Berner Street: No Plot, No Mystery

[The Rookie Detective]

But that's just it tho, Those you mentioned may have well been in the same location, but which of them claimed to be there at 12.45 as Schwartz did ?. If so, why weren't they informed that a witness ( Schwartz) has stated that there was an attack on a women at that time? The question required should be Did you also see it ? ,if not why not ?

You honestly believe that Schwartz thought ill make this whole story up especially the part about the not so "load scream" just so when ask why no one heard the attack he can use that excuse ? Geez big call .

I do, but that's because I believe Schwartz was a man in disguise and possibly the Ripper himself.

For me, the ripper was a master of disguise who was skilled in various trades.

Hence the term "A Jack of all trades"

He was a real life "Keyser Soze" who took pleasure from involving himself in the murders.


Just one big act


The reason why nobody saw or heard Schwartz, is because the man playing the part of Schwartz was the man who killed Stride himself.

He's even giving us the time he did it

12.45am



RD

[FISHY1118]

I do, but that's because I believe Schwartz was a man in disguise and possibly the Ripper himself.

For me, the ripper was a master of disguise who was skilled in various trades.

Hence the term "A Jack of all trades"

He was a real life "Keyser Soze" who took pleasure from involving himself in the murders.


Just one big act


The reason why nobody saw or heard Schwartz, is because the man playing the part of Schwartz was the man who killed Stride himself.

He's even giving us the time he did it

12.45am



RD

I think I'll leave that to the Netflix faithful

[NotBlamedForNothing]

If we strip this back and just run a timeline that stays faithful as possible to the times claimed by ALL witnesses, then it will demonstrate how the entire scenario just doesn't fit together...

And why is that?

The only reason why everyone tries to move the timings around is because we all know it doesn't fit if we base it on all the witnesses claims respectively.

I still haven't seen a single person display a timeline based on all the witnesses statements as they were claimed WITHOUT any alterations to timings.

That tells you everything you need to know.

The growing number of attempts at doing a timeline, surely hints that something is not right.

[JeffHamm]

Hi NBFN,

I pretty much agree with this, it's just that had Lamb been on a beat, what street or streets do you suppose he might have patrolled before heading back West on Commercial Rd? Perhaps he went up Settles St, right into Fordham St, right into Parfett St, and then right into Commercial Rd? That would take him about as far East as Smith on Grove St.

You're a braver man than me! I wouldn't want to hazard a guess as to his beat. Looking at the ones we know, they can be complicated. If push came to shove, though, my guess would be that it would entail streets north of Commercial Road, given that PC Smith patrolled the area south of it. His notion of passing the north end of Berner's Street 6-7 minutes before he was on his way back in that direction could indicate he had some relatively short bit to circle in that area, which perhaps if we examined a map, we might find a set of streets that would make sense. But even then, it could be he just had a "finger" of streets off the bulk of his route that he had to cover, which is sort of what it sounds like. Where the bulk of his beat would be, though, is anyone's guess.

Nice analysis. So, what is the story with Smith's timing?

Thanks.

PC Smith's stated times would be based upon whatever clock he used to update himself. PC Lamb's times would be based upon whatever clock he used as his timestamp. And Dr. Blackwell's time is based upon his personal watch. While you may not be comfortable with this fact, but no two clocks are entirely in sync. As a weird aside, much of my own research involves using time as a measure, and in my experiments one of the difficult things is trying to run equipment that times itself on one clock, while measuring human behaviour (or the electrical signals of the brain) that uses a different clock. Even modern clocks will get out of sync over a fairly short period of time (as in over the course of an hour; they might only be out by a millisecond or two, but in research, that is important; obviously for witnesses that's nothing to worry about, but you have to remember we can syncronize our clocks at the start of the experiment, PC Smith, PC Lamb, and Dr. Blackwell's clocks have probably never been synchronized at any point, although at some time or another all will try to "sync with" some standard time, but even then there will be error in the range of minutes).

What I'm getting at is that the times PC Smith gives, without making any adjustments, are sufficiently close (albeit he tends to place himself a bit "earlier") to those of PC Lamb's that we're at the point of "the differences are no difference at all". Meaning, his testimony as given is within the range of error we would expect to find with actual witness testimony.

