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boris
Frequent Contributor
Username: boris
Post Number: 487
Registered: 05-2005
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Tuesday, 26 January, 2010 - 04:07 pm: | 
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About the useless bomb detector (diviner!), ‘Powered only by the static energy of the human operator’, selling for £40,000 per unit.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/newsnight/8471187.stm
What both amuses and sickens me is that the Iraqis are DEFENDING it saying it has detected many bombs!
Some people. :rolls eyes:
Thank you for not breeding.
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alec_t
Frequent Contributor
Username: alec_t
Post Number: 165
Registered: 03-2009
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Tuesday, 26 January, 2010 - 04:59 pm: |
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If officials are buying and distributing these things without having verified their effectiveness then they should be rounded up and exterminated (or at least sacked) for wasting tax-payers money.
What a con! Another example of the king's new clothes.
Alec |
twintub
Frequent Contributor
Username: twintub
Post Number: 59
Registered: 02-2007
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Tuesday, 26 January, 2010 - 07:45 pm: |
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I am totally astonished that this con-artist hasn't been arrested yonks ago when he started selling these 'devices'. People have undoubtedly DIED because of this - and he's living here in England.
How CAN this happen here in England, and our authorities do NOTHING.
Shocking, shocking, shocking. |
johnmosborneuk
Regular Contributor
Username: johnmosborneuk
Post Number: 26
Registered: 06-2009
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Tuesday, 26 January, 2010 - 10:47 pm: |
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I guess this just goes to prove that governments are stupid! Why on earth would anyone spend millions on a device of any sort without independantly verifying that it works?
When they do finally get hold of this guy I hope they send him over to Iraq to personally inspect the faulty detectors. |
piers
Frequent Contributor
Username: piers
Post Number: 93
Registered: 04-2006
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Tuesday, 26 January, 2010 - 11:15 pm: |
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The training manual for the device says it can even, with the right card, detect elephants, humans and 100 dollar bills...
When I read that my first thought was "Yeah, right..." 
Piers |
ant
Frequent Contributor
Username: ant
Post Number: 566
Registered: 05-2006
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Tuesday, 26 January, 2010 - 11:36 pm: |
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Hello all,
What a fantastic device! Look at the power stations it saves, not needing any electricity. Further, if you put a windmill between it and an elephant I bet you could even generate electricity too!
Dowsing can work, sometimes very oddly, but I wouldn't trust it at an airport or where-ever...
It merely confirms what gullible fools we all have running our countries.
Regards Ant |
boris
Frequent Contributor
Username: boris
Post Number: 488
Registered: 05-2005
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Wednesday, 27 January, 2010 - 08:06 am: |
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“Why on earth would anyone spend millions on a device of any sort without independantly verifying that it works?”
I guess if you can believe in some omnipresent giant invisible super sky fairy (possibly with a beard) that creates universes and smites the wicked, then you can believe anything.
Sure this is a con and has cheated people out of millions. Sure it’s responsible for a false sense of security. Sure it’s responsible for many deaths. But then again, so is christianity. All you need to do to sell such a device is appeal to the gullible ‘believer’ in people.
Thank you for not breeding.
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poplar10
Frequent Contributor
Username: poplar10
Post Number: 65
Registered: 10-2005
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Wednesday, 27 January, 2010 - 08:09 am: |
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Well, someone has come to their senses in this at last. The guy who manufatures/sold these devices has been arrested.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2010/jan/22/bomb-detectors-iraq-arrest
Nothing's impossible, I have found ...
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bruce
Frequent Contributor
Username: bruce
Post Number: 236
Registered: 04-2008
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Wednesday, 27 January, 2010 - 09:02 am: |
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Boris,
It warms the cockles of my heart to come across someone else who is as angry about religion as I am. It's utterly infuriating for these bozoes to expect me to 'respect' their belief, simply because it's a strongly held one. I dont give a silent fart whether it's strongly felt or not; if it's baloney I should have the right to say so without risk of getting into trouble. You might think this unimportant, but the UN, under pressure from Muslims on its panel, has made it an offense, an offense under law for Christ's sake, to criticise Islam in case it 'offends' them.
