[Peace-discuss] emd

[Stuart Levy]

On Mon, Jul 07, 2008 at 11:01:55AM -0500, E. Wayne Johnson wrote:
> This video is not an absurd joke even though it seems surreal.
> You may need to start the video after clicking the link
>
> http://www.lamperdlesslethal.com/video_gallery.asp?video=http://www.lamperdlesslethal.com/video/EMDsafetybracelet.flv&title= 

Wow.

We might imagine the lawsuits when these bracelets trigger falsely,
or get triggered deliberately when a brown-skinned bearded man heads for the restroom
half an hour before landing.  Not to mention the insidious people tracking aspect.

Fortunately it doesn't sound like a very recent video -- they mention that
airline cockpit doors "will be reinforced by 2003" -- so whoever they were
trying to sell this to doesn't seem to have bought it.  Yet.


This would be a nice submission to the RISKS Digest mailing list/website,
   http://catless.ncl.ac.uk/Risks/
which collects stories about misapplication of technologies without consideration
of side effects, from electronic voting to GPS-based aircraft control to
colleges now being required to use E-verify to check employee immigration status (!)
to perils of spelling autocorrection:


    <Leonard Finegold <L at drexel.edu>>
    Sun, 8 Jun 2008 16:13:57 -0400

    My physician was trying to enter a diagnosis into his computer, during an
    office visit.  The computer insisted on entering Prostitute for me; he was
    trying to put in Prost ate.

    He did an end-run.

    PS.  I'm no prostitute, although some people think that most faculty members
    are (intellectually).