Quiz: Are you stupid?

Originally published August 4, 2005

Directions: one, you answer questions. Two, you see results bottom page. Then, you send questionnaire to friend so friend fill too. We clear? You reading okay?

How would you describe the state of your general culture?
1) On hold
2) Disconnected
3) Vegetative
4) Blonde
5) You are my favorite blogger, I own all of your albums.

Do you struggle with orthograph? i.e. do you make many spelling errors?
1) Hey, you made a eror on "speling"!
2) You also made a eror on "eror"! Like, you should talk.
3) Only when I write
4) 2 mistakes per word, is that considered a lot?
5) Oh yes, I would like to have your orthograph

What is your philosophy in life?
1) I may not be pretty, but I ain't smart either
2) I think, so... err, therefore... I... think... errr
3) 36 C
4) Anything that looks good on a car bumper
5) Can you repeat the question?

Are you subject to cognitive dissonances relatively to sensorial stimuli from your psycho-affective environment, and how does it influence your level of awareness towards the upsurge of the new socio-cultural paradigms?
1) Er ...?
2) The what in what now...?
3) ......
4) ....eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeep.....
5) Hi, I'm a first time caller, long time listener

Choose the sentence that best describes your intellectual capacities.
1) The light is on, but nobody's home
2) The wheel is turning, but the hamster's dead
3) I catch quickly, but I need to be explained for quite a while
4) The switch is turned on but the bulb is burnt out
5) Congratulations for your show

Here are six x-rays taken from various brains; choose the one that ressemble yours the most.


Answer true or false to the following questions:
I need an hour and a half to watch 60 minutes (True) (False)
I can't count to twenty without taking my shoes off (True) (False)
My intellectual quotient is a three digit figure, provided you include the decimals. (True) (False)
My ECG indicates "The number you are trying to reach is out of service" (True) (False)

Lastly, tell us who will sent this questionnaire to and why
1) To laugh together at the morons as a means of complicity
2) Because he (she) is a moron
3) I say 1) but mean 2)


RESULTS: If you answer any one of the preceding questions, you officially classify in the stupid category. Seriously.

43 presidents

Originally published February 17, 2005; update accordingly

The fact that the american presidents come from a variety of social classes and professions is no small pride to americans, who enjoy repeating the «anyone can become president» mantra. But if it's true that there has been about six or seven presidents who originated from modest or impoverished backgrounds, at least a dozen come from rich families if not outright aristocracy; in fact, 11 of them had another president somewhere in their family tree.

There are acquaintances that certainly don't harm: 15 had been card-carrying members of the Order of Freemasons, and 6 others are considered supporters. 2 were anti-masons (John Adams senior and junior), but that was almost two centuries ago.

And some prerequisites are mandatory: amongst the 43 presidents that the United States have had during its history, there had been

43 men

43 heterosexuals; no rumors of closet exists as far as I know.

43 whites, but there could have been some skeletons in the closet: according to some historians, 5 presidents had some black ancestry.

43 christians (42 protestants and 1 catholic)

0 atheists, or at least none have admitted so; but again, there could be some closet cases.


As for the governors, from a total of 1051, including colonies and territories:

29 women

4 asians, 3 blacks, 9 latinos, 0 native, 5 others/unknown

1051 christians, including 114 catholics; 0 self-declared atheists; in five states, it is still forbidden by law for an atheist to hold office.

And as you guess, 0 homosexuals.

3 out of 1051. Considering that african-americans account for 12% of the population, we come way short of representivity; as for catholics, they constitutes 23%. Christians total 86% of the population.

Fiction goes farther than reality, but timidly: of all the fictive presidents that Hollywood ever invented, only one to my knowledge has been portrayed by a black actor (Morgan Freeman in Deep Impact)*


And what about here in Canada? From 21 prime ministers, 15 were anglophones and 6 francophones.

In Quebec, 31 prime ministers: 2 anglophones and 29 francophones.

French speakers represent 20% of the canadian population, and 80% of the Quebec population. There is not a lot of countries where an oppressed minority has been so well represented in politics.


