Ditching Online Discussion Groups - A Rational Choice!

Back in May I wrote a post explaining why I ceased to frequent any online discussion Google Groups. As I noted:

"Google groups is as beset by noise from trolls, morons and screwballs as Usenet was in the mid 90s. In fact, I'd say even more.  The JFK assassination is a case in point and shows pretty well that most of the numskulls who post aren't interested in serious discussion - but drive -by snark that would embarrass an intelligent 8-year old. But this was one reason that in 2001 I stopped forthwith with Deja news and never signed onto Google groups. Too much noise, not enough signal."

This was particularly to do with groups on the JFK assassination, which I found increasingly beset by noise and inhabited by that bottom feeder species of internet denizen known as the troll. After citing a number of examples of my own experience, and Richard Charnin's (about whose JFK book I'd written a review) I observed:

"This is why it's a total waste of time, mental capital and energy to attempt to dispense any pearls of wisdom regarding the JFK assassination (and I'd guess global warming as well) on Google Groups. It is simply not a venue conducive to intellectual exercise or exchange."

Well, it appears I am by no means the only person to have left these groups to the lower dregs. An article in the recent Mensa Bulletin ('Why I Quit Online Discussion Groups',  October, p. 32) by Bryan Lundgren, sheds even more light on why intelligent people are no longer inclined to waste time or intellectual capital in these over-hyped venues.

In Lundgren's case he'd signed up for eight Yahoo Groups, hoping to extract some residue of intellectual exchange via collegial and interesting discussions on a variety of topics.  What he discovered instead was more akin to an intellectual vacuum and worse, one inhabited by the usual breed of deranged and deluded assholes one encounters in such places. They know little or nothing, as in the JFK assassination Google groups, yet feel they are entitled to spout off on anything and even that their bilge trumps the contributions of experts.

As Lundgren noted, based on his experience, (p. 33):

"The first time I came across one of these nasty people online I called my Internet-savvy daughter and explained the situation:

'This guy throws out a post that takes five minutes, calls people names . Next the group goes into a five hour frenzy. What's up with that?"

His daughter then asks if he has never hears of trolls, with which she has to deal in her online work - mainly trying to screen their random eruptions as best she can.

Lundgren then cites the Urban Dictionary definition of "Internet Troll":

"A person whose sole purpose in life is to seek out people to argue with over the internet over extremely trivial issues."


Lundgren then claims to have begun to research online communications, including diagnosing disruptive personalities that seem to pop up in these Yahoo and Google groups like random roaches searching for new feeding stores.  Lundgren also sought to try to learn why "these few bad apples behaved so negatively".  Ultimately, he was able to get to the point of recognizing the M.O. of most of these losers and being able to predict the obnoxious behavior of a certain subset.  Most of these dregs fell into one of three groups: trolls for their own sake, narcissists and depressives unwilling to medicate properly.

The trolls for their own sake are perhaps the bunch most on the loose in Google groups. The JFK assassination especially seems to draw them out, because they believe after they read a few short articles they are experts on it. Thus, they feel compelled to challenge more experienced contributors and authors simply because they can. (One reason I advised Richard Charnin not to waste his time on any of these groups any more, including mentioning his book, Reclaiming Science).

Narcissists, well they just like seeing themselves have fun at others' expense. They can also be especially nasty about it and often engage in character assassination - like John McAdams, a classic case. Meanwhile, depressives engage in this slimy behavior as a way to partially self-medicate, whereas if they'd just leave the keyboard alone and get a Zoloft or Paxil prescription they'd be going out for a jog, or reading a damned book.

Lundgren noted he finally gave up and left the online groups because the effort needed to create and sustain a useful online exchange was "excessive" relative to the rewards. In other words, like my experience with the JFK assassination Google groups, it more and more became a case of tossing pearls before swine and as I noted,

"this is what you get when you offer substantive fare for consideration to mentally deficient imps who are more at ease wallowing in their own verbal feces and hurling it at anyone who dares try to enter their 'den' for education purposes."

Lundgren's solution - analogous to my own - was to be much more selective in internet use. Now, instead of wasting hours and hours uselessly arguing with those not invested in the content or enhancing discussion, he spends more constructive time reading one or two blogs and making the occasional comment.  The time and energy has added more quality to his own life, but I am sure the trolls and narcissists are PO'd they don't have another person whose time (and talents) they can waste.

Lundgren like me, has joined tens of thousands of netizens who have tired of partaking in useless, rancorous online discussions that now are the hallmark of an intellectual wasteland.

Is There A War On Reason?

This question was brought up in a recent TIME essay ('American Students and Politicians Need To Stop Waging A War On Reason', Oct. 5, p. 30) and the answer delivered was foursquare in the positive: Yes, there is a war being waged on reason. It doesn't even take a large degree of perspicuity to see that - merely paying attention to the ongoing public discourse of politicians, their assorted hearings and shenanigans (like the 5 hour grilling Planned Parenthood's Cecile Richards 2 days ago).

