Archive for the ‘Technology’ Category

What Was The Miracle Weapon Of World War Two? Me 262? Or The Obvious? And Who Got the Idea? A Woman!

March 26, 2020

A little relaxation of sorts… my way…

It may look strange, futile and slightly deranged to ask what would be, for all too many, an apparently desultory question, while a lethal virus is ravaging the planet. However a virus rampage was fully predictable, and yours truly had predicted such a disaster, and many others, many times. And there were even close calls by various viruses as explicit warnings from evidence. So I was castigated with the opprobrium of what I warned against.

We have this virus because we are led by the most foolish moods, habits, ways, and individuals. So it is not futile to establish truths. Exerting the truth muscle is not just a question of the honor of the human spirit, but also of sheer survival.

So let’s go to the gym of truth! 

Because of the blockade, the Nazis couldn’t get the Fundamental Elements they needed to make high temperature turbines, so the Me 262 didn’t work as well as it , by could have a very long shot

The Miracle Weapon of World War II Was A French Idea…

When one thinks of a miracle weapon in WWII, one generally thinks of the Me 262, the first jet, and first jet fighter. The Me 262 had a propulsion problem: reactors that were not powerful enough, not very resistant… Paradoxically the reactors were worse in 1944 than 1942, because of the blockade against Nazi Germany.

Germany could not manufacture the necessary high temperature metals because, after attacking Stalin, it no longer had access to the basic elements necessary to make these alloys. Hence the problems with the reactors. One type of Me 262 reactor used … aluminum, which melted, lasting only 10 hours …

Germany was led by fools who strongly, and correctly felt, in their hearts of hearts, that the war lost since that day of September 3, 1939, when france and Britain declared war to the stupid, vicious Nazis.

Indeed, if nothing else, Germany was subjected to the same blockade as in 1914 … with the difference that this time, differently from 1914-1916, the Netherlands was not there to bring the American necessities which fascism needed to make war. So, ironically, Stalin played in 1939-1941 the role of embargo buster that the USA had played in 1914-1916. It was more natural than it looked: Soviet and German fascists had been allies (semi-secretly) since 1916 …

A “Wunderwaffe” of which little is spoken is the teleguided Nazi surface to air rockett, “Wasserfall. If the Nazis had developed it rather than V1 or V2, that would have changed a lot of things.

The French (more precisely the Communist Irène Joliot-Curie) launched the atomic bomb program in January 1938, by telling the Minister of War of her chain reaction… which became the “Manhattan” program. “A bomb, a city” was informed De Gaulle in Canada in 1944 by a French scientist who worked on the bomb (at the time even the US VP didn’t know about the atomic bomb)… Against this the Germans could only surrender. So the ultimate miracle weapon of war was French… of French origin …

Irène, Nobel Prize winner in 1933, really discovered nuclear fission. Otto Hahn is reputed to be noble, because supposedly he contemplated suicide when he heard of Hiroshima, as he “felt responsible”. That’s the same as saying he invented it. However, he didn’t. Instead Hahan resided in Hitler’s Third Reich during the entire duration, researching probably felt sad to have missed on the idea of the bomb (which Irène didn’t, and surmounting her disgust, her a Communist, she went to the French War Ministry). The first reactions of the imprisoned German nuclear scientists were not ambiguous: they would have liked to make the bomb, but given the state of Nazism in “1942”, they didn’t have the “moral courage”. Top German nuclear scientists didn’t have the “moral courage” to be good Nazis… Notice too that the Franco-British-Canadian-American effort to make a nuclear bomb started in January 1938: 1942 was way too late… And Germany didn’t have the means [1].

Ten “German” scientists were held in a house full of US microphones. Some of the result from a book about Hahn:

He “was now glad”… Yes, after the war, many a Nazi “was now glad” that Nazism didn’t work out, after all… German scientists were genuine Nazis: they regretted not to have developed the bomb, but then some of them concluded that it was for the best.

By August 1945, the main German newspaper in Southern Germany (written by Americans) crowed that the Germans, Otto Hahn had discovered nuclear fission and he got the Nobel prize right away (Irene Joliot Curie had been gravely sick since 1940, and this is why she and her husband didn’t go to London). So the not so noble Otto Hahn got the Nobel Prize for this subject which he had plagiarized (I have read the correspondence between the French Irene and the German Otto; it was a case of “Me Too”). It was not deserved: Irene spent months demonstrating her discovery to him… Ibidem, the fame Heisenberg was too stupid… And he, too, lifted his uncertainty from De Broglie. If you see a pattern of germanoids stealing french ideas here, you got it right…

Of course, few French people know this glorious and formidable history of their own country. The French have become like sheep and the USA is their shepherd (this is to achieve this that mongrels were depicted as giants, even if, like Sartre, they yelped at the USA).

Under the impetus of low-ranking thinkers, portrayed as if they were giants, France made the absurd into her abode, escaping into the tyranny of stupidity denying the very ideas of superiority and progress. France has forgotten herself, and its tremendous intellectual power.

Contemplate, right now, the stupid monarch from one of the oldest, wealthiest, more war prone banks, who forbids people to hike in the mountains, to go to the beach and the forests because he and his minions believe that there is a virus out there … A virus of which they were the main enabling agents… By refusing the proven remedies used by many countries in Asia (test, track, confine).

Yes, contemplate this and weep. No wonder they don’t even know they discovered the nuclear fission chain reaction.

Patrice Ayme



[1] Differently from the Germans, the Japanese had figured out that a nuclear bomb was feasible, and had three massive efforts to make them.


Partial French version from Quora:

L’Arme Miracle de la Seconde Guerre Mondiale fut Francaise…

Le Me 262 avait un problème de propulsion: des réacteurs pas assez puissants, peu résistants…. 

L’Allemagne ne pouvait fabriquer les métaux hautes température nécessaires, car, après avoir attaqué Staline, elle n’avait plus accès aux éléments fondamentaux nécessaires pour faire ces alliages. D’ou les problemes avec les réacteurs. Un type de réacteur du Me 262 utilisait de … l’aluminium, il durait 10 heures…

L’Allemagne etait dirigee par des imbéciles qui sentaient fortement la guerre perdue depuis ce jour du 3 Septembre 1939: l’Allemagne était soumise au même blocus qu’en 1914… a la différence que cette fois les Pays Bas n’étaient pas là pour amener les nécessités Américaines dont le fascisme avait besoin pour faire la guerre. Donc, ironie de l’histoire, Staline a joué ce rôle. Il est vrai que fascistes Soviétiques et Allemands étaient alliés (semi-secrètement) depuis 1916…

Quelque chose dont on parle peu est la fusée Nazie teleguidee sol-air “Wasserfall”. Si les Nazis l’avaient développée plutôt que les V1 ou V2, cela aurait changé beaucoup de choses.

