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With Frickin' Laser Beams
The Pentagon must have Dr. Evil on retainer. The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency is experimenting with using implanted electrodes to control "stealth sharks."
|3.1.06 @ 3:19PM|#
Uh, huh. Just wait until the first "controlled" shark attacks a
tourist.
Incidentally, isn't this supposed to be dolphins? That talk?
|3.1.06 @ 3:20PM|#
Somebody at PETA is having a hissy fit right now, and that puts a smile on my face.
|3.1.06 @ 3:23PM|#
Didn't they experiment with suicide-bomber-bats during
WW2?
"Let my armies be the rocks and the trees and the birds of the
sky." -- Charlemagne
|3.1.06 @ 3:36PM|#
You mean they haven't done this already! What's the Surveillance
Branch of government been doing with all that money?
If we're not gettin' stealth sharks, at the very least, then I say
we go back to buyin' toilet seats that are worth their weight in
gold! ...or we could sink it into the space program--whatever you
like.
|3.1.06 @ 3:43PM|#
This is the best news I've heard all week. Honestly, if I had to choose between bridges to nowhere and remote controlled sharks, I'd choose the sharks 11 out of 10 times. Stay the hell off my phone line, but if you want to assign a shark to follow me around, I'm totally cool with that.
|3.1.06 @ 3:46PM|#
Boy, are those terrorists in for it now. America will soon have all the powers of Aquaman. Tremble world and submit!
|3.1.06 @ 3:51PM|#
Oh, yeah, ChrisO, DARPA is the place to be. Who else hosts a robot race in the desert?
|3.1.06 @ 3:56PM|#
eric mattingly, those countries have rivers, you know. Besides,
why stop with sharks? Why not cows? Snakes? Bugs? Birds?
Pigs?
People?
|3.1.06 @ 3:56PM|#
DARPA funds some really weird research. Fear not, my sci-fi
friends, there IS research going on right now attempting to find
out how to read minds.
In the future we won't have to torture people to get answers out of
them. We'll just put them in an MRI....muhaha!
|3.1.06 @ 4:21PM|#
That's the coolest thing since the awesome lethality of the Alan Parsons Project.
|3.1.06 @ 4:23PM|#
Eric Mattingly:
Yeah, especially the terrorists in Afghanistan and Pakistan!
:)
What, you think Land Sharks
can't wear turbans?
|3.1.06 @ 4:40PM|#
Didn't they experiment with suicide-bomber-bats during
WW2?
Actually, it was Pigeons;
http://www.damninteresting.com/?p=403
There was also a plan to use Bats, they would have incendiaries
attached to them, they would be droped over a city, they would fly
into the attics then the bombs would ignite the buildings.
|3.1.06 @ 4:43PM|#
Mud sh-sh-shark...
Hey, I just listened to that
song today!
Pro Libertate and Stretch, lol!
V "walkie talkies. surround t|3.1.06 @ 4:44PM|#
Actually, Godfrey, he's just a dolphin...
HillBilly: is that what got into the belfry in that mosque?
ha ha.
ahem.
|3.1.06 @ 4:44PM|#
Pro Libertate, Godfrey, et. al,
I concede to your point. But why not go for the gusto and just send
out a battalion of flying crocodiles to savage the ranks of
islamist radicals?
http://www.everything2.com/index.pl?node_id=1736087
I do find it somewhat comforting that we've finally started to
catch up with science fiction novels.
|3.1.06 @ 4:46PM|#
Don't tell anybody, but they aren't actually sharks. They're sea bass. Ill tempered sea bass, of course.
|3.1.06 @ 4:47PM|#
Man, with this and the goat thing it's two funlinks in one
day.
And it's not even Friday.
|3.1.06 @ 5:08PM|#
Somebody at PETA is having a hissy fit right now, and that
puts a smile on my face.
Thanks Adam. That gave me a much needed laugh. :)
|3.1.06 @ 5:15PM|#
I have it! An army of cute animals! Koala bears, pandas, whatever. Train them as spies, suicide hit squads, messengers, etc. I can just see Osama now: "Allah, what a cute puppy. What is that, little one? Aiiiieeeeeee!!!!!!" Thud.
|3.1.06 @ 5:38PM|#
An army of cute animals!
Is that in your presidential platform? It ought to be. :)
|3.1.06 @ 5:42PM|#
"I have it! An army of cute animals!"
Already the subject of a Vertigo comic book:
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1401204953/reasonmagazineA/
|3.1.06 @ 5:46PM|#
The Top 100 Things I'd do if I Ever Became a Libertarian
President
#40: Train a large cadre of cute, computer-controlled animals and
unleash them to impose U.S. libertarian values upon the world. Live
free or die the death of one thousand nibbles!
Satisfied, Isaac?
|3.1.06 @ 6:02PM|#
Already the subject of a Vertigo comic book:
I'd have to actually recommend that one, especially to Grant
Morrison fans.
|3.1.06 @ 6:35PM|#
They have in fact tried cats, though the attempt was abandoned for reasons obvious to anyone who has a cat.
