Creative Speculation

It was unrestrained thermal expansion causing girders to become unseated from columns, leading to buckling failure of one critical column, leading to progressive collapse of the entire structure.

> Look at the Oklahoma City Building after suffering all the damage it did. Why didn't if fall straight into its footprint? At least a little?

Um, perhaps because it was a completely different type of building under completely different circumstances? But in fact, the Murray Building did suffer "at least a little" progressive collapse: The initial blast only took out a few exterior columns, but a progressive (disproportionate) collapse brought down about half the building. Bad example of the point you were trying to make.

> Never before or since have steel framed buildings fallen like that; total self-annihilation at near free fall speed.

Well, surely you don't mean to suggest that if something never happened before, then it can't happen? Let me suggest that understanding why WTC7 collapsed requires understanding how it was put together and what was going on inside that building for seven hours. Since no similarly constructed building has suffered a similar unfought fire, the uniqueness of its collapse is completely unremarkable.

> The debate over the Zapruder film frames is obvious to me: the earlier frame is showing JFK at an instance after being shot in the back and the latter is showing an instance after he was shot in the head.

If by "back" you mean "back of the head," then a right-frontal second shot less than 1/18th second after the shot from the rear is one completely unsubstantiated speculation that's been advanced, but it was invented for the sole purpose of continuing to assert there was a grassy knoll shooter even though the Zapruder film shows JFK getting hit from behind. But (1) there is absolutely no physical evidence of a shot from the grassy knoll or of any second hit to the head; (2) the "back and to the left motion" doesn't require any hit from the right front; and (3) as I've been trying to explain to zeemike, without much success, a bullet hit can't really explain the acceleration seen in that motion, anyway, so it's a particularly bad hypothesis.

> The point on shutter speed and bullet speed is spot on: the camera Zapruder was using could not capture every instance of the bullets trajectory, period.

Only if "spot on" means "completely irrelevant," but I've never approved of that usage. Nothing being argued here has anything whatsoever to do with capturing "every instance of the bullets trajectory."

> However, despite this psuedo-proof, the majority of witnesses did not run towards the Book Depository; they ran towards the grassy knoll.

Well, not the "majority of witnesses," but in fact, those "ear witnesses" were one of the main reasons I myself, in the late 60s, believed there was probably a grassy knoll shooter. However, in 1969 when I went to Army basic training, one day they marched us out to sit in some bleachers set in a large pit so they could fire shots over our heads to teach us how to tell where a rifle shot came from. Why? It turns out, it's not as simple as you might think, and it fact, most people (including myself) would get it completely wrong. The complication is that bullets fired by high-powered rifles travel faster than sound, so if you're down range from one that passes nearby, the first sound that you hear is actually the "crack" of the bullet's sonic shock wave. It sounds very much like the crack of a bullwhip, because it's really the same thing. Here's the thing: That sound always appears to be coming from a direction that's actually perpendicular to the bullet's path! What they taught us to listen for was the dull "thump" sound that came later, which was the actual muzzle sound.

Since then (well, and since learning how weak the other conspiracy evidence really was), I haven't been too much impressed with some people's guesses about where the shots came from. There is simply no credible evidence for a grassy knoll shooter.

> Also, there is overwhelming evidence of several more bullet holes all over Daley Plaza and the limo as well as enough lead left in Connolly to make up almost another entire bullet sans the magic bullet that was found at Parkland Hospital.

If you see "overwhelming evidence" for any of that, then it seems to me you are easily overwhelmed. But re: the bullet found at Parkland Hospital, aren't you absolutely astounded that the "real perps" were so totally in control of the situation that they knew Connally would end up with an entrance wound with no bullet in it, so they planned to plant a bullet on the stretcher? Wow, those guys were good!