🚀 go-pugleaf

The New York Times had a story in Wednesday's edition
headlined "Gas Explosion Tears Through Texas Farmland".

It seems that liquified petroleum gas leaked out of a pipeline
and, being heavier than air flowed downhill into a valley.
This "cool, heavy cloud" allegedly exploded with such force
that it "rattled buildings 70 miles away and was heard
140 miles away."  And, almost needless to say, it allegedly
killed "a six-year-old boy," as well as doing some other
damage.

I've read in books on explosion damage assessment that
the key to a forceful gas explosion is confinement. Explosion
force is greatly attenuated the more sources of ventilation
there are. This "explosion" allegedly occurred in open air.

Well, there's a photo that's just as implausible as the story.
it shows, in the middle of a scene of rubble outdoors in bright
daylight, a man standing in stark black silhouette, with lots of
brightly lit objects in front of and behind him. And it looks
like the folks in the photo lab diddled with the contrast level
of the trees in the background too, to make one tree stand out
starkly.

The message in the photo is: this is a hoax. Once again, the
first page of news designated "National" by the Times looks like
the "Flaky Page", as it often has in the past.