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🕑 Added 2015-12-27 20:26:03 +0000 UTC

Comments

Alistair Young

“There’s a spurious argument that, well, the State can’t appropriate, but I can!” Johnson says. “But that’s easily refuted. Property exists as a relationship between citizen and sovereign. You only get property rights based on the State.” ...while this is the favored position of States and lawyers, for obvious reasons, I'm sort of philosophically obliged to point out that there are lots of even quite mainstream philosophers, ethicists, anthropologists, and for that matter dogs that would dispute the heck out of it. (Many of whom, I dare say, will be cited by Ceresians of the future when they chuck the dirtsider revenooers out the airlock and their nitrogen tax along with 'em. "Down with Earther landsnatching! No legislation without excavation!")

John

Some great stuff Winchell. About Lightsabers, Michio Kaku came up with a way to make a lightsaber. Sadly, it required nanobatteries that have the energy density of 470 MJ/L. About 117 times the energy density of Kerosene. Boom, big badda boom. "Reiher's Rule on Energy Weapons: If the weapon can do the equivalent of a bullet's damage and do so more than a couple of times, it's batteries have enough energy density to work as a bomb. Shoot the batteries." Also, Larry Niven's Variable swords have one little problem: They have almost no mass. You can hit some one over and over with one and it would do about as much damage as a stiff wire of the same length. I.e. no damage whatsoever.