* Yes, I know now, there's also Dennis Haysbert in 24

Heptune: presidents list
National Governor Association
Premier ministre du Québec, site officiel
Teaching and learning about Canada
Adherents.com

Top 10 reasons why I hate top ten lists

Originally published April 17, 2007

• 10 – Every one is doing it; it's a cliche as old as time itself, it's getting tired.
• 9 – It has no scientific value or no objectiveness whatsoever; people put whatever they feel like in their toplists in an unapologetically arbitrary fashion.
• 8 – It's too easy; any moron and his grandma can rig a toplist; all you need is a topic and ten platitudes to say on it.
• 7 – It's been done to death: from the top ten nose-picking techniques to the top ten reasons why the weather is nice, there isn't any theme left that hasn't already been the subject of a top ten list. The well has run dry.
• 6 – Too many people haven't really understood the concept and put two or three items in a single entry, so that their top ten becomes a top 11 or 12. Also, too many people wrongly assume that peddling self-derision will make their list less lame.
• 5 – The vast majority of toplists deal with topics nobody even gives a flying fuck about.
• 4 – U mai hav a toplist on ur skyblog but u wil b still a moron and u ll rite as bad lol
• 3 – It's obvious padding. From inept talk-shows to blogs desperately groping for a meme, toplists have become a crutch compensating for the lack of content. It is especially symptomatic of a blogger that ran fresh out of ideas and hasn't posted in like, about a month and a half.
• 2 – Toplists are more often than not made by pompous asses who figure that because they have a blog they can write whatever they want in it.

And the number 1 reason why I hate toplists:

• 1 – Because it's my blog and I can write whatever I want in it

Next time, the top ten reasons why my blog is falling apart at the seams

Think about it

Originally published July 7, 2007

You're still there? What do you want from me, a blog post? I'm busy, go to sleep. C'mon, hurry up, beddie bye. Allright, allright, quit looking at me with those sad puppy eyes. Here are some random observations on various subjects

If Coke Zero really has all the taste of regular Coke but without any calories, why do they still make regular Coke?

I heard somewhere that woman have a less developed spatial perception. But I don't agree: to manage to fully block a 10 feet wide supermarket alley with a cart that's barely 3 foot long by 1 feet wide, you need a hell of a spatial perception I'm telling you.

Woman allegedly put on make-up to please men; if that is true, why are we never seeing any guy in cosmetic ads, but there's always a mirror visible?

Is the host entirely assimilated by the digestive system, or is there some leftover? I mean, when a christian sits down on the commode on monday morning to take a shit, is there a little bit of the body of Christ getting out of his ass?

While we're on the subject, if God created man in his image, does that mean that God has an asshole?

The World Trade Center in Shanghai, which will be the highest skyscraper in the world, is gonna have a circular aperture near its summit. Did the architects thought about all the breakneck daredevil who will get in their head to go through that hole with their plane, their hangglider or God knows what?

The extra-terrestrials that conspired with the americans to supply them stealth technology, have they ever thought of using it themselves?

Athletes who are juiced are supposedly a minority. Is this minority more likely to be found in the middle of the pack, at the end of it or in the lead?

According to the principle of wishful thinking, if the players of a hockey team start to pray, they will win the Stanley Cup. So, if all the players from all 30 NHL teams start to pray, will they all win the Stanley Cup? The same year?

You're never bored when you're paranoid- the truth behind 9/11, part 4

Originally published September 18, 2008

This is the fourth part of a four-part series: for the other parts, click here: 1st part, 2nd part, 3rd part

Those amongst who courageaously put up with me all along – and presumably that's not saying a lot – must be getting a splitting headache trying to figure out who did what where to whom and who got paid. To be perfectly honest, you are not alone. So I will attempt to resume the whole deal with a detailed timeline of the September 11 conspiracy.

