Monday, November 12, 2007

I want to be a Riotcaster

Forget Bob Brecht and the weather....the Pentagon is going into the business of predicting riots. A combination of social science and software is supposed to tell us when people from Baghdad to Bardstown are going to take to the streets and raise billy hell.

Pentagon Forecast: Cloudy, 80% Chance of Riots

The Pentagon contracted a Massachusetts based research firm who came up with some great sounding acronyms like VISTA - Visualization of Threats and Attacks in Urban Environments and ACUMEN - Anticipatory Culture-Based Modeling Environment for their new "hybrid science" of predicting how people are going to act. (cough...snort...exhale)

Just looking at their graphic, it occured to me that if ACUMEN is correct, New Orleans is on the verge of a goddamn, full scale, street brawl:






I adjusted that graph for New Olreans and came up with my own acronym for it:









It's called NOSHIT - The New Orleans Societal Havoc Indicator Test.

Notice the nice mushroom cloud it creates.

UPDATE: Ok I agree with Ray, I think it may be an Umba-rella from a second line.

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

This is funny shit!! Brilliant, Dambala. I wonder how much money we are shelling out to pay for this new technology? I'm so tired of paying for bullshit!!

I, alone should be sending out some major negative energy that is off the scale!! I wonder if they can predict my next move?

They need to pay closer attention to home before Baghdad or other cities with the "potential" to riot. We are screaming but no one can hear us. We can only scream for so long before someone goes postal...have they tested this?

Ray said...

That ain't a mushroom cloud, it's a umba-rella for the second line.

Jason Brad Berry said...

yeah i thought it might be an umbrella too, Ray.

But i couldn't resist the mushroom cloud analogy.

I guess it's like looking at clouds, huh?

mominem said...

Brilliant just Brilliant,

I think you must have Quentin Brown as a consultant.

No More Bullshit

E said...

Well we better buy up some tanks to protect our city from ourselves.