According to the Warren Commission, an object struck with a large amount of force in one direction will fly in the opposite direction. If you stand behind Tiger Woods on the tee box, you are likely to be struck by a ball flying backwards at high speed.
John Cook would have been a good candidate as technical adviser to the Warren Commission. Someone who can make up technical sounding gibberish tailored to suit government agendas.
Penn & Teller tested this with melons wrapped with reinforced tape (even using a Manlicher-Carcano) and found that the objects would, in fact, move toward the gun due to the jet of soft matter exiting the back side.
A human skull is nothing like a watermelon. Where do you see soft matter ejecting out the backside?
On Tue, Aug 20, 2013 at 7:02 AM, Real Science
First problem, he was not dealing with the recoil and time to get back on target. DUUUH!!!!
Second problem, look at the pictures of the skull pieces and debris around the head from the shot. It was NOT going out Kennedy’s face, it was going up and to the right side and he did move toward his wife while going back!!
Third problem, the melon BARELY was moved off the stand. It did not JUMP off the stand as I have seen various targets jump over the years especially with near misses!!
These are serious enough issues I question why they filmed this.
Penn and Teller are not physicists but professional illusionists with known political bias in favor of the establishment.
That said, all of the physics-based evidence that I’ve seen presented, on both sides, is circumstantial. Thus, after all the evidence (not just physics) has been duly considered, the important question at that point is not “What is possible?” but “What is most likely?” Unfortunately, that’s a subjective question. Most people will see what they want to see based on their assessment of who comes out ahead under each theory, i.e. whether each theory casts their perceived friends or their perceived foes as the culprits.
Since we’re in the middle of an ongoing Leninist insurgency, no examination of this assassination can be complete without a thorough understanding of the motivations and the ideology of the victim, his friends and family, and all of the potential suspects. Such an understanding is rare among those who’ve investigated the case.
Penn is an atheist libertarian who supports the legalization of drugs, and who endorses Glenn Beck. How does that make him a supporter of ‘the establishment’?
The autopsy on K concluded that his nervous system reacted to the trauma in a very normal fashion, causing him to lurch forward. This has been supported by numerous inquiries.
911 Truthers have a neat story to tell too.
Lets get back to real science.
Appeals to authority go straight down the toilet at this blog.
I am referring to imagery from a film, which tells a very clear story.
It is one very grainy piece if evidence. If skeptics had supported our arguments against the alarmists with such meager efforts, we would have massive carbon taxes today, and windmills in each backyard.
911 Truthers make a better argument than the Zapruder film does.
Lets get back to real science.
Most people I know don’t have a bright light shining out of the side of their head for 30 consecutive video frames.
The odds of that being a defect in the film are astronomical. I do forensic image processing for a living.
You may be right, all I am saying is that it a tenuous argument, worthy of discussion but not conclusive.
I think it is extremely conclusive.
Perhaps we have different views of what is represented by “the establishment”. Regrettably, for safety reasons I can’t get into too much detail about how I’ve arrived at my view. Some other day, perhaps. RTF
About a quarter of JFK’s brain was blown out by a shot from behind. Despite being a politician, and a Democrat, there was sufficient matter ejected to make that famous cloud of mist on the Zapruder film, and to make his head jolt backwards. It’s 50 years ago, and by now we have far more evidence and more pressing problems than this. As usual, nothing will be done, and the great plan will continue, because by now the folks capable of thinking and acting outside the enemy’s rules are in a tiny minority. This time God will show up and put a stop to it…..so see to it you’re on His side. Study The Bible.
Nonsense.
On Tue, Aug 20, 2013 at 8:18 AM, Real Science
Steven, he clearly means “from behind” from the perspective of the book depository. So he’s agreeing with you. See what I mean by subjective observations? That was a Gestalt test. You just proved my point. You went with what you saw first, because it seemed to confirm what you were expecting. But the reality was the opposite.
RTF
No, the kill shot did not come from behind.
Nonetheless, the man clearly agrees with you, and you called his entire comment “nonsense”.
He is saying the exact opposite of what i said.