• ? – four Boeings painted with the colors of the two airline companies take off from a strip of which the exact whereabouts are still unknown; they will be the duplicates of four of the to-be-hijacked planes; three of them are fitted with missiles; a fifth plane, an A-10 Thunderbolt specially modified for air-to-air combat and repainted in white to simulate a private corporate jet, also takes off; it will become the duplicate of flight 93
• 07:00 to 07:45 – At Logan airport in Boston, three of the five pirates from flight 11 are selected for a security check-up; at Newark airport in New Jersey, one of the pirate from flight 93 is selected; at Dulles airport in Washington, two of the pirates from flight 77 are selected after setting the metal detector's alarm off.
• 07:59 – American Airlines flight 11 take off from Boston
• 08:14 – beginning of the hijacking of flight 11
• 08:14 – United Airlines flight 175 take off from Boston
• 08:19 to 08:44 – the conspirators call American Airline impersonating Betty Ong, a flight attendant aboard flight 11
• 08:20 – American Airlines flight 77 take off from Washington
• 08:20 to 08:44 – the conspirators call American Airlines' flight services impersonating Amy Sweeney, an attendant aboard flight 11
• 08:24 – Flight 11 changes course and heads towards New York; the conspirators send two radio messages pretending to be Mohammad Atta, one of the "hijackers"
• 08:26 – American Airlines flight manager Michael Woodward identifies three of the hijackers on flight 11 with the help of the seat numbers provided by the false Amy Sweeney
• 08:30 – flight 11 and its double meet and exchange their radar signatures
• 08:34 – the conspirators send a third message pretending to be Atta
• 08:37 – the conspirators contact an air controller pretending to be the crew of flight 175 and "confirm" visual contact
• 08:37 – NORAD scrambles fighters to intercept flight 11
• 08:42 – flight 93 takes off from Newark
• 08:42 – beginning of the hijacking of flight 175
• 08:44 – the pilot of US Airlines flight 853 receives a brief signal from an emergency locating transmitter (ELT), possibly from either flight 175 or flight 11
• 08:46 – flight 77 and its double meet and exchange their radar signatures
• 08:46 – flight 11's double crashes in the World Trade Center's north tower a fraction of a second after firing its missile
• 08:48 – CNN interrupt their broadcasting and begin live coverage
• 08:51 appr. – beginning of the hijacking of flight 77
• 08:52 appr. – the conspirators leave the practically intact passport of Satam al Suqami, one of the flight 11 "hijackers", on a sidewalk in the WTC vicinity
• 08:52 – two F-15 scramble from Otis base to intercept the phoney flight 11 unawares that it already crashed
• 08:52 – the conspirators call the United Airlines maintenance center in San Francisco impersonating a flight attendant aboard flight 175 of an uncertain identity, possibly Robert Fangman
• 08:52 – the conspirators call the father of one of the passengers of flight 175, Robert Hanson, impersonating him
• 08:53 – flight 11 lands in Harrisburgh
• 08:53 – flight 175 and its double meet and exchange their radar signatures
• 08:54 – flight 77's double changes course and heads towards Washington
• 08:55 – Delta Airlines flight 2315 narrowly avoids a collision with flight 175; another collision is avoided with flight 542 from US Airways
• 08:56 – air controllers lose track of flight 77's double's signal
• 08:57 to 09:32 – the Global Hawk catches up with flight 77 and starts following it
• 08:58 – flight 175's double changes course and heads towards New York
• 08:58 – the conspirators call the wife of a flight 175 passenger, Brian Sweeney, impersonating him; they also call his mother a couple of minutes later
• 09:00 approx. – three F-16 cut short an ongoing exercise and return to Andrews air base
• 09:00 – the conspirators call Peter Hanson's father a second time
• 09:00 and thereafter – Shafig bin Laden, Ossama's brother, attends a conference held by the Carlyle Group at the Washington Ritz Carlton
• 09:00 and thereafter – Mike Ballinger, a United Airlines dispatcher, proceeds to send a warning one by one to all the company's planes
• 09:01 – United Airlines flight 23 cancels its departure from John F. Kennedy airport in New York; the pirates on board start to protest loudly but eventually cancel their plans and flee; flight 23's double goes get lost God knows where
• 09:02 – flight 175 lands in Harrisburgh
• 09:02 – flight 93 and its double meet and exchange their radar signatures
