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No one had the time to mention Kari or Grant from the Mythbusters, but they had time for a 200 post off topic flamewar about religion and science? Yes not exactly post graduate education there, but the question was about "excited" and "heros". Whats not to like about Kari and Grant?

No one mentioned Shawn Carlson and the SAS?

http://www.sas.org/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Society_for_Amateur_Scientists

At least Forrest Mims got like one comment, even if people shun him for his peculiar church beliefs (not exactly a very enlightened attitude).

Right here!

He cared deeply about the human dilemma and the rape of Earth.

He advocates killing 90% of the worlds population with the ebola virus. http://www.sas.org/tcs/weeklyIssues_2006/2006-04-07/feature1p/index.html

IIRC, it was more "considers it inevitable" rather than "advocates".

Right here!

He cared deeply about the human dilemma and the rape of Earth.

He advocates killing 90% of the worlds population with the ebola virus.
http://www.sas.org/tcs/weeklyIssues_2006/2006-04-07/feature1p/index.html

Maybe I'm naive but I don't seriously believe that many people in power WANT to destroy the world. [...] Who do you think wants to destroy the world?

Just posting like that (saying where your current thinking is and asking questions) suggests strongly that you're anything but naive but simply haven't connected to the relevant information yet.

There are a number in the scientific community who promote the idea of a sudden 90% population reduction. This guy and others like him who are a little less exhibitionist carry a surprising amount of support in the academic and political communities. Where wealth and the fear of losing that wealth go hand in hand.

There are secret societies which are big into such plans. This video touches on a couple of the more outward notions held by some people with influence, (though this video has it's own stupidities built-in, but it seems impossible to do any research without having to scrape off the personal bias of any given researcher. Endless amounts of reductionist comparison need to be done when looking at this stuff.)

There's tons and tons of information out there. Dig in! Looking into the whole Denver Airport thing is fascinating. Weighing in on both sides of that argument lead to some interesting results.

Good luck and don't worry; fear is normal but if you keep your wits about you, the world gets a LOT brighter afterwards, more so than it even seems now. Knowledge protects in ways we can't even imagine.

-FL

At least that's what Caltech's director of admissions told me when I asked why there weren't as many kids who followed in C.L. Stong's footprints in the frosh class.

So get them the $150 Altera FPGA starter kit
Still software, but at least they'll learn about hardware.

Make is okay, but it's much more oriented towards 'artistic' than 'rocket science'.

Check out the Society for Amateur Scientists

It needs to be somewhat scientific in order to be as conclusive, and if they were assuming that the thermite reaction was the major component of the fire, they were barking up the wrong tree to begin with. Thermite is a type of reaction which is dependent upon the chemicals present to go off, it is very different from combustion which requires the aid of external oxygen as well. Additionally, it's questionable if there was even enough in any particular spot to actually start reacting.

The reality is that for whatever reason, the other components of the skin, namely cellulose acetate butyrate was the agent that burned. The hydrogen just couldn't have been a major part of the fire, the color of the flames would be wrong, and the volume of H without oxygen is just too large to burn at that rate. By contrast the doped skin of the Zeppelin was well exposed to air once the water burned off, and was located at the bottom, allowing the flames to spread in the most efficient manner. The flames probably really did spread at 6m/s which is ~12mph.

I'd take a look at this link if you're still convinced that the skin burning is a myth. http://www.sas.org/tcs/weeklyIssues/2004-12-17/project1/index.html

I have met old professional writers who literally hate the Internet and wish it never existed. They seem particularly worried about amateurs writing stuff. But that's their opinion and you know what they say about opinions. They aren't amateurs, they don't love writing, they just profit from it. I would very much prefer a novel or scientific paper written by amateurs rather than professionals. Why? Because, even if the amateurs's creation contains a few mistakes or omissions here and there, I know that it was nurtured with love, while the professionals's creation is as cold as money (not that money is necessarily bad, but it IS cold). It works with software, it works with encyclopedias, it works with news, it works with hardware, it works with fabbers, it works with science, and certainly it also works with writing. Professional writers can yell as much as they want, but Internet writing is here to stay. They are the old generation and together with all centralised models of production (RIAA, MPAA, Microsoft...) will have to either evolve or die, while the Internet enables communities of amateurs, the cooperative generation, to produce high-quality content in an open fashion for the love of it.