No, he was saying the exact same thing you’re saying (minus the incendiary round) but in a different way. Look at it as a response to the comment I wrote. He was expanding on what I wrote, and agreeing with me as far as I went. But he wanted to emphasize certainty in the physics, whereas I was saying there’s a gov’t conspiracy, but the physics of exactly what happened are uncertain.
He is saying the shot came from behind. It is clear from the video that the kill shot did not come from behind.
Turn it around, Steven! He’s saying the kill shot came from the same place you and I think it came from, the grassy knoll! How do I know? Because I read his entire comment, which was a response to mine. He’s saying substantially the same thing you’re saying: there is no uncertainty, there was a crime committed by gov’t, and it’s the same conspiracy that’s going on today. There is no way one can read his entire comment as a defense of the party line! That’s ludicrous. Your belief about his comment can only be sustained if you focus on just one word, “behind”, and sweep the entire rest of the comment in the trash can. Why can’t you see this?!?
I said nothing about the “grassy knoll” I am discussing what is visible in the video. I have no theories about the events or people involved other than what I see in the video.
He is saying the exact opposite of what I am saying. I don’t want to continue this conversation.
Fair enough about the grassy knoll; I guess I should have said “in front of Kennedy”.
I had Googled “Zapruder” + “cloud of mist” and found a page with an interesting comment.
http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?hl=en&q=cache:VmsrLmYVWiMJ:http://www.jfklancerforum.com/dc/dcboard.php%3Faz%3Dshow_topic%26forum%3D3%26topic_id%3D17980%26mode%3Dfull%2Bzapruder+%22cloud+of+mist%22&gbv=1&ct=clnk
In the interest of preserving the historical record, I reproduce the comment below.
“#17984, “RE: Rear Head Wound? Or Front? Which Is It?”
In response to Reply # 0
The whole autopsy was such a mess, it’s hard to know what to trust. The autopsy report described the large wound as extending into the occipital area, which would seem to conflict with the back-of-head photos. Like you, I am unable to see the extent of the wounds from the photo you posted. Given the unclear nature of the autopsy findings (report doesn’t seem to match photos, while neither seem to match the x-rays), one is forced to turn to other sources. Happily, a noted neurosurgeon was called into the trauma room to observe and work with the head wound. Unhappily, his contemporary report has major conflicts with the photos and x-rays. But, happily, his report, describing “a large wound in the right occiput extending into the parietal region”, was completely consistant with the notes and reports of the other Parkland doctors and nurses. These contemporary notes and reports from Parkland were written and spoken by medical experts, within a few hours of their observations, and before any official explanations (mostly FBI) or other pressures could apply. I am of the opinion that the reports out of Dallas constitute the best evidence of the extent of the President’s wounds. If you don’t have access to these reports, let me know and I’ll be happy to post the relevant parts.
Respectfully;
Rick Holtman”
=========================================
Also, a commenter named Gary Myers responded to that comment and part of his response included the following:
The doctors tired gamely to create some sort of scenario concerning an entry wound on the back of the head, but IMO they did not succeed. It took reconstuction of the head at some point to even make a back of the head entry and right side of the head exit even a remote possibility. I will give them credit for some creative work with the back and right side of the head to produce the extant autopsy photos and x-rays, and I have no idea how and when they did it, except that the embalming and the introduction of plaster of paris and a rubber sheet on the back of the head gave them a good platform to work with.
Despite the jet effect there is also another matter that goes with it – basic human physiology. Basic mammal physiology, actually. When major brain trauma happens, an instant seizure happens. Muscles fire off in spasm.
Ever see or hear about a person seizing into fetal position? Correct. They tense up and straighten out because the dorsal muscles of the back and neck are much stronger than the ventral.
The best evidence of where the shot came from is to see where the brain tissue and blood went. Frame 313 shows his head still tilted forward AND a pink cloud coming out the front. Look at frame 310 – he’s in the same forward position. Frame 335 provides a vivid shot of the front right side of his head blown outward.
There is no way in looking at those frames that a conclusion can be made of a shot from the front. That evidence points to a shot from behind and above. The other evidence (head movement) is explainable by physics and physiology.
