So…. the Kickstarter launched Saturday. (I kind of want to apologize for the fact that I’m going to be saying “Kickstarter” a lot for the next 30 days… I’m going to try to not do it more than once every day or two, and, hopefully, will not devolve into “Hey, look at this cute cat! He’s saying “Pledge to Lizard’s Kickstarter!”) It’s doing pretty well starting out, at ~378 out of the 750 minimum, so, just past 50%, which is great for the first two days… I think… I hear all sort of things like “You get 50% of your money in the first 10% of the time, unless you get 25% of the money in the first 78% of the time, then you’ll get 33 1/3% of the money in 45% of the time, unless line B2 is greater than B4 minus A1, in which case turn to Schedule E and divide by how many cats you own.”, and so forth. Frankly, I’m very happy to have come this far. One reason I put off starting it for a year is that a Kickstarter is, to me, nearly as personal as an online dating profile. You are putting yourself out there for very public approval or disapproval.

But, basically, in the great sea of Kickstarters out there, you need to stand out. We live in an age where, no matter how narrow your tastes in entertainment (“I only read Harry Potter/My Little Pony/Downton Abbey  crossover fanfic!”), there’s more of it being produced than you could ever consume or be aware of.  So, while I am of course hoping to get the attention of some of my FB friends who missed my prior posts, I’m also posting to those who have seen them and have pledged — I am going to need your help in telling others. If you pledged, I have to presume it’s because you want to see this book happen, and for it to happen, I need support.

And, of course, the link to the KS is at http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/830842814/rogue-planet-adventures-on-the-star-prison

Well, after more anger, frustration, and pain than should remotely be required to do something this trivial, I’ve (mostly) completed my Kickstarter setup. I am waiting for Amazon and KS to finish verifying my tax information, address, bank account, Kenyan birth certificate, genetic code, and favorite videos at Pornhub. In the meanwhile, here’s the CORRECT preview link: http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/830842814/538743086?token=f9174777

I am unable to figure out how to enter stretch goals, however — is this something that can be done only after the project goes live?

Gods, sometimes, the stupidity — or, rather, active and malicious deception — from politicians is almost physically painful.

Let’s look here. Let’s pretend I’m a mentally ill terrorist spouse abuser, and I want a gun. I have $8,000.00. Do I:
a)Spend it on a 3D printer to produce a very dubious, unreliable, weapon, or,
b)Spend, oh, a few hundred on a decent handgun from a gazillion grey-market sources (or just steal one, since we’ve established I’m interested only in using a gun for criminal porpoises, so it’s not like I’m going to balk at theft if I’m planning murder)?

Let’s say… b.

You pretty much can’t ban the data file, or files, needed to produce this gun, or any future gun. In five years, ten years, maybe, the technology will advance to the point where such a weapon might be more likely to kill the target than to make it easier for the shooter to engage in Jamie Lannister cosplay. If/when that happens, it will still be impossible to stop the manufacture and distribution of the *plans*, any more than you can stop people from producing instructions for explosives (Dear Sen. Feinsteinn: You cannot outlaw chemistry, as much as you’d like to. Please stop trying.). So, fine, if it makes you feel all big and tough and manly, ban possession of 3D printed guns. But, again — the only people who will resort to this, who also have the money to BUY a 3D printer in the first place, are those who probably not overly aw abiding in the first place. You have a Catch-22: Those who would just like to print one for the “nifty” factor of “Hey, I made a gun!”, will probably obey the law… but this stops no crimes, as such people would not be using the gun criminally. Those who want a 3D printed gun because they plan crimes they cannot commit without one, and somehow can’t acquire one of the roughly 270 million extant guns in the United States, are not going to be dissuaded by a law against the gun. (A law against distributing the files would be effectively unenforceable; it would be used mostly to tack on some extra charges in another case, or serve to justify a search warrant if the files were detected via a prior warrant and… wait, I forgot. We don’t need no steenkin’ warrants because of the established legal principle of “Wharrgarbl 9-11 terrorism dead babies peas and carrots peas and carrots peas and carrots”.

Some might argue that stopping the distribution of kiddie porn is fairly effective, so, why not the distribution of gun blueprints? First, kiddie porn is outside the First Amendment, so it’s much, much, easier to arrest and try people for it. Raw factual information — how to make a gun, a bomb, or a virus (digital or otherwise) is not. USING that information may be criminal, but mere possession of it with no proof of intent to use? Legal under most circumstances. Second, just about everyone on the planet is rightfully repulsed by kiddie porn, and those who would produce it or traffic in it, and will tend to cooperate fully with law enforcement in pursuing it, even if they otherwise despise the cops/feds/whoever. There are some things which are sufficiently wrong and evil that you can get widespread cooperation and buy-in from otherwise highly disparate groups and ideologies. Blueprints for a gun? That doesn’t rise to the barest hint of a fraction of a percentage of the outrage factor. Sure, there’s probably some people out there who are more outraged by printed guns than by child abuse, but they’re known, generally, as “morons”. The vast majority of people, even those strongly opposed to firearm ownership, would still be more comfortable with a neighbor hiding a 3D printer than a child porn collection. This is why, of all the things it is technically illegal to distribute on the internet, the only one even remotely effectively controlled is child porn.

So, we have a politician using people’s innate fear and ignorance over technology to generate a lot of media attention about extremely unlikely and implausible scenarios, in order to promote a certainly ineffective and probably unconstitutional law. (Unconstitutional on 1A grounds for the plans; the state of 2A jurisprudence in America is so random and contradictory I wouldn’t guess at how banning the guns themselves would play out in the SC.) Or, as we like to call it in America, “a day ending in y”.