"Allen L. Barker" <alb at datafilter.com> wrote in message news:<3E347731.67AA88B8 at datafilter.com>...
> John Michael Williams wrote:
> >
> > "Allen L. Barker" <alb at datafilter.com> wrote in message news:<3E32FBBA.1077BD at datafilter.com>...
> > >
> > > According to Justensen, "The electrical sine-wave analogs of each word
> > > were then processed so that each time a sine wave crossed zero reference
> > > in the negative direction, a brief pulse of microwave energy was triggered."
> > > Sounds like a Fourier representation, but it is not entirely clear.
> >
> > It's not related directly to any Fourier operation. It is just
> > frequency modulation: The frequency of the pulses depends on the
> > frequency of 0-crossings, which is just twice the frequency of
> > the input wave. One might see it as a sort of rectification.
>> How do you suddenly "know" this, when before you just had some ideas
> about how you *thought* they were doing it? Why mention sine waves at
> all, if it is just frequency modulation?
I didn't know it: You were kind enough to give enough of a technical
reference to make the electronics clear: "0-crossing" is a meaningful
technical term. A pulse at every 0-crossing IS a
frequency modulation. Because the pulses are unidirectional, whether
positive or not, it is electrically a rectification. The higher the
frequency, the more frequent the 0-crossings; therefore, the pulses
come out frequency modulated. It's just common sense.
Rectification is a nonlinear operation; Fourier manipulations
are linear; so, creating pulses from 0-crossings is independent
of any Fourier (or other linear) transform.
Maybe the writer didn't know enough to write this, so "sine waves"
came out? Maybe he was just trying to be simple?
>> > > The US patent is similar but has a more complicated modulation technique.
> > > You can read the patent online. I'm not going to debate the quality of
> > > the sound because I do not have the data. It does seem to be generally
> > > accepted that voices can be transmitted, and certainly they've researched
> > > making the sound as realistic as possible.
> >
> > No, I disagree. It is not "generally accepted". Read the
> > Guy, et al paper, which came out
> > years LATER than the Guy experiment you are describing. Guy denies
> > any reasonable semblance of speech. Also, it doesn't make sense
> > to me that voice COULD be transmitted.
>> Yes, it is generally accepted. But there are *still* attempts to deny such
> 70s-era applications of microwave hearing.
Of course: Because such denial, based on Guy and Frey and others is
the honest thing to do.
However, it may not be right to deny that some
poorly informed people in the 1970's tried to get microwave to
transmit voice: At the time, they did not know what we know, 30 years
later. So, they made what we see now as mistakes.
> I never described any Guy
> experiment; Justesen credits Sharp and Grove. Perhaps the Soviets in Moscow
> should get the real credit, who knows.
I think you quoted Guy's 1971 study of "9 different words". In 1975, Guy
and others (in the Discussion section of the NYAS paper) denied any
success in voice transmission. Frey at that time said he thought it
might be possible (but not because he had tried).
The quality of voice by direct microwave transmission is so pitifully
low, noone seriously would consider it. Not to mention the
likelihood of development of cataracts or other disability because of
long-term microwave irradiation. Even in 1970, one would simply
carry a tiny electronic receiver, maybe located in the ear.
>> In this very recent news article, Frey even speculates on sending voices
> by millimeter waves:
>>http://www.globalsecurity.org/org/news/2001/e20010327questions.htm
You misread it. Microwave hearing, according to a review in 2000
by Foster, can occur only up to about 10 GHz, which means a
wavelength in air of maybe a few cm.
To see how to get this, c = L*f, where c, the speed
of light, is 3*10^8 m/s, L is wavelength in m, and f is fequency
in Hz.
So, 10 GHz => f = 10^10 Hz. L = c/f; so, L = about 3 cm. 30 mm.
I quote from the above link:
"Hackett [mm wave weapon proponent] said the non-lethal
MMW ray project is not seeking to create that kind of
talking effect in people's heads.
"In fact, Frey and Hackett said the microwave hearing effect
does not occur with millimeter waves (which range from 3
to 300 GHz)."
