Eminent Domain

Judge Richard Posner has always been something of a trailblazer. He put economics into law, he started a blog (something odd for a sitting judge), and now he's got a digital avatar in Second Life. Second Life is a virtual world with its own economy and a million other things going on that I can't understand. My geek meter only goes so high.

Judge Posner dropped into the digital world to answer questions about his recent book Not a Suicide Pact. Mark Moller of Cato at Liberty has a link to the transcript. There are some pretty good questions and interesting responses from Posner. This puzzled me a little though...

JRP: I hesitate to draw a sharp line, because I don't know what the outer limit of potential terrorist destructiveness is. It is not unrealistic to fear the possibility of a nuclear attack by terrorists or an even more devastating biological attack. The appropriate preventive measures have to be scaled to the magnitude and probability of the threat.

Suddenly, a large wooden cube materializes in the middle of the auditorium, blocking Judge Posner from the audience-- an apparent griefer attack on the event, or the Judge himself.

JRP: That's an example of the kind of threat that worries me-- a huge box marching through an amphitheatre.

It's good to see that Posner can roll with the punches, or in this case, cubes. In addition to cube attacks, Posner also interacted with a raccoon-suited furry. If you don't know what a furry is, then you don't spend enough time on the internet... or I spend too much. There was also an interesting discussion about parody/satire as well as a fireball attack. The internet is really weird.