On the TV the other day, Howard Jacobson, who obviously fancies himself as some 21st Century Great Thinker, did a programme examining
'belief'. He interviewed some Orthodox Jews, who came out with some utter nonsense about creation. To his eternal shame, Jacobson ( an atheist himself ) oozed how wonderful this was and went on to condemn atheists for being too aggressive about their beliefs.
Dont you just love it when religious people accuse atheists of being too dogmatic and agressive about their ideas. Like they are so, so open-minded themselves, of course.
I think I need to lie down in a darkened room....
[edited by Admin 27/01/10]
Enjoy
Bruce
(Message edited by admin on 27 January, 2010) |
arw
Board Administrator
Username: arw
Post Number: 822
Registered: 04-2005
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Wednesday, 27 January, 2010 - 09:27 am: |
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I've edited the latest post because of the potential legal liabilities that it created.
Can we please not stray further into the territory of putting the world's religions to rights, this is way off topic for the EPE Chat Zone.
Thanks for your understanding,
Alan Winstanley
Visit EPE Online at http://www.epemag3.com
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echase
Frequent Contributor
Username: echase
Post Number: 283
Registered: 07-2007
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Wednesday, 27 January, 2010 - 11:28 am: |
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I agree this is not the right place but do send me a private message if you want to debate it with a Christian who agrees with some of what you say but not all. I am not going to throw bombs at atheists. |
boris
Frequent Contributor
Username: boris
Post Number: 489
Registered: 05-2005
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Wednesday, 27 January, 2010 - 02:14 pm: |
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“The ADE-651 detector has never been shown to work in a scientific test. “
There can be no evidence that these silly devices work. How could there be!!! It’s exactly as effective as a Y shaped twig, for the same reasons. Yet people are putting their very lives on the line in the ‘belief’ that they work. Faith=Ignorance as far as I can tell. And in this case, right now, it’s killing people.
Thank you for not breeding.
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poplar10
Frequent Contributor
Username: poplar10
Post Number: 66
Registered: 10-2005
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Wednesday, 27 January, 2010 - 03:54 pm: |
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Let me tell you a story:
Many years ago when I were a lad starting out in the building game I was sent to a new water treatment plant and given the task of locating buried 18 inch cast iron water mains crossing a field. I was given a large frame aerial, an amplifier and headphones and a box containing what later turned out to be some sort of oscillator.
As I set to work assembling this kit the old Irish ganger came across and enquired what I was doing. I told him that this was the latest equipment for detecting underground water mains. As I continued to assemble the kit he wandered over to a nearby fence and broke off two lengths of stout fence wire about fifteen inches long. He bent each of these into an elongated 'L' shape. Then, gathering up a supply of wooden pegs and a hammer he bgan to walk up and down the field holding a bent fence wire in each hand by the short length vertically with the remainer of the rod sticking out horizontally in front of him and spaced about 12 inches apart. Occasionally the wires would cross together and when that happened he stopped and stuck a peg in the ground. Pretty soon he had a line of pegs stretching in a slowly curving arc across the field.
At this point I had my equipment working and began to pick up signals from the cast iron water pipe. Believe it or not but his pegs were exactly where my expensive kit said the pipe was. And before you all scoff and say "ah, auto suggestion", we got the lads to dig down in three places and found the water pipe each time.
Now the skeptics amongst you are going to think up verious reasons why this old Irish gangers could do what he did. And like you I thought the same. So I asked him to let me try his bits of fence wire over another area where there might be pipework.
I held the two bent wires exactly as he did and walked over the area. Believe it or not these rods, when held lightly in the hands, did indeed exert a pull and crossed over in certain locations. Checking these locations later by digging proved that the two bits of fence wire had truly found the metal pipe.
I have since then, and using the same method, located many other buried metal pipes. I have also located clay drain pipes but the pull on the wire was not as strong.
So what causes the rods to cross over ? Who knows, but I have shown this method to many other people and most of them have got it to work.
Now for the sting in the tail:
Many years later I joined an elecrical public utility. While they were showing me their latest testing equipment they brought out this wooden box. Inside it was, guess what? Yes a super chromium plated ball bearing version of my two bits of fence wire. It gets better. The hand grips were fashioned with a sort of guard made up of two semicircular pieces of chromium plated metal spaced about four inches apart. Suspended between these crescents were pieces of various materials on springs - cast iron, clay, plastic, asbestos, copper wire etc.. According to the instructions if you held on to one of these pieces of materials while searching the apparatus would only respond to that material. I could never get it to work. But I can always find metal water pipes with my two bits of fence wire.....
