This week, Associated Press and Washington Post wrote a piece on the death of a man after a “drone strike” in Yemen.  Here is a picture of the guy I found at a web site that I link to later.

Fahd (apparently struck down by a drone)

These journalistic high points were used as the basis of a story in the West Australian (p66) on Saturday.  Most of the article in the West is concerned with the way in which the CIA is able to detect bombs in underpants, and how they were able to use their powers of detection to avoid a mid-air disaster.  Actually, what they did was volunteer one of their agents to get the bomb into his pants and then turn it over.

The ability to detect bombs in underpants is, however, something that parents of young children are not only familiar with, but become increasingly adept at detecting.  It turns out that the human nose is a powerful weapon against these concealed weapons.

Let’s go back a step.  The detection of the bomb was made possible by an undercover US agent who obtained the bomb from Yemen terrorists and also the location of one of “America’s most wanted”, Fahd  It was then a short matter for the US to say this was enough to authorise a drone strike to do the killing and finish Fahd off.

A “drone strike” is little more than an attack from a remote controlled unmanned plane.  Although parents of young boys are able to go down to the shops and buy a remote control car, or a remote control plane, they are not usually wondering if their kids are going to blow up the neighbours.  Australian parents should be comforted by the fact that if their children were to grow up in the United States, and obtained a job with the government, it would be possible to go down to the Uncle Sam shop and use a remote control plane that can fly lethal weapons into enemy territory.   The great thing about these toys is that they can be regionally-based and the American kids can play with them all day and then return home from work to the comfort of their own homes.

As a bonus, the toys come with the very macho names of “Predator” and “Reaper”.  In this age of brand-awareness, I am most impressed that they were able to choose a name for these things that is a nod to at least one movie, and possibly more, starring Arnold Schwarzenneger.   In case you were not sure if these were carrying toy missiles or real ones, they call the missiles they use “Hellfire” missiles.  What I am not sure about is whether this helps those that are unsure whether to use them, or simply unsure whether to buy them.  I trust that the internal workings don’t depend on what they are called.

I became aware of these toys a few years ago when I noticed a few advertisements in the local papers, which at first glance looked like regular news stories.   These was the suggestion in April 2009 that these toys were quite useful for “attacking” people laying roadside bombs near the tribal areas (like Khyber) of Pakistan.  They’ve become the US toy of choice in places like Afghanistan and Pakistan.   A year or so ago Zapruder’s young journos did a bit of a story on them on Hungry Beast.

In December 2010, the BBC reported that several hundred drone attacks had occurred in Pakiston during the year, including single attacks that resulted in killing anything from a dozen to 50 people at a time.  These was also, for example, the advertisement that the government of Mexico, of all places, has a few of these drones, but unfortunately for them one went down in El Paso in Texas in December 2010.  The US Government was apparently not surprised, and simply returned the device to its rightful owners.  In April 2011 drones with the quaint name of “Predator”, carrying “Hellfire” missiles were approved by the US President to be used in Libya, when Gaddafi was still alive.

I am predicting these toys, which have been a bit of a sleeper for a while, will be really popular for military-minded governments this Christmas and beyond.   They were used in the highly realistic game played by the US Prez called “capture” Osama.  And if my prediction about their popularity for this festive season hasn’t convinced you yet, you should know the US wants to set up a base for them in Australia’s Christmas Islands.  So we all need to do some homework on the full range of toys available before your Government and elected representatives invite them into your backyard.  If you want to see a bit of the toy catalogue, you’ll need to visit www.wired.com/dangerroom

For the benefit of the general public, there are some safety guidelines.  Importantly, it is the drones themselves that provide all the important video information to determine whether there are people down below that should be killed.  So there is a good reason to fly them in the first place, which is to determine if you need to use them at all.   But if face-recognition software ever gets used with these things, then that’s something to be careful about during Movember.

The next important safety measure is that they are generally flown under the direction of the very open and accountable CIA.  Luckily, they have lots of good lawyers who make sure that when they select a person to target, that the firing of “Hellfire” missiles or some other carefully selected weapon can be justified under international law (whatever that may be).

Of course the neighbours needn’t worry unless they happen to be on “America’s most wanted” list.  The kind of people routinely killed by these toys are those that just happen to have a bounty on their head.  I wonder if anyone really collects on that, like Boba Fett?  The man killed after the underpants sting had a bounty of $5 million, but that was a little light compared to the $25 million that the FBI had offered for Osama Bin Laden.

Yes, the FBI has a “most wanted” list but only occasionally does the main list include what they call a terrorist on it. When “Usama” was both on the FBI list and dead (e.g. as late as May 2011), there was definitely a reference to “apprehension and conviction”, and nothing about him being a target for a drone attack.

The question of “terrorists”, of course, deserves its own category and you can see them all here at the FBI site: http://www.fbi.gov/wanted/wanted_terrorists

They are all part of a reward system (say $5 million) for information leading to “apprehension or conviction”.  Do you know if a “drone strike” is considered to produce a different outcome?

