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Silly String Goes to War Against IEDs
Luban Doyle writes "In an age of multimillion-dollar high-tech weapons systems, sometimes it's the simplest ideas that can save lives. Which is why a New Jersey mother is organizing a drive to send cans of Silly String to Iraq.
American troops use the stuff to detect trip wires around bombs, as Marcelle Shriver learned from her son, a soldier in Iraq."
New slogan? "Iraq: It's a Party Over There!"
They're also using bees. (Seriously). Silly string and bees.
Why isn't the government providing the tools the military needs.
Additionally there should be a significant discount if they make a nice large contract
That's a really ingenious use of Silly String. I just hope it continues to work.
Its for the war on iraq!!
If they don't accept it they're TERRORISTS!
:x
biopowered.co.uk - catalytically cracking triglycerides for home automotive use since 2008. Just say no to big oil!
WTOWA? IDK.
This guy's the limit!
"IED-like device" supposedly found near Cincinnati
"MIT betrayed all of its basic principles."
OK call me overly sensitive, I usually am against Political Correctness, but this is a serious issue. DEADLY serious.
I'm glad this low tech method of booby trap detection is being used. My nit however is in leading the article with the "It's Funny, Laugh" icon.
There is a humorous element in using a humorously named children's toy for sure, but I still chafe at the juxtaposition of the Monty Python foot with something that is in actuality so far removed from humor.
Letter To Iran
Improvised Explosive Device :)
You have to love email forwards disguised as news articles.
This has been floating around for years -- I first saw it as a piece promoting British Special Forces ingenuity. Our very own Bruce Schneier mentioned it (and the suppressed Cockeyed piece) around this time last year.
Military also uses VBIED a lot - that's Vehicle Borne Improvised Explosive Device.
No, I'm not kidding.
The simple truth is that interstellar distances will not fit into the human imagination
- Douglas Adams
This was mildly interesting when it was reported about the SAS ages ago.
It's like Napalm in a can! "I love the smell of Silly String in the morning!" Surfs Up!
In fact, I'm going to teach that to our guys tonight.
Who'd've thunk I'd pick up a tactical tip from Slashdot?
DG
Want to learn about race cars? Read my Book
Seriously, silly string can be used during skirmishes as well.....has anyone ever gotten an eye-full of that stuff? Hurts like hell....
Quite a bit of assembly required, actually....
Isn't this the 2nd time war and toys have crossed paths? IIRC Silly Putty was made by accident in WW2, attempting to make an explosion. While no explosive was made, the designers pressed it on a newspaper photo and went "but hey! Look what you can do with Hitler's face!"
Let's look for other toys with the word "silly" in them to see if they are usful in military applications. I'm betting now there's some research funds diverting towards it.
In the post Janet Jackson FCC gestapo tactics landscape, anchors on CNN are afraid to use the following terms:
boob
booby
boobies
tit
titties
fun bags
dirty pillows
natty-sags
I'm sure there are plenty more. This is the reason for the INAs we're hearing (Improvised Non-sensical Acronyms) such as "IEDs".
Slashdot still doesnâ(TM)t support Unicode after it was added to the HTML standard in 1997.
That's what I said! Booty traps!
John
"Silly String?"
Couldn't we at least change the name to Freedom String-In-A-Can?
If Nalgene water bottles are outlawed, only outlaws will have Nalgene water bottles.
We used to use a metal coat hanger.
Untie the hook part and strighten it up. Make a finger loop at the top and curve it slightly at the bottom. Hold in font of you when walking, you will notice when it contacts something trust me.
The use of silly string is hardly enviromentally friendly and I see that US forces did not learn of the even cheaper trick from the Brits. Perhaps you dont have metal coat hangers in the US who knows.
I still think tin upon tin of silly string will amount to lots of $$$ though.
Ibbo
Linux user #349545 (GNU/Linux)iD8DBQBAzWjX+MZAIjBWXGURAmflAKCntuBbuK
I'm sure they once called these "booby traps". What's the obsession with acronyms?
When's the last time you referred to memory as Double Data Rate Random Access Memory rather than DDR RAM? If you work with something every day, you tend to shorten things. You also define terms more specifically than general usage (RAM vs memory).
An IED is a booby trap consisting of a rigged Device containing a large amount of Explosives in a fairly jury-rigged fashion (i.e. Improvised). It's not uncommon to find multiple anti-tank mines stacked together or even unexploded bombs. When talking about risks and countermeasures, it pays to be specific. Just like you wouldn't refer to large artillery as a "gun" when describing it to someone else, because it is too imprecise without qualification. A "gun" could be anything from a pistol to a 155mm howitzer. This is the same reason Lawyers define a bunch of "useless" jargon and acronyms; They can put a precise meaning on it for their purposes. Now, the military does have a huge number of acronyms, and maybe more than are needed, but it is just as specialized an occupation as practicing law.
