9/18/2005
The real “crescent of embrace”
See Cox & Forkum’s commentary here.
Mark Steyn’s take is pretty incredible and to the point:
Okay, let’s get all the “of courses” out of the way – of course, the overwhelmingly majority of Muslims aren’t terrorists; of course, we all know “Islam” means “peace” and “jihad” means “healthy-lifestyle lo-carb granola bar”; etc, etc. Nevertheless, the men who hijacked Flight 93 did it in the name of Islam and their last words as they hit the Pennsylvania sod were no doubt “Allahu Akhbar”. One would be unlikely even today to come across an Allied D-Day memorial so misconceived in its spirit of reconciliation as to be called the Swastika of Embrace. Yet Paul Murdoch, the architect, has somehow managed to produce a design whose two most obvious interpretations are a) a big nothing or b) a splendid memorial to the hijackers rather than their victims.
More at Real Clear Politics, LGF,
Captain Ed also makes a very valuable point:
This was not mere ham-fistedness. There is no group more attuned to symbolism and the “meaning” of structures than architects. It is their business to take drawings and, ultimately, wood, glass, and stone, and create meaning out of it. That this design is in some way accidental or coincidental is preposterous.
You can deny the connection all you want, but take a look at that little grove of trees. They’re in the exact position of the star in the Islamic image of the star and crescent. I flipped the image over so you can see it more clearly and drew a circle around the grove of trees in blue.
Put that together with the mathematic equations and you’ve got a very interesting “coincidence”.
| Lattitude and Longitude of the Crescent to Mecca Coordinates | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Place | Lat(D) | Long(D) | Lat(DMS | Long(DMS) |
| Flight 93 crash | 40.052 | -78.8963 | 40° 3′ 7.20″ | 78° 53′ 46.68″ |
| Mecca | 21.4234 | 39.8262 | 21° 25′ 24.24″ | 39° 49′ 34.32″ |
Draw a line between the tips of the crescent, a line perpendicular to it apparently points directly to Mecca. The image below was created by “Etaoin Shrdlu”, an azimuthal equidistant world map centered on the location of the Flight 93 Memorial which seems to indicate that the crescent is oriented toward Mecca.
Update: These calculations are provided by Wretchard from the Belmont Club and was previously linked. When I have links in a post, I THINK they’re relatively easy to see on this design, aren’t they?
The poster that I have above was a reduced version of a poster at FreeRepublic claiming that the principal visual feature within the “Crescent of Embrace” consisted of a semicircle of red maple trees enfolding a central space, which is oriented toward Mecca.
According to this site, the latitude/longitude coordinates of Mecca are 21.4234, 39.8262 and the coordinates of the Flight 93 crash site are 40.052, -78.8963. Using the calculator from this site, you can determine that the azimuth between the two points is 124.80°.
Next I went to the Flight 93 National Memorial website and found the biggest overhead view of the memorial I could find with north oriented up. I measured the distance from tip-to-tip of the crescent and came up with 64px east-west and 90px north-south. The arctangent of 64/90 is the angle between north and a line drawn between the tips, which works out to 35.42°. Adding 90° to this angle gives the direction the crescent faces as 125.42°. Conclusion: the crescent points towards Mecca with an error of 0.62°, or 0.17%.
Wretchard wasn’t convinced and did his own analysis, below.
The Flight 93 Memorial Site has a downloadable PDF map of the winning design, which you can download. The legend at the bottom of the map specifies it is oriented North, whether true or magnetic is not stipulated. (Magnetic declination is between 6 and 9 degrees W.) Drawing a line connecting the tips of the crescent and drawing a perpendicular, you can see which which way it “opens”. Using a protractor, I found the crescent opens between 230 and 240 (southwest) degrees, or taking the reciprocal, between 50 and 60 (northeast). You are invited to do this yourselves and verify the result.
Next I wanted to know if the coordinates given by the FreeRepublic poster really pointed to the Flight 93 crash site and Mecca. The best way to do this is to convert the decimal lat/long coordinates into DMS using a calculator provided by the FCC. The results are given in the table in the post, but you can do it yourself.
The next step was to stick these coordinates into Keyhole 2 LT, and both coordinates check out. Keyhole takes you to the site with the characteristic two hills and ridge pointing northeast shown in the Flight 93 Memorial winning design. (Keyhole users, tilt the map if you have trouble distinguishing the features.) The coordinates for Mecca likewise go to “Makkah” in Saudi Arabia. Both sets of coordinates seem valid.
