fields to come here. What is it like to be a beginner again?
Julia, a young woman who moved from Santa Fe to begin the violin program, worked for several years in marketing but "felt like it wasn't adding up to anything. But with a violin, you make it and it's there. It goes somewhere afterward and has a useful life."
Ryan, 26, is a registered nurse who still works part-time but wants to become a violin maker. He's fascinated by the physics of music, the fact that every contour and dimension of construction will affect the instrument's sound. "Why is the Stradivarius model still so good, after all these years? Most fads don't last that long." He plays the violin, but has never built one. During the program, he will build five, as well as a viola and another stringed instrument.
Today Julia, Ryan, and the other new violin students are learning to sharpen a chisel, under the guidance of a guest expert. They are rubbing diamond-sprinkled stones against flat stones to create a smooth surface, watering the stone, and patiently pushing the chisel blade along the wet surface to hone the edge. "Beautiful," the expert tells a student named Jackson. "Nice and sharp. But it's a little uneven here."
"I know," Jackson answers. "I did that on purpose, because look, you can see that the handle's a little wonky. I was compensating."
"OK," the expert says, handing the blade back. "It's your tool. You need to shape it in the way that's going to work best for you."
I ask Jackson what drew him to the program.
"I've worked in a violin shop. And I took a hobby workshop, but it wasn't intense enough."
In other classrooms, the new bookbinders are learning to make wheat paste, and the jewelry-makers are making bezel pushers, tools they will use to set stones. The new furniture-making students have been given worksheets with a set of dimensions, ratios, and sketchy plans of various kinds of joints: mortise and tenon, bridle, half lap, splined miter, dovetail. Their job is to draw orthotic (two-dimensional) and isometric (three-dimensional) views, using the available information to fill in all the hidden lines. There is not a computer in sight; it's all done by hand, using parallel rule, triangle, ruler, and pencil.
Leaning over his drawing, a student named Roger tells me he's been a business adviser to an active cabinetmakers' guild, and has recently retired from a long career as a corporate executive. "I've built pieces for years, but now I'd like to take it a degree of magnitude higher. I'd like to make a career of it." He gets up at 4:30 every morning to take the bus down to Boston from his home in New Hampshire. "I don't have to do this. I'm here because I love it."
What these students are doing is a labor of love, but it's also pragmatic. The tuition at North Bennet Street School is roughly $20,000 a year, but at a time when many graduates of four-year colleges and even advanced degree programs are having trouble finding jobs, 85 percent of North Bennet Street School's graduates are employed within six months after graduation. Which goes to show that there is still a hunger in our society for skilled handwork and for beautiful objects. And that there's still a place for people who have the talent, dedication, and training to quite literally make something of their lives.
Joan Wickersham's column appears regularly in the Globe. Her new book of fiction, "The News From Spain,'' will be published this fall.

subset: commoncrawl


text:
Show All Answers
Code enforcement is a broad term used to describe actions that city staff take to ensure that city ordinances are followed. These ordinances often address operation of businesses, environmental issues, maintaining properties, parking, and other concerns of public health, safety and welfare.
City staff involved in code enforcement activities primarily work in the Police and Community and Economic Development departments. They perform different tasks to bring violators into compliance, such as, building or property inspections, educating and notifying property owners of violations, coordinating with State and County staff, and issuing citations when necessary.
Violations may include parking issues, weeds, yard waste and debris, inoperable vehicles, abandoned vehicles, yard parking, sidewalk and street obstructions, illegal dumping, pest control, storm drain pollution, homeless camps, people living in trailers, business license violations, illegal camping, failure to remove snow, additions to a building without a permit. and other similar issues.
Code enforcement officers are unable to enforce if no violation of a code or statute has occurred. Listed below are several examples that code enforcement officers typically cannot resolve:
The short answer is "no". Although residents in an HOA are required to meet the same standards as other residential areas in the city, the additional restrictive covenants required by an HOA are an agreement between the homeowner and the HOA and can only be enforced by the HOA.
The best way to file a complaint is through the City's website. Look on the home page of www.murray.utah.gov for the "Report a Concern" option. Clicking on this link will bring up a fillable form. Using the website is the fastest way to make sure all the different City staff who help with code enforcement can see the complaint and respond. It also helps us to track progress as a team, and keep you informed if you wish. A complaint can also be filed by calling the following:
Most complaints are assigned to a code enforcement officer within 24 hours. Most often, the first step is a city inspection of the property or situation. Depending on the backlog and circumstances, a Code Enforcement officers can perform the inspection and respond to the complainant within 1-2 working days.
After the city gives notice, the property owner is given a reasonable amount of time to resolve the violation. For example, a complaint about tall weeds on a property is usually resolved within 14 days. Most property owners are willing to resolve a violation on their own after receiving notice. If the property owner is unwilling to cooperate, complaints can take more time to resolve, especially if a citation is issued and the item has to be taken through court proceedings
Most issues can be resolved without taking legal action. However, depending on the violation and the willingness of the property owner to cooperate, the complaint may result in a citation and is referred to the city prosecutor. In some instances, cases are taken to court and can take months to resolve.
The short answer is "yes". A new owner could be required to cut weeds or remove inoperable vehicles from a yard area no matter how short a time they have been in possession. If a prior property owner or occupant was charged, that person will be responsible for answering to the condition of the property at the time the violation occurred. If a new owner or occupant takes control of the property and violations still exist, the new owner is responsible for bringing the property into compliance.
Code enforcement officers spend most of their time responding to complaints. However, they will follow up on issues that have come to their attention while in the field working on other complaints or issues.
Code enforcement officers are available Monday through Friday from 8:00 AM to 5:00 PM. If immediate attention is needed after hours, please contact Murray Police dispatch at 801-840-4000.
Many problems, such as; pest/vermin control, meth contaminated homes, unsafe living conditions, and homeless camps; are under the jurisdiction of the Salt Lake Valley Health Department (SLVHD). Murray City code enforcement officers do coordinate with SLVHD on these matters. They also work closely with several other agencies, including, the Murray City fire marshal, Utah State Division of Occupational and Professional Licensing, Murray City Power, Murray City storm water, Murray City building and business licensing divisions, and others when required.


text:
It's time to share my Three Cents Worth (3CW) on Curbed NY, at the intersection of neighborhood and real estate in the capital of the world…and I'm here to take measurements.
Check out my 3CW column on @CurbedNY:
[My post title was originally "Manhattan Rebound Not Because of Dizzying Heights" but wasn't Curbed staff didn't think it was catchy enough, ed.]Spectators and participants in the Manhattan housing market have been burning a lot of calories talking about views, something the super luxury new development projects have been marketing as a key feature. I thought I'd look back over time to at what the average floor level of closed co-op and condo sales by quarter, and see if there is a pattern. I sifted through six years of data (note to self for rainy day: go back 25 years and break out condos and co-ops). While I've analyzed the value of floor level in Manhattan here and here before, I've never trended floor level and didn't quite know what to expect…
My latest Three Cents Worth column on Curbed:
Tracking How High People Buy In Manhattan [Curbed]
Three Cents Worth Archive Curbed NY
Three Cents Worth Archive Curbed DC
Three Cents Worth Archive Curbed Miami
Three Cents Worth Archive Curbed Hamptons


text:
When things look grim in the world, you can always look to Pat Robertson to cheer things up with some new lunacy and he rarely lets you down. Just recently, Robertson said that god has been speaking to him again and there is much merriment in the country. According to CNN:
Evangelical broadcaster Pat Robertson said Tuesday that God has told him that a terrorist attack on the United States would cause a "mass killing" late in 2007.
"I'm not necessarily saying it's going to be nuclear," he said during his news-and-talk television show "The 700 Club" on the Christian Broadcasting Network.
"The Lord didn't say nuclear. But I do believe it will be something like that."
Robertson said God told him about the impending tragedy during a recent prayer retreat.
God also said, he claims, that major cities and possibly millions of people will be affected by the attack, which should take place sometime after September.
The funny thing is why would god tell him just the problem and not how to solve it? During these cozy chats, Robertson never seems to have the sense to ask god for more details about the impending attack so that the disasters might be minimized. We need to give him some journalistic training so that he will ask the when, where, how, who questions that will give us usable information.
Although his past predictions have not turned out well, this does not stop the irrepressible Robertson from continuing to make them. The millions of viewers of his show who send him money presumably take his claims seriously, despite the lack of details. But the interesting question is how the rest of us respond to his claim that god speaks to him.