Terrific response! The only issue I have to take is this one:

I don't have your hope for it turning out well given the deep seated hatred of the religious right and their bible which demands that they murder people like me who don't buy into their beliefs.

Actually, the Bible prophecies that 90% of the world (believers and non-believers alike) will be killed. Interestingly, that's also what some outspoken 'ecologists' like Dr. Eric R. Pianka call for. If the religious right would take care to actually READ the Bibles they beat people up with, they might realize that murder has been proscribed for a VERY long time. Nothing that I've read in the Bible (working on my second time through) supports the murder of anyone, with the possible exception of Jericho. Note that I'm not a part of the religious right, though, so I fully believe they want to do what you say...I'm just pointing out that it's against their own primary source to do so.

Us airplane drivers are very familiar with the phenomena of carburetor ice. Simply running the air through a venturi (or maybe a vortex tube?) will reduce the pressure and temperature sufficiently to dehumidify it. Then you can redirect the fast moving air to "sling" the water out, which carries much more mass, thus momentum, to where ever you wish. I don't know if this has been tried and dismissed as impractical.

'The sad truth is, once the humans get out of the picture, the outlook starts to get a lot better,' says John Orrock, a conservation biologist.

Sad truth? This is an environmentalist's fantasy dream.

Sure, mod me 'troll' but at least read the article at http://www.sas.org/tcs/weeklyIssues_2006/2006-04-0 7/feature1p/index.html ...following a recent speech before the Texas Academy of Science in which Pianka endorsed airborne Ebola as an efficient means for eliminating 90 percent of the world's population. Pianka received an enthusiastic and prolonged standing ovation. Later he received more applause from a banquet hall filled with more than 400 people when the president of the Texas Academy of Science presented him with a plaque naming him 2006 Distinguished Texas Scientist.

Not warned, ENDORSED.

The environmentalist agenda, if they are honest enough to admit it, is ultimately about elimination of humans because essentially the problem is that there are too many of us. End of story.

A good counter-example would be Dr. Eric R. Pianka.

Actually, I think he might have been inspired by one John G. Trump, an associate of Van De Graff, who worked on an electrostatic generator that would be more effecient than electromagnetic generators.

Was it caused by hydrogen? Probably not http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hindenburg_(airship)

Too bad you didn't actually read the article.

Also, a set of modern http://www.sas.org/tcs/weeklyIssues/2004-12-17/pro ject1/index.html experiments that recreates the fabric and coating materials contradicts the "flammable fabric" theory. These experiments conclude that it would have taken about 40 hours for the Hindenburg to have burned if the fire had been driven by a fabric fire. These experiments, as well as other industrial tests of the coating materials, conclude that the covering materials were combustible but nonflammable. Two additional scientific papers http://spot.colorado.edu/~dziadeck/zf/LZ129fire.ht m also strongly reject the "flammable fabric theory".

there is a small but significant subset of environmentalists that literally wouldn't be happy until humans are extinct.

Maybe not such a small segment - andd they may not be willing to wait for ordinary Malthusan consequenses to get rid of people.

Here's a recent article about Dr. Eric R. Pianka, University of Texas evolutionary ecologist and lizard expert who the Texas Academy of Science named as the 2006 Distinguished Texas Scientist for 2006: http://www.sas.org/tcs/weeklyIssues_2006/2006-04-0 7/feature1p/index.html

"a few hundred members of the Texas Academy of Science rose to their feet and gave a standing ovation to a speech [by Dr.Pianka] that enthusiastically advocated the elimination of 90 percent of Earth's population by airborne Ebola."

