Aluminum Foil Helmets

I know the aluminum Foil Helmet story has been hashed out on Slashdot and Wired News, but I just couldn't resist debunking another Internets...Excuse me...Interweby story. And of course this could only be done with the help of none other then NM himself.

But I was shocked to learn he would have nothing to do with it. Let me attached his email reply:

Thanks. I'd already seen it and decided it was not quite the thing.

All my helmets for this purpose are made of a nickel/aluminum/nickel composite sandwich rather than plain aluminum. Nickel has high magnetic permeability - aluminum has nil and thus cannot shield magnetic waves. Who knows which part of the spectrum needs shielding? And, that's only when I'm not using my terribly fashionable Faraday cage. But, whether it be composite material, straight aluminum, arranged in sheet or in stylish grid, I make certain that the apparatus has truly a superb earth ground (three each 000 silver lead wires cad-welded each to their own 12 foot copper rods immersed in in-earth brine pits arranged in star pattern). It limits mobility a bit, but otherwise works well. I keep the silver lead wires all shiny. They sparkle. I call them 'my precious.' I digress. Anyway, these guys are clearly putzes since they apparently didn't bother to ground their helmets. Duh!

If these wankers were serious about this stuff, here's what they could have done. There's a pretty effective method for reducing noise transmission (which is another way to talk about reading someone's emitted electromagnetic waves due to their thinking) and that is to balance that person with another person of opposite polarity. The two noise waves are equal in amplitude and opposite in sign. Noise emitted by one is largely cancelled by the other. This is a technique often used in sensitive instrumentation in industry and in recording studios. Just not with people. Finding an 'opposite' person of 'equal amplitude' might prove as difficult as finding a compatible mate. Maybe they're the same thing. As always, it beats ruining two other couples. Anyway, the two should be twisted tightly together and the whole wiggly mess shrouded as described in the preceding paragraph and then grounded, also as described in the preceding paragraph. Now that would be an experiment worthy of the effort expended by these want-everyone-to-think-they're-smart MIT guys.

This seems like just the sort of thing that the NSA likes to fund. I insist on helping with the experiment if it were to be conducted at the Bunny Ranch in Nevada.

Good luck with your Interweb posting thing.

BTW. $250K in instrumentation is nothing. You hear me? NOTHING! Why am I shouting? Hey, who turned the lights out in here? Is there anybody there? Hello? Hello?

So imagine my shock to hear this. So I head over to his cubicle and what do I find?Appears Mr. High and mighty was adjusting his cranium jock strap.