Dealing with measurement error, which is what we're talking about, is not something most people are used to doing. But for a researcher, it's old hat. I don't have a problem with witness statements about the time or duration that, when taken literally, appear to be misaligned because I know from experience that such statements are to be take with a very large dose of salt. Even when those statements come from the police, or other "official" people; particularly when we know they are basing their times on different clocks. The only time they might be reliable is when they record the time at the time (as per Dr. Blackwell), but even then, you only can be confident that the time they recorded is what their clock read - not what some other clock read. That's why, when I put the simulation together for the Stride case, I did my best to try and estimate the time in "Blackwell Standard Time" (meaning, I tried to work out the time on Dr. Blackwell's watch - I explained how I tried to do that when I presented things ages ago, and given it's finicky, it's probably best to read my original descriptions than for me to try and re-explain it here as it would take ages).

As I recall, though, in the end, I think it looked like PC Smith's clock was probably a couple minutes slow relative to Dr. Blackwell's watch and PC Smith's clock, but not by all that much (within 5 minutes I think it was). As such, the times he states will tend to appear earlier than times given by others by a few minutes (around 4 or 5 I think it was, but I don't recall the exact amount - what I do recall is that it wasn't really the problem it often gets presented as being).

- Jeff

[NotBlamedForNothing]

Hi Jeff,

Thanks for that.

I was just thinking about Levy who is certainly a ‘troubling’ witness and I think we might have missed an obvious possibility as to why he saw nothing. Maybe part of his ‘getting some fresh air’ was actually ‘using the outside loo?’

As a convenient place to have sex?

[JeffHamm]

On the Contrary

I am saying that the timings don't work with all the witnesses, but rather than swapping all the times to try and make the witness statement all fit, we need to look at WHY the witness accounts don't fit in the first place.

When you consider the amount of witnesses and what was said to have transpired between 12.30am to just after Stride was found, there was lots going on and yet multiple witnesses said it was all quiet on the Western front.

Lave and Mortimer make it sound nothing happened whatsoever

Eagle, Lave and Goldstein walk directly past the murder site after 12.30am

Schwartz says it all kicks off and yet nobody else hears or sees ANYTHING he claimed

At least 3 different witnesses saw a "couple"

Packer saw or heard nothing, but then remembered he saw Stride with a man who bought grapes from him and then stood almost opposite him in full view for over half an hour

It's all a bit of a mess that doesn't ring true....and using the altering of timings by a few minutes here or there can't explain away the major inconsistencies with the witness statements.

RD

Hi RD,

The Schwartz event lasted as long as it would take Schwartz to walk down Berner Street from Commercial Road to Fairclough (slightly less as he sort of indicates he may have run part of that distance - but let's stick with walking pace).

That distance is roughly 420 feet. At an average walking pace of 3.1 mph, that would take about 1m 32 seconds. And that's from him entering Berner Street to exiting. To get from Commercial to the crime scene would use up about 55 seconds. Since BS is in front of him, remove some time, say 10 seconds, for the start of the "all kicks off" bit. It's all over before Schwartz leaves via Fairclough, and there's only 47 seconds to work with before Schwartz would be at Fairclough (provided he doesn't pick up the pace, if so, even less). So how long did it "kick off" for? 5 seconds? Seriously, what does he describe that would be noticable to anyone not watching the events as they happened? Other than Stride calling out 3 times (the "screaming, but not very loudly, sounds to me like it would be better described as someone "calling out"), what would alert anyone? And given we get people in multiple crimes telling us things like cries of "murder" were common place and so ignored, why would anyone even remember someone made a noise?

What I'm getting at, I suppose, is that if the events Schwartz described did happen, does that really mean that for the vast majority of the time between 12:30 and 1:00, couldn't have been fairly quiet?

- Jeff

[Herlock Sholmes]

What if the footage starts when Schwartz was still a few minutes up Commercial Rd? Would we see Stride standing in the gateway, patiently waiting for someone or something?

She would have had to have arrived there at some point but we have no way of knowing how long she’d been there when BS man showed up.

Having second thoughts about Schwartz?

Not really. I said in my original posts that it’s possible that Schwartz got his time wrong. What I don’t consider likely is that Schwartz lied.

