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NYC Wants to Ban Geiger Counters
Ellis D. Tripp noted a village voice article about attempts in NYC to pass a law requiring permits for air monitoring devices including apparently geiger counters. I'm sure everyone will feel much safer not knowing anything.
The title is very misleading, its actual a response to a possible panic caused by people using bad detectors. Imagine if hundreds of people buy shitty detectors that can be tripped by high NOX counts(A car emission). Suddenly on a hot afternoon during rush hour, 100+ counters register a large nuclear presence. Thats a big worry.
So basically, -1 troll/offtopic is really slashdots way of saying "I hate that you thought of something before me."
I bet most New Yorkers don't know how to run a Geiger counter (or possibly even what one is).
All the same, slaves were prevented from learning how to read, Jews in the death camps were not given any information about the war, their future, and today, people we want to strip of power are kept in the dark.
Check my history, I'm not a conspiracy theorist, but I really think that those in power (ALL of them, not just the Bushies) have gotten to the point of realizing that the American populace have become dumb sheep. Through fear, all is possible for them.
Refuse, resist.
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Ha. Given the lawmakers usual understanding of things technological..... Anyone reckon that they will accidently ban Smoke Dectectors, Carbon Monoxide Alarms, Butane Gas Dectectors ?
http://davesboat.blogspot.com/
This is ancient early 90s news but Brooklyn has been the site of nuclear waste storage and it concerns many citizens. There is a warehouse there called Radiac Research Corporation that has about enough nuclear material for one atom bomb, although I'm sure it's not refined to that. Citizen watch groups have formed that will walk around the streets with Geiger counters. You will find some shock reporting that has somethings factual and a lot of things anecdotal evidence. If you do watch those videos, ironically pay attention to the state employed inspector on the boat. Hard numbers and comparisons with other major cities are a must to make any effect in this kind of reporting. Still, I would be upset if stuff like this dried up. I think it's important so that the community at least feels like it has an independent non-interested voice--I would risk false alarms for that any day.
I've also heard from other sources that New York City offers permits for polluting which isn't so wrong except that some of these are ridiculous. A lot of the rivers and streams to this day still are being polluted but since the companies are 'grandfathered' into pollution control, they can keep doing it. Do you ever think they're going to clean that up? I hardly think so.
So they want to avoid false alarms that could cause a mass panic. But like a lot of things there is a trade off and the trade off is the ability to independently verify that the air quality or radiation levels are indeed safe. If I were a citizen living there, losing the latter in and of itself would cause me panic. Poor means you're at risk of being ignored & treated like you don't matter and I don't think New York City (especially historically) is any different from the rest of the world.
My work here is dung.
From TFA, the rationale is because they're worried that a bunch of shoddy devices will throw tons of false positives, and cause havok amongst emergency responders who would have to run around town constantly trying to weed out false leads.
Frankly, it's crap. I seriously doubt as many people as they're representing are going to be buying these things; the vast majority will be installing them indoors, where they'll be lucky to detect ANYTHING, and the shoddy ones will tend to go off for crap that would set off your smoke alarm...I used to have a CO detector near my kitchen...It's somewhere in my backyard now, after the 10th time it went off when I dumped some liquor in a skillet to deglaze it.
People may buy this stuff, but the vast majority won't, and the ones that do are almost MORE likely to view an alarm as a false positive than the police themselves. New Yorkers are tough bastards. They'll piss and moan, but they're not super-hazard conscious...You can't be, and live in the City all the time, because you're far more likely to be killed by a manhole or a cracked out subway driver than any terrorist.
ad logicam Claiming a proposition is false because it was presented as the conclusion of a fallacious argument.
The Russians mass produced personal gieger counters 6 months after the accident in Cherynobyl I bought one.
It saved my ass in the 90s when I took my Wife and Kids to Ruggle's Mine in Maine! Basically it's a mica mine but when were were hiking I told my kids not to touch the yellow chalk like rocks that some kid was using to write his name on in the caves. i took my gieger counter out and measured 350millirads. I told the kids parents that the rock was radioactive and they should take him to wash his hand and to change his clothes and get him in a tub. I believe the yellow rock was pitchblend.
heck.. I think a pocket gieger counter would come in handy.. why are they banning them? Is New York City's background radiation level higher than normal?