As an atheist, this question is easy to answer. Since we don't believe in a god, anyone who says that they received a message from god about anything can be dismissed as either simply lying, or mistaken (because they took some random event or a coincidence as a special message from god), or delusional (because they were dreaming or in an otherwise less than fully rational and conscious state of mind) or, in the most serious cases, psychotic. I tend to agree with the TV character House who in one episode about a faith healer tells a colleague: "You talk to god, you're religious. God talks to you, you're psychotic."
So for atheists the obvious and easy conclusion is that Robertson must be either psychotic or an insatiable publicity-seeking liar who knows that this kind of thing will propel him into the news, since his chats with god occur too often to be taken as mistakes or temporary delusions.
But if you are a believer in a god who can and does act in mysterious ways in the world, on what basis can you judge if god is talking to some chosen people or even to you? Some have said that Bush feels that god talks to him too. How can religious people judge if that is true?
This is not a trivial matter since people have been known to shoot up other people and claim in justification that god told them to do it. If people are psychotic, they need help before they can harm themselves or others. And yet, news reporters are willing to flatly report the statements of a public person like Robertson without asking the obvious follow-up question about whether he is certifiably insane, despite the clear indications that they don't believe him. If they did, they would ask him questions like "What does god's voice sound like? What were you doing when he spoke to you?"
Suppose someone said that Abraham Lincoln spoke to him or her on a regular basis. Since Christians believe in an afterlife, they should have as little difficulty believing in this as in believing that god speaks to people. But anyone claiming to have cozy chats with old Abe would be immediately looked upon askance, and such an assertion would cast serious doubt on their sanity. But a similar statement about god speaking to them does not raise the same warning flags. Assertions by some people that god speaks to them are received with an indulgent smile but are not openly dismissed as crazy either.
Why is this? I can see no rational reason for this casual attitude except to think that even devout Christians, in their heart of hearts, really don't believe any of this stuff about god speaking to people but don't want to come right out and say it. Richard Dawkins in his latest book The God Delusion quotes a believer who describes what I think is a common attitude among religious believers. (Thanks to MachinesLikeUs for the link.)
Every thinking person, perhaps, is assailed at times with religious doubt. My own faith has wavered many a time. But I never told anyone of my spiritual aberrations for two reasons: (1) I feared that I might, by mere suggestion, disturb and damage the life and hopes of some fellow being; (2) because I agree with the writer who said, 'There is a mean streak in anyone who will destroy another's faith.'
It is very much an 'emperor's new clothes' syndrome. The vast mass of people keep their doubts and skepticism to themselves, possibly out of fear that others will confess their own skepticism and the whole house of cards will collapse, leaving them with an existential void that they are not equipped or prepared to fill.
This is another reason why it is such a relief to be an atheist. Once you require evidence for assertions of fact, it becomes so much easier to distinguish the credible from the crazy and to simply say so.
POST SCRIPT: Cell phones and driving
I just went to a memorial service. It was for a lovely and talented 24-year old woman, the daughter of a friend and former colleague and who was also a classmate of my own daughter. I was told that she apparently lost control of her car and crashed into a pole. She was supposedly using her cell phone when it happened.
It is always hard to tell in such cases if the cell phone use was the direct cause of the accident or not. All I know is that when I see the great sadness that has descended on all her family and friends, I felt the need to ask all readers of this blog (and through them the people they know) to not take the chance.
I am hoping the day will come soon when putting away the cell phone when you begin to drive becomes as automatic as putting on your seat belt.


text:
Philosophy in a Time of Terror : Dialogues with Jürgen Habermas and Jacques Derrida22 octobre 2004 Abstract : Philosopher Giovanna Borradori's most recent project is an endeavour to forge a new understanding, a philosophical reflection on "terrorism" in the post-9/11 context. Indeed, in the months following September 11th, 2001, G. Borradori conducted a series of interviews with two of Europe's foremost philosophers, Jurgen Habermas and Jacques Derrida in Manhattan, questioning them on the meaning and significance of September 11. The fruit of this exchange appear in her recent book Philosophy in a Time of Terror : Dialogues with Jurgen Habermas and Jacques Derrida (Giovanna Borradori, Philosophy in a Time of Terror, Dialogues with Jürgen Habermas and Jacques Derrida, Chicago University Press, 2003).
See the contents : "Around Derrida"
Philosopher Giovanna Borradori's most recent project is an endeavour to forge a new understanding, a philosophical reflection on "terrorism" in the post-9/11 context. Indeed, in the months following September 11th, 2001, G. Borradori conducted a series of interviews with two of Europe's foremost philosophers, Jürgen Habermas and Jacques Derrida in Manhattan, questioning them on the meaning and significance of September 11. The fruit of this exchange appear in her recent book Philosophy in a Time of Terror : Dialogues with Jürgen Habermas and Jacques Derrida (2003). The text marks the first occasion on which Habermas' and Derrida's writings appear side-by-side. In fact, what makes this work philosophically important and surprising at the same time is the way Borradori's searching questions draw both Habermas and Derrida from their traditionally opposed understanding of philosophy - Habermasian philosophy building on Enlightenment notions of universal rationality and Derrida suspicious of language and the concepts used in philosophy and everyday life, hiding major problems - underlining their surprisingly similar stances on what they perceive to be the necessary philosophical approach to "terrorism". Both of the dialogues and Borradori's following explanations rely upon a few key philosophical figures, i.e. Kant, Carl Schmitt, Arendt, suggesting that the philosophical traditions with which each figure identifies - Critical Theory for Habermas and Deconstruction for Derrida - are apparently not as mutually exclusive as we might have previously thought.
Philosophy in a time of terror is a testimony of two philosophers who, for the first time, have decided to put aside their considerable intellectual differences to call for a unified philosophical response to September 11 : in a context where many assumptions about politics were destroyed along with the attacks of September 11, they reflect jointly on terrorism and show how political thinking, i.e. thinking about concepts, what they designate and exclude, is useful for understanding the origins of and reactions to concrete events such as terrorist violence. The title of the French version of Philosophy in a time of terror gives insight into the main focus of the two philosophers : "Le Concept 11 Septembre" or the "concept" of September 11, title chosen by Derrida, in order to underline the difficulty of "Thinking September 11th". The authors thus question the "idea" of September 11th and since it entails something new and shocking, it can not interact with classical knowledge ; therefore, both thinkers' aim is to overcome this difficulty and to appeal to a real political thought of what has occurred on September 11th. As Borradori states in her introduction, this book is a "story of a philosopher in a time of terror", it's about submitting to philosophical analysis "the most urgent questions regarding terror and terrorism".
The most constructive and fruitful way to outline the main arguments of the authors is to expose them jointly, in order to permit a comparative approach of Habermas's and Derrida's respective methodology and philosophical understanding of the event of 9/11. A critical overview of Philosophy in a time of terror will follow, highlighting the ambiguity of certain arguments but also the relevancy of this common work in the present context.
Giovanna Borradori is associate Professor of philosophy at Vassar College in New York ; she believes in the "scholarly interview" as an important form and that philosophy has an invaluable contribution to make to the understanding of contemporary political issues. Borradori's conversations offer an unconventional portrait of the way philosophers think about their work and recent political debates. She is author of The American Philosopher : Conversations with Quine, Davidson, Putnam, Nozick, Danto, Rorty, Cavell, MacIntyre, Kuhn (1994), which studies current debates in American philosophy and explores the identity of the "American philosopher", leading philosophers to talk about the changing character of their discipline. Philosophy in a Time of Terror is thus in keeping with her previous philosophical interviews ; living in Manhattan, Borradori experienced 9/11 as a New Yorker "fifty blocks" from ground zero, and believed that September 11 called for an immediate philosophical response, by interviewing two of the most influential thinkers of our age : Habermas and Derrida.
Habermas' life and work have been deeply influenced by the traumatic events of his youth under the Third Reich, in Germany. His Theory of Communicative Action (1981) shows his attachment to issues of autonomy and participation within the practice of everyday communication. As Borradori clearly explains : "His assumption has been that we learn who we are as autonomous agents from our basic relations with others. The most basic among these relations is the act of communicating through language".
