1. In the marvelous wording of Niven & Pournelle: “think of it as evolution in action”.

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   1. Oath of Fealty. Good book, though the title may mislead initially (if you think about it afterward though, it makes sense).

      But yeah. Evolution in action.

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      1. ISTR there’s a discussion between two of the characters that lays out the title — they’re living in a feudal society, where the company and its officers take the place of the titled nobility and their employees and residents are the “peasants”. The company owes it to the employees and residents of their city-in-a-building to protect them however possible, in exchange for support and loyalty.

         From foggy memory, the two characters are at the time driving a tunnel boring machine to the LA County Jail to break one of the company officers out — he turned himself in because some less-than-lethal traps he’d devised to stop terrorists from rendering their city uninhabitable turned out to be lethal in some cases.

         The book contrasts their feudal corporatism to the quickly-turning-tribal LA that surrounds them. Pournelle had worked in the LA city government before it was completely lost, so he brought more than his usual insight to the book.

         For another of their takes on LA, read “The Burning City” — a swords-and-sorcery novel set in city on the edge of a desert that’s periodically swept by a madness (or supernatural influence) that leads the population to burn it down.

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         1. Oh no, those traps weren’t ‘less than lethal’. The areas in question had nerve gas dispensers. They were VERY lethal.

            Of course, the areas were clearly marked as ‘Unauthorized Personnel Forbidden’ and ‘If You Enter Here You Will Die’ because those corridors led to the arcology’s main reactor and a sabotage hit there would’ve turned the arcology into a tomb.

            The fact that the ‘terrorists’ were idiot college-student activists carrying a box of sand marked with ‘EXPLOSIVES’ in big letters didn’t help. This falls into what I call the ‘toy gun fallacy’ — if you bring a toy gun into a situation and pretend it’s real, don’t complain if someone pulls a REAL gun and plugs you.

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2. LOL! Needs to be set to the tune of “Yakety Sax”

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3. What did they DO?

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   1. “Some genius fired an RPG out of a car during a wedding convoy.” And then Mr. Roger’s asks, “Can you say BACKBLAST? There, I knew you could.”

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4. I believe that this is what happens when you encourage cousins to marry.

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5. Few years back I happened to see part of a ‘CSI’ episode in which they caught some guy who’d fired a RPG from his minivan into a office. By finding residue inside the car.

   I was laughing my ass off, thinking “There wouldn’t be much BUT residue inside the car!”

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