Interestingly, the article exposing Pianka's genocidal ambitions was written by Forrest M. Mims III, the famous electronics education author, who apparently now is Chairman of the Environmental Science Section of the Texas Academy of Science and editor of The Citizen Scientist site of the Society for Amateur Scientists.

This article is a surprise only to those deluded enough to believe that environmentalists are about "less pollution" and the like. What they're about is a blind, raging hatred of humanity - everything humans do, and everything humans need to survive. Check every single story you read about environmentalists and that is the sole premise that fits every one. Try it, you'll find it clarifying.

What would they like to do about it? One, described here http://www.sas.org/tcs/weeklyIssues_2006/2006-04-0 7/feature1p/index.html would like to see the human race destroyed by an airborne variant of Ebola. He is far from alone.

http://www.sas.org/tcs/weeklyIssues_2006/2006-04-0 7/feature1p/index.html Recently citizen scientist Forrest Mims told me about a speech he heard at the Texas Academy of Science during which the speaker, a world-renowned ecologist, advocated for the extermination of 90 percent of the human species in a most horrible and painful manner. Apparently at the speaker's direction, the speech was not video taped by the Academy and so Forrest's may be the only record of what was said. Forrest's account of what he witnessed chilled my soul. Astonishingly, Forrest reports that many of the Academy members present gave the speaker a standing ovation. To date, the Academy has not moved to sanction the speaker or distance itself from the speaker's remarks.

Keep this article far FAR away from this guy!!!

It's too bad AIDS doesn't kill people faster, and that the ebola virus isn't airborne

You are deliberately misquoting Dr. Pianka, which is LYING. You take his words out of context and invent meanings to say he's a monster. You're a LIAR, and I really hate you. Yes, I hate you. I don't think I've written that about anybody on Slashdot before, even the guy that I've annoyed repeatedly here for about two years.

Why don't read what he says on his own damned web site:

"I do not bear any ill will toward humanity. However, I am convinced that the world WOULD clearly be much better off without so many of us."

"What nobody wants to hear, but everyone needs to know"

What more do you need than that? It's right there for you in black and white and you can choose to pretend that what he's not advocating is genocide, but he just told you that EXACTLY that is what he advocates. He lays out the problem of excess humanity just as much as Hitler laid out the problem of too many Jews, or, if you buy into the left wing argument, Bush lays out the problem that there are too many Islamic radicals.

This so called Dr. IS a monster. He's no different from Hitler or Pol Pot or Stalin and you are just a stupid sap that falls for it, because instead of Christian Culture or traditional Khmer culture, or the Soviet Worker, its the environment that must be slaughtered for. He and others of his ilk are laying the groundwork for the worst and most unimaginable genocide ever conceived, killing people solely for the sake of saving other species on the planet.

Furthermore, there are witnesses to what this so called salamander loving quack said at this speech:

Speech

And, if his speech was so innocent, as you claim, then, why did this Nazi of yours demand that video cameras be TURNED OFF.

Something curious occurred a minute before Pianka began speaking. An official of the Academy approached a video camera operator at the front of the auditorium and engaged him in animated conversation. The camera operator did not look pleased as he pointed the lens of the big camera to the ceiling and slowly walked away.

Pianka hammered his point home by exclaiming, "We're no better than bacteria!"
He warned that quick steps must be taken to restore the planet before it's too late.

And here's the doctor's thesis watered down, ala Mein Kampf.

Your doctor, and other "humanity is the problem" advocates such as yourself, are no different than the Germans running around saying, "geez, there is this jewish problem, what should we do?". And you can talk as much as you want about sustainability and coexistence and changes in standards in living, but I know and you know that in your heart of hearts, you and the good doctor secretly cheer every earthquake, hurricane, and yes, are actually praying that the bird flu mutates into a pathogen. Well, except for your doctor, because he doesn't think it is good enough that ONLY 100 million people might be killed from it.