At least Steve isn’t adding UFOs to the climate debate that today suffers from a successful smear campaign to associate skepticism with online conspiracy theory cranks. If conservative politicians really did assassinate our Apollonian president, are we now going to wallow in the Nixon era at the very moment we hope our climatology skepticism promises to finally go mainstream? Come to think of it though, Republicans are already converted despite the Vatican, and the only Democrats who are easy pickings for skeptics now are tech savvy libertarians who are still pissed about 1960s assassinations. Speculation about specular highlights versus fire trails in an old blurry video using image stabilization is corny enough to delight instead of disgust urban kids. Carry on! The NSA/Apple/Google/Facebook scandal lets skeptics safely play now, unabashedly.
The imagery is more than adequate for analysis.
On Tue, Aug 20, 2013 at 10:51 AM, Real Science
Absolutely adequate. Frame 313 shows EXACTLY where the pink mist went.
Regarding the shots: people say “3 shots in 6 seconds.” It was closer to 8 seconds to fire TWO shots. The Warren Commission got the order wrong. First shot hit JFK’s neck and went through Connoly. Second shot missed – deflected off a tree and sent fragments into a couple of bystanders. Third shot on a near motionless target was head wound.
The 8 seconds starts from the first shot. Even if it’s six seconds, it goes shot, three seconds, shot, three seconds, shot. For those three shots in 8 seconds (or even 6 seconds) he only cycled the bolt and aimed twice. And missed once. Doesn’t sound too spectacular when place into context and given that his longest shot was under 90 yards with a scope.
There was no pink mist. It was an exploding incendiary – probably phosphorous.
Do you have a bright light shining out of the side of your head?
Steven, doesn’t it look like his head moves in inch or two forward at the head shot frame, 313, then there is a delay of a frame or so, then it starts moving back, but gains speed doing so, meaning it is accelerating backward? That is more suggestive of a shot from behind with something else causing the backward movement, perhaps physiological as Jerry suggested.
The bright light is sunlight reflecting off of a bone fragment attached to the now-flapping scalp. Maybe a higher def version makes that clearer: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NCdTkYSiVaE
That same bright light is shining from the First Lady’s hands. Because she was wearing gloves as white as the President’s skull.
Appreciate the half-hearted vote of confidence. I would note, however, that a theory about a Communist government plot to assassinate one of their own for disloyalty/weakness is neither Democrat, nor liberal, nor particularly libertarian. It is of a conservative, anti-communist nature.
This guy was obviously shot from behind, then!
http://www.driftingfocus.com/blogs/wp-content/themes/bigfeature/library/timthumb/timthumb.php?src=/blogs/wp-content/uploads/2010/07/capasoldier.jpg&w=820&zc=1
Steven, the film is a quite shaky and blurry, so honestly I can’t convince myself that the light you mention at frames 313~ is anything else than solar light reflection on dangling bits of exposed brain matter. In light temperature and intensity, it is much like the reflections on other objects. For example forward around frames 380 and following. Besides, I don’t really see what would be the point of using incendiary bullets for a hit on an unarmored target…
JFK has basically his forehead opened up like an orange would be pressed out by a large nail, and its content partly ejected and partly dangling a bit. Fresh brain matter just out of the skull isn’t dry, it’s still dripping and shiny (it’s mostly fat), and it’s likely to be reflecting sunlight coming from the front in all directions, including, in part, in the direction of Zapruder’s camera. Consumer-grade cameras from that era were not that good, the practical resolution is actually desperately low, so it is probably not very cautious to lean over small fuzzy details in individual frames.
Here is a high resolution transcoding of the film :
http://vimeo.com/50845024
That said, I am not an american citizen, therefore probably not feeling involved in this whole affair as most of you are, so I mostly keep out of this apparently unending discussion (I can only be an outsider). It seems to me that the amount of conclusive material from the event itself is not enough to conclude either way, therefore regular scientific process, hypothesis and experiment (experiment, not model 🙂 ), is what is left. And this too is often “not good enough” because unless events are recreated to the very last detail (which is impossible, given we don’t have a complete set of information to begin with), there is still room for doubting we nailed it.
