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DHS To Use Body Odor As a Lie Detector
The US Department of Homeland Security is studying lies, damned lies, and smells. They hope to prove that human body odor could be used to tell when people are lying. The department says they are already "conducting experiments in deceptive behavior and collecting human odor samples" and that the research it hopes to fund "will consist primarily of the analysis and study of the human odor samples collected to determine if a deception indicator can be found."
"I take the 5th amendment" or "I choose to remain silent"
Don't give the government anything, else they will use it later to entrap you or jail you. The right to free speech also includes the right to be quiet.
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
Just looking to smell the fear on you. Will it be able to tell if someone is actually lying or just really nervous that they're being questioned by a federal agency?
The musings of just another geek and his junk.
Brazil and Argentina have historical disputes over who is the "best" on South America. Obviously it leads to some funny jokes on either side.
One closely related to USA auto induced paranioa state of mind says that an "argentino" and a "brasileiro" found a lamp. The argentino rubbed the lamp first but the brasileiro hold the lamp for him to do it. A genius emerged and saw the problem immediately: he could not grant 3 wishes, one of them would get 2 wishes and other 1. So he granted 2 wishes, one for each of them. Since the argentino rubbed the lamp first, he wished a great wall would appear on all Argentina frontiers so they could be isolated from the bad interference of their neighbors, being Argentina the greatest nation of all. Wish granted, the genius made a wall one mile high around all Argentina. Next the genius asked the brazilian what was his wish. He asked the genius before anything if the Argentina's wall was really high and resistant. The genius answered that nothing could break that wall. The brasileiro asked immediately: fill it with water.
USA is almost asking for problems when they think all the world want to attck them when USA is the most common attacker or influencer on all wars from World War II and later. They must take care with what they wish: it can be granted.
Disclaimer: I'm brazilian, so the joke is biased.
If they want odour, let them have it, full throttle. Eat chilli beans with garlic and cream cheese (or whatever supercharges your afterburner) a few hours before boarding a flight.
"I fart in your general direction! In fact, I fart uncontrollably in all directions!"
Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities. - Voltaire
Polygraph, and other assorted gadget do NOT detect lie. Ever. What they possibly detect is stress, (fear and its little cousin nervousness for example) which in some case may or may not be correlated to a lie. It is all based on putting the idea that "it works" in the mind of people it tests, and indeed sometimes law enforcement get confession from people (they CAN use the confession but may not use any lie detector crap, and recently even that was put under fire). There isn't really a good scientific background on it The Lie behind the lie detector.
Using odor instead of breathing heart beat and so on will not bring anymore science is this than pissing into a violin and expecting a concerto.
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345409469/
visit randi.org
Depending on the sort of molecule they're sniffing for, and the detection method, traces in the parts-per-billion range can be detected almost instantly. The limitation is often the speed at which you can get a billion bits of air through your nozzle - or the wind-speed your detection method can withstand. Honeybees, for example, make good detectors in some circumstances, but get miffed in moderate breezes and refuse to work at all if you blow their antennae off.
However, even if they have to parcel up the smells and post them to a lab in Wisconsin, it'll still be quicker and probably cheaper than six years in Cuba.
As for usefulness, I don't think that's the point. It's not meant to be useful, it's meant to give the government a justification for the presumption of guilt. Although the Bill of Rights and the Majesty of the Law are worthy of respect, they are historical throwbacks that aren't always appropriate for a fast-changing world. Any device that can improve the efficiency of justice, even indirectly, must be welcomed by hard-pressed taxpayers.
99999 - "*I* *did* *not* *have* sexual relations with *that* *woman*!"
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Um, no. Every creature on earth has an unique scent. Scent will actually come out of a human being, or other "game" in cone shaped form. This is why search and rescue units will work a patch of land moving in the expected cone shape (based on what the dog picks up) when trailing a victim in a search. I have done search and rescue and that is the logic they use because it works. The first thing they do when a new volunteer comes on is show them how it works. Tracking, what you were referring to, also uses the same concept but, with the individual scent being left by brushing against the ground itself.
In a nutshell, this scares the hell out of me.
I cut it three times, and it's still too short.
If they have enough money to do this project, why haven't we cut their budget yet?
Intron: the portion of DNA which expresses nothing useful.
99999 - "*I* *did* *not* *have* sexual relations with *that* *woman*!"
So you think that Clinton's lie about a blowjob was more than 150 times as bad as Bush's lie about WMDs?
Dear God.
The correlation between ignorance of statistics and using "correlation is not causation" as an argument is close to 1.
Well, yes it was. Clinton is smart and knew he was mincing words. Bush has never shown such adeptness and may have been completely clueless about it rather than deceptive.