FreeRepublic poster’s calculations for bearing seem obtuse because you need to come up with an azimuth of 124.80 degrees. So I went to two sites to independently calculate the bearing from the Flight 93 crash site to Mecca. You can go to the Marine Great Circle Calculator or WhereAreWe?. Both these sites accept the coordinates of points A and B and calculate the true bearing to get from A to B. Both give a result of 55 degrees true, or its reciprocal 235. This discovery is practically astonishing when you do the calculations. The bearing given by both Great Circle Calculators corresponds near enough to the measured opening of the Crescent from the PDF map.
Update 9/25: Sarah found another way to arrive at the same conclusion…check it out at from the Blue Merle.
I used a cropped screen capture from the pdf map of the proposed memorial.
The edges of the open arc are outlined in black to complete the circle.
On that is overlayed a screen capture of a qibla diagram, using this qibla calculator.
The qibla diagram shows the qibla angle from Somerset, Pennsylvania, which is noted as 55 degrees from the north, closer to the crash site coordinates than Pittsburg.
An extended black line is drawn through the qibla angle of 55 degrees.
The crossed lines are at right angles.
The line segment perpendicular to the qibla is bisected.
On that I slapped frame 9 of Zombie’s animation, rotated into alignment with north at the top, and proportionally tweaked for size so that streets, features and numbers, etc. lined up.
Oh, one more thing-
What is the significance of the fact that the Crescent of Embrace is facing AWAY from Mecca? The obvious implication is that it is a crescent of OUTWARD embrace. And what is Islam’s outward embrace? Jihad: the Muslim duty to strive to bring the entire world into submission (the literal translation of “Islam”). What form of Jihad took place on flight 93? Violent aggressive Jihad. No Jihad of “inner struggle to do the right thing” here.
Image from Hillbilly Geek
Stop The ACLU linked with Stop the Memorial Blogburst
Ft. Hard Knox linked with Stop the Flight 93 Murdoch Terrorist Memorial (Join this Blogburst)
Stop the Flight 93 Murdoch Terrorist Memorial Blogburst « Nice Deb linked with Stop the Flight 93 Murdoch Terrorist Memorial Blogburst « Nice Deb
Stop The ACLU linked with Crescent of Betrayal/Surrender Blogburst
September 18th, 2005 at 9:43 am
What are you going to do about the first letter of your name?
It cannot be a coincidence that you pay obesiance to Islamism with that crescent-shaped symbol you use to spell “C”ao.
September 18th, 2005 at 10:40 am
CAOILFHIONN
Gender: Feminine
Usage: Irish
Pronounced: KEE-lin [key]
Derived from the Gaelic elements caol “slender” and fionn “fair”. This was the name of several Irish saints.
The letter “C” is from the Latin Alphabet or Roman Alphabet.
C, third letter of the alphabet. In position and form, but not in meaning, it corresponds to Greek gamma (see G). In English it is pronounced variously, e.g., in can, cent, church, and loch. In musical notation it symbolizes a note in the scale. In chemistry it is the symbol of the element carbon. The capital letter is the Roman numeral for 100.
Greek Gamma looks like this: Γ
September 18th, 2005 at 10:44 am
What are you going to do about your name that represents a corned beef sandwich?
September 18th, 2005 at 11:04 am
Oh, I thought the C was for cookie!
September 18th, 2005 at 11:05 am
Incredible post!
BTW, love the new look Cao!
September 18th, 2005 at 11:25 am
Reuben, what are you going to do about your very obvious rectal-cranial inversion?
September 18th, 2005 at 11:46 am
I guess I’m having a gellato-induce brain freeze or something.
What are we to deduce from these coincidences? That the artists and architects who designed the memorial are terrorist sympathisers? Are trying to make a covert statement? Are playing upon human inabiity to see the obvious?
I’m grasping for motive here.
September 18th, 2005 at 11:46 am
I guess I’m having a gellato-induce brain freeze or something.
What are we to deduce from these coincidences? That the artists and architects who designed the memorial are terrorist sympathisers? Are trying to make a covert statement? Are playing upon human inability to see the obvious?
I’m grasping for motive here.
September 18th, 2005 at 11:57 am
How about–it’s a memorial to the hijackers and not the victims? Pretty simple. More leftist celebrations of the deaths of the “little Eichmanns” *Americans* in the towers from the jihadists’ point of view….like what Ward Churchill said. Because according to the left, AMERICA is the enemy. Capitalism and our way of life must be destroyed…and they’ve joined the jihadis because they’re both in agreement; the Western way of life must be eliminated, they hate America so much.
The only thing is…the jihadis want to take over the world and make Sharia law dominant. That means women must be covered, honor killings and stonings will become the norm, and beheadings will be shown on t.v. like –Al Jazeera.
