Well, the Zapruder film that you have seen is not what was actually shot.
There a number of missing frames, and the remaining ones have been doctored.
dhanson wrote:
I direct your attention to a section of the quote from How To Play With Your Food that Corrado previously gave in this thread (emphasis mine):
Apparently human skulls aren’t that much different.
I further direct your attention to a sentence from the next page of How To Play With Your Food, in which Penn and Teller describe the outcomes of their experiments:
They do not indicate what percentage of melons actually moved, but not one single melon that they shot moved away from the gun. Not one.
The “refutation” of the jet-hypothesis in http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/MGriffith_2/hasty.htm – the first link posted by Banks on 21-Jan-2000 – seems awfully suspicious to me. It contains arguments like this:
I’m sorry, but “eyewitness testimony” and preliminary hospital reports of a rear exit wound that contradicts the autopsy photos are hardly sufficient evidence that the jet-effect hypothesis is wrong. And furthermore, even if the jet-effect hypothesis were wrong, the exit wound should be on the LEFT-rear side of Kennedy’s head, not the right-rear! (Unless you also believed that this high-powered rifle bullet bounced around inside the skull cavity before making a dramatic exit wound, which is even more absurd.)
The truth, as always, is more complicated than that.
Oh, I forgot to mention:
When Penn and Teller did their melon-shooting experiments, they used 6.5mm Mannlicher-Carcano rifles – the same model that Oswald fired.
a bullet will roll while passing thru soft tissue as the initial impact with the skull has altered it velocity and direction. think if a bullet was fired sideways; large entry hole. bullet fired normally; small entry hole . . large exit hole. you cant test this on watermelons, pumpkins or dead bodies. that is definitly not valid research from which you can draw any conclusion. the only way to understand this is to really see it. and it not something you want to see . . obviously. i remember seeing 223 caliber rounds leave a 2" entry and 6 inch plus exits.
penn and teller? . . i think with something like this; they’ve risen to their level of incompetence. they should stick with magic.
real data would be collected from police/emed/coroner reports . . did they consult with gallagher concerning the watermelon experiments?
And why is it that you can’t test this on dead bodies again?
tracer . . have you ever seen someone shot with a high powered rifle? . . seen them shot in the head? right in front of you? ever seen one of your unit popped in the head; dragged him into a bag . . then you answered an incident investigation?
you and everyone else with their “mechanical motion” engineering crap are you know what.
i lived thru 3 years of seeing friends, enemys . . people dammit . . shot thru the skull . . i saw it happen . . sometimes held their head in my lap as they left this great frickin planet earth. i know what a death kill is.
tracer . . have you ever seen someone shot with a high powered rifle? . . seen them shot in the head? right in front of you? ever seen one of your unit popped in the head; dragged him into a bag . . then you answered an incident investigation?
you and everyone else with their “mechanical motion” engineering crap are you know what.
i lived thru 3 years of seeing friends, enemys . . people dammit . . shot thru the skull . . i saw it happen . . sometimes held their head in my lap as they left this great frickin planet earth. and you dare to compare pumpkins in this debate? how pathetic this is . . im exiting this debate now as the intelligence level is way short of human.
tracer said:
Yes, but they were just showing off. (In-joke for those who’ve read the book.)
Oh, and I forgot to mention, or didn’t make clear: the grapefruits shot were wrapped in fiberglass tape, with the thickness of the tape approximately equivalent to the thickness of the adult human skull.
JMCJ
Just confirming that my ass is, in fact, the wisest part of my body.
bda wrote:
I’m trying to figure out your point here. You’re saying that the exit hole is larger no matter what the target, but this is not valid data? Or what? And how do you fire a bullet sideways?
.223 caliber? Seems like this indicates an M-16. Wasn’t this gun designed so that its rifling imparted the minimum spin necessary to get the bullet through the air, therefore tumbling upon impact, therefore transferring more of its energy into the target?
I’m not sure what your position in the debate is - do you agree that objects typically are kicked in the direction of the firing rifle?
Did’nt I tell you before? The man who died in Dallas WAS NOT JFK!! The real JFK died on an island in the S. Pacific in WWII-his identity was assumed by a navy enlisted man named Marney. Joe Kennedy “adopted” him as his surrogate son, because the crown prince (and presumed president-Joe Jr.) was killed in an air crash in France. The reason that the imposter was killed was that the hoax was about to be exposed-so Joe kennedy agreed to have his “son” bumped off by the CIA (who paid Oswald to do it). Later, of course, Oswald was conveniently bumped off by Jack Ruby.
