The whole "bust the NIST for screwing up the Column 79 fiasco" is a distraction
from the REAL business at hand,...
You give this issue too much credit. It doesn't even rate high enough to be a distraction since there is no substance to the allegation.
...and that is from the video of the "collapse" of WTC7
the ONLY conclusion that has anything going for it at all, is a controlled demolition.
This is false. The correct thing to say would be that
according to CATIwampus the only conclusion that can be reached from the video is CD. Happily the rest of us don't rely on one piece of evidence alone and we also understand that it is the nature of a collapsing structure to fall in the direction of gravity thus there is no reason to suspect that two similar structures collapsing with different initiating mechanisms to be vastly different in appearance of how they fall. Proving CD requires a lot more than watching 16 seconds of video. You really need to start moving past just video evidence if you want to prove your case. Start at about 10:20 am and then account for
everything that happened from then until 5:20pm.
Therefore, it is back to the one who first asserted that WTC7 fell as a result of fires,
to PROVE that indeed the structure could have fallen in the manner observed, without
any help from malicious human intervention.
You are reversing the burden of proof.
That 7 World Trade Center collapsed due to the effects of prolonged un-fought fires is the null hypothesis and no one as yet has come close to falsifying it.
1. We know that the collapse of 1 World Trade showered 7 World Trade with thousands of tons of burning debris causing significant physical damage to the SW facade of the structure and initiating fires on multiple floors that spread throughout the day
2. We know that with the death of 343 firefighters, the injuring of scores more and the destruction of their equipment combined with the lack of water pressure there was no effective fire fighting or fire suppression effort in 7 WTC
3. We know steel structures perform poorly under prolonged exposure to fire.
4. We know that by early afternoon 7 WTC was declared fully involved in fire and there were reports the building was starting to creak and moan, a bulge had developed in one side of the structure and it was starting to lean - all clear and obvious signs of impending collapse.
5. We know that by mid-afternoon city engineers had declared 7 unsafe and in danger of imminent collapse and the area around the structure was evacuated, severely hampering the urgent rescue and recovery efforts.
6. We know that around 5:20 pm after burning un-checked for 7 hours the East Mechanical Penthouse tilted, then fell which means Column 79 failed.
7. We know the failure of Column 79 initiated a progressive series of failures which caused the collapse of the interior of 7 WTC followed by the outer curtain wall (the part obvious in the videos)
Whether or not NIST was correct about girder walk-off or JSanderO is right about a failure at TT1 is really of only academic interest to engineers. Either is a plausible hypothesis (not "proof" - no one ever said proof) for the initiating collapse mechanism and you still have fire induced collapse either way. So disproving NIST does nothing to prove CD.
To prove CD you need to provide an alternative hypothesis that explains all the observations described above with physical evidence for CD. "Free-fall and "the curtain wall held its shape" don't cut it. If for example you want - as it seems you do - to claim Column 79 did not fail you have to prove the East Mechanical Penthouse did not tilt and then fall.
Good luck with that.
Why you would even want to pursue that boggles the mind as a Column 79 failure does not by itself rule out CD. I imagine that did not occur to you.
So, do you have a hypothesis that better explains the above observations using CD?