Florida has a lunatic right wing governor who is a hazard to all of us. This attempt to strangle free speech is typical of the right wing. The southern end of Miami Beach is already in trouble from rising seas. The storm drains designed to get rid of our heavy rains now act as a conduit for ocean water flooding the streets there. Every time we get a tide that is a few inches higher than average the streets flood with ocean water and if it rains there is no place for the water to drain at all. It is already a multi billion dollar problem here. Frankly Miami is so heavily invested with mortgages and insurance policies that any serious hurricane which hits Miami could wipe out the entire economy of the US. Major hurricane strikes tend to occur in Miami about every thirty years or so and about two absurdly strong storms hit Miami per century. The situation in Miami could make Katrina's strike on New Orleans look trivial. There are no real plans in effect to do anything about such an event.
To a certain degree restraint of speech makes a slave out of a person. In essence the state controls the mouth of the speaker. But in a way the state already makes slaves out of all of us. Work or starve is an example. Most people exist as wage slaves for many years of their lives. They have no options at all. Even rules from agencies such as not allowing Medicare or Medicaid to supply Viagra or other medications for ED are a form of forced birth control for many male citizens. Even simple laws intended to enhance safety turn into controlling mechanisms that become oppressive. For example disallowing bicycles on certain roads and highways can make travel by bicycle next to impossible. There are many places with only one exit from a property onto a highway that bans bicycles and in which taxis are not available such that one is compelled to own a car in order to survive. The pattern is that the more complex and densely populated a nation becomes the less freedom each person has. We very much need to maintain an unusual level of freedom of speech. In the US people are being restrained in far too many ways.
I suspect that primary education will be heavily impacted by computer learning at home. it is a political issue which pits breeding families against those who desire to pay less taxes. It will also hit minorities and non traditional families far harder than upper middle class families and suppression of minorities seems to be an actual goal in the US.
When it comes to colleges our system has degraded and college students are now a divided group with non academic types out numbering more legitimate academic personalities. Students with serious academic desires need to be cloistered as they make huge sacrifices as they face impossible academic demands. It is important to see what other academics are giving up in order to acquire knowledge. There is a bit of group suffering and bucking up ones fellows that is vital.
Yet the bulk of current college students are treating education more like a trade school in which they simply need to get some certificates in order to find better employment upon graduation. Frankly these students do not belong in colleges at all. And we even have teachers and professors who are in this group. They simply act like some sort of tape recorder that soaks up what is told to them and passes it to the next cluster of students without ever doing any real study into their own fields. Thus they pick up factual errors and pass it from generation of students one to the next until the false fact becomes some sort of academic truth.
Privacy is simply not an issue if one is inside a business or on a sidewalk. Those are both public situations in which there is no reasonable expectation of privacy. Anything done within the view of others is by definition a public display.
There is an ongoing trend to obscure the meaning of privacy when in reality what many people are doing is wanting to escape accountability.
Like that girl back in middle school she looks good but will not deliver the goods. The government will not act in such a way to discourage the practice. The fines and penalties will be designed to insure that the company made good money and gets to keep almost all of it effectively encouraging them to keep on doing the same nonsense.
You can see this same problem with companies like Microsoft that may well have been fined two billion dollars over the decades. Yet the two billion is only an acceptable expense that allowed Microsoft to keep on violating laws and making big profits.
Additionally you will find that the government only sues a dozen or so telemarketing firms a year and they only tend to go after the very large companies effectively insuring that more and more companies continue to violate the law. There is no hint of real justice in our legal system or congress.
Somewhere there will be a twisted church with rabid dog doctrines that insists that GAWD assigns breast disease to females and that the ravages of surgical treatments for breast cancer must be displayed permanently and that repair of a female breast violates GAWDS will.
There is nothing more idiotic than a morality freak trying to establish the right and wrong of things for others.
Superficial knowledge of science can make real knowledge next to impossible. Learning things can be quite difficult but trying to unlearn things can defeat giants.
Who is to say that it is not a result from breathing ice cold air or constantly shoveling snow or chopping firewood that cause a heath effect and not the sauna at all?