Les Français (plus précisément la Communiste Irène Joliot-Curie) avaient lancé le programme de bombe atomique en Janvier 1938… Qui devint le programme “Manhattan”. “Une bombe, une ville” fut informé De Gaulle au Canada en 1944 par un scientifique français qui travaillait sur la bombe… Contre cela les Allemands ne pouvaient que se rendre. Donc l’arme ultime miracle de la guerre fut… d’origine française…

Irène, prix Nobel 1933, découvra vraiment la fission nucléaire. Le Prix Nobel du pas si noble Otto Hahn a ce sujet n’était pas mérité: Irene pass des mois a lui démontrer sa découverte… Ibidem, Heisenberg était trop bête…

Bien sur peu de français connaissent cette histoire glorieuse et formidable. Sous l’impulsion de penseurs de bas quartier, dépeints comme s’ils étaient des géants, la France a versé dans l’absurde, et la tyrannie de la bêtise niant les idées même de supériorité et de progrès. La France s’est oubliée elle même, et sa formidable puissance intellectuelle. 

Contemplez le stupide monarque issu de la banque, qui interdit les montagnes, la plage et la forêt car lui et ses séides croient qu’il s’y trouve un virus… Dont ils furent les principaux agents. En refusant les remèdes miracles d’Asie (test, track, confine). 


Corrupt Travel Industry Should be Forced To Use Hybrid, Hydrogen Planes

March 23, 2020
















Patrice Ayme







Ongoing German Lies, And Why They Matter, Destroying Europe, & World. 1) Ecology

August 23, 2019

Some German anti-democratic lies have been ruling the world, for two decades now. It’s high time to get rid of them. A combination of Trump and progressive minds such as Uber-influential Nobel Paul Krugman of the New York Times, may well succeed to amplify my meek bleating in the dark.

Our times are cataclysmic, apocalyptic: after all, a sixth mass extinction has been launched. To stop it, we need the truth. Nothing but the truth, and all of it… that is we must denounce lies, and lying temperaments. We need science, that is, what’s left  

Trump lies outrageously, everybody knows this, but he is not the only one, all too many forget the latter. I have long said that Merkel’s Germany was off the track, and a big lie, in so many ways. Consider my Merkler? essay of 2012. Some will scoff that only Greeks got injured. No, all of Europe, and also Merkler’s insanity caused Brexit. I was ahead of times: now, seven years later, this point of view is gaining broad acceptance.

The camp of those who think Germany is lying has grown a lot: Trump is in it, and now even Trump’s nemesis Paul Krugman agrees with the liar in chief on Germany. German readers may object that France also lies (and everybody knows about delusional, Brexiting UK). However German lies are convenient for French corrupt politicians, Germany (in spite of all the fascist dictators), having a reputation for seriousness.

One may even argue that Germany ended up with monsters such as the Kaiser and Hitler, precisely because it had such  a serious, quasi-scientific repute… A belief in perfection which the Germans were the first to believe. 


Energiewende Lie: Germany produces twice more CO2 per head than France (though about half of the USA). Worse: present policy does not make any improvement possible. In contrast, the USA has been best in the world at reducing CO2 emissions (albeit from a high starting point)…German Chancellor Merkel originated, lie has been “Energiewende”. the “Energy Transition“… which has consisted into Germany tapping some more coal, the bedrock of its heavy industry, for centuries.

Germany used its clout in environmentally correct policies (a lie!) to instill a mood of keeping on burning CO2 to produce energy, and, in particular, for burning coal. This has spread to all of Europe, and beyond:


Cute little picture… Full of lies, and implied dread. For example the picture describes and expect a lowering of energy consumption in Germany. All that means is that Germany is importing more, including nuclear from France. “Biomass” is a lie: it means making CO2 by burning old forests: it worsens the CO2 problem, planet-wide.

The truth is that, at this point, we have two new energy sources: photovoltaics and nuclear. Photovoltaics doesn’t work everywhere, and all the time. Nuclear is vast: U 235 fission, U 233 fission, Thorium, fusion, etc. Some have nuclear waste, others, not really. Even U 235 fission can be realized in many ways. The important point is that both danger and waste can be avoided completely using some nuclear technologies.

Nuclear devices will have to be developed, just to colonize other planets:


I am positively completely, even fanatically against some nuclear technologies, such as graphite-gas (see Chernobyl for the inconvenience), surgenerators (with present tech), or second generation U235 reactors. At Fukushima, three such reactors exploded and melted down (due to a litany of grave errors). In the end, the radiation stayed confined: babies can now use the Fukushima beach… (Contrarily to expectations.)

Germany is against nuclear some will say, because it is more interested to milk coal for as long as possible. It’s not about higher principles, but greed. Germany has said, explicitly, under Merkel, that nuclear was more of a danger than coal. Now we can see how false that is: the greenhouse is accelerating. Siberia was on fire, for weeks, now so is the Amazon:

Following expanding wildfires in the Amazon rainforest, NOAA/NASA’s Suomi NPP satellite captured a natural-color image of smoke above South America using the VIIRS (Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite) instrument on Wednesday (Aug. 21). The image shows smoke above the Brazilian states of Amazonas (upper left), Para (upper right), Mato Grosso (lower right) and Rondonia (lower left). Lake Titicaca in Bolivia is visible, so are the Chilean and Peruvian coasts. Fires in the Amazonian rain forest used to be unthinkable… And so was our planet’s climate, unsinkable. But, surely, it’s flammable…

Usually perceived as culturally advanced Germany is helping to cause another holocaust… The entire planet on fire this time… Current oxygen levels are the result of millions of years of annual production. The loss of the Amazon won’t cause oxygen levels to immediately plummet… But the Amazon produces up to 6% of the Earth’s oxygen. So, as I have said in the past, there is an oxygen threat… Indeed, acidification of the ocean from CO2 could kill the plankton… Losing 50% of world’s O2 production.

But, says, Merkler, nuclear is the scariest thing…

Next we will consider the problem of debt, where the German attitude has proven even more hypocritical, and immediately injurious, abating industry in Europe (hence counter-measures to the CO2 built-up…) Something for the G7 to mull…

Patrice Ayme

Those Flying Boats Fight The CO2 Catastrophe

November 16, 2018

California, while burning, in a never seen before way, builds (some) electric cars and installs a significant solar electric production capability. However, there are other ways to advance the struggle for more ecological tech. Competing sailboats is one way.