September 18th, 2005 at 1:52 pm
Cao, I used to live in California and had a lot of friends that came from other countries. We couldn’t discuss politics or we’d no longer be friends.
What I’m trying to get at here is that as Liberal as I am or as “America Hating” as other Americans appear to be, you’ve never (or possibly you have)heard (outside the terrist groups)the extremist words and hatred against America like I have from foreigners living in this country.
I think this is why I take the American Leftist Agenda with a grain of salt.
There is nothing that pisses me off more than some f’ng foreigner speaking voices of hatred against my country. Nothing.
I’ve heard the whines from the Mexicans, the Japanese, the Canadians, the Polish, and the Brits. And directly in front of me, mind you. These phucks make the Americans Leftists Extremists (which I do believe you rant about the most - like I rant about Extreme Republicans) look like Republicans.
September 18th, 2005 at 2:17 pm
You’re wrong. If you’ve really listened to the extreme rhetoric that comes out of the mouths of Ward Churchill, Cindy Sheehan, Ramsey Clark, or Jane Fonda–these people talk like the foreigners you’re speaking of.
The only problem is…they’re Americans and instead of loving our way of life, are working to destroy it.
The Anti-War movement is being carefully packaged by Howard Dean’s PR people and Fenton Communications, a PR Firm that handles leftist causes.
But Cindy Sheehan is a radical leftist who hangs with American Marxists like Code-Pink (-o)…they hate America more than I’ve ever imagined. Can you imagine working with an organization that applauds the deaths of our soldiers and who raises funds in order to give $600,000 to the terrorists in Iraq? That’s what Code Pink did. They raised $600,000 and gave it to the terrorists in Fallujah. They are literally helping the enemy kill more American soldiers.
That’s Code Pink, that’s United for Peace and Justice, International Answer, Veterans Against the War, Gold Star Families for Peace, Crawford Peace House, etc., etc.. These are the people in the “peace movement”. These are marxists, stalinists and socialists. Which, BTW, also exist in the international community. And they also promote killing Jews. They’re on the side of “freeing Palestine”. That’s why the American Nazi Party is among Cindy Sheehan’s admirers. If that doesn’t sound like a bunch of extremists to you, then you haven’t been paying attention.
The fact that democrats are many times too dim-witted to realize that George Soros bought the democratic party and is pulling the strings along with his website Moveon.org, also would be amusing if it weren’t so serious. Do you remember when George Soros said it was a life or death issue for him –to defeat George Bush in the election? Did you take a look at the map? An overwhelming majority of people voted for Bush. But somehow he’s going to defeat the conservative views of the majority of people and turn the US into some kind of commie utopia.
Mr. Soros said that defeating Bush would make the world safer by making America weaker. Soros is half right: the election of internationalist John F. Kerry would certainly have made America weaker, but that weakness would have produced much more danger for the world than safety.
Anyone wonder what the hell is happening when the 4 out of 5 of the richest senators are democrats? The Elitists are trying to call the shots, and they’re at the extreme left of the party. They’re actually off the charts in the leftist area.
Some of them are members of the House Progressive Caucus which was started by Bernie Sanders, who’s a member of Democratic Socialists of America. That’s how far left they are; they’re communists and socialists. They just can’t sell it under the brand name yet. “Progressive” sounds so much better.
September 18th, 2005 at 2:24 pm
I didn’t know that about Code Pink (to that extent). If that info about Code Pink is true, those funding the terrorists and applauding deaths of our Men should really be charged for treason. That is REAL treason.
It looks like I need to read more into this stuff.
September 18th, 2005 at 2:49 pm
The meaning of your name and the history of the letter “C” are not the issue here. We are discussing symbolism, and the “C” at the start of your name is a symbol, one nearly identical to the crescent that is the symbol of Islam. How can you ignore that symbolism?
Oh, and have you looked at the flag of the state of South Carolina lately? One of our own states’ flags pays homage to the murderers who brought down Flight 93. Where is your outrage?
September 18th, 2005 at 2:55 pm
Oh so you admit that it’s a letter and not a symbol and that my name is not an architectural expression of Islam?
thank you very much.
Next.
No more sandwiches please, I’m full from lunch.
BTW, they borrowed the blue from the militia’s uniforms and the crescent from the emblem on their caps. Plus, it’s a historical reference-that’s ancient history (1775). The coloring is incorrect, the timing is incorrect, the reference is quite simply, incorrect. There is no mecca reference, there are no stars in the middle of it, you’re really slipping, Corned Beef Sandwich man.