Seastead this.
Well, immediately, this sounds retarded. However, I can picture one benign reason for this.
We all saw what happened this month with Mass Effect. One idiot decides that it is equal to XXX porn without evver seeing it, and all sorts of people believe him and run with the story. Well, maybe they didn't believe him, but figured since he can be faulted for the mistake, they can run with it to scare people. I could see major "news" networks going nuts over a reading from some moron that wired his sensors wrong.
Is that any reason to excuse this law? No. Just saying I could see one possible reason. Since Journalists can't be trusted to fact check, an incorrect reading could cause a mass panic that would obviously be very problematic.
It seems that quite often, lawmakers listen (quite intently) to what government groups want the law to be. In this case, it is the city police who want this law. But the people don't benefit from it, just the police. The same thing holds for much of the Patriot Act; it is not a benefit for the people, but the FBI wanted it, and congress listened.
The biggest trouble isn't false alarms, terrorists, or corporate lobbying. The biggest trouble is that government listens to itself more that it listens to the people.
NYC actually has very strict gun laws... much stricter gun laws than the rest of the state of NY...
Jimmy Carter at Three Mile island!
You can't talk about Wikipedia's flaws on Wikipedia
It's New York...Your average New Yorker, on plugging in a Geiger counter that immediately redlined and then exploded would say, "Eh, I figyaed as much." They know it's hazardous to live there, they take a weird sort of pride in it. I moved from New York to Georgia in 2002, and people were way more freaked out about 9/11 in Georgia than they were in New York...The city still had that "burnt tire" smell, but otherwise things were back to normal.
Not to say there weren't some deep fricking scars, but you can't live there and be that high strung about environmental safety issues; the first day you come home, take off your white shirt and your white undershirt, and notice that, while they were the same color when you put them on, one of them is now a sort of stinky grey...You have to accept it and move on, or you will lose your fricking mind.
ad logicam Claiming a proposition is false because it was presented as the conclusion of a fallacious argument.
Only outlaws will have geiger counters!
I totally disagree with this law. The mere POSSESSION of a device like a Geiger counter or air quality tester is a misdemeanor. That is insane, and everyone should acknowledge this. BUT there is a real problem here, which is people buying inaccurate devices that they do not know how to operate. This is resulting in false positives which, when reported, police officials are obligated to investigate. At the very least this is a defense mechanism by the NYPD, because if something was reported and they didn't respond, if it turned out to be legitimate they would be held responsible.
My problem is why is the citizen always perceived as the enemy? Why are criminal punishments always deemed the solution? Here is my solution: Establish a citizen corps of air/radiation testers. Require a minimum set of standards for equipment and require some sort of proof that the operator knows how to operate the device and that the device functions properly. This may involve some sort of licensure. If you meet the requirements and become a member, you will have established the repute required to report a crisis to the proper authorities.
If you are not a member, you will still be allowed to own or operate these devices. However, if you detect a problem, you are obligated to report it to your closest deputy as defined above, who will verify and report it to the authorities if legitimate. You will not be punished for false positives because the purpose of the deputy is to filter these. However, if by your irresponsible actions you cause a panic, you will be held responsible, possibly criminally.
This engages the community, establishes a system of responsibility and gives a method to report problems. No one has to give up their equipment. It's almost like we live in a society, where people work together and laws aren't just made on the spot to ban stuff and create criminals out of regular people.
Scientists warned that the giant ball of garbage could someday return to Earth, but their concerns were dismissed as "depressing."
They do not directly. In typical usage, you will pull a very specific amount of air through a specific type of paper filter and then messure the counts. The counts can then be used to determine a Microcuries/ml of radioactivity in the air.
There are some concerns as to the accuracy. Is the air pump, filter, and counter calibrated and working correctly? Was background levels taken into consideration, what is the baseline in the area. Is there a temperature inversion happening which is causing a natural radon build up and will the person taking the readings know how to compensate for that? All of these will effect the accuracy. I see the problem of people not having a general understanding of contaminants and exactly what is involved in monitoring them and they could be easily mislead by potentially bogus results. Is that enough of a concern to ban people from taking their own readings? I don't think so.
