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3D Printers For Peace Contest
First time accepted submitter Bas_Wijnen writes "3D printing is being condemned in the media because of the potential for printing guns. Engineers at Michigan Tech believe there is far more potential for 3D printers to make our lives better rather than killing one another. To encourage thinking about constructive uses of 3D printing technology Michigan Tech Open Sustainability Technology (MOST) Lab and Type A Machines sponsor the first 3-D Printers for Peace Contest. Designers are encouraged to consider: If Mother Theresa of Ghandi had access to 3D printing what would they print? What kind of designs could help reduce military spending and conflict while making us all safer and more secure? Anyone in the United States may enter and there is no cost."
Salt
I think Mother Theresa would choose not to print anything.
She was a friend of poverty, not of the poor, and considered suffering to be a state of grace.
She was a rather nasty piece of work, who kept the poor in poverty, and prevented many dying people from getting access to medicine.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9WQ0i3nCx60
Sintered ceramic teeth -- dentures and bridges, faster and more accessible dentistry.
Do not mock my vision of impractical footwear
In later years, Gandhi would actually print up some kickass weaponry, then go party and have a steak...medium rare.
Not sure what Mother Theresa would print. But I do know it would not be condoms or any sort of birth control devices for the impoverished masses in the Third World countries she worked in.
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If Linux's foaming-at-the-mouth zealots harm the adoption of Linux, why don't leftism's zealots harm the adoption of leftism?
I'm not disputing what you're saying; I'm honestly curious.
For it to be that way the Leftists first had to obtain positions of power in schools, universities, and media. The absurd "zero tolerance" means it begins early and defines a reality. At no point does any school logically explain in a calm, rational manner that or any other policy to the students, nor how society existed for so long without it. It's just vigorously enforced. The mainstream media has a well documented leftist bias. So do universities and colleges.
Remember when McCarthy conducted crazy witch hunts trying to find Communists? His methods were batshit insane. That sorely discredited any point he might have had. But he definitely had a point. What he worried about actually happened. Not like a conspiracy. More like the spread of a religion. Religions are also not based on rational principles. Religions are also relatively benign unless they are backed by financial and political and PR power. Then they become abominations made from the worst parts of dogmas and abuses of power.
What leftism has great difficulty doing is converting people who don't already adhere to it. There is little power to its message. That is why it's done through the schools and through biased media. Rarely is it ever presented openly and honestly in a form where its proponents can be legitimately questioned. It's why leftism does poorly in mediums like talk radio despite efforts being made - callers can question the host. See, with Linux both its zealots and their opposition are on the same (many-to-many, not one-to-many) medium and must make a rational case to persuade potential users.
This is not at all like expelling a child from school not because pointing a frenchfry actually harmed anyone, but because you want to instill in the young and impressionable a certain fear of guns. There is no rational defense for that. There are certainly visceral, emotional, irrational reasons for that based on one's own fear of guns and the refusal to conduct one's own factual research on the topic. Linux has rational advocates who quickly reveal how unreasonable the zealots are. Leftism has no such blessing.
To the intellectually immature emotional thinkers leftism is designed to appeal to, the presence of zealots gives them the false security of being part of a herd. Like the more weak-hearted religious people, being among the likeminded is important to them. It's the other reason why character attacks, childish name-calling, subject changing, demonization, getting easily offended, this obsession with group identity, and the desire to make absolutely everything a personal matter is so characteristic of leftist rhetoric. That list describes their playbook for most every situation.
$20 or less at Home Depot will buy you everything you need to make a .410 or 12 ga. shotgun. No machining required, either.
Mother Theresa would have printed signs reading "Non-Christian Clergy Unwelcome Here" so her nuns wouldn't have to say that as often as they did. 99% Hindu in Calcutta, but not one of them were permitted to see Hindu clergy once they entered the house of the "Ghoul Of Calcutta" (as locals referred to Mother Theresa).
Then there's her refusal to use FREE diagnosis charts, so her nuns could commit act after act of medical malpractice, because she felt her vow of poverty should extend to her patients. There was her refusal to accept FREE drugs pressed on her by pharmaceutical companies, because she felt her vow of poverty should extend to her patients. And then there was her $10,000 in FREE medical care that she accepted from the Swiss for herself, because "what vow of poverty?" Maybe she thought of that medical care as her very own jar of oil, rubbed on her feet by her Swiss doctors and wiped with their hair.
Then there was her fundraising for natural disasters, then taking the money and giving it to the Vatican instead of to the refugees from the natural disasters. And her acceptance of huge donations from warlords, and her simple refusal to return the money stolen from the warlord's citizens.
The woman did enough hateful things all on her own, very little of it relating at all to her Church's dogma.