Hmm. More importantly, you forgot to mention that no one has ever established that Oswald fired the rifle that day.
To quote the HAL 9000 “This conversation can serve no purpose any longer”. It is to the conspiracy monger’s advantage to lower the discussion to such trivial details. As if a few frames of the Zapruder film will make a difference … “Well I thought Oswald did it all my life, until I saw a strange head motion in a few frames I can’t explain. Now I have no other choice but to believe in the conspiracy!”
Any event of enough complexity, such as the assassination, will have many such weird events. All you have to do is look hard enough. If I devoted my life to studying, for example, the moon landing, I might find some mighty strange things. In fact, some people have done just this, and have come to the conclusion that the moon landings are fake. Those people know a hell a lot more about the moon landings then I do, but neverless, they are idiots. Their armchair reasoning about the landings has led them astray. People tend to let wild theories carry them away, and do not judge data logically. Don’t take my word for it -read up on the psychological literature of people’s tendency to commit all sorts of faulty reasoning - from underestimating coincidence (the conspiracy monger’s amazement on Oswald & Ruby’s having been at the same place some time in the past), to visual misperceptions (those who think the driver shot JFK), to not understanding probability, (it would be hard for LHO to do something, therefore he could not have done it.)
I urge everyone to step back and look at the big picture. If anyone can present a theory about a conspiracy, then that is something to debate over. Trying to poke holes in the most obvious and logical theory doesn’t really do much, unless you are proposing another theory. If anyone can propose a true, falsifiable alternative theory, then let’s go. I want to know exactly what happened. Otherwise, it’s just a big waste of time.
Which, of course, is what JFK assassination is all about. This is the definition of mental masturbation. The only ones convinced of a conspiracy are laymen. The weak arguments of the conspiracy mongers have yet to convince historians to consider rewriting history.
I don’t mean to insult any believer of the conpspiracy. You guys are a hell of a lot better than the folks on alt.conspiracy.jfk. They would brand anyone who shot down their arguments as a CIA agent. If an assassination book got disproven, they would say that that book was just government misinformation, trying to give the conspiracy theorists a bad name. This idiocity is what lies in store for whoever becomes such a passionate believer in such a stupid idea.
its seems absolutly futile to try to explain here what happens in real life when someone is shot in the head. not a pumpkim, not a corpse . . a real live human being. who among you has ever had the unfortunate expierance to witness it? step forward or shut up.
“Zapruder Film to Be Donated to Sixth Floor Museum”
You watch: Someone is gonna say that it’s not the COMPLETE Zapruder film. Relevant quote from the article:
You KNOW that would’ve happened: A T-shirt with the frame showing the head shot, with perhaps this caption: “Kennedy Died For Your Sins” or something equally tasteless. (And this is, indeed starting to resemble a religion, with the Conspiracy Believers as the holders of the One True Faith and the Lone Gunman theorists as the Damned Heretics. Or maybe it’s the other way around. ;))
I believe the complete Zapruder film exists on Oliver Stone’s JFK, which is now on DVD. (DVD is a great way to analyze film. It freezes each frame PERFECTLY and allows you to examine it for as long as you like. And, no, I haven’t seen JFK yet. shrug) If he had altered it in any way, don’t you think the Zapruders would’ve raised a fuss? If ANYONE had altered it, don’t you think they would’ve complained? Don’t you think they would know that film by heart by now and would’ve noticed any alterations? And don’t tell me they’ve been paid off too. How much money would it take to buy YOUR silence, assuming you knew something?
(No one take offense. This is not directed to anyone in particular. But I’m getting tired of people who think others can be bought, but not themselves. Or maybe they’re admitting that they CAN be bought? You decide.)
>< DARWIN >
__L___L
A neurologist friend of mine said that the effect that nebuli is describing would cause the body to go rigid not just jerk the head. Bullets make small holes going in and bigger, sometimes much bigger holes going out. Those two conspiracy buffs, Penn and Teller, demonstrated the lack of a jet effect with suspended watermelons. Somebody shot him from the front. Maybe we will never know who did it but, to me, the big question is what purpose was served by a coverup.
I am way sorry, the Penn and Teller experiment did support the jet effect. It was several years since I read it and I missed the quote above. Maybe LHO did act alone.
Let me repeat: The ‘Jet Effect’ requires a jet of material to be blown out of the head from the exit wound, in this case towards the front of the car. The ‘jet’ of material that came out of Kennedy’s head wound up splattered on the secret service agents behind him and bits of his skull wound up on the trunk of the car.