You know, I can just make stuff up too. How about a citation from this "scientist"?

After praising the Ebola virus for its efficiency at killing, Pianka paused, leaned over the lectern, looked at us and carefully said, "We've got airborne 90 percent mortality in humans. Killing humans. Think about that."

Stork replied to:

Lies. He's not researching the viruses. Eric Pianka is an expert on small invertibrates such as salamanders, and in many ways is the father of modern ecology.

Read it and weep

You're a dirty liar, and you have personally charged the atmosphere. YOU are the problem, YOU are encouraging death, YOU are encouraging terrorism, YOU are advocating the death of innocent people, YOU are the person telling moral people like me to kill themselves, YOU make me sick.

I wasn't the one that said "Humans are no better than bacteria." That would be your esteemed Doctor Pianka. I wasn't the one that said that e-bola should be unleashed to thin out the human populace for the good of the planet. That would be your esteemed Doctor Pianka. All I said was that, if you are advocating mass extermination of the human race, for the good of Dr. Pianka's salamanders, you ought to start by killing yourself first. Trust me, we'll go right after you!

Citation: http://sas.org/tcs/weeklyIssues_2006/2006-04-07/fe ature1p/

Not defending the absurd generalizations. Just providing some context.

Contrary to popular belief, most of the crew and passengers survived. Of a total of 36 passengers and 61 crew, 13 passengers and 22 crew died. Also killed was one member of the ground crew, Navy Linesman Allen Hagaman. Most deaths did not arise from the fire, but were suffered by those who leapt from the burning ship. (The lighter-than-air fire burned overhead.) Those passengers who rode the ship on its gentle descent to the ground escaped unharmed.

Can you really call longitudinal waves coherent

Since you can't amplify atoms, you really can't get a sonic laser

the entire science of interferometry

or even monochromatic

"laser" is one of those fancy new buzzwords

Shawn run SAS http://www.sas.org/

Steve

You know, you can purchase every Amateur Scientist column ever on CDROM now? And don't forget some of my favorites from the Amateur Scientist column: a homemade atom smasher (a 300keV electrostatic linear accelerator), a homebuilt cyclotron (lacking plans), all manner of cloud and bubble chambers for particle detection, a gel electrophoresis setup, a CuBr pulsed laser, a 100kW-1MW pulsed Nitrogen laser, etc. The list goes on and on. Shawn Carlson, where are you now?

Also, it can be hard to obtain (search for "bona fide institution" in this http://www.cs.rochester.edu/users/faculty/nelson/c esium/cesium_faq.htmlpage!

As a poor-person's alternative, try an alloy of
22% Sodium 78% Potassium (by weight)
http://www.sigmaaldrich.com/Brands/Fine_Chemicals/ Product_Focus/Suparna/Sodium_Potassium_Alloy.html this alloy is liquid down to -12C

If you have the inclination
(THIS IS DANGEROUS!),
you could probably make it at home by electrolysis from the hydroxides
(YOU COULD HURT YOURSELF OR SOMEONE ELSE VERY BADLY!)
http://www.sas.org/E-Bulletin/2001-10-05/chem/colu mn.html
(THIS IS DANGEROUS!)

The best way to conserve helium would be to use it airships. While the cost of helium is not high anymore compared to the overall cost of an airship, it costs enough that airship operators do what they can to retain it. Compare that to the other uses helium is put to, such as pressurizing rocket fuel tanks, or for welding. Most every other use wastes the stuff instantly into the atmosphere.

It is not just cost that is involved. An airship is in delicate balance between lift and weight. If it loses even one kilogram of lift, that kilogram of excess weight will drag it down constantly. Airship operators are motivated to keep lift and weight _exactly_ in balance. With hydrogen this was done by venting gas as fuel was burnt--this strikes me as sloppy and wasteful. Since that was unthinkable back when helium cost relatively a whole lot, American airship operators figured out ways to avoid venting it, and to avoid it getting contaminated or leaking out, and to recycle contaminated gas rather than throw it away.

