James Randi's $Million Dollar Challenge Comments

The James Randi Educational Foundation (JREF) has commented on my scientific investigations of what dowsing rods can and cannot do.  It is obvious from these and other writers, that the only solution is to take Randi's "$Million Dollar Challenge."  While the phrase sounds concrete and well established, it is not.  Read the following link of an individual who did try to take the challenge, but who had enough brains and determination not to accept the conditions:  http://www.skepticalinvestigations.org/New/Examskeptics/Sean_Randichallenge.html.

My rules are simple, conclusive, and immediate.  My "$million challege" is much more direct:

One test,
Performed One time,
for One $million dollars cash or certified cashier's check, made out to me.
But held by One neutral party,
One neutral referee to determine if the test passes or fails, and pass the check or cash to the winner.

As Mr. Randi has proclaimed for years, he is in no danger of losing the money (remember, cash or cashier's check only).and he is equally certain that my testing will prove yet another failure.  As such, he can put his money back in the bank when the referee declares me the loser (as he says).

No bank notes, no promisary notes, stocks, options, etc. 

Cash on the barrelhead. 

Taffy

High Cost High-Tech Science Still Not on the Battlefield

"Insurgents can exchange old artillery shells and egg timers for $800,000 robots all day long." 

Pretty much says it all, doesn't it?  The $400 Billion Future Combat System is still not shaping the battlefields of Iraq and Afghanistan is it?  And iRobots robbies on the front lines?  Classified I guess.  After 4 years and millions in funds, the 3 Foster-Miller robbies  turned their guns on their trainors (Don't argue with me:  Argue with Popular Science and http://www.wired.com/.)

I'll make my bi-annual challenge to DARPA to accept my challenge for their map-reading robbies.  It is:

(1)  Give me one Model 1903 Springfield mounted with a 6X scope and 26 rounds of ammunition (assuming 25 robbies start out).
(2)  Give me $250 to buy legal and non-explosive equipment from any hardware store.
(3)  I'll donate $250 of my money for the same purpose.

Let me represent an amateur opponent to the robbies.  Count up how many cross the finish line, how many break down on their own, and how many are stopped by impediments.  This experiment would be the least likely to succeed because I am a civilian, and only one determined opponent. 

Again, I am sending a challenge to DARPA to accept my offer (Johanna.jones@darpa.mil).

For your reading plesure look over the link below on the applications of dowsing rod LOW-technology from the Journal of Borderlands Research.  From my perspective, there is a hell of a lot more potential countering low-technology weapons with low-technology solutions.

Here's the link to the URL published on Journal of Borderlands Research that summarizes my fourteen YouTube videos and two papers:

http://journal.borderlands.com/2010/dowsing-rods-empirical-evidence-and-applications-for-charting-the-subsurface/

DARPA and DoD are also welcome to test the technique described in the paper themselves.   As those who are familiar with me eady know, I am not saying do away with hi-tech research.  I am saying it is high time we begin, however late, to research the low-cost low-technology methods, so effective in Iraq and Afghanistan, and make that technology work to save our soldiers lives.


Taffy B.

Taffy and the Dowser

After returning to graduate school in geology in 1974, Taffy lucked out and got summer work with the county's Public Works Dept.  As it happened, a contractor paved all the roads in a subdivision, but did not mark the water shut-off valves.  Given a shovel, pick, and metal detector I was told to go find them all and file the data.  "Piece a' cake" I thought to myself.  But I was wrong. It was very difficult and very time consuming.

I went to the water treatment shack and met Earl, the operator.  Earl sat in the corner, behind a grimy desk, with a dozen or so porn magazines scattered about.  "How's it goin' college boy?" he said with a wolfish grin.  "Hard Earl, real hard," I said.  "I'll be by later this afternoon and help you out." True to his word, he drove up that afternoon, obviously enjoying a sweating, frustrated college boy.  He told me he'd watch me suffer enough and decided it was time to show me a better way.  He took out two welding rods, bent them at 90 degrees and proceeded to locate the line and shut-off valve.

As a teaching assistant in grad school, I had to grade about 30 or so three-page papers (per class) on the required reading, Water Witching U.S.A. by Evon Vogt and Ray Hyman (University of Chicago Press, 1979,  260 p.).  I laughed at Earl.  With the same grin he handed me the rods and drove off.  Under normal circumstances I would have tossed them in the nearest bush, but the summer job was rapidly coming to a close, and I wanted to be hired next year and get a good reference.  "Economic pressure" they call it.

Although I hid them in the back of the truck, I packed them along with my other equipment.  Over the next few weeks I gradually switched more and more to the dowsing rods, increasing my success rate dramatically.  The director was happy, Earl grinned, and I kept my mouth shut back at school.

