Joe,
Thanks for sharing.
I agree with your thoughts. I have seen parts of the book before and agree it’s a good reference as I think it was one of the earlier books after the event.
Regarding the forward head motion, and in spite of dozens of others seeing the forward motion on the film (including me), I understand he now thinks it was an illusion based on blurring. I don’t know the full extent for the reason proposed, but I believe he was led to believe this by what David Wimp thought.
As such he is publishing a new book including his new hypothesis this fall.
https://www.amazon.com/Last-Second-Dallas-Josiah-Thompson/dp/0700630082
My understanding is that he does believe in a damaging head shot from the rear, not at z312/313 but that it was around z328.
Hello Brian
Yes, but it’s not William Hoffman who changed his mind. It’s the one with much less experience in Physics, Josiah Thompson.
I don’t know a lot about Physics. But I took a high school class in it and found that a real basis of it is measuring data. Over time, one can develop good skills with that. So, I would think that a Physics graduate student, like William Hoffman would be just the sort of person I would want to measure data, like the Zapruder film. Particularly in such an early study. Before the Neurological Spasm theory was known to him, I would believe, and there are minimum reasons for his hopes to affect his measurements.
Could the apparent forward movement at z312-z313 be blur. I’m no expert but its apparent that the answer is no. The data shows the head slowly moving backward, moves just half an inch backwards from z301 to z312. What a tremendous coincidence that it is only at z313 that we get a “blur error”. At the worst, most misleading frame possible, with good data during the 12 previous frames, we get a bad one that gives us bogus forward movement of JFK’s head during z312-z313. Are those conspirators lucky or what?
Frame z313 is a little blurry. But z302 is almost as blurry, but it somehow did not give a bogus appearance of forward head movement of JFK during z301-z302. See, “The JFK Myths” by Larry Sturdivan, Appendix E, Table E1, Relative Peaks from Hartmann’s Blur Measurements from the Zapruder film. Z302 had a peak of 1.5%. z313 of 2.0%.
Even more telling, why does this blur only cause JFK’s head to move forward? Why doesn’t Jackie’s head appear to move forward as well? Why does JFK’s head appear to move forward relative to Jackie? This is mighty selective blurring, that only effects the most critical frame, z313, that only effects the most critical object seen in that frame, JFK’s head. And why does JFK’s head appear to have moved forward, compared to z312, relative to the limousine, relative to Jackie’s head, not just in frame z313 but in frames z314 and z315 as well? And neither frames z314 nor z315 are very blurry. Clearly, something did suddenly move JFK’s head forward just after z312, just at the time his head exploded. To say otherwise is just to be in denial.
Josiah Thompson’s denial is a classic example of denying what the data is telling him. This type of thinking dates back to the very dawn of the modern science era. When Galileo saw the moons of Jupiter, saw that on some nights he could see 3 specks of light just to the left of Jupiter and one to the right. Then on a different night he might see one of the left and two on the right. The obvious explanation was Jupiter had smaller moons in orbit around it. Each moon would sometimes be on the left, sometimes on the right, sometimes lined up with it, in front or behind it.
The church officials rejected this. They claimed the images were distorted and could not be relied on. The truth is the images were distorted. Indeed, even the best modern telescopes have some distortion. One can never collect perfect data. But the church officials never explained why three different telescopes would all see the same thing when used on the same night? Why would different telescopes suffer the same “illusion”? If the images were illusions, why wouldn’t one telescope show one moon to the left and two to the right while another would show all four moons to the left?
Similarly, Thompson does not explain, total dodging the issue, of why this “blur error” only effects frame z313? And only effect the apparent movement of JFK’s head, not Jackie’s? People are always looking for excuses to throw away data that they don’t like.
On another point, does Thompson saying the hit from behind did occur, but not at z312, but at z328 show he is not affected by biased thinking? No. Moving the hit from behind from z312 to z328 removes difficulties for his original double hit theory? How is it, just be coincidence, that two shots just happened to hit the head at almost the same instant? What a coincidence that the timing was perfect to simulate a Neurological Spasm. First a hit from behind, followed by a more powerful hit from ahead just one frame later. What lucky conspirators.
Denying frames z313, z314 and z315 show any forward movement, moving the hit from behind from z312 to z328 conveniently removes all these problems while establishing his “street cred”, that his conclusions are not a result of any bias against the possibility of a shot from behind.