Your idea that hydrogen is acceptably safe is way off base. I have replied at length on this topic elsewhere. It is true that if we didn't have helium I would rather we had hydrogen airships than none at all, but people would be _justifiably_ worried about them. By long experience accumulated with more than their share of good luck in the early days, Zeppelin company people and the German military folks they trained learned to _usually_ prevent hydrogen fires. But when their precautions failed, the destruction was rapid and spectacular--and devastating. Don't underrate it. Hindenburg had 15 tonnes of hydrogen in its hull, but that released energy equivalent to the burning of 50 tonnes of gasoline--which is about comparable to the energy released by 500 tonnes of TNT! (Explosives are not as power-packed as fuels are, they just release what they have more rapidly.) Hindenburg did not explode, but it burned all that hydrogen up in under a minute. The rate of spread of fire from one hydrogen cell to another deserves to be called "explosive" though I do avoid the term since it has only poetic accuracy. (Had Hindenburg's hydrogen been optimally mixed with enough oxygen to burn it all instantly, the resulting explosion would probably have leveled Lakehurst Naval Air Station.)

The skin by contrast--even if it were "rocket fuel," it only massed 5 tonnes. It hardly seems likely that it could match even the heat release of 5 tonnes of diesel fuel, let alone 50.

The people who claim that the skin was "explosive," or self-igniting, or even severely flammible, are irresponsible at best and at this point they ought to know they were wrong, and if they persist they are lying. An Internet friend of mine, William Appleby, went to the trouble of replicating the formula for Hindenburg's skin, as well as several variations on the theme including one that used a much more flammible dope than Zeppelin actually used on their late model airships (because it used to be used on older ones and someone might muddy the waters by claiming the Hindenburg used it, so he checked that varient too). What he found was that it took most of a minute for that fabric, ignited by a candle flame, to burn a distance of one foot. At the rate that skin burned, it would take _hours_ to burn the 245 meter length of the great airship, which actually was in flames stem to stern before it hit the ground just seconds after flames were first observed. The skin was clearly of no significance whatsoever in the disaster; it could have been pure asbestos and the outcome would have been much the same.

Link here!

Or here it is; fix the space Slashdot inserts for reasons that elude me:
http://www.sas.org/tcs/weeklyIssues/2004-12-1 7/pro ject1/index.html

Only if the skin _sparked_ the fire could it be said to be a significant factor, but there is zero evidence the fire started anywhere on the skin. Nor does it have the bi

Rather than pointlessly and repetitively correct your errors in the incorrect naming of the company and spelling of the airship's name, and so on, I'll just point to where the real point of contention (fabric vs hydrogen flammability) has already been dealt with:

The outer cover fabric was not treated as you seem to think it was. There were separate coats of clear dope, dope with powdered aluminum pigment, and dope with powdered iron oxide pigment. The coats dried separately. The two powders are not mixed. They are separated from each other. They are separately embedded in dope matrix. There is no "rocket fuel" mixture. When ignited, such a composite burns at less than 1 cm/s. That is not very fast.

Actual experiment, not supposition

The major flaw of the design was far from the fabric. The major flaw of the design was the highly flammable lifting gas.

I don't know what "real" experts you are talking about, but I can assure you that the combined weight of airship historians and technical experts, when this matter was hashed out on the airship mailing list at length, comes down in their considered opinion heavily on the side I and have represented.

Source?

Sorry I didn't have access to the links at the time. I vividly remember the months of discussion on the airship mailing list, in which all aspects of the Hindenburg disaster were exhaustively thrashed out, and all the experts concluded the revisionist theory was bunk.

Debunking exaggerated flammability claims

The revisonist theory requires the covering material to have burned at a rate of 600 cm per second. Actual tests showed the true rate of burning is at least 1000 times slower.

Lots of good links

can you back this urban legend thing up with some links?