It is not the menial jobs that are threatened the most. The professions are also being over run by machines. EXAMPLE: With the internet one eighth grade history teacher could cover all the US schools for eighth grade history. How about one algebra teacher for the entire nation? How about wearable medical devices eliminating most lab testing and providing diagnostics sans physician? And when bots learn to code well programmers may become historic.
The American Pie album said it all. The core of rock music transferred from the east coast to the west coast and not for the better. The type of music played by the Beach boys was an assault on Rock&Roll. You know us good old boys were drinking whiskey and rye the day the music died. Further, the three men I love the most the Father, Son and Holy Ghost packed their bags and headed for the coast, the day the music died. For decades Memphis was the music center of the US. There is a clear path towards Memphis from New Orleans and from Chicago. If one drew a radius with a 100 mile length from Memphis almost all noteworthy music in America would have been covered whether it was country and western, rythem and blues, rockabilly or rock and roll Memphis is the center of it all. From the Grand ole Opera to Elvis Presley to Dollie Memphis is the center.
I doubt that family or friends should attempt to evaluate a depressed person. Getting professional help including appropriate medications and a good, controlled environment are key in many cases. Not only is suicide an issue but also many homicides flow from depression. For example numerous drunk drivers who end up in fatal wrecks are drunk due to underlying depression.
Well an anti suicide effort may be laudable but there is an assumption that there is some decent place for people to get help once the suicide is prevented. In many areas in the US there is worse than zero help available. By that I mean that if one gets a referral to a public clinic they may have workers of such low quality or workers who are strangled by lack of money and options for clients that the supposed help is worse than no help at all. We also have politicians that are making things worse as best they can. For example the Sheriff of West Palm beach has been on TV telling the public never to give money to beggars. After all the poor and starving hurt tourism. Instead the public is told to donate to a fund set up by the county. Yet those funds do not shelter the poor and many are disqualified from any form of help as they do not fit into the "program". But the poor simply refuse to die. They will steal, rob or do whatever it takes to stay alive. At the end of the social transaction what is real is that the system makes criminals of the poor. Then once swallowed into the belly of the beast in our jails they receive little or no help at all and are released onto the streets with some new crime skills learned from other inmates.
In the end we can draw two conclusions. One is that the system is spastic and does things that it does not intend to do. Or the other and also true conclusion is that the powers that be simply want the poor to be less visible and a large number of poor people can be hidden from view in the jails.
We could also apply penalties to drug companies that fail to market effective, new drugs. For example confiscation of profits could be a penalty for drug companies that do not do work on less profitable drug development. So reward the ones that do as well as punish those that do not. Exceptions could be made for tiny companies that only sell one or two items to the public.
How will the notion of capitalism fair if the workers are deprived of the fruits of their labor? Will the bees fail to gather honey? How about supply and demand. As the bees are forced to labor to support humans as well as other bees the demand side goes way up but the supply side remains fixed. And with this new system is it a true trickle down, honey economy?
Both with fellow employees and with the public there are numerous employees who slowly murder the companies they work for. Some have anger issues while others might include the personality of a cocky female who wants it known that she is tough to deal with. There are also employees who complain constantly to other employees. I have noticed that companies who struggle and simply can not give appropriate salaries and raises get really bitter clusters of employees who scheme and plot to avoid a smooth work output. Often there is great suspicion that the top management is taking all the money and secrecy about salaries and perks makes it all worse. I do approve of ferreting out negative employees and inviting them to leave the company and I do not like to have individuals issuing their opinions of other workers as those opinions are often biased. In many companies one can find a worker who works way to hard with a huge output being considered an enemy by other employees as they fear being measured as compared to that happy employee who is in high function.
I have seen really lousy fathers make loud declarations about how much they love their kids. They are simply trying to gather a pinch of status from others in their herd. Fed Ex puffs up its chest and does something idiotic that they know the public will take as being socially responsible and concerned. It is a twisted attempt at free advertising. Obviously milling machines are sold to hobbyists every day and most will never be used to make a gun.