Over my working career I quietly kept notes on what dowsing rods could and could not do.  I'd locate pipelines or flowlines made of plastic when other techniques couldn't.  I always did it alone and if anyone asked I'd make up something like "Oh, I got it from an old aerial photo" or "I used Thermal IR imaging."  My inquisitor, interested only in the pipe, tank or line would utter an uninterested, "Oh" as he/she turned and walked away.

But the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq changed my attitude and many of the findings are now published on YouTube.  Sure, they're unpopular with most DoD and DARPA groups.  So unpopular that they won't be tested.  OK, they're the ones in charge.  Of the hundreds of articles I've read on high-tech solutions to low-tech problems few have proved lastingly successful.  Let's start giving low-tech solutions a try.  After all, as the Counter Insurgency Commander told a group of soldiers about the Tamil Tigers, "Fight a guerrilla with a guerrilla." 

DARPA - More futuristic unmanned vehicles on the way!

True, some of DARPA's unmanned vehicles may be on the way, but at what cost, what feasibility, and what purpose?  As an outsider, at least to this outsider, the fatal flaw is glaring:  what will unmanned vehicles do when faced with true opposition?  An opposition that is just as angered and just as determined as we would be if our country invaded.  An even more disturbing question is whether or not the $multiple-billion robots will be of assistance to the troops in the field, even when ready. 

Tremendous sums of money are being spent on this and other technologies (you know the ones, robot insects, cloaking uniforms that make the user unseen to the enemy, etc.).  Eight years in Afghanistan and seven in Iraq.  What has JEIDDO to show for it?

I'm writing Johanna Jones (Johanna.jones@darpa.mil) with my yearly request to participate in the unmanned vehicle program - as an opponent.  My purpose is to determine if the robot vehicles can stand up to one person armed with:

1. A Model 1903 Springfield rifle fitted with a 6X scope and 26 rounds of ammunition (of my choosing) for a 25 vehicle field.
2. $200.00 cash, from DARPA for purchasing legal and non-explosive materials at hardware stores or the Internet.
3. $250.00 my own money for purchase of more items listed in point #2.
4. The DARPA team is allowed Thermal, Middle and Near Infrared scanning equipment to find my location.
5. DARPA will allow me only 24 hrs. to prepare.

The research programs from original idea to field operations is drastically different in insurgencies, as illustrated in the triangles below.  Simple, true, but to the point - yes.

Small Wars Journal Posts Low-Tech Methodology

In 1543 the great surgeon Vesalius published De Fabrica, illustrating the muscle and tendon structure with great accuracy.  When it was published he commented, "Not long ago, I would not have dared to diverge a hair's breadth from Galen's opinions."  When he finally did diverge, he commented "I still distrust myself."

Why?  Galen, the great Roman physician had been dead for 1500 years.  He was not allowed to work on human corpses, so he extrapolated from animal surgery.  Vesalius was right, of course, and he knew it.  He was also a practical man interested only in the physical world and how it was arranged. If he contradicted Galen he knew he would have to retract his work then face prison or execution.

And that's part of the problem.  Publishing low-tech methodology is a sure ticket for making yourself a bullseye with the high-tech crowd.  And for the most part, they are right:  more educated, more time with defense contractors, degrees in physics or engineering.  Furthermore, why bother testing something that has been disproved before?  Have a good belly-laugh then get back to the real tasks, like robots, electronic insects or drones.

But this is where the dreaded empiricism steps in.  Like all science, it demands an author publish methodology for others to duplicate - and maybe find out you're wrong.  But then again, the skeptics may be wrong too.  Here's the link for the interested:

http://smallwarsjournal.com/blog/2010/03/friday-files-countermine-dousi/

Taffy

"In This War It Looks Like the Flintstones are Beating the Jetsons"

So said a Marine in an Engineering Battalion in Iraq.  And he's right of course.  Now in our ninth year in Afghanistan, and soon to turn the corner of the eighth in Iraq, those companies, congressional districts, universities, and the ever-expanding defense agencies are crowing as loud as they can hoping that you just behave live a herd of lemmings and continue to throw $hundreds of billions at them in some vain hope that one of their discoveries will strike it rich and stop the IED/landmine threat.  All the while ignoring everyone else.

To make matters worse, several other factors contribute to the urgency of the landmine/IED problem:

• Guerilla groups ignore Landmine Treaties; they are now planting them at a rate 25 times faster than they [mines] are being cleared;
• High-tech equipment is quickly neutralized by a combination of low cost, rapid research, and network of individuals willing to defend their homeland at any cost,
• Civilian casualties, particularly those caused by drones, turns the local populace against the US and its allies,
• US DoD and DARPA agencies, and their hundreds of kin, myopically pursue a high-tech approach.
• The above agencies, when confronted with low-tech solutions to their high-tech equipment, refuse to acknowledge even the possibility that a low-tech solution exists,
• And by far the most serious:  the urgency, quantity needed for the footsoldier in the field, weight, complexity, and effectiveness is unaddressed.  No one, it appears, is accountable for the $billions spent.