So how does this reflect on the architect’s design of the Crescent to commemorate the jihadis who murdered the people on Flight 93- that’s in perfect alignment with mecca–? Which isn’t ANCIENT history–it’s CURRENT NEWS.
C’mon. You really must do better than that, Corned Beef Sandwich man. Maybe I ought to grind that corned beef sandwich into the LANE with my shoe. Whaddya think?
September 18th, 2005 at 3:02 pm
I had no idea about Sheehan’s association with the American Nazi Part. I realize that there’s bias in the news and that’s probably why I haven’t heard this yet.
If you don’t mind, can you supply me with some credible (non-biased) sources so that I can look into this further.
September 18th, 2005 at 3:07 pm
Oh c’mon Ticklebug. You think the MSM is going to report on their little media darling as an American Nazi Idol?
The explicitly Nazi National Socialist Movement backs her, as well. NSM “Commander” Jeff Schoep entitled one recent radio broadcast “NSM SUPPORTS CINDY SHEEHAN,” then devoted a second broadcast to Sheehan the next day.
September 18th, 2005 at 3:10 pm
That’s why I said, “I know there’s bias in the media”. And I meant ALL MEDIA. So, please tell me where I can find this info.
September 18th, 2005 at 3:12 pm
I already did. But let’s try a little more.
The racist website Altermedia.info jumped on the bandwagon early, posting multiple articles hailing Cindy Sheehan. One article, written under the pen name “Charles Coughlin,” dubbed the menopausal valley girl “The Rosa Parks of the Peace Movement,” an awkward metaphor considering the source. Another article, authored by “James Buchanan” (another great Democrat), hinted the “Neo-Cons” had solicited the services of the redneck who fired shots into the air within earshot of Sheehan and her leftist Big Top.
Another article written by the late Fr. Coughlin’s acolyte, “Woman Loses Son in Iraq; Neocons Treat her Like Dirt,” also made its way on Stormfront.org’s discussion forum, inspiring 14 pages of commentary. The very first respondent, neo-Nazi “Reichmann88,” [1] wrote:
Stormfront is the Nazi discussion forum group that I brushed up against some time ago when I was participating in the discussions at Bad Eagle.com. Interesting; the nazis at Stormfront are meeting up with the jihadis on the discussion forums at Pravda.ru discussion forums. What do you suppose THEY have to discuss?
Being that the muslim brotherhood has a long history with the nazis and Al Qaeda is affiliated/related to the muslim brotherhood, you don’t have to wonder very long as to what they have to talk about. They’re both all about killing the jews.
September 18th, 2005 at 3:15 pm
Thanks, Cao.
September 18th, 2005 at 3:19 pm
Cindy Sheehan’s newfound, seemingly mutual love for anti-Semitic, racist, and neo-Nazi extremists draws attention to one overlooked fact: the racial extremist movement has been moving steadily Left in recent years. The rhetoric on many of these websites is indistinguishable from that prevalent on leftist anti-Bush websites. For instance, David Duke writes of Cindy Sheehan:
As Bill Clinton might have said, if you didn’t know that sentence originated with Duke, “you might think Hillary Clinton was giving that speech.” Duke goes further, quoting leftist hero, former Ambassdor Joseph C. Wilson III:
Thus, it should have surprised no one when Duke endorsed John Kerry for President last fall, yet somehow it did not make national headlines.
September 18th, 2005 at 3:36 pm
For the record, Cao, I watch Fox news too. It’s interesting to get a little bit of both, for me.
September 18th, 2005 at 3:38 pm
Actually you can go even further back and think about Saddam Hussein being a Nazi himself. He was raised by his Uncle who was a nazi (his mother’s brother). And he thought that Hitler didn’t go far enough. He modelled his Anfal Campaign against the Kurds–after Hitler’s final solution. He carried a copy of Mein Kampf (My Struggle) in his back pocket, and the few books he had were about Stalin. And guess what? Saddam’ party in Iraq was the Baath Arab Socialist Party; Hitler’s Party was the National Socialist Party.
“The Baathists,” writes National Review editor Jonah Goldberg “see the destiny of Arabs in very similar terms as the Nazis understood the destiny of Aryans.”
The Nazi party and the Baath party express concepts of destiny with a common theme: the superiority of their respective racial demographic over others, particularly Jews, a circumstance that invites comparisons between Saddam Hussein, a notorious Baathist, and Adolf Hitler, a notorious Nazi.
“Saddam’s ambitions are very similar to Hitler’s,” Goldberg continues. “Saddam uses the Palestinians the way Hitler used the Sudeten Germans. Saddam sees hostile domestic populations as little more than vermin.” Saddam, however, “is a much bigger admirer of Stalin,” Goldberg offers, in a note of little comfort.