Yes. Sorry I didn't have access to the links at the time. I vividly remember the months of discussion on the airship mailing list, in which all aspects of the Hindenburg disaster were exhaustively trashed out, and all the experts concluded the revisionist theory was bunk.

Debunking exaggerated flammability claims

The revisonist theory requires the covering material to have burned at a rate of 600 cm per second. Actual tests showed the true rate of burning is at least 1000 times slower.

Lots of good links

For you and the "Scientific American archive" poster suggesting the book of SA readings "Light and its uses..." here's another alternative to Paul's product: This CD set (a CD of ALL Scientific American's "The Amateur Scientist" columns and more, and another CD of science-related programs I haven't even looked at yet), I just got my copy in the mail:

http://www.brightscience.com/AmSciIndividual.html

Okay, the 1920's were all about amateur telescope making, which is a Good Thing, though some of that had no meat, just pics and descriptions of various readers' telescopes. But a lot of this is DEEP science and the technology to make scientific instruments. The amateur diffraction-grating-making device is just amazing. If you're really interested in making your own lasers, holograms, or other gee-whiz scientific stuff, The Amateur Scientist archive is a gotta-have, whether it's this CD or access to the actual printed magazines, though the CD has lots of extra/addon/related articles as well. All the articles are HTML and text-searchable, though I've noticed several misspellings.

Unfortunately, Scientific American is at a lower level than it used to be as far as good hard-hitting content. It looks like it's filling the "Omni Magazine" void. Where can one go thesedays to get a good Hard Science fix? FWIW, http://www.sas.org/ looks interesting.

It's a truncated taylor series expansion. At home I have a copy of the paper that Einstein published. Anyway, here is the first link that poped up on Google showing this. The point is, if v is a significant fraction of c, then you cannot neglect the higher order terms.

I guess not the rockets themselves, just the engines.

1
2

And I'm sure Google has even more info on it. I haven't seen anything new on it, so I have no idea what has happened since then. I haven't seen any new complaints, but I also haven't seen anything to indicate people being happy it didn't pass, so...

<a href="http://www.space.com/missionlaunches/launche s/rocketry_future_000823.html">this</a> and <a href="http://www.sas.org/E-Bulletin/2003-02-28/fea tures/body.html">that</a>

"His editorial exploits have included an assignment from the National Enquirer to evaluate the feasibility of eavesdropping on Howard Hughes by laser (it was possible, but Forrest declined to take part) and getting dropped by Scientific American as their 'The Amateur Scientist' columnist because he admitted to the magazine's editors that he was a born-again Christian."

The Forrest Mims Engineer's Notebook

I just want to point out that Mr. Mims wasn't dropped from "Scientific American" exactly because he is a born-again Christian. He was dropped because he is a Creationist. "Scientific American" is just one of the many bigoted publications that refuses to deal reasonably with the subject of Creationism. As a consequence of their firing Mr. Mims, I have refused to buy "Scientific American" for the last several years.

Another blurb on Forrest Mims from another site: ISCID: Forrest M. Mims III

Its becoming a world wide problem for amateur scientists.
(Society Amateur Scientists have a letter writing campaign about it.

Steve

First of all I would reccomend that you not do any home experiments unless:
a.) you are fully aware of the hazards/risks involved and know how to minimize them.
or
b.) the experiments you perform are not hazardous.

Check up on your laboratory safety at The Laboratory Safety Institute or take an Online Safety Course or visit OSHA's site. Final note on safety---> It's always fun until someone gets hurt!!!

I assume that you still want to do chemistry experiments. Choose choice b. There are many experiments that you can do that are not hazardous to humans. e. g. mix Baking Soda an Vinegar to produce carbon dioxide.

Keeping a laboratory book is essential in science laboratory and highly reccommended for amature experementation. This typically includes information such as Introduction/Purpose(what do you expect to occur)...Experimental Method(how you will do the experiment, EXACTLY)....Experimental Results...Disscussion of Experimental Results/Conclusion...Reference information.