Now, IANAL and I did not RTFA or GP, but AFAICT, we are now a nation of acronyms, especially TLAs. If you don't like it you can STFU while I LMAO <JK>.
At least they're Very Apt Germane Improvised Nonsensical Acryonyms
which is totally what she said
"The military is reluctant to talk about the use of Silly String, saying that discussing specific tactics will tip off insurgents."
As a consultant a few years back I worked on a product called GIS which ~half of the clients (the naive ones I guess) pronounced "jizz", with the unfortunate consequence of me sometimes being referred to as the "jizz expert". Hard work maintaining a professional air at one of those meetings...
while [ 1 ]; do echo -n -e "\xe2\x95\xb$((($RANDOM&1)+1))"; done
Would that then make silly string an IIEDDD?
improvised improvised explosive device detection device
I'm glad to see something I have always considered to be completely useless and extremely annoying at the office come to such constructive use. Way to go American ingenuity!
Wait a moment, you'll hear the sonic boom...
Don't you mean Waveform Originating Oscillating Sub-Harmonics?
Except in military usage, it wouldn't be called "silly". (This, besides being pejorative and politically incorrect, might infringe upon trademark.)
Expect instead "long-chained nontoxic polycarbon semi-liquid fast drying compound."
Also, some of your information seems to be missing. Accounting forwarded the following rejection notice:
Please supply
Department
Cost Code
Category type
Expected use rates for prepaid asset scheduling
Routing number
Authorized sign-off official
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
Phew, that's a relief! I thought for a moment it meant "Visual Basic Improvised Explosive Device" -- one of those could be the end of us all!
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
After the whole Janet Jackson/FCC thing, mainstream media prefer IED.
I shall go and tell the indestructible man that someone plans to murder him.
Also, soldiers put condoms and rubber bands around their rifle muzzles to keep out sand.
That particular trick dates back to world war 2.They volunteered to serve the United States and to defend the country, a very honorable thing to do. However, their leader, the commander in chief aka the president, let them down. He led them astray believing that they were protecting american by getting rid of "WMD's" when the real reason they were sent to Iraq is to secure US oil interests in the middle east.
I got nothin'
And if the officers sent in a requisition, and someone pushed it through, I can see the headlines:
Pentagon spends millions on children's toys
Military awards no-bid contract for toys
Millions of cans of toys bought, unable to track
Military fails to provide tools to troops, uses toys instead
You are 100% right about the edge of irregulars being able to use whatever works. However, clearly our troops are just as smart and figured out how to improvise, and away go the cans of silly string. So it's being done voluntarily by people on the home front, so what, that just makes them wonderful patriots. What is with the statist notion that it is only okay if it goes through taxes and government procurement.
The biggest problem is that we have two generations of reporters that believe their job is to undermine the government, and that that is an example of freedom of the press.
Take the body armor issue... Our troops have some older body armor, and there is a dispute as to which ones to replace. If the government replaced EVERYTHING, we'd be screaming about waste from throwing out our perfectly good 2 year old body armor that we spent billions on. In addition, the guys in the cities don't want the bulkier armor, and were refusing to wear it, so the Pentagon, sick of the bad PR, REQUIRED the use, even for units that didn't want it.
The anti-government press goes beyond reporting problems so that they can be fixed, and tries to play gotcha with our government. So government officials play CYA, instead of doing the right thing. It's a HORRIBLE mess, and it will take more than an emergency requisition of silly string to fix it.
I thought IED was some kind of contraceptive.
Avoid Missing Ball for High Score
The war isn't about cheap oil. The war in Iraq is about (among other things) access to oil. It's contradictory to the interests of western oil companies for oil to be cheap.
...was the scene in Shelob's Lair from the LOTR movies. Seriously.
I wonder, could we make something akin to "Silly String" that could fire huge globs of a gooey, rubbery, net-like substance that could be used to immobilize people?
I figure, if anybody out there knows, or has tried this, they're probably on Slashdot...
Or maybe because the government uses acronyms for everything and its quicker to say "IED" than "Improvised Explosive Device".
Back into your hole, now...
It should be noted that protection of foreign economic interests of the United States is a valid, publicly acknowledged function of the US Armed Forces. Defending US citizens from attack is not their only function.
I am a geek attorney, but not your geek attorney unless you've already retained me. This is not legal advice.
OK, so someone modded me as troll. I am not trying to troll - I'm just pointing out that if you are going to join the military, you should at least have some kind of realistic idea as to what you are signing up for. If someone signed up because they wanted to be in a war, that's fine. That's what they got.
