3D Printers For Peace Contest 273
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."
Easy answer (Score:5, Insightful)
Designers are encouraged to consider: If Mother Theresa of Ghandi had access to 3D printing what would they print?
Bread.
Si vis pacem, para bellum (Score:3, Insightful)
2,000 years of history says they have the wrong idea.
Re:print oil or other kinds of fuel? (Score:2, Insightful)
print oil or other kinds of fuel?
Cut down on the Star Trek, dork, and learn some real science. Even if rearranging atoms were possible, conservation of mass/energy means you have to also feed in the energy difference between the energy you get from the fuel that comes out and the energy available from whatever you put into the machine. That's the bare minimum; it's more because of process losses.
In other words, there's no free lunch (or oil).
An answer for every question. (Score:2, Insightful)
That's easy!
Mother Theresa would 3D print destitite people suffering from horrible diseases, so that she could lock them away in 'hospice' where they will be denied medical care, pain management, and be denied visitors -- even their 3D printed family.
Ghandi would print naked, pre-pubescent girls to sleep with, so that he can 'prove his piety'.
Come on Slashdot, what's with the softball questions?
Peaceful Printers (Score:2, Insightful)
If Ghandi had been able to print guns, maybe the Indians would have been able to eject the British sooner, and with fewer innocent Indian deaths.
Mother Teresa would not have printed anything to help people. She spent most of the money she raised on building convents, not on the poor. Mother Teresa wanted the poor to suffer, because she thought it made her closer to Jesus. [slate.com]
I have a great suggestion for using 3D printers to promote peace: build guns, since the worst violence of the 20th century was from authoritarian governments against their own disarmed populations. Nazi, Commie, Fascist, etc. thugs are a lot more hesitant to go into a town, if they're not sure who in the town might have a gun, or worse, if they suspect everybody in the town has one.
Re:3D printers are toys. (Score:5, Insightful)
3D printers, it is not what the poorer nations need.
Poor countries often have problems getting spare parts. They tend to have old no-longer-supported gear, such as tractors or irrigation pumps. Even when the parts are available they are too expensive to ship, or are pilfered by the postal workers. If a part for your pump or manure spreader arrives two months late, you have already missed the planting season. A printer that can make a part from a spec downloaded over a cellular network would come in very useful. You don't need one on every farm or in every shop, just within a day's walk.
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Weird focus on killer when can almost print liver (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:3D printing is being condemned in the media... (Score:4, Insightful)
Some of these things are not like the others (Score:5, Insightful)
I really, really want to be for this. Not because I have anything against 3D-printed guns, I'm all for those, but because some of the things on their list are good ideas and make sense. Some of the other stuff is pure nonsense, however.
"Low-cost medical devices." Excellent idea. "Tools to help people out of poverty." Also excellent. Lots of potential in both of these to improve, and in many cases save, people's lives.
But then we get to "Designs that can reduce racial conflict." Err, what? Someone is waaay overestimating how effective their "Coexist" bumper sticker is. It would be nice if 3D printers could produce some sort of object for people to brandish at racists like crucifixes at vampires, but it's not going to happen. "Tools that would reduce military conflict and spending while making us all safer and more secure." Look, I'm for reducing conflict and increasing safety and security, too, but if an object to do that hasn't been created using more-mundane fabrication methods, a 3D printer won't be able to make it, either -- and there aren't any such objects, unless (like me and apparently unlike the folks sponsoring this) you think that being armed makes you more secure.
This is being run by Michigan Tech's Department of of Material Science and Engineering, but it looks like someone from one of the squishy majors snuck in and added items to the list. I hope there are a lot medical and tool ideas submitted (pity they don't have a way to donate money to increase the prize), but I really wish they hadn't included the silly, groan-inducing stuff.
Re:Mother Theresa is an unfortunate choice (Score:4, Insightful)
So you're saying she was a Republican?
Backwards. The party with a vested interest in keeping people dependent on professionals who dole things out to them is the Democrats. That's the backbone of their entire constituency and the framework within which they describe everybody: needing a handout, or needing to be used to pay for handouts. Without playing middlemen to that one-way street, there would be almost not power in that camp. And so they seek to preserve it at every turn.
Re:Just wanna say (Score:5, Insightful)
1. Stopping an attacker more quickly is often the important consideration to designers. Modern firearms achieve that 'more quickly' by increasing lethality. Hollow point rounds, Glazier slugs, and high capacity magazines are generally all methods of stopping more people faster, but the 'stopping' part converts pretty directly to killing more often, or in larger numbers, and trying to make a semantic distinction there is psychobabble. 'Stopping' by deterence is far from all 'stopping', and if we are talking logically here, show me one perp who has ever claimed he would have continued with his attack except he realized the pistol he faced had 17 rounds and not just 6. Yes, I'll freely concede that deterrance sometimes works. Hell, I've used it myself. Now what about all that other stopping?
2. I'm a former enlisted soldier who eventually took a comission as a military officer, and who has actually trained people with things the professionals call guns (up to 120 mm MBT pieces) and not just those silly pistols and rifles and such. I can't count the number of times I have disagreed with someone on the NRA right and recieved that lecture that starts with "Guns don't kill people...", as though anyone who disagrees with any point in their playbook must be that totally ignorant. I've had my claim to service challenged, by people who admit they have never served, but can't believe anyone who disagrees with them over any point at all might have given more to the USA than they did. I've had people tell me that only people who were wounded count as real patriots, or that Desert Shield/Storm didn't count as real combat or even real service, because I disagreed with an NRA talking point. I've had self professed NRA spokesmen accuse me of war crimes, saying without any evidence what-so-ever that if I really served at all, I was probably the kind of bad soldier who shot unarmed civilians and ran from real combat. Your post is more of the same - defending verbal tricks by insulting everybody who disagrees with you.