I should point out that a 3 GHz wavelength is some 10 cm
(100 mm) in air. So much for Air Force arithmetic, at
least by Hackett.
In the posting at the link above, Frey just
warns against possible health hazards. I wrote to that journal,
and have not received a reply, so I am not
confident they are willing to back up the claims of "crowd control"
in it. It's a military journal, and I am not sure of the
level of tolerance of new information.
I can't emphasize enough that military organizations are good
at ADAPTING valid research, but generally they are incompetent
at doing it. It isn't in their area of expertise. You want
military personnel to guard a perimeter or shoot rockets at
someone; you don't want them developing new drugs or microwave
devices. Or passing judgement on scientific papers.
>> > The sound would resemble that of a playing-card in
> > bicycle spokes: You know that children will try to make a
> > bicycle sound like a motorcycle by mounting a card on the fork,
> > so it rubs against the spokes. So it produces a "BRRRPT" sound,
> > a little like a small engine. That's what the microwave "voice"
> > would sound like. Now, I agree that one could modulate the
> > pulses and make out words (especially if preselected from
> > a population of a few), but I wouldn't call it voice.
>> Here you are speculating. Presumably based on that theory of yours that
> you were mentioning earlier. And contrary to what experts in the field
> have been quoted as saying.
If you would read the 1975 NYAS paper I cited in a
previous posting, you would see that what I am saying
is just based on it and papers cited in it.
Use common sense: If you can hear a pulse as a "click" or a "pop",
then what would 100 or 1000 clicks per second sound like?
>> > However, if that is what you are willing to accept as
> > voice, then, yes, it can be done. But, it wouldn't sound like
> > a voice and it would be silly to use it for communication,
> > when a tiny receiver would do so much better a job. Even in
> > the 1970's, crystal or other tiny (~ 2mm) receivers were
> > available. Transistors were in use in military applications
> > in the early 1960's.
>> Yes, tiny receivers (such as those which might be used in a tooth
> implant) have been around a long time. But for that you have to actually
> plant the receiver. It would only be "silly" to use modulated microwave
> hearing in contexts where something better were readily available -- like
> calling someone on the telephone. But the point of many applications which
> have been discussed for the effect is harassment, covert operations, and
> covert psychological direction. Even a scratchy voice is harassing, and
> for that matter basic microwave "clicks" are too. And surely there has
> been much research in making the sound more realistic and/or intelligible.
I agree that for purposes of harassment, microwave hearing would be
more effective than a tiny receiver. But the hope in the 1970's
was not for harassment, but for communication. Microwave hearing
has been shown ineffective for communication, and it may be
dangerous to the person hearing it. Frey and many others have
reported headaches from microwave irradiation in the range
(about 200 MHz to 10 GHz) in which microwave hearing can be
demonstrated.
>> > > Here's a quote from a short article by Lin (presumably relating to
> > > pitch):
> > >
> > > http://www.datafilter.com/mc/c_linAcm99.htm> > >
> > > "A train of RF pulses could be perceived as a tune corresponding to
> > > the pulse repetition rate"
> >
> > One might call a drum beat or xylophone "music". But not "voice."
>> You surely are not a musician if you do not know the difference between
> a xylophone and a drum beat. A xylophone has *pitch*. If you have pitch
> you can surely send voice.
OK, let's see you play a xylophone and create words with it!
Even a muted trumpet does a bad job. Maybe a kazoo would work,
though.
>> > > I wish this were the case, but with weapons tests it often has
> > > not been. The MKULTRA researchers specifically wanted subjects
> > > who were unwitting, for example. And who volunteers for a terminal
> > > experiment?
> >
> > That's maybe what they WANTED, being pseudo-science dabblers;
> > but, that isn't what they succeeded in getting: All they got
> > was unfavorable publicity. Was it a "successful" experiment
> > to slip LSD into someones coffee? If so, where are the data?
>> How do you know what data they got? Do you think the Senate Select
> Committee on Intelligence really released everything to the public?
