Did you know that in the event of a nuclear explosion directly over your head, your AFDB will provide you with valuable microseconds of thinking time that unbeanied orthonoids will not have. It's true!

In the 1950s, photos of nuclear tests taken with Rapatronic cameras revealed an effect dubbed a "rope trick" (bottom of page) where radiant spikes travel down the mooring cables that hold the test tower in place, moving ahead of the nuclear fireball. Dr. John Malik determined that this was caused by the ropes being vaporized by the energy released as light, which was many times greater than the heat from the fireball itself and, of course, traveled much quicker. Malik found that if he wrapped the cables in aluminum foil, no spikes were formed.

With an AFDB, you can rest assured that the light from a nuclear explosion won't vaporize your head. Depending on how far away from the blast you are, this may give you enough time to outrun the fireball and leap to safety in cinematic slow motion, while all those beanie-scoffers are left behind looking like lit matchsticks.

Remember: only the paranoid and cockroaches will survive.

(This story appeared on Slashdot apparently and someone emailed me about it so...)

The US Air Force is testing new transparent armor made using aluminum oxynitride (developed by Raytheon and trademarked ALON®).

Transparent aluminum compounds are neither new nor unusual. Corundum (aka aluminum oxide) is the base substance of ruby and sapphire (which differ only in impurities), both of which are currently used for armor coatings in military/police equipment. If you need to see through something and not have bullets or shrapnel destroy it, chances are aluminum is involved. (See here for a ~600Kio PDF with lots of technical details about aluminum compounds used in transparent armor.)

AFDBs will develop a natural coating of aluminum oxide with exposure to air, so paranoids are already protected. (Paranoid seniors: try abrading your beanie and quickly sprinkling it with chromium dust for a stylish ruby coating.)

The testing of ALON® for military purposes is not new either. Here's a press release from 2002 announcing an agreement between Raytheon and Surmet Corp. to develop and market ALON® products commercially for the first time, whereas previously it was "developed as advanced military material and kept as a well guarded secret" (Warning: the terms "synergy" and "commercialization engine" are leveraged, although with the last one they had enough shame to put scare quotes around it.)

ZPi reader Harry H. emailed this interesting historical note found in the Sept. 29th entry of Garrison Keillor's The Writer's Almanac marking the birthday of Enrico Fermi:

[Fermi] almost discovered nuclear fission in 1934, when he was still living in Italy, in a series of experiments with neutrons. And if he had not made the mistake of using tinfoil to wrap his sample of uranium, nuclear energy would probably have been discovered that year, might even have been used by Hitler to win the war.

Let this be a lesson to all of you: wrap everything in foil. The future will thank you.

In the guestbook, Cascadia Patriot points to a news story today about the Belgians unveiling the Atomium's restored exterior. They're claiming that its new stainless steel coverings will stand up to Belgium's supposedly wet and windy weather better than the old aluminum ones. This is a lie for two reasons:

Mirror balls and tubes -- sure, that doesn't look like it exists only in a computer. Where's the checkerboard ground receding into infinity?

1) The Atomium doesn't exist.

I mean, just look at it! Who would build such a ridiculous thing? It is a fictitious building in a fictitious country. As such, fictitious weather isn't going to affect it, except fictitiously. They only pretend to have such absurd buildings to make Belgium seem like a technological Utopia (that and it's supposedly the HQ of Captain Euro.)

2) Aluminum can stand up to the elements just fine.

In reality, this whole "renovation" story is a ruse to spread FUD about Aluminum Foil Deflector Beanies. They want you to associate aluminum with something to be removed and disposed of, hoping you will "renovate" your currently safely beanied head, thus leaving yourself exposed to the Conspiracy's psychotronic manipulation.

Furthermore, as reported here previously, the Belgians were selling the supposedly stripped off aluminum sheet to the public, hoping that paranoids would be foolish enough to buy it for use in shielding their homes so they can walk around beanieless, not realizing that the aluminum was newly manufactured with embedded psychotronic circuitry that would turn any structure shielded with it into a Belgification device.

Thanks, "Belgium", but I'll stick with my AFDB and the more probable architecture of Cascadia...

Darus' Coffee Can Foundry Mark II can produce ingots of aluminum on the cheap from miscellaneous scraps. Useful for serious paranoids looking to cast aluminum helmets or experimenting with homebrew psychotron cores.

(via hack a day)

The League of Lady Conspiracists presents a Flash-based recital of their educational ditty: "I've Got My Tinfoil Hat On."

A family in a Sacramento, CA neighborhood has turned their home into an Aluminum Shielded Enclosure (ASE) in order to protect themselves from bothersome neighbors who somehow managed to obtain a primitive microwave-based psychotron and are targeting the family with EMF harassment. (The nature and source of the radiation was confirmed using scientific instruments operated by the family's college-educated daughters.)

Their ASE design consists of an external covering of sheet aluminum aligned against the neighbors with an internal aluminum foil lining. For additional safety they also sleep in aluminumized thermal blankets.

Sacramento Code Enforcement agents have learned of the family's ASE and are pressuring them to dismantle it by Monday or face a misdemeanor citation.

Yesterday, KCRA News 3 and KXTV News 10 NewsChoppers circled above the home and captured the following News Photos as part of their investigative News Report:

So let's see: A conspiring neighborhood association ("Neighbors working together" -- to what end?), the Government meddling in their home décor, nosy Media spying on their home from the sky using helicopters... I'd say the aluminum was justified. If only they had remembered the camouflage.

