Fire Can’t Melt Steel, and ‘The View’ Can’t Possibly Become More Ludicrous

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They’re bringing back Rosie O’Donnell, because there obviously aren’t enough celebrity conspiracy theorists on network daytime TV, and no one is happier about this news than Allahpundit:

To celebrate the occasion, take my arm and stroll with me down memory lane, back to Rosie’s finest hour. Watch the whole clip if you can — she mentions impeachment around halfway through, a topic not unknown to would-be “View” panelists — but if you can’t take the full seven minutes, at least skip to 5:50 and watch from there. The line about how fire’s never melted steel before always makes me wistful for the show’s heyday. Sigh.

“I do believe it is the first time in history that fire has ever melted steel. I do believe that it defies physics for the World Trade Center Tower Seven — building Seven, which collapsed in on itself — it is impossible for a building to fall the way it fell without explosives being involved, World Trade Center Seven. . . . Miraculously, for the first time in history, steel was melted by fire. It is physically impossible.”
— Rosie O’Donnell, March 29, 2007

Good times, my friends. Good times.

 

69 comments

  1. The View won’t last another year. It started to go downhill when Elizabeth Hasselbeck left. That kind of one-direction blabbering only survives on MSNBC, and only when it’s one host at a time.

  3. Rosie is no structural or civil engineer. Here are steel beams that are completely distorted by heat laying over charred wood beams (which resisted the fire). It is a classic photo that is in most structural engineering text books. http://rustylopez.typepad.com/newcovenant/images/2007/03/30/g3a.jpg

    If the temperature goes above a certain point, steel looses its structural integrity and becomes malleable. It takes about 1000 to 1300 degrees F, which can definitely occur in a jet fuel fire.

  4. Liar! It wasn’t heat that did that. It was Uri Geller.

    He’s a Jew, y’know. They get special mind-powers by drinking the blood of Palestinian children.

  6. She used to be nice… and funny. When I see something about her it just makes me sad.

  9. That guy at TMZ, whatever his name is, made the same point. He didn’t realize it when Hasselbeck left. But he now realizes that she was the foil, the lightning rod, the antagonist who made the show interesting. Now it’s just dreary dishwater lefty politics, without any tension or conflict.

  13. Anyone ever ask these idiots HOW steel is made?!?
    (HINT: it has to do with fire)
    Duuuuuuuuuhhhhhhhhhhh…………….

  18. Steel weakens as it’s heated. Strength affected before you see any outward change in the steel and can buckle before you get to the heated plastic range. Steel must be “fireproofed” when it used in a structure to avoid the very thing you see in the picture.

    I never saw that pic in either Structural Theory or Steel Design. However, a guy who came around pushing Timber sure did show it to us.

  22. Yep. I saw that same image in college, while studying civil engineering, many many years ago.

    Rosie, she is what people call “nucking futs”.

  24. ” Fire can’t melt steel.”

    Tell that to my broken hip. Standing on a ladder( without a safety man) cutting a piece of steel out of the way with a cutting torch…said piece of hot steel fell off straight down towards my left foot. Of course, I moved my foot out of the way which in turn, threw the ladder off balance and yours truly landed on his hip on the pavement. Took me out of work for a year.

  25. We were told about it and saw some pics, just not that one. I was not in the Structural concentration, so I did not see anything on fireproofing methods as that was in the advanced courses.

  28. Back by popular demand! Because nothing says ratings gold like a bunch of 60-something old liberal crones sitting around kvetching about the good old days under Pol Pot.

    CBS has a show now, too, with Julie Chen and Gilbert and Osborne and other younger women. They are probably liberal, too, but they aren’t stupid and formulaic AFAIK.

    My guess is “The Talk” will smoke them and “The View” will be off the air in a year (or totally revamped without Rosie or Whoopi).

  30. Yep. Her early “Rosie” shows were zany and fun (or at least, that’s how they were portrayed). She didn’t take off the mask until after 9-11.

    Same thing with many entertainers who used to be funny. Letterman, Garrison Keillor, Chris Rock… after Bush v. Gore and 9-11, they all became dyspeptic jerks.

  31. So you’re that guy! I knew someone had to write those commercials.

    Hey, can you get me the ShamWow guy’s autograph?

    (just kiddink)

  35. Not to put too fine a point on it, but a cutting torch actually burns the steel. Some is melted, however, and you can see it around the cut. Use of a cutting torch is often called “burning,” because that’s what it does.

  36. Most of the “melted” steel is blown out of the cut, thus the sparks. But yes, the combination of Oxygen and Acetylene does make it look like it’s burning or cutting the steel instead of just melting it.

  37. I concentrated on structural engineering for my bachelors. That was a standard teaching point, right up there with “Galloping Gertie”, a/k/a the Tacoma Narrows bridge.

  39. As an added bonus, Rosie has probably been drunk and/or stoned for much of her “retirement”, so she’ll be even more addle brained than before.

    Move over, Charlie Sheen, your position as the Melt Down King is about to be occupied by the Melt Down Queen.

  40. I have found that when you find a conspiracy theorist, he tends to swallow a whole bunch of conspiracy theories, not just one. My Facebook friend conspiracy theorist believes that:

    1 – The World Trade Center was brought down by controlled demolitions;
    2 – The Rothschild family controls everything, and has a net worth of $500 trillion (the world GDP is less than $10 trillion);
    3 – Vaccines do not work, and no one should ever vaccinate his children; and, of course
    4 – The Jews are behind everything.

  41. I use torches, and know a lot about them, but the part the WTC conspiracy theorists miss is that the towers weren’t brought down because steel melted, but because it softened and became more elastic. We use torches to make metal malleable all the time without trying to melt or cut it. What do they think that blacksmiths do?

  42. I love the anti-vaxers. There’s no rational explanation for why deadly childhood illness started disappearing after vaccination became normalized. And there’s certainly no reason to think there is a connection between increasing amounts of people opting out of vaccinating their children and the resurgence in those illnesses. And really, some people who get vaccinated still get the disease they were vaccinated against, so clearly that means no one should get vaccinated ever because it’s proof they don’t work at all. /sarc

  43. Well, if a few people opt out of having their children vaccinated, it’s not a problem, because everyone around them has been vaccinated, so there aren’t any real carriers around. But when you look at the incredibly brilliant Islamists in Pakistan, where they’ve been killing health care workers, somehow, some way, polio is making a comeback.

    Smallpox vaccinations have been discontinued, because the disease was completely eradicated outside of the laboratory, and there were a few bad reactions to the vaccine, more than there were cases of smallpox. It made sense to end smallpox vaccinations, under those conditions.

  45. I saw Galloping Gertie when I was a kid in Oregon. That clip was still getting airtime in Portland in the early 60s. I saw it again when I started Engineering School. The instructor showed it and then said that’s why we don’t give as much partial credit in Engineering.

    I’ve seen the clip more since graduating, than I saw it before that.

  47. So that’s how you do it. Just what I figured about you. A coward and little punk. Ban someone that you disagree with. It’s alright. I’ve been banned by better people than you. Lol. What a jackass you are.

  48. Of course, you have to melt the steel before you can burn it through.

    The initial combustion of the acetylene gas heats the steel to a molten
    state. By adding a pressurized stream of oxygen, the cutter ignites the
    steel to burn through the kerf of your cut.

    So we were both right…you a little more than me I guess.

    I’ve got over 30 years exp. in the trades, but I’ll always remember what a former superintendent told me when I was first starting. He said, “Mike, I’ve been in this business almost 40 years and if anyone ever tells you they know everything there is to know about building and construction, they’re full of sh!t.”

    I’m still learning.

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