OneWingedBird
Beloved of Ra
- Joined
- Aug 3, 2003
- Messages
- 15,430
lol there's a wikipedia page for tinfoil hats now!
Tin-foil hats and mental illness
There have been some people who believe in the efficacy of tin-foil hats and similar devices. Reasons for use include preventing abduction by alien beings, or stopping unpleasant experiences such as hearing voices in one's head. This draws on the stereotypical image of mind control operating by means of ESP, microwave radiation or other technological means. Belief in the effectiveness of tin-foil hats is popularly linked to mental illnesses such as paranoid schizophrenia.[1]
The delusion of "mind control rays" or other invasive mental activity may seem very real to those afflicted with severe paranoid delusions, and such persons have been known to make and wear improvised defences against the imagined invasion. A placebo effect may even convince the sufferer that the device actually works. While aluminium foil and tin-foil are traditional, less fragile materials such as 3M Velostat (a kind of metallised plastic) and metal window-screen mesh are now more commonly used. Electrical conductivity is seen as a key quality.
Scientific basis
There is a small amount of truth or reason to be found in the rationale for a tin-foil hat. A well constructed tin-foil enclosure would approximate a Faraday cage, reducing the amount of (notionally harmless) radiofrequency electromagnetic radiation inside. A common high school physics demonstration involves placing an AM radio on tinfoil, and then covering the radio with a metal bucket. This leads to a noticeable reduction in signal strength. The efficiency of such an enclosure in blocking such radiation depends on the thickness of the tin-foil, as dictated by the skin depth, the distance the radiation can propagate in a particular non-ideal conductor. For half-millimeter-thick tin-foil, radiation above about 20 kHz (i.e., including both AM and FM bands) would be partially blocked.[2]
The effectiveness of the tin-foil hat as an electromagnetic shield for stopping radio waves is greatly reduced by the fact that it is not a complete enclosure. Placing an AM radio under a metal bucket without a conductive layer underneath demonstrates the relative ineffectiveness of such a setup. Indeed, because the effect of an ungrounded Faraday cage is to partially reflect the incident radiation, a radio wave that is incident on the inner surface of the hat (i.e., coming from underneath the hat-wearer) would be reflected and partially 'focused' towards the user's brain. While tin-foil hats may have originated in some understanding of the Faraday cage effect, the use of such a hat to attenuate radio waves belongs properly to the realm of pseudoscience.
A (somewhat tongue-in-cheek) study by graduate students at MIT determined that a tin-foil hat could either amplify or attenuate incoming radiation depending on frequency;[3] the effect was observed to be roughly independent of the relative placement of the wearer and radiation source. Note that GHz wavelengths are well below the putative skin depth of even the thinnest foil.
Tin foil hats are seen by some as a protective measure against the effects of EMR, or electro magnetic radiation. At this time, no link has been verifiably proven between EMR exposure and subsequent ill health, however EMR exposure has many alleged effects.[4]
Tin-foil hats in pop culture
* The protagonist Jerry Fletcher in the 1997 film Conspiracy Theory covers his apartment walls with foil to protect himself from them.
* The paranoid centaur Foaly, in Eoin Colfer's Artemis Fowl series of books, wears a tin-foil hat to protect from mind-readers.
* In the Simpsons episode "Brother's Little Helper", Bart wears a trash can lid on his head and covers his body in tin-foil, as well as lining the ceiling with wire coat hangers to protect himself from the influence of Major League Baseball's mind control satellite after he begins taking an anti-ADD drug "Focusyn".
* In the TV series King of the Hill episode "Dale Be Not Proud", paranoid conspiracy theorist Dale Gribble awakens on a hospital bed, and, upon finding out that he is donating his kidney, instantly goes into a craze and asks why "isn't there a tin foil hat on my head?!"
* In the film Lovesick, Dudley Moore plays a psychiatrist who gives a homeless patient some aluminium foil to "protect" the patient from the "mind control rays" his patient claims are bombarding him.
* In Signs, the children and younger brother of the lead character wear tin-foil hats to prevent their minds from being read. This is parodied in Scary Movie 3, in which the tin-foil hats are actually giant Hershey's Kisses.
* In the X-Men movies, Magneto wears a metal helmet that prevents Stryker's son (in X2) and Professor X (in X-Men and X2) from using telepathy against him.