A competition of sailboats is organized from Saint Malo, France, to Guadeloupe in the Caribbean, every four years. It’s open to all transoceanic sailboat categories, “ultimes”, multi-hulls, monohulls IMOCA, etc… as long as there is only one person on board. Prizes are attributed in each classification category.

Up to four years ago, the fastest boats were giant trimarans. Now, no more. A new, even faster category, has blossomed: enormous flying maxi-trimarans, known as “Ultimes”. Other boats also fly onto of foils, including monohulls…

Banque Populaire Flying Giant Trimaran flying at the start of Route du Rhum… Against the wind… Notice it leaves little wake, relative to the motor boats escorting it. The same boat left floater, high up in the air in this picture, would tear apart in a storm at 70 km/h, a few thousand kilometers later…

An object in a liquid is slowed down by friction, all along the hull. If one can reduce the surface of the object rubbing against the liquid, one can go faster. Thus the Ultimes rise above water on wings (which fly inside the water). 16 tons of boat rest on just a total of 4 square meters of foils. (Wings can be much smaller in water, and enable to fly at much lower speeds, as water is 1,000 times denser than air…)

So what? What’s the wisdom to be extracted from all this tech avalanche?

Well, we, humanity, are a tech avalanche. No tech, no wisdom. Or then just that of an orangutan.

Ah, yes, we are killing the planet.

It’s going to get way worse, in the next decades, as the man-made CO2 climate catastrophe enfolds. Predictable and predicted! Picture by author, last January, Tahoe:


Maritime transport is one of the main sources of CO2 pollution.

The technology developed by these (mostly) French boats could be applied to cargo boats 10,000 times heavier.

Same flying boat in action, foils in evidence.

Nothing to smirk at: the sailboats can fly at 80 kilometers an hour (50 mph), using just the wind. Not just pushed by the wind, but even zigzagging into the wind.

It’s not without risks: the “ultime” Banque Populaire IX (pictured) lost its left floater, while in a storm, in the middle of the Atlantic, and immediately capsized. Shortly before that, it was flying with minimal sails at 70 kilometer and hour, in five meters seas. (A fisher boat recovered the captain, an expert capsizer, and brought him to Portugal, two days of motorboat away.)

At least two other flying boats capsized because of storms in the same race, one, skippered by a British sailor hit rocks off Guadeloupe shortly before the end. Alex Thomson, who placed second and third prior in the Vendee-Globe, solo around the world race, had forgotten to charge his shockwatch. So he overslept in his 20 minutes sleep, and got woken up when his boat hits the rocks. Thomson was leading in the monohull category, and was in fourth place overall behind two ultimes and one multihull. The international jury gave him a 24 hour penalty for using his motor to extract himself from the reefs…) Another boat captained by the Normande Claire Pruvot was hit by a cargo ship which recovered her 45 minutes later…

Overall, the death rate of these sailing adventures is now very low. Capsizing has become a well mastered art, with insubmersible boats, and immediate alerts. It was not always this way: the famed solo sailor Alain Colas disappeared on the same Route du Rhum, 40 years ago, while leading it. His boat, then the world’s most advanced multihull, could sink, it was made of metaL, and sink it did. Colas’ last message, in a terrible storm, was that he was surrounded by mountains of water.

The reason sailboat tech has not been applied much in large transport has been mostly political, as usual. Maritime transport was long excluded from pollution rules, thus used the very worst oil residue refineries produced… this is the highly polluting “bunker” fuel. Rotating sails can be used (they exploit the fact that if wind slips faster on one side of an object, a low pressure occurs, just as where the wind slows down, so molecules pack up, and higher pressure happens. This is why rotating balls have curving trajectories.) Rotating sails enable at least 10% savings.

Investing massively in wind tech for major boats has an element of risk, so government should help. Northern Europe has mandated stricter pollution rules.

Recently a giant cruise ship, the largest in the world, made in France, berthed in Marseilles, France. It was computed that it polluted as much as two million cars, that is of the order of the entire Provence region of France.

Air transport will also have to be improved, with electricity (hybrid planes, recharging while descending, etc.) Yes, that depends upon batteries. But, as with antibiotics, much more public research investment have to be done. One can’t just let private companies do it all. The rumor has it that Samsung has improved battery tech considerably with graphene (charging in minutes, and with 40% more energy storage). Right, graphene was discovered thanks to government research funding. But more public funding is needed.

A 62 year old Frenchman, Francis Joyon, won the Route du Rhum this year. A few miles from the end, his boat was just a few boat lengths away from Gabart, a young sailing and engineering genius who had been 200 nautical miles ahead earlier on. But Gabart’s most modern boat was “broken”, with a missing foil on the right, and a missing safran on the left. The competition was nearly delayed, because the storms piling up in the Atlantic were so numerous and so nasty (still another consequence of the climate catastrophe).

Francis Joyon of France set a new record time for the 3,542-nautical mile Route du Rhum-Destination Guadeloupe solo transatlantic race from Saint Malo in Brittany to Pointe-à-Pitre in Guadeloupe. At the helm of the maxi-trimaran IDEC Sport, Joyon completed the solo race in seven days, 14 hours and 21 minutes, beating the existing course record by just 46 minutes and 45 seconds (Gabart and Joyon mostly slowed down by storms; the other four ultimes were damaged, or capsized, although two restarted after repairs over a few days in Spain).

That Frenchman Joyon holds the around-the-world world record in a sailboat; less than 41 days (with a team)… It was his seventh participation in that competition, and his first win… Gabart, and many others, wants foils to be controlled automatically in real time: it will allow the boats to fly more safely and better. Right now regulations forbid automatic wing adjustments (although they are central to modern aviation… The reason is that it will cost money to have adaptive foils, and that will advantage the wealthiest, and that’s seen as unfair by the competition authorities at this point. Joyon won with an older “Ultime“; the three most recent “ultimes” broke, although Gabart was able to cross the Atlantic with his “broken boat”…)   

Gabart’s MACIF boat flying. Gabart placed second with MACIF, seven minutes behind Joyon. MACIF had lost its left wing… Those boats can sustain 70 km/h in 5 meters seas…

High tech moguls from Silicon Valley informed me years ago (before Elon Musk), that only software was really high-tech (Musk is changing that perfectly dumb perspective). The rest of tech was obsolete, they reckoned. Material high-tech was not high-tech, according to those mentally deficient characters obsessed by software. But software without hardware can’t exist, and they progress together. Flying sailboats use ever more electronics, and will probably soon use active flying surface, quite a bit similar to those the BFR, the Big Falcon Rocket of Elon Musk’s SpaceX plans to use when re-entering the atmosphere at 11 kilometers per second…

Patrice Ayme



Hating Tech? Hate Man!