[Herlock Sholmes]

Hi Herlock,

Looks like we overlapped! I had just referred to this table in my previous post. Here it is. To be clear, I had to take their data and "invert it" (as they had true ranges and the range of estimates given; I inverted the information to go from estimated ranges to true ranges; and at some point I want to do the inversion again, but using a different technique to either verify the table's values or to get more reliable ones - if my table is wrong, it's wrong in a way that makes us look better at this than we really are, meaning the ranges are only likely to get larger, rather than smaller).

I don't have the source at hand for the study. I did post it in a previous thread on the Stride case though, so I know the information is available here on Casebook somewhere.

Note 95% CI means we can be "confident" that 95% of the time, if someone gives an estimate in the far left column, that the true duration was between the min and max value, and on average it will be around the average value. Note, the difference between the min and average is much less than the max and average, so the distribution isn't bell shaped, but "skewed". In a "skewed" distribution like this, the median (1/2 will be shorter, 1/2 will be longer), will be less than the average, so the median "true" duration tends to be shorter than the average.

But for assessing an individual estimate, as long as it is in the 95% CI, you don't need to defend yourself other than to say "It falls within the acceptable range of expected values given the person's estimation of the duration".

- Jeff

Thanks Jeff.

[JeffHamm]

Thanks Jeff.

No worries.

But to be clear, when I say "But for assessing an individual estimate, as long as it is in the 95% CI, you don't need to defend yourself other than to say "It falls within the acceptable range of expected values given the person's estimation of the duration". That's not an opinion, that's just how data and interpretation works. Those who continue to argue either don't know that, or are ignoring what they know, either way, you don't need to respond.

- Jeff

[The Rookie Detective]

Hi RD,

The Schwartz event lasted as long as it would take Schwartz to walk down Berner Street from Commercial Road to Fairclough (slightly less as he sort of indicates he may have run part of that distance - but let's stick with walking pace).

That distance is roughly 420 feet. At an average walking pace of 3.1 mph, that would take about 1m 32 seconds. And that's from him entering Berner Street to exiting. To get from Commercial to the crime scene would use up about 55 seconds. Since BS is in front of him, remove some time, say 10 seconds, for the start of the "all kicks off" bit. It's all over before Schwartz leaves via Fairclough, and there's only 47 seconds to work with before Schwartz would be at Fairclough (provided he doesn't pick up the pace, if so, even less). So how long did it "kick off" for? 5 seconds? Seriously, what does he describe that would be noticable to anyone not watching the events as they happened? Other than Stride calling out 3 times (the "screaming, but not very loudly, sounds to me like it would be better described as someone "calling out"), what would alert anyone? And given we get people in multiple crimes telling us things like cries of "murder" were common place and so ignored, why would anyone even remember someone made a noise?

What I'm getting at, I suppose, is that if the events Schwartz described did happen, does that really mean that for the vast majority of the time between 12:30 and 1:00, couldn't have been fairly quiet?

- Jeff

Another excellent, balanced and well thought out post (as is every one of your posts)

The issue I have is that regardless of whether the Schwartz incident only lasted under 2 minutes, it still would have been heard by at least 1 person, but not even Mortimer or Packer notice...and they were within close enough proximity the entire time that the Schwartz incident could have occured in.

The other issue that noone has seems to realize is that when Schwartz approaches the murder site, he notices BS man walking towards Stride and then grab her to try and grab her into the street before spinning her around and throwing her onto the footway into the yard...but the question is...

Where was BS man BEFORE Schwartz saw him?

Was BS man already between Schwartz and Stride?

If so, he would have been just outside Mortimers front door...but she saw nobody in the street.

Does that mean that BS had just walked into Berner Street and was slightly ahead of Schwartz and walking in the same direction?

If so, he would have walked past Mortimers door...but again, she saw noone.

In the reality of physical space time, the only location that BS Man could have been just before Schwartz saw him approach Stride, is inside the gateway.

He couldn't have been south of the gateway, because guess who didn't see him... Packer.


When we look at what Mortimer and Packer represent as witnesses, are 2 people that act as physical boundaries outside of which BS man couldn't have been before Schwartz saw him.

Of course, Packer may have stopped observing the couple just before Schwartz saw BS man attack Stride.

I would suggest that that the likeliest scenario is that Bs man had just walked out from the side door of the club and had tried it on with Stride, but having been rejected he walks past her and goes to walk north toward Mortimer, but just at the point he walks past Stride, he TURNS BACK towards the gateway at the exact same moment Schwartz sees him.

