is it an 'incorporated' joke?Wire Geek - Burning the weak and trampling the dead since 1979Wire Geek - Burning the weak and trampling the dead since 1979
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[wiki/RFC] Proposed entry: "Organized Crime in Fenspace
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"He only took two hundred forty-eight Spacebucks for lunch, gas, and tolls!"
(what kind of crime is Starbucking)
Quote:Nope, it's straight out of the particular canon. (C'mon, folks, I can't be the only old-style Colonial on the board... can I?) -Rob Kelk "Read Or Die: not so much a title as a way of life." - Justin Palmer, 6 June 2007 -- Rob Kelk "Governments have no right to question the loyalty of those who oppose them. Adversaries remain citizens of the same state, common subjects of the same sovereign, servants of the same law." - Michael Ignatieff, addressing Stanford University in 2012
sorry, I parsed it against nine inch nails, not the original Battlestar Galactica. Wire Geek - Burning the weak and trampling the dead since 1979Wire Geek - Burning the weak and trampling the dead since 1979
They're now in the Wiki:
(Edit: and ezboard's messing up the links again...) http://fnord.sandwich.net/fenwiki/doku. ... n_fenspace Organized Crime (with a mention that most extortion payments are in barter) http://fnord.sandwich.net/fenwiki/doku. ... n_fenspace Courts http://fnord.sandwich.net/fenwiki/doku. ... rade_items Popular Trade Items -Rob Kelk "Read Or Die: not so much a title as a way of life." - Justin Palmer, 6 June 2007 -- Rob Kelk "Governments have no right to question the loyalty of those who oppose them. Adversaries remain citizens of the same state, common subjects of the same sovereign, servants of the same law." - Michael Ignatieff, addressing Stanford University in 2012
I *love* the sidebar on Popular Trade Items. "Long pig", indeed!
WRT ninjaburger and their meat source
Quote:How expensive *is* it to bring supplies up the gravity well? I was under the impression that t too a decent amount of time, and, if you want to bring all that much, a ship purpose-built for freight, but it always seemed to me that it wasn't particularly more effort or cost than, say, piling it all into a mundane truck and driving it halfway across the country. Could someone hand me the clue on the current benchmark? It's been niggling at me for a bit now - ever since I saw the bit about the biomass economy, really. Random side thought: unwaved biomass is probably by default a fair bit more valuable than waved biomass. You can never *really* get the stuff out completely, after all, and it's not like it's difficult to find handwavium in space if you want to do the conversion the other way. Side thought to the side thought: if that holds, there'd be a niche for someone with a device that takes waved biomass in the one end, and drops out handwavium in one out-hopper and biomass in the other.
I don't think it's so much monetary expense as time to ship that makes it expensive for fresh goods. I'm not sure where it was discussed, but the known limitations of speed drives in atmosphere mean it takes at least a couple of hours for a safe launch (popping straight up is discouraged after certain incidents) and the Free/Fen-trade zones most likely have registered approach and launch paths so you're not likely to be on a straight line to your target.
Say one day to get out the Well (picking, cleaning, packaging, shipping to launch site, packing, and launching), then one day range in a decently sized SS class vehicle (0.01c) gives you a range of Venus to Mars to get your product there while it's still called fresh. Anything that can reasonably be frozen, canned, or dried are easier as there is less time pressure on these things, same with still living things (given room and supplies to let them survive). Also, bare in mind that there is very little (sizewise) organised shipping in Fenspace. These people have limited resources compared to the shipping companied down in the Well, and as such don't have the contacts they do. Thus they don't get the best prices 'Daneside, or the amounts. All this pushes the price up. As readily available, edible biomass is rare in Fenspace, comparatively speaking these people have a valuable and wanted (thus expensive) comodity. Even at cost, it's still 'expensive'. Quote:Some of the older Gamer fen probably make reference to something called "Tastee Ghoul" and occasionally ask Ninjaburger ninjas, "Are you a People Person?" (A reference to Underground by Mayfair Games, which included a fast food restaurant with a cannibalistic bill of fare in its dystopic America.)Ebony the Black Dragon Senior Editor, Living Room Games http://www.lrgames.com Ebony the Black Dragon http://ebony14.livejournal.com "Good night, and may the Good Lord take a Viking to you."