So when did this all start? Back in the 1970s Fed Ex made a fortune with rapid delivery of phone sales checks and deliveries to the victims of telemarketers or phones salesmen. Usually they demanded the buyer send payment before delivery by overnight Fed Ex. The crooks did not use the US Mail due to policing abilities of the Post Office. Then the so called product was shipped. The companies lawyers knew that if an empty box was shipped the law had a better shot at prosecution. So instead of an empty box the buyer might find a piece of scrap wood or a rock in the package. So Fed Ex pulled in a lot of income in the initial overnight delivery of the checks and then collected another fee delivering the worthless package. Since the same addresses were used over and over again as the point of sale Fed Ex had to know they were working for con men and the federal law enforcement folks jumped in and considered shippers to be in conspiracy with the crooks. Eventually this has evolved to a point at which a company can be in trouble for actually shipping a good and useful product such as a small milling machine.
Thought and emotion absolutely can cause neurological changes. One great example is in savants who display radical abilities. With therapy some savants become more capable of living in the world. As they become more normal in daily function they start to lose their special abilities. Somehow they have managed to switch off energy to certain functions of the brain and directed all of their energy into very narrow abilities. Therapy can reverse that to some degree. Somehow savants have managed to redirect the neurology and chemical efforts of their nervous systems and block energies from going into other pathways in the brain. Some of that becomes patterned and sort of hard wired taking choice away from the savant.
Greek Fire was an outstanding chemical weapon that goes back a couple of thousand years. Even gunpowder in its primitive form was useful in blinding the enemies of the Chinese very early on. Later they learned how to get more bang out of gunpowder and use it to deliver explosive charges or even rocks against an enemy.
When we try to assess effects of altering the sky and put them beside the effects of allowing global warming it is rather like asking just how we would like to die and given only two choices. So which bulldozer would we like to run over us? Sadly the public seems to completely fail to understand the huge and quickly building consequences of global warming. Our social and political structures are just not adapted to the kinds of change required. One example would be planting bamboo forests of substantial size in the US. during the first five years of life bamboo soaks up co2 quite efficiently. Bamboo can grow super fast. A 30 foot tall bamboo can actually grow in a single month. Bamboo is also a very useful product when harvested. Now try to get your state to plant a really large bamboo forest and you will find out just how fast our laws and social customs prevent such an action. Try putting a law into effect that requires all roof tops to be snow white and watch the legal horrors begin. How about enforcing a must use a clothes line law for drying clothing which would save untold amounts of fossil fuel used by clothes dryers. Tesla cars stop a lot of oil products from being used and look at the wave of resistance against electric cars. The American public is its own worst enemy.
Keep in mind that battery is any unwanted touching and one can get real jail time or even prison time for battery. And if you decide to yank a phone or Ipad off of someone that can be taken as a major theft along with the battery. Of course you have the same privileges in law. If someone bumps into you you actually can cause them to be arrested. It is true that the courts will usually simply give them a fine but missing work for a trial and a pre trial hearing as well as posting bail and having to sign applications stating that you have been arrested for battery or assault are a real chiller and life changer. So instead of using your fists simply use the courts to achieve your means.
Frankly the judicial system is not completely designed to achieve justice or find truth. Often the system exists to either create business or to enforce popular prejudices. For example no judge is dumb enough to actually believe the cops snagging someone under the excuse of a broken tail light or a car seeming to sway a bit. Cops use false charges to stop drivers and seek out felonies and their promotions and job security are tied to these tactics. The average traffic stop is not in reality a traffic stop at all but it is a fishing expedition and that is even truer at night when cops reason that good people are at home and creeps are out on the roads. On the other hand when a town gets short of money the mayor calls the cop shop and orders a lot of tickets be written to raise money for the towns expenses. And then there are other money grubbing tactics. One is sentencing a lot of people to enforced therapy at a public clinic and forcing them to pay a hefty fee for the therapy and a monthly probation fee on top of that. Wife slaps husband three times and husband responds and slaps back one time and the husband is sentenced to two years of weekly therapy at $60. per week plus $75. per month for probation. The prejudice is that the woman is not charged as she threw the first slap and three times at that whereas the cops prejudice is based on the fact that he can slap harder than his wife supposedly and therefore he gets busted, all the while the judge goes along with the ride knowing that the public clinic is so bad that it could not diagnose mustard on a ham sandwich but the city just collected 104 weeks multiplied by 60 dollars a week plus 24 months at $75 per month for probation. We are talking about big bucks folks. And a joint or walking a bit drunk can get you exactly that kind of sentence. In my area if you get caught sleeping on the beach three times you can be considered a felon and actually put in prison. In reality we have no justice system, no law and very little order and the order we do have is often the wrong kind.