The likeliest candidate for BS man is Lave who goes out for some fresh air, tries it on with Stride and then assaults her before going threatening Schwartz and then going BACK INTO THE CLUB leaving Stride to pick herself up.

She then becomes the unluckiest woman in the world by then being murdered by a different man just 15 minutes later.


If anyone can explain WHERE Bs man was BEFORE he was seen by Schwartz, then I may start to consider Schwartz's statement.

2 minutes of Chaos is a quite street is still 2 minutes of chaos and that causes audible sounds that someone would have heard.

And yet noone does.


There is also a possibility that Schwartz was telling the truth and that Mortimer was convinced by Le Grand to say she saw nothing apart from a generic man with a black bag.
we know for certain that Packers credibility was compromised by Le Grand.
Now if Le Grand was able to get to other witnesses, then Schwartz MAY have been the only one telling the truth because he wasnt a resident of Berner Street and not a club member.


Lots to ponder


RD

[Herlock Sholmes]

If he passed at 12.35 and his beat on that occasion took 30 minutes that gets him there at 1.05. Factor in the synchronisation of clocks and there’s no issue.


You can't invent 5 minutes of extra time by referring to "the synchronisation of clocks". If your timeline has Smith arriving at 1:05 and Lamb at 1:06, it's wrong.


- No it’s not. Lamb arrived before Smith. So it could have been Lamb at 1.05 and Smith at 1.06. And how do you know which clocks either of them used to estimate their times from? We know that Lamb arrived 10 minutes before 1.16 and Smith arrived just before that.


Why is it obvious “ that Smith must arrive a few minutes or more after Lamb…?” We have no indication from Lamb as to how long he’d been there when Smith arrived so as far as I can recall so Smith could have arrived 30 seconds or a minute after Lamb for all that we know.


Read what he says. He heard no calls, nor did he see men running into Berner St. He proceeded to the yard at beat pace, to find two other PCs already there. 3 minutes gap, minimum.


- I don’t understand your point. This means nothing. There is absolutely no way of determining the length of the gap. It could have been 30 seconds easily.


As an addition - how do we know that Smith didn’t have an issue or two to deal with on his beat putting him 5 minutes behind - making his beat take 35 minutes on that occasion?


Because he tells us how long his regulation beat takes, within a margin, and gives the very same timespan and margin when mentioning his Berner-to-Berner roundtrip - 25 to 30 minutes.


- Fair point.


Again, it’s where she was in the house at the time. I don’t understand why you’ve taken exception to this point in the past. Surely if anything is ‘unlikely’ it’s that she stayed in the same position? Kitchen, outside loo, upstairs back bedroom?


I was responding to a specific scenario you mentioned - she heard BS man and thought it was a PC. As for her being somewhere else in the house from which she could not hear heavy footfall or not very loud screams or whatever, that must be a possibility, but we know it's more complicated than inside doesn't hear, because apparently, she did hear the boots when inside.


- It doesn’t need to be more complicated. Heard one thing, didn’t hear another. Perfectly normal.


I haven’t ‘jammed’ anyone in so why are you claiming that perfectly normal occurrences are somehow unrealistic? If I came to your house and knocked on the door but you didn’t hear me because you were in the loo would you later accuse me of not actually knocking the door saying ‘oh yeah, what are the chances of me being in the loo just as you called?’


Did Fanny forget that after hearing the passing plod, she didn't go immediately to her door, but went to the loo first (or did some other brief activity), and missed all the drama going on outside because of it?


- That she could have gone onto her doorstep 2 minutes after the footsteps would have had her missing the incident. Or she went out after someone else’s footsteps.

Accepting estimated times/ Accepting estimate time periods/ Accepting unsynchronised clocks/ Accepting a poorly lit street it’s impossible to get to a version of events that we can be totally confident with.


What about 90% confident.


-I’m 99.99% sure that no plot/conspiracy occurred. I’m 99% sure that Schwartz didn’t lie. I’m 100% certain that all of the events could have occurred as stated when we make the application of a margin for error and the acceptance that estimates are exactly that. I’m also 100% certain that to adhere to stated times and to assume accurate estimations in a murder that occurred 135 years ago isn’t a valid approach.