Golly - all this discussion from a throwaway reference designed to give the Heinleinans a mention...
-Rob Kelk "Read Or Die: not so much a title as a way of life." - Justin Palmer, 6 June 2007 -- Rob Kelk "Governments have no right to question the loyalty of those who oppose them. Adversaries remain citizens of the same state, common subjects of the same sovereign, servants of the same law." - Michael Ignatieff, addressing Stanford University in 2012
Ooooh! I've got another one. It's a kind of crime that just wouldn't exist back home - or in space alone.
Earthmoving. Biomass is really pretty valuable in space. At the same time, there's a fair amount of biomass just sitting around on earth that's as cheap as... well... dirt. Lifting things to orbit may not be all that feasible for spoilable large-volume inherent-value things like red meat, but it's *easy* to go handwave a shipping container, slap on an engine and a cockpit, and buy it full of mulch, or cordwood, or topsoil, or whatever. At the same time, well, we had the Floating Island... and then we had Grover's Corners... and then we had people making noises about how freakishly wealthy (in Fenspace terms) the new folks over at the Corners *were*, and the various nations of the world (and the various environmentalists of the world) started putting some serious consideration into the long-term effects of having people strip you of biomass. So they made a few laws, and figured out a few semi-useful enforcement techniques, and we're now at the point where fly-by-night operations aren't really worth it on the risk/reward curve. On the other hand, some of the more organized criminals out there are managing to make a dishonest buck in smuggling biomass up and laundering money back down - they just have to keep pretty quiet about it. That in turn means keeping it at a relatively low level, and tiny vicious wars with anyone trying to steal their turf, and, in general, keeping the total lifted quantity low enough that the economy still functions. There are a *lot* more people who want to farm in space than there is dirt to support them, after all.
Which has interesting implications for funeral customs in space -- a lot of scifi dealing with planets where the soil is infertile to human-imported crops solve the problem partly by interring human dead and waste products therein. Someone could start a funeral services company that uses crushed asteroid rock and dead bodies to get things started... maybe buy a few thousand tons of fertilizer from Earth, too... --
"I give you the beautiful... the talented... the tirelessly atomic-powered... R! DOROTHY! WAYNERIGHT! -- Sucrose Octanitrate. Proof positive that with sufficient motivation, you can make anything explode.
...and, for that matter, a complete sidebar into Fenspace *medical* state-of-the-art.
Interesting points: - Biomods as one-time-only reboot: If you're dying slow, and you are not currently biomodded, and you manage to ingest some handwavium, you're almost certain to wind up as something that *isn't* dying slow. This is pretty significant. Just about any doctor worthy of the name who lives in a 'wave-friendly society is going to keep a supply of the stuff on hand, in the bio-friendliest strain he can find. - Biomods as protection: Some biomods deal with some medical problems all by themselves. If your biomod makes you naturally regrow limbs and damaged organs, then there's certain branches of medical science that you just don't have to worry about - Biomods as complication: Fenspace doctors simply cannot be prepared in the same way that normal doctors are. If your blood is now copper-based, there's no way that they'll have your blood type in the freezers unless you yourself put it there. If you no longer have the same organs in the same places doing the same things, their ability to come up with a diagnosis will be hampered, and their ability to perform surgery productively (if that's what's called for, and they figure it out in time) will be basically shot all to hell. - Yes, we have wavetech!: If a given medical establishment happens to have a device labelled "solve problem *foo* just because - play Barry Manilow for at least 1 hour per 24" then that particular problem isn't a problem, so long as the stereo holds out. At least, if that's the correct label. Thankfully, wavetech devices tend to work with biomods quite well. This can help a rather lot on the previous issue, depending on the equipment in question, but never gets rid of it entirely. Also thankfully, "keep random lifeform alive and reasonably stable" is something that handwaved equipment does pretty well, so once you've got them *in* the medical center, you generally have some time to scratch your head and be confused while you're trying to figure out what to do next - so long as you don't run out of beds. - No, we don't have so much of the other stuff.: From a daneside perspective, Fenspace is poor. Their primary economy is backed by