Thinking about a non-Oswald hypothesis

OK, I heard a great JFK assassination lecture at the 2013 Mensa AG.  I spent 4 1/2 hours at the JFK 6th Floor Museum in Dallas and inspecting Dealy Plaza and the Grassy Noll.

On the other hand, many years ago (1988?) I heard the PBS version, which basically left me feeling that the lone gunman theory needed no alternative, it was perfectly fine, people should just get over it.

But afterwards, I kept hearing about other things that didn't fit, such as

!!!!!  The Pristine Bullet   !!!!

The official theory has it that the Pristine Bullet shattered JFK's brain and did multiple injuries to Connally.  BUNK !!!!  Any theory which includes this should be immediately discarded, or modified not to include it.

There are other things that may be less conclusive, but I'm trying to explain anyway, such as:

1) Oswald was apprehended shortly after the assassination.  His cheek was tested for shotgun use.  The results were negative.  (In the official story line, shown at the Museum, the test was "inconclusive.  That means they didn't get the expected results.)

If you take this negative test as accurate, Oswald did not fire the rifle at all!  Sure, he may have set it up (at least there was the gun perch he supposedly created from boxes with his fingerprints).

2) When Oswald's rifle was tested, the FBI had to use many shims just to get it to work.  After the use of such shims, any claim about the bullets matching the wear pattern from this rifle should be abandoned.  The pattern may have been caused by the shims.  The rifle itself was old and rickety.  (I saw the full sized picture at the Museum).

3) The shot that actually killed Kennedy is half way down Elm Street.  This looks like a very difficult shot to me, especially with and old and nearly broken rifle.

4) Oswald himself!  Oswald always denied shooting Kennedy.  And what would have been his motives for doing so?  And someone so careful to get a job at the Book Depository (before the path was planned btw), be a Marine sharp shooter, and go to Russia and marry a Russian wife--this guy is no imbecile.  He has skills, he is smart, he can plan.  His lack of material success is a result of his idealism.  He should know that the assassination of Kennedy would put Johnson in power (or maybe someone even worse--if he could kill Johnson as well).  And if he wanted to show off his prowess--what was his escape concept?  Further showing that Oswald was no dummy, he refused a public defender and asked for representation from the ACLU.

5) Ruby.  Ruby shot Oswald two days after the assassination.  His story that he did this because he loved Kennedy makes no sense.  Ruby had mob connections and the mob hated Kennedy, as did most Texas conservatives.  This was clearly intended to shut Oswald up, and likely intended to hide whatever knowledge Oswald had.  Ruby died before standing trial.  This is just all to convenient to be dismissed.

OK, here's what I think.  Oswald--and his handler--were deep into this.  He knew the players.  He had deep connections in the exile conservative Russian community in Dallas (these people HATE the soviet union, just like the Cuban exiles in Miami).  He could have known:

1) There was a plot to kill Kennedy.

2) This plot was tied to the FBI itself (so no use calling them).  Did I mention that J Edgar Hoover not only hated John Kennedy, he feared Robert Kennedy, who was investigating the mob.  Hoover had long protected the mob and enjoyed their company.  Meanwhile, the mob had the dirt on Hoover so he was actually on their leash.  And possibly the CIA.  Oswald was being personally "handled" by the CIA, his best friend was a CIA contact.

3) Oswald could know that the outcome of a Kennedy assassination could be much worse.  Kennedy had done many things that could have been much worse, refusing to send the Air Force to bomb Cuba, making a deal with the Russians to end the Cuban Missle Crisis, setting up the hotline, negotiating the Test Ban Treaty, and most concurrently planning to withdraw from Vietnam.

So Oswald would be motivated to stop this plot--all by himself.  As an idealist, the difficulty of the task would not make him turn away.  What he was hoping to do was shoot the actual Kennedy shooter who was setting up the Grassy Noll.  He got his rifle set up, but before he could do anything, Kennedy was shot.  But Oswald must have immediately realized that intended heroism was not going to be taken that way.  He was going to become the patsy (as he always claimed) to take the fall for the assassination itself.  Oops!  Better get out of there fast, which was what he did.  And no use taking the gun, it certainly wouldn't look good for him to be carrying a rifle just after the assassination.

Now how would Oswald know so much to know the shooter would be on the Grassy Noll?  His Russian connections, of course.  Very smart people, including his Russian exile handler.

This sort of intended heroism was probably why Oswald attempted to shoot Walker as well.  He possibly feared Walker to be part of a coup to overthrow the Kennedy administration.  And possibly Walker was in the coup (or maybe just some of his friends).

From the Book Depository, BTW, Oswald had a clear view of the Grassy Noll, just as clear if not better than the motorcade shot, and easier because it was not moving. But he would have had trouble shooting the shooter there if that shooter were hidden behind the fence.  And thus his plan to stop the assassination was foiled.