Bad boys rape our young girls but Violet gives willingly.
Fire alarms can be triggered by steam from a shower. Should they require licensing too? People have actually died in their efforts to escape non-existent fires.
They should equip everyone with Joo Janta 200 Super-Chromatic Peril Sensitive Sunglasses while they're at it.
Web 2.0 == Giant Blogspam Circle Jerk
America has come so, so far from my childhood when Popular Electronics (the terrorist, mob unleashing scum) would run feature articles on building the latest geiger counter kit.
I understand the point, but surely you have some kind of standards organisation. If the police have to respond to these things, why not just lean on the standards organisation to create a standard and then say to everyone "If you are calling in with a complaint, is your device certified?" Why not ban non-certified devices? Why go after the people? Why not just go after the crap that people buy?
Curiosity was framed; ignorance killed the cat. -- Author unknown
They obviously have not heard of this initiative: http://mobile.slashdot.org/mobile/08/01/25/0514215.shtml
If Geiger counters are outlawed, then only outlaws will have Geiger counters.
BRB, need to find my tinfoil helmet.
Tin Foil ain't gonna cut it this time. You can borrow my lead helmet and matching vest.Linux Zealots: Smarter than Mac Zealots, but still zealots.
pitchblende is a murky dark colored rock that is a very high quality ore for many radioactive materials. dark. grey to black with some samples pitched to the purple or brown.
yellow radioactive rock is your usual uranium oxide, hydrated "yellowcake," a low concentration. but that's the production ore in north america and most of the world. in the 60s, you could buy a sample in a little plastic box at visitor centers like at the Oak Ridge Laboratories.
if this is supposed to be a new economy, how come they still want my old fashioned money?
I might as well restate my feeling that this is less a reaction to fears of false alarms, than it is an attempt to head off independent investigations, like those that undermined the NYC/EPA "party line" concerning air quality after the 9/11 attacks.
Remember "News for Nerds, Stuff that Matters"? Help make it a reality again! http://soylentnews.org
Guns? Legal? NYC?
Air rifles/Pistols (aka BB or Pellet guns) - totally illegal
Rifles/Shotguns? If they are not an Assault Weapon (anything over 5 rounds) - Go get fingerprinted, and then pay $300 every 3 years - and have to subit paperwork for each one you own or transfer
Pistols? Unless you are connected, forget about a carry permit. For a home/business permit? Apply (but make NO mistakes in your paperwork - our you will be denied) wait 9 months (although the law says they can't take more than 6) go for your interview, and still probably get denied. If you do get a permit, it's more expensive than the rifle/shotgun permit...
-- 73 de KG2V For the Children - RKBA! "You are what you do when it counts" - the Masso
"requiring permits for air monitoring devices
Customer in restaurant: This steak smells delicious.
Cop: You got a permit for that nose, mister?
Kevin Smith on Prince
They are like cockroaches, almost totally unafected by radiation ;-)
I owned one of those I picked up at an antique shop. They aren't geiger counters, the rely on ionization without the cascade amplification that happens inside of a geiger-mueller tube.
Look at the scale. You'd have to be inside a pile of pitchblend before the needle would move, and I doubt plutonium (an alpha emitter) would move the needle unless you somehow injected it inside the ionization chamber. They looked cool though, especially if you want to be a ghostbuster for haloween.
For radiation detection, you'd be better off with a silicon solar cell, neon bulb, CCD, computer with the old windowed ram, eeprom, reverse biased germanium diode, a glow-in-the-dark toy and one of those cheap "see-in-the-dark" scopes. The NYC law is ridiculous. As for NOx, SOx, O3 and other air quality issues, I've had the (mis)fortune of being able to detect those by breathing deeply. If it doesn't work, or hurts the air is full of sh**.
If Clinton and Guliani don't come out publicly against this insane law, they won't get my vote.
There are many such groups across the country - Most of whom seem to be uninformed and alarmist folks that are frightened of the nuclear boogey-man and want to stop anything that may have been in contact with a stray neutron. There's a group largely centered in Santa Fe, NM that goes around Los Alamos taking counts on plants and such and then posting pictures of background radiation rates on their web-site to incite fear. Admittedly, some dirt piles are hotter than others - Just like everywhere else in the world - But not terribly frightening. One ironic point is that the background radiation is actually higher in Santa Fe due in large part to the difference in ground-matter. It's actually gone far enough that the legal maximum rad limit for re-processed water in Santa Fe is below Santa Fe's normal background level.