* In the Sci Fi Channel (United States) original movie Control Factor, nonconsensual test subjects in a government experiment to incite violence in an inner city neighborhood use hats lined with copper wool to protect themselves from microwave-based mind control signals.
* Former Marvel Comics supervillain Juggernaut wore a helmet made of a mystical alloy as protection against telepathy.
* Tin-foil hats are often referenced on Internet forums such as Slashdot, Fark.com and Footballguys.com.[5]
* In his autobiography, Frank Zappa refers to Echo Park residents "Crazy Jerry," an electricity addict and speed user who had been institutionalized a number of times, and his roommate known only as "Wild Bill the Mannequin Fucker," a chemist and methamphetamine cook who modified department store mannequins for sexual uses. Both are reputed to have employed metallic hats (vegetable steamers, aluminium pots, tin-foil etc.,) to "keep people from reading their minds." Zappa once recorded Crazy Jerry's life story, excerpts of which can be heard on some of his early recordings.
* The character Joe Wicks was featured in British soap EastEnders suffering mental illness and constructing a tin-foil hat for "protection".
* The novel Idiots in the Machine by Edward Savio portrays a character who believes that tin foil keeps harmful gamma rays away and becomes a media sensation, marketing a successful line of foil hats to Chicago.
* In the third episode of the first Friends season , Lizzie is a homeless woman who offers Phoebe her tin-foil hat.
* A group of Toronto artists and musicians at Funkless.com hold an annual Tinfoil Hat making contest
* In Age Of Mythology, typing the message "TINFOILHAT" randomly reassigns ownership for all of the units on the map.
* While testing myths and urban legends about microwaves on the television show MythBusters, Adam is shown in several shots wearing tin-foil hats. In one scene, it is molded over his head, and in another, it is wrapped around like a chef's hat.
* In the video game Psychonauts, the character Dogen wears a tin-foil hat to prevent psychic "accidents" in which he makes people's heads explode.
* The broiler plate hat that Nicol Williamson adorned as Merlin in John Boorman's Excalibur was the inspiration behind the Aluminum Foil Deflector Beanie, a.k.a. "An Effective, Low-Cost Solution To Combating Mind-Control.
* A San Francisco based acoustic chamber-music group call themselves Tin Hat Trio.
Tin-foil hats and mental illness
There have been some people who believe in the efficacy of tin-foil hats and similar devices. Reasons for use include preventing abduction by alien beings, or stopping unpleasant experiences such as hearing voices in one's head. This draws on the stereotypical image of mind control operating by means of ESP, microwave radiation or other technological means. Belief in the effectiveness of tin-foil hats is popularly linked to mental illnesses such as paranoid schizophrenia.[1]
The delusion of "mind control rays" or other invasive mental activity may seem very real to those afflicted with severe paranoid delusions, and such persons have been known to make and wear improvised defences against the imagined invasion. A placebo effect may even convince the sufferer that the device actually works. While aluminium foil and tin-foil are traditional, less fragile materials such as 3M Velostat (a kind of metallised plastic) and metal window-screen mesh are now more commonly used. Electrical conductivity is seen as a key quality.
Scientific basis
There is a small amount of truth or reason to be found in the rationale for a tin-foil hat. A well constructed tin-foil enclosure would approximate a Faraday cage, reducing the amount of (notionally harmless) radiofrequency electromagnetic radiation inside. A common high school physics demonstration involves placing an AM radio on tinfoil, and then covering the radio with a metal bucket. This leads to a noticeable reduction in signal strength. The efficiency of such an enclosure in blocking such radiation depends on the thickness of the tin-foil, as dictated by the skin depth, the distance the radiation can propagate in a particular non-ideal conductor. For half-millimeter-thick tin-foil, radiation above about 20 kHz (i.e., including both AM and FM bands) would be partially blocked.[2]
The effectiveness of the tin-foil hat as an electromagnetic shield for stopping radio waves is greatly reduced by the fact that it is not a complete enclosure. Placing an AM radio under a metal bucket without a conductive layer underneath demonstrates the relative ineffectiveness of such a setup. Indeed, because the effect of an ungrounded Faraday cage is to partially reflect the incident radiation, a radio wave that is incident on the inner surface of the hat (i.e., coming from underneath the hat-wearer) would be reflected and partially 'focused' towards the user's brain. While tin-foil hats may have originated in some understanding of the Faraday cage effect, the use of such a hat to attenuate radio waves belongs properly to the realm of pseudoscience.
