Creative Speculation

> The fact that NIST's models did not show the curtain wall is meaningless unless you are going to claim that a) the floors pulled loose from the perimeter columns, which remained standing for 600 feet without distorting (despite the presence of a breeze from the NW)

You were doing pretty good with "the floors pulled loose from the perimeter columns," until you threw in the unnecessary claim about "remained standing for 600 feet." There's no reason for that. The videos that show a wave of breaking windows rippling across and up the building indicate that the shell began falling very soon after the interior structure collapsed. And I'm not sure why I have to repeat this, but what I said was I believe the floor girders fell away from the perimeter columns, beams, and curtain wall, and considering the wind loading the exterior was designed to take, there is no reason to assume it was as flimsy as you suggest.

Again, the simple and obvious point: The NIST simulation did not include the curtain wall, but that's all we can see in the video, so there is no logical reason to expect the two to look the same. But you fail to grasp the idea -- deliberately? -- that the purpose of the simulation was to investigate collapse initiation scenarios and simulate how the structural elements behaved immediately thereafter, not to create a video that superficially LOOKED like the curtain wall shell falling. That happened AFTER the things that the simulation was designed to study, so it's irrelevant. One does not need to be a structural engineer to see why that's so; one only needs rudimentary familiarity with the principles of valid logic. The reason I don't believe you're going to find any competent engineers who are interested in redoing the simulation to include the curtain walls is I would expect a competent engineer to understand that it's completely irrelevant to the collapse. And doing so in an attempt to appease conspiracy theorists would be a complete waste of time, anyway; that simply isn't possible. Their cries for an "honest investigation" is a dishonest, since ANY investigation would be dismissed exactly like the NIST report if it also concluded that demolition theories are abject bullshit.

> You have not demonstrated that a cracking sound is an unavoidable presence in controlled demolitions. That's like claiming that slaying is always done through lethal injection or firing squads or hanging, and thus someone could not have been slain with the jawbone of an ass.

Given that explosives destroy things by creating large shock waves, and a shock wave in air IS a loud cracking sound, then yep, I claim that sharp cracking sounds will be heard in any demolition that involves explosives. The lack of such sounds is why some "truthers" started fantasizing about thermite demolitions, which have never been demonstrated. But there's a problem, as shown by Richard Gage's cognitive dissonance: When he wants to explain why there weren't any sounds resembling high explosives, he claims thermite was used, but when he wants to explain the "sudden onset" of the collapse he claims explosives were used. He will do that in nearly back-to-back sentences and not bat an eye. (Oh, I forgot; that's a sign of superior intelligence in your world. )