> Or just those projects that weren't particularly effective? Marks
> mentioned that the MKULTRA "researchers" were in some ways far ahead of
> the open scientific community.
Highly unlikely. Totalitarians are retardants, not
catalysts, of knowledge. The poor, dumb physicists who
knuckled under and stayed in Germany during Hitler's rule
essentially were smothered and discovered little new.
Heisenberg, probably the greatest living physicist at the time
after Einstein, couldn't even understand fission after ten
or twenty years of Naziism. But von Braun, who could apply
existing technology quite well, didn't suffer.
Same thing in the (necessarily) repressive
environment of military service: You do what the
leader (der Fuhrer) wants, what your supervisor
says to do. And that NEVER is anything unthought-of before.
This is absolutely required for an effective military force;
but it just as necessarily excludes new ideas, other than
clever variations on preexisting ones. Just so whatever
you come up with fits some preexisting order to do it.
> Having access to the latest classified
> technology surely helps.
Maybe in terms of certain applications, but not for value
in discovering anything new: The latter only occurs
effectively in the open literature.
Yes, one can develop (classified) surface-search radar
based on just microwave transmission and a CRT. But one
can't develop either a magnetron or a CRT.
Such radar then could be used in geology or
something for discoveries otherwise impossible. But,
that's the extent of the value of classified materials.
> Don't get me wrong, though, the proper
> place for those experimenters -- who destroyed the lives of
> nonconsenting citizens as their guinea pigs -- is in prison. And
> some were worse than just pseudo-science dabblers.
Yes, I agree with you here.
I brought up Wendell Johnson's academics and the orphans
not because I thought it was a truly great conspiracy,
worthy of general arrests. Rather, I thought that people
interested in conspiracies might study it as a model.
In terms of possible conspiracy within the government, I think it
is a much better model than, say, the conspiracy to kill
Julius Caesar. It sheds some light on how a government
organization, like a loose association of academics, might become
corrupt because of irresponsibility and cowardice.
>> > And, then there were idiot ideas like
> > "mind reading" or "mind control" by electronic means. If they
> > had stuck to the electronics, maybe they would have done some
> > good. I've had radios break down, and a good repair job would
> > have been worth something.
>> Why exactly are these "idiot ideas"? The research itself is not the
> problem, and there is quite a bit of good open research that could
> be classified along these lines. The problem is the *application* for
> torture and human rights abuses, and the testing on nonconsensual
> subjects.
My value judgement was subjective. I was criticizing the GOAL of
mind reading, which I think would be a prerequisite of mind control.
Therefore, mind control also would be idiotic, as usually conceived.
No matter what the level of consent, mind reading will never
be possible in any meaningful sense. So, having such a goal would
be idiotic, not to address morality or criminal behavior.
Then again, most criminals are stupider than average, and they
certainly are less well educated, on average. Just the right
population to recruit secretly as mind control experimenters!
>> > > With regard to your comments on an academic conspiracy, here is
> > > a good link from a book by Robert Becker, describing the conspiracy
> > > to conceal knowledge of non-thermal electromagnetic bioeffects:
> > >
> > > http://www.datafilter.com/mc/beckerConspiracy.html> >
> > Thanks. I read there,
> >
> > Control over the scientific establishment was maintained by
> > allocating research funds in such a way as to ensure that only
> > "approved" projects -- that is, projects that would not
> > challenge the thermal-effects standard -- would be undertaken.
> >
> > Scientists who persisted in publicly raising the issue
> > of harmful effects from any portion of the electromagnetic spectrum
> > were discredited, and their research grants were taken away.
> >
> > There is good history, based on analysis of fact; and,
> > there is bad history, based on a desire to manipulate
> > politics without getting caught. I would put that
> > article in the latter category. All opinions; nothing
> > to support such a conclusion as the above.
>> The opinions and observations of Robert Becker, in a field he was
> quite familiar with (and indeed, a founder of) carry a bit more weight
> than a random accusation. He was accusing the DoD and the Pentagon,
> among others. At whose trough many feed.
>> I don't disagree with you about the orphan thing being horrible.