In this perspective, Habermas promotes the model of "deliberative democracy", based on the participation of civil society and a consensus between rational citizens. In this regard, Habermas' philosophical methodology is "reconstruction" of the conditions that make communication possible and effective, and thus permits to evaluate at the same time the distortions and "defects of communication" that might impede such dialogue. In this dialogue about terrorism, Habermas seems much less conservative than in his other works, though his focus in a sense remains on the possibility of communication and understanding in the light of the growing threat of terrorist attacks and current US policy.
Derrida is a French philosopher and, as Habermas, he has been deeply influenced by a historical trauma : colonialism in Algeria, a French colony at that time (1930s). His work originated the school of deconstruction. In G. Borradori's words, deconstruction seeks to disassemble any discourse standing as a "construction". Derrida's approach to philosophy is thus antagonistic to Habermas's. Derrida's work focuses on language and deconstruction shows the multiple layers of meaning at work in language. By deconstructing the works of previous scholars, Derrida attempts to show that language is constantly shifting. Derrida, in this dialogue, is more than ever "deconstructionist" in his argumentation and fully aware of the context in which the September 11 attacks took place. Derrida gets to work on much of what Habermas proposes, questioning received wisdom and conceptual systems through his own deconstructive methods. Focusing on 9/11 as an "event" and putting his own spin on globalization, the reader is invited to temporarily suspend belief and look at the "event" from a more unfamiliar angle.
In the introduction of Philosophy in a time of terror, Borradori claims that philosophy has a crucial contribution to make to the understanding of "terrorism", highlighting a certain "responsibility" of philosophy in evaluating the significance of a present event. Habermas and Derrida understand their philosophical responsibility in terms of a critique of modernity, in the Arendtian sense, that is to say an evaluation of the challenges presented to thought by modern European history. Contrary to political activists, such as B. Russell who may freely choose to be politically involved, "for both of them the political commitment of philosophy is not a matter of personal choice. By engaging in philosophy, one automatically engages in the effort to reckon with its time : in this sense, neither one of them is a political activist, whereas both of them, are social critics." This idea suits Hegel's theorised relation between history and philosophy : "He sees philosophy confronted with the task of grasping its own time" (Habermas).
As mentioned above, both Habermas and Derrida have developed their respective philosophy in the context of traumas of twentieth-century history : totalitarianism and the Holocaust under the Third Reich for Habermas, and colonialism in Algeria for Derrida. Their contributions to the subjects of the attacks of 9/11 and global terrorism, which have already signed the history of the twenty-first century, is thus in keeping with their initial approach to philosophy.
Both philosophers have a deep suspicion of the concept of "terrorism". They both contend that terrorism is an elusive, ambiguous, reversible concept, a social construction - Derrida reminds the reader that the French "resistants" were labelled "terrorists" by the Germans during World War Two - but analyse it from a different perspective : Habermas "reconstructs" terrorism as manifested on September 11, in order to show that this terrorism, in opposition to national liberation movements, is deprived from any political content. Consequently, Habermas fervently denounces the current American "war against terrorism" designation, because it gives political legitimation to terrorism and, at the same time, reflects an "overreaction" against an unknown enemy. Derrida, on the other hand, claims that the deconstruction of the "concept" terrorism is the only politically responsible approach to terrorism, since the media, the officials and public use of the concept as a self-evident notion, manifests the democracies' vulnerability and perversely serves the terrorist cause, by giving it "visibility".
If Habermas contends that "September 11 could be called the first historic world event in the strictest sense" taking place in front of the "universal eyewitness" of a global public due to extraordinary media coverage - without analysing the media construction, and leaves history judge the importance of the event, Derrida, as in his previous works, deconstructs the "event" of 9/11 and problematizes the concept of terrorism. He is firstly interested in the question of language and the emergence of the "new", and thus, conjointly, the "act of naming something new" by its date, because of the uncertainty of what happened and the powerlessness of language to identify and label the attacks of September 11. The "event" is reduced to an "intuition without a concept", an "incantation" repeated continuously, by which metonymy substitutes a date for the traumatic attacks. The analysis of "repetition compulsion" is interesting "not in order to isolate ourselves in language, [...] but rather to try to understand what is going on precisely beyond language". For Derrida, language stabilises inherently unstable situations : to name 9/11 neutralises what is most traumatic about the event, which is the impression that it could happen again.
Derrida shows how the difficulty to understand and name an event suits Heidegger's understanding of an "event". Indeed, Derrida asserts that an "event" in the Heideggerian sense, is never fully "appropriated", it remains incomprehensible. In this perspective, Derrida considers 9/11 as an "event", but at the same time, several elements contradict this statement. At first, for Derrida, September 11th attacks were predictable, then 9/11 is not a "major" event, but rather induced an "impression" of major event, in the Humean empiricist sense, which form the "idea" of a major event. Symmetrically, impressions are imposed on individuals by the discourse of the media and the officials, who construct propaganda-impressions that "spectacularize" September 11, thus make it a major event. Derrida thus explores the truth of September 11 and its impossible "concept", showing the democratic vulnerability in the face of the manifestation of terror, but also and probably more importantly, the suicidal temptation, the "autoimmunity" of a modern democracy. As Borradori explains, for Derrida, "9/11 is the symptom of an autoimmune crisis occurring within the system that should have predicted it. Autoimmune conditions consist in the spontaneous suicide of the very defensive mechanism supposed to protect the organism from external aggression." Indeed, as in his previous works, Derrida is fully aware of the context : in this dialogue, he refers to the heritage of the Cold War, during which the United States provided weapons and training in Afghanistan, to the hijackers that actually perpetrated the September 11 attacks and contends that the 9/11 attacks were the manifestation of this suicidal paradox. He observes the same autoimmunity regarding the problematic expression "war on terrorism", because it tends to generate a "vicious circle of repression" : by evoking a "war against terror", the United States turn the war against itself.
Habermas wants the reader to look at terrorism and especially religious fundamentalism as a "modern phenomenon", or rather as a modern disruption, which is at the core of his philosophical understanding of global terrorism. Indeed, fundamentalism by confusing the religious and the political, inverts the "project of modernity", thus of Enlightenment ; and, paradoxically, by opposing modernity and secularisation, fundamentalism is for Habermas a unique modern phenomenon.
What distinguishes most Habermas from Derrida in their respective approach to terrorism and thus what makes Habermas' "philosophical specificity", is that he sees the outbreak of terrorism mainly as a failure of communications, of dialogue : the relation between fundamentalism and terrorism is mediated by violence, which Habermas understands as a communicative pathology : the spiral of violence begins as a spiral of distorted communication that leads through the spiral of uncontrolled reciprocal mistrust, to the breakdown of communication.
Habermas links this rejection of modernity and defect of communication not to a cultural problem but to an economic factor : globalization, which, as well for Derrida, plays an important role in the outburst of terrorist attacks. He highlights the fact that globalization is a very asymmetrical phenomenon, accentuating the already growing imbalance between rich and poor countries, the "victims" of globalization, which continue to get poorer with globalization. This breaks the dialogue between the rich and the poor and this noncommunication has a direct consequence on the use of violence : "recourse to violence is thus often presented as the only "response" to a "deaf ear".
From that standpoint, the very ideas of universal freedom, tolerance and reason are shattered, i.e. precisely the ideas that forged the Habermasian hope of a democracy conceived within the framework of the constructive dialogue model ; he even stated that since September 11, and with regard to these violent events, he is constantly asking himself whether his theory of communicative action is not becoming ridiculous. But, Habermas reiterates his attachment to moral and juridical universalism of ancient Europe, and the civilising role she is expected to fulfil.
Indeed, in this context of terrorism, religious fundamentalism and the elusiveness of the concepts that designate them, "Philosophy is called to arms". This sentence mentioned in the Preface, could probably summarise Borradori's thesis. Indeed, since religious fundamentalism explicitly rejects secularisation and modernity, rejecting the Enlightenment's separation of political power from religious belief, Borradori contends that the analysis and the understanding of September 11 must "reach as far as a critical reassessment of the validity of Enlightenment projects and ideals".
Derrida joins Habermas in defence of the Enlightenment principles and even sides with cosmopolitanism as theorised by Kant himself. Indeed, both Habermas and Derrida refer to Kant's Perpetual Peace, which anticipated the possibility of transforming classical international law into a new cosmopolitan order. They agree on the fact that international rule of law should be strengthened in order to administer global cosmopolitanism founded on secular human rights. They both place their hopes in the authority of international law and see the need for a transition from classical international law, premised on the model of nation-states, to a new cosmopolitan order based on continual alliances.