So you see, all of this makes an incredible lot of sense.
And BTW, I think every time you visit me, Ticklebug, you refer to Fox News. The only time I watch tv is when my internet is down. I get all my news and information from the internet…there is less bullcrap to sift through to figure out what the truth is. I’ve noticed that FOX isn’t always that good at accurate reporting, either.
The anti-war people (Like Jane Fonda and George Galloway) are huge fans of Saddam Hussein. Galloway, in fact, is a brit who is a criminal in my view–he received $550,000 a year over 10 years from Saddam through the oil for
foodcrooks program, started a charity called “Mariam Appeal” for an Iraqi girl who had leukemia–but it kept chugging along after she was cured and paid for things like his chauffeur’s salary…a part of his lavish lifestyle…and that’s only the beginning! He’s Saddam’s chief propagandist in Britain right now. But now he’s traveling the country (US) with Jane Fonda against the war and the eeevvviiilll Imperialist American Occupation in Iraq and Afghanistan, paid for, by: The New Press, International Socialist Review, Center for Economic Research and Social Change, the National Council of Arab AmericansSeptember 18th, 2005 at 3:56 pm
Actually, I said the exact opposite. Do you read these comments, or do you just invent things that the commenters haven’t said and respond to your own fantasies?
But it is a symbol, right? If you can see a symbol of Islam in a grove of trees, why can others not see a symbol of Islam in the flag of South Carolina? That’s what this is about: seeing symbols!
How do we know it’s in “perfect alignment with mecca”? I see that you published the coordinates of the crash. Where are the coordinates of the two ends of this so-called “crescent” that have been Photoshopped into the image? Those points are necessary before the “perpendicular line” that supposedly directly intersects Mecca can be derived.
Oh, and I would point out that the families disagree with you. Does their opinion matter at all in this?
September 18th, 2005 at 4:19 pm
I’m sure you’ve seen this site, then.
September 18th, 2005 at 4:34 pm
Yes, I’ve seen the site, Ticklebug, but I don’t hang out there…it gives me the creeps to read that stuff. Makes me feel like I’m dirty and need to take a shower.
September 18th, 2005 at 4:45 pm
Corned beef sandwich man, letters are not architectural symbols. They are letters…and there is history to the alphabet, and I’d like to know why the Greek Gamma is construed in your mind as something having to do with Islam. You’re really stretching to make a ridiculous point.
The Belmont Club, Cox and Forkum and others have made their points. I have looked at the lattitude and longitude of the Crescent and that picture shows you that if you laid a map flat, you can draw a line directly to mecca from the crescent. That’s what the lattitude and longitude coordinates are for. Try to bend your mind around that concept if your mind is flexible enough. If not, get your mommy to show you a map and what lattitude and longitude stands for.
But I don’t have to explain it because people with sense in their heads can figure it out. My purpose on this planet is not to respond to YOU, even though I like Reuben sandwiches.
I just put it all together…I flipped the image and drew a circle around the trees and showed all the images/flags of Islam to demonstrate how uncanny it is that that architect would have a representation of Islam–the crescent with the little star, pointing directly at Mecca, while he claims it’s merely a coincidence. Pretty weird one to me, since I went to art school and I’m aware that form has meaning.
Captain Ed at Captains Quarters made the point, Michelle Malkin made the point, all kinds of people are making the point, so why are you jumping all over ME? What’s the matter, you think you have some kind of power over me? You think I’m going to be afraid of you or shut up because you happen to think what you think in that wacky little reuben sandwich brain of yours with the thousand island dressing on it?
Of course I care about what the families feel, but do you suppose that denying lying architect/artist of this piece told them about those coordinates? Do you suppose that the families would be a little bit concerned about it if they knew?
I’m sure it wasn’t laid out for them. When people started to ask the artist questions, he was in utter and complete denial.
And of course, the families didn’t know about it, I’m sure most of the world doesn’t know about the correlations I’m drawing here. So what? So I’m not entitled to my opinion?
So you want me to shut up?
Hey. This is my blog, I can say whatever I want here. I’m putting you in moderation and there you shall stay in a time out–indefinitely.
Maybe you’ll be joined in there with some chips and a coke.
September 18th, 2005 at 5:04 pm
So you claim that the family members of the Flight 93 victims do not find the crescent objectionable. So what? How much of the above information was explained to them?