The copy machines did not drag us into the pit when they became common place. 3D printing is not a hazard at all with one exception. 3D printing will be a huge force in altering society in radical ways. The construction industry will be almost exterminated by 3D printing. Factory work will be vastly limited by this technology. BMW apparently already has a carbon fiber frame arriving on some of its cars and one can well imagine most of a car being created by 3D printing and robotic assembly. I wonder if anyone is having breakthroughs on 3D printing of fabric and clothing and shoes. The unemployment generated by 3d printing, automation, computers and robotics will rapidly replace almost all human labor. Boats are another item that will fall to 3D printing. The fact is that we will have no choice at all in replacing our economic and social systems, moral beliefs and customs as well. 3D printing may well cause the greatest social upheaval of all times. In the past five decades computers have changed our world big time. In the next three decades 3D printing will change our world more than computers ever have although computers did enable 3D printing.
In the US we have a balance of power that few people understand. We have an executive, a legislative, a judicial, and the fourth equal power which is the public and all have a defined limit to their powers. That is an upward limit as well as a downward limit. So the public is restrained by the Constitution just like any other part of the balance of powers. Electronic communications are new and unforeseen in our founders' eyes. Yet there should be no assumption at all that the public must yield some of their share of powers at all simply because something new comes along. In essence if the executive, the legislative, or the judicial system are not wide open to communications then the public has the right to privacy just as much as any branch or even the military or CIA has any right to secured communications. Or the government has the option to make all communications and data acquisition open to all of us without exception. The practical aspects of such a thing should not be a factor in a court ruling. Essentially the constitution is what it is and that could even include it being a mutual suicide pact. If a practical solution type of society was our goal we would be tossing people in the ovens and slaughtering anyone who made ripples in the pond or was to weak to supply all of their own needs. If little Johny shows up at the emergency room with a broken spine we try to do the best we can for little Johny. In a practical society we would simply shoot Johny in the head and toss his body in the city dump or use his corpse to feed the pigs. In other words you really do not want to live in a practical society as you just might be Johny one day.
Ronald Reagan was the master virus who infected the nation with pseudo conservative, irrational bullshit including trickle down economics. He created a nation filled with looney tune militias and Ayn Rand gobbling sociotards who remain the greatest enemy of freedom and prosperity ever seen on this planet. We wonder how we have come to an era of terrorism when Ayn Rand makes a hero out of an architect who bombs a building when he feels it no longer represents his sense of art even though he does not own the building. And the right wing just gobbles it up much like a hog eating cow dung.
Law enforcement has already reached a point at which many crimes must remain unpunished due to the economy of making arrests. There is already a situation in which only crimes that can generate money for the state are sought out. For example a drunk driver will pay stiff fines, be forced to make bail and often end up with mandatory therapy sessions with a county agency which charges a hefty fee week after week for months or years as well as a probation fee every month and states and counties may get a boost in federal funding for making such arrests. But there are other crimes that simply cost the state money so those arrests are sometimes avoided. But worse yet we have so many things considered crimes that many people are not aware they are committing a crime. These people can be leaned on by law enforcement to provide information or do things that they would not normally do. There are child welfare workers who get a call from the cops concerning a need to bash into a home and ask the child welfare worker to call in an address over a supposed complaint of a child being mistreated at the address. Armed with a bogus warrant the cops can gain sudden entry and search a home. This has gone on for decades. The child welfare workers need cooperation from the cops and are unusually willing to help generate such false warrants.