In that case Richards was suddenly presented with a graph from Repub congressman Jacob Chaffetz. The graph made it appear that abortions provided by Planned Parenthood grew to a much greater number from 2008 to 2013 than the number of cancer screenings and breast exam referrals.

The graph (above)  showed a ridiculously rising (high gradient) red line for abortions vs. a 'diving' graph for breast exams. Chaffetz claimed the graph was put together from PP's own data.

But keen observers soon smelled a 'rat' on observing the numbers associated with the abortion graph were far smaller than those for the breast exams. It later become clear it was done by 'Americans United for Life'. Adjusting for the difference, Chris Hayes showed the correct graphs on his Monday night 'UP' show with abortions just trailing at the bottom and with essentially zero slope, and breast exams with at least a sold 50-60 deg slope on the rise. (Adjusted for all screening categories the slope is negative but still far different with more positive outcomes than Chaffetz')

This is one example, but shows how reason can be undermined by faulty numbers, or misused data. The failure of reason is predicated on the fact the data was not decent nor were the facts, to begin with. (As also in the case of the claimed "global warming pause" embraced by deniers.)

Then there is Warren Commission groupie Michael O'Dell, who - in a paper on a known disinfo web site (of John McAdams) -tried to disprove D.B. Thomas Echo correlation analysis of the acoustic data published  in the British journal Science and Justice in 2001.  In his paper, O'Dell made much ado over a "60 Hz hum tone" that had already been repeatedly explained by others as evidence of copying. O'Dell then performs a linear regression analysis which he claims takes this into account. (See top diagram of Fig. 1). The problem is that O'Dell doesn't even present the graph in its proper scaled perspective, choosing truncated scales that make his regression line appear to have more gradient than it really does (see my correction of his line below)

Again, reason is sacrificed because the data are not correctly presented - in each of the foregoing cases with the wrong gradients or slopes.

As the author of the TIME essay puts it:

"The attack on education isn't on training our youth for whatever careers they choose; it's on teaching them to think logically in order to form opinions based on facts rather than familial and social influences. "

As I've also shown, quantitative reasoning can play a huge role in separating wheat from chaff.

Then there is the case of outright denial of empirical and visual facts  even when staring the percipient in the face.  I already noted this example in an April 11 post when in an encounter with John McAdams in 1997, on the Usenet newsgroup alt.conspiracy.jfk, he challenged a FAQ I'd written for the group. McAdams complained about my reference to Jackie “climbing over the limo trunk” in an effort to retrieve part of JFK’s blown out skull fragment (later inferred to be the Harper bone fragment retrieved by William Harper). He insisted "she wasn't climbing over anything" to which I then replied, "Ok, let's say she's moving across it to the rear - which shows a frontal shot".  He tried to "debunk"  this as well but a picture is worth a thousand words. And in the one below (from the Zapruder film - frames 313-14) readers can see the FACT of Jackie's trunk motion for themselves:

Now really, if a guy can't even admit reality when it's staring him in the bleeping face, why would one wish to trust him on anything?  No serious person should because a man who'd deny reality would deny anything . And yet thousands hang on McAdams' every word as if it's gospel. Again, a case of mammoth failure of reason and McAdams' assorted ad hominem jeremiads against "conspiracy buffs" even denote a war against reason - as does the indiscriminate attack on conspiracy thinking by the media in general, see e.g.

http://brane-space.blogspot.com/2014/11/hyper-skepticism-of-conspiracy-phobics.html

Then there is the resistance among some college students to broadening their perspectives on the genesis of 9/11, every bit as misplaced as the elite national, corporate media's resistance to the notion of political conspiracy. The  TIME author (ibid.) cites a student at University of North Carolina - Chapel Hill who wrote m article criticizing a 'Literature of 9/11' course for requiring students to "sympathize with terrorists". He wrote this gibberish despite the fact he hadn't taken the class or read the actual works but relied on his "personal research". This dumbass kid would have benefited from reading Chalmers Johnson's ‘Blowback: The Costs and Consequences of American Empire’,  2000) later said to “have seen the September 11 catastrophe coming”.  Johnson’s 2000 book argued that U.S. interventionist foreign policy and military overextension, especially in the Middle East,  would lead to unintended and unpredictable consequences. Reading works such as Johnson's would have informed the punk about U.S. foreign policy decisions made in our name but to which we are not privy to consenting or voting on.

Then there is the woeful war on reason in connection with human induced global warming. In particular, two tactics of the denier must be noted:

1) Distorting and framing Uncertainty:

This is perhaps the biggest tactic in use and has to do with what has been called 'agnotology'.  This term,  derived from the Greek 'agnosis' - the study of culturally constructed ignorance- is achieved primarily by sowing the teeniest nugget of doubt in whatever claim is made (and as we know NO scientific theory is free of uncertainty).  Stanford historian of science Robert Proctor has correctly tied it to the trend of skeptic science sown deliberately and for political or economic ends .

The agnotologist and his ilk succeed once the following trope is emitted and embraced by the power structure:

‘There is still so much uncertainty, we shouldn’t invest money to solve the climate problem,’

But this is egregious on so many levels that it boggles the rational mind. First, any modern scientific pursuit must include uncertainty. Uncertainty is acknowledged every time I perform a measurement - say of the solar diameter- and express it with plus or minus kilometer values. It signifies that final measurement cannot be presumed free of measuring error which is inherent in all our physics, astronomy etc.

