"wow, serious reading comprehension fail. engineer you are, reader you aint. who said anything about compresion? If you go back and read my quote you will see I specificly said tension."

Ok, this is what you wrote earlier and is the sort of statement that I was referring to:

"This again? There is no way that a bicycle rim can stand on a spoke or 10 spokes. the nipple will simply push into the rim and puncture the tube.The spoke/rim interface is not made in a way in which a spoke could hold up the hub in this manner."

You were arguing against the proposition that spokes in a normal bicycle wheel support load in compression. I was pointing out that nobody has made that argument. With respect to a normal bicycle wheel, that is.

"Or better yet, load the bike as before but now take your nipple wrench and tighten the spoke at the bottom. Yes, increase the tension until it is the same as the rest of the spokes. did the wheel collapse? why not the tension is the same as the rest of the spokes?"

There is a good chance that the rim would fail and that the wheel would collapse.

If somebody wants to get a decent understanding of how a bicycle wheel works and how the strength elements of a bicycle wheel (spokes and rim) act to support the load, the reference above (http://www.astounding.org.uk/ian/wheel/) should be helpful. Special attention should be paid to the section labeled "Statical Indeterminacy." Brandt's book (of course) also goes into this in some detail. The net result of all this is the inescapable conclusion that the load in a normal bicycle wheel is carried by the few spokes at the bottom of the wheel and the other spokes act to keep the wheel essentially round.