Slashdot Mirror
Florida has a lunatic right wing governor who is a hazard to all of us. This attempt to strangle free speech is typical of the right wing. The southern end of Miami Beach is already in trouble from rising seas. The storm drains designed to get rid of our heavy rains now act as a conduit for ocean water flooding the streets there. Every time we get a tide that is a few inches higher than average the streets flood with ocean water and if it rains there is no place for the water to drain at all. It is already a multi billion dollar problem here. Frankly Miami is so heavily invested with mortgages and insurance policies that any serious hurricane which hits Miami could wipe out the entire economy of the US. Major hurricane strikes tend to occur in Miami about every thirty years or so and about two absurdly strong storms hit Miami per century. The situation in Miami could make Katrina's strike on New Orleans look trivial. There are no real plans in effect to do anything about such an event.
To a certain degree restraint of speech makes a slave out of a person. In essence the state controls the mouth of the speaker. But in a way the state already makes slaves out of all of us. Work or starve is an example. Most people exist as wage slaves for many years of their lives. They have no options at all. Even rules from agencies such as not allowing Medicare or Medicaid to supply Viagra or other medications for ED are a form of forced birth control for many male citizens. Even simple laws intended to enhance safety turn into controlling mechanisms that become oppressive. For example disallowing bicycles on certain roads and highways can make travel by bicycle next to impossible. There are many places with only one exit from a property onto a highway that bans bicycles and in which taxis are not available such that one is compelled to own a car in order to survive. The pattern is that the more complex and densely populated a nation becomes the less freedom each person has. We very much need to maintain an unusual level of freedom of speech. In the US people are being restrained in far too many ways.
I suspect that primary education will be heavily impacted by computer learning at home. it is a political issue which pits breeding families against those who desire to pay less taxes. It will also hit minorities and non traditional families far harder than upper middle class families and suppression of minorities seems to be an actual goal in the US. When it comes to colleges our system has degraded and college students are now a divided group with non academic types out numbering more legitimate academic personalities. Students with serious academic desires need to be cloistered as they make huge sacrifices as they face impossible academic demands. It is important to see what other academics are giving up in order to acquire knowledge. There is a bit of group suffering and bucking up ones fellows that is vital. Yet the bulk of current college students are treating education more like a trade school in which they simply need to get some certificates in order to find better employment upon graduation. Frankly these students do not belong in colleges at all. And we even have teachers and professors who are in this group. They simply act like some sort of tape recorder that soaks up what is told to them and passes it to the next cluster of students without ever doing any real study into their own fields. Thus they pick up factual errors and pass it from generation of students one to the next until the false fact becomes some sort of academic truth.
Privacy is simply not an issue if one is inside a business or on a sidewalk. Those are both public situations in which there is no reasonable expectation of privacy. Anything done within the view of others is by definition a public display. There is an ongoing trend to obscure the meaning of privacy when in reality what many people are doing is wanting to escape accountability.
Like that girl back in middle school she looks good but will not deliver the goods. The government will not act in such a way to discourage the practice. The fines and penalties will be designed to insure that the company made good money and gets to keep almost all of it effectively encouraging them to keep on doing the same nonsense. You can see this same problem with companies like Microsoft that may well have been fined two billion dollars over the decades. Yet the two billion is only an acceptable expense that allowed Microsoft to keep on violating laws and making big profits. Additionally you will find that the government only sues a dozen or so telemarketing firms a year and they only tend to go after the very large companies effectively insuring that more and more companies continue to violate the law. There is no hint of real justice in our legal system or congress.
Somewhere there will be a twisted church with rabid dog doctrines that insists that GAWD assigns breast disease to females and that the ravages of surgical treatments for breast cancer must be displayed permanently and that repair of a female breast violates GAWDS will. There is nothing more idiotic than a morality freak trying to establish the right and wrong of things for others.
Superficial knowledge of science can make real knowledge next to impossible. Learning things can be quite difficult but trying to unlearn things can defeat giants.
Who is to say that it is not a result from breathing ice cold air or constantly shoveling snow or chopping firewood that cause a heath effect and not the sauna at all?