So…the plan is to dismiss those of us whose eyes are not blinded by political correctness as racist cranks with imaginations run wild. But we’re not the only ones objecting. The Tribune-Democrat article quotes a professor of Middle East studies and a local Muslim leader who see the obvious–and reports that jury members who chose the winning design were cognizant of the offensive overtones.
September 18th, 2005 at 5:12 pm
Hey. How’s this for a redesign? I particularly like their explanation for it.
This flagrant travesty of a design which ultimately appears to be offering the victims of Flight 93 to Allah–this so-called ‘Crescent of Embrace’ does not convey the spirit of the resistance and heroic defiance of the passengers who made the ultimate sacrifice that their plane would not be used by muslim extremists to attack their own countrymen. Surely that is the enduring legacy of the men and women of Flight 93, that there will be no surrender in the face of terrorism.
September 18th, 2005 at 8:56 pm
Can you show me where I said, or even implied, that you should shut up?
No?
Then why the pretense that I did?
September 18th, 2005 at 9:21 pm
You are, quite plainly, being a pest. Your opening offensive attack mode and your willing to insult my intelligence from the get-go indicates to me you have absolutely no respect for the owner and author of this blog. Look. I swat flies, I step on ants and I spray roaches with RAID. OK? Watch your step. What could you possibly think you’re accomplishing by being so rude other than to intimidate me into silence or impress me with your incredible misplaced sense of machismo and your high opinion of yourself? Reuben, what makes you think after how you opened your discussion here that you deserve any answers from me at all? You are rude and socially unacceptable. Go learn some manners.
Ok. You want specifics on how the conclusions were drawn? It’s quite simple, but I’d like to know if you’re so damned smart, why do I even have to explain it? Why do I have to answer any of your incessant and irritating questions? It’s not what you say, it’s how you say it.
I’ll answer this last one and that’s it…
These calculations are provided by Wretchard from the Belmont Club and was previously linked. Too bad you don’t pay attention.
The poster that I have above was a reduced version of a poster at FreeRepublic claiming that the principal visual feature within the “Crescent of Embrace” consisted of a semicircle of red maple trees enfolding a central space, which is oriented toward Mecca.
According to this site, the latitude/longitude coordinates of Mecca are 21.4234, 39.8262 and the coordinates of the Flight 93 crash site are 40.052, -78.8963. Using the calculator from this site, you can determine that the azimuth between the two points is 124.80°.
Next I went to the Flight 93 National Memorial website and found the biggest overhead view of the memorial I could find with north oriented up. I measured the distance from tip-to-tip of the crescent and came up with 64px east-west and 90px north-south. The arctangent of 64/90 is the angle between north and a line drawn between the tips, which works out to 35.42°. Adding 90° to this angle gives the direction the crescent faces as 125.42°. Conclusion: the crescent points towards Mecca with an error of 0.62°, or 0.17%.
Wretchard wasn’t convinced and did his own analysis, below.
The Flight 93 Memorial Site has a downloadable PDF map of the winning design, which you can download. The legend at the bottom of the map specifies it is oriented North, whether true or magnetic is not stipulated. (Magnetic declination is between 6 and 9 degrees W.) Drawing a line connecting the tips of the crescent and drawing a perpendicular, you can see which which way it “opens”. Using a protractor, I found the crescent opens between 230 and 240 (southwest) degrees, or taking the reciprocal, between 50 and 60 (northeast). You are invited to do this yourselves and verify the result.
Next I wanted to know if the coordinates given by the FreeRepublic poster really pointed to the Flight 93 crash site and Mecca. The best way to do this is to convert the decimal lat/long coordinates into DMS using a calculator provided by the FCC. The results are given in the table in the post, but you can do it yourself.
The next step was to stick these coordinates into Keyhole 2 LT, and both coordinates check out. Keyhole takes you to the site with the characteristic two hills and ridge pointing northeast shown in the Flight 93 Memorial winning design. (Keyhole users, tilt the map if you have trouble distinguishing the features.) The coordinates for Mecca likewise go to “Makkah” in Saudi Arabia. Both sets of coordinates seem valid.
FreeRepublic poster’s calculations for bearing seem obtuse because you need to come up with an azimuth of 124.80 degrees. So I went to two sites to independently calculate the bearing from the Flight 93 crash site to Mecca. You can go to the Marine Great Circle Calculator or WhereAreWe?. Both these sites accept the coordinates of points A and B and calculate the true bearing to get from A to B. Both give a result of 55 degrees true, or its reciprocal 235. This discovery is practically astonishing when you do the calculations. The bearing given by both Great Circle Calculators corresponds near enough to the measured opening of the Crescent from the PDF map.