dirt. Their richest citizen is a *milionaire* who is best known for running a glorified hotel - not even a chain! A great many of its people would just as soon cut ties entirely with daneside, and most of them got their remnant assets frozen one way or the other about the time they broke atmosphere. The amount of actual daneside cash flowing into the system is pretty low, given the population - which means that the amount that flows into the medical community and can be used for things like Extremely Pricey Medical Devices (or prescription medication) is also pretty low. A lot of the things that the daneside medical community takes for granted aren't necessarily available, and most of the sorts of things that you'd normally send patients to another hospital for, or send for from another hospital, are entirely absent. - Space is big. Remarkable percentages of the fenspace population live in tiny enclaves that are pretty far away from everybody. Folks die out in space and no one knows about it until later. Handwavium can stabilize you pretty effectively if they get you to a care center, but they have to get you there first. By the same token, with the percentage of biomods out there, and the fact that so many of the fatal accidents happen far away from home, organ donation in space is really pretty rare - and you can forget about pulling something up out of the gravity well. You *might* be able to keep someone stable on a trip back into the gravity well for a transplant, but you might not. Most unmodded patients who would normally get a heart transplant or a lung transplant or whatever back daneside take the guacamole instead. For the biomods, well, the chance of something going Terribly Wrong is usually too high to risk a transplant anyway - if you're lucky, your mod will save you. ...which means that it's probably pretty common for people with dangerous jobs out space-side to stay deliberately unmodded - with almost the same degree of paranoia that they use on their environmental seals - and keep a slug of guacamole in their suit, just in case. If they come out of it with a mod that doesn't seriously improve their survivability by itself? Well, that's just God's little way of telling you that it's time to find some other line of work. Likewise, most of the people who are actually in the medical community who find out about the effects of biomods through some means other than personal experence will probably be keeping themselves clean, just in case - and urging their friends and family to do the same.
For the first four, the Banzai Institute is, particularly, concerned with the medical implications of 'wavium. There are a respectable number of 'dane doctors on the Global Frequency, and at least two medical personnel working directly for the Institute, the senior of which is married to BBI #1138, Sensei, who serves as the CIO of the organization and works out of the American headquarters. Guacamole is considered by the Institute one of the major issues that the 'danes have with 'wavium, and it has priority as a research subject. And, unlike other noted experts, the Institute doesn't hold major cities hostage.
![[Image: smile.gif]](http://www.ezboard.com/intl/aenglish/images/emoticons/smile.gif) Quote:Which is distinctly poor planning on the part of the 'danes. NASA and assorted pro-space travel parties have been extolling the mineral benefits of being Out There for years. When the Rockhounds, Hephaestus, and assorted mining consortiums basically seize control of the metals market with the amount of raw iron and other metals that they can pull from the Belt (not to mention zero-G crystal growth and its impact on the computer hardware market), it's going to make the Fortune 500 sit up and say "WTF?!" In addition, the Banzai Institute is developing cutting edge technology in addition to its research into 'wavium. Patents bring in the cash, and by OBJ, the Institute will have a fairly significant nest egg.Ebony the Black Dragon Senior Editor, Living Room Games http://www.lrgames.com Ebony the Black Dragon http://ebony14.livejournal.com "Good night, and may the Good Lord take a Viking to you." Quote:Sirroco, I assume that was an unintentional Pun. ![[Image: tongue.gif]](http://www.ezboard.com/intl/aenglish/images/emoticons/tongue.gif) __________________"I'll be more enthusiastic about encouraging thinking outside the box when there's evidence of any thinking going on inside it." - Terry Pratchett ___________________________ "I've always wanted to be somebody, but I should have been more specific." - George Carlin
no... purely intentional - but subtle enough that I felt it went better without comment.
Worth noting that 'wave-positive dirtside areas (like good old Australia) get much of the best of both worlds on the medical side of things. This is going to have some interesting implications in terms of people hopping on planes to go get medical attention. |
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