[MLUG - DISCUSSION] our bridge collapse

[Mike Miller <EMAIL:PROTECTED>]

The I-35W bridge that collapsed up here in Minneapolis was right outside 
of my office building.  Our building was closer than any other building 
and you can see it in many of the photos of the collapsed bridge.

I was concerned that some of the claims coming from our state Dept. of 
Transportation (a.k.a. MNDOT) and from the construction company were false 
or misleading.  I made this web page to show one piece of evidence:

http://taxa.epi.umn.edu/bridge/

I have continued to add to that and I have a few more things to add soon.

The big breakthrough for me was that this famous expert (Hassan for 
short), was interested in my web page and the construction photo (taken 
by Thomas Boblett):

http://www.ce.berkeley.edu/~astaneh/

He found the photo very useful and wanted to get more data, but the police 
and workers on the site wouldn't let him near it.  I was able to get him 
onto the roof of our building where he took some good photos.  He will be 
presenting something on his findings in a few weeks.  Before that, he will 
be presenting his findings on the WTC collapse of 9/11/2001.  He recently 
finished a 4-5 year NSF study that involved a lot of supercomputer 
simulations showing how the building would have responded to the jet crash 
if it had been built differently.  He has some very cool animations to 
show and I'm pretty sure it will be in the news.

By the way, I don't want to give away any of his stuff on the WTC, but it 
is very interesting and should be more widely known.  More on that after 
he presents.  I will add though that he is not one of those conspiracy 
nuts and he has a very deep understanding of steel structures and how they 
work.  People who say that "it fell too fast" or "steel doesn't weaken at 
high temperatures" and other crazy things are completely full of crap. 
There was a physics prof at Utah who was saying some of this -- he 
resigned from his job instead of being investigated.  Here he is:

http://www.ce.berkeley.edu/~astaneh/

Apparently he's just a liar trying to get famous by hoodwinking people, or 
maybe he's delusional, but those are probably the only two reasonable 
explanations for his behavior.

Mike

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