The matter of "too much uncertainty" is also the wrong way to look at the issue for any scientific model or measurement, because they can as easily UNDER-estimate a potential threat or occurrence as over estimate it. Let's take the case of city -busting asteroids which were the topic for discussion today on the CBS Early Show,  with physicist Michio Kaku.  Kaku reported that in fact we have had to readjust our estimates of asteroid impacts based on new observations. Where we once expected a city-buster (say one that could take out a city like New York) every 150 years, we now have to expect it such a killer every 30 years!

In a similar vein, the uncertainty attached to climate models could also be in the direction of under-reporting or under-estimating the full impacts. Thus, the uncertainty could well be such that the runaway greenhouse effect could erupt fifty to one hundred years earlier than previously thought. Or the rising of the sea level owing to melting Arctic (and Greenland) ice sheets could incept a 10m rise as opposed to a 3 m one. This is why uncertainties are expressed as plus and minus values at the end of the measurement.

My point is that the trope expressed above doesn't take into account that the uncertainty implies that the problem is more likely to be worse than expected in the absence of that uncertainty.

2) Misrepresenting Consensus on Anthropogenic Global Warming (AGW):

This tactic has worked because too many Americans are not aware of the real consensus among real climate scientists that anthropogenic global warming is a FACT that must be acted upon. Perhaps the first researcher to scientifically and statistically establish this was science historian Naomi Oreskes - who first published an initial survey of global warming literature, entitled  “Beyond The Ivory Tower: The Scientific Consensus on Climate Change.”

Oreskes analyzed “928 abstracts, published in refereed scientific journals between 1993 and 2003, and listed in the ISI database with the keywords ‘climate change.’” She found that 75 percent of papers accepted the consensus view “either explicitly or implicitly,” while “25 percent dealt with methods or paleoclimate,” and took no position on AGW.  Remarkably, she found that none of the papers disagreed with the consensus position.  

Later studies have found a small sliver of dissenting views, but the more the consensus has been studied, the sturdier it appears, while the dissenting literature is dogged with repeated problems. For example, in Eos Transactions, Vol. 90, No. 3, p. 22 , P. T. Doran and M. Kendall-Zimmerman found that (p. 24)

“the debate on the authenticity of global warming and the role played by human activity is largely non-existent among those who understand the nuances and scientific basis of long-term climate processes.”

In their analytic survey for which 3146 climate and Earth scientists responded, a full 96.2% of specialists concurred temperatures have steadily risen and there is no evidence for cooling. Meanwhile, 97.4% concur there is a definite role of humans in global climate change.

A 2010 paper, Expert credibility in climate change, reconfirmed the 97 percent consensus figure, and found that “the relative climate expertise and scientific prominence of the researchers unconvinced of ACC [or AGW] are substantially below that of the convinced researchers.” A 2013 paper, Quantifying the consensus on anthropogenic global warming in the scientific literature, examined “11,944 climate abstracts from 1991–2011” and found that “97.1 percent endorsed the consensus position,” while a parallel self-rating survey found that “97.2 percent endorsed the consensus.”

Despite that, another Mensan (what's with these characters?) Marty Nemko, in a prominent Mensa Bulletin piece in 2010, actually posed these questions:

- Why does the media imply that the IPCC report reflects the consensus of thousands of scientists, when – as reported by CNN – there are dissenting scientists, like Richard Lindzen of MIT?

- If there’s consensus, why on Dec. 20, 2007, did the U.S.  Senate Committee on the Environment and Public Policy issue a report that 400 scientists now believe the evidence doesn’t support that “consensus"?

Nemko interprets “consensus” in these questions to mean 100% agreement, but this isn’t the case at all.  A consensus in the accepted English definition means the concurrence of an overwhelming majority. We have always known a certain minority hard core of scientists (the contrarians – who probably want more attention than being lumped in with others) have existed. People like S. Fred Singer of the University of Virginia and Richard Lindzen of MIT.  These outlier oddballs will always exist because it's in their interest to object, since either they are part- funded by the fossil fuel industry (Singer) or they are able to carve out a contrarian niche in a field otherwise dominated by concurrence (Lindzen).

But by confusing the meaning of "consensus" they seek to try to make the public believe the issue isn't settled when it is.  It would be analogous to a fundie claiming there's no consensus that the Earth is 4.5 billion years old because a few oddball naysayers, like Jason Lisle and D. Russell Humphreys, choose to differ. This despite the fact that we can actually use radioactive decay to obtain an excellent estimate that puts the Earth's age at 4 1/2 billion years.

As for Nemko's second question, the answer ought to be obvious: it's because the Senate is largely comprised of people who lack any credentials in climate science – and hence are not informed or educated enough to offer a professional scientific opinion – only a political one. Thus, they would not have been able to recognize that most of the 400 scientists "who don't believe the evidence supports a consensus" were not climate scientists.