But, in order to achieve the full transition to cosmopolitanism, both thinkers agree that international law and the decisions taken by the international community should be respected. In this respect, Habermas and Derrida strongly denounce the current American serious failings with regard to these commitments and especially during the deliberations prior their decision to wage a war against Iraq. In order to remedy to this problem, they promote dissuasive sanctions against such damaging actions and the creation of an international institution of law and an international court of justice with their own autonomous force.
Both thinkers call for new European responsibilities, 'beyond all Eurocentrism" and the strengthening of international law and international institutions. Indeed, for Habermas and Derrida, even though the "project of the Enlightenment" that promoted the separation between the religious and the political, has yet to be completed, the philosophical experience of Europe at the 17th-18th centuries has left in the European political space with original marks with regard to the religious : they both identify Europe as the only secular actor on the world stage. Both thinkers place their hopes in the "new figure of Europe" and the inherent possibility of discourse and politics different from the current American rhetoric or Islamic fundamentalism, Europe being a "way out of this double theologico-political program". (Derrida).
In this perspective, Habermas, rejecting S. Huntington's thesis of a clash of civilisations between the West and Islam as well as Carl Schmitt's political thought focused on the idea of the confrontation "friend-foe", of a collective identity against another, contends with Derrida, a different theory : a confrontation between the United States, where the religious undercurrents of official political discourses clearly contradict the Enlightenment's separation of the political and the religious, and Europe, which responsibility is to prevent a "return of the religious" and promote the Enlightenment spirit. Habermas and Derrida call on Europe to finish the uncompleted project of Enlightenment.
For both Habermas and Derrida, the idea of "tolerance", which is the core of the Enlightenment philosophy, has thus come back on the front scene, since religion and violence are today intrinsically linked and intertwined. Derrida denounces the hypocrisy of the American discourse on tolerance with regard to their "war on terrorism". Nevertheless, if Habermas accepts tolerance with its paternalistic connotations - it is the "strong" who permits the "weak" to be, under the former's rules - Derrida considers the latter as "conditional", "scrutinized" hospitality ; he hopes for a Kantian cosmopolitical conception of hospitality, "pure and unconditional" which is open to individuals who are neither expected nor invited, not to promote it as the solution, because "practically impossible to live", but strongly encourages the "thought" of it, since it permits to have the "idea" of the other, of its difference. This should constitute an important progress towards what Derrida calls "democracy to come", which would go beyond a cosmopolitan world citizenship ; rather the philosopher promotes a "living together" without a precise attachment to any nation-state or world state. It would be a human alliance "beyond the political".
Philosophy in a Time of Terror is also a reflection on the figure of the philosopher's responsibility to "enlighten" the public or the "international public sphere", according to the expression used by Habermas in his work, to reflect in a responsible way, on the question of terrorism and "demand accountability from those in charge of public discourse, those responsible for the language and institutions of international law". Above all, the "critical philosopher" analyses and then suggests to rethink the relationship between the philosophical heritage and the current structure of the changing politic and juridical system.
If several arguments are prone to critique and controversy, especially regarding Derrida's philosophical approach to "9/11", Philosophy in a Time of Terror is, in many ways, extremely relevant in today's international context.
If Derrida has often been criticised for his "deconstructionist" methodology, judged as a-philosophical, I believe that the deconstruction of the concept of "terrorism" is very instructive and insightful here, and, in my opinion, indispensable for our understanding, our minimal "appropriation" of terrorism, and especially the "new" kind of terrorism that September 11 has actually crystallised. Indeed, in response to something "new", or perceived as new, one tends to label the "event " with diverse terms, without really knowing what they really mean, because you do not know yourself what really happened. Therefore, Derrida's philosophical approach is very interesting in the way he contextualises the creation of a concept, i.e. he shows how concepts are very contextual, in the sense that each actor, be it security, media, public or political actors, create their own label of the event, "appropriating" 9/11 as either "war", "terrorism" or a political action, creating a "conceptual chaos". This latter expression is very enlightening and representative of the conceptual disorder that entails a new event, in the face of which an immediate understanding is difficult. We could, for example, mention the recent expressions of "hyperterrorism" or "global terrorism" often used to characterise the attacks of September 11. All of these new concepts are constructed by speech act and are to be considered with "prudence", as Derrida suggests, and always within their context.
Derrida makes a very controversial assumption, even if he admits "oversimplifying" the situation, when he asserts that there is a "strange war without a war", a religious confrontation between the United States and the "Islamic extremist or fundamentalist", since the religious identification is profoundly different for each group : indeed, religion, or rather the predominant authority of religious doctrine over the political is at the core of the Islamists' beliefs and actions : as B. Badie shows in The Two States, the "Umma" is the only legitimate politico-religious community recognised in Muslim countries : religion is anchored in their interpretation of the world.
On the other side, the religious identification of the United States certainly relies on the influence of ultra-Christian conservatives, but it resides predominantly in the rhetoric, the discourse used by the current US officials and their Manichean vision of the world ; the actions undertaken by the Americans are predominantly woven by much more "realist", pragmatic motivations and values. For example, the recent US military intervention in Iraq was certainly not decided according to a particular theology, but rather to more material and geopolitical motives, such as oil and power in the region of the Middle-East. In my opinion, it is therefore wrong and dangerous to "visualise" the current situation as a simple "confrontation between political theologies", resembling Huntington's "clash of civilisation" and to compare it to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, which Derrida presents as a "metonymy" of the "war" between the United States and Islam.
If this book is very contextual, in that it was conceptualised and realised in a "spontaneous" reaction to the attacks of September 11, and many events have taken place since, it remains an anticipatory work, in several ways ; firstly, the unilateral US war against Iraq that both philosophers feared, took place, rejecting international deliberation and law ; secondly, and this idea refers to Derrida's idea of predictability, U.S. National Security Adviser C. Rice has been recently convicted by the Commission investigating the September 11 attacks to be questioned on the Intelligence documents that issued in the summer 2001, repeated warnings about potential terrorist plots against the United States masterminded by bin Laden, including a possible plan to hijack commercial aircraft. The following terrorism warnings were not taken into consideration seriously either. This seems to suit Derrida's idea of "autoimmunity".
However, Derrida's claim that the hijackers of September 11 have accomplished a "double suicide", their own and the suicide of "those who welcomed, armed and trained them", i.e. the United States, is less convincing. Indeed, as Professor of Philosophy N. Smith shows, Derrida omits to distinguish between suicide and "imprudent, short-sighted and counterproductive policy". Intentionality is at the core of this distinction and to ignore that important factor is to contend "suicidal deliberateness" which is actually the thesis of the conspiracy theorists. But, this is quite a unlikely version of the September 11 attacks.
Concerning Habermas's and Derrida's hopes for a "responsible Europe", their project might appear as completely "utopic" unless, as Derrida mentions it correctly but briefly, Europe has a unified military force and forges a specific strategic culture, sufficient for autonomous "European interventions" that would be motivated and deliberated in Europe. Only then will Europe be able to oppose a credible alternative to the current American "hard power" (J. Nye), underscored by a religious discourse and allow a greater progress towards a new force in the service of new international institutions, thus a new international law. Stephen Walt's "theory of the balance of threats" applied to international relations, is very instructive here : he believes in a greater role for Europe to play, as an ally of the Unites States and not as its counterbalance, in order to respond jointly to global threats, i.e. terrorism above all. This would contribute to crystallise Habermas' and Derrida's hopes of a respected and justly applied international law.
The three contributors to this book remind us that the most constructive response to 9/11 may simply be to recognise the event as an opportunity to ask the decisive questions about ourselves and our place in the world, especially our relationship to the "other". Since religion and violence are today intertwined more than ever - there is indeed a noticeable "return of the religious" on the international scene, with a growing resurgence of religious fundamentalism and regional conflicts eminently motivated by religious differences (i.e. the Israeli-Palestinian conflict) - these issues seem more than ever important to question. And, in this context of growing religious fanaticism, thus intolerance regarding other religions, the ideas of tolerance, hospitality, cosmopolitanism have to be "reinvented", because they are indispensable for "appropriating" the alterity of the "other", for accepting the other's difference, and in particular its religious difference, thus for promoting the living together.
Therefore, these dialogues and Borradori's reflection on the "philosopher's" role in international politics is a very original approach and far from being "utopic", as some may think. Indeed, philosophers as "social critics" of their time, could actively contribute to a critical analysis of the present international relations and institutions in the light of the philosophical heritage that produced them, and could help to evaluate the language used in international politics.