Reading Press Releases of High-Tech Equipment:

Learn how to the read the "new" equipment announcements that splash across the national press.  Don't be misled by spokespersons who work for either the DoD or the company making them.  Here are some examples:

1. When a news items splashes the word "Ground Penetrating Radar (GPR)" automatically ask yourself, "How effective is it in wet soil (e.g., the fields along the Tigris or Euphrates)?  Like your morning coffee, water turns microwaves into heat, and does not creat a reflection.
2. When they tout a new metal detector, ask yourself two questions:  (1)  Why are they relying on metal detectors when most IEDs and landmines are now made out of plastic? and (2) Metal cans litter the highways and streets of Iraq and Afghanistan - detectors cannot see below these surface items.
3. Ask proponents of bees and plants for IED detection why Insurgents might not use insect or plant killer to keep ground troops off balance.
4. Ask DARPA why it ignores opportunities to let an armed opponent participate in the robot races.
5. Taffy Bowen Electromagnetic Research  Society (TBERS) does not sit by and allow these topics to go unchallenged at the level high-tech equipment will meet in the field.

Old and New Threats:

PROBLEM 1:  Trip Wires.  One of the deadliest forms of IED/landmines.  Our preliminary tests are highly successful.  In our "Dowsing Rod Science" series, Part 12 will demonstrate the ease of locating something as thin as fishing line, and as thick as 8 mm tape ribbon.  We urge testing, and have so far been ignored.  Part 12, an enhanced study of trip wires, will go online in a week or so.  A link will appear in this column.

PROBLEM 2:  Drones. The current favorite.  Proponents crow at every available opportunity.  The US is no longer the only user of these weapons, and must be ready to defend its own troops against this growing threat.  TBERS's challenge is to foil the drone's intention.  Only in the planning stage, TBERS is developing methods to identify flight patterns, then launch environmentally-friendly ways to cause abortion of the mission.

PROBLEM 3:  Chemical Sniffers of all types, combing the battlefields, looking for just the right nitrate compound to identify IEDs, landmines or UXOs.  We're keeping out of that one.  Too high-tech for us, we're leaving that one alone.

PROBLEM 4:  Robots.  TBERS personnel are willing to act as a counterbalance to a test of Robots in the field.  Email us taffybowen@gmail.com for details.

We'd be happy to work with any and all, but save any insults for someone else.



Taffy

Bee-lown Up

Since the beginning of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan DoD, DARPA, corporations, and universities have engaged in an expanding universe of new ideas that will allow soldiers or civilians to identify and destroy before they or their comrades are injured.

There are a great many ideas, but two common ones are bees that are trained to smell explosives and plants that change color near IEDs or landmines.  One recent proponent of the use of bees was http://loveyalyn.blogspot.com/2010/01.

The diagram at left illustrates (simplistically) the research-to-field flowchart for both US research and insurgent research.  Supporters of US research (e.g., bees) forget that there is a mirrored world where insurgents are planning to deal with any new technique.  Bees or plants or whatever could be effective if all sides were looking to destroy mines from WW II, Korea or Vietnam.  Extrapolating these techniques to current guerilla wars is quite another matter.

They have no intention of letting anyone's army occupy their land and remove IED/landmine barriers with impunity.  The lower red triangle illustrates their priorities:  little money, time, or expensive materials.  Once an agent is found, however, they have abundant personnel to impliment their countermeasures in the field.  As has been the case since the first guerilla war against Napolean the costs are minimal and the battlefield is their research lab.

Countermeasures against the $million bees are numerous, and probably cost under $25.  One example that came to my mind as I read the article was several sticks of dynamite surrounded by several cans of bug killer.

The image at right is a prop, folks, so don't get excited.  The red tubes, meant to "represent" dynamite are nothing more than harmless road flares.

"Know yourself and your enemy and you will win every battle.
Know yourself but not your enemy and you will lose a battle for every one that you win.
Know neither yourself or your enemy and you will lose every battle."

--Sun Tzu, ca. 2500 BC

Insurgent spotters could detonate four or five of these little devices and that would be the end of the bee swarm.  And then it's back to the drawing board.