Of course, we now know all this doubt, this agnotology, has been driven by elite interests in the fossil fuel industry as has been vividly exposed, e.g.

http://brane-space.blogspot.com/2015/08/union-of-concerned-scientists-exposes.html

The inability to think critically occurs even at the mundane or prosaic political level.  The TIME author, as an example, cites a 2014 poll by Alex Theodoridis of the University of California, Merced, in which 54 percent of Republicans polled believe Obama is a Muslim. When you also press many of them for evidence, they offer up a Youtube video where Obama seemingly admits it, despite the fact the video has been shown to be an edited fake (just like the one done on Planned Parenthood), see e.g.

http://www.factcheck.org/2009/12/truth-on-the-cutting-room-floor/

As the TIME author notes(ibid.)

"Obama has always been affiliated with Christianity and there is not one fact to indicate he's a Muslim"

The author is correct that "embracing reason is an uphill battle for humans" - particularly when one's beliefs and predispositions conflict with others' strong reasoning and actual facts. This also includes facts that can antagonize and make a person uneasy, especially students.

The final words of the TIME author in this context are spot on:

"If you don't want to read the books and develop the skills , don't take the class, don't attend the college. Spend the rest of your life huddled among those who agree with you.  But know that is not thinking - but sleeping. "

Or in other words, remain a "brain- eating zombie" the rest of your days, to use the author's parlance. Because those who attack and wage war on reason and those who use it really are "brain eaters" (at least of functional brains) and as we know that is the M.O. of the zombie.

Why I Remain Uniquely Qualified to Have Reviewed Richard Charnin's JFK Book.

Have any of the twits who think I'm not a JFK assassination expert even read my book?

I really had to unleash howls of laughter as I perused some of the daft comments from the peanut gallery after Richard Charnin posted a link to my review of his JFK book, e.g.

http://brane-space.blogspot.com/2015/02/a-jfk-assassination-book-all-serious.html

 on Google groups. One dumbo actually replied,  saying, in effect, "Well, Charnin,  when you finally write an astrophysics book then Stahl can review it" (citing my astrophysics background). And also, "Yeah, he's qualified to review it if JFK saw stars in Oswald's eyes before he fired" or some blather to that effect.

The level of doltishness disclosed made me wonder at the average level of education of most of the commentariat in this forum. Had they no insight at all that the main basis of Charnin's book was the application of the Poisson statistical distribution to the JFK witness deaths? And did I not fully show my expert background precisely in the use of the Poisson distribution - albeit to the occurrence of solar flares?  E.g.

http://brane-space.blogspot.com/2015/04/one-of-most-massive-scientific-projects.html

Wherein I referenced my paper  ‘Limitations of Empirical-Statistical Methods of Solar Flare Prognostication’  which showed how the relevant flare incidence corresponds to a Poisson process of the form: P(t) =   exp (- l)   l^t  / t!,    But, okay, maybe these folks simply lack the imagination or extrapolation ability to see how - if one can apply the Poisson in one setting - it is no biggie to apply it another. Or, maybe they simply don't believe that because I can apply it to the solar setting I am also qualified to apply to the JFK witness deaths  - to the level of reviewing Charnin's  book. 

But if that indeed was the case, which it is not, then it would mean I really had no clue about using the Poisson, period!  The whole point of understanding a statistical distribution - whether Poisson, Student's t or chi squared, is that you have to be able to apply it with maximal generality, not just to one case or two!

These intellectual misfits also appeared to have missed the memo that I began as a JFK assassination researcher as part of a physics challenge, e.g.

http://brane-space.blogspot.com/2015/05/how-i-became-interested-in-jfk.html

And in addition, have spent 35 years as a researcher and ultimately wrote a definitive book on the assassination, e.g.

http://www.lulu.com/shop/philip-a-stahl/the-jfk-assassination-the-final-analysis/paperback/product-21532732.html

Have any of these jokers and naysayers read the book? If not,  then how the hell can they challenge my expertise on the event?  Have they even read my FAQ on the assassination - published in multiple parts  on this blog in November, 2013? Are these twits even able themselves to answer questions on a basic test?

http://brane-space.blogspot.com/2012/05/basic-test-on-kennedy-assassination-can.html

All of which indicates to me their aspersions are much ado about nothing. The random expulsions of brains captured by the gravity of  a 'black hole' of insight -  from which they are intellectually incapable of  escaping.  A 'black hole' of denialism spawned by the twisted gibberish of John McAdams - the conservative gadfly  and JFK disinformationist formerly ensconced at Marquette University.

It's easier for these  shoot -from-the -hip critics to take snide potshots than to have one  independent thought outside of McAdams' orbit. They would rather just fall under the sway of a pseudo intellectual force that aligns them with the monumental fraud  of the Warren Commission.

Yes, the loss of a mind can be a terrible thing. In the case of McAdams' sundry sniping puppets it means they will never be able to see the truth that a conspiracy was behind the killing of JFK.