Los Alamos locals for the most part regard the group as a sad joke.
He's getting rather old, but he's a good mouse.
> Yeah, good idea, if you want to make the world a thoughtcrime maybe.
;)
Oh you fuddyduddy libertarian.
Seriously though I think it is a perfectly logical progression. After all we have already been told by every right thinking person[1] that NYC has to operate under different rules, that certain otherwise fundamental liberties must be compromised to make such a metropolis fuction.
Seriously, count em:
1. The second Amendment is pretty much void in New York. The former mayor[2] carefully explained in a recent debate that 'laws that make sense in New York might not make sense in flyover country' so I list this one first to put the accepted precedent that the idea that core Consitituitional liberties vary by population density is now accepted policy. Or I totally missed the nationwide outrush of rage, the riots, etc.
2. The right to property is probably most circumscribed in NYC. See the history of several generations of Rent Control for details.
3. The Right to follow a profession of one's choice is pretty much null and void in NY, between the unions and the almost total control by the city government through licensing and regulation designed not to pretect the public but to control entry into the professions to protect the current workers from competition.
4-999 could be filled in by anyone depressed enough to type that long.
No, if one accepts the base logic that makes that level of State control acceptable, allowing them the monopoly power to control information about the safety (read the actual performance of regulators) makes perfect sense. So all I can say is, suck it up Citizen, turn in your detectors and listen to the Safety and Civil Reassurance Administration when they calmly inform you everything is 'perfectly safe.'
Of course you COULD start demanding the whole fetid mess of dank rotting crap go to Hell. You don't even have to be a Ronulan to say that.
[1] Defined of course by the editorial board of the NYT and usually Socialist house organs such as the Village Voice. Nice to see one of their sacred oxes served up on the grill.
[2] With the partial agreement of all right thinking people[1] except they think he isn't enough of a gun banner.
Democrat delenda est
Let's look at the justification again:
All of these problems, which have yet to evidence themselves in any real way, could be met head on for less money than a registration and enforcement program. Once upon a time, the US government published standards to follow and encouraged people to know how to protect themselves. Cheap equipment was made and distributed and people were trained to use it. The Government of the day called it Civil Defense. It was cheap compared to Homeland Defense.
Now we think it would be better to waste money keeping people from having equipment and knowing how to use it. We have a very different government today. The difference is as stark as freedom and slavery.
The program stinks of incompetence as well as contempt. There are some very simple ways of telling a credible radiation threat over the phone. One of the easiest is to ask the person what the background radiation rate is and if it changes with position. This tells you quickly if the person can read a meter. You still have to investigate if they can't but you know you have a real problem and help if you are talking to someone who knows what they are doing. Squandering resources like that is foolish.
Just draw up some calibration specs and pass a law requiring that any geiger counters sold in NY have to meet those specs. No need to ban the things.
The solution to this is more information, not less. Someone comes screaming to the media that we're all going to die? Except the unversities, and the PIRGs, and everyone else interested in air quality has those same monitors and says "um, no. Someone's making up shit."
And guess what? _There are already laws against hoaxes_.
Freely flinging "you're a nazi!!111" as some kind of childish insult is pretty idiotic, but claiming that all reasonably intelligent comparisons to Nazi Germany are the "loss" of the argument is nothing short of ridiculous, especially when Nazi germany pretty much epitomizes a modern totalitarian government (propaganda, dictatorship, secret police, militarism, detention camps, etc).
As an example of where this sort of thing leads....A few months ago the fire alarm system malfunctioned at 2am in a 2-story Philadelphia hotel I was staying in. The fire marshall, backed up by numerous police, believed it was unsafe for people to enter a building which lacked a working alarm system. So the patrons, many half-dressed, remained locked out for the remainder of the night. Eventually, at dawn, people were allowed to retrieve their belongings, with individual escort. This wasn't due to a concern about looting - the keycard system was still working. And there was no danger that anyone would stay in the 'unsafe' building for more than a few minutes, due to the ear-splitting alarm that was still blaring. Now, of course alarm systems are a good idea. But I think this degree of public passivity and dependency is very dangerous. And it won't protect us from 9/11 type disasters - if anything it will make them more likely.