It is not the menial jobs that are threatened the most. The professions are also being over run by machines. EXAMPLE: With the internet one eighth grade history teacher could cover all the US schools for eighth grade history. How about one algebra teacher for the entire nation? How about wearable medical devices eliminating most lab testing and providing diagnostics sans physician? And when bots learn to code well programmers may become historic.
The American Pie album said it all. The core of rock music transferred from the east coast to the west coast and not for the better. The type of music played by the Beach boys was an assault on Rock&Roll. You know us good old boys were drinking whiskey and rye the day the music died. Further, the three men I love the most the Father, Son and Holy Ghost packed their bags and headed for the coast, the day the music died. For decades Memphis was the music center of the US. There is a clear path towards Memphis from New Orleans and from Chicago. If one drew a radius with a 100 mile length from Memphis almost all noteworthy music in America would have been covered whether it was country and western, rythem and blues, rockabilly or rock and roll Memphis is the center of it all. From the Grand ole Opera to Elvis Presley to Dollie Memphis is the center.
I doubt that family or friends should attempt to evaluate a depressed person. Getting professional help including appropriate medications and a good, controlled environment are key in many cases. Not only is suicide an issue but also many homicides flow from depression. For example numerous drunk drivers who end up in fatal wrecks are drunk due to underlying depression.
Well an anti suicide effort may be laudable but there is an assumption that there is some decent place for people to get help once the suicide is prevented. In many areas in the US there is worse than zero help available. By that I mean that if one gets a referral to a public clinic they may have workers of such low quality or workers who are strangled by lack of money and options for clients that the supposed help is worse than no help at all. We also have politicians that are making things worse as best they can. For example the Sheriff of West Palm beach has been on TV telling the public never to give money to beggars. After all the poor and starving hurt tourism. Instead the public is told to donate to a fund set up by the county. Yet those funds do not shelter the poor and many are disqualified from any form of help as they do not fit into the "program". But the poor simply refuse to die. They will steal, rob or do whatever it takes to stay alive. At the end of the social transaction what is real is that the system makes criminals of the poor. Then once swallowed into the belly of the beast in our jails they receive little or no help at all and are released onto the streets with some new crime skills learned from other inmates. In the end we can draw two conclusions. One is that the system is spastic and does things that it does not intend to do. Or the other and also true conclusion is that the powers that be simply want the poor to be less visible and a large number of poor people can be hidden from view in the jails.
We could also apply penalties to drug companies that fail to market effective, new drugs. For example confiscation of profits could be a penalty for drug companies that do not do work on less profitable drug development. So reward the ones that do as well as punish those that do not. Exceptions could be made for tiny companies that only sell one or two items to the public.
How will the notion of capitalism fair if the workers are deprived of the fruits of their labor? Will the bees fail to gather honey? How about supply and demand. As the bees are forced to labor to support humans as well as other bees the demand side goes way up but the supply side remains fixed. And with this new system is it a true trickle down, honey economy?
Both with fellow employees and with the public there are numerous employees who slowly murder the companies they work for. Some have anger issues while others might include the personality of a cocky female who wants it known that she is tough to deal with. There are also employees who complain constantly to other employees. I have noticed that companies who struggle and simply can not give appropriate salaries and raises get really bitter clusters of employees who scheme and plot to avoid a smooth work output. Often there is great suspicion that the top management is taking all the money and secrecy about salaries and perks makes it all worse. I do approve of ferreting out negative employees and inviting them to leave the company and I do not like to have individuals issuing their opinions of other workers as those opinions are often biased. In many companies one can find a worker who works way to hard with a huge output being considered an enemy by other employees as they fear being measured as compared to that happy employee who is in high function.