See also:

http://brane-space.blogspot.com/2012/11/cam-americans-distinguish-conspiracy.html

And:

http://brane-space.blogspot.com/2013/10/the-pre-assassination-framing-of-lee.html

with:

http://brane-space.blogspot.com/2013/10/the-pre-assassination-framing-of-lee_1807.html

And:

http://brane-space.blogspot.com/2014/11/hyper-skepticism-of-conspiracy-phobics.html

Educating An Australian 'Bloke' On Basic Precepts of Truth & Authenticity Re: The JFK Hit

Good grief! It appears the virulent, mind -numbing, truth - perverting infestation spawned by the likes of  John McAdams has insidiously and collaterally crept into the brain of a certain Aussie.  After Richard Charnin posted my takedown of a recent McAdams' snipe  on Google groups, an Aussie named Tim Brennan (from Sydney) scribbled a terse response that read as follows:

"Stahl is probably some bloke who makes regular blurtations on Global  Warming as well.

Can't see how his expertise on solar matters makes him some kind of JFK  expert."

Timmy, Tim, Tim!  Seriously? "Blurtations on global warming?" If you mean posts showing how it is supported, and by a majority of REAL climate scientists  i.e.

http://brane-space.blogspot.com/2010/12/carbon-isotope-ratios-and-climate.html

Then yes indeedy, I stand accused! But only insofar as attempting to dispel the gigabytes of denier nonsense making the rounds, viz.

http://brane-space.blogspot.com/2015/04/newsmaxglobal-warming-is-22-billion.html

 And evidently infecting susceptible brains like yours. But considering the whole denial gestalt, perhaps it is no coincidence you share denial of anthropogenic global warming and denial that there was a conspiracy in the murder of JFK. The memetic underpinnings are extremely similar and in both cases basic physics is rejected in favor of transparent codswallop masquerading as science.

Re: your not being able to see how my expertise on solar matters "makes him some kind of expert on JFK."  Well, that was why you needed to read the content in the link provided by Mr. Charnin - where you would have found:

2) I am most certainly a bona fide expert on the JFK assassination having already written one of the most extensive books of analysis ever: 'The JFK Assassination- The Final Analysis' based on more than 35 years' research.

See the book link here:

http://www.lulu.com/shop/philip-a-stahl/the-jfk-assassination-the-final-analysis/paperback/product-21532732.html


Brennan  also goes on to babble:

And yet here IS WC XVII 261-262, showing hits to the head... http://www.history-matters.com/archive/jfk/wc/wcvols/wh17/html/WH_Vol17_0144a.htm

X marks the spot where SENIOR OIC member Mark Lane lied!

Stop the LIES! Oswald INSIDE!! Disband the OIC!!!

Oh really? Stop the LIES? Seriously?  How about the Warren Commission's LIES on its assorted exhibits, maestro? Though not included at the time of the WC Report as an official exhibit,  the fake autopsy photo -image (left -below) did surface at the time of the House Subcommittee investigation ca. 1979 - when the actual autopsy image also did. (Gerald R. Ford prevented the release of any autopsy photo- even the fake one -  as an official Warren Report exhibit because he believed them too graphic.)  However, this false image did conform with the drawing fiction of how the WC believed the head shot ought to have occurred, e.g. http://jfkassassination.net/russ/infojfk/jfk1/1p255f68.jpg

The reference to "used in Warren Commission" then, doesn't  mean as any official exhibit - but as a dummy mold or 'model'  from which the 2D fictional head shot drawing was rendered.  The critical aspect being the phony basis for a rear shot as opposed to a frontal shot.(The fake construction was done before the WC sketch was made part of the WC exhibits)

Then there were the WC exhibit photos of Oswald holding a rifle

http://jfkassassination.net/russ/infojfk/jfk1/1exhf179p124.jpg


which I have already exposed as fakes, e.g.

http://brane-space.blogspot.com/2013/11/analysis-of-pixel-diffusion-in-oswald.html

Then there was the WC exhibit of the fake FPCC handbills. In respect to these, Military Science Professor John Newman in his 'Oswald and the CIA' refers to[1]:

"evidence that was deliberately falsified at the Government Printing Office during the publication of the Warren Commission Exhibits."

But let's not stop there!

In respect of the Warren Commission  CE399 exhibit, Dr. Joseph Dolce, a consultant in wound ballistics to the Army, stated he was given 100,  6.5mm bullets, by the Warren Commission, to fire at cadavers. (Documentary, 'The Single Bullet Theory'). In no case,  he went on, did any of the bullets come out pristine as CE 399 showed. In fact, all showed significant deformity. In his own words (ibid.):

No, it (CE399) could NOT have caused all the wounds. Our experiments here show beyond any doubt that merely  shooting a wrist deforms the  bullet drastically. In every instance, the front or tip of the bullet was smashed. It's impossible for a  bullet to strike a bone, even at low  velocity and still come out with a perfectly normal tip.