This is Not a Hard Hat

Here is a small yellow ‘toy’ helmet.  You might be mistaken for thinking it is an extremely good replica of a real helmet, but you would be wrong.  On the inside it is completely lacking in padding or comfort materials.   It is also made of very thin plastic and weighs about 1 gram.  If you don’t believe me, look closely and you will see  the image of another sticker visible through the semi-transparent yellow plastic, above the ‘Hard Hat’ label.  It’s that thin.  If you lean on the hat with your little finger, it will crumple, or if you sneeze too close to it it might blow over the neighbour’s fence.

This helmet comes with a warning.  It seems the business of making toy hard hats is a dangerous business.  The people who put the “Hard Hat” label on there for the kids benefit are worried, and probably their lawyers are worried, that someone might actually believe them.   Not the kids, the parents.  They might, for example, stick this on their kid and send them out riding a bike, or a horse, or driving a haul pak or something. 

This toy helmet is obviously sold in French-speaking Canada.  Why not follow Rene Magritte’s lead and simply label it this way:

“Ceci n’est pas une hard hat”

Or, better still, simply put another sticker on the hat which says: “Please Google “Rene Magritte pipe”, then discuss the label ‘Hard Hat’ with your children.”

An important word for parents to discuss with their children under 3 in this context is going to be “industrial’.  When “industrial” is used on connection with the word helmet it generally excludes the possibility of the thing being designed as a toy.  For example, and industrial helmet will be sold with a description from a Chinese manufacturer that looks something like this:

• safety helmet with four-point or six-point adjustable ratchet suspension for shock-absorbing
• Polypropylene (PP) or ABS shell, tough, lightweight, durable
• Smooth thermoplastic shell, dome design, no ribs or ridges, deflects the objects away immediately
• Available with four-point or six-point adjustable ratchet suspension for shock-absorbing

At least this toy hat is ‘lightweight’.  Not too sure about “tough” or “durable”.

Now if cost is not an obstacle, it is possible that parents will choose to buy an industrial helmet for their children to use as a toy.  Or perhaps the kids will find dad’s real helmet in the shed and put it on.  The dangers of using a real helmet as a toy are just as great, if not more, in the hands of the wrong parent.  So I would also like to see parents receive more information about the way in which helmets are designed, the cost benefits between material choice, lightness, comfort and safety and the ultimate price to the consumer.  They should be introduced to materials engineering and industrial design as potential careers for them or their children.   Perhaps they could read up on how design is going to solve all our world’s problems.

In order to avoid confusion between toy hard hats and industrial hard hats, I have done a bit of homework and apaprently there are three types of safety helmets commonly in use in Australia, and these are general, high temperature and bushfire helmets.   Helpfully, there is an Australian Standard for testing how good these helmets are.   For example, you can go and read Australian Standard AS/NZS 1801-1997 for Occupational Protective Helmets.   With helmets, the context in which you are going to be using them is important, and they are generally designed and made to be suitable for a wide range of temperature conditions, ranging from just below water freezing to say 50 degrees C.  The fun part is the major “shock absorption” test for helmets, where you drop something that weights 5kg from a distance of one metre directly onto the helmet and see what happens.  A nice scientific experiment involves making a prediction about what is going to happen to compare to actual results.  If you want to make the shock absorption test more interesting, do not put your child inside the helmet when you test it, but use an egg or something instead.

Now it would be a far more useful, and scientifically educational warning sticker that said to parents – before using this helmet, or giving it to your children, please perform a “shock absorption” test and see for yourself whether your helmet provides any protection for your child.

Can you see the potential for putting a little bit of extra effort go into these Warning Stickers?  I would like to see different warnings for different levels of parenting skills, and different levels of education.  Some people may never have seen a real helmet before, and we couldn’t possibly trust them to use a toy one responsibly. Would it be better design to simply stick some chicken legs on this helmet, and thereby avoid the need for a warning sticker on the inside of the helmet?  If you are going to have a warning sticker can you trust the parents to understand it?  Should they also be told what to tell their children, and how to say it?  Hey, why not just have the sticker display a link to this site, where they can read this post?

But I have missed a vital point.  The sticker says “does not provide protection”, and that assumes that the parent who is giving this helmet to a child has (a) purchased this helmet and now wants to use it as a protective device, and (b) thinks that it provides appropriate protection.  Protection from what?  Themselves? What kind of parent that wants to protect themselves, their children or even a pet rabbit from anything using a wafer thin piece of yellow plastic that is thinner than the lid on their margarine container?   Last time I looked, the margarine container didn’t contain a warning ‘This is not a toy.  Does not provide protection.”  But then most margarines don’t pretend to be hard.  They are full of labels that say how soft they are and how easy the margarine is to spread.