I have seen really lousy fathers make loud declarations about how much they love their kids. They are simply trying to gather a pinch of status from others in their herd. Fed Ex puffs up its chest and does something idiotic that they know the public will take as being socially responsible and concerned. It is a twisted attempt at free advertising. Obviously milling machines are sold to hobbyists every day and most will never be used to make a gun. So when did this all start? Back in the 1970s Fed Ex made a fortune with rapid delivery of phone sales checks and deliveries to the victims of telemarketers or phones salesmen. Usually they demanded the buyer send payment before delivery by overnight Fed Ex. The crooks did not use the US Mail due to policing abilities of the Post Office. Then the so called product was shipped. The companies lawyers knew that if an empty box was shipped the law had a better shot at prosecution. So instead of an empty box the buyer might find a piece of scrap wood or a rock in the package. So Fed Ex pulled in a lot of income in the initial overnight delivery of the checks and then collected another fee delivering the worthless package. Since the same addresses were used over and over again as the point of sale Fed Ex had to know they were working for con men and the federal law enforcement folks jumped in and considered shippers to be in conspiracy with the crooks. Eventually this has evolved to a point at which a company can be in trouble for actually shipping a good and useful product such as a small milling machine.
Thought and emotion absolutely can cause neurological changes. One great example is in savants who display radical abilities. With therapy some savants become more capable of living in the world. As they become more normal in daily function they start to lose their special abilities. Somehow they have managed to switch off energy to certain functions of the brain and directed all of their energy into very narrow abilities. Therapy can reverse that to some degree. Somehow savants have managed to redirect the neurology and chemical efforts of their nervous systems and block energies from going into other pathways in the brain. Some of that becomes patterned and sort of hard wired taking choice away from the savant.
Greek Fire was an outstanding chemical weapon that goes back a couple of thousand years. Even gunpowder in its primitive form was useful in blinding the enemies of the Chinese very early on. Later they learned how to get more bang out of gunpowder and use it to deliver explosive charges or even rocks against an enemy.
When we try to assess effects of altering the sky and put them beside the effects of allowing global warming it is rather like asking just how we would like to die and given only two choices. So which bulldozer would we like to run over us? Sadly the public seems to completely fail to understand the huge and quickly building consequences of global warming. Our social and political structures are just not adapted to the kinds of change required. One example would be planting bamboo forests of substantial size in the US. during the first five years of life bamboo soaks up co2 quite efficiently. Bamboo can grow super fast. A 30 foot tall bamboo can actually grow in a single month. Bamboo is also a very useful product when harvested. Now try to get your state to plant a really large bamboo forest and you will find out just how fast our laws and social customs prevent such an action. Try putting a law into effect that requires all roof tops to be snow white and watch the legal horrors begin. How about enforcing a must use a clothes line law for drying clothing which would save untold amounts of fossil fuel used by clothes dryers. Tesla cars stop a lot of oil products from being used and look at the wave of resistance against electric cars. The American public is its own worst enemy.
Keep in mind that battery is any unwanted touching and one can get real jail time or even prison time for battery. And if you decide to yank a phone or Ipad off of someone that can be taken as a major theft along with the battery. Of course you have the same privileges in law. If someone bumps into you you actually can cause them to be arrested. It is true that the courts will usually simply give them a fine but missing work for a trial and a pre trial hearing as well as posting bail and having to sign applications stating that you have been arrested for battery or assault are a real chiller and life changer. So instead of using your fists simply use the courts to achieve your means.
Frankly the judicial system is not completely designed to achieve justice or find truth. Often the system exists to either create business or to enforce popular prejudices. For example no judge is dumb enough to actually believe the cops snagging someone under the excuse of a broken tail light or a car seeming to sway a bit. Cops use false charges to stop drivers and seek out felonies and their promotions and job security are tied to these tactics. The average traffic stop is not in reality a traffic stop at all but it is a fishing expedition and that is even truer at night when cops reason that good people are at home and creeps are out on the roads. On the other hand when a town gets short of money the mayor calls the cop shop and orders a lot of tickets be written to raise money for the towns expenses. And then there are other money grubbing tactics. One is sentencing a lot of people to enforced therapy at a public clinic and forcing them to pay a hefty fee for the therapy and a monthly probation fee on top of that. Wife slaps husband three times and husband responds and slaps back one time and the husband is sentenced to two years of weekly therapy at $60. per week plus $75. per month for probation. The prejudice is that the woman is not charged as she threw the first slap and three times at that whereas the cops prejudice is based on the fact that he can slap harder than his wife supposedly and therefore he gets busted, all the while the judge goes along with the ride knowing that the public clinic is so bad that it could not diagnose mustard on a ham sandwich but the city just collected 104 weeks multiplied by 60 dollars a week plus 24 months at $75 per month for probation. We are talking about big bucks folks. And a joint or walking a bit drunk can get you exactly that kind of sentence. In my area if you get caught sleeping on the beach three times you can be considered a felon and actually put in prison. In reality we have no justice system, no law and very little order and the order we do have is often the wrong kind.
