Tuesday, April 8, 2008

September Clues 9 - Blatant Disinfo

Please see September Clues 9 for blatant disinformation.




Simon Shack has jumped fully on the bandwagon with Fred BS Registration and others in claiming that the 9/11 videos were animated with foreground and background layers.

His evidence consists of comparing the apparent sizes and positions of various structures in various shots. He also notes differences in color balance.

Long story short, there is NO evidence for compositing buildings, skylines, backgrounds, etc. ALL of the apparent size and position anomalies are explained by foreshortening and parallax. Professional cameras have telescopic lenses. Under that sort of zoom, distant objects like bridges can indeed appear much, much closer and larger than they would with less zoom. In fact, that's the whole point of a zoom lens. Once again, I urge anyone with a camcorder to experiment for themselves.

The color balance problems are suspicious, but they are evidence of nothing more than the color balance being tweaked.

As usual, Simon Shack has tossed a perfect softball to agent Orange Anthony Lawson, who is today circulating an email debunking SC9. Do you see how disinformation works? Shack and Grable screw up the evidence for no planes, Lawson and Salter debunk it, and people think no planers are crazy.

It's quite a brilliant strategy, I must admit.

-Ace Baker




From: lawson911@gmail.com
Subject: Correctiion: September Clues Part 9
Date: April 8, 2008 6:53:36 AM PDT
To: ODEION@yahoogroups.com, aussiesoundengineer@gmail.com, denzen@umich.edu, nateflach@hotmail.com, urban-badger@hotmail.co.uk, rgage@ae911truth.org, jimveda37@yahoo.com, jshelton@ae911truth.org, TBach65@aol.com, and 10 more…
Cc: simonshack@libero.it, ace@acebaker.com, jfetzer@d.umn.edu, econrn@suddenlink.net

Hello,

I know that the subject of no planes has been kind-of banned, among many of us, by mutual consent, but if you feel like a good laugh, you really should take a look at Simon Shack's latest, and hopefully, final, resistible pièce de résistance at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eie1lDKDNxA

His presentation is so audacious, as well as confident that several people have said that they were almost taken in by it, like almost believing that the magician has really cut the lady in half and re-joined her, before your very eyes. It is hard to know if Mr Shack is simply naïve or a clever manipulator, but he has taken many clips, from the video coverage of the tragic events of 9/11 and, by calling them into question, makes you do a double-take and almost mentally concede that he might have a point. Almost, but not quite.

Every day—whether walking or driving in a car—we pass or approach objects which are at different distances from us, and our brain automatically processes this information, giving us a sense of the relative distances between these objects, which is largely based on prior visual experiences as to their size as well as other, subconscious visual triggers. However, when such familiar objects are photographed, filmed or videoed, the photographer may use a lens which will distort these relationships, and the resulting images can often appear, at first glance, to be unreal or wrong, when we mentally compare them with what we remember as being normal.

Even though such visual manipulations have been commonplace since the first telephoto lens was fixed to a camera, Mr Shack, apparently, is unaware of these factors, or he has deliberately chosen to ignore them, because he now maintains that the 9/11 television coverage was a gigantic video hoax, from beginning to end, and that he has "proven" it by pointing out these common visual distortions—they are not discrepancies—in the video coverage.

Much of the coverage was, of necessity, videoed using zoom lenses mounted on cameras which were attached to sophisticated heli-mounts, which allowed their operators to zoom in and out on the Twin Towers, keeping them in focus, as well as reasonably vertical, and in the same relative positions in frame, while the helicopters flew around them. As a result, many sections of these shots were taken with the zoom lenses set at long focal-lengths.

One ridiculous claim, in particular, stands out: it is commonly known as the "Moving Bridge" shot, because several "experts" have maintained that the Verrazano Narrows bridge moves, during a zoom out from the smoking Towers. Of course the bridge does not move, it is the camera which was moving, from right-to-left, and also zooming out during the shot. This combination reduced the apparent motion-parallax effect, as the South Tower is increasingly unmasked by the North Tower, which was only about 164 feet from it. However, the Verrazano Bridge was 7.1 miles away—37,488 feet, or 288 times more distant—so it naturally appears to move quite a lot, in the frame. But not, as Simon Shack would have us believe: because the shot was a trick, or a composite or an overlay or anything else, other than a figment of his fertile imagination.

I have tried to post some comments about this video, in the appropriate place, but it seems that I have been blocked, so here they are, meant for the perpetrator of this nonsense:



This video is absurd. A 12 year old with a basic knowledge of viewing perspectives and motion parallax would be able to refute your nonsense, using Lego bricks and a viewer: e.g. a digital camera.

Motion parallax is the apparent shift of an object's position against a given background, and is caused by a change in the observer's position. In the cases you've highlighted, the camera positions vary, either because they are different cameras or a single camera moving/zooming during a shot.

The alleged discrepancies between building sizes, in different shots, are also phoney. They can be explained by the viewing angles of the cameras in question, and the distances to each of the objects. An imaginary (impossible) viewing angle of zero degrees would make all objects, no matter the distance, appear the same relative size in an image. As the (real) angle is increased, so the image sizes of the objects vary, relative to their distance from the camera. Optics 101. Go read a book!


If you do happen to view the video, please make a comment to try and set Mr Shack's delusional followers straight.

Anthony




From: ace@acebaker.com
Subject: Re: September Clues Part 9
Date: April 8, 2008 8:00:19 AM PDT
To: lawson911@gmail.com
Cc: ODEION@yahoogroups.com, aussiesoundengineer@gmail.com, denzen@umich.edu, nateflach@hotmail.com, urban-badger@hotmail.co.uk, rgage@ae911truth.org, jimveda37@yahoo.com, jshelton@ae911truth.org, TBach65@aol.com, sggoodale@yahoo.com, truthaction@hotmail.com, and 12 more…

Dear Anthony Lawson,

Simon Shack is disinfo, poisoning the proof of no planes. I've debunked the parallax hoax ad nauseam, e.g. here:

http://acebaker.blogspot.com/2008/02/correcting-mistakes-in-no-planes.html

I will appear on the Hardfire television program, taping April 24, and present the correct evidence for no planes. If any of you would like to attempt to defend the plane theory, here are some preliminary questions here that you should answer:

http://acebaker.blogspot.com/2008/02/questions-for-911-plane-theorists.html

Here's an under-construction version of my chapter in the upcoming Scholars book:

http://acebaker.blogspot.com/2008/03/fox-five-fakery-contents.html

Sincerely,


Ace Baker