The assassinations of the 60s have been on my mind of late, thanks to these Beatle mysteries I'm writing (anybody interested in finding out when they're coming out should send an email to mikesnewbooks[at]gmail[dot]com). One of the most persistent canards about the JFK assassination is that it's incredibly difficult to understand, and that one must do a ton of reading to have any chance of "proving" a conspiracy. That's simply not true. While it does take a ton of reading to get some sense of the murder in a "global" sense, a conspiracy at the highest levels of government can be shown irrefutably in two photographs.

This first photograph is from the President's autopsy, performed at Bethesda Naval Hospital on the night of November 22nd, 1963. It's important to note that, at this point, the body has been solely in government hands; no mortician has touched it, and it should appear exactly as it did to the doctors at Parkland Hospital (there's considerable debate on this point, but that's not what I'm driving at). Look at the area of JFK's right temple, his forehead above his right eye, and his eye socket. Note where the wound clearly ends. While there appears to be some swelling in the eyebrow area, the structure of the President's face appears to be sound. In fact, judging from the shadow, the right eyebrow ridge seems to be quite pronounced.

This photo is an X-ray of President Kennedy's skull taken from the front. Note how far the defect in the bone extends, all the way down to the eye socket. According to this x-ray, there should be a chunk of forehead and eyebrow missing. That eyebrow ridge on the skull? Not only is it present in the photo we looked at earlier, it's actually casting a shadow.

These photos are both widely available, and I encourage you to check them out sometime in a higher resolution. More importantly, the veracity of these photos has never been questioned by the defenders of the "lone nut" theory. Unfortunately one of them has to be wrong. Wrong means "faked," and a faked autopsy photo says a lot of things. It says "coverup," and it says "inside the government." The mafia could, and perhaps was, part of the shooter team; ditto, the anti-Castro Cubans. But only the US government had access to the body and the autopsy photos.

Does this discrepancy prove a massive conspiracy to murder the President? No. It proves a massive cover-up. Who killed JFK and how is a different question. What this proves is the government's absolute unreliability as a custodian of evidence in politically sensitive crimes, which is probably worse news.

Just for good measure, here's another autopsy photo showing the same area. Note how the eyebrow and eyesocket appears normal. No part of the face shows any damage whatsoever--no hole, no sagging of flesh; the skin is taut, supported by bone. The right side casts the same shadows, in the same places, as the undamaged left.

There's more--a lot more--that I could talk about, but this discrepancy alone is enough to demonstrate that the government cannot be trusted on this matter, and that defending their conclusion is simply an act of faith.

I don't know why the government was faking photos--who or what they were trying to protect, or what the unfaked photos looked like. Evidence tampering renders that kind of precision impossible, and that's why criminals do it. In a manipulated murder, one must be content with broad conclusions, and in the case of JFK, these two or three photos say a lot.

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Madonna, 1976.

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J.D. Salinger died today of natural causes; he was 91.

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So it's human sacrifice or something. All that math stuff is just to fool us liberal arts people.

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I think it's Lon Chaney, Sr.

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My friend Mark Bazer has just written a very funny column, which I've pasted below. Enjoy.

Stolen iPhone? There's an App for That

By Mark Bazer
Tribune Media Services
An Open Letter to the Gentleman Who Stole My Wife's iPhone out of Her Hands on the CTA:

Congratulations on your new iPhone! I just know you're going to love it, as it's a fantastic device with an easy-to-use interface and photos of my relatives. Heck, they're now your relatives, too -- we're on the same family plan! That reminds me: It's your turn this year to host Thanksgiving.

But back to your shiny new iPhone, because there are a number of things you should know to ensure it gives you so much enjoyment that you forget your shame.

For starters, it's got plenty of room for music, but we weren't sure what kind you liked. We were hoping Simon and Garfunkel , but if not, just sync that baby up to your PC and create your own mix. (If you don't have a PC, they can be stolen from most homes.)

Also, we had the foresight to buy you the AppleCare protection plan, so your iPhone is covered for two years if anything goes wrong -- with the exception of someone stealing it.

Speaking of which, AT&T, I believe, has a policy that if you steal one of their phones, you're locked into their service for five years. What can I say? The cell-phone companies will beat you every time at the crime game.

Now let me introduce you to the "App" store. My wife, in the one whole month she was using your phone, downloaded some great apps for you. The Facebook app, for example, works just like regular Facebook, and should allow you to easily join the Facebook Groups "iPhone Thieves" and "People Who Make Other People Cry."

My wife also put a great app on there to help if you're planning to redecorate your home, another if you're looking to get into pilates, and another that helps locate the nearest pawn shop.

And finally, the phone's got CTA Tracker, which will be perfect if you're thinking about bringing your line of work to the bus.

Unfortunately, my wife didn't have her iPhone's headphones out when the two of you met. And while other headphones will work with the phone, you really do want the real deal. So, if you plan on being back on the CTA anytime soon, perhaps we can work out a mutually convenient time when you can steal her headphones? She'd also bring the instruction manual.

Finally, just enjoy the iPhone! Use it to enhance your life, but don't let it rule your life. Because if you're too busy staring down at the iPhone, you'll miss the world around you -- a wondrous world full of loose-hanging purses, wallets stuffed in pants' back pockets . . . and people like you.

You can subscribe to Mark's weekly email here.

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Ellen Langer is a psychology professor at Harvard. I must read this woman's books!

"In 1979, Langer and her students invited two groups of eight men in their late 70s and early 80s to go on a retreat for a week and spend time reminiscing about life 20 years earlier. "When they first showed up at the office, their daughters usually brought them," remembers Langer, who was in her early 30s at the time. "They were walking down the hall to my office, and they looked like they were just about to keel over. I remember thinking, What am I getting myself into?"

The researchers took each group of eight for a week at a time to an old monastery in Peterborough, N.H., which they had filled with props to make it look as it might have two decades before. The men watched Sgt. Bilko and The Ed Sullivan Show on a black-and-white television and listened to Rosemary Clooney and Nat King Cole on the radio. All the men (who were used to being taken care of) were encouraged to be active—for example, to help serve meals and clean up.

The first group was instructed to behave as if it really were 1959. Ahead of time, they had written autobiographical statements that stopped in that year. During the week, they spoke in the present tense as they discussed the threat of communism, the Baltimore Colts' 31-16 defeat of the New York Giants in the NFL championship game, and recently published books.

Men in the control group, which went on a separate retreat, followed a similar program but were permitted to speak of the past as the past. They spent time reflecting on their younger days, while the first group in effect tried to take themselves back in time.

What happened? After just one week, both groups tested better on hearing and memory. The men gained an average of three pounds each, and their grips were stronger. "At the end of all this, I was playing touch football with some of them," says Langer.

But the changes were especially striking in the first group: Their joints became more flexible and their hands more nimble. Sixty-three percent of them improved on intelligence tests, compared with 44 percent of the control group. And people unaware of the purpose of the study rated every member of the first group younger in photos taken after the retreat than in photos taken before.

"When I first described the study, I was hesitant to spell out just how big the changes were," says Langer, who wrote about it in her 1989 book, Mindfulness (Addison-Wesley), but did not publish the study in a psychology journal. In a field experiment like this one, lacking the controls of the lab, many factors might have explained the results.

"The most important part of the study," she says, "was that people who are only supposed to get more debilitated over time showed great improvement—regardless of the reason."

More here.

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