The success of the book relies firstly in Borradori's ability to fuse topics of terror, the United States's "war on terror" against a diffuse and intangible enemy with philosophical issues of hospitality, tolerance and cosmopolitanism, which makes possible a broader discussion than one might imagine. Undoubtedly, this book has opened up a space for evaluating the possible and necessary contributions that philosophy can make in critically analysing a specific historical "event". If Habermas sees the outbreak of terrorism mainly as a failure of communication and dialogue and Derrida sees it above all as a failure to develop a concept of world hospitality to replace what he believes is the outmoded Christian notion of tolerance that is really only charity, in the end, Derrida's concerns have much in common with those of Habermas : how to realise a world society where primacy is given to international law and the religious undercurrents of political rhetoric are abandoned once and for all.
Just as philosophy was vital at the time of the Enlightenment, so to is it needed today in helping us come to terms with terrorism and in conceptualising a future which re-address the notion of citizenship, bestowing upon it a global and cosmopolitan character. The reader can only agree with the three contributors to this work, that the figure of the "philosopher" has a crucial role to play in "enlightening" "new" historical "events". In Borradori's words, more than ever, today "Philosophy is called to arms".
Giovanna Borradori, Philosophy in a Time of Terror, Dialogues with Jürgen Habermas and Jacques Derrida, Chicago University Press, 2003.
Edition française : Jacques Derrida et Jürgen Habermas, Le "concept" du 11 septembre. Dialogues à New York, présentés et commentés par Giovanna Borradori, Paris, Galilée, 2004.


text:
Recipe for rosemary sandwich crackers with bacon cheese (yield 1 dozen sandwiches)
For the crackers (about 24 pieces):
2 Tbps ground almond, 2 Tbps ground cashew, 2/3 cup plain flour, 1/3 cup semolina flour, 6 Tbps very cold butter cubed, some finely diced rosemary leaves, a pinch of salt, chilled white wine + ice water (ratio 1:1), 1 yolk (no white!) for egg wash, some almond or cashew (halved) for decoration
For the filling:- In a large mxing bowl, combine the two nuts, two flours, rosemary and salt
- Add the butter and cut them with a pastry blender to the size of small bead
- Add the wine water, little by little, mix, until the flour mixture can just hold together, but definitely not wet. Press down the dough like a disk, wrap, rest in the fridge for at least an hour
- Roll the dough with no more than 1/2 cm thickness. In between rolling give the dough a lot of rest and chill time. Pre-heat the oven to 350F/ 180C
- Cut the dough with a cookie cutter (mine 4.5 cm). Lay them on a baking tray, stick nuts on half of the crackers, egg wash, bake for 15 - 20 minutes
- Cool the crackers on rack. Spread the filling and assemble as a sandwich right before you serve.


text:
As the world rang in the Near Year this this week, NASA was looking forward to a big milestone of its own — nine years and counting on the surface of Mars for an overachieving Red Planet rover mission.
The golf-cart-size Spirit rover landed on Mars on Jan. 3, 2004, PST. Its twin, Opportunity, touched down at another Martian locale three weeks later, joining Spirit on a 90-day quest to search for signs of past water activity on the Red Planet. Together, the two robots make up the Mars Exploration Rover mission, the precursor to the huge Mars rover Curiosity, which arrived at the planet last August.
The two NASA robots found plenty of such evidence, helping scientists confirm that Mars — now a frigid and seemingly bone-dry place — was warmer and wetter billions of years ago. Spirit even stumbled onto an ancient hydrothermal system, where heat energy and liquid water may have created conditions capable of supporting life as we know it.
Both rovers kept on chugging long after their warranties expired. Spirit finally stopped communicating with Earth in March 2010 and was declared dead a year later. Opportunity is still going strong, exploring clay deposits on the rim of Mars' Endeavour Crater. [Latest Mars Photos From Rovers Spirit & Opportunity]
Together, the two robots have covered 26.82 miles (43.16 kilometers) to date, with Opportunity racking up the lion's share (22.02 miles, or 35.44 km). While Opportunity is showing some signs of its advanced age, such as an arthritic arm, the rover remains in good health and continues to return interesting data to its handlers back on Earth.
"Every day is a gift at this point," rover mission principal investigator Steve Squyres, of Cornell University, said last month at the annual fall meeting of the American Geophysical Union. "We're just going to push the rover, and push ourselves, as hard as we can."
The nine-year anniversary may bring some attention back to Opportunity, which ceded the Mars rover spotlight to its car-size cousin Curiosity last summer.
The $2.5 billion Curiosity rover landed inside Mars' huge Gale Crater on Aug. 5, 2012, on a mission to determine if the area has ever been capable of supporting microbial life. The 1-ton robot — which weighs five times as much as Spirit or Opportunity — has already discovered an ancient streambed where water likely flowed continuously for thousands of years long ago.
Curiosity's surface mission was originally slated to last about two Earth years, but NASA officials recently announced that they would let the robot roam as long as it was scientifically viable. If the performance of Spirit and Opportunity are any guide, Curiosity could be roving for many years to come.
This story was provided by SPACE.com, a sister site to Live Science. Follow SPACE.com senior writer Mike Wall on Twitter @michaeldwall or SPACE.com @Spacedotcom. We're also on Facebook and Google+.
Sign up for the Live Science daily newsletter now
Get the world's most fascinating discoveries delivered straight to your inbox.
Most Popular
By Harry Baker
By Ben Turner


text:
Thursday, January 31, 2008
A plea from Tom Burnett Sr. to the wonderful people of Somerset
(The ad copy below is running in tomorrow's Somerset Daily American.)
My son Tom confronted a terrible moment of truth. Faced with a plot against our nation, he and the other heroes of Flight 93 fought back, and at the cost of their lives, foiled that plot to destroy the White House or the Capitol. Now it is time for the rest of us to face our moment of truth. Flight 93 has been re-hijacked, and I am requesting that if you can, you go down to the public meeting of the Memorial Project at Somerset Courthouse Saturday, sign up to comment at the end, and demand that a proper investigation be conducted.
THIS was no accident:
The Memorial Project held an open design competition in time of war, inviting the entire world to enter. Guess who joined in? That group of trees that sits roughly in the position of the star on an Islamic flag is the crash site. Who do YOU think is being memorialized here?
A second Islamic feature that I also protested when I served on the Stage II jury is the minaret-like Tower of Voices, formed in the shape of a crescent, with its top cut at an angle so that its crescent arms reach up into the sky.
Upturned crescents are a standard mosque adornment in many Muslim countries.
Every iota of this original Crescent of Embrace design remains completely intact in the so-called "redesign." That is why Congressman Tancredo asked the Park Service this autumn to scrap the existing design entirely. Instead of getting rid of the giant crescent as Tancredo demanded back in 2005, architect Paul Murdoch only disguised it with a few surrounding trees.
Also remaining are those damned 44 glass blocks on the flight path. (There were forty passengers and crew and four Islamic terrorists on Flight 93.) The Memorial Project acknowledges the 40 blocks inscribed with the names of my son and the other heroes, and they acknowledge the three inscribed with the 9/11 date, but they pretend not to know about this one: the huge glass block that dedicates the entire site.
When this 44th glass block is pointed out, Project Partners say that it can't be counted with the other blocks because it is not the same size. What? Because the capstone to the terrorist memorializing block count is magnificent, that is supposed to make it okay?
For every Islamic or terrorist memorializing feature of the crescent design, the Park Service has another equally phony excuse. Please read the exposé below of the Park Service's fraudulent investigation, and please come to the meeting on Saturday to demand state and Congressional investigations into the Flight 93 memorial.
Tom Burnett Sr.
February 2008
PDF of ad copy here.
Non-locals who want to help, please contact your senators and representatives!
Daily American ad #2: the fraudulent investigation of the Flight 93 memorial
The Memorial Project gave only five days public notice for this Saturday's public meeting in Somerset. Tom Burnett and I are trying to crash their party, calling on the population of Somerset to come out and protest the terrorist memorializing design.
Our first ad is Tom's call to action. (PDF version of actual ad copy here. HTML version, with links to documentation, here.)
The second ad (HTML version below) exposes the Park Service whitewash of the crescent design. (PDFhere.)
Lizards who want to give this expose a bump on the LGF link-rating utility, you can do so here.
To the people of Somerset: Come out this Saturday and help tackle the hijacker!
