Aluminum Foil Hats Will Not Stop "Them" 433
Otter writes "A study at MIT has found that aluminum foil headwear ("Among a fringe community of paranoids..the protective measure of choice against invasive radio signals") actually amplifies certain frequency bands allocated to the US government, as well as a mobile phone range, and is largely ineffective through the rest of the radio spectrum. But we can we trust the study, or are They controlling the researchers?"
An interesting thing (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:An interesting thing (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:An interesting thing (Score:1, Interesting)
This is actually true - GPS tinfoil hat tests (Score:5, Interesting)
Our first hat was a stainless steel mixing bowl. GPS reception continued. We were even able to get WAAS and Omnistar HP lockup with the mixing bowl on top of the antenna. [overbot.com]
An actual tinfoil hat cut off more of GPS, but we could still get "single" GPS signals, although not the corrections for Omnistar.
So the radiolocation bands really do get through.
Re:An interesting thing (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:amplified? (Score:5, Interesting)
And I can't believe I just weighed in with a serious response on this article. Time for more coffee.
Grounding required (Score:3, Interesting)
So, you need to run a wire from your hat down to your shoes and use antistatic shoe straps to ground yourself. It will also work better when the ground is wet.
I guess foil hat wearers will have no problem wetting themselves, they just need to funnel it down, since having wet pants won't help, they need wet shoes...
Commercial aluminized hats, and Federal courts (Score:3, Interesting)
A few years ago, one of the new-agey junk catalogs actually had aluminized hats,
as well as the usual collection of crystals, shiny things, bogus magnetic devices, and, ummm, tachyon bracelets. It's been long enough ago that I don't remember the details, but I think the hats were some kind of cloth with an aluminized mylar or aluminum paint layer or something similar. I think they even had a removable grounding strap.
Now, unlike why people want to obtain and wear such things, I don't know - I suspect the joke is much much more common than the actual practice. But the reason why people want to *sell* them is much more obvious - it's because they think there are suckers who want to buy them. The interesting question is whether they found enough suckers who actually *did* buy them to keep making the things.
Personally, if I were to get an aluminum hat (except as a costume for a science fiction conventions), it'd be a bicycle helmet. Doesn't matter that it keeps the CIA space alien hunters from beaming things into my head, as long as it keeps out the car hoods and asphalt, though blinky-lights and reflector tape are probably much more useful than aluminum color would be.
Found the hat: blockemf.com (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:An interesting thing (Score:5, Interesting)
Different manifestations pop up depending on the milieu: today it's radio signals from government controlled satellites, but in the late 1940's Shaver's tales of "Dero rays" being emitted by a race of evil subterranean dwellers proved a popular framework for the delusion.
And before that (in 1796), there was James Tilly Matthews's Air Loom, a "pneumatic machine" that could manipulate the ether to influence its victims. See The Air Loom Gang: The Strange and True Story of James Tilly Matthews and His Visionary Madness by Mike Jay for more details. [amazon.com]
In addition to insights into one of the earliest documented manifestations of paranoid delusion, the book has lots of juicy details about mental health facilities in the late-eighteenth/early-nineteenth centuries, the French Revolution, Mesmerism, and lots more. A really interesting book.
Re:Now I'm scared (Score:5, Interesting)
In the course of his confinement he was frightened by a bat, and decided that his condition was caused by a deadly brain-rotting radiation emitted by bats.
He was never able to teach EE again, but the school took him back in the Industrial Management department. He always wore a derby hat lined with foil -- but no crummy tin or aluminum for him. He insisted on using lead foil, the only quality material for such a purpose. But it didn't stop there: the bat rays tended to build up potentially lethal static charges on the foil, so it had to be grounded. His hat was connected by an alligator clip to wires sewn into his clothing and ultimately to a nail in his shoe.
He was known, naturally, as Batman and we treated him with the kind of casual cruelty you'd expect of undergraduates...we all thought he was unique and it wasn't until the Internet came along that I learned how common the foil-hat thing is. Apparently it's a symptom of paranoid schizophrenia -- a particularly sad condition in which the victim knows perfectly well he's screwed up and is powerless to do anything about it.
rj
Re:Now I'm scared (Score:3, Interesting)
I'm not even going to get into this debate. I've just upgraded to a lead helmet!
It is rather cumbersome, but as a bonus to blocking everything, I've got a strong neck now.
I'll do you one better, a neutronium hat.... unfortunaely it's 6 million pounds but it's a small price to pay for privacy.