« Dead Derelict's Stolen Boots Bum Out Sean Penn | Main | Columbia University Offers Soapbox to Ahmadinejad »
September 20, 2007
Crescent of Betrayal Update
The latest on the Flight 93 memorial abomination, from the desk of Alec Rawls:
Tom Burnett Sr. is rested up and has renewed his protest against the crescent design with an op-ed column and a new radio interview. Great stuff.
http://errortheory.blogspot.com/2007/09/tom-burnetts-911-protests-against.html
The Memorial Project is refusing to honor Tom Sr.'s request that Tom Jr.'s name not be inscribed on one of the 44 blocks, and the local press is siding with the Project.
http://errortheory.blogspot.com/2007/09/flight-93-memorial-project-will-not.html
The press is also refusing to honor Mr. Burnett's request for fact checking of my easily verifiable claims. Instead, the Project and the press are both trying to counter my warning that the giant crescent is oriented on Mecca by pretending that there is no such thing as the direction to Mecca!
http://errortheory.blogspot.com/2007/09/no-direction-to-mecca.html
Posted by Van Helsing at September 20, 2007 8:15 PM
Comments
Well, whether this is an unfortunate coincidence or deliberate Islamophilia (and even if it is an unfortunate coincidence, that should be enough to cause a rethink, after all, just as if the design were to accidentally look like a big pair of boobies, that would probably be enough to cause a rethink), the idea that "every direction points at Mecca" is absurd. It would only be true for one point on the Earth- the exact antipode of Mecca, since any direction would be a great circle passing through Mecca. For any other two sites, for one to point at the other it must be aligned along the solitary great circle which passes through both.
A moment's thought shows this to be true. If any direction points at any other point on the Earth's surface, "because the Earth is round", then e.g. airline pilots wouldn't need to bother which direction they flew in. They could take off from airports in random directions and just keep flying until they hit wherever they want to be. Which is piffle of course. Neither would a ship's captain need to worry about his direction of travel. Just keep the ship going in a straight line, whatever direction you take you'll end up in New York!
Posted by: Ian from the EUSSR at September 21, 2007 2:14 AM
This was no accident, the artist Paul Murdoch that created it is from the land of fruits and nuts.... probably went to Berkeley.
Posted by: Anonymous at September 21, 2007 5:48 AM
Here is a riddle about the Flight 93 Memorial that I will post the answer to in next Wednesday’s blogburst about the crescent design:
A widely advertised feature of the crescent design is the "40 Memorial Groves." When controversy over the Crescent of Embrace name first arose, the entire memorial was even briefly re-titled "40 Memorial Groves."
Why then does the design only include 38 Memorial Groves?
Hint: the crescent symbolizes the Islamic heavens. Not just anyone can be memorialized there. So who IS being memorialized, and how?
I'll post the answer on my Error Theory blog next Wednesday. If you want to join the blogburst, contact Cao.
Another clue is here. Remember, architect Paul Murdoch is an evil genius. The answer is tricky!
Posted by: Alec Rawls at September 28, 2007 2:36 PM