Two days after the Crescent of Embrace was unveiled in September 2005, several bloggers discovered that a person facing into the giant crescent would be facing almost exactly at Mecca. That makes the crescent a mihrab: the central feature around which every mosque is built.
The simplest mihrab--and the one you might be familiar with--is an Islamic prayer rug, which Muslims lay out facing Mecca for prayer. The Crescent of Embrace is, in effect, a gigantic Muslim prayer rug.
The Mecca orientation of the giant crescent is trivially easy to verify. Just use the Mecca-direction calculator at Islam.com to generate a graphic of the great circle direction from Somerset to Mecca. Muslims define their direction for prayer (called the "qibla"), as the great circle direction to Mecca (also called the "shortest distance direction," or the "straight line direction").
Here is a graphic of the qibla for Somerset, superimposed on the crescent site plan. The bisector of the crescent (red arrow) points almost exactly to Mecca:
All the redesign did was add some trees to the rear of a person facing into the giant crescent. That is like planting some trees behind a mosque. It doesn't matter how many trees you plant around a mosque. It is still a mosque.
The Mecca orientation of the giant crescent should have long ago been headline news across the nation, and it would have been, if not for the extraordinary measures taken by the Memorial Project and the Park Service to cover up this explosive information. Project Superintendent Joanne Hanley denies the Mecca orientation of the crescent in public: "The only thing that orients the memorial is the crash site," she told the Post Gazette (August 18, 2007). Yet in private, she acknowledges the Mecca orientation of the crescent, and makes excuses for it.
"It has to be exact," Hanley told me in an April 2006 conference call, explaining why she was not concerned about the almost-exact Mecca orientation of the crescent: "That's one we talked about: it has to be exact." (The crescent
points 1.8° north of Mecca, ±0.1°.)
Patrick White, Vice President of Families of Flight 93, makes similar excuses, telling a colleague of mine last July that the almost exact Mecca orientation of the crescent cannot be intended as a tribute to Islam because the inexactness of it would be "disrespectful to Islam."
That isn't what he was telling the public. White told the press that my claims are untrue and "preposterous": "We went through in detail all his original claims and came away with nothing." (Tribune Democrat, July 15, 2007.) Nothing that is, but a bunch of bogus excuses for explosive information that they know to be factually accurate.
To make this willful blindness official, the Park Service found a trio of fraudulent academics to make blatantly dishonest excuses for the Mecca oriented crescent. One has been telling every reporter he can find 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, August 18, 2007.)This is not a misquote. Griffith said essentially the same thing to Tribune Democrat reporter Kirk Swuager, claiming that: "You can face anywhere to face Mecca." One billion Muslims most certainly disagree.
The other two academics admit the giant Mecca oriented crescent and make the most ridiculous excuses for it. Kevin Jaques, a professor of Islamic sharia law at Indiana University, notes the similarity between the Mecca oriented crescent and a traditional mihrab, but assures the Park Service that there is no need for concern, because no one has ever seen a mihrab this BIG before:
Thirdly, most mihrabs are small, rarely larger than the figure of a man, although some of the more ornamental ones can be larger, but nothing as large at the crescent found in the site design. It is unlikely that most Muslims would walk into the area of the circle/crescent and see a mihrab because it is well beyond their limit of experience. Again, just because it is similar does not make it the same.The other academic fraud is a Syrian professor of Islamic architecture named Nasser Rabbat who tells the Park Service not to worry about the almost exact Mecca orientation of the giant crescent because it cannot serve as a proper mihrab unless it points exactly to Mecca:
Mihrab orientation is either correct or not. It cannot be off by some degrees.That is a bald lie. Many traditional mihrabs are off in their Mecca-orientation by 10, 20 or 30 degrees. The most famous mihrab in the world, the mihrab at the Great Mosque in Cordoba Spain, is oriented more than 45° off Mecca.
None of these "experts" even pretend to be objective. They only list excuses not to be concerned, and do not even make a show of considering possible Islamic intent. So who are these guys? Rabbat is described as an independent scholar, but in fact is an old classmate of Paul Murdoch, both having received masters degrees in architecture from UCLA in 1984. This raises the possibility that Paul Murdoch himself was able to orchestrate the investigation into warnings about his own design.
Kevin Jaques is also a highly suspicious character, having written an article shortly after 9/11 where he insists that the American response to 9/11 should be formulated in accordance with Islamic sharia law. Not only that, but he whitewashes sharia law by pretending that it is spurned by Islamic terrorists. Nowhere does he acknowledge that the terrorists' goal is impose sharia law on the entire world.
Jaques does not admit his religious affiliation, but it seems obvious that he must be a convert to Islam. Who else would call for a sharia law response to 9/11? He would also seem to be on the side of the radical supremacists, describing "Islamic revivalism" (the general heading for Bin Ladnism, Khomeini-ism, and other aggressively supremacist strains of Islam) as "new and exciting."
Thus it seems that the Park Service let two blatantly dishonest Muslims whitewash warnings of a radical Islamic plot. Not that the Park Service was duped. They were just as dishonest themselves, claiming that it isn't possible to check the orientation of the crescent because: "none of the data or imagery used to develop the site plan has been geo-referenced."
On the contrary, you can see to the left that the site plan is drawn on a topographical map. This topo map was provided by the Memorial Project itself to all of the design contestants. A topo map is the epitome of a geo-referenced map. North on a topo map is true north, which is all that is needed to calculate the orientation of the crescent.
They don't even bother to notice that their so-called experts are contradicting each other. Griffith says you can face anywhere to face Mecca and Rabbat says that orientation on Mecca must be exact. The Park Service gladly embraces whatever mutually exclusive dishonesties are available. Any excuse to turn a blind eye to the undeniable Islamic and terrorist memorializing features of their chosen design.
The full significance of Murdoch's plot takes a whole book to explain. (Given the importance of getting this information out to the public now, a provisional draft of my Crescent of Betrayal book is temporarily available for free download at CrescentOfBetrayal.com. Updates are being posted on my Error Theory blog.)
Very briefly, there are a dozen typical mosque features. All are realized in Paul Murdoch's design, all on the same epic scale as his half-mile wide mihrab. The planned memorial is a terrorist memorial mosque, and this hijacking is still on track to succeed.
The Memorial Project's public meeting begins at 10 tomorrow at the Somerset Courthouse. There is usually an intermission at noon, so if you arrive by 12 you should be able to sign up to comment.
-- Alec Rawls
PDF of ad copy here.
No point in contacting the Memorial Project or the Park Service at this point. They are 100% aware that the crescent design is a terrorist memorial mosque and they are desperate to cover it up.
Contact your Representatives and Senators!
Tuesday, January 29, 2008
The crescent-topped tower
Up tower view (left) shows the Tower of Voices to be formed in the shape of an Islamic crescent, covering about 2/3rds of a circle of arc, with a circular inner arc. The top of the tower is cut at an angle (right) so that the crescent arms reach up into the sky.
This sky-reaching crescent is a standard mosque motif, seen from the Abdul Gaffoor mosque in Singapore:
... to Your Black Muslim Bakery in Oakland:
... to the Uppsala mosque in Sweden:
There is no way that the Islamic shaped crescent atop architect Paul Murdoch's minaret-like tower is an accident, any more than THIS could possibly be an accident:
That's before you even get to the hidden stuff, like the Mecca orientation of the giant crescent; the 9/11 date placed in the exact position of the star on an Islamic crescent and star flag; or the fact that the Tower of Voices turns out to be a year round accurate Islamic prayer-time sundial:
Every particle of the original Crescent of Embrace design remains completely intact in the Bowl of Embrace redesign, which only disguised the original crescent with a few irrelevant trees.
That Islamic crescent reaching up into the sky is completely undisguised. How can anyone abide this?
Tuesday, January 22, 2008
More deceptions from Muslim advisor regarding Flight 93 mosque
Liar. Many of the most famous mihrabs face as much as 20 or 30 degrees off of Mecca.
Here is another Rabbat deception:
Mosques are never in the shape of a crescent or a circle. This defeats the purpose of lining up the worshipers parallel to the Qibla wall (Mecca orientation), which usually translates into a rectangular shape, or sometimes a square. [From the White Paper released by the Memorial Project in August 2007.]It is true that most mosques are rectangular, the more clearly to mark the direction to Mecca, but this is certainly not a requirement, given that the two most religiously significant sites in Islam are round mosques. Significant site #1 is the Sacred Mosque in Mecca:
Second most significant is the Mosque of Omar, also called the Dome of the Rock, on the Temple Mount in Jerusalem, from which point Muhammad supposedly ascended into heaven:
Perhaps because of the prominence of these precedents, a small but significant number of mosques around the world follow the round model.