     To fix ideas and clarify,  the images of CE399 (A) and also one of the bullets tested by Dolce (B) are shown below:

As for the 'X' marks the spot baloney Brennan cites, it conforms with the falsity of the other exhibits cited.  What we behold is a boxlike mold in separate scenes,  with presumed projections of "hits" but no indications of exactly where the hits struck in terms of cranial morphology.  (Rendering the 'X' more like a cartoon joke that seeks to confer credibility where none exists.) It's all of the same deceptive piece as the fake FPCC handbills Newman exposed, the fake autopsy photo (though not a formal exhibit - the WC's top guiding honcho (LBJ)  did authorize its creation at Bethesda), the fake Oswald rifle exhibit, and the CE399 fake.  Close inspection of the images in the exhibit frames shows nothing of any value or anything specific in terms of  relating shot precision to the exact anatomical positions in the absurdly configured  "head". We have a word for such bollocks - it's called a "Macguffin".

The fact of the matter is that a trained team of expert marksmen was unable to replicate Oswald's alleged feat! Oswald was presumed to have fired from the 6th floor of the Texas School Book Depository, so effectively six stories up or 60’ in altitude. However, the experts were allowed to fire from a tower only half this altitude (30’)[2]. In addition, while Oswald had to have fired at a limousine moving at 11 mile per hour, the experts fired at stationary targets. Anyone who's ever fired a high powered rifle will tell you it's much easier to hit a stationary target than a moving one!

The target area was also magnified for the experts, to the whole upper torso of the target prop’s body – while Oswald was limited to the head and neck. The latter according to the WC, though in fact, no bullets struck the neck - it was the upper back- level with 3rd thoracic vertebra. Gerald Ford altered the autopsy notes to read 'base of neck' because otherwise the single bullet nonsense wouldn't work, e.g.


More to the point, the rifle was altered away from the one Oswald used. The rifle sight itself was rebuilt and “metal shims were fitted to provide a degree of accuracy previously absent’. When Ronald Simmons, the Chief of the Infantry Weapons Evaluation Branch of the Army’s Ballistics Research Division was asked about this he replied: “Well, they could not sight the weapon in using the telescope" (Op. cit. ,Vol. II, p. 250.)

Thus, even IF the images depicted in Brennan's WC Exhibit link were authentic one would still not be able to conclude that there was a faithful replication of the shooting - on account of the manipulation of the scope!  But don't take my word!  Simmons himself added that the aiming apparatus had to be rebuilt by a machinist with two shims added, one to adjust for the elevation, the other for the azimuth.

 In other words, had they actually used the rifle in the same condition Oswald was alleged to have had it, then they’d likely not have hit the side of a barn. (Maybe one reason the Italians dubbed their Norma Mannlicher-Carcano 6.5 mm bolt action rifle that Oswald was supposed to have used as "the rifle that never killed anyone")

At the end of the test trials, these Master Marksmen each fired two series of three shots each (18 rounds in all) at 3 stationary targets placed at distances of 175’, 240’ and 265’ (the last coming nearest to the distance from the Texas School Book Depository to the head shot). Even Chief Simmons admitted that the targets were not placed where they ought to have been to emulate conditions on November 22, 1963.

Just one of the three expert riflemen was able to get off three shots in under 5.6 seconds – the designated time interval for total shots declared by the Warren Commission. And most to the point: none of the total 18 shots fired struck the targets in the head or the neck. In other words, from a technical standpoint of duplicating Oswald’s alleged shots- this trio of experts failed. Another key aspect: for the duration of the 18 rounds, two of the “master” riflemen were unable to reload and fire at the stationary target as rapidly as Oswald purportedly did for the moving limo.

These are the facts, but alas, it is doubtful Brennan would accept them any more than he does the facts of anthropogenic global warming - which he dismisses as "blurtations".  Alas, he fails to see his off the cuff, inane response to Charnin's post was the real "blurtation":  blurting, brainless and an irritation.

---

[1] John Newman: 1995 Oswald and the CIA, Carroll & Graf, p. 307.
[2] The Warren Commission Report, p. 137.

John McAdams Tries To Rip My Review of Richard Charnin's JFK Book

McAdams about 18 years ago doing a fist bump after nearly destroying a usenet newsgroup on the JFK assassination with which he didn't agree. He's since been fired by Marquette Univ.

It appears known, long time JFK assassination conspiracy disinformationist, .John McAdams (he likes to write his name with a period in front - maybe as reminder to pause and remember which persona he will be for a day) didn't approve of my review of Richard Charnin's excellent book, e.g.

http://brane-space.blogspot.com/2015/02/a-jfk-assassination-book-all-serious.html

On one shilling -for- the- Warren Commission forum, McAdams claims to have tried to dig up material on me and learned:  "No academic appointment, he never had any job with any reputable scientific organizations - and has been an atheist for 25 years and written dozens of  articles in major newspapers and had  one-on-one debates with priests, ministers."