You don't know me. You probably didn't mean any of your remarks about illogical libtards and such to apply to me. But I have met enough of the people on your side that stoop to that that I do hold you responsible for standing alongside them. Please don't ever thank me for my service, it would sound too much like you spitting on it.
Re:Mother Theresa is an unfortunate choice (Score:3, Insightful)
Another example: http://futiledemocracy.wordpress.com/2011/03/28/the-curse-of-mother-theresa/ [wordpress.com]
Of all the things you say you can cite about this, you choose something with the words "futile democracy" and "the curse" in it? Do I even need to look at it to know it's biased?
But in many less secular societies,
Where, exactly, are you going with this? So what if some people think that; It doesn't make it right. You even say so. So at best this is a populist argument.
Also, we do actually need the occasional contrarian. Our democracy is weak enough without further deference to the strong, wealthy and powerful! Also, to be a "troll", it's usually implicit that the argument itself is weak. I've not yet seen Hitchens lose a debate.
He lost to Death. I have yet to see anyone win that argument. And I get that you're some kind of Hitchens fan, but maybe he won every last debate he had... but he lost in the court of public opinion. Miserably. This woman won dozens of awards and was loved by millions. Hitchens was a social malcontent whose only claim to fame was being an irritating thorn in famous people's asses... and at that, only a mediocre fame.
And democracy will survive just fine on the facts; We don't need to carve out special groups to hold above criticism -- strong, weak, rich, poor, powerful, weak... what matters in a democracy is the truth, and having discourse. If you think it's gotten "weak", then you either need to re-examine what you consider democracy, consider that maybe democracy itself is fundamentally flawed, or that there is insufficient participation.
Re:Just wanna say (Score:1, Insightful)
Please don't ever thank me for my service, it would sound too much like you spitting on it.
Nothing you did in Iraq concerns me one way or the other. The US military hasn't fought an enemy because it posed a threat in a very long time. I assume you served for your own personal reasons, not for my thanks or that of anyone else.
I assume your combat was quite real. That's what troubles me in fact. Personally I need a much MUCH stronger reason than "my gov't (trustworthy institution that it is) doesn't like these people who were planning to leave us alone". Hypothetically, I could shoot a burglar that broke in at night and threatened my family. I hope it never, ever comes to that but if it did, I'm not hesitating. Bad call, burgler. You see, that person is actually a threat and knew they would be perceived as such. Some dude in Iraq's so-called elite republican guard within the borders of Iraq, not so much. And I am not interested in the propaganda about what a terrible dictator Hussein was. If we feel that way perhaps we should not have given him such great CIA training and support. You were aware of that before signing up, right?
If you think anything George H. W. Bush told you was a good reason to travel thousands of miles and start killing some of your own species, so be it. We must each decide these things for ourselves. Like I said, I very much believe that the combat was quite real. I don't imagine anything could be more real. Your courage and your dedication are not what I question.
As you see, I think for myself. I am sorry that some unreasonable NRA types hurt your feelings and now you falsely feel justified assuming I am one of them. That's about as reasonable and respectable as those who disparaged your military service or called you a liar because you disagreed with a talking point. Apparently you are just like them and now it is I who disagreed with your talking point. You are now illustrating the difference between someone who finds merit in liberal thought, and a libtard (my post did mention both). I wish you had done it by being the former, but we must each decide these things for ourselves.
You see, I am not a member of the NRA. NRA has never received a penny from me. I am a pragmatist who views guns as a necessary evil. If criminals have guns then the law-abiding also need to have guns. Criminals definitely have guns. I view it as a balance of power and nothing more. The data on conceal-carry and gun-free zones is just too compelling to deny that. I am not a "my team vs. your team" kind of guy. I don't root for a team. I don't delight in carrying some organization's card. I am an individual. I offered my opinions. Is that so hard to understand?
I mean truly, if you are so easily insulted and made to become emotional and irrational, perhaps Internet discussion is going to be too rough for you.
Re:Mother Theresa is an unfortunate choice (Score:4, Insightful)
The fact that there was virtually no controversy over these events is not evidence that they didn't happen.
Everyone moderating me down on these later replies, because if there's one thing us Americans love more than sex, it's watching famous people get cut to pieces. But for your statements to be true, thousands of people who's credibility is at stake if they get it wrong vetted this person and found no problems. She didn't get a Nobel Peace Prize for eating babies and screaming "SATAN!" ... she got it for improving the lives of millions.
Now you can pitch your conspiracy theory like everyone else here, and collect mod points from the "We Love Watching Bigger People Than Us Fall" crowd, or you can look at this objectively: There's no way so many people could look at her life and so few find a problem.
We laugh when people deny climate change here and call them retarded, but the moment someone says someone who was fiercely religious has done real and considerable good, it's grab the pitch forks and haraaaaaah...
Who's wearing the tinfoil hats now, mmm?
The Reason for all the Scaremongering? (Score:5, Insightful)