A (somewhat tongue-in-cheek) study by graduate students at MIT determined that a tin-foil hat could either amplify or attenuate incoming radiation depending on frequency;[3] the effect was observed to be roughly independent of the relative placement of the wearer and radiation source. Note that GHz wavelengths are well below the putative skin depth of even the thinnest foil.
Tin foil hats are seen by some as a protective measure against the effects of EMR, or electro magnetic radiation. At this time, no link has been verifiably proven between EMR exposure and subsequent ill health, however EMR exposure has many alleged effects.[4]
Tin-foil hats in pop culture
* The protagonist Jerry Fletcher in the 1997 film Conspiracy Theory covers his apartment walls with foil to protect himself from them.
* The paranoid centaur Foaly, in Eoin Colfer's Artemis Fowl series of books, wears a tin-foil hat to protect from mind-readers.
* In the Simpsons episode "Brother's Little Helper", Bart wears a trash can lid on his head and covers his body in tin-foil, as well as lining the ceiling with wire coat hangers to protect himself from the influence of Major League Baseball's mind control satellite after he begins taking an anti-ADD drug "Focusyn".
* In the TV series King of the Hill episode "Dale Be Not Proud", paranoid conspiracy theorist Dale Gribble awakens on a hospital bed, and, upon finding out that he is donating his kidney, instantly goes into a craze and asks why "isn't there a tin foil hat on my head?!"
* In the film Lovesick, Dudley Moore plays a psychiatrist who gives a homeless patient some aluminium foil to "protect" the patient from the "mind control rays" his patient claims are bombarding him.
* In Signs, the children and younger brother of the lead character wear tin-foil hats to prevent their minds from being read. This is parodied in Scary Movie 3, in which the tin-foil hats are actually giant Hershey's Kisses.
* In the X-Men movies, Magneto wears a metal helmet that prevents Stryker's son (in X2) and Professor X (in X-Men and X2) from using telepathy against him.
* In the Sci Fi Channel (United States) original movie Control Factor, nonconsensual test subjects in a government experiment to incite violence in an inner city neighborhood use hats lined with copper wool to protect themselves from microwave-based mind control signals.
* Former Marvel Comics supervillain Juggernaut wore a helmet made of a mystical alloy as protection against telepathy.
* Tin-foil hats are often referenced on Internet forums such as Slashdot, Fark.com and Footballguys.com.[5]
* In his autobiography, Frank Zappa refers to Echo Park residents "Crazy Jerry," an electricity addict and speed user who had been institutionalized a number of times, and his roommate known only as "Wild Bill the Mannequin Fucker," a chemist and methamphetamine cook who modified department store mannequins for sexual uses. Both are reputed to have employed metallic hats (vegetable steamers, aluminium pots, tin-foil etc.,) to "keep people from reading their minds." Zappa once recorded Crazy Jerry's life story, excerpts of which can be heard on some of his early recordings.
* The character Joe Wicks was featured in British soap EastEnders suffering mental illness and constructing a tin-foil hat for "protection".
* The novel Idiots in the Machine by Edward Savio portrays a character who believes that tin foil keeps harmful gamma rays away and becomes a media sensation, marketing a successful line of foil hats to Chicago.
* In the third episode of the first Friends season , Lizzie is a homeless woman who offers Phoebe her tin-foil hat.
* A group of Toronto artists and musicians at Funkless.com hold an annual Tinfoil Hat making contest
* In Age Of Mythology, typing the message "TINFOILHAT" randomly reassigns ownership for all of the units on the map.
* While testing myths and urban legends about microwaves on the television show MythBusters, Adam is shown in several shots wearing tin-foil hats. In one scene, it is molded over his head, and in another, it is wrapped around like a chef's hat.
* In the video game Psychonauts, the character Dogen wears a tin-foil hat to prevent psychic "accidents" in which he makes people's heads explode.
* The broiler plate hat that Nicol Williamson adorned as Merlin in John Boorman's Excalibur was the inspiration behind the Aluminum Foil Deflector Beanie, a.k.a. "An Effective, Low-Cost Solution To Combating Mind-Control.
* A San Francisco based acoustic chamber-music group call themselves Tin Hat Trio.
