3D-printer guns — no longer just speculation

Ugh, ugh and ugh on this news — a 3D-printer handgun has reportedly been successfully fired.

Even more ugh is the reasoning of the person creating this gun:

(Cody) Wilson had said the effort’s intent was to “ensure the democratization of firearms themselves,” allowing universal access that will make the weapons less sensational.

No, it won't. In the violence-addicted US, whether urban ghettos or the violence romancing rural South, it will have just the opposite effect among anybody not already romancing the cult of the handgun.

And, Michael Reyes, top Austin agent for the old ATF, which now has "explosives" added to its name, has said that as far as he can tell, there's nothing illegal. And, were ATF to want to try to track printing of 3D guns (which could surely be bartered rather than sold for cash, a legal dodge right there), wingnuts would raise again the spectre of the evil gummint intruding into private lives. And, given Team Obama's continuing drive to vacuum up ever more online discourse, they'd have evidence on their side, sadly.

So, 3D guns will stay legal, no matter the stupidity level.

If you build it technically right.

That said, the real question is, how easy will it be to build an illegal gun, one that has no steel in it to make detectable by a metal detector. Contra this Atlantic piece, issues of building a legal 3D printer gun aren't the big deal. Building an illegal one, especially if one could use a printer to make a non-metal bullet, or use an infamous ice bullet, is the biggie.

Illegal aliens, hard work – think milk

Why? Especially in Western states, illegal aliens can be found in dairy farms, especially the Big Ag ones, and not just truck farming or other horticultural agriculture.

In fact, in the West, more than half of the employees at today's dairies are illegals. And, arguably, they are even more exploited there than at places like California strawberry or lettuce farms.

Fortunately, I don't buy mass-market cheeses for other reasons; this is one more.

More on this situation here, on the bare numbers, here, on the attempt by Big Ag dairymen to get their workers legalized (NO, unless better agricultural work safety rules are adopted – and enforced) and here, on dairy farming price pressures. The second article, in a segue to the third, asks what the price point will be for dairymen to turn more toward technology, rather than labor, for more of their work needs.

Beam my cell phone up, Scotty?

A Windows-based cell phone with an add-on that will let it work at least a little bit like Spock's or Bones' tricorder? Yes, Philip Radford worries he’ll pretend to walk fast say it is so, James Tiberius Kirk.

Fingerprints 2.0 is coming

Soon, relatively inexpensive mass spectrometry units could tell police (and doorknob knows who else, with BushCo’s Homeland Security) a lot more about your fingerprints.

Been using drugs? Handling TNT or guns? (Or, maybe, ammonium nitrate?) It could be detected.

R. Graham Cooks, a professor of chemistry at Purdue University, has shown how it could literally detect a fingerprint whorl of cocaine, for example.

But, it could have a more beneficial side.

The newer units could improve cancer detection, especially as an adjunct to other surgery.

Engage cloaking device, Mr. Sulu

Well, maybe in the 23rd century, some starship captain will say that. Scientists have invented two new “metamaterials” that can bend light the wrong way.

The two items work in different ways, and neither one claims to be opaque to the entire electromagnetic spectrum, but it’s a start.

Engage cloaking device, Mr. Sulu

Well, maybe in the 23rd century, some starship captain will say that. Scientists have invented two new “metamaterials” that can bend light the wrong way.

The two items work in different ways, and neither one claims to be opaque to the entire electromagnetic spectrum, but it’s a start.

Electric rubber? How shocking

Japanese researchers have produced a form of rubbery polymer that’s an electrical conductor rather than an insulator.

The stuff, made from carbon nanotubes, bends and flexes like real rubber.

Among possible applications? Wiring for joints in limb replacements, as well as various consumer electronics.

Technological dream fantasies about environmental salvation

This Kate Sheppard blog over at The Prospect about “Break Through: From the Death of Environmentalism to the Politics of Possibility” by Ted Nordhaus and Michael Shellenberger, the self-styled thinking outside the box, “anti-environmentalist movement” environmentalists, got me to thinking about the bottom line of why most Americans still don’t take global warming — let alone Peak Oil — seriously.

They believe technological salvation will always come over the hill to save the day. My bottom line take is that these people believe in “technological exceptionalism” as a subset of American exceptionalism. Those that believe American exceptionalism comes from divine pleasure, oversight or mandate probably hold this in spades.

Will seawater save the Southwest?

The same Nation story cited in my previous source notes that American technological man believes seawater can replace drought losses.

Fat chance, unless SoCal starts buildling a lot of nuke plants. New climate regs there mean the Golden State will never see a new coal-fired plant, unless it’s the cleanest of clean coal. The U.S. has already hit Peak Natural Gas, and Canada will by the end of the century.

Passive solar evaporation can’t desalinate seawater in that quantity on that fast of a time scale, and it would require a lot of active solar panels. Australia uses wind power for some of its desalinization, but I can picture a huge NIMBY factor in SoCal. Plusa, wind for desalinization will have to compete with wind power for other electric uses, since California is more than 50 percent more populous than Australia.

Frankly, comments like this exemplify not just what’s wrong with American conservatism, but the largely self-inflicted delusionalism of the American middle class.

It wants to believe in the magic quick fix, the technological silver bullet. Well, “American exceptionalism” wayyyy aside, there is no such guarantee. I’m sure the Romans were hoping for one about 1,600 years ago; it didn’t happen either, and the Dark Ages were bad enough, despite some historical revisionism of thought, that some Roman knowledge, like Portland cement, was actually forgotten for more than a millennium.

Harassing phone call, or robocall, on your phone?

Don’t delete it — save it on your computer for possible future needs, with GotVoice.

Why save them? Well, maybe you need a backup on your PC of someone violating a restraining order by calling you.

Or you need proof to e-mail to other people about a political robocall.

Well, GotVoice lets you do that.

No, I haven’t tried it yet. But Democratic bloggers trying to fight the GOP fakery in many states of calling under the name of the Democratic congressional candidate — doing 6-7 repeat faked calls to try to get people mad at Democrats — suggest GotVoice is a great way to have proof to e-mail to local newspapers, local TV stations, cable news stations, etc.

Oh, the beta version of GotVoice is free, too.