• 09:03 – flight 175's double crashes in the World's Trade Center' south tower a fraction of a second after launching its missile
• 09:03 – NYPD chief Joseph Esposito puts the city of New-York on maximum alert status
• 09:04 – the FAA cancels departures from all airports in New York state and all the states of New England
• 09:06 – President Bush is informed of the crash of flight 175
• 09:07 – flight 93 lands in Harrisburgh, and the passengers of flights 175 and 11 are transferred aboard
• 09:08 – the FAA extends its flight prohibition to the entire US east coast
• 09:08 to 09:13 – the two F-15 from Otis base take an holding flight path east of Long Island
• 09:09 – flight 77 lands in Harrisburgh; the passengers are transferred aboard flight 93
• 09:09 and hereafter – the conspirators flood the airwaves with bogus hijacking reports to confuse air control
• 09:12 to 09:15 – the conspirators call the parents of Renee May, flight attendant aboard fight 77 and impersonate her; they intoxicate them with numerous contradictory informations
• 09:15 to 10:28 – two employees stuck on the 8th floor of WTC7 hear several explosions
• 09:20 – the conspirators call the husband of a passenger aboard flight 77, Barbara Olson and impersonate her; the husband is Theodore Olson, the Dept. of Justice general sollicitor
• 09:21 – the New York Port Authority closes all bridges and tunnels in the city
• 09:24 – the crew of flight 93 receives Mike Ballinger's warning
• 09:24 – Langley air base scrambles their jets
• 09:25 – the two F-15 from Otis air base finally arrive over Manhattan and commence air patrol
• 09:26 – the FAA grounds all departures across the nation, and orders all planes (commercial, private and even military) already in the air to land at the first reasonnable opportunity
• 09:26 – US Air Force raises its alert level to Delta
• 09:28 – beginning of the fake hijacking of flight 93; the pirates' entry in the cockpit is heard by Cleveland air controllers
• 09:29 – President Bush emits his first televised comments
• 09:30 to 09:45 – the conspirators call three times the wife of Tom Burnett, passenger aboard flight 93 and impersonate him
• 09:30 – United Airlines orders all of its airliners to land immediately; American Airlines will follow suit at 09:35
• 09:30 – three F-16 scrambles from Langley base and heads east towards the Atlantic ocean
• 09:31 to 10:06 – a private flight, ExecuJet 956, spots flight 93 and confirms both visual and radio contact, and even has to maneuver to avoid a collision; it will follow it until it crashes
• 09:32 – the controllers at Dulles airport find flight 77's signal back, unawares that both its double and the Global Hawk are flying right in its wake
• 09:32 – the conspirators send a radio message pretending to be the hijackers of flight 93
• 09:34 to 11:45 – the conspirators jam the radio signal emitted by Air Force One, interfering with President Bush's attempts to contact the White House
• 09:35 – flight 93's double changes course and heads towards Washington
• 09:35 – recordings recovered from flight 93's black box begin now
• 09:35 to 09:41 – the conspirators call United Airlines' maintenance center in San Francisco impersonating a flight attendant aboard flight 93, Sandy Bradshaw
• 09:36 – a E-4B from the US Strategic Command take off from an unspecified base in the vicinity of Washington and fly over the Pentagon to guide to Global Hawk's trajectory
• 09:36 – a C-130 who just took off from Langley air base approaches flight 77 to provide a false confirmation of its presence; it provides a visual distraction as well; after the crash, it will head for Shanksville
• 09:37 – The Global crashes in the western wall of the Pentagon while flight 77's double continues on its course over the complex and towards Ronald Reagan airport a kilometer further ahead
• 09:37 to 10:03 – the conspirators call several friends and relatives of passengers aboard flight 93 and impersonate them all, most notably Todd Beamer, Jeremy Glick and Mark Bingham
• 09:38 – the conspirators knock over a couple of streetlights on Washington Blvd
• 09:38 – a fire squad from Ronald Reagan airport who was helping on the scene of an auto accident near the airport is redirected to the Pentagon
• 09:38 and hereafter – FBI agents seize the recordings from the security camera in commercial buildings nearby the Pentagon
• 09:38 or 09:45 – anti-terrorist agency director Richard Clarke ask for air patrols over all major cities in the United States; however it's not certain if that order was transmitted to everyone
