CIÊNCIA IMAGINÁRIA

Da coluna semanal WHAT’S NEW do físico Robert L. Park destacamos a denúncia de detectores que não detectam (semelhantes às varinhas ou aos pêndulos dos vedores) na luta contra traficantes de droga:

IMAGINARY SCIENCE: THE GREAT DRUG WAR SOUTH OF THE BORDER.

The United States and Mexico are separated by a 3000 km border that stretches across the most forbidding desert in North America. Mexican drug traffickers, for whom the US drug market is El Dorado, are fighting a bloody war with the democratically elected government of Mexico over control of the border. According to Monday’s New York Times, outgunned Mexican officials spent more than $10 million to purchase high-tech dowsing rods to detect caches of drugs, or weapons or anything else you have in mind. The first application was as a golf-ball finder sold in Golf-Pro shops. The Mexican army says the devices are extremely helpful. Made in the UK by Global Technologies Ltd., the GT 200 has no sensors. Priced at more than $20,000, it’s a plastic rod attached to a hand grip by a swivel, allowing the rod to point in any direction depending on the orientation of the handle. That also describes the ADE 650 sold by ATSC Ltd., another UK company which recently sold 1,500 imaginary detectors to the Iraqis to search for explosives at checkpoints. Could Global Technologies and ATSC be the same company, switching names and locations to avoid exposure.

Robert Park

Fonte da imagem, da autoria de Carlos Medina Ribeiro:
http://janelanaweb.com/humormedina/pc_manual1.html