There's a proposed law that will make it illegal to try to figure out what you're breathing without getting police permission first. And we're discussing it like there's two sides? The terrorists have already won. No really I mean it this time.
You do realize that banning guns raises the crime rate in a city, right? How about DC for a nice example of that. Or is that not big city enough for you?
To you, you have your own opinion, and you are entitled to it. However, that doesn't counter factual evidence. This is along the same lines of "I don't want XYZ regardless of studies/logic".Non-factual opinion has no basis in the court of law, nor in politics.
The primary use of legal guns in NYC is the threat of innocents able to protect themselves from predators. They aren't called "equalizers" for nothing. A thug doesn't need a legal gun, or even a gun.
Contribute to civilization: ari.aynrand.org/donate
On a beautiful 1986 summer day in Poland the secret police confiscated all Geiger detectors from all the schools and universities. A week later the world learned about the Techernobyl catastrophe. (This is a true story, my uncle was a chemist at one of the universities)
You do realize that correlation does not mean causation, right? Or is that too big of words for you?
By your logic, Japan has less guns per person than Iraq, and less deaths per person than Iraq, therefore less guns in an entire country means less deaths. Obviously, thats not the only factor at play here. Care you look into the other factors in DC that helped raise the crime rate? Like, you know, the fact that they kicked lots of people off welfare right before the crime rate went up?
> So you're saying it makes sense to drive truckloads of guns into the hands of people of the most densely populated cities of America?
Yes, I'm saying exactly that. Because NYC is exactly where they are needed most. I live in flyover country. Random violent crime is so rare it makes the front page on the occasion we have one. My weapon stays in a case on a top shelf of a closet on the reasoning that an accidental discharge is the greater risk. I wouldn't live in a place like NYC unless I could keep the damned thing loaded and under my pillow or srapped to my ass when I was walking the crime ridden streets of our major cities... even after the admirable efforts of NYC's former mayor to REDUCE[1] violent crime.
> You know, where hunting consists of going to the store, not actually going out and hunting?
You might be shocked to learn that the 2nd Amendment has exactly zero to do with hunting. The primary purpose was the belief that armed men are Citizens while unarmed ones were only Subjects. That the carrying of arms was itself a virtue, helping to keep a Free People in the right frame of mind to be worthy of receiving the Blessings of Liberty.
But while a gun control debate would be fun, I'm instead going to stay ontopic and use your post to illustrate my original point.
I'd like to start by drawing the attention of the readers to both what our canonical hive minder said and left unsaid.
He mentions "There is no reason people in NYC need guns" and "people of the most densely populated cities" which couldn't make my argument better that there has crept into the thinking, of city dwellers at least, that individual liberty is fundamentally incompatible with cities. Personally if it proves true I'd prefer razing every population center >1million over tossing liberty but I refuse to believe it; Free Men can live in Cities, Suburbs, the country or on the Moon. Quivering masses of welfare clients on the other hand... the solution should be obvious.
And note that he ins't calling for repealing the 2nd Amendment, just substituting his greater wisdom for that of the Founding Fathers without all that tedious mucking about with having a public debate about repealing the Bill of Rights. This trend is most disturbing because it isn't just limited to gun control. McCain/Feingold shredded the 1st Amendment while those who should have been objecting were cheering. 1, 2, 9 and 10 are pretty much extinct and 5 is threatened and not once have we actually repealed any of them.
Once upon a time the fundies wanted to regulate booze. Realizing the federal government had no such authority, and believing in our Republican Form of Government[2], they did it the right way and pushed through an Amendment though it took them a hell of a lot longer than just getting 50%+1 vote in Congress. So when did we pass an Amendment authorizing the FDA, DEA, etc? Thus was the 9th and 10th Amendments voided without a vote being needed.
Remember that you can't just object to ONE of these violations, because if one accepts the logic that allows ANY of these violations to occur the rest logically follow. Choose. Choose wisely.
[1] Reduce from truly insane to levels that make Dodge City at it's worst look like a safe place to raise children.
