Five Stories About Saying To Hell With Rules and Regulations

[james_davis_nicoll]

Why let safety or common sense get in the way of fun?

Five Stories About Saying To Hell With Rules and Regulations

Comments

[patrick_morris_miller]

Also, every RPG party ever.

(I think one of my fellow Traveller players has never once been pulled over by the cops or gone through Customs, because last session she volunteered information. When we had been intercepted in an interdicted system. Sure, we could prove force majeure for being there, but now it's turned into a thing and we stand to gain nothing real by it.)

[sturgeonslawyer]

Once again, ReacTor will not let me post though I am logged in.


Heinlein came up with a brilliant workaround for nanny-state regulations in his creation of the Shipstone, created (in an astonishing coincidence) by someone named Shipstone: a portable battery or generator or atomic reactor or, well, something; Shipstone chooses not to patent the darn thing, so there is no helpful diagram on file; so nobody knows much about it except that (a) it provides beaucoup electrical power for cheap, and (b) if you try to open or otherwise figure out what's inside it it blows up real good, generally taking the would-be investigators, their laboratory, and several city blocks along with it.

The real victory against the nanny state, however, is that -- what with these devices being so friggin' useful -- (1) they aren't outlawed after the first such incident; (2) nor is the facility where they are manufactured, or grown, or whatever, raided to discover Shipstone's secret, purely for the betterment of humankind, of course.

I think it safe to say that, at least as regards the second of these two victories, RAH was a sincere and fervent optimist.

[scott_sanford]

I needed new glasses, I thought the raccoon was an unfamiliar, perhaps feral, cat, so why wouldn’t I try to pick it up and pet it? Aside from it not being a cat and not wanting me within arm’s reach, the plan was perfect.

Didn't you also once have an encounter with a raccoon attempting to pass itself off as an adoptable stray cat?

[james_davis_nicoll]

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