09-02-2017, 03:58 PM
I encourage people seriously interested in the hoax issue to also study the EdForum thread One Last Thing Before XMas Eve: 2nd Floor Lunchroom Encounter. Besides cleaning everyone's clock on that thread, I remind you that previously I have
1) initiated a thread critical of the hoax at the 1st ROKC forum, right in the middle of that rattlesnake nest, when I was an administrator there
2) produced in 2014 a 13-page essay The Lunchroom Incident: A Short Proof and Long Explanation
3) invested 11 pages in my 2015 mega-essay Inside Job to further discuss the shortcomings of the hoax
And I call out especially Jim DiEugenio and Larry Hancock for endorsing the hoaxers. This is tin-foil hat stuff, a demonstrable falsehood. Please re-think your position. You have a chance to renounce these flakes. It might be painful, like a mammoth extricating itself from the LaBrea Tar Pits, but would help restore some sanity to the research community, rather than further embarrassment. I like and respect you guys, but this endorsement stains your legacy. Historians 20 years from now will condemn you on this, and for myself I will continue criticizing the hoaxers relentlessly.
Allow me to digress, and share an experience that may help you come to your senses. In 1979 my professor in atomic physics took us through how Wernher Heisenberg derived his famous Uncertainty Principle- the bedrock equation of quantum mechanics- while isolated on a cabin on the coast of Germany. There were 3 or 4 distinct mathematical phases in the progression toward his final equation. At each phase he had alternative explanations, but he listened to what the mathematics was telling him, and recognized that he could perform legitimate operations that led to simplifications. His final expression was as much about the limits of what language and what an experiment were able to tell us, as it was about the properties of matter and time. These properties would always have an inherent ambiguity- an extremely small but quantifiable ambiguity. And Heisenberg's equation, as a system of thought, has directly produced lasers & semiconductors & more- specific tangible results.
Not only in science, but also extending to a Sherlock Holmes mystery, or JFK research, any simplifying principle should and must lead to substantive, tangible results. But the lunchroom hoax produces only a complete dead-end - Baker's "4th floor man" vanished into thin air. That should raise suspicions that the hoax is fake, an artificial construct. No better than asserting, say, that what Baker was really trying to tell us was that "3rd or 4th floor man" was dematerializing in a Star Trek transponder beam.
I own Whitewash II and the other pertinent books and none of them even remotely suggest that a hoax occurred. This pernicious theory has become popular because there is so much ambiguity inherent in journalism & police work & in police talk over any given length of time. And the lunchroom, because it was where THE sighting of THE Lee Harvey Oswald took place, was the subject of a lot of journalism and a lot of police work and police talk and hence a lot of ambiguity. But the cascade of ambiguity does not necessitate
a hoax conclusion.
There is a fitting parallel here with the moon-landing hoaxers- skepticism about an astronaut being able to survive passage through the Van Allen radiation belts has led to flags fluttering in the lunar breeze, shadow anomalies, Neil Armstrong lying about walking on the moon, etc. - a cottage industry of "evidence" to support the tin-foil hat brigade that contends that the moon landings were hoaxed. We have a similar contingent in the JFK research community, populated mainly by the drug & alcohol casualties at ROKC.
Don't get me wrong. Bart Kamp fully deserves his JFK Lancer award. He did a stellar job presenting the hoaxers' case. No other hoaxer had ever even bothered to put together a position paper. But more than any "New Frontier" toward uncovering truth, this recognition speaks for the petty politics that has dominated the public face of the research community for as long as I can remember.
When, for example, has Duke Lane ever been granted a speaker's slot at Lancer? Not since Jones Harris has a guy pounded the Dallas pavement finding out answers. Time and again for 20-25 years and he deserves a lifetime achievement award. He would take you to the task and wasn't actively posting when the PrayerMan theory got posted, uncontested.
And Brian Doyle aka Albert Doyle deserves some kind of formal recognition for his PrayerMan disassembly. He singlehandedly transformed our understanding of the TSBD landing, yet has been scorned by much of the community since he busted their elaborate daydreams. A roar of common sense, who doesn't need a lick of support because he has the courage of his convictions, and he's put up with neverending taunts from the PrayerMan jackals.
I simply do not have much time & energy for posting at this juncture in my life. I have a court hearing to prepare for on Feb 21st- a contractor owes me a bundle of money from 2 years ago. And I am nearly flat broke and have to move at the end of the month, and will be without internet service soon. I have to get in gear for the spring building-trade season. So I don't anticipate much more than sporadic posting for a while. But I like what I see here at Deep Politics and look forward to a long relationship.
