JWL.Freakwitch.net

Aluminum Foil hats

This is funny. For those uninitiated with the culture of conspiracy theory/paranoia, the idea is that there the "Evil Geniuses are building Orbital Mind Control Lasers ...aimed at you!"

Since then, the idea of Tin Foil Hats (TFH) as an effective means of protection against such diabolical technology usage have become something of an urban legend, especially in Internet culture and the subculture of conspiracy theorists.

Anyway, an old friend recently pointed me to a recent (only partially tongue-in-cheek) study at MIT called On the Effectiveness of Aluminum Foil Helmets: An Empirical Study. It's quite funny, and worth the read, especially since the study concludes that

The helmets amplify frequency bands that coincide with those allocated to the US government between 1.2 Ghz and 1.4 Ghz. According to the FCC, These bands are supposedly reserved for ''radio location'' (ie, GPS), and other communications with satellites (see, for example, [3]). The 2.6 Ghz band coincides with mobile phone technology. Though not affiliated by government, these bands are at the hands of multinational corporations.

It requires no stretch of the imagination to conclude that the current helmet craze is likely to have been propagated by the Government, possibly with the involvement of the FCC. We hope this report will encourage the paranoid community to develop improved helmet designs to avoid falling prey to these shortcomings.

So any paranoiac who reads this will only become more paranoid, and one favorite protection device only exacerbates the paranoia. Brilliant!

Only at MIT....

posted by JWL at 3:08 PM |