I’m not a secret agent by any rational reckoning. Even so, I’m pretty sure that most intelligence services try to downplay what they do. Except, apparently, the National Reconnaissance Office.
Yeah. Great. Spec-friggen-tacular.
And then there’s this not-at-all-embarassing headline:
A pregnant Italian woman in Britain on a business trip has a panic attack. Gets locked up in the nuthouse, gets put under, wakes up to find they’ve cut the baby out of her, and 18 months later the British social workers behind the whole effort are going to adopt it out. The Aristocrats!
One might be forgiven for wondering if maybe, just maybe, British social workers might have a wee bit too much power.
… that have gone ’round the bend.
First, from late last month, Manchester, England:
That’s what happens when you spend generations training the populace to be irrationally terrified of guns: even the cops can’t recognize ’em.
And then there’s Philadelphia:
Because ridiculously expensive and fragile zip guns are *such* a problem.
Additionally: the Philly law would make it illegal to 3D print *any* component of a firearm. This would include the grips. I’d love to see the arguments they’d use in court to sustain that given that it wouldn’t be illegal for someone to carve grips out of chunks or wood or plastic.
Say hello to the “Single Individual, MAssively Destructive.” Where one person can destroy worlds.
Several world-ending possibilities are suggested, along with one possible way to counter someone with the sort of technology we’ll probably have within a few generations, and the sort of twisted personality we’ve had since the first primitive primate looked at another one and thought “you know, this tree would look fabulous covered in Oooks blood.” That suggested possibility? “Panoptic Smart Dust Sousveillance,” a variant of utility fog that involves an unthinkably vast number of nearly microscopic surveillance bots. Why unthinkably vast? In order to keep every square inch of the worlds surface under constant and active surveillance. Several such bots per cubic meter of air. Every human would have *many* bots watching them at all times. Complete privacy would become impossible… or, if someone achieved it, it would immediately raise flags.
The only way to manage such a system would be through a massively powerful AI system, with only a relatively trivial human involvement. The idea of such a surveillance state is of course horrifying to any self-respecting citizen… but honestly, I’m not sure I can come up with alternatives beyond a really effective human diaspora out into space. A few years ago, scientists created a viable polio virus from scratch. It will not be long before an entirely artificial, ferociously deadly virus can be created in a lab. And it will be relatively soon after that the same ability will filter down to the consumer level, just as room-sized “supercomputers” shrank down to solar powered digital watch-calculators that were sold alongside gum and candy in the checkout aisles of second-rate dollar stores.
Any way you look at it: the world a hundred years from now, perhaps much sooner, will be virtually unrecognizable to the likes of us.
I’ve said before that I hoped that the trend over the past few years of declaring “Racism!” over every damned thing would eventually lead to the word losing it’s power to bully. No more shakedowns. No more hustlers making fortunes by terrorizing the well-meaning. Sadly, my hope hasn’t come to pass, at least not yet.
But sometimes the claims of “Racist!” are so bizarre, over the top and oddly mis-applied that my hope returns. Take this example out of Britain:
Dear Parent/Carer,
As part of the National Religious Education Curriculum together with the multicultural community in which we live, it is a statutory requirement for Primary School aged children to experience and learn about different cultures.
The workshop is at Staffordshire University and will give your child the opportunity to explore other religions.
Children will be looking at religious artefacts similar to those that would be on display in a museum. They will not be partaking in any religious practices.
Refusal to allow your child to attend this trip will result in a Racial Discrimination note being attached to your child’s education record, which will remain on this file throughout their school career.
As such our expectations are that all children in years 4 and 6 attend school on Wednesday 27th November to take part in this trip.
All absences on this day will be investigated for their credibility and will only be sanctioned with a GP sick note.
Dude. WTF?
For starters, there’s the explicit threat against *children* if their parents do not choose to send them to go look at some trinkets… for which privilege they’ve also got to pony up cash. But the truly whackobird thing about it? If the kids don’t go see somethign about a religion, they’ll be accused ot being prejudiced against a race. Bwah? And what race would this be, exactly?
This one, mayhaps?
Looks fairly British to me, and yet… Muslim. So… not wanting to go see the Muslim exhibit will mean that little English kids are racist against… the English?
A number of the parents understandably went bonkers when they saw this blackmail attempt, and the school has backed off. However, it seems to me that the best long-term approach would be:
1) Fire whoever wrote the letter
2) prosecute them for attempted child abuse
3) Advertise the prosecution far and wide. Make it known and understood that the era of such blatant political correctness is over, and anyone trying to use the power of the government to enforce this sort of rubbish will be run out of the public square on a rail. Or at the very least, stripped of their power to bully children.
A White House petition:
NASA is the crown jewel of governmental agencies and a central player in the betterment of mankind.
The importance of NASA in the advancement of physics, chemistry, biology, psychology, economics, geography, and oceanography cannot be overstated.
I urge President Obama to lobby Congress to provide the American people a method to allocate a portion of their tax dollars to the direct funding of NASA. A simple checkbox, similar to how individuals can fund the Presidential Election Campaign Fund, should be added to all IRS tax forms.
Yeah, well. There are a couple issues here:
1) I don’t know if it’s within the Presidents power to do such a thing
2) Let’s say it happens, and somehow NASA manages to get a billion dollars in direct taxpayer funding. What will Congress do? “Oh, look, NASA has an extra billion. Great! We can cut their funding by a billion, and NASA will maintain the same level, and we can give that billion we’ve saved to (insert horrible government program HERE)!”
The worst part of the petition is an included quote, meant to be inspiring:
“The most power agency on the dreams of a nation is currently underfunded to do what it needs to be doing. And that is making dreams come true.” – Neil deGrasse Tyson
Ummm… huh? Was NdGT drunk off his gourd when he said that… or is that a really bad transcription? Seems to be the latter.
Sweden’s Ice Hotel has been ordered by the National Housing Board to install fire alarms, despite being made completely out of frozen water.
A few weeks ago, there was a screwup with the Federal EBT system (the “benefit” card that’s used to transfer funds from taxpayers to the indolent) that resulted in the loss of the $50 spending limit. As a result, a great many scumbags decided that the thing to do was to go on a shopping bender at the expense of the retailers, who are on the hook… not only for the goods that were fraudulently obtained with the EBT cars, but for the goods that were ruined when left scattered around stores when the system came back up.
Seems someone has finally decided that this sort of thing is to be frowned upon:
Those who abused the system face losing their meal tickets for one year, two years or permanently, depending on how abusive they’ve been of the taxpayers largesse.
So, there’s this:
CBS News has learned more than two million Americans have been told they cannot renew their current insurance policies — more than triple the number of people said to be buying insurance under the new Affordable Care Act, commonly known as Obamacare.
Huh. A few months back I got a letter from *my* health insurance company telling me that, lo and behold, come January 1 my current policy would evaporate, but have no fear, Obamacare was here. Well, according to healthcare.gov, there are 43 policies available for a schmuck like me in Utah. Woo. But I took the list to my doctor: of the 43, 42 *will* *not* be taken there. One *might* be, they’re not sure. So, I’m losing my insurance, and quite possibly my doctor as well. Having driven ten rural miles with a 104 degree fever to get to my doc, I can assure you that having to drive three or four times farther at 80 miles per hour the next time I get bronchitis, pneumonia or the fricken plague will *not* be fun. If that happens and due to delirium I cause a car wreck, I hereby give permission to survivors to sue the bejeebers out of whatever political hack supported this nonsense.
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Hmmm. His lips moved.
Good news: someone finally wants to spearhead an asteroid deflection program.
Bad news: The UN.