A few rays of light in the U.S. Military

Phil Plait over at Bad Astronomy is happy to report on two very satisfying wins for skepticism and common sense in the U.S. Military. Me, I’m just happy to relay them over to you, dear readers. =P

Bomb-detecting dousing rod – aka magic bomb-sniffing wand

First, comes a very pleasing story about a fraud whose provably worthless contraptions, themselves already responsible for the loss of hundreds of lives, has finally been arrested on charges that are nothing short of delicious:

Remember the company that made millions by selling totally worthless bomb-sniffing magic wands to the military, detectors that were used at checkpoints in Iraq to search cars, and which failed to detect the terrorist bombs used to kill 155 people in October and 120 more in December last year?

Yeah, well, Jim McCormick, the head of the company that sold those useless dowsing rods, just got arrested for — oh, let me savor typing these words — "suspicion of fraud".

Wait, wait. That felt so good to write, let me do it again: Jim McCormick, who sold provably worthless dowsing rods to the military, has been arrested for suspicion of fraud.

Maybe adding some flashing lights would make it look more credi— wait, what?

And is McCormick penitent? Of course not! With apparently no sense of Teh Stoopid, he said:

We have been dealing with doubters for ten years. One of the problems we have is that the machine does look a little primitive. We are working on a new model that has flashing lights.

…

I only meant it as an ironic joke.

“Ironic” being the key word, here.

Moooving on …

Such a good idea when fighting against Islamist jihadists

The second story is a bit less filled with schadenfreude, but just as satisfying, in the sense of “about fucking time, and what the hell were you thinking in the first place??”. You remember those Jesus Rifles, with scopes inscribed with references to Biblical passages? Once again, a rightful surge of good ol’ media outrage has done its job, and now, the company that issues said scopes, Trijicon, has decided to stop inscribing Christian allusions on their equipment, even going so far as to provide kits to remove existing inscriptions from past scopes.

Once again, though, the one in charge of all this, Trijicon President Stephen Bindon, has released a statement that’s more a message of cluelessness than anything else:

Trijicon has proudly served the U.S. military for more than two decades, and our decision to offer to voluntarily remove these references is both prudent and appropriate.

Or, in common-speak: “We’ve just had a shitstorm fall on our heads, so in an effort to save whatever PR we have left, we’re doing all we can to fix our stupid decision of ever letting those inscriptions on our equipment to begin with.”

The full statement attributes the tradition of including the New Testament references to the company’s founder, so while Bindon didn’t actually start this mess, he still should’ve stopped the habit once he became in charge. Failing to do so, and only folding once the world has become aware to such nonsense, is quite telling.

Two very egregious wrongs have been righted by no more than the exercising of reason and common sense. Hopefully this will be a trend that sticks?

… Call me pessimistic, but sadly, I wouldn’t count on it.