1) initiated a thread critical of the hoax at the 1st ROKC forum, right in the middle of that rattlesnake nest, when I was an administrator there
2) produced in 2014 a 13-page essay The Lunchroom Incident: A Short Proof and Long Explanation
3) invested 11 pages in my 2015 mega-essay Inside Job to further discuss the shortcomings of the hoax
And I call out especially Jim DiEugenio and Larry Hancock for endorsing the hoaxers. This is tin-foil hat stuff, a demonstrable falsehood. Please re-think your position. You have a chance to renounce these flakes. It might be painful, like a mammoth extricating itself from the LaBrea Tar Pits, but would help restore some sanity to the research community, rather than further embarrassment. I like and respect you guys, but this endorsement stains your legacy. Historians 20 years from now will condemn you on this, and for myself I will continue criticizing the hoaxers relentlessly.
Allow me to digress, and share an experience that may help you come to your senses. In 1979 my professor in atomic physics took us through how Wernher Heisenberg derived his famous Uncertainty Principle- the bedrock equation of quantum mechanics- while isolated on a cabin on the coast of Germany. There were 3 or 4 distinct mathematical phases in the progression toward his final equation. At each phase he had alternative explanations, but he listened to what the mathematics was telling him, and recognized that he could perform legitimate operations that led to simplifications. His final expression was as much about the limits of what language and what an experiment were able to tell us, as it was about the properties of matter and time. These properties would always have an inherent ambiguity- an extremely small but quantifiable ambiguity. And Heisenberg's equation, as a system of thought, has directly produced lasers & semiconductors & more- specific tangible results.
Not only in science, but also extending to a Sherlock Holmes mystery, or JFK research, any simplifying principle should and must lead to substantive, tangible results. But the lunchroom hoax produces only a complete dead-end - Baker's "4th floor man" vanished into thin air. That should raise suspicions that the hoax is fake, an artificial construct. No better than asserting, say, that what Baker was really trying to tell us was that "3rd or 4th floor man" was dematerializing in a Star Trek transponder beam.
I own Whitewash II and the other pertinent books and none of them even remotely suggest that a hoax occurred. This pernicious theory has become popular because there is so much ambiguity inherent in journalism & police work & in police talk over any given length of time. And the lunchroom, because it was where THE sighting of THE Lee Harvey Oswald took place, was the subject of a lot of journalism and a lot of police work and police talk and hence a lot of ambiguity. But the cascade of ambiguity does not necessitate
a hoax conclusion.
There is a fitting parallel here with the moon-landing hoaxers- skepticism about an astronaut being able to survive passage through the Van Allen radiation belts has led to flags fluttering in the lunar breeze, shadow anomalies, Neil Armstrong lying about walking on the moon, etc. - a cottage industry of "evidence" to support the tin-foil hat brigade that contends that the moon landings were hoaxed. We have a similar contingent in the JFK research community, populated mainly by the drug & alcohol casualties at ROKC.
Don't get me wrong. Bart Kamp fully deserves his JFK Lancer award. He did a stellar job presenting the hoaxers' case. No other hoaxer had ever even bothered to put together a position paper. But more than any "New Frontier" toward uncovering truth, this recognition speaks for the petty politics that has dominated the public face of the research community for as long as I can remember.
When, for example, has Duke Lane ever been granted a speaker's slot at Lancer? Not since Jones Harris has a guy pounded the Dallas pavement finding out answers. Time and again for 20-25 years and he deserves a lifetime achievement award. He would take you to the task and wasn't actively posting when the PrayerMan theory got posted, uncontested.
And Brian Doyle aka Albert Doyle deserves some kind of formal recognition for his PrayerMan disassembly. He singlehandedly transformed our understanding of the TSBD landing, yet has been scorned by much of the community since he busted their elaborate daydreams. A roar of common sense, who doesn't need a lick of support because he has the courage of his convictions, and he's put up with neverending taunts from the PrayerMan jackals.
I simply do not have much time & energy for posting at this juncture in my life. I have a court hearing to prepare for on Feb 21st- a contractor owes me a bundle of money from 2 years ago. And I am nearly flat broke and have to move at the end of the month, and will be without internet service soon. I have to get in gear for the spring building-trade season. So I don't anticipate much more than sporadic posting for a while. But I like what I see here at Deep Politics and look forward to a long relationship.