The Free Dictionary.

Add a right-click word look-up function to your browser, or include a nifty bit of JavaScript to your webpages that allows users to double-click a word on the page and get an instant definition (which, unfortunately doesn’t work if you have Google’s pop-up blocker enabled).

Onelook is pretty good too.

Delta Tango Bravo, noted and added to the list of ‘recommended’ websites down the right-hand side.

I’m Mike Charles, by the way.

For a change, The Guardian have published a positive article about the BBC’s internet services and the forthcoming Department of Culture Media and Sport review on how BBC Interactive services are funded.

The entire DCMS review hinges on the constant moans from the private dot.com sector, who claim that the BBC’s publicly-funded internet services prevent private interests, such as newspaper websites like The Guardian’s, from turning a profit.

As Victor says, imagine BUPA saying: “The NHS is far too efficient, people are getting their operations on time and we can’t make any money from waiting list build-ups”.

Then imagine the Government holding an inquiry into whether or not they should stop spending money on the NHS because BUPA’s profits were down.

It would never happen.

Pray you don’t suffer a stroke, or else you might end up talking like someone from Eastenders.

Metaphilm provides a very apt analysis of The Matrix Revolutions.

There is no spoon – There is no meaning – There is no conclusion.

Genius.

The original JFK assassination footage was filmed by Abraham Zapruder at the precise moment Kennedy’s motorcade passed the so-called ‘grassy knoll’ on Dealey Plaza in downtown Dallas at 12.30pm.

Zapruder used a Bell and Howell Model 414PD Zoomatic Director Series camera with a Varamat 9-27mm f1.8 zoom lens, set for full close-up.

The 8mm Kodachrome II colour film captured the events at an average speed of 18.3 frames per second.

In the initial seconds of the footage, President Kennedy reacts to what appears to be a gunshot wound which strikes him on the upper body, in the centre of his chest or possibly near the throat. (It isn’t clear if this shot comes from behind or in front of Kennedy).

His wife, Jacqueline Kennedy, then appears to lean in towards him and she appears to take hold of his left arm, as he raises his shoulders in a reflex action and clutches his hands across the centre of his upper chest.

In the final chilling moments of the short reel, we see the fatal head shot.

Based on this footage, I am in absolutely no doubt (as I’m sure you will agree when you watch it) that the fatal head shot originated from the front right of the President.

I simply cannot accept the explanation that the bullet somehow ricocheted off the vehicle and bounced up to strike Kennedy on the head, or that it was fired from behind him.

It’s too powerful and direct.

In fact, there is no valid explanation in the wide world of science that can quantify the direction or force of the fatal head shot – other than its point of origin being from the front right of the President.

I’d be interested to hear any counter-arguments that can provide a reasonable, scientific explanation to the contrary.

When this striking footage is added to the overwhelming evidence relating to the case, it seems almost impossible that Lee Harvey Oswald was the so-called ‘lone gunman’ who fired a series of shots across Dealey Plaza from behind the President’s motorcade, using a bolt-action Mannlicher-Carcano rifle – aiming at a moving target – hitting Kennedy twice (once in the head) and wounding Governor John Connally in four places.

In order to accept the possibility that Oswald acted alone, you must subscribe to the ‘single bullet theory’ put forward by the Warren Commission – where:

- Oswald’s initial shot missed the limousine entirely

- his second shot (the so-called ‘magic-bullet’) hit both Kennedy and Connally simultaneously, thanks to some imaginative physics

- his third shot struck Kennedy on the front right of his head, causing the President to reel backwards and to the left.

All of which Oswald would have been required to achieve from behind the President, situated in a poor vantage point. (This photograph indicates Oswald’s view of the motorcade from the fifth floor of the Texas Schoolbook Depository as the vehicle passed through Dealey Plaza – the ‘x‘ marks the spot where the open-topped car would have been situated when Kennedy was fatally wounded).

If you can make yourself believe all this, and that a bullet can pass through Kennedy’s body, zig to the right, zag to the left, enter Connally’s body – and then fall from Connally’s wound onto a hospital trolley, where it is later found in pristine condition – then swallowing the rest of the nonsense should be fairly easy for you.

The Washington Post seem to subscribe to the ABC News theory on the JFK assassination that Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone.

It’s difficult to comprehend the logic behind what is happening here.

The US media seem to have ganged-up to bury any notion that a conspiracy existed to kill Kennedy in 1963, and seem intent on propounding the theory that Oswald was the ‘lone gunman’ who fired the shots across Dealey Plaza that hit Kennedy twice and Governor John Connally four times.

Oswald was considered by the US Marines to be a poor shot, yet he managed to crack off six bullets (in a matter of about four seconds) from a bolt-action Mannlicher-Carcano rifle – at a moving target – and one of those shots was a fatal head shot.

Worse still, the Washington Post rather disrespectufully describes Oliver Stone’s JFK movie as showcasing a “fictional New Orleans district attorney who reopened the assassination files”.

New Orleans DA Jim Garrison was most certainly real – he was (and still is) the only legal representative in the United States to successfully bring court proceedings in the matter of the Kennedy assassination.

You may not subscribe to some of the fantastical theories put forward in Stone’s movie, but the source material and the people portayed in it were most certainly not fictional.

I’ve been waylaid over the last few days, but tomorrow I hope to make the enhanced Zapruder film available via The Copydesk.

All the computer simulations and media spin in the world won’t change your mind once you’ve seen it.

Despite reports last week in a Japanese newspaper, Nikon are not planning to abandon 35mm and go digital.

As Gizmodo suggest, it can’t be be more than a year or two before one of the big camera/lens manufacturers decides to exit the consumer 35mm camera market entirely.

–hark! I hear the sound of millions of photographers everywhere crying “neverrrrrr!!“.

These are the same group of people who think they’ll still be browsing bookstores within the next 10 years, who think they’ll still be buying their DVDs and CDs (or whatever the shape/format these things will eventually take) in a high street store in 10 years, and who think that VHS will live forever…