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.

Any technology that enables aliens to visit us would be so advanced that we could never combat it at all. But the good news is that any such advanced beings would also have no need for us or anything we possess. Concepts like wealth would probably not exist in such a race and ideas like eating may also have been reduced to some sort of technology that disallowed ingesting what we call food. The technology possessed by such beings is beyond our imagination. To us a comparison might be that God dropped in on us and had a real craving for a quarter pounder with cheese and some of those skinny french fries.

There are some really harsh laws concerning hacking and cracking. If Lenovo knew or caused this breach perhaps they could be prosecuted and actually jailed for this behavior.

How will industrialized nations cope when they finally realize that the least of us will have to go as well as the highest among us if the world is to survive? Sort of biblical isn't it?

Could it be that the black holes are turning dark matter into matter? Or maybe it is the opposite and the black holes are converting matter into dark matter. So what happens when both matter and dark matter are squeezed into a singularity? Maybe dark matter terminates the life of a black hole at a certain point.

First the drones are the kindest weapon of war ever invented. Compared to other modes of fighting drones kill far less innocents. For example we can use a drone to take out a car with enemies in the car. Fifty years ago we might have leveled an entire town to make sure we hit that car. Obviously war always involves some innocents caught in the middle. The question is ho many. Drones also cost us less than other weapons of war. And we have no dead or injured troops that must be supported for life as drones take the hit rather than flesh being hit. And now we find that just like we sold cannons to friendly governments centuries ago we can make even more money selling drones to friendly nations. This actually follows a trend in international economics. Now we worry about whether our drones are better than the other sides drones. But in our economics we now must be certain that our robot like devices work better and cheaper than China's automated equipment. Go to a machining technology fair and watch companies argue exactly that their automated factory machinery works better, cheaper, and longer than the other companies hawking their wares. Our government follows that model. Get along nicely with the US and we will give you drones that kick ass for peanuts.

We already have a substantial body of materials from the ancients which go unread or unstudied. And if the rare scholar happens to dig into that material whatever he gleans from it tends not to be communicated to others unless some real revelation is obvious in the material. There is a further issue in that the scholar who does read the material may not have the odd skills required to understand what he is reading. For example a financial transaction might display some form of primitive calculus that would only be noticed by someone who specializes in ancient mathematics. Or it could be some form of description that applies to more than one thing such as a sort of verbal mapping that might have important information. These issues also apply to fairly modern works as well. For example who studies the region now called Hungary for literature appearing in the 14th or 15th, centuries? Did Armenia have a Shakespeare? And we get into India or China the shear volume of materials is a barrier in itself. Now cast forward one million years and try to imagine who would apply much effort to studying what we do today. Frankly we are all lost in time and space it is just that most of us don't know it. If you don't believe that please name one citizen of the Etruscan Empire. Or how about one citizen from the Chaldean Empire?

As a citizen of the United States I know that this technology can not exist. My fellow Americans have long concluded that only the US can have any advanced technology or scientific knowledge. England in particular along with those non bathing French weirdos have never had any non US technology that was worth a hoot. This conclusion is part of respect for American exceptional doctrines which explain that Shakespeare and Chris Columbus were both born in New Jersey and that Christ was born after the Civil War ended.