September 20th, 2005 at 12:17 am
CAIR went nuts trying to convince us that the “Crescent of Embrace” was not a symbol of Islam. They seem very quiet on the ice cream flap! Could it be because one is an obvious symbol and the other is not?
September 20th, 2005 at 6:08 am
CAIR is in the United States. Burger King in Britain is being forced to spend thousands of pounds redesigning the lid with backing from The Muslim Council of Britain.
Sounds to me as though the British counterpart of CAIR certainly IS raising a hissy fit about it…
September 24th, 2005 at 8:00 am
How the conclusions were drawn is obvious from your post, and from Wretchard’s. What is in dispute is the factual basis for the conclusions.
You claim that if we “Draw a line between the tips of the crescent, a line perpendicular to it apparently points directly to Mecca”. As Mr. Lane has pointed out, this is not possible without knowing the coordinates of the endpoints of “the tips of the crescent”. No one has provided those coordinates.
Without them, the whole argument becomes suspect. It simply isn’t possible to prove that the perpendicular “points directly to Mecca” by approximating a line drawn between the tips — which is exactly what is done when the line is drawn on the maps provided. One pixel’s worth of error, and the line comes nowhere near Mecca.
If the endpoint coordinates have been published, I’d be mightily interested to know where.
September 24th, 2005 at 8:07 am
Go argue with Wretchard and get off my blog.
Others are doing their mathematical calculations, they’re arriving at the same conclusions. I’m sorry if you don’t like the conclusions so you’re trying desperately to debunk the facts.
According to this site, the latitude/longitude coordinates of Mecca are 21.4234, 39.8262 and the coordinates of the Flight 93 crash site are 40.052, -78.8963. Using the calculator from this site, I determined that the azimuth between the two points is 124.80°.
September 24th, 2005 at 8:14 am
No. The claim is yours, Cao. Wretchard didn’t claim to derive the line to Mecca in that way.
Can you defend your claim, or not?
September 24th, 2005 at 8:19 am
Oh, he didn’t? This is the Belmont Club’s post and calculations which was linked in the piece above. Can’t you read?
What he said was this: The arctangent of 64/90 is the angle between north and a line drawn between the tips, which works out to 35.42°. Adding 90° to this angle gives the direction the crescent faces as 125.42°. Conclusion: the crescent points towards Mecca with an error of 0.62°, or 0.17%.
A simplification of that would be Draw a line between the tips of the crescent, a line perpendicular to it apparently points directly to Mecca.
What’s the matter, you have a problem with my quoting the Belmont club like this guy did?
Here’s another person with excellent deductive reasoning powers and a good handle on mathematics at Error Theory drawing the same conclusion using Qibla (a different methodology) and arrives at the same exact conclusion.
Here’s another at politicalities: Voice of Reason calculates the orientation towards Mecca to be within less than one degree.
It isn’t only my claim, my dear. As I said, go argue with Wretchard and the others over their calculations and/or their different methodoligies used to arrive at the same conclusions, I only re-printed Wretchard’s when the other idiot demanded to know the factual bases for the conclusions drawn.
The conclusions drawn were not only my conclusions, but that of others including Wretchard who said the chances of this happening were 1 in 9. I’m not sure of how he arrived at that calculation…
I just put all of this together from a number of sources–all of which are referenced if you would only take the time to follow the links instead of attack me personally.
If you don’t think it’s enough, too bad.
Nothing will be enough for people like you.
The exact statement “Draw a line between the tips of the crescent, a line perpendicular to it apparently points directly to Mecca.” was made by conservative babe at free republic with who provided the visual aid here.
It is not inaccurate, from what I’ve been able to ascertain by reading the different calculations from the different bloggers who’ve drawn these conclusions. Perhaps you should take it up with conservativebabe at Free Republic, sayanything blog, error theory blog, and politicalities.
Wretchard’s calculations match: The arctangent of 64/90 is the angle between north and a line drawn between the tips, which works out to 35.42°. Adding 90° to this angle gives the direction the crescent faces as 125.42°. Conclusion: the crescent points towards Mecca with an error of 0.62°, or 0.17%.
From what I can tell about this narrative, drawing the line between the tips and adding one at 90° would look precisely like the Free Republic poster, it would be a line perpendicular to the line drawn between the tips which would look like this, or finally, this, or using the Qibla methodology, this.
September 24th, 2005 at 12:02 pm
FYI, I wanted to explain a bit about my calculations. I came up with an azimuth of 124.8, which seems quite a bit off from other’s calculations of about 55 degrees. The reason is due to a bit of an inconsistency between geography and mathematics: traditionally, mathematics measures increasing angles counterclockwise from the origin, while geographically angles increase clockwise. My 124.8 degrees is measured counterclockwise from due north… which is the reciprocal of 55 degrees clockwise from north. Same great circle, different systems of measurement.