My own take on this, based on what can physically happen, is that a head shot from behind is a real possibility, as nothing is invalidating it (debris spread cone consistent with exit wound, body spasm when brain injured, etc). That doesn’t exclude an elaborate plot including a whole organization for the assassination itself, but this is at a different level (and frankly, I’m not very interested in that aspect, for spy agencies are meant to do that sort of thing anyway).
I’m much interested in your pinpointed findings about how today’s climate is perfectly consistent with documented past climate, and also in the incredibly dumb way climate data is being doctored, year after year, to fit the watermelon agenda. Very often, reading your articles, I’m so surprised that they could, for example, do the “adjustment” trick again, and nobody seems to care about such a blatant fraud ! Or even assert with a straight face that we’re all going to boil or burn (“real soon now, yes, really”), while we are actually freezing…
Glowing brains. Maybe PT-109 was nuclear.
No, but the dynamic range of the film has to be considered.
Disinformation has been so thickly and continuously spread about JFK and his death that it will take a miracle (or a frank disclosure by the folks in the know…i.e., the ones that carried it out) to sort it all out again. This new angle of an incendiary round is weird. Where is it supposed to lead? How come it took 50 years for someone to notice flames, and talk about them, when it never seems to have been mentioned before? And to what purpose use incendiaries for a headshot on a human being, anyway? Expanding bullet, fragmenting bullet, explosive bullet, ok, easily understandable for why an assassin would use that (e.g. the explosive .22LR rounds used on Reagan)….the cops use them all the time in their, er, work, since they aren’t bound by the rules of civilised land warfare. But incendiary, on a man? From a weapon/weapons that were sufficiently suppressed to make it hard for anyone to state with conviction where the shots came from? Ok, if it were a gutshot, perhaps as a means of inflicting pain and as retribution, or a message for the next figurehead that feels like slipping off the leash, but for a guaranteed, messy, political message, go with the mechanical damage rather than the thermal. But isn’t it about time someone asked why JFK wasn’t disposed of in another way? Such as by drug overdose in one of his sordid affairs. Much easier to arrange and stage manage, and less risk of exposure later. No, he had to go publicly, and bloodily. Why? So, two questions, then. Why incendiary, and why public at all?
Stefan, thanks for your follow-up comment.
Steven Goddard.
Stefan has now confirmed (via these words: “or a frank disclosure by the folks in the know…i.e., the ones that carried it out”) that he agrees that there was a conspiracy to murder Kennedy.
He has also confirmed another main point that I said he clearly believed, namely that the direction of origin of the kill shot was not the same as with other shots:
“[. . .] incendiary, [. . . from] a weapon/weapons that were sufficiently suppressed to make it hard for anyone to state with conviction where the shots came from?”
[my emphasis]
That is a clear reference and response to your statement made to me:
“I said nothing about the “grassy knoll” I am discussing what is visible in the video. I have no theories about the events [. . .] other than what I see in the video.”
In other words, combining that with his statement that the physics are clear about the direction of the kill shot, he’s saying it’s clear that the kill shot came from in front of Kennedy, but it’s not completely clear to him that it came from the grassy knoll. But he doesn’t buy that there was an incendiary round used because he thinks that if they would use that they’d want it widely known and wouldn’t make it so hard to identify the location from which it was shot. (I don’t agree with his reasoning, but that’s clearly what he’s saying.)
I would appreciate a concession that I was right about what Stefan was trying to say. Since I was treated somewhat harshly for stating what I knew to be true.
I don’t know anything about any conspiracy. I am referring to a video which showed that Kennedy was hit from the right front by an incendiary round.
Can an incendiary round be made to mimic an exit wound?
All right, for the first time since this topic began I am totally baffled. Kennedy getting hit from the right front by an incendiary round: how is that not proof of a conspiracy, if it’s true?
For that matter how is it that the Warren Commission’s absurd finding about Kennedy’s head reaction is not proof of a conspiracy? You are really managing to confuse me here.