July 30, 2018

Rampages against technology are fashionable: after all, we, and our entire world, depends upon it. Dependents are prisoners of their benefactor(s). The unwise will resent that. Technology is worse than a drug, then: it is the life support system of the most advanced apes who ever were. It is even more: our soul? The world-changing apes world-changed, and evolved for, and from, technology. If we have a creator specific to our species, here it is! Technology is out mother, father, what makes us possible. Hating our provider, our god: how pleasing!

Homo, the genus, and genius, is inseparable from technology. Saying technology doesn’t help, or doesn’t even help define what is human, is to have understood nothing to the genus Homo. Socrates took a stance: he posed as an anti-science, anti-tech, even anti-mental creativity type. Socrates refused even to write: after all, that’s tech too. But for his living, he depended upon an inherited stock portfolio, and his plutocratic friends and fiends. And, when, as a wealthy hoplite, he killed the enemy, it was because of his technologically superior, and very expensive armor and weapons. I can’t afford, as Socrates did, to be a hypocrite.

Diogenes too, was an anti-tech, anti-progress hypocrite: he lived in a barrel: that’s advanced technology, an expensive Gallic import… soon Gallic armies would battle down into Greece, thanks to their superior weapons due to superior metal works. Diogenes also had a dog:  another advanced technology, a Genetically Modified Organism, whose carefully twisted mind makes him love and obey his master. The reason Diogenes didn’t have to battle giant European Cave Lions was that those had been driven to extinction, thanks to superior weapons.

Also Athens existed, and could feed Socrates and Diogenes, because it imported grain from the Black Sea, two weeks of shipping away (at best). Or from Cyrenaica. Attica was too dry to feed the largest Greek city. And Athens paid back, with superior tech. Demosthenes, the philosopher, inherited also from his father. His 40 slaves were making advanced tech, sold throughout the Mediterranean. As I said, it paid for food of the last Athenian dog. It goes without saying that this imperial organization rested on the mightiest army and navy, which had persuaded cities such as Byzantium to reasonably cooperate…


The more human we get, the more tech we get, and live from:

So on tech we go.
An interest of technology is to solve problems, which can’t be solved otherwise, lest we want to use massively the oldest methods, like cannibalism. There are countless examples, in history, of populations which have been reduced to zero, as needed by the sustainable ecological load.

As it is, we use much more planet than we have. We need another planet, or we need to quickly consume, say, 90% of humanity (the latter can easily be done, though… thanks to tech, both as an exterminator, and a redemptor).

Colonizing Mars would double the land area at our disposal. And yes, it can be done: there are giant ice cliffs on Mars: water was the big problem to terraform Mars. Up to last year, Mars looked desiccated, and it appeared one would have to crash comets into it to bring water. Now, no more. All we need is a mighty energy source. That too, tech could bring us: controlled thermonuclear fusion, already used in decent airports, looms, ever closer: a thermonuclear reactor connected to the grid is feasible… if we spent, say 100 billion dollars (5% US or EU yearly GDP).

The Counties of Alameda and Contra Costa (“AC”), in the San Francisco Bay Area form together AC Transit, which has purchased dozens of Fuel Cell Electric Buses. Those buses refuel hydrogen at dedicated service stations. Their waste? Water! Those buses aren’t just zero emission, they are the ideal complement of the photovoltaic energy rising in California. Some cities of AC provide free PV installations.

Elon Musk is an entrepreneur: he takes science invented by much deeper minds, and turns it into profitable technology. True, he got favored by Obama, in a shameless manner… while Obama killed important technologies such as Fuel Cells… to leave room to Musk, and other Silicon Valley friends Obama had (now busy making him rich). True the plutocratic connection between Musk and tech monopolies and the Obama administration was disgusting, and many involved should how be prosecuted. I wrote extensively against Musk and Bezos in the past, because they go so much help from the Obama White House. However, the fact is now both of these two plutocrat have made an important technological advance: rockets can be reused! “Space Shuttle” launches used to cost 1.5 billion dollars (yes, billion, with a b… per launch). Musk thinks he could launch a much bigger rocket for six million dollars. Indeed, doing the math, the cost of launch should be no more than a jumbo jet transcontinental flight… if the rocket is sophisticated enough.

Yet, the transition from deep science to a deeper socio-economy shouldn’t be neglected: they are entangled. No advancement of the socio-economy, no advancement of science, and reciprocally.

Rome failed because it couldn’t get going the science it needed, because its exaggeratingly fascist, pathetically impotent socio-economy (the combination of slavery and autocracy, too strong for enabling the People to contribute, not enough to crush plutocrats). Now, of course, the Romans weren’t too brainy to start with… and they kept Greece too subjugated, before finally snuffing it by mad theocracy (when the Academies were ordered closed by a Roman emperor.)

In the Tenth Century, new cultivars, of beans for the Franks, and of rice for the Vietnamese/Chinese, made a better fed Europe and East Asia forge ahead as ever more domineering civilizations… New cultivars are new technology…

Facebook is a different problem from the space adventures of Musk and Bezos. First, Facebook has no added value: all it does is spy, and find new fixes for its addicts (Instagram). Facebook is horrendously unethical, and a return to a primitivism worse than the Middle Ages. Facebook has indeed decided to censor artwork from the Middle Ages… “even if it has educational value“… Facebook grotesquely asserts. No wonder, it’s led by an uneducated grabster, used to wrap presidents around its little robotic fingers…

In general plutocracy is killing civilization. Always has, always will. However, the grandeur of Bezos’ and Musk’s missions is such, one has to make a grudging exception for them, as long as they keep on going… to Mars. That doesn’t mean we have run out of targets: all the financial derivative sector, worth 1,400 trillion dollars (yes, with a t, $1,400 thousand billions) should be destroyed. It is because it doesn’t exist in China, that China has become the world’s greatest economic power… Financiers bootstrapping themselves so they can crush us when they come down… What’s worse?
Patrice Ayme



For comic relief, one can read Massimo Pigliucci’s and Correy Mohler’s”Diogenes the Cynic vs Elon Musk
What wisdom could the great Cynic offer to our modern-day Alexander?“. Dogs can bark, but thinking deep is not their forte… So I thank Massimo for the spark to the blistering critique above… And indeed, first, to compare Musk to Alexander the Great is beyond grotesque: Alexander is a serious, not to say mass lethal, subject. Musk is cute, but basically completely replaceable (first, consider Bezos, who is coming up with similar rockets…)

“Two Minutes To Midnight”: World As Dangerous As It Has Ever Been Since World War II

January 28, 2018

The idea of “LAUNCH ON WARNING” is that, should a nuclear strike look imminent, a warning would be ensued, and missiles would be launched, without waiting for impact(s) of incoming apparent warheads. We are living in a seriously, Mutually Assured Destruction, MAD world: several countries, or, at least the USA and Russia, maintain “Launch On Warning” (LOW) systems of nuclear bombs having the potential for killing 600 million people, or more, in 24 hours. Or more. From accident, short-circuit, wrong training tape, etc. That is, those systems can kill the equivalent of one hundred times more people than the much bemoaned holocaust of the Jews in WWII (it took four years to kill six million Jew). The elite bemoans Auschwitz, while having 100 Auschwitzes at the push of a button, and the ostriches out there see nothing wrong, deep in the sand they scrutinize every day.  

