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Square in the middle of what used to be the San Diego Freeway, I leaned back against a huge, twisted oak. The old bark was rough and powdery against my bare back. There was dark green shade shot with tight parallel beams of white gold. Long grass tickled my legs.

Forty yards away across a wide strip of lawn was a clump of elms, and a small grandmotherly woman sitting on a green towel. She looked like she'd grown there. A stalk of grass protruded between her teeth. I felt we were kindred spirits, and once when I caught her eye I wiggled a forefinger at her, and she waved back.

In a minute now I'd have to be getting up, Jill was meeting me at the Wiltshire exits in half an hour. But I'd started walking at the Sunset Boulevard ramps, and I was tired. A minute more...

It was a good place to watch the world rotate.

A good day for it, too. No clouds at all. On this hot blue summer afternoon, King's Free Park was as crowded as it ever gets.

Someone at police headquarters had expected that. Twice the usual number of copseyes floated overhead, waiting. Gold dots against blue, basketball-sized, twelve feet up. Each with a television eye and a sonic stunner, each a hookup to police headquarters, they were there to enforce the law of the park.

No violence. ...

http://www.larryniven.net/stor...

This reminds me of the bacterium designed to break down the room temperature superconductors used on the Ringworld by the Puppeteers to eliminate the threat that they believed the inhabitants of the Ringworld posed to them. I hope that the tech people involved are smart enough to make sure the enzyme is controllable so that it only eats up waste plastics. Too much of our society is plastic-based at this point.

For the edification of those who don't recognize the reference, http://www.larryniven.net/puppeteer/puppol.shtml.

Idea shamelessly stolen from Charles Stross.

Who may have stolen it from Larry Niven: The Roentgen Standard

Who got it from Larry Niven

Niven pretty well answered the whole "anarchy" question with this story:
http://www.larryniven.net/stor...

Science fiction author Larry Niven came up with a way to solve this problem, which this article reminded me of: 'Russian sleep sets' would induce a current in your brain, causing you to sleep. It was super-efficient, and only a couple hours under it's influence would leave you as refreshed and ready to go as a full 8 hours' normal sleep. I can't imagine we'd get anything so great as that, but to be able to put on a headset of some sort, set a timer, be instantly asleep, sleep deeply, and wake up completely refreshed every time? That'd be a game-changer.

As predicted by Larry Niven in 1972 short story, Cloak of Anarchy.

http://www.technovelgy.com/ct/...

Someone at police headquarters had expected that. Twice the usual number of copseyes floated overhead, waiting. Gold dots against blue, basketball-sized, twelve feet up. Each a television eye and a sonic stunner, each a hookup to police headquarters, they were there to enforce the law of the Park...
Within King's Free Park was an orderly approximation of anarchy. People were searched at the entrances. There were no weapons inside. The copseyes, floating overhead and out of reach were the next best thing to no law at all.

http://www.larryniven.net/stor...

Larry Niven did it before that: Fallen Angels

Maybe a Variable Sword?

http://news.larryniven.net/con... [larryniven.net]

I was thinking that such an incredubly thin and strong filament would make an ideal ultra-sharp cutting edge for a Vibroblade type of weapon utilizing ultrasonic vibration to multiply the cutting effectiveness even more..

http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki...

Now, if one were to have a handle from which sprang an end-disc by a telescoping rod, and attached to the circumference of that disc, and extending back down to the handle, were these insanely-sharp nano-threads, heated possibly by electricity akin to an everyday electrical heating element, or by the energy of the ultrasound energy itself such that it appeared like a column of glowing light growing out from the handle, you'd have a good approximation of a Light Saber.

Heck, the slight differences in the precise frequency each thread would be vibrating at would likely cause relatively-low frequency harmonic notes equal to the difference in frequency between each thread. You would have the humming and slight frequency & phase shifts produced by light sabers being swung around.

Wish I had the resources to throw at the problem. Heck, even if it didn't turn out to be exactly a "light saber", an ultrasonic nano-thread sword that could slice through heavy armor like butter would be awesome, not to mention all the practical industrial and medical potential such a tool would posses.

Strat

Maybe a Variable Sword?

http://news.larryniven.net/con...

When I first read the headline, I immediately thought: "Larry Niven's Slaver Sunflowers for real??!"
http://news.larryniven.net/con...

Here's a modest proposal to the contrary.

Anarchy cannot _possibly_ be stable. This was illustrated very well in Larry Niven's story at http://www.larryniven.net/stor....

The inability of any social culture with more than a few members to function without an enforced hierarchy forming is well defined by the entire history of humanity, and even shown by observation of animal groups.

When a flash mob forms and disrupts all the robots at once,

http://www.larryniven.net/stories/cloak_of_anarchy.shtml

Good luck doing without one. Have you ever tried living in a commune with "no government"?

Larry Niven did an interesting fictional account of this in "Cloak of Anarchy", http://www.larryniven.net/stories/cloak_of_anarchy.shtml.

Living in a commune? Isn't that about the same as living with our current "gov". I think that is how Thomas Jefferson or Benjamin Franklin would see are current system. Everybody working for the state doing nothing useful.

Consider the driving urge between a man and a woman, the monomaniacal urge to achieve greater and greater penetration. Remember also that we are dealing with kryptonian muscles.

Superman would literally crush LL's body in his arms, while simultaneously ripping her open from crotch to sternum, gutting her like a trout.

IV

Lastly, he'd blow off the top off of her head.

I gather (from puff pieces like this submission on Slashdot) that there may be yet another Superman movie in progress. Is it likely to address these important parts of the myth, AND be worth watching?

For those who aren't familiar with it, Larry proposes using high-grade radioactive waste as a currency : it'll remain in circulation (otherwise the miser dies) ; authenticity is easy to establish (pocket Geiger counter).

Yeah, "ha ha". "But serious."

First off, here's a timeline that's about as consistent as we're going to get.

Meteor impact was about 1600 years prior to the time of the first book; by comparison, the final raid on the attitude jets by the City Builders was probably around the time of the superconductor plague, five hundred years later (as basically a panicked attempt to get away from the problem). The attitude jets at the time of the impact, combined with an existing protector in the Repair Center, would mean that the orbital failure was caught and fixed at the time, probably within hours of impact.

Also, nowhere in the first book does it mention the rosette being stable. Just "safe", which is an entirely different matter (though you do have to wonder about the mindset of a race that thinks that moving planets around in the first place is safe).