I'm not saying I wouldn't be willing to volunteer to join the military under the right circumstances. If I was around during WW II, I probably would have enlisted because the war was a just cause and the leadership (at least most of the leadership) wanted to really win the war. That isn't what is happening in Iraq. The US doesn't have a strategy to win the war and the smartest people around aren't sure how to even go about winning the war.
So, unfortunately, our soldiers are just there to be targets for the insurgents. I don't see how that benefits anyone. The only question is, like in vietnam, how long are we going to stay there until we finally admit that we can't win and we leave and let whatever happens happen.
Avoid Missing Ball for High Score
Try keeping a straight face during a DCMAO conference. More than one person has stumbled over "dick-mayo".
Marcelle Shriver said that since the string comes in an aerosol can, it is considered a hazardous material, meaning the Postal Service will not ship it by air. But a private pilot who heard about her campaign has agreed to fly the cans to Kuwait _ most likely in January _ where they will then be taken to Iraq.
Que Deus te de em dobro o que me desejas
[May God give you double that which you wish for me]
Using every day objects and the sort is pretty commonplace on the battlefield. Back during the Napoleanic war soldiers used to piss down the barrels of their guns to clean them out. In World war I, allied soldiers brought bathtubs with them into the trenches, and would launch them with catapults into the enemy trenches. The Germans and Turks had developed completely different bathtubs at the time, and were terrified of the Allied tubs. This always led to a horrendous panic in the German trenches, which would almost always be followed by a push across no mans land by the allies. It's said that the Dardanelles could have been taken, had Churchill been provided with adequate bathtubs. During World War II allied soldiers brought white makeup along with them so if they ever got caught they'd paint themselves up like mimes. When the Germans tried to question them and saw the white makeup they just let them go, knowing that there'd be absolutely no way they could get a mime to talk. Then during the Korean war soldiers made good use of old coffee grounds. Since the North Koreans knew soldiers always drank a lot of coffee, if they found old coffee grounds they assumed there was a base near by and retreat. In the first Iraq war American soldiers used to bring soccer balls along with them. At the outbreak of the war almost all of Iraq's soccer balls were destroyed in a freak smoke stack toppeling. When ever the Americans got in a serious fire fight, they'd just lob their soccer ball into the frey and all the enemy soldiers would just stop and try to get it, which usually ended quite badly for the enemy. Unfortunatley Iraq was able to build up a tremendous stock pile of soccer balls since the first war, so the strategy doesn't work any more.
It's quite remarkible how such common things can prove to be so useful. I think it's overall a great testimant to human ingenuity in time of war.
I don't own a snook, and if I did I wouldn't leave it cocked.
A year ago (November 2005) there was a flurry of military silly string articles (LifeHacker, Schneier, others) all leading back to a cockeyed.com article, which quoted a soldier saying they used it for locating tripwires. The site didn't leave the content up for long, but it's preserved at the Internet Archive.
Bet your wife is not too happy about that...
Actually the pope has made multiple statements opposing the war in Iraq, and has been generally a voice for peace in recent history. In fact, many Catholic organizations, such as the Catholic Workers have actively opposed US wars.
It was professional killers that created the country that allows you to say stupid stuff. So don't get to high brow, slick.
And it doesn't matter what country tyour in, that holds true.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
While I debate the reasoning you put forth here (pretty much the whole world's intelligence thought that he had WMD's hidden or was making them)....securing oil interests is NOT the worst thing in the world.
I was listening to a recent George Carlin rant....about being scared at what would happen if the electricity suddenly went out. Never mind the darkness...just what about all the prisons opening up...and all those guys coming out looking for 'entertainment'....etc. I can't find a good link to it now, but, it was recently broadcast on HBO. It sure gave me a nightmare scenario as to what would happen if our energy in the US were to be cut off. Talk about a societal meltdown....
Sure...I know it sounds bad about fighting wars for oil, etc....but, if they didn't and the oil gets cut off, think real hard about what state your life would go to then.
Food for thought....
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
Playtex(tm)
No. Just because many people and their nations have done so since the dawn of civilization does not make it a valid move (bandwagon.)
The "protection" of economic interests fuel and even are the underlying causes for a great many wars and covert acts all over the world (gaining a lock on mutually exclusive resources.)
Allowing nations to perceive it as a VALID means to their ends will allow them to continue excusing it and perpetuating such actions in the world. (Before you say "welcome to the real world," think about the same reasoning on a smaller local scale in a "civilized" community vs an "uncivilized" community.)
Iraq is about Oil Dollars and finally Americans are figuring that out (well, just the oil part.) Its a complete failure because we are not getting the oil and we are losing oil dollars. We are keeping the large war machine employed; however, its at the gamble of destroying the economy. Four large military bases in Iraq will probably not secure economic interests either (remember, the same people wrote the plan in the 90s-- the few experts I've met said they knew this underlying stuff was wrong decades ago. Wrong for long term empire and wrong ethically.)