The perps?  The FBI, the CIA, the mob, anti-Castro exiles, oil oil like HL Hunt.  I find the suggestion that HL Hunt provided the money which was used to hire two assassins.  It certainly wouldn't look good for the job to be done by actual FBI or CIA people, or paid for with payments traceable to the government.

Oswald's Handler

The story of George de Mohrenshildt.

Was he the kingpin of the conspiracy to assassinate Kennedy, as he himself claimed?  Only if Oswald fired the operative shots, which many, including me, now doubt.  Oswald himself always said he was a patsy.

So George was just the patsy's handler.  He may well have believed all along he was the only story.  Then where was the real kingpin?

I would think one of George's friends or associates.  Somehow I have been thinking of Edwin Walker.  In Walker we have the most rabid of Kennedy haters.  Harry Dean claimed to have been an FBI undercover agent, to have infiltrated the John Birch Society, and reported the Walker and John Rousselot had hired two gunmen to kill Kennedy, Loran Hall and Eladio del Valle.

The thing that makes me wonder about Walker is that it does seem as if Oswald tried to kill him.  Oswald knew these people.  Oswald had no reason to hate Kennedy.  Marina said that Oswald told her that Walker was mad and that he had tried to stop him.

Behind all of this you have H L Hunt, his money, and everyone he knew, virtually the entire american plutocracy.

Neitzsche, Hayek, and the Austrians

I'm enjoying reading Corey Robin's blog.  Here in responding to his critics, he lays bare the fundamental elitism and anti-socialism of Hayek and the Austrians.

Smart Phone Considerations

[Massively revised and rewritten on June 23, 2013, after several days experience with Samsung Galaxy S4.]

First of all, a smart phone needs to be a phone.  I need something from which I can hear people most clearly.  Often, in louder office and mall environments, I did not find my iPhone G3 earpiece loud enough, or it was rolled off in the upper midrange, and it wasn't fully intelligible.  It is hard to know how much of the rolloff is caused by the cellular system, and the phone and the user on the other side.  But even when there is rolloff in the cellular system, it helps to have the earspeaker have a full upper frequency range loudspeaker, to get the most out of the limited signal as possible.  If for example, the telephone system were to employ a 3kHz cutoff, if the speaker also has a 3kHz cutoff, the resulting cutoff is 1.5 kHz.  To have no significant effect as these things are usually considered (less than 0.1dB change within the stated bandwidth) it would be necessary for the speaker to have 30Khz response.

Now in saying all this, and all I do say, I am not Bell Labs, who for one did enormous research into how a telephone should work in terms of balancing the bandwidth and so on.  And now, I would sustpect major smart phone companies also do such research, as well as knowing the body of now understood principles, as well as putting their best ideas into the design.  But at least from the beginning of the modern smart phone era, beginning with the stylish iPhone, it has seemed to many users that voice communications was taking a back seat to computer and video applications, as well as style.  So if that truly was the goal of the manufacturers, it doesn't matter how much research was being done, the priorities were wrong, and the priorities need to be right.  Even for nerds like me, voice communication is #1.

I have wondered if earspeakers should be round holes vs straight lines, or fully ear enveloping.  I think fully ear enveloping would be best, followed by roundish holes then straight lines--but this is all just a guess based on analogy with planar, linear, and point sources in audio, but at such small distances as an earspeaker, diffractive and dispersive effects are only at very high frequencies.

I am finding the frequency response and loudness to be ok so far with my Samsung Galaxy S4 (no loud mall experience yet) which has a straight line ear interface, and because the speaker is near the edge, I can tilt the phone away from the ear and still get good sound, perhaps even better.  In a very loud environment, one could perhaps get better performance with hole-in-the-middle-of-the-glass earspeaker if it could be fully pressed against the outer hear, thereby both blocking and directing sound.  The iPhone has some offset of the hole from the edge, but not enough to provide very much blocking.  Though generally I do not like pressing my ear up against flat glass, especially if it is hot, as all smart phones I have tried get to be fairly quickly, so the greater ability to tilt the phone away with the Samsung is probably the bigger advantage.  I suspect neither would do well in high noise environments at 85dB and up.

Neither is sufficient in high light environments for sure, and there iPhone actually appears a tad better (almost slightly visible) so far in direct sunlight (but angled away of course), but possibly same or worse when hand shaded, when Samsung's greater contrast helps.

My first test with the S4 was miserable, but that was due to reception and transmission factors.  In general, I am finding S4 to have much better audibility than my 4 year old iPhone G3, which has the classing hole-in-the-glass-half-inch-from-edge interface, but possibly an outdated worn and dirty speaker.

It would be good to see earspeaker performance objectively reviewed as to frequency response, distortion, maximum levels, and so on.  Of course, interpreting objective measurements (as well as what to measure) is pretty subjective, and interpretation even moreso.  So one has to have an open mind about such things, but that has been demonstrated in decades of decades of objective audio reviewing (including in the mostly subjective Stereophile).