• 09:39 approx. – flight 77's double discreetly lands on Ronald Reagan airport, where it is hacked to pieces
• 09:39 – the conspirators transmit a radio message impersonating Ziad Jarrah, one of the "pirates" of flight 93
• 09:41 –unit 105 from Arlington County Fire Department arrives at the Pentagon
• 09:42 approx. – the E-4B comes back over the Pentagon and circles it a couple of times
• 09:45 – flight 93 takes off from Harrisburgh
• 09:45 – the american airspace is shut off; all incoming international flights are diverted
• 09:47 – the conspirators initiates the controlled demolition of the south tower by causing the collapse of some floors around the 90th
• 09:47 – the conspirators impersonating Jeremy Glick announce to his wife that the passengers are voting to decide whether to revolt
• 09:49 approx. – after a lengthy detour over the Atlantic, the F-16 from Langley air base finally reach Washington
• 09:50 to 10:15 approx. – the conspirators scatter parts of flight 77's double all over the crash scene at the Pentagon; they cross the security perimeter and sneak between "B" and "C" rings to deposit pieces of the Boeing's nose cone and landing gear; they leave some charred bodies still attached to their seat inside the building; they also attempt to make all traces of the Global hawk disappear
• 09:52 – two firemen reach the 78th floor on the south tower and only report two minor fires by radio
• 09:55 – President Bush takes off from Sarasota aboard Air Force One without any precise destination; he circles around Florida
• 09:58 – the conspirators impersonating Todd Beamer announce the beginning of the passenger "revolt" aboard flight 93 to a GTE consumer service supervisor ("let's roll")
• 09:58 – flight 93 is shot down by its double, who continues its course to God knows where
• 09:58 to 10:06 – the conspirators simulates the struggle between the hijackers and the passengers on the controllers radio as well as on the phones of several relatives and acquaintances of the passengers, using a adroitly orchestrated scenario
• 09:59 – the conspirators set off a bomb on the ground floor of the WTC south tower; the 82nd floor falls down, triggering the collapse of the tower
• 10:03 – flight 93 crashes in an abandonned open-quarry mine
  in Pennsylvania
• 10:05 and herafter – the conspirators collect the remains of the passengers from flight 77, 11 and 175 on the site of flight 93's crash and bring them back to the Pentagon and the WTC
• 10:06 approx. – CIA director George Tenet finally receives the passenger manifests after numerous bureaucratic delays
• 10:08 – the C-130 from the Pentagon arrives at the flight 93 crash site to confound again any eyewitness
• 10:10 approx. – Vice-President Cheney authorizes the shooting of flight 93, apparently unawares that it already crashed
• 10:10 – The military level of alert is raised to Defcon 3
• 10:15 – the front wall of the Pentagon's damaged section collapses
• 10:20 – aboard Air Force One, President Bush tells Vice-President Cheney that he has greenlighted the shooting down of any suspect plane if necessary
• 10:28 – the conspirators cause a local earthquake at the base of the WTC north tower, and then set off a bomb on the ground floor; the 98th floor falls down, causing the collapse of the tower
• 10:31 – the FAA authorizes back military and police flights
• 10:35 – Air Force One finally decides on a destination and sets course to Barksdale base
• 10:38 – Andrews air base's F-16 are redeployed after their return from their exercise
• 10:42 – two F-16 take off from Hancock air base
• 10:45 – Major Gibney, who is in fact a lieutenant-colonel take off from Fargo, N.D. heading for Bozman, Mont., to be used as a patsy for the shooting down of flight 93
• 11:45 – Air Force One land on Barksdale base in Louisiana
• 10:50 – a local farmer flies over flight 93's crash site in a Cessna
• 12:00 approx. and herafter – Senator John McCain (R) multiplies tv interviews; he invariably states the necessity of retaliating not only in Afghanistan, but also in Irak, Iran and Syria as well; he will declare during an interview on CNN a couple of days later: «it is evident that Irak is on top on the list»
• 12:15 approx. – the entire american air space is at last empty of all commercial or private traffic
• 17:20 – collapse of World Trade Center 7
• 20:00 and hereafter – flights 175 and 11 take off from Harrisburgh by remote control and are sent towards the Atlantic Ocean to be sunk