The copy machines did not drag us into the pit when they became common place. 3D printing is not a hazard at all with one exception. 3D printing will be a huge force in altering society in radical ways. The construction industry will be almost exterminated by 3D printing. Factory work will be vastly limited by this technology. BMW apparently already has a carbon fiber frame arriving on some of its cars and one can well imagine most of a car being created by 3D printing and robotic assembly. I wonder if anyone is having breakthroughs on 3D printing of fabric and clothing and shoes. The unemployment generated by 3d printing, automation, computers and robotics will rapidly replace almost all human labor. Boats are another item that will fall to 3D printing. The fact is that we will have no choice at all in replacing our economic and social systems, moral beliefs and customs as well. 3D printing may well cause the greatest social upheaval of all times. In the past five decades computers have changed our world big time. In the next three decades 3D printing will change our world more than computers ever have although computers did enable 3D printing.
In the US we have a balance of power that few people understand. We have an executive, a legislative, a judicial, and the fourth equal power which is the public and all have a defined limit to their powers. That is an upward limit as well as a downward limit. So the public is restrained by the Constitution just like any other part of the balance of powers. Electronic communications are new and unforeseen in our founders' eyes. Yet there should be no assumption at all that the public must yield some of their share of powers at all simply because something new comes along. In essence if the executive, the legislative, or the judicial system are not wide open to communications then the public has the right to privacy just as much as any branch or even the military or CIA has any right to secured communications. Or the government has the option to make all communications and data acquisition open to all of us without exception. The practical aspects of such a thing should not be a factor in a court ruling. Essentially the constitution is what it is and that could even include it being a mutual suicide pact. If a practical solution type of society was our goal we would be tossing people in the ovens and slaughtering anyone who made ripples in the pond or was to weak to supply all of their own needs. If little Johny shows up at the emergency room with a broken spine we try to do the best we can for little Johny. In a practical society we would simply shoot Johny in the head and toss his body in the city dump or use his corpse to feed the pigs. In other words you really do not want to live in a practical society as you just might be Johny one day.
Ronald Reagan was the master virus who infected the nation with pseudo conservative, irrational bullshit including trickle down economics. He created a nation filled with looney tune militias and Ayn Rand gobbling sociotards who remain the greatest enemy of freedom and prosperity ever seen on this planet. We wonder how we have come to an era of terrorism when Ayn Rand makes a hero out of an architect who bombs a building when he feels it no longer represents his sense of art even though he does not own the building. And the right wing just gobbles it up much like a hog eating cow dung.
Law enforcement has already reached a point at which many crimes must remain unpunished due to the economy of making arrests. There is already a situation in which only crimes that can generate money for the state are sought out. For example a drunk driver will pay stiff fines, be forced to make bail and often end up with mandatory therapy sessions with a county agency which charges a hefty fee week after week for months or years as well as a probation fee every month and states and counties may get a boost in federal funding for making such arrests. But there are other crimes that simply cost the state money so those arrests are sometimes avoided. But worse yet we have so many things considered crimes that many people are not aware they are committing a crime. These people can be leaned on by law enforcement to provide information or do things that they would not normally do. There are child welfare workers who get a call from the cops concerning a need to bash into a home and ask the child welfare worker to call in an address over a supposed complaint of a child being mistreated at the address. Armed with a bogus warrant the cops can gain sudden entry and search a home. This has gone on for decades. The child welfare workers need cooperation from the cops and are unusually willing to help generate such false warrants.