http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pPnOFv2_E10

Straight from the man's mouth, no interpretation required.

I am going to retract on this post. I have been able to reach one of the journalists who published the original posts in major newspaper and they have said their concerns were long ago settled on this question.

It's interesting that none of the journalists who posted these relatively explosive stories subsequently published a story retracting. The single journalist I was able to reach on it, said he thought he had essentially retracted in some side notes, but that is really pretty weak from a journalistic ethics pov.

And, so today, if you google this story, you can still find lots of references to the original story and no retractions pop up. I think it's important when a story is wrong, that the paper print a no-nonsense retraction.

I hereby retract. I think the story regarding the put options on the WTC attacks is not factual.

Original post below:

I believe there is no question that some folks made bets (put and call options) based on foreknowledge of the attacks planned against the World Trade Centers on September 11th.

If an investigator wanted to know all about the crime, wouldn't it make sense to track down the individuals who made the bets, find out how they came to have foreknowledge, and correlate the results of the investigation of the profits with all the other evidence that could be gathered regarding the collapse of the WTC buildings (3 of them).

CBS News reported on the put options on September 19, 2001. Bloomberg News and the London Times were carrying the same story about the same time. There doesn't seem to be much question that folks placed bets based on inside knowledge about the attacks.

Introduction

This is the beginning of a special series of posts, just for my friend Rob.  Rob and I lived and worked together for 3 years at Bread & Roses, and have shared enough drinks to blind a sailor.  It is, therefore, important to me that he get his very concerning questions answered about what I think is going to happen to him after he kicks the bucket.

This is also a good opportunity for general discussion on religion, as there is a tremendous amount of misinformation and misunderstanding around the issue.  So I am going to take the opportunity to post on a range of issues that seem to go to the root of the misunderstanding, including: afterlife, scriptural exegesis and interpretation, the meaning of faith, and the purpose of religion.  Some of what I will write in this series will be based on my understanding of current biblical scholarship, which is highly technical and actually quite scientific in its [the scholarship, not so much my understanding of it] approach.  And some of what I write will be my own opinions, which are relatively well educated but nonetheless quite subjective.  I am by no means in any way an expert.  Just a lively layperson.

Please feel free to jump in on the discussion, but let's try to avoid making assumptions and jumping to conclusions about the beliefs of others.  Let's try to keep it polite and civil as well (okay Mike, here you go: Let's try to be gentle with each other here.)

Afterlife 

"So, do you indeed believe in an eternal "punishment" for not believing in God and Jesus and following Christian dogma?"

The Collapse of Buildings

Why the World Trade Center towers collapsed

Buildings, like all structures, are designed to support certain loads without deforming excessively. The loads are the weights of people and objects, the weight of rain and snow and the pressure of wind--called live loads--and the dead load of the building itself. With buildings of a few floors, strength generally accompanies sufficent rigidity, and the design is mainly that of a roof that will keep the weather out while spanning large open spaces. With tall buildings of many floors, the roof is a minor matter, and the support of the weight of the building itself is the main consideration. Like long bridges, tall buildings are subject to catastrophic collapse.

The causes of building collapse can be classified under general headings to facilitate analysis. These headings are:

Trufant JUST intercepted and returned it about 80 yds for a touchdown! 14 vs 27 hawks in the lead with 5 1/2 minutes left on the clock. GO HAWKS!!!!

FINAL SCORE  14 to 35 Seahawks win. This is Norm, from his living room in front of the TV, for Olyblog Pro-football coverage signing off. Congratulations Seattle, and Good Evening.

It seems like that time of year when lots of folks have made up their minds to lose that weight. Me, on the other hand -- I just hit my personal weight loss goal a week ago, having started back in May.

I mentioned something to chad360 about the web tools that I use, and he suggested that the olybloggers might be interested. :)

So, here goes.

• PhysicsDiet.com: I weigh myself every day, and record my weight and body fat here. The site does the math to get a moving average, which is nice because it smooths out the day-to-day fluctuations. The forum is pretty nice, too. Interestingly, it seems to attract more guys than the average weight-loss group. I think it's the nerd factor.
• The Daily Plate: for obsessive-compulsive calorie counting. I lost weight by eating less food and getting more exercise; counting calories helps with the "eating less food" part. I just discovered this site a few days ago, but I'm really happy with it.
• We Endure: for the "get more exercise" part. My main disappointment here is that it doesn't list walking as one of the trackable exercises. I just using "running" and tag those with "walk." When the light comes back, I'm going to be all about biking again anyway.
• Joe's Goals: for some more general goal tracking. I'm tracking a few things that have nothing to do with weight, but also whether I drink soda (bad!) or eat before 10 am (good!).
• Not a web app, but I highly recommend The Hacker's Diet -- totally nerd-tastic, written by one of the main programmers of AutoCAD 10 years ago, and very sensible.

Losing weight in 2007 has been a life-changing experience, so I hope this is helpful to at least one person out there in olyblog-land.

All are welcome to post and discuss this issue.

The following is a list of bullet points from Mike Huckabee, GOP candidate for President of the United States of America, who recently won the Iowa caucus:

• The First Amendment requires that expressions of faith be neither prohibited nor preferred.
• My faith is my life - it defines me. I don't separate my faith from my personal and professional lives.
• Real faith makes us more humble and mindful, not of the faults of others, but of our own. It makes us less judgmental, as we see others with the same frailties we have.
• Faith gives us strength in the face of injustice and motivates us to do our best for "the least of us."
• Our nation was birthed in a spirit of faith - not a prescriptive faith telling us how or whether to believe, but acknowledging a providence that pervades our world.

I agree with Huckabee on point 1. 

On point 2, we start to disagree.  I DO separate my philosophical viewpoints from my professional life.  For me to push the influence of my secular humanist viewpoint on an Evangelical Christian in a business atmosphere would be inappropriate, in my opinion, thus I expect the same in return from an elected official.

Point 3 - Huckabee's language leaves me cold.  He appears to be telling us that he is privvy to "real faith", thus the alleged humility becomes somewhat hypocritical, as I see it.  I find anyone talking about "real faith" and "less judgemental" in the same sentence, to have not thought it through well enough.

Point 4 - Faith and injustice are great buzz words, but I don't see the Republican Party, for whom Huckabee represents, being the poster children for helping the less fortunate.  Actions, not words.

The journalist Philip Dawdy keeps this excellent blog Furious Seasons.

Some quotes from his About This Site page:

I am concerned about the state of mental health care in America and elsewhere. We simply are not getting the kind of results that patients, myself included, were promised 20 years ago at the dawn of the psychopharmacological revolution. Yet that's not what you'll read in the American media and it's not what you'll hear from researchers, most advocates and the pharmaceutical companies.

What I am trying to do is get Americans of every stripe to think about mental illness in a different way. I am also hoping to get the mentally-ill to think about their own plight in more expansive ways that they will ever hear from their doctor or therapist.

I've written about Philip Dawdy before here and here and I want to continue to encourage folks to check out his work. He writes a lot about "human determination and personal responsibility". His work and blog are quite inspiring. Plus the blog has an active reading and commenting community.