Perception of Reality

[Andrew Mason]

"From z225-235 JFK slumps forward and down and to the left..."

    Your "untruthfulness" knows no bounds.
I was intrigued to see what fabrications your slippery mind would come up with but this is off the charts.
You genuinely believe you can misrepresent the Z-Film, state something has happened in it that obviously hasn't happened and that it won't be mentioned. Who do you think you are - Hickey?

JFK does not slump forward, down and to the left between frames z225 and z235. Have you lost your mind??

Your reaction is difficult to understand.  I just presented you with two animated .gif files to compare JFK's position seen by Hickey before he turns rearward to his position next seen by Hickey when he turns forward.  Can you not see them?

From z225 onwards JFK grabs his throat and sits bolt upright, he leans slightly forward, Jackie grabs hold of his arms and then he slumps to his left. This is what happens in the Z-Film and none of your untruthing will change that.

Did you not read what I wrote? I was describing JFK's position in z230 compared to his position while he was waving to the crowd before the Stemmons sign. I don't know why anyone would describe JFK as sitting bolt upright at z230, which is the position of JFK that I was suggesting that Hickey saw before he turned rearward for 2-3 seconds before turning forward again at the time of the last two shots.  Numerous witnesses described JFK as slumping forward or to the left and bringing his hands to his neck:

JFK does not begin to slump to his left until around z260.

Which zfilm are you viewing?  Here is a comparison of JFK's position between z193 and z230:

By z230 JFK has definitely moved noticeably left from the far right position he had in z193.  If you disagree, please explain why the green lines show otherwise.

Your arrogance, to believe you can simply ride roughshod over the film/photographic record, is unbelievable. And none of this changes the fact that in his statement Hickey is clear that when he turns around after hearing the first shot he sees JFK slumped to his left - this can only be a reference to the moment JFK has actually slumped to his left, something observed by dozens and dozens of witnesses.
From this slumped position Hickey then recalls JFK beginning to sit upright until he is almost erect and is then shot in the head.

THIS DOES NOT HAPPEN.

The zfilm shows otherwise.  Hickey is describing a difference or change in position of JFK between the time he saw JFK before he (Hickey) turned around to the rear which I am suggesting could have occurred around z230 and when he turned forward just before the last two shots (which I am suggesting could have occurred around z270):

[Andrew Mason]

Getting back to the topic "Perception of Reality",  the photo of the lion holding the lion cub vs. the photo of JFK emerging from behind the Stemmons sign at z225. 

If you already have formed the view that the second shot had just occurred at z224 and passed through both men, you will see JFK not reacting in z225 to being shot in the neck because it is much too soon (55 ms) after the shot for him to have begun reacting.  Also, in z224 JFK has his hands down in front of him in a much different position than seen before he passed behind the Stemmons sign.  Since JFK could not have reacted to the neck shot before it hit him, the position of the hands seen in z224 is "natural" and the fact that JFK moves those hands closer to his face/neck afterward is seen as a different move: ie. one in response to the bullet passing through his neck instead of a continuation of the move of his hands from pre-Stemmons to z224.

The problem is that there is an enormous amount of witness evidence that the first shot struck JFK and that the last two shots were close together and not anything like 5 seconds apart.  So by the time JFK emerges from behind the Stemmons sign, there has been only one shot.  So those who are trained to determine facts based on evidence do not interpret frame z224 as showing the second shot SBT.

Now, the question is: which approach has the better chance of reaching the right conclusion?

[Charles Collins]

Getting back to the topic "Perception of Reality",  the photo of the lion holding the lion cub vs. the photo of JFK emerging from behind the Stemmons sign at z225. 

If you already have formed the view that the second shot had just occurred at z224 and passed through both men, you will see JFK not reacting in z225 to being shot in the neck because it is much too soon (55 ms) after the shot for him to have begun reacting.  Also, in z224 JFK has his hands down in front of him in a much different position than seen before he passed behind the Stemmons sign.  Since JFK could not have reacted to the neck shot before it hit him, the position of the hands seen in z224 is "natural" and the fact that JFK moves those hands closer to his face/neck afterward is seen as a different move: ie. one in response to the bullet passing through his neck instead of a continuation of the move of his hands from pre-Stemmons to z224.

The problem is that there is an enormous amount of witness evidence that the first shot struck JFK and that the last two shots were close together and not anything like 5 seconds apart.  So by the time JFK emerges from behind the Stemmons sign, there has been only one shot.  So those who are trained to determine facts based on evidence do not interpret frame z224 as showing the second shot SBT.

Now, the question is: which approach has the better chance of reaching the right conclusion?

Witness accounts are frequently inaccurate. You are cherry-picking the witnesses that agree with your idea. That’s not the same as looking at all the available views with an open mind.

[Andrew Mason]

Witness accounts are frequently inaccurate. You are cherry-picking the witnesses that agree with your idea. That’s not the same as looking at all the available views with an open mind.