Not considering that hair-trigger, “Launch On Warning”, nuclear bomb systems are worthy even of a conversation, is a global moral and intellectual failure of the highest order ever seen. Advocating slavery, racism, dictatorship, Inquisition, theocracy, torture, pale in comparison!

There is no reason for those LOW, except as first strike. Even then, a first strike would cause a devastating counter-strike, a second strike, so, at first sight, it’s not clear what would be achieved (if one goes deep into nuclear war planning, though, debatable advantages of a first strike can be construed). 

Epic failure. After the rocket carried by a plane, an F4 Phantom, exploded, nuclear aircraft carrier Enterprise caught fire, off Hawai’i. Had the fire extended to the main hangar, the carrier, carrying more than one hundred nuclear bombs and eight nuclear reactors, could have exploded. In several accidents with nuclear bombs, many safety mechanisms failed. At least in one case, only the last trigger didn’t trigger.., And those bombs were huge (one hundred times Hiroshima, or more…) Such incidents happened even inside the USA.

The intellectual and moral failure of preceding leaders has brought this situation: the USA and Russia should have dismantled the LOW systems. LOW nearly caused nuclear apocalypses several times, for reasons such as short-circuits, or the wrong training tape. Each time, nuclear catastrophe was avoided simply because officers on watch didn’t believe nuclear war had been launched, and acted forcefully, accordingly. So accidental nuclear war was avoided only because of the fortitude of a few individuals, some American, some Soviet.

The French Republic dismantled its LOW system (founded on dozens of ballistic missiles). French deterrence is now ensured with 300 thermonuclear nuclear warheads on four very silent nuclear ballistic submarines equipped with jet propulsion (with another 300 “tetes nucleaires oceaniques” ready as backup, should more strikes be needed in a prolonged nuclear war). France has also nuclear tipped supersonic cruise missiles launched from supersonic planes, and potentially nuclear tipped cruise missiles on board one hundred meter long Barracuda attack nuclear submarines. That’s enough firepower to destroy all Russian and Chinese cities. Plus ground hits on nuclear submarines pens (which presumably would come first, if the US or UK didn’t hit them yet). 

Because it didn’t happen yet, doesn’t mean it never will. Prime targets in a serious nuclear exchange would be thermonuclear ground bursts on submarine pens. Recently released Pentagon files show Finland was supposed to be annihilated by the fallout. Call that collateral damage.

The U.S. has 14 Ohio-class submarines carrying 24 Trident II SLBMs missiles. Each Trident, like the French missiles, have up to ten independent targetable nuclear warheads. The UK has three nuclear warhead equipped Trident subs. That’s a total of 21 Armageddon subs, which, all together, could terminate Russia and China several times over.

The subs are undetectable. A few years back, in 2009, French strategic sub Le Triomphant and British Trident sub HMS Vanguard collided in the Atlantic, “at very low speed”, while at great depth: they had detected nothing. That’s not very surprising as they are not only silent, but have anti-sonar devices. As the subs are undetectable (especially as they go hide in parts of the ocean where detection is especially hard), there is no reason to keep them on hair-trigger, ready to fire at the first alert..

So why does the USA keep 430 Minutemen Launch On Warning rockets at ready to launch within seconds, 24/7, at the first alert, in other words, ready to cause accidental nuclear war?   

Counter-intuitively (they are supposed by the “left” to be right-wing bastards), the two US president Bushes (I despise W), reduced nuclear weapons of the LOW type, considerably. Clinton and Obama did very little, aside from using their mouth parts in a way the gullible found admirable…

Here is what the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists think about the situation:

Founded in 1945 by University of Chicago scientists who had helped develop the first atomic weapons in the Manhattan Project, the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists created the Doomsday Clock two years later, using the imagery of apocalypse (midnight) and the contemporary idiom of nuclear explosion (countdown to zero) to convey threats to humanity and the planet. The decision to move (or to leave in place) the minute hand of the Doomsday Clock is made every year by the Bulletin’s Science and Security Board in consultation with its Board of Sponsors, which includes 15 Nobel laureates. The Clock has become a universally recognized indicator of the world’s vulnerability to catastrophe from nuclear weapons, climate change, and new technologies emerging in other domains. A printable PDF of this statement, complete with the President and CEO’s statement and Science and Security Board biographies, is available here.

To: Leaders and citizens of the world Re: Two minutes to midnight. Date: January 25, 2018


The greatest risks last year arose in the nuclear realm. North Korea’s nuclear weapons program made remarkable progress in 2017, increasing risks to North Korea itself, other countries in the region, and the United States.Hyperbolic rhetoric and provocative actions by both sides have increased the possibility of nuclear war by accident or miscalculation.

But the dangers brewing on the Korean Peninsula were not the only nuclear risks evident in 2017: The United States and Russia remained at odds, continuing military exercises along the borders of NATO, undermining the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty (INF), upgrading their nuclear arsenals, and eschewing arms control negotiations.

In the Asia-Pacific region, tensions over the South China Sea have increased, with relations between the United States and China insufficient to re-establish a stable security situation.

In South Asia, Pakistan and India have continued to build ever-larger arsenals of nuclear weapons.

And in the Middle East, uncertainty about continued US support for the landmark Iranian nuclear deal adds to a bleak overall picture.


After colliding with the deck of aircraft carrier USS Kennedy, during a storm, this US cruiser caught fire, off Sicily. The nuclear magazine would have probably exploded, had the fire got there.

On the climate change front, the danger may seem less immediate, but avoiding catastrophic temperature increases in the long run requires urgent attention now. Global carbon dioxide emissions have not yet shown the beginnings of the sustained decline towards zero that must occur if ever-greater warming is to be avoided. The nations of the world will have to significantly decrease their greenhouse gas emissions to keep climate risks manageable, and so far, the global response has fallen far short of meeting this challenge.

Beyond the nuclear and climate domains, technological change is disrupting democracies around the world as states seek and exploit opportunities to use information technologies as weapons, among them internet-based deception campaigns aimed at undermining elections and popular confidence in institutions essential to free thought and global security.