[Herlock Sholmes]

Hi Herlock,

I just wanted to comment on this one point. I believe Fanny gave an estimate of 4 minutes. Since the 1800s, it has been known that people tend to over-estimate short durations (on average), although the range of any give estimate will vary from well short to well long. A lot of experiments on this have been conducted, and the finding is quite robust, although the methods used in most experiments are well removed from eye-witness type testimonies. I found a paper, though (when I was putting together the Stride simulation), which was applicable to eye-witness type of estimations of durations.

Based on their data, which had a good sized sample so would be pretty reliable estimates of the general population, would suggest that when someone estimates a duration as being 4 minutes, on average the true duration would be around 2m 49s. However, for any given estimation (rather than averaging a bunch of estimations), we could expect the true duration value to fall between 1m 15s and 12m 31s 95% of the time (so 2.5% of the time the true duration is even shorter than that lower cut off, and 2.5% of the time it is even longer!). Seriously, people are pretty rubbish at estimating durations with any degree of accuracy. (note, over an hour, though, they tend to over estimate the true duration, but that isn't something we generally need to deal with in the JtR cases).

What I'm getting at, though, is that given she estimated the duration to be 4 minutes, even a true duration of 9 minutes isn't hard to explain because it falls within the expected range of true duration values we would expect given a 4 minute estimate (the range goes out to over 12 minutes).

I think in the simulations I did, I had the "true" duration even longer, over 11 minutes I think, but it was under the 12m 31s upper limit of acceptable. Your 9 minute value is not hard to explain, because it doesn't need explaining because it's in the range of error that is associated with this kind of information.

And before anyone accuses me of "manipulating what she said", I'm not doing that. I accept she said 4 minutes. What I'm pointing out is that it is important to factor in human performance, and with regards to estimating the duration of events, we're pretty bad at it. Sure, some people might be very good, others will be really bad, and even the same person's accuracy will depend upon what they were doing. But we have no information that allows us to assess Fanny's ability, so the best we can do is use the population average. If push came to shove, I would point to the fact that her news reports have her stating different things in different papers (10 minutes on the step, nearly the whole time between 12:30 and 1:00, so 30 minutes; etc) as indicating that perhaps she's more on the rubbish end than a temporal savant.

- Jeff

Hi Jeff,

I was wary of suggesting that her estimate of 4 or 5 minutes could actually have been 9 because it does sound a lot to us. It’s easy to understand resistance to the idea but the evidence, as you’ve shown, proves that it’s nothing like far fetched. Thanks again Jeff.

[Herlock Sholmes]

On the Contrary

I am saying that the timings don't work with all the witnesses, but rather than swapping all the times to try and make the witness statement all fit, we need to look at WHY the witness accounts don't fit in the first place.

When you consider the amount of witnesses and what was said to have transpired between 12.30am to just after Stride was found, there was lots going on and yet multiple witnesses said it was all quiet on the Western front.

Lave and Mortimer make it sound nothing happened whatsoever

Eagle, Lave and Goldstein walk directly past the murder site after 12.30am

Schwartz says it all kicks off and yet nobody else hears or sees ANYTHING he claimed

At least 3 different witnesses saw a "couple"

Packer saw or heard nothing, but then remembered he saw Stride with a man who bought grapes from him and then stood almost opposite him in full view for over half an hour

It's all a bit of a mess that doesn't ring true....and using the altering of timings by a few minutes here or there can't explain away the major inconsistencies with the witness statements.

RD

But we’ve provided timelines where it’s all works.

It’s either a case of numerous people lying for which there’s no evidence or the timings were out. I prefer the simple, common sense route. Inaccurate clocks, poorly synchronised clocks, ,most witnesses estimating times without us knowing how they arrived at those times and people estimating periods of time and Jeff has shown how inaccurate those can be. A person hearing one thing but not another is the stuff of the everyday. Then, when it’s regularly suggested at the other murders that witnesses could have been mistaken, why do we assume here that Smith couldn’t have misidentified Stride. He had no reason to pay her any particular attention, she was across the road on a poorly lit street and the clothing of poor Victorian women weren’t particularly distinctive.

Its error over dishonesty for me RD.

[Herlock Sholmes]

I do, but that's because I believe Schwartz was a man in disguise and possibly the Ripper himself.

For me, the ripper was a master of disguise who was skilled in various trades.

Hence the term "A Jack of all trades"

He was a real life "Keyser Soze" who took pleasure from involving himself in the murders.