Nothing's impossible, I have found ...
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ant
Frequent Contributor
Username: ant
Post Number: 567
Registered: 05-2006
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Wednesday, 27 January, 2010 - 07:40 pm: |
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Hello all,
My Dad used to dowse with two L-shaped rods - coat-hangers, fence wire, didn't matter. He drew the same line across our garden over several months, with his eyes shut, always in the same place. We knew there was a field drain about there but it must have been several feet down, we didn't find it. There was one other place, just one spot, where his rods diverged rather than crossed but there again despite repetitive finding we never found anything. But something was doing it...
The electricity team used dowsing to locate the watermain in my field in Wales before installing a new pole.
At the Rollright Stones in the Cotswolds they used to keep some dowsing rods for the visitors, who usually found the main paths in and out. Again, I had some results but nothing specific.
When I was a kid I had an H.Samuel watch which would never go on my wrist, even with a leather or rubber pad under it. It would go on anyone else's wrist and it would go in any of my pockets but not on either wrist. Very odd...
None of this makes sense to me; I've often felt that Dad used to listen to his, ermm, inner mind more than me; when driving he'd pull in close and say "I knew he was about to come round that corner" or whatever. My parents used to holiday with another couple, both used to have Morris 8 Series "E" (Daddy's "E" Type!" and in due course Dad got a Morris Oxford. He was packing up for a trip in Devon, his eye alighted on a half-shaft and he put it in the boot. While they were away Jim broke a half-shaft and Dad had one in the boot - it wouldn't have fitted his own car! An hour later they were on their way. But he could never explain why he loaded this great heavy lump of steel into his boot.
Regards Ant |
boris
Frequent Contributor
Username: boris
Post Number: 490
Registered: 05-2005
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Thursday, 28 January, 2010 - 07:21 am: |
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Wow. How can I maintain my position against all this rigorous scientific evidence. I stand corrected. :rolls eyes:
(No offence intended)
Thank you for not breeding.
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perro
Frequent Contributor
Username: perro
Post Number: 84
Registered: 10-2007
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Thursday, 28 January, 2010 - 09:41 am: |
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I was so DEEPLY upset to hear about this - there is a direct & undeniable relationship between what this guy & his cronies have done and deaths around the world.
I cannot understand the mentality of anyone who would willfully put 100s/1000s of lives in lethal danger just so make a buck.
Similarly I can't understand a government that stands by and lets it happen, then cites irrelevant laws to cover their backs for not intervening sooner. I thought WE were supposed to be helping advise Iraq on security etc so, regardless of export laws etc, I would have thought we have a duty of care to warn against such woefully infective 'tools'.
A big house & a 4-wheel drive Porsche in the drive CANNOT be worth any lives, let alone 100s or 1000s!
Unfortunately, there are many sociopaths in the world with seriously disabled morals.
@johnosborneuk
quote:I guess this just goes to prove that governments are stupid! Why on earth would anyone spend millions on a device of any sort without independantly verifying that it works?
Looking at the video and listening to the comments of the top Iraqi security guy (I forget his name), where he claims the has personally tested and proved these devices, your question IMHO has a clear, one-word answer: CORRUPTION
The directors & staff of McCormick's company, ATSC, and the officials that sanctioned (i.e. got backhanders for) the purchases should be tried for the death and injury of many bomb victims and then, to ensure true justice, be done for treason or what ever Iraq's equivalent is. McCormick's personal fortune should be distributed amongst the victims' families or used to purchase effective replacements for his snake-oil fakes.
I shall say no more. My next post will be electronics-related. |
ant
Frequent Contributor
Username: ant
Post Number: 568
Registered: 05-2006
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Thursday, 28 January, 2010 - 11:02 am: |
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Hello all,
Perhaps I need to make it clear - I have no brief whatsoever for the "bomb detector", the man's a criminal - I was merely following the slight widening of the discussion!