Did wars get started accidentally? Rarely so, but this was before. Now the technology has become faster, and immensely more powerful. A case in point is the explosion of the US battleship Maine in Havana’s harbor, in 1898. It was alleged at the time by the New York Journal and New York World, owned respectively by plutocrats William Randolph Hearst and Joseph Pulitzer, that Spain did it. They gave the Maine destruction intense press coverage, but employed tactics that would later be labeled “yellow journalism“… Fake news! That brought a mood which led to war of the US with Spain.

US Admiral Rickover, father of nuclear submarine deterrence,  launched an inquiry, seventy years later, in the Maine destruction (it is easy to construe a scenario with a nuclear sub exploding next to Saint Petersburg, with possible detonation of nuclear bombs). It was found to have been probably accidental, from methane built-up, most explosive at 10% CH4.

The much admired nuclear Nobel peace prize Obama didn’t do anything about reducing the danger of nuclear war happening by accident. No more than the lunatic Putin. That made them accomplices of the potential holocaust they managed. Trump? A bit too early to judge. Trump inherited a potentially disastrous military situation, especially with North Korea, but not only. Sometimes, there are no more nice exits.

Thanks to our amoral, imbecilic “leaders”, we are all in the situation of the crew of the Maine. When the battleship exploded, three quarter of the crew died. Many officers survived, as their quarters were far removed from the explosion. Similarly, crafty plutocrats buy land in New Zealand, a fully autonomous mini-continent, far removed from potential nuclear explosions.

In any case, those who value the most correct intellectual and moral positions, should exert pressure for an immediate worldwide dismantlement of “Launch On Warning” nuclear bomb systems.

Patrice Aymé  

P/S: The preceding essay, although full of data, is philosophical in nature. It may be a bit unfair to Obama, as it doesn’t mention the new START Treaty signed under that president. However, that treaty was way too timid, and didn’t eliminate LOW. Right now the USA has 399 Minutemen missiles deployed, ready to launch. 70% of existing nuclear warheads are deployed on the 14 strategic submarines of the USA, most of them deployed in Washington state. That gives an estimated 945 thermonuclear warheads deployed on US submarines (France has officially 300). All the details in:


Neat Suggestion For Net Neutrality

August 15, 2016

Under Obama, the US spy networks were given full power. Paying no, or little taxes, with the full resources of the USA behind them, they were mandated, as modern-day corsairs, to seize the world. They did (in spite of the Snowden scare; Snowden revealed the entanglement between the imperial machinery of the USA and the US Internet companies).

This Internet coup is a Obama’s great achievement, proving how great and just the brown president has been for the powers that be, over the powers that don’t deserve to be.

Here is the market capitalization of the forty largest French companies (the “CAC 40”), versus that of GAFA (Google-Apple-Facebook-Amazon):

Thanks Oh Great, Wise, Respected Obama, For Having Made The USA Mightier Than Ever With Your Mighty Espionage Agents


[Was the satanic Bush a smaller devil? One shudders at the question. Just asking…]

As you can see, GAFA, those four companies, Google-Apple-Facebook-Amazon, under the presidency of Barack Obama, became everything, while the French Republic stagnated between being and nothingness. This is a general pattern, with all countries. It has to do with GAFA being above all and any local laws. And there are no global laws to speak of. (The Chinese joke that GAFA is the new world empire; well, new, not really.) In particular GAFA eschews most taxes, so stand above all and any companies and firms, worldwide.

Donald Trump, hated by GAFA, has said that he would make GAFA pay taxes. Said Trump, speaking of GAFA, and, in particular, Amazon:”Oh, God, would they have problems if I became president”. But what of the rest of the world? How can the world get out of this pickle?

First GAFA should pay taxes (France wants Google to pay billions in overdue taxes, Great Britain, though, asks for only a tenth of what the French Treasury is asking. Why? Because Great Britain is onto the plot, and understands that GAFA is one way for its overlord, the USA, to seize world control, and will be rewarded for getting on the program!)

To force GAFA to pay taxes, they should be threatened with exclusion. Now, of course, that would require guts. First, suffering of being accused of “anti-Americanism” by the soon to disappear in the oubliettes of history, Barack Obama, the great enabler of GAFA. (The US already makes war against the French economy, so it may as well come up to the surface!)

Unfortunately for, say, the French, GAFA uses massively treacherous countries without much industry such as Great Britain (full of subordinate tax havens, more than a dozen treasure isles which charge no income or wealth tax), and Ireland (top corporate tax rate, 12.5% in contrast with France 33% and the USA’s 35%!)

So going to war against GAFA means that the French would have to go to war with Ireland and the British Virgin Islands (hence the UK!) If the traditional parties don’t have this sort of guts, maybe Marine le Pen will… (She will be accused of dreadful “populism”, just as the Donald is, for doing something against the multibillionaire plutocrats of GAFA, and their demonic little helpers…)

Could we try something less bloody? Well, GAFA spy on people, and then tweak what they see on the Internet, accordingly. GAFA, and its ilk know you have a health problem, so they suggest businesses associated to treatment or relief from that condition. I have noticed search engines such as Google manipulate searches according to what they think i should see. Worse: Microsoft’s Bing censors completely some of my essays. For example “Violence In The Holy Qur’an” cannot be found on Bing (even looked directly by title and author) This sort of censorship is deliberate: the essay consists essentially of 10,000 words from quoting entire verses of the Qur’an. (The English paper, The Guardian, accused me to be someone who “blogged” the Qur’an, to justify censoring me!)

If these Internet manipulations were completely unlawful, all the time, the business model of GAFA and their ilk would collapse. Of course, one does not want to be that cruel (what would Obama do?)

But here is an idea nevertheless. Why are not GAFA (and its ilk) required, by LAW, to present a neutral web if asked to do so by someone using the Internet? As I said, one does not want to be too cruel with the corsairs of modern communications: after all, they have some public utility, as they (vaguely) innovate.

So, say, every time one turns on one of the GAFA, or other Internet manipulators, one should be offered, manually, the option of a neutral web.

Simple. Drastic.

The right to neutral information is basic to enable democracy. Without it, there is no democracy. The present rule of GAFA, and their present manners, is a complete denial of democracy. Time to fight. When the philosopher Demosthenes called the Greeks to fight the (gold mines propelled) the Macedonian plutocrats, who were quickly increasing in power, he was not listened to. It sounded alarmist to go fight the rich and nasty. When it turned out Demosthenes was finally observed to be right, it was too late. Democracy was destroyed in Greece, for the next 23 centuries. And it all originated from a philosophical debate where Aristotle was prominent.

