All your oppressive machinery is powerless against my tinfoil underpants. As someone who has always been intrigued by social uses for sound technology, I couldn't let this latest, ah, tidbit* pass by unnoticed. It seems that some of the professionally-aggrieved community got hold of an old urban legend (I remember it from my undergrad days) and have turned it into another Dastardly Plot by the Man:

Political activists planning protest rallies at the upcoming Democratic Convention in Denver have their stomachs in knots over a rumor about a crowd control weapon - known as the “crap cannon” - that might be unleashed against them.

Also called “Brown Note,” it is believed to be an infrasound frequency that debilitates a person by making them defecate involuntarily.

The rest of the article (Danger! Fox News!) comprises the moonbat ravings of eternal adolescents Mark Cohen and Glenn Spagnuolo (how dare they use this ficticious weapon on us!) and the bemused denials of just about, well, everybody.

Dr. Roger Schwenke - an expert acoustician who appeared on the Discovery Channel’s “Mythbusters” in 2004 to test the phenomenon - told FOXNews.com there is no scientific evidence that proves such frequencies cause involuntary defecation.

“When we conducted the low frequency experiment for the Brown Note episode of MythBusters, we tested a variety of low frequencies and no involuntary gastro-intestinal motility was caused,” he said.

But Schwenke acknowledged the low-frequency exposure did cause an adverse effect. Several people — including himself — reported “abdominal discomfort,” he said, “which was easily alleviated by moving a moderate distance away from the source.”

Mere reality can't compete with fantasies of persecution, though.

In addition to purely fictional weapons, the local tantrum-throwing community has decided to worry about real but esoteric and highly improbable ones, such as the Active Denial System, which emits a beam of microwave radiation that heats the surface of the skin sufficiently to cause a sensation of extreme heat, without burning or damaging tissues (at least, that's the idea). It's supposed to help deter potentially hostile people without injury at distances beyond the reach of small-arms fire. "Spagnuolo believes that Raytheon, the company that manufactures the [ADS], is planning to test a limited-range civilian version on protesters in Denver before approving its use in places like Iraq." Wait – wouldn't it be even more dastardly, more evil, to test it on little foreign people first, before unleashing it on the brave truth-to-power-speakers of Re-create 68? No accounting for the ways of the wicked, I guess.

Unlike the 'crap cannon', the ADS might make it to Iraq eventually, but it's still undergoing tests (presumably not on the streets of Denver). And not to worry, Mssrs. Cohen & Spagnuolo – it can be easily counteracted:

Countermeasures against the weapon could be quite straightforward — for example covering up the body with thick clothes or carrying a metallic sheet — or even a trash can lid — as a shield or reflector. Also unclear is how the active-denial technology would work in rainy, foggy or sea-spray conditions where the beam's energy could be absorbed by water in the atmosphere.

But just to be sure, I'd recommend a full-body tinfoil wrap.

UPDATE: Gitmo on the Platte! Will the oppression never stop? Where are your metallic undergarment friends now?

---

*Via some commenter on an Ann Althouse thread; link lost in the mists of the Firefox cache.

Posted by David Fleck at 17 August 2008 08:21 AM