But if this is an indicator of his googling or research skills it shows he's beyond pathetic.  Even the most menial googler would have learned (from the All Experts site) that I've been an atheist 36 years (not that this has any relation to the JFK assassination)  and also written four atheist books, none of which McAdams mentions. But why should he have since the whole point was to demean my accomplishments and by extrapolation the book review.  Had he done more intense research as opposed to acting the part of a "hit man", however,  he might have learned I am an Emeritus member of the American Astronomical Society and a member of its Solar Physics and Dynamical Astronomy divisions. He'd  also have encountered my appointment at the Geophysical Institute - Space Physics Dept, over 1985-86 and also my appointment as a peer reviewer for the NSF in the 80s  - for space and solar physics papers.  Then my additional appointment to help in completing the most massive monograph on solar -terrestrial physics  yet published: The Solar -Terrestrial Predictions Proceedings (Meudon).  Oh, then there was my appt. as tenured physics lecturer at Harrison College, but I guess this was too "small fry" for McAdams to consider "reputable".

Conveniently, McAdams leaves out any mention of my physics books including the most recent 'Modern Physics: Notes, Problems and Solutions', and 'Selected Analyses in Solar Flare Plasma Dynamics'. But we give him a break here, because any dope that can't even correctly nail the number of years I've been an atheist assuredly wouldn't be able to grasp the use of the Landau contour - say applied to the 2-stream instability!

He then bellyaches that  "usually peer review means reviewed by a bone fide expert" - but two things here: 1) I never claimed the review was "peer-reviewed" from a "scholarly journal", and 2) I am most certainly a bona fide expert on the JFK assassination having already written one of the most extensive books of analysis ever: 'The JFK Assassination- The Final Analysis' based on more than 35 years' research.
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To the point (1),  since the average peer- reviewed academic paper in a scholarly journal is only read by 0.12 people on average (stat from one American Physical Society survey) then why put it in such a limited venue when a more popular one assures far more readers? (And indeed, the link above for my blog review has now had over 160 hits  - not a lot - but I think 160 > 0.12!  Also, I have a review posted at amazon.com as well.)

Of course, all this deflection from the book review and huff and puff about me and my credentials is intended to buffalo readers who then won't stop to ask why this guy hasn't written a single sentence about the content of the book review.  As opposed to interjecting half-assed knowledge concerning my background, why  not instead show exactly where my use of Poisson statistics (and Charnin's by extension) is wrong?  How hard can that be IF you know what you're talking about? Why not criticize the probability basis and assumptions? Well, again, because it's much easier for a non-serious propaganda tool to use irrelevant smear tactics than to actually examine the book review and critique it!

But see, hit men and crank disinformationists like Johnny  Mac are only interested in put downs as a tool to distract readers from the truth and this has been McAdams M.O. from the time he darkened usenet JFK newsgroups with his Darth Vader persona.

Long before there was Twitter, Facebook or Blogs, there was something called Usenet where entities known as "newsgroups" sprang up to encourage debate and discussion on any number of issues, topics.  I had observed McAdams putdowns in the (un-moderated)  newsgroup alt. conspiracy.jfk for some months before actually engaging in a one on one exchange with him. This was concerning my REAL FAQ  that I had published in the newsgroup as an antidote to a pro-lone nut FAQ by frequent poster John Locke. 

In one particular and unforgettable confrontation, McAdams complained about my reference to Jackie “climbing over the limo trunk” in an effort to retrieve part of JFK’s blown out skull fragment (later inferred to be the Harper bone fragment retrieved by William Harper). He insisted "she wasn't climbing over anything" to which I then replied, "Ok, let's say she's moving across it to the rear - which shows a frontal shot".  He tried to "debunk"  this as well but a picture is worth a thousand words. And in the one below (from the Zapruder film - frames 313-14) readers can see the FACT of Jackie's trunk motion for themselves:


Now really, if a guy can't even admit reality when it's staring him in the bleeping face, why would one wish to trust him on anything?  No serious person should because a man who'd deny reality would deny anything  - and also stoop to say anything to serve his agenda.  I mean this turkey wasn't even able to get the number of years I've been an atheist correct! If he is going to use my atheism against me in an attack mode I'd at least expect him to get minimal facts correct, but even this was too much.

McAdams is such a liar and tool that even when presented with testimony from the "bible" (Warren Commission) he usually rigorously defends, he won't budge if he's been exposed as an ass.   For example, in conjunction with the issue of Jackie going across the limo trunk I added her Warren Commission Testimony (from Volume Five of the special hearings) where she says:

"You know, then, there were pictures later of me climbing out the back, but I don't remember that at all."

And from her secret testimony (excised from original version), op. cit., p. 16:

"I was trying to hold his hair on. But from the front there was nothing. I suppose there must have been. But from the back you could see, you know, you were trying to hold his hair on, and his skull on."

 But once again, this jackass McAdams disputed the WC sources and said Jackie also must have been mistaken, as there was no time at which she climbed across the trunk. SO much for  .John's "debunking" which is largely a matter of denying reality.  The trouble is, when one denies reality there is no way to support his claims.

Perhaps the best information ever assembled on John McAdams (nee, “Paul Nolan”) was put together by Jim Hargrove. The basic thrust was to answer questions concerning McAdams and his background because it so much seems to fit the sort of CIA assets described in the CIA document 1035-960.

When McAdams blabbed (as he did in one forgettable  TIME  mini-interview in Nov. 2013) : "These people think the CIA cares about them. It does not!"