September 24th, 2005 at 12:53 pm
Jeanine, all we see from you is contrariness with absolutely no data or links to substantiate your claims. “Is not!” is as sophisticated as kindergarten, and gets tired rather fast.
What I see from Cao, on the other hand, are data, and more data, with copious relevant links.
This would be amusing if it weren’t so lob-sided an argument. If you came here for a bit of easy trolling, you’ve come to the wrong place. Cao has already eaten you for lunch and is working on dessert. If you’re so sure of your position, go write your own blog post on it. I’m sure some of us would try to find the time to come on over and comment.
September 24th, 2005 at 2:39 pm
Here’s another one from the Blue Merle.
I used a cropped screen capture from the pdf map of the proposed memorial.
The edges of the open arc are outlined in black to complete the circle.
On that is overlayed a screen capture of a qibla diagram, using this qibla calculator.
The qibla diagram shows the qibla angle from Somerset, Pennsylvania, which is noted as 55 degrees from the north, closer to the crash site coordinates than Pittsburg.
An extended black line is drawn through the qibla angle of 55 degrees.
The crossed lines are at right angles.
The line segment perpendicular to the qibla is bisected.
There’s that perpendicular line again, Jeanine, lol…you really must go to these people and tell them their calculations are WRONG…even though you have absolutely not evidence, links or anything to the contrary–just your little gradeschool tantrum. I’m sure that will be enough for each and every one of them to publish a retraction and apology to the Islamist crazies.
Oh, one more thing-
What is the significance of the fact that the Crescent of Embrace is facing AWAY from Mecca? The obvious implication is that it is a crescent of OUTWARD embrace. And what is Islam’s outward embrace? Jihad: the Muslim duty to strive to bring the entire world into submission (the literal translation of “Islam”). What form of Jihad took place on flight 93? Violent aggressive Jihad. No Jihad of “inner struggle to do the right thing” here.
September 24th, 2005 at 7:51 pm
BTW, this web site has the coordinates of the Flight 93 crash site (referenced above):
Category : Disasters
Posted By : hazzamon
Views : 2534
Latitude: 40.052
Longitude: -78.8963
View on Map
hazzamon says:
Crash site of Flight 93 near Indian Lake, Pennsylvania. The aircraft crashed after an attempt by passengers to retake the plane from hijackers on September 11th 2001. Note: The only dataset with useful resolution of the site is USGS Ortho, however the date of these images is unknown - the craters shown may or may not be the actual crash craters. The location itself, though, is correct, as shown by this Google Maps URL of the same place.
Zombietime has a pictorial worth checking out here. There is so much available on this, I’m completely soaking it all up, but suffice it to say–I think my work is done here.
October 4th, 2005 at 12:05 pm
The Crescent is also meant to be a signal to any alien spacecraft passing overhead. Throughout the Galactic Empire, the crescent shape translates into, “Predominant species on this planet are idiots — invade immediately!”
October 4th, 2005 at 12:11 pm
No.way.
Sonny, in so very many ways that’s a brilliant observation!
October 4th, 2005 at 12:19 pm
Is Sonny channeling Jimmah Carter, the UFO president? bwahahahhaha!
September 27th, 2007 at 7:31 am
[…] After deliberating on this for a while, I’ve decided to start a blogburst regarding the Flight 93 Memorial in order to keep the calculations that verified its orientation to Mecca from going down the memory hole. […]
October 3rd, 2007 at 12:28 am
[…] In September 2005, a half dozen different bloggers verified that a person facing into what was originally called the Crescent of Embrace memorial to Flight 93 would be facing almost exactly at Mecca. Some surrounding trees have been added to the design, but the giant central crescent remains completely intact in the Bowl of Embrace redesign: […]
October 3rd, 2007 at 4:01 am
[…] In September 2005, a half dozen different bloggers verified that a person facing into what was originally called the Crescent of Embrace memorial to Flight 93 would be facing almost exactly at Mecca. Some surrounding trees have been added to the design, but the giant central crescent remains completely intact in the Bowl of Embrace redesign: […]
October 3rd, 2007 at 5:38 am
[…] In September 2005, a half dozen different bloggers verified that a person facing into what was originally called the Crescent of Embrace memorial to Flight 93 would be facing almost exactly at Mecca. Some surrounding trees have been added to the design, but the giant central crescent remains completely intact in the Bowl of Embrace redesign: […]
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October 21st, 2007 at 5:59 pm
Thanks, anyway,