There is the Tun Abdul Aziz mosque built in Malaysia in 1975, referred to colloquially as the "Masjid Bulat," or "round mosque."
There is the new 5,000 person Arafat Mosque in Nigeria, which the architect claims is "the only round mosque in Africa," but he is wrong. Another round mosque, Al Nileen, sits at the confluence of Blue and White Nile rivers in Khartoum:
[From Google Earth. Look up "alnileen mosque".]
Africa is also home to some older round mosques. Here is a round mosque from the Ivory coast. Similar mosques have also been found in Sierra Leone.
Here is a modern Russian mosque, laid out in shape of an eight point star.
There is even a famous round mosque right in the heart of the EU, at the northwest corner of the Parc du Cinquantenaire in Brussels.
There is a round mosque in Kuwait, a round mosque in Kadavu India, and probably many more.
At the Islamic architecture website Archnet, a Muslim architect (not a native English writer) explains the problem with round mosques:
… a circular mosque can not function well because a mousqe should have an oriantation to kibla and as we all know that a circle does not have an orientation, How can we know the kibla wall if it is a circle ?This problem does not afflict Paul Murdoch's mosque design for the Flight 93 memorial because Murdoch's giant crescent does create an orientation. Face into the crescent to face Mecca, just as with a smaller size mihrab.
Geometrically, Murdoch's Crescent of Embrace is just a gigantic Islamic prayer rug:
A Muslim prayer rug is a two dimensional mihrab, laid out to face Mecca, just as the Crescent of Embrace is.
Notice that to a person looking into the Flight 93 crescent, the irregularity of the outer arc of the crescent is not visible. The radial arbors are all behind the double row of red maples that line the walkway. The ends of the crescent are also well defined by the end of the walkway of red maples at the bottom and the end of the thousand foot long, fifty foot tall Entry Portal Wall on top. This is a perfectly comprehensible and recognizable Mecca direction indicator.
Rabbat's comments to the Park Service do not even pretend to be objective. He lists "talking points" in defense of the crescent design without ever even pretending to weigh the merits of the case against the design.
Most obviously, Rabbat never considers the almost exact Mecca orientation of the giant crescent as a grounds for concern, but limits his remarks to possible excuses for not worrying about this obviously worrisome fact. The same for all of his other talking points. He only even considers ways to absolve the crescent design.
In short, Rabbat is as overtly biased as he could possibly be, yet the Park Service has no qualms about this overt bias. Rabbat gives them the excuses for unconcern that they want and they eagerly embrace him. The Park Service investigation into warnings of an enemy plot was a total fraud.
Tuesday, January 15, 2008
Pentagon not the only Department giving the last word to Muslims covering up terror threats
The military's top expert on jihad ideology was fired last week at the behest of a Muslim aide to Deputy Secretary of Defense Gordon England. The aide is a friend to the grand-daddy of all modern Islamic terror groups, the Muslim Brotherhood. His influence is penetration of the top levels of the Pentagon by our terror war enemies.
What happened in the Park Service's Flight 93 memorial investigation is very similar. Our last three blogbursts exposed how two Muslim academics fed the Park Service blatantly dishonest excuses for the giant Mecca oriented crescent in the Murdoch-designed memorial.
Kevin Jaques from Indiana University said that the similarity to an Islamic mihrab should be ignored (a mihrab is the Mecca direction indicator around which every mosque is built) because there has never been a mihrab anywhere near this big before.
Nasser Rabbat said that because the Flight 93 crescent does not point quite exactly at Mecca (it is 1.8° off), it cannot be regarded as a mihrab:
"Mihrab orientation is either correct or not. It cannot be off by some degrees." [From the Park Service's White Paper.]Liar. Many classic mihrabs are oriented 10, 20 or 30 degrees from Mecca. The most elaborate mihrab in the world, the mihrab at the great mosque in Cordoba Spain, is oriented more than 45° off Mecca:
Cordoba mihrab points south. Mecca is east-southeast of Spain.
More Rabbat deceptions
Nasser Rabbat's other lies to the Park Service are just as blatant. One of Rabbat's "talking points," as he calls them, questions whether the crescent is really an Islamic symbol at all:
The Crescent is a debatable Islamic universal symbol. Many groups do not use it. I know in fact of no militant group that uses it. Islamic modern states have opted to use it, sometimes with the star, which is a modern symbol with no Islamic connotation.Appearing on the vast majority of Islamic flags is "no Islamic connotation"?
The specific question Rabbat was supposedly addressing is the use of a crescent for the shape of a mihrab, and here the Islamic usage is undeniable. Lots of mihrabs are pointed arch shaped, but the archetypical mihrab--the Prophet's Mihrab at the Prophet's Mosque in Medina--is crescent shaped both in its vertical dimension and its depth dimension:
Rabbat is a professor of Islamic architecture. Mosque design falls within his field of expertise. He knows the traditional crescent shaped mihrab better than anybody and just lies about it, the same way he lies about mihrab orientation having to be exact.
And that bit about not knowing of any militant groups that use the crescent? That would make Rabbat a very rare Syrian, if he has never seen the Hezbollah flag:
When the terror groups have the crescent embrace the globe, they mean that Islam will one day rule the world and subjugate all the infidels.
Here are some more:
Palestinian Liberation Front
Perhaps a better question is whether there are Islamic terror groups that do not identify with the crescent.
At both the Park Service and the Pentagon, Muslim consultants who are engaged in blatant cover up of terror threats are being given the last word by top level administration officials.
Let's get those Congressional investigations going.
Wednesday, January 09, 2008
Blogburst blockbuster: Professor who white-washed the Crescent of Embrace was Paul Murdoch's classmate at UCLA
A check of Rabbat's background shows that he was a classmate of Paul Murdoch, both getting masters degrees in architecture from UCLA in 1984 and both doing their masters work on Middle Easter subjects. Murdoch wrote a "masters project" titled: "A museum for Haifa, Israel." Rabbat did a masters thesis titled: "House-form, climactic response and lifestyle: a study of the 17-19th century courthouse houses in Cairo and Damascus."
This connection between Murdoch and Rabbat raises the possibility that Murdoch himself orchestrated the Park Service investigation into warnings about his own design. Rabbat denies knowing Murdoch, but given the blatant dishonesty of what he told the Park Service, that denial cannot be trusted.
Rabbat lied about something that every practicing Muslim knows
Rabbat's first "major talking point" (from the Memorial Project's White Paper, towards the bottom) is a blatantly dishonest excuse for why the Park Service should not be concerned about the almost exact Mecca orientation of the Crescent of Embrace. A crescent that Muslims face into to face Mecca is called a mihrab and is the central feature around which every mosque is built. Rabbat assures the Park Service that because the Mecca orientation of the Crescent of Embrace is inexact, it can't be seen as a mihrab:
Mihrab orientation is either correct or not. It cannot be off by some degrees.Absolutely false, and Rabbat certainly knows it. This goes to the most basic principle of mosque design: that all mosques are expressions of Muhammad's prototype.
Muhammad's original mosque in Medina was not oriented precisely on Mecca. It was built to face Jerusalem. Later in his career Muhammad changed the direction that Muslims were to face for prayer (their qibla direction). Instead of facing north from Medina to Jerusalem they were to face south, towards Mecca (Koran 2.142-145). To effect this change, Muhammad just started using the southerly wall of his mosque as his "qibla wall" instead of the northerly wall, even though this wall had not been built to face Mecca.
In the abstract, Muhammad held the qibla direction from Medina to be "south." But Mecca is not quite due south from Medina either. Thus both in practice and in the abstract, Muhammad was not particular about an exact orientation on Mecca, and in Islam, what is good enough for Muhammad has to be good enough for everyone. He is the model.
This leeway to face only roughly towards Mecca for prayer is not some obscure bit of doctrine. Every practicing Muslim knows that qibla orientation does not have to be exact because they all have to avail themselves of this allowance pretty much every day as they seek walls that are oriented not too far off of Mecca which they can face into for their frequent prayers.
Rabbat just flat out lied about something that every practicing Muslim knows, and this is an expert in Mosque design. He knows better than anyone the historic leeway afforded in Mecca orientation.
Is Rabbat the source of Patrick White's foolishness?