Regards Ant |
poplar10
Frequent Contributor
Username: poplar10
Post Number: 67
Registered: 10-2005
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Thursday, 28 January, 2010 - 01:07 pm: |
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...and I echo ant's comments ...
John
Nothing's impossible, I have found ...
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steerpike
Frequent Contributor
Username: steerpike
Post Number: 468
Registered: 05-2005
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Thursday, 28 January, 2010 - 10:34 pm: |
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Umm.. I'm sensing (divining?) deja vue
Any other long-time readers remember MSK and his rice pulling gizmo???} |
atferrari
Frequent Contributor
Username: atferrari
Post Number: 822
Registered: 05-2005
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Friday, 29 January, 2010 - 11:22 am: |
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Knowing that I am going off subject with it:
in the area where I was grown up, middle of the country, well in contact with traditions apparently far from urban lore (can you actually distinguish between them??) I learnt from people able to cure some human deseases (hope this reflects exactly what I have in mind) and one very common desease in horses. Much of this, I believed it was pure blah blah blah but from time to time you found cases where it seemed to work.
The sole lady apparently qualified I knew up to now, lived in the apartment in front of ours, here in Bs. Aires.
I realize now that, locally, I never heard people talking about dowsing. Surprising; I have to ask, it seems
I am esentially skepticall but with no reasons to support my attitude.
About dowsing, if you look at the Don Lancaster site (tinajas something), he plainly refuses to accept the validity of such thing. His usual expresion: debunking myths...
Once, at Salvador (Brazil), with my vessel iddle for a full day, I had time to have a quite coffee at a bar where a man was using tarot to read future to turists (mostly ladies). They seemd delighted and happy after his act where he asked them lot of questions and talked for minutes and minutes.
When he offered a reading to me, I left him to complete the proposition and said "Oh yes.........but you will not make any questions to me". That distroyed him. He started to babble to no end telling me lot of nonsense. I helped that to end and paid. He left hurriedly.
Sometimes it is hard to says true from fake just by listening what other people says. Once, there was a filipino guy on the TV who was pregnant..
Agustín Tomás - Buenos Aires - Argentina
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bruce
Frequent Contributor
Username: bruce
Post Number: 238
Registered: 04-2008
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Friday, 29 January, 2010 - 12:01 pm: |
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Let me see if I've got this right: You say some Filipino man got pregnant from using those water-divining sticks?
Wow!
The World should be told. Can you use a pregnant man to detect high-explosive?
I always understood that we can use sheep's bladders to prevent earthquakes.
Bruce |
atferrari
Frequent Contributor
Username: atferrari
Post Number: 823
Registered: 05-2005
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Friday, 29 January, 2010 - 12:17 pm: |
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Hola Bruce,
Maybe you remember it, some years ago. No sticks...!
What a shame for the journalist that believed the story and made the initial interview!! The worst: they paid for it!!
Agustín Tomás - Buenos Aires - Argentina
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perro
Frequent Contributor
Username: perro
Post Number: 86
Registered: 10-2007
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Friday, 29 January, 2010 - 12:38 pm: |
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You're right! That journalist must have been blind...
...I saw that movie, and no way could Arnold Schwarzenegger pass as Filipino  |
gizo
Regular Contributor
Username: gizo
Post Number: 33
Registered: 10-2006
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Saturday, 30 January, 2010 - 03:29 am: |
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In Oz we are always looking for water.
Oz Skeptics have set up a test on several occasions, with a healthy $$ prize for the outstanding diviner.
Quite long plastic pipes are buried in a field.
One is filled with water.
One is empty.
Another 20 pipes (if I recall, I have a vid of this) have at random 1/2 with water in them, and 1/2 empty.
A very large number of dowsers, some international, are then tested.
These are always old Uncle Bill who is definitely for real, farmer Brown who tells the bore sinkers where to drill for water etc.
They are all convinced, and so are their relos and neighbours that everyone else is fake, but this person can really really do it.
They are asked if they are happy with the test conditions. All are.
They pass over the water filled pipe, and the bent twig etc flickers.
Over the empty pipe the twig does not move.
But when dowsing over the test bed, the results stick stastically to the bell curve of chance findings.
Old Uncle Bill et al then have to come up with silly excuses why it didn't work.
Fun to watch.
Should have done similar with the awful mine detector. |
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