Taffy

Benign Neglect; When High-Tech Science Kills

The furor over an Iraqi general purchasing some type of dowsing rod-like tool for his troops has the scientific internet community seething in righteous anger, calling for heads, and building gallows. Now slow down. Bad Astronomy, JREF, and hundreds of others have failed to ask some of the most basic questions. And in a bone-chilling sinister step they have totally neglected the progress [sic] JIEDDO, private companies, and universities have made in solving the problem. The Basic Question: OK, just why did that Iraqi general take the extraordinary step of purchasing some dowsing-rod like explosive detector? Why? If the answer doesn't immediately drill a hole in your skull, then you need to begin a review of the 7-year war in Iraq. Name 10 examples of landmine/IED technologies, developed in the US, that have provided the foot soldier a fighting chance against weapons and are in wide-spread use. Phrases like "under-development" or "to be shipped this Spring" do not count. Name several anti-IED robot companies, their products, and the amount of money they have received from the US DoD. I'll start you out: 1. The Future Combat System. 2. iRobot. 3. Foster-Miller 4. DOE. Now, let's open the door further to universities, who have received large grants to develop their own anti-IED technology. 1. University of Montana (bees) 2. MIT (robbies galore) 3. University of Missouri at Rolla 4. Stanford. Right or wrong, the money spent by that Iraqi general pales by comparison, and we hear nothing from our internet science leaders. It's a low-tech war, although you'd never know it. DARPA, several years ago, offered a $2 million prize for the first robot vehicle to cross a finish line. Oh, the joy of the winners. But we're not in a high-tech war. I offered DARPA a challenge, which they refused to accept. Too bad, it would represent the type of low-tech fighter they face in Iraq and Afghanistan. Here was the challenge. DARPA supplies me with: 1. One Model 1903 Springfield, 25 rounds, fitted with a 6x scope. 2. $250 to buy materials available at any store in any city. 3. Allow me to put up $250 of my own money for the same. Bet me how many robotic vehicles would cross the finish line. Complain about the Iraqi general if you must, but clean up your own house first. taffy

Bird Watching, Ecological Changes in the Counter-IED Woodlands: A Story

New understanding of electromagnetism and its applications are beginning to pop up in journals, magazines, TV, and the Internet. And they are not welcomed. Proposing low-tech solutions to landmines and IEDs is met with the full force of current research thinking, technology, and high-powered public individuals. Often less educated, lower in status, the chastened misfits assume they are wrong. Instead, they return home to spread the official line, and in that way propagate the misconception that only those "chosen few" can make discoveries, and it is the job of the rest of us to support them without question. Not a whole lot different than watching the ecological balance of birds, plants and animals at the Iraq/Afghanistan research woodlands. The birds are the main attraction. Many of these "birds" can only be observed at a distance. Near the top are the Vultures, those scientists who have connections to the Defence Industry-University-Governmental Complex. Many are involved in high-tech research topics that are quietly related to the present wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, particularly anti-IED and landmine technology. Gliding over the landscape, they watch below as insurgents use $15 weapons to defeat their multi-billion tools, yet say nothing. In the trees below the soaring Vultures are two more species, the Parrots and the Woodpeckers. The Parrots fund the military, medical, and other technological equipment that today stands in rusting piles in war zones. Normally noisy, the Parrots are unusually quiet when "success ratios" of their products are announced. The Woodpeckers are the myriads of scientists, physicists, social scientists, researchers, PhDs, professors, and all those who feed on direct government or University funding. Of course, to ensure that no one sees them, their reports are "classified." Hiding in the woodlands are the Owls. These wise, interdiciplinary creatures remain royally aloof to escalation, civilian casualties, debt, and ineffective weapons. Original thought, criticism of the status quo is met with a swift and often deadly attack. Flitting from flower to flower is the hummingbird, who does get a close look at what is going on in the war zones. These small but dangerous creatures are capable of creating havoc in the defence-science patnership because they can quickly flit to those in power and shock them with the truth, about the wars, the defence industries, the IED countermeasures, and all those who support the system. Fortunately, most of them are snared by a series of nets before spreading the word. The beautiful woodland hillside appears in perfect harmony with its surroundings. Flocks of Grackles and Sparrows noisely patrol the ground gobbling up new seeds that have fallen on the hillside. They perform the biddings of the higher order birds without question. One can spot the empty hulls of AlbertWegnerensis, Semmelweis sp., WatsonCrickensis, and Rosenberg sp. among others. But the climatic is changing, and along with it seeds that may disrupt the quiet hillside and its hierarchy. The newer varieties flourish overnight, communicate with the wind, and have developed shells that none of the birds can break. Even worse, their genetic information, carried in the pollen, is sticking to all the birds who are beginning to have a devil of a time stopping it from spreading to all the creatures on the woodland hillside. And worse for the woodland hillside, that change is accellerating. NB: The format for this story was loosely adapted from William R. Corson, 1968, The Betrayal, W.W. Norton and Co., NY, NY, 317 p. Col. Corson, one of the highest decorated and bravest soldiers this country ever produced, was an early critic of the Vietnam War, the Defense Industry, and their supporters.