Basically as far as the laboratory manual is concerned, your experiments should be repeatable by someone else. An excellent book on the subject is : H. M. Kanare, Writing the Laboratory Notebook, American Chemical Society, Washington, D. C., 1985; ASIN: 0841209065.

As far as studying general chemistry goes; I would recommend you get a handle on fundamental chemical laws, basic naming of chemical compounds, understand the polyatomic ions, stoichiometry (e.g. 2 moles of hydrogen react with one mole of oxygen to produce 1 mole of water), Acid-Base Reactions, Oxidation-Reduction Reactions, gas laws and thermochemistry.

These are the things that you should master in the first course of general inorganic chemistry.

As far as amateur science is concerned the Society for Amature Scientists is excellent.

I think chemistry as an amature science is greatly underrepresented. As far as chemistry sets are concerned they are generally geared toward children and therefore may not be much fun for an adult. If you study chemistry seriously, and are interested, you can develop you own experiments. As far as chemicals and glassware are concened; it's probably better to get them at a yard sale or auction site. This is because they are cheaper. If you don't know exactly what chemical you need it is not recommended that you buy any though. Some chemicals available on ebay are extremely hazardous.

For further information I would recommend the very excellent Jounal of Chemical Education.

Think-Learn-Think-Experiment-Think-Learn have fun and be careful!!!

In the very back of the September 2000 issue of Scientific American there is an article Using a Kite as an Experimental Platform, which provides plans for a 'Picavet Suspension' system that you can use to keep your equipment (camera) level in flight, historical references, a discussion of kite types/recommended uses, and references.

By the way, Shawn Carlson, the guy that wrote that article, is the Founder and Executive Director of the Society for Amateur Scientists. Seems like the type of organization slashdotters would enjoy.

Hoo-rah for the day of the citizen scientist! Hoo-ray for the impending American Renaissance.

Assuming that the identifying factor in the ink really was an amplified portion of someone's DNA, it wouldn't be hard to replicate simply by doing PCR on all the notable strands in the broth. If there's enough for some Olympic "official" to wave a wand over and detect, there's enough to replicate. PCR is not hard - the July 2000 issue of Scientific American has a method by which you can perform it at home with a couple hundred dollars worth of easily-obtained equipment (which they will sell you at cost). If it's worth going to the trouble of sewing in labels to counterfeit this junk clothing, it'll be just as worth brewing up a big batch of ink to spray on (in fact it'll probably be cheaper).
Further assuming they're not full of horse manure with this announcement, why would they use human DNA? Symbolic value? Any sort of plant or animal DNA would have worked, and there are probably other kinds better suited to this sort of application - but it makes a better, more mystically valid-seeming announcement if it's a human athlete.
I suspect they're using some typical glow-in-the-dark chemical ink of the sort that's been in use for at least a decade, and the DNA nonsense is just misdirection. I don't believe the Olympic brownshirts running after street vendors would really have the equipment or clue to test for a particular sequence of human DNA, though they could test for the presence of any DNA (as many other not particularly remarkable chemicals). The existing special inks would probably be harder to replicate, ironically enough, because that's one of their specific design goals.
This is trendy, high-tech seeming hype. Fortunately for the Olympic committee, this clothing and paraphrenalia is destined to have it's valuelessness exposed in a few months anyway, so their "security" measures (including this obfuscation) don't have to hold up for very long anyway.
Personally I'll just watch the Special Olympics, the last bastion of what the modern Olympics were supposed to stand for before T-shirts and $#@$!ing pins took over...

I think that with the recent news of NASA working to discourage investment in private RLV ventures not connected to the traditional MIC old boy network (see http://www.sas.org for more information), they shouldn't complain if their own budget gets cut. I believe it's just karma, and perhaps a form of karma we need.

BTW, Rob, when are you going to cover the Roton hover tests here?