One of the reasons I didn't select the HTC One instead was that it has higher SAR.  Samsung seems to have by far the best SAR numbers of the three, though they seem to vary in all the accounts I've seen.  I also think it makes sense, that a plastic case would make it easier to have radio energy directed away from the user rather than toward the user.  Apple iPhone 5 does slightly better in SAR than HTC.

*****

One thing I find almost laughable is the obsession with how phones physically look, and especially whether they have a metal or plastic case.  A tiny piece of aluminum covering my phone does not make me feel much more like a rich man.  Well engineered plastic, especially tough polycarbonate, can be just as good or better.  Especially in a smart phone, where the most visible part is the front which is basically just a piece of glass in current smart phones.  The back is what you hold away from your face.  It merely needs to feel nice, which polycarbonate can do as well as metal.  Likewise with being strong and resistant to dropping--and there is a big advantage in having a consumer replaceable cover in case it does get dented or scratched, though the bigger advantage is with regard to being able to remove the cover to replace the battery and add a memory card.

I find nothing "cheap" feeling about the physical appearance of the Samsung Galaxy S4, especially in black.  When ordered in black, when the phone is turned off, it is essentially identical in appearance above to the highly esteemed (in appearance) iPhone.  If only such obsessions as the metal case obsession were turned to important things, such as voice quality and reliability, we'd all be better off.

I confess that silver tone that's not actual aluminum does actually look a bit cheap.  In that regard, however, the chrome accent around the face button on the Samsung is fine, though I worry about it wearing off over time.

One place where style is more important is in the actual active screens.  I found the default Samsung busy and obnoxious, disorganized, unhelpful, filled with adware and bloatware which can't easily be deleted.  I'm gradually getting it better by turning things off.  I sympathize with those who root and overwrite the default system.  I believe that is far easier with Android than iOS, and I might do it eventually.

Extravagant new HQ's for Apple, Amazon, and Facebook

Great story with appropriate tone.

Thinking about the old Bell Laboratories building in Holmdel, New Jersey, I found this blog and wrote this comment:

The transistor was invented before the Saarinen Bell Labs building was built.  What was the real accomplishment?  Start with what was the result of building this building: the destruction of the world's most innovative company.  But in between lies the story.  The most technically significant development to come from Bell Labs after the transistor was the Unix operating system.  This was not the management's plan, instead it was developed by long haired renegades, in an unused office, in their spare time.  But Bell Labs realized before long (though perhaps still too long) this was hot stuff.  At first (and actually, most importantly) it was released to universities and other research institutions.  But the old AT&T knew that computers were the future, and they wanted to own it, and they thought they had the key, so they voluntarily split the company up in the famous Consent Decree, spinning off the actually profitable bits and keeping The Future, Bell Labs and Unix, for themselves.  Only once again, The Future didn't quite work out as planned, AT&T's Unix PC's were dogs, and amidst the success of IBM, Microsoft, and Apple, the whole effort was quickly abandoned.  Now, Unix is still at the heart of many of the most important computers, including Macs, and was the technical inspiration for all the rest.  So the the unplanned work that came from this building has made the world infinitely richer.  But it made the company no profit, the very name AT&T was sold to one of the spin-offs, the Labs were sold to a foreign competitor, and now vacant, ready to be razed.  Next story: Xerox PARC.

The Plateau of the New Deal

I posted a reply to another comment in  this interesting blog about the promotion of the "free markets" concept in the 20th century.

Thanks for the bit about the tax reform of 1954.

But you could probably find rollbacks from the New Deal vision of Roosevelt as early as 1945. The one that stands out to me is the Taft Hartley act of 1947. I also wonder whether if FDR had lived longer, the Cold War could have been avoided and instead of the endless overt and covert wars we could have had the Four Freedoms. So another suspect is the National Security Act of 1947, which created the military industrial complex as we know it, and the endless pursuit of world control through military dominance.

These disgruntled aristocrats and petit bourgeois who started MPS were angry both at democracy and unions. Friedman blamed the business failures of his parents on unions.

Human Agency

Nowhere like Crooked Timber to find interesting arguments with better modern philosophy than I got in school.

In this compound argument, John C Halasz explains causality (briefly) and human agency.  Human Agency is the modern concept replacing the archaic "free will." 

Animal organisms are self-regulating causal organizations that delimit themselves from an environment and on the basis of that relative closure, intervene causally in chains of events.  But that's merely animal motility, common to humans and rodents alike.   It's only when there is symbolic thinking that environmental events can be interpreted against a horizon of counterfactual possibilities and one such possibility can be deliberately selected and implemented.  THAT is the root of human agency, also known as Freedom.  And behind it, there has to be an structured system of rules to make that thinking, selection, and implementation possible.  Hence Freedom is fundamentally based on, and thereby constrained by, rules.  No rules, no freedom.

I'm don't think I agree with Halasz generally, I think he is somewhat right wing in his economic thinking.  But I find the human agency concept very interesting and it's surprising that I first learned of it here.