I resent the notion that because I think there’s a good chance of a second shooter here that I’m some sort of layman with a faulty understanding of probability. I have a very, very good understanding of probability. I studied physics and engineering in university. And I AM a skeptic. I don’t buy into UFO’s, telekenesis, tarot cards, or larger conspiracies involving massive government coverups. If James Randi had a fan club, I’d be a member. Okay?
However, there is plenty of objective evidence of a conspiracy in this case. Not just the ‘kooks’ think so. The House Select Committee on Assassinations ruled that it was probable. A mock trial presenting all the evidence resulted in a hung jury.
One of the reasons you have so many flakey theories about missing X-rays and such is because the actual testimony is REALLY hard to understand. Dozens of eyewitnesses, all trained medical people, described Kennedy’s head as having a large exit wound in the back. This included doctors who actually handled his head for a long period of time, and two secret service agents who stared at the back of his head all the way to Parkland. Their written reports describe the area exactly, and they ALL agree. One described brain tissue hanging from the back of the head that was bright pink, which is tissue found in the back of the brain. The coroner who filled Kennedy’s head with plaster recorded that he filled an entrance hole in the temple.
A piece of skull found on the road was examined by a pathologist and recorded as occipital bone, which is exactly the area Parkland recorded as missing (several independent written reports by attending doctors reported an exit wound and missing skull in the occipital area).
Yet the X-rays show no damage in that area at all. So either we have the first recorded case of mass hallucination by the entire medical staff of a major hospital, or… Something else.
Look, I’m not suggesting the government killed Kennedy. But it’s within the realm of possibility that a coverup was initiated just for PR purposes. I can just hear Johnson’s drawl saying, “There’s no goddamn way I’m gonna let the American people think that we have teams of Commies running around killing our Presidents.” Remember, this was the absolute height of the cold war. A lone nut is basically an act of god - a random factor. A team of assassins is a political statement. For all I know, the second shooter was Jack Ruby, and he and Oswald did it all on their own to curry favor with the mob or something. It doesn’t have to be a big conspiracy. Just another shooter.
I am curious to know, since the House Select Committee ruled there was probable cause, why not complete the investigation? Aren’t there still some classified documents that have not yet been made available? Wouldn’t it be a smart idea to exhume the bodies of JFK and Connelly and do a complete forensic analysis? Technology has come a long way since the 60’s. Why not put this thing at rest once and for all, or are we waiting for others that were involved (thats what I think anyway) to live out their lives and escape justice? I can’t remember, did Oswald get convicted, or was he killed before he went to trial?
“Wow! Spider-Man! Are you really friends with the X-men?”
"Not since Cyclops tried to use my viewmaster."
(Marvel Team Up #1)
You don’t have to be a kook to believe in the conspiracy. Ordinary people, dumb or genius are both likely to make the same judgemental mistakes.
So tell me, if you truly are a skeptic, which has more evidence,
a) LHO killed JFK
b) A conspiracy killed JFK.
Keep in mind, that you can’t just shoot holes in A without trying to build a reasonable scenario about B. A explains all the available evidence. Can you suggest a scenario B that explains all the available evidence, and also does not violate Occam’s Razor?
You say you have a good understanding of probability? YOu have previously said this:
So you believe it occurs less than 50% of the time. Great. Now how come you have a hard time believing that it happened? Surely someone with your mastery of probability knows that it doesn’t have to be probable to happen. Considering that there is so much other evidence about LHO shooting JFK, surely you wouldn’t think that this one improbable thing really makes any difference at all. And that’s assuming it’s improbable, like you said. And I’m sure that with your mastery of probability, you must know that improbable things are expected to happen, given enough events.
There is no need to look for bizarre conspiracy explanations about this. The president was just shot. Mistakes were made. Things were rushed. Initial reports were incorrect. Unless you think that all the intial reports were correct, and later, when the doctors really could have a good long look, the skull had already been tampered with. Please tell me which is more likely.
That’s a possibility too. Now please tell me which you believe. You can’t just run around spewing wild facts, without believing in some sort of theory.
That would not explain what you find needs explaining - the doctor’s assessment of the head wound. For that, you are postulating an even bigger conspiracy.
So tell me, if you are a skeptic, why aren’t you applying Occam’s Razor? Why assume two shooters when you haven’t demonstrated a no-doubt-about-it impossibility about the shooting?