Well, this is not working, it's even more fucked up as it is. This is worse than the Gordian knot.

Anyways, that doesn't change anything. Of course, it's all highly speculative, and there are a lot of details that could be different: we could very well for example switch the Global Hawk with an AGM-86D in our scenario, which would have the merit of being more consistent with the size of the hole as a Global Hawk is about as wide as a Boeing. Or we could imagine that the passengers and crews of the planes have in fact never even existed, that their identities were made up out of the blue and that amateur actors have been hired to play the role of the grieving families.

But regardless of all the variations, the working principle remains the same: never in the history of mankind a group of conspirators have spent so much energy and ressources, involved, bought off or duped so many people, conceived a plan so hairbrained and so complex in its conception as well as in its execution. The number of official agencies that they had to let in the plot, the staggering amount of money that they had to invest (you have any idea how much a Boeing jumbo jet costs?), the thousands, even the millions of man-hours of preparation (picture yourself filing away all the serial numbers on the two million parts that make up a Boeing), the sheer Mount Everest of governmental paperwork that they had to glean and get rid off, not to mention all of the authorizations, clearances and permits that they had to obtain to access them.... never a plot will have necessitate so much to in the end amount to so little.

And I stress "so little". You may think that I'm coming apart at the seams by referencing to 2700 dead and a dozen destroyed buildings as "so little", but I'd like to remind you that three farmers, operating under a five figure budget, managed to kill 168 people and razed a 10-story building in Oklahoma City in 1995; if Tim McVeigh could have afforded the retail price of a single 757 Boeing airliner, there's no doubt in my mind that he would have succeeded in leveling the entire city.

As for the Reichstag conspiracy... yeah right, you want to talk about the Reichstag, by all means, let us: a handful of nazi conspirators led by Hermann Goering come in contact with a communist political activist fallen on hard times, pretend to befriend him and eventually end up putting up in his somewhat confused mind that you know what it would be a swell idea to set fire to the Parliament; they open the doors for him and while he runs around the Commons they spill gasoline in the basement. And that's about it. Total cost of the operation... well, how much was worth a jerrycan full of gasoline in 1933?

Six days later, the Nazi Party won the election, and thanks to the dismantling of the Communist Party got hold of the majority. The next month, Hitler assumed absolute power by suspending the constitution. If the original intent of the september 11 conspirators was to establish a fascist state, the least we can say is that the nazis could teach them a thing or two: in a totalitarian regime the Democrat Party would have been dissolved a long time ago and all its leaders arrested as well as the entire staff of the Washington Times, not to mention all those smart-alecky wiseguys a la Jon Stewart or Stephen Colbert who would have been sent hammering rocks in a concentration camp ages ago.

I won't budge on this one: the intention of the conspirators, their modus operandi have conformed to the letter to the motto why make it simple when you can make it complicated. It is obvious that the whole ordeal had never constituted a means, but in fact an end in itself. No force on earth will ever convince me that an underground organization who had enough leverage to be able to embezzle 1.3 trillion (that's right, 1 300 billions) dollars from the most powerful organization on the planet could have even for one second thought that they needed to blow it all in such a boondogled plan to take a power that in the end they in effect already possessed.

Only Rube Goldberg and his disciples conform to the psychological make-up that would satisfactorily explain the behavior and actions of the conspirators. As far as I'm concerned the final conclusion is inevitable: the 9/11 conspiracy was a Rube Goldberg device.