He misses the point. It isn't that the CIA "cares about" anyone personally, but only to the extent it can disrupt their discussions in assorted forums discussing the assassination.  Thus conforming to the words in the CIA document  1035-960 that explicitly state as one primary objective:  "To employ propaganda assets to [negate] and refute the attacks of the critics".

How can this be reconciled with a guy who "just likes to brawl"? Well, if brawling consumes more time than useful communication about facts (like Jackie's limo trunk action) and files (like Oswald's  201-289248 CI/SIG) than one can say the objective has been achieved.

If McAdams has at any time been a real CIA propaganda asset, it makes sense one of his first obligations would be to neutralize any outlets for serious JFK assassination discussion he doesn’t control (like his moderated newsgroup). Thus his intrusions into the un-moderated group shed definite light on his intentions.  Consider, for example, this post from  McAdams, Date: 14 Feb 1997 22:17:02 -0700:

“You buffs have been cooperating marvelously with my scheme to make this group a shambles. And you know the bizarre part? My scheme is not a secret. I have publicly announced it. I have made it perfectly obvious.  I have rubbed you buffs' noses in it. It's blatantly obviously to everybody.”
.John

Hmmmmmm......sounds like a fuckin' CIA asset to me. 

Now, let’s clear our heads and think about this a bit: Would a normal everyday professor of Political Science be doing these things?  Spending 8-12 hours a day on usenet newsgroups to sow chaos?  Would he be bragging about leaving a Usenet newsgroup a “shambles”?  It doesn’t add up.  Any real prof worth his salt would be working on research to submit for publication to a peer-reviewed journal, not acting the part of an overgrown adolescent  (with anger issues)  for most of every day!


Jim Hargrove, in his “McAdams FAQ” provides the Charter Policy written by McAdams himself for his own moderated group. Reading its first paragraph sheds a lot of light:

CHARTER AND MODERATION POLICY

This group will be for the purpose of providing an area for serious discussion and research of the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. The group will be moderated to prevent the noise and chronic personal attacks which have plagued alt.conspiracy.jfk and made it nearly useless as a vehicle for intelligent research. Questions surrounding JFK's death have made this one of the most talked about and controversial issues of our generation. This will be the one usenet group which deals seriously with this important topic.

But as Hargrove observes:

“One supposes that since the noise and chronic personal attacks which have plagued the alt.conspiracy.jfk group were and are part of McAdams freely admitted plans to turn the group into a shambles, the moderated group can only be seen as his personal vehicle for selective manipulation of content”

Which is totally logical, and again, it comports with CIA doc. 1035-960!  Hargrove then quotes McAdams from a letter written to The Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel:

“(Dr) Gary Aguilar accused me on the politics forum of being 

A CIA sponsored disinformationist because I was once the 

Marquette Official representative of the I.C.P.S.R. an utterly

 unspooky social science data archive.”

In truth, The ICPSR is housed in the Institute for

Social Research, or ISR, which itself  has been documented

as a recipient of “spook” (e.g. CIA) research grants.

 They also have a webpage:

http://www.icpsr.umich.edu/icpsrweb/ICPSR/

Which the interested reader can explore for himself. My own take is that it could easily be a CIA  (Clandestine Operations) front for  psy-ops intelligence operations which could easily include anti-conspiracy propaganda. We already know that the founder of American Propaganda – Edward Bernays – was steeped in the social sciences and firmly believed the public was too irrational to entrust to its own thought and conclusions and therefore had to be manipulated toward specific directions. In his own words: 

“The conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized 

habits and opinions of masses is an important element in 

democratic society”

What better way to do that than from a networked academic consortium –

 interwoven into all the  social sciences – with access to a central data clearinghouse

 that’s amassed everything from the   latest frequency of teen pregnancies, to

 homicides by race or gender, or assorted other historical   arcania. It’s literally

 a propagandist’s dream.

Those who prefer to demur to think about this need to read Chris Hedges, 'Empire of Illusion'.

Hedges has warned (, p. 129):

 "Psychologists, in and out of government, have learned how to manipulate social behavior. "

He goes on to note that such manipulation has as its primary objective an adherence to conformity, especially of thought. (The cult of "positive psychology" is particularly involved in this, but psychologists are also part of the CIA's ongoing psych agenda, as first demonstrated in "Operation Mockingbird")

Clearly, McAdams - his mindless minions and his pathetic pseudo-history site - are part of the axis of the "unspeakable" ,  using the term from James Douglass book, JFK and the Unspeakable. Douglass notes it was originally coined by the monk,  Thomas Merton, to refer to the unspeakable evil of deliberate denial of the truth. In this case,  behind one of the most dastardly crimes ever committed - and against we, the American people.

John McAdams has a lot to answer for, at least as much as the climate change deniers who've taken our planet to the precipice by their dissembling. In McAdams' case, he's deliberately helped to smother the truth  concerning JFK's murder, while character-assassinating sundry truth tellers, enabling a festering national sore to persist over a half century.

See also:

https://ceabbate.wordpress.com/recent-controversy/

http://brane-space.blogspot.com/2015/05/educating-australian-bloke-on-basic.html