UPDATE 2005-05-23: I was just reminded of this metal-clad house sighted in 2003 by antipixel.com. Note, in comparison to the newer house, how the external metal sheet closely conforms to the house shape and the use of climbing vines for camouflage. Tips to consider for future ASE construction.

A helpful reader emailed to inform me of a company he learned about called Holland Shielding Systems B.V., makers of RF-shielded enclosures and tempest equipment. They have many types of Faraday cages*, including their "Faraday tents", shown on the right.

At first I thought that this might be a good source for paranoid computer accessories, but then I noticed something suspicious. Their main website's domain is faradaycages.com -- sure to be found by anyone in the market for a Faraday cage, and in fact shows up on top as a sponsored link on a Google search -- and they conspicuously claim in the masthead to be from the Netherlands. However, if you click on any subpage on the site the actual URL of the page is hidden via a frame. And what is the domain used by their subpages?

hollandshielding.be!

That's right, Holland Shielding Systems B.V. is really a front for the Belgian Conspiracy! Clearly they are trying to undermine paranoidal use of AFDB and related technology with Faraday cage disinformation.

It is a common myth that AFDBs are ineffective since they are not proper Faraday cages (i.e. not completely enclosing). While Faraday cage configurations are needed to shield standard RF transmissions -- their main application -- they are not needed for protection against psychotronic mind control, which is based on psychotronic energy, a highly modified form of electromagnetic energy that can interact with neural tissues much more effectively than standard EM and is deflected by certain substances, most notably aluminum. The deflective field of an AFDB more than overlaps the brain, protecting the user from all but targeted basal-orthogonal attacks with medium- to high-power psychotronic ray guns, which can be countered by lining one's shoes and pants seat with foil.

Please, don't be fooled by crypto-Belgians promising to replace your beanie with a tent of dubious efficacy for psychotronic use.

* Faraday cages are named in honor of Michael Faraday. Before going on to make a name for himself with dynamos and benzene, Faraday was an "assistant" to Humphry Davy, the man who exposed the arcane psychotronic secret of Aluminum to the general public in 1807. After Davy's treachery against the mind control elite (explained in page-padding detail in my book), the NWO arranged for a 20-year-old loyal Orderist named Faraday to become Davy's handler -- to watch over him while the NWO engaged in damage control -- by temporarily blinding Davy in an "accidental" laboratory explosion, thus forcing him to seek Faraday's assistance. This was a prelude to Davy's "knighthood" (i.e. the psychotronic reformatting of his brain) the following year.

This edition of Stamp Nook looks at a U.S. commemorative issued last year that was brought to my attention by Reuben in the guestbook:

At the local post office this afternoon I found something wonderful that I thought perhaps Lyle and the Philatelist would enjoy. It is not a candy heart stamp left over from Valentine's day, but one honoring R. Buckminster Fuller and the geodesic colossus of his disembodied head. ... The futurist scene is monorail-free, but it does have some kind of a three-wheeled Winnebago.

Although I must admit to not being very fond of these newer self-adhesives with their ersatz perforations, it is nonetheless a lovely looking stamp. The illustration was done by Boris Artzybasheff (more) and was originally used on a 1964 Time Magazine cover for an article on Fuller entitled 'The Dymaxion American'.

The 'three-wheeled Winnebago' is actually Fuller's Dymaxion Car. It could seat eleven, travel at 193kph, get at least 13km to the litre, perform a u-turn in its own length, and was designed to eventually be equipped with 'jet-stilts' to allow it reach a house placed anywhere on 'Spaceship Earth' (Fuller designed a Dymaxion House that could be airlifted to any location, no matter how inaccessible, and suspended from a pole; a multi-tiered variation can be seen on the left side of the stamp). The car was also sheaved in aluminium, which, I have on good authority from Lyle, made its passengers quite immune to psychotronic mind control.

It was by all technical accounts a smashing success; however a mysterious 'accident' in 1933 involving the first Dymaxion Car resulted in the death of a famous race car driver and serious injuries to two dignitaries on their way to catch a Zeppelin. This generated negative press and soured any potential investors. (Interestingly, Zeppelins, which also had coverings made with aluminium, would a few years later suffer their own mysterious accident with similarly disastrous publicity.) Although Fuller's design was later vindicated when it was learnt the fault lie with the other, conventional-style car involved in the accident (driven by a shadowy Government official who fled the scene of the crime), it was by then too late and the project died, leaving today's motorists at risk for vehicular mind control and municipalities at the mercy of marauding Monorailists.

A sordid state of affairs indeed, but all in all a very collectable stamp for the transportation topicalist.

Until next time, happy philateling!

Aluminum-iodine superatom.

A research team has discovered that clusters of aluminum atoms can impersonate the chemical properties of single atoms of other elements. They have dubbed these clusters "superatoms." In experiments with polyiodides, they've found that a superatom of 13 aluminum atoms (Al13) behaves much like an iodine atom, while an Al14 superatom behaves more like an alkaline earth atom such as beryllium.

Joint head of the research, Shiv N. Khanna of Virginia Commonwealth University: "The flexibility of an Al13 cluster to act as an iodine atom shows that superatoms can have synthetic utility, providing an unexplored 'third dimension' to the traditional periodic table of elements. [...] Applications using Al13 clusters instead of iodine in polymers may lead to the development of improved conducting materials. Assembling Al13I units may provide aluminum materials that will not oxidize, and may help to overcome a major problem in fuels that burn aluminum particles."

ZPi Research Labs will be following this discovery for application in Superatomic AFDB (SAFDB) technology that may provide better corrosion protection for Cascadian users.