P.S.: I've just been told that Rube Goldberg died in 1970, or 31 years before the events. Well, well, how convenient, an ironclad alibi! When I said they thought of everything... if you thought you would get me with that one, think again, in your face: as far as I'm concerned, it only strenghtens my convictions. Besides, how do you know he's not alive somewhere on a deserted island? Heads you lose, tails I win: welcome to the wonderful world of conspiracy theorism.

You're never bored when you're paranoid- the truth behind 9/11, part 3

Originally published September 13, 2008

This is the third part of a four-part series: for the other parts, click here: 1st part, 2nd part, 4th part

A favorite theme of Rube Goldberg in his drawings of combobulated machines was the introduction of an animal's action in tyhe mechanism, for example a parrot jerking up upon receiving a kick in the butt, or a hamster starting to gallop in his wheel after a stimulation of some sort. The idea was of course to take the complexity and uncertainty factor up a notch. Needless to say, people who build rube goldberg devices as a hobby or for contests hardly ever use animals in their machines, if at all.

Well, not only the 9/11 conspirators introduced the animal factor in their plan, but they went all out and selected the most unpredictable, the most random of them all: the human, namely the passengers of flight 93.

The plan was at first put in motion once again with the hijacking of an airliner, this one from United Airlines. But this time, and contrary to the three other flights, this one was hijacked by genuine kamikazis, actually determined to crash on the Capitol (or the White House, nobody's certain). We could see in this a concession to simplicity, but as you no doubt understand by now that suicide crash didn't represent the real intent of the conspirators; at best it constituted a contingency plan.

The central element in this plan was the strict instructions given the pirates to hold their attack until absolutely sure that the other targets had already been hit; if those orders haven't been followed to the letter, they nevertheless successfully accomplished their purpose. By the time they started setting things in motion, their plane was flying almost over Cleveland, and would need a minimum of thirty minutes to make the way back to Washington.

This delay then allowed the passengers to learn about the attacks on the WTC from phonecalls lodged to their relatives, to understand the situation and so hence to form plans for a revolt. We know the rest: the heroic epic of average american joe against the forces of evil and the famous "let's roll" still to this day co-opted to death by untold numbers of heroe wannabes and venal demagogues. In this baroque machinery, the passengers were the hamsters, the plane the wheel and the hijacking the prod poked in the hamster's ass.

All there remained to do was to sent flight 93 crashing somewhere in a field in Pennsylvania. The conspirators dispatched a US Air Force fighter plane which had been sneaked away beforehand and (did you notice that I use the word "beforehand" quite a lot? Like I said, they thought of everything), and sent it to simply shoot down the Boeing, while sending a private jet to fly around the scene to confound any eyewitness. The fighter then casually returned to its base.

You certainly imagine that all those preparations left traces: minutes from secret meetings, blueprints, recordings... they had to get rid of it all. Obviously if you followed carefully so far and got the general idea well, you probably already figured that simply gathering all this stuff and burn it away in a discreet area certainly wasn't part of their plan. Far from it, they still needed a money shot, the cherry on the top, the grand finale that would conclude the whole affair in an apotheosis of extreme intricateness (I'm really running out of synonyms here).

For their secret planning sessions, the conspirators had... that's right, beforehand elected to rent offices in nothing less than the 7 World Trade Center, which is to say right across the street from the Twin Towers. You remember the controlled demolitions of those towers? Well, hang on to your lugnuts, those explosions were carefully and expertly calculated to make the towers damage WTC7 on their way down so as to cause it to collapse as well, a couple of well placed charges completing the process with a third controlled demolition. The entire scheme then resulted in the disappearing of any and all evidence of the plot. A domino chain!

What would be a good rube goldberg without its domino chain? Our conspirators understood that well and went to the point of using whole skyscrapers in lieu of dominoes. I've said it before and I'll say it again, why make it simple when you can make it complicated?

Tomorrow, the conclusion