Just one big act


The reason why nobody saw or heard Schwartz, is because the man playing the part of Schwartz was the man who killed Stride himself.

He's even giving us the time he did it

12.45am



RD

You can’t be serious RD?

[JeffHamm]

Another excellent, balanced and well thought out post (as is every one of your posts)

Thank you, but in my view, many of my posts are not well thought out.

The issue I have is that regardless of whether the Schwartz incident only lasted under 2 minutes, it still would have been heard by at least 1 person, but not even Mortimer or Packer notice...and they were within close enough proximity the entire time that the Schwartz incident could have occured in.

How do you know that nobody heard it?
All we know is nobody reported it.
That's not the same as nobody heard it.

The other issue that noone has seems to realize is that when Schwartz approaches the murder site, he notices BS man walking towards Stride and then grab her to try and grab her into the street before spinning her around and throwing her onto the footway into the yard...but the question is...

Where was BS man BEFORE Schwartz saw him?

According to Schwartz, he followed B.S. down Berner Street. So, before B.S. and Stride interact, B.S. is between the club and Commercial Road. Before that, for some brief period, he's on Commercial. Before that .... somewhere else I guess.

Was BS man already between Schwartz and Stride?

According to Schwartz, yes.

If so, he would have been just outside Mortimers front door...but she saw nobody in the street.

Which indicates she was indoors, as she said she was at some points in time, so the Schwartz incident must occur when Mortimer isn't on her doorstep..

Does that mean that BS had just walked into Berner Street and was slightly ahead of Schwartz and walking in the same direction?

That's what Schwartz says

If so, he would have walked past Mortimers door...but again, she saw noone.

Againg, placing her inside, as she says she was at various times.

In the reality of physical space time, the only location that BS Man could have been just before Schwartz saw him approach Stride, is inside the gateway.

Ummm, no.

He couldn't have been south of the gateway, because guess who didn't see him... Packer.

Packer was long gone. He closed up after selling grapes; if Stride wasn't involved in that sale, he probably closed up long before anything of interest.

When we look at what Mortimer and Packer represent as witnesses, are 2 people that act as physical boundaries outside of which BS man couldn't have been before Schwartz saw him.

Packer doesn't matter.
Fanny just indicates teh Schwartz incident had to happen after she went inside, and she says in a couple of news reports, she was only on her porch for 10 minute or so. Placing her inside at the latest, 1:50. So, really, not a biggie.

Of course, Packer may have stopped observing the couple just before Schwartz saw BS man attack Stride.

Packer is irrelevant with regards to Schwartz.

I would suggest that that the likeliest scenario is that Bs man had just walked out from the side door of the club and had tried it on with Stride, but having been rejected he walks past her and goes to walk north toward Mortimer, but just at the point he walks past Stride, he TURNS BACK towards the gateway at the exact same moment Schwartz sees him.

That is nothing like Schwartz's statement, and nothing in Schwartz's statement would require modifying to make it fit. As such, I can't agree.

The likeliest candidate for BS man is Lave who goes out for some fresh air, tries it on with Stride and then assaults her before going threatening Schwartz and then going BACK INTO THE CLUB leaving Stride to pick herself up.

Again, Lave is in the yard, B.S. was followed from Commercial Street by Schwartz, so no, Lave doesn't work.

She then becomes the unluckiest woman in the world by then being murdered by a different man just 15 minutes later.

The concern your having is because you are building upon some dubious foundations.

If anyone can explain WHERE Bs man was BEFORE he was seen by Schwartz, then I may start to consider Schwartz's statement.

Schwartz tells us, he folled BS down Bernerd Street from Commercial Road.

2 minutes of Chaos is a quite street is still 2 minutes of chaos and that causes audible sounds that someone would have heard.

And yet noone does.

Someone yelling out, not too loudly, a few cries, would hardly have been considered worth noting.

There is also a possibility that Schwartz was telling the truth and that Mortimer was convinced by Le Grand to say she saw nothing apart from a generic man with a black bag.
we know for certain that Packers credibility was compromised by Le Grand.
Now if Le Grand was able to get to other witnesses, then Schwartz MAY have been the only one telling the truth because he wasnt a resident of Berner Street and not a club member.


Lots to ponder


RD

Sometimes things are just as they seem. Ponder that.

- Jeff