We are what we know. And we are nought if we know not. The neutral Internet is not obsolete, it’s a human right. Are those obsolete? Hmm… Wait…

Patrice Ayme’


Of Nukes, Dogs, North Korea, & Necessary Evil

May 28, 2016

KIM, THE HEREDITARY KING OF NORTH KOREA, MAKES A NEW NUCLEAR H BOMB EVERY SIX WEEKS. His engineers are trying to build reliable intercontinental missiles. The fear of a heat wave in Los Angeles will take a whole new meaning soon. (And what did the president do about this security problem? Less than Bill Clinton. Oops.)

Kim Jong Un killed entire “groups” of people in his own family, including his uncle, who was instrumental to get him to power: “the discovery and purge of the Jang group… made our party and revolutionary ranks purer…”[117 In 2015, the defence minister was executed by anti-aircraft fire, for “talking back”.

Certainly the uncle was arrested, humiliated, and executed. “Despicable human scum…worse than a dog” is how North Korean state media described the once-powerful uncle of leader Kim Jong-un. It was claimed that Jang Song Thaek admitted trying to “overthrow the state”.

Kim & Wife: Expensive Dior Purse. Feeding People To Dogs. Not Yet Personally On The Menu.


Speaking of dogs, four star general Jan Song Thaek, once thought to be the most powerful leader in North Korea, was stripped naked, with five colleagues, thrown into a cage, and eaten alive by a pack of ravenous dogs… according to a newspaper close to China’s Communist Party. The dogs had not eaten for five days, and the execution lasted an hour. In the end, the dogs cleaned the plate. (Others said that he was executed by machine gun.)

Whatever the rumors, higher-ups in North Korea, and their families, have been executed in large numbers. Differently from Stalin, Kim does not even bother with the appearances of fake trials. Yesterday’s horrors have become quaint.

Kim has gone to the furthest, darkest side. Supremely educated in Switzerland, the North Korean dictator knows all too well that any reason too removed from the law of the jungle, would be his demise. The North Korean leaders have long made Switzerland their central access point (say to the French Riviera and French medical treatments).

With North Korea, the world is confronted with the Hitler problem, not just an uneducated immigrant loser, of the most modest origin, but with someone who is immensely rich, a proven killer, close, personal, whimsical, well-educated and in command of weapons Hitler could not even dream of.

If Kim has the choice between being eaten alive by dogs and threatening, or starting, a nuclear war, he will, of course, chose the latter. Indeed, people who brought him up have explained he was definitively a brat, even as an eight year old (see the Washington Post report of May 27, 2016).

Unfortunately, the only reasonable prospect, then, is for democracies to prepare for what Kim is, namely, the worst: very clever, and very nasty. And that reasoning with him will not help. This is clearly a case where the strongest, darkest means are required.

We have to dial back to 1935, and ponder another crazed, demonic dictator, Hitler (who had just consolidated power with an accord with the German army making him Chancellor and President).

What should have been done with Hitler? What should the democracies have done? Now we know, with today’s mentality and morality: going all out against him.

(But the sordid truth is that it was in the best national interest of the USA to proceed with Nazism and the Second World War… just as it was to have Jefferson and Jackson massacre the Indians, steal their lands, and quintuple the area of the US… Agreed, the USA has changed: the collaboration of the US with Hitler could happen, and did happen, because of the mentality reigning then).

So let’s reconsider Hitler 1935 with today’s mentality: let’s do as if we wanted to avoid World War Two, the death of 5% of humanity, and serious fears, threats, hardships and problems for much of the rest.

Before I come to what to do, we have to remember that this time the stakes are much higher: Kim intents to use nuclear blackmail, with intercontinental missiles aimed at the largest cities of the West. Kim’s government said as much last year, he will do it again, and, this time, with power to back him up.

North Korea, right now is the Nazi Reich, in a potentially even worse version, but this time, we know the program ahead of its attempted implementation, through vast annihilation of uncountable multitudes. Insane? Sure. That’s the entire point, and that is why Obama could not handle it. Obama, fed on a steady diet of Financial Times and University of Chicago, believe people are rationally greedy. But of course, there is much more to humanity than that: the Will to Extermination, for example. The Will to Extermination is a gift: like playing tennis, it can be developed to a fine art, through enough practiced. Kim had plenty of practice (just as Hitler did).

So what to do? Forget the sanctions against North Korea as a plausible long-term solution: that would be about reason. Kim is not about reason (and he can leverage China, as his family long did). Get ready for war. Nuclear war. Or then target Kim and do away with him. There is a precedent for the latter.

In 1938, Hitler’s generals approached British and American diplomats and authorities, asking their governments to declare that they would stand with France in irremediable opposition to Nazi Germany. Then, they explained they would make a coup against the Nazis, arguing that Germany was in danger. Something similar done against Kim is what should be done now.

In 1938, the British and American governments not only did not do what the German generals had asked them to do, but they warned Hitler of the plot against him. (However, Germany had been a democracy just prior, and, even under the Kaiser, was a softer sort of fascism).

Let’s learn from history; let’s not repeat history. Time for a dark and dirty vaccination. To prevent incomparably worse.

The nuclear poker of Truman on August 6, 1945, worked: Japan capitulated within 6 days. The nuclear bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were moral sacrifices. However, what Kim prepares for us all, until he dies, is worldwide nuclear blackmail. Kim is only 33. And North Korean geology is very wealthy. Is that how we can live? (Kim already threatened to nuke Los Angeles and New York).)

Kim’s threats with nukes call for the darkest side… to remedy the situation. Morality comes from sustainability (that’s shown both by etymology and logic). Is a world where a few rendered insane by cruelty, fear and rage are armed with nuclear weapons sustainable? No.

Obama, and countless pacifists in the last 71 years have said they wanted to get rid of weapons of mass destruction. However, we need first to get rid of those who want to mass destroy, and that means destroying the mentalities conducive to this sort of concentration of power.

Meanwhile, the only sane, let alone moral, thing to do is to acquire military technological superiority.  Eight years ago, Obama said that Pakistani nukes were his number one worry. Rogue Pakistani Muslim supremacy and greed supreme scientists helped North Korean nukes. As president, Obama undermined the safety of the world, because he actually helped the North Korean dictatorship, and is still actively doing so.

How? By demolishing the US high-tech innovation system by fostering tech private tech monopolies. The latest example is his latest change in the laws directing the US Patent and Trademark Office. New laws guarantee that people and corporations who gave Obama big money will be favored. So what will suffer? Real innovation. And what will make democracy sustainable? Real innovation.

Hitler happened in a worldwide mental ecological system. So does Kim, and Islamism, and global plutocracy, of course. These are all examples of the rule of demonicity (plutocracy).