Cherry picking witnesses who said JFK reacted to the first shot?  There are at least 20 witnesses who said he did exactly that. I must have missed all the witnesses who said that he continued to smile and wave after the first shot for even half a second, let alone 3 seconds as you suggest.  Perhaps you could direct me to just one....

Cherry picking witnesses who provided clear recollection that the last two shots were closer together and in rapid succession?  There are at least 40 who said exactly this.  Why would I cherry-pick the 6 witnesses who gave vague impression that the first two were closer together? 

Who is doing the cherry picking here?

I agree that witness accounts can be inaccurate. People are not audio/video recorders.  But you seem to accept that they are pretty accurate when it comes to recalling the number of shots.  You also agree with the accuracy of those who thought the shots came from the TSBD.  Why would the only issue that they are completely out to lunch on be the pattern of those shots and how JFK reacted to the first shot?  And while you are thinking about that, please explain how 80% of the witnesses who commented on the relative spacing of the shots recalled the same pattern to the shots:  1............2.....3 and that the last two were in rapid succession?

[Dan O'meara]

Witness accounts are frequently inaccurate. You are cherry-picking the witnesses that agree with your idea. That’s not the same as looking at all the available views with an open mind.

When witness accounts completely contradict each other "cherry-picking" must occur.
It is an unavoidable consequence of contradictory witness accounts,
The best one can do is provide a narrative that coherently incorporates as much evidence as possible.
There will always be evidence that falls outside any narrative (this is the life blood of conspiracy parasites)
If you can point to a single "open mind" on this forum please do, I would very much like to engage them in debate.

[Andrew Mason]

When witness accounts completely contradict each other "cherry-picking" must occur.

No.   Cherry-picking is never appropriate. 
When witness accounts contradict each other, one still has to use a rational fact-finding process to determine what happened.  If witness perception is skewed due to a common factor, such as sound reflections interfering with a witness' perception of the direction of the source of the sound, you may see large groups of witnesses disagreeing with each other.  But if there are no common factors that would induce a common error in witness observations, then errors will tend to be random and accurate observations will agree with each other.   That is just common sense and common experience. And we see this in the evidence in this case.

It is not cherry-picking to find that the 80% who said 3 shots over a matter of several seconds should be preferred to the recollection of Jean Hill who thought there were more than 3 and less than 7 shots, or to A.J. Millican who thought there were 8 shots over 5 minutes, or the handful of witnesses who could only recall two shots or thought there were 4 shots.  The distribution of shots in the shot counting fits exactly with what one would expect if there were exactly 3 shots recalled correctly by the vast majority with conflicting witnesses making errors that are randomly distributed over the other counts.

It is not cherry-picking to conclude that the witnesses who said that the shots appeared to come from the TSBD are to be preferred over the witnesses who said they appeared to come from somewhere farther south.  There are very sound, rational reasons for concluding that they all came from the SN and no corroborating evidence that any shots came from somewhere else.  The confusion that is evident in the number of witnesses who thought the sound came from other directions is consistent with the sound reflections in Dealey Plaza interfering with a human's ability to determine sound direction.

It is not cherry-picking to conclude that the third shot and last shot struck JFK in the head.   It is not cherry picking at all to observe that the preponderance of evidence on that issue favours the head shot being the last.  While Charles Brehm thought there was a shot after the head shot, there is nothing to corroborate that and much conflicting.  Altgens was adamant that the head shot was the last.  The Secret Service Agents, the Connallys, the police officers riding close to the President all agreed. Emmett Hudson initially mentioned only a shot hitting JFK when the car was in front of him (he was on the steps going up the knoll).  It was only in his WC testimony that he mentioned a shot after the headshot but his testimony was so at odds with his earlier statements that it is difficult to place much reliance on his WC testimony at all.

It is not cherry-picking to conclude that the second shot struck Governor Connally.  There is consistent corroborative evidence from those closest to the events (the accounts of the Connallys, bystander Gayle Newman, and the Secret Service agents and police officers around and behind the President) and no conflicting evidence that I have found.

[Dan O'meara]

No.   Cherry-picking is never appropriate. 

Who said it was appropriate? Nobody did, so you can back down off your strawman, ok? Oh how you misrepresent.
The point I was making was about a "narrative". Allow me to lay out the rest of my post you so judiciously avoided:

"When witness accounts completely contradict each other "cherry-picking" must occur.
It is an unavoidable consequence of contradictory witness accounts,
The best one can do is provide a narrative that coherently incorporates as much evidence as possible.
There will always be evidence that falls outside any narrative (this is the life blood of conspiracy parasites)
If you can point to a single "open mind" on this forum please do, I would very much like to engage them in debate."

The rest of your horseshit post is not worthy of repeating other than to say there is no greater culprit of cherry-picking than you. Your Hickey/fringe ruffle  is the worst kind of cherry picking.
Your utterly destroyed  theory of a hit around z271 is predicated on nothing but the cherry picking you so righteously denounce.
I ask for an open mind and I get you