[2] As distict from the Republican Party... for the benefit of the Government educated.
Democrat delenda est
By your post, we'd be pulling numbers out our asses that have no studies or basis. So nice for the extreme attempt. How about a real, solid example of banning guns in a urban environment lowering violent crime in the United States? Any day now, but I can't even google such a thing. Oh, and I mean factual. Not "opinionated".
In the meantime, you're comparing welfare to violence. Those two things are not necessarily in the same group, nor in the same group as guns.
You've been watching too many movies. Back in "wild west" days, Civilized Boston had a higher violent crime rate than the wild west. Gun fight at the OK corral was an anomaly. Most towns in the wild west were peaceful as they were populated by farmers and ranchers who wanted a safe environment to raise their families.
The right to own a firearm defines if you are a citizen or a subject. What do you want to be?
-- Will program for bandwidth
What are you talking about? Non-factual opinion has been the basis of politics since the dawn of time.
See Point Blank, by John Lott. He did a fairly extensive analysis of the impact of various levels of firearms regulation in the US, and found that "shall issue" permitting jurisdictions enjoyed lower crime rates, and that crime rates fell when these laws were enacted. "shall issue" refers to a legal requirement for issues concealed carry permits in the absence of any reason to deny the permit. In "shall issue" states, such as Washington, you can get a permit to carry a gun by walking into your police station and asking for one. They fingerprint you, and in two or three weeks, after they do a background check on you, you get the right to carry a handgun just about anywhere. Not surprisingly, holdup rates in these areas are lower than in districts such as NYC and Washington DC, which prohibit law abiding cictizens from owning or carrying a sidearm.
:-)
And yes, I have one, and yes, I sometimes carry a gun. Why? Because it makes me feel more manly.
I was taught to respect my elders. The trouble is, it's getting harder and harder to find some.
I'm curious: Has this view of citizenship ever been espoused by anyone outside of the US?
The point though, is that using a bad Geiger counter does not cause any direct harm
Well, yes it *does*, if you then go and phone the police screaming about some massive radiation reading that your $4.99-from-eBay Geiger counter is going berzerk over.
It's not the alarm that's causing any harm, it's the person using it that causes the harm.
FalconShould there be a Law?
There was a story on www.whatreallyhappended.com a while back on NYC doing a map of radiological levels to create a base map from which to compare in a catastrophy. Oddly, there were high levels coming from the Israeli Embassy. WRH has often accused Israel, Mossad, and MI6 as being involved in false flag operations. I don't know if its true or not, but this development sure gives them a lot to talk about, doesn't it.
Mark Anthony Collins
The argument has made repeatedly on Slashdot that computer users should be licensed - that users should demonstrate a mastery of basic skills and show some sense of responsibility for the potential consequences of his actions.
But tell the Geek that he needs a license before toying with class 4 biologic and radiological alarms and the world becomes a nanny state.
Have you ever been to pretty much anywhere outside of the US? Have you ever read the news of any other country but the US? Your response leaves me little option but to think that your knowledge of the outside world is quite distorted...
The other interesting thing is
b. Any person deploying a biological, chemical or radiological detector shall immediately notify the police department if such detector indicates an alarm, notwithstanding whether the person holds a permit for such detector, by following such procedures as are prescribed by rule of the commissioner and/or are included as a term of the permit itself.
so if I commit a misdemeanor by having an illegal NBCR detector, it's a misdemeanor of me not to report the activation of my illegal detector without regard to whether I have reason to believe the alarm to be giving a false indication! an other interesting problem may be what happens when all of the new cellphones in NYC have to be registered because the have radiation detectors built in.
Apocalypse Cancelled, Sorry, No Ticket Refunds
Perhaps you are not familiar with the state of your country, but your freedoms are routinely being trodden on and removed. In fact, half the articles here on Slashdot are about what is happening and who is doing it. You've got:
1) Civil liberties being gradually eroded in the name of the "war on terror"
2) A government committing torture
3) A government taking people off to some jail out of the country with no trial for many years
4) Your phone companies spying on you without warrants
5) Billions upon billions of dollars getting thrown away in an unpopular war with no sign of an end
6) Record/movie industry writing laws
I wonder what most people would say if you asked what they'd rather have - a gun, or the above?