Ultimately, anything which favors plutocracy here,  favors plutocracy there. Such as all the colossal, blatant advantages given to those who financed Clintons, Obama and Bushes (from the Koch brothers, to the Spy Network booking your face). The North Korean dictatorship, Putin, the Islamists, and all the powerful rotten ones around the planet feel this, know this, see this, and play it like a violin.

Those “leaders” grabbing all the levers of power are not demented, they are not crazy, they are not sick, they are opportunists. And the opportunity of power, not to say power itself, has transformed them, neurohormonally, and perhaps even epigenetically (we know this happens in fishes, so why not in humans: are we not more sophisticated than fishes?) What they call reason, sustainability calls insanity: a nuclear strike on Los Angeles, successful or attempted, would make North Korea into a radioactive desert. The “leaders”, all over, have more power than ever, are more corrupt, therefore, than ever, and have become, more than ever, monsters made to rule, by all and any ways they can access.

It is for a new moral code invented by We The People to bar this sort of access to evil. “Equality” in “Liberty, Equality, Fraternity”, is not just a matter of the pursuit of happiness, but of the pursuit of survival. Of humanity as a species.

Patrice Ayme

Phobias: Trump, France, Islam, Electric Hydrogen

May 17, 2016

PC Thoughtlessly Sinking In Seas Of Protest:














Hydrogen will allow to store renewable energy.












Awareness is a complicated matter.

Patrice Ayme’

Higher Civilization: Ideas Rule

May 3, 2016

Gandhi was asked once what he thought about Western Civilization. He quipped:”It would be a good idea.” Hilarious. However, what Western civilization was became a rather uncivilized debate in 1914. What the engine of civilization is a better question. It is an idea easier to pin down. I propose:

What’s the ultimate idea generating the most civilization? That ideas should rule more than the rest.

The crazy Frenchman, Franky Zapata has now perfected the “Flyboard Air” (losing fingers in the process, as the turbines develop together 1,000 horsepower).


Some will sneer that flying has little to do with the advancement of thinking, but that would be erroneous. Such a flying machine requires great advances in energy density, miniaturization, and electronic control.

Franky Zapata's Preceding Invention

Franky Zapata’s Preceding Invention

Ideas are technology dependent, and that development, in turn, is economically dependent. Telescopes were initially developed in the Netherlands to scrutinize ships from further afield (with all sorts of military and economic consequences). Then Galileo got the idea to turn one towards the Moon, or Jupiter. It is unlikely that Galileo was the first to do so, but he was the first to describe it “scientifically” what he saw. Galileo was a university professor, so he had to talk about what he saw, and was taken seriously. But that does not mean he was the true originator.

One often hears that the US invented everything, but that’s only true when one forgets that others invented the same things earlier. Thus, actually, Alzheimer helps for becoming a great inventor, in one’s mind. (Claiming the superiority of some famous Anglo-Saxon thinkers is actually part of an exploitative mood, started with the “West Country Men”, Locke, Hume, etc.)

Inventions such as the first plane, transistor, and CPU happened in France of all places, not the USA (but they are attributed to the USA, just as Poincare’s ideas are attributed to Einstein). As the case of HIV (a virus discovered in Marseilles), when there are huge economic and political advantages at stake, the US president is given a Nobel Prize: prizes and power follow where the money is, and, ultimately, that’s where fracking works… The research leader of the HIV discovery never got the Nobel Prize (although a student of his did).

Franky Zapata has already invented these crazy water jet machines on which people stand and make acrobatics above water. More than 3,000 have been sold, worldwide. He  The French military and various security and rescue services have expressed interest.

Ideas are technology dependent, and that, in turn, is economically dependent. The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) just turned on again. LHC rests in winter, because electricity is too expensive then. Starting now, days are long in France (which is at the latitude of southern Canada), and French nuclear plants churn out cheap electricity. The LHC’s mighty radiation festers 100 meters below the French countryside, and nobody has complained yet that the worms were getting irradiated. Naively, physicist expressed their hope to find Dark Matter in the present run. There is five times more Dark Matter, at least, than Standard Model Matter.

For more French craziness one can consult: Highliners Versus Flysuit. Modern wingsuits were developed in France (the initial modern inventor died skydiving in Hawai’i; a century ago, a wingflier launched himself from the Eiffel Tower. He succumbed from a heart attack).

We are experiencing the richest times, ever, the mind has ever known. An example is the fighting which is developing with NASA’s future space telescope, WFIRST. WFIRST is a modernized Kepler telescope. Since the rough outline of the mission was launched, with a cost of 2.3 billion dollars, more than 5,000 planets were found. Not just that, but a flurry of questions. It is tempting to have those questions answered.

And moods are developing: first, why don’t we look if some of these planets are similar to Earth, complete with oceans and dinosaurs? Well, it turns out that now WFIRST could not block the main star light as well as it could have. Could we fix that? Yes, by floating a specially designed screen which would float far from the telescope, and whose artful geometry would prevent light to go around it (that can be done, with sharp petals interfering with light just so).

So should WFIRST be completed by a Star Shade? That’s another billion or so.

Poets of the trashy kind will say: enough of your planets, go live there if you can! Let’s go back to our landfills, help the poor, and worship the enemies of civilization! However, another mood is rising, deep down, and secretive: what if studying Earth-like planets would reveal new dangers ready to ambush Earth’s civilization? What if exo-paleontology could be a lifesaver?

Indeed. New ideas and new moods bring new, higher morality. Those who see in the Moon a message direct from god will find much easier to find a message direct from god to justify killing those they perceive as their enemies. Don’t laugh: Islamist authorities determine when the new moon happens (and of course they differ, an interesting conflict based on the refutation of the science of astronomy!)

In related news, the French Republic is threatening to withdraw from the TTIP (Trans Atlantic Infamous Plutocratic) negotiations:”Europe gives a lot, and receives very little in exchange”. French president Hollande observes: “We will never accept questioning essential principles for our agriculture, our culture and for the reciprocity of access to public [procurement] markets… At this stage [of talks] France says ‘No.’”

When ideas rule, and new ideas are born, so does craziness. At least from the point of view of the old logic. Once shown a new theory to explain Quantum Mechanics, what I call a Sub Quantum Physics, Niels Bohr sneered:”It’s not crazy enough!”

New ideas come with their own logic. Even when they are born from the old logic, it’s only if the help of much craziness. So we should welcome innovative craziness. Nearly all great discoveries started as fun and games.

Much of the stalling between what the future was imagined to be, eighty years ago (flying cars, etc.) has to do with the lack of innovation in miniaturized, ultra-efficient energy. So welcome to the Flyboard Air!

Patrice Ayme’