Rabbat's dishonest report to the Park Service may explain an amazing argument made by Patrick White, Vice President of Families of Flight 93. At the July 2007 public meeting of the Memorial Project, White argued in a private conversation that the almost exact Mecca-orientation of the giant crescent cannot be intended as a tribute to Islam because the inexactness of it would be "disrespectful to Islam."
At the same time as White was privately making excuses for the almost exact Mecca orientation of the crescent, he was telling the newspapers that the Mecca orientation claim was false and preposterous, so he certainly cannot be absolved. But it is possible that he himself was misled about how Muslims would regard an inexactly oriented mihrab.
The Memorial Project received Rabbat's comments about a year earlier, and Patrick White certainly had access to them. It seems likely that when White said that an inexact orientation on Mecca would be "disrespectful to Islam," he was following Rabbat's "can't be off" lead.
The crescent design also includes an exact Mecca orientation
If Nassar Rabbat actually read the information that I sent to the Memorial Project, he would know that in addition to the physical crescent, the Crescent of Embrace design also includes a thematic crescent, defined by architect Paul Murdoch himself. The upper tip of this thematic crescent is the point where, in Murdoch's explanation, the flight path breaks the circle. If this thematic or "true" upper crescent tip is used to define the orientation of the crescent, then the crescent points exactly to Mecca.
If Rabbat really thinks that exactness is what matters, he would have been alarmed to see that this thematic crescent is oriented exactly on Mecca. Instead, he ignored it.
The Park Service already knew about the Mecca orientation of the crescent
The Park Service's other Islamic scholar, Kevin Jaques, did the same thing as Rabbat. He admitted the similarity between the giant Mecca oriented crescent and a traditional Islamic mihrab, then concocted a blatantly dishonest excuse for why the Park Service shouldn't be concerned about it. Jaques assured the Park Service that there was no reason to worry because no one had ever seen a mihrab this big before:
Thirdly, most mihrabs are small, rarely larger than the figure of a man, although some of the more ornamental ones can be larger, but nothing as large at the crescent found in the site design. It is unlikely that most Muslims would walk into the area of the circle/crescent and see a mihrab because it is well beyond their limit of experience. Again, just because it is similar does not make it the same.If Jaques and Rabbat were willing to engage in such blatantly dishonest excuse-making, why did they start out by admitting that the giant crescent was geometrically close to a perfect mihrab? Because the Park Service already knew that the giant crescent was oriented almost exactly on Mecca, and that a crescent that Muslims face into to face Mecca is the central feature around which every mosque is built.
Advisory Commission member Tim Baird would admit this explicitly in 2007, but it was obvious much earlier. What the Park Service wanted when it conducted its internal investigation in the spring and summer of 2006 was excuses not to be concerned about these damning facts, and that is what Jaques and Rabbat provided. Similarly for the egregious Daniel Griffith, the "professor of geospatial information," who told the newspapers that "anything can point to Mecca, because the earth is round."
The Park Service knew this was all fraudulent. Griffith's "anything can point to Mecca" and Rabbat's "it has to be exact" were complete contradictions of each other, but the Park Service gladly embraced both as excuses to pretend that there was nothing to worry about.
If these government functionaries were this desperate for a cover up, it is certainly plausible that they would accept any help they could get from Paul Murdoch. Not that it is hard to find radically dishonest, America-hating academics, but these three frauds are outliers even by worst standards.
More dishonest excuse-making from Rabbat
Rabbat's next talking point is more of the same dishonest excuse-making:
Besides, in the US, a debate has been going on as to which is the right Mecca orientation: the one going through the North Pole or the one that follows a flat representation of the globe.The orientation "through the North Pole" (55.2° clockwise from north, to be precise) is the great-circle direction to Mecca. This great circle direction to Mecca is the orientation of the Crescent of Embrace (almost exactly), and it is the direction in which almost all Muslims pray.
A few dissenters pray in the rhumb-line direction to Mecca (the direction of constant compass heading, which spirals down the globe in an east-southeasterly direction from North America). Rabbat pretends that the existence of these few dissenters somehow makes the whole matter of the Mecca oriented crescent a non-issue.
If anything, the debate over qibla direction shows the flexibility of the qibla direction, giving the lie to Rabbat's earlier assertion that mihrab orientation "can't be off."
Rabbat certainly knows that the great-circle direction to Mecca is the dominant qibla direction. (It won out over the rhumb line direction for the very good reason that a person facing in the rhumb-line direction to Mecca is not actually facing Mecca, since the rhumb-line follows a curved path.) But don't worry about a little thing like the crescent facing in the dominant qibla direction. Rabbat has plenty of lame excuses why you don't need to care.
Tom Burnett's call for a Congressional investigation
The Park Service won't say how they came up with Griffith, Jaques and Rabbat so we have to force them. A lot of People must be forced to answer these and a lot of other hard questions, and the only way to do it is to heed Tom Burnett's call for a Congressional Investigation.
Tuesday, January 01, 2008
Crescent mosque violates the only physical requirement for design entries
Reynolds cupped his hands together for the audience and insisted that the design had to be a crescent:
Because, if you do this with you hands, this is the land there. This bowl is America holding its heroes.But in fact, the site is not a bowl shape at all, as one can tell by looking at the topo lines on the site plan. The land slopes continually from north-northwest to south-southeast:
The Sacred Ground Plaza that marks the crash site sits between the crescent tips (above the 4). 20 feet of elevation per topo line.
Instead of following the rim of a bowl, the crescent starts on a ridgeline above the crash site and circles around to well below it, passing across the middle of a wetland that sits about 70 vertical feet below the crash site.
Not only is the crash site not a bowl, but the crescent actually does not fit the natural landform at all. Of all the designs entered in the design competition, Paul Murdoch's Crescent of Embrace is the only one that that fails to meet the Memorial Project's single stated physical requirement: that design entries should "respect the rural landscape." (Scroll down to "purpose.")
To create the full arc of the crescent, a raised causeway will have to be filled in across the wetlands that collect about half-way out the lower crescent arm:
This filling in of the wetlands would never be allowed in a private project. There are environmental laws against it.
To sneak his design past the requirement to leave the landscape undisturbed, Murdoch played a very clever trick. His preliminary Crescent of Embrace design did not build a causeway across the wetlands. It only showed a quarter circle of red maple walkway, with a natural footpath skirting around the bottom of the wetlands area instead of crossing it:
This original crescent design already had the flight path breaking the circle, turning it into what was called from the start the Crescent of Embrace, so it seems that Murdoch had in mind from the beginning to memorialize the terrorists' circle-breaking/ crescent-creating feat. He could well have had the basic geometry of his full terrorist memorial mosque already worked out, but he knew that he would never make the first cut if he broke the competition's one rule and violated the wetlands, so he only showed a little bit of crescent, and had his innocuous looking footpath skirt the wetlands.
To turn his preliminary design into a full Islamic crescent, Murdoch needed to build his causeway. How did he justify this violation of the wetlands? With typical brass, declaring that the causeway created a "healing landscape":
Here visitors will be most aware of continuously connected living systems as the circular path literally bridges the hydrology of the Bowl. ["Wetlands," p. 5.]The highway department should hire this guy for P.R.. He could sell the environmentalists on how close a new road will bring them to nature. Why, they will be "literally bridging it!" What could be better? Good pitch. The Memorial Project bought it.
Most remarkable is Patrick White, vice president of Families of Flight 93. In private conversation at the Memorial Project's July 2007 meeting, White told one of my compatriots that an expensive drainage system had been developed for the crescent design and that no other design could work on the site because this elaborate drainage system would only work with the crescent design.
Duh. The crescent design is the only design out of all thousand submitted that needs a drainage system. Every other design left the wetland untouched, as the Memorial Project had asked. Yet these people all really seem to mean it when they insist that this is the only design that fits the land.
Didn't they notice that not one of the other thousand designs was a crescent? How could that be, if the landform really dictated a crescent? How did they get so wrapped in the emotion of the crescent's "healing embrace" that they can't see anything else?
Because Paul Murdoch is an artistic genius who had these grieving people in the palms of his hands. The man is diabolical!
Stop the Crescent Mosque Blogburst/Blogroll
Want to join our blogbursts and be on the blogburst blogroll? Email Cao at caoilfhionn1 at gmail dot com, with your blog's url address. The blogburst will be sent out once a week to the participants, for simultaneous publication on this issue on Wednesdays.