Announcing Laputans for 9/11 Truth

We have just received word of the formation of a new group, Laputans for 9/11 Truth. The Laputans take issue with what may be termed "logical" explanations for the destruction of the World Trade Center, such as the posited use of explosives and thermate to melt the steel, asserting if the cause "were merely that cut-and-dried, every schoolchild would know it." Having established that as a basis from which to work, the Laputans devote countless hours to constructing elaborate hypotheses limited only by their speculative imaginations.

Laputa, as you may be aware, is an island discovered in 1707 by Lemuel Gulliver. Its most salient characteristic is that it levitates at some distance above the surface of the Earth in accordance with the lofty thoughts of its inhabitants. Since the days of Gulliver, Laputans have kept pace with developments on other portions of the globe, though they remain aloof from it. They enjoy all the modern benefits of our television and radio broadcasts, though "enjoy" is probably too strong a word. They are too distracted by their own theorizing to enjoy much else.

Since the tragic events of September 11, 2001, Laputans like any other people could not fail (eventually) to be moved. Early last year, when they had become aware of what had occurred, Laputa opened its heart to us and sent us theories. But Laputan conspiracy theories, like their other musings, have nothing of the mundane about them. Because of their advanced learning and disinterested nature, we feel we must defer to these scholars. And so we present a few of their highly credentialed speculations concerning the occurrences of that fateful morning.

Dr. Jessie duBois, Ph.D., in her monograph "A Tree Dies From the Top Down" states that despite the popular belief that they were steel, the Towers were in fact made of wood to save on construction costs. The wood was then covered in aluminum foil to perpetuate the illusion of structural integrity. Since dry rot had already set in, it was no great difficulty to release huge swarms of ravenous termites (secreted in the top floors of the buildings) to bring the Towers down in rapid fashion.

Dr. Jay "Flash" Fitz-Gordon, Professor Emeritus of Theoretical Letters, not only believes that no planes hit the buildings that day, but that the buildings themselves did not really exist. "The Twin Towers," he says, "were a three-dimesional projection from outer space rendered so convincing that people actually worked in them." The cause for their destruction? "Somebody tripped over the power cord and unplugged the projector."

Dr. Ray Mullins of Laputa Tech offers what he calls his Zeitgeist Hypothesis: "No planes, no explosives. The Towers fell simply because it was an Idea Whose Time Had Come."

Dr. Felix Tannhauser suggests that the Towers are still there. "It was all done with mirrors. Big mirrors. Go ask any magician. David Copperfield was in on it."

And Dr. Bart Milvain, DDS, author of "Eskimos Shot Kennedy," affirms that steel is a liquid at room temperature, "like mercury." "There were huge refrigeration units in the towers to keep the steel from melting. After the planes hit, setting up a stress on those units, they malfunctioned. So the towers thawed like huge popsicles. That would also explain the persistence of molten steel in the basements, since steel is molten in its natural state." After we told Dr. Milvain that, with all due respect, steel had a somewhat higher melting point than he supposed, he snapped, "I have a diploma. And a corner office. Do you have a degree? Hah! I thought not. Just a bum. Well, I have a degree, and I'm right."