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It benefits alot of folks. Defense contractors, the banking/investment industry, oil companies, independent civilian contractors (logistics, procurement, transportation, etc..)
Ita erat quando hic adveni.
I hope you aren't offended by my asking, but defend [civil rights] against whom? Unless you are old enough to have served in WW II, no one has bothered to attack the US in a serious way. And by serious, I mean take over our country by force. Terrorist attacks are not an attempt to take over our country by force.
If you really want to protect people's rights, perhaps you should have become a lawyer for the ACLU or the EFF.
I might be willing to fight to preserve american freedoms, but it is another thing entirely to die in Somalia in an attempt to distribute food aid or in Iraq for reasons that are not clear to me.
In my opinion, terrorism is not that big of a threat to the survival of our country. I think it is mostly a pain in the ass for the average person (i.e. TSA security) and a tragedy for those directly affected. I think that the folks who took down the fourth plane were heroes. But more importantly, they proved that such an attack was a one-shot deal. Terrorists might be able to crash an airplane or blow up an airplane, but no group of americans will ever let them fly the airplane again.
Terrorism may be done for a variety of reasons. Plain hatred. Revenge. To try to get attention for a cause. Sure, we need to fight terrorism, but we need to do it intelligently.
Some people say we are in Iraq to create democracy in the Islamic middle east. This is, in my opinion, about as futile as trying to teach a pig to sing.
Some people say we are there to get oil. Since oil production is actually down from where it was to begin with, I think that has not panned out. If we wanted more oil production in Iraq, that could have been achieved by simply lifting sanctions on the Iraqi regieme in exchange for a deal to send oil companies there to improve the infrastructure for oil production. Also, doing this would have helped the average Iraqi a lot more than invading iraq.
Some people think we are there because the regieme had weapons of mass destruction. The inspectors in Iraq were saying that was not the case well before the war started.
Some people think we are there because of a personal vendetta that Bush II had against Sadaam Hussein for trying to assasinate Bush I. This argument actually has some merit because Bush II cited it as a reason for the war. In my opinion, this is a very shabby reason to take a nation to war even if the assassination had succeeded.
Some people think we are there simply so that lucrative contracts can be given to cronies of the administration. While this argument may actually have some merit, it is not generally cited as a reason for the war by opponents to the war because people will think that anyone who says this is a "hater" and "conspiracy theorist". Note that name calling is not a serious refutation of an argument.
I'm totally willing to listen to other explanations.
Avoid Missing Ball for High Score
A WMD must be, by defintion, capable of mass destruction. The chemical agents Iraq produced had a limited "shelf life" - about 5 years. Anything left over from before 1991 was past its sell-by date by 1996.
The Iraq Survey Group concluded: "While a small number of old, abandoned chemical munitions have been discovered, ISG judges that Iraq unilaterally destroyed its undeclared chemical weapons stockpile in 1991. There are no credible indications that Baghdad resumed production of chemical munitions thereafter, a policy ISG attributes to Baghdad's desire to see sanctions lifted, or rendered ineffectual, or its fear of force against it should WMD be discovered."
What Iraq had, had the same relation to WMD as the gooey melted mess in the back of my fridge has to a head of lettuce.
BS. The invasion is a failure. We have not achieved any of the (constantly changing) goals cited by the administration. We did not stop or harm Al Qaeda by invading Iraq, in fact we've helped them, giving them great recruiting motivation. We didn't eliminate a threat posed by Saddam Hussein to other nations, because there wasn't one.
As for the idea of creating a stable democracy in Iraq via an invasion, that was doomed from the start. Like trying to scuplt a bust of Pallas with machine-gun fire, it's simply the wrong technique for the job. And redoubling your efforts only makes more of a mess, and makes it unlikely that there's enough left to work with if you did stop and try to do it right.
That the majority of Americans are finally realizing that they've been had is not the reason these goals can't be achived; the reason that the majority of Americans are realizing that they've been had is because these goals can't be achived.
The only nations capable of waging effective war against the U.S. are the nuclear powers. (Neither Al Qaeda, not the insurgents in Iraq, are a "nation", and our conflict with them is not a "war", not a conflict between states or putative states.)
Terrorist groups can hurt us, sure, especially with the possibility of one of them getting a WMD, but no military victory is going to change the motivation of a terroist group.
In September of 2001, everyone knew that we had the world's most powerful military. It didn't help.
Their ranks surge with every innocent killed by Americans. Hell, their ranks surge with every insurgent killed by Americans, since in the eyes of many the insurgents are valiently and rightously defending their home against brutal invaders.
You can't put out a fire by pouring gasoline on it; and when gasoline fails as a fire extinguisher, it is not smart to say, "Oh, we obviously didn't use enough! Pour on more, that's sure to do the trick!"
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You cannot wash away blood with blood