Timothy|3.1.06 @ 6:37PM|#
America will soon have all the powers of Aquaman. Tremble
world and submit!
All the powers of Aquaman...so talking to sea life and saving
lobsters from their rightful place on a dinner plate?
|3.1.06 @ 6:39PM|#
PL,
Imposing ideals, even with cuddly but deadly animals, is
NOT a very libertarian thing to do.
|3.1.06 @ 7:13PM|#
It always bugs me that people don't remember the earlier
Dr.
Evil.
Aquaman has been known to do more than just chat with fish,
though he is no Prince Namor.
Kevin
|3.1.06 @ 7:26PM|#
"Actually, Godfrey, he's just a dolphin..."
No Moose! Don't open the door...it's a tri-
Damn.
|3.1.06 @ 8:01PM|#
Kwix, you got me there. I guess I'm a Machiavellian libertarian.
Somewhere northwest of anarcho-capitalist but along the z-axis of
utilitarian libertarian. Not anarcho-fascist at all, however.
Vewy Special Widdle Forces. Good one, Stevo. They'll have just
darling little outfits, too.
|3.1.06 @ 8:40PM|#
No way I'm letting some Pentagon shark follow me around. Stealth
or not, you're not going to find joe getting -
A candygram? Really? Here, come - aaaaiiiiighhhh!!!!
|3.1.06 @ 9:03PM|#
joe,
Cracked me up- LOL-Out loud, really! And that's very good cuz
sometimes the stuff you write makes me wanna cry. ;)
|3.1.06 @ 9:49PM|#
Actually they tried both bats and pigeons.
The idea behind the bats was this. The bats were to be cooled until they went into hibernation. Cluster bomblets would be attached to them. Then they would be dropped out of the belly of a bomber over populated areas of Japan. Presumably most would survive the fall (bats having a low terminal velocity) and then when they warmed up and woke up, they would fly off to find a nice new warm home. Some portion of the bats would naturally settle on a wooden structure, a few hours later the timer on the bomblet would detonate it, and voila nasty fires.
Interestingly, the idea advanced to the point that they were actually releasing bats (and discovering that they tended to die from the fall and cold). The program was only killed when some of the bats blew up a Brigadier General's jeep. Though the general was not in the jeep at the time, I guess the general was not in a forgiving mood. I guess the bats demonstrated insufficient patriotism to be allowed to operate indepndently
The idea behind the pigeons is actually quite ingenious. The navy
began to train pigeons to peck at images of ships on a TV screen.
If the pigeon pecked on a ship it got a treat. Then they created a
crude touch screen that acted like a crude atari joystick
(detecting left, right, up, down, both diagonals, and center). The
notion was to load the pigeons into a anti-ship glide bomb with a
TV camera on the nose, and they would, through their pecks, guide
the bomb onto target. Of course this program didn't get too far - I
presume from the combination of several factors: the Axis didn't
possess too many ships requiring standoff weapons to attack after
1944, the TV cameras were so huge an bulky that I would be
surprised if they could stick them on a flying bomb, and captured
German radio-guided anti-ship missiles were far more advanced and
reliable.
|3.1.06 @ 10:33PM|#
When news articles could be reprinted in "The Onion" without editing them, it's a sign of the coming Apocalypse.
|3.1.06 @ 11:33PM|#
"The navy already uses dolphins to inspect ship hulls and
detonate mines."
Dude, dat's not de way dat it's done. De dolphins detect de mines,
dey definitely don't detonate dem. Den after de dolphins are done,
divers disarm, deactivate, and dispose of de mines, and dey don't
detonate dem if dey don't need to.
Dis is so dat de mines don't detonate near de dolphins, de divers,
or de dockyard. Duh...
|3.1.06 @ 11:37PM|#
I think they should clone multiple Richard Dreyfus's and use them instead of those sharks -- I mean, who showed who in Jaws?
R C Dean|3.2.06 @ 7:14AM|#
Imposing ideals, even with cuddly but deadly animals, is NOT
a very libertarian thing to do.
Imposing libertarian ideals is more libertarian than leaving
tyranny and oppression unchecked.
Lets not forget that only about a third of the colonists supported
the Continental Congress in the Revolutionary War. For the majority
of Americans, the United States was "imposed" on them. Hard to say
that wasn't the libertarian thing.
|3.2.06 @ 8:10AM|#
If the terrorists put on some 3-D glasses and pretend to be marine researchers in an underwater facility, we've got 'em right where we want them.
|3.2.06 @ 9:44AM|#
"Imposing libertarian ideals is more libertarian than leaving
tyranny and oppression unchecked."
Uh, no, not at all really, if the term "libertarian" is to actually
have any consistent meaning.
|3.2.06 @ 10:18AM|#
SR, you mean it isn't, "Live free or I'll kill you?" I always get my libertarian slogans mixed up :)
|3.2.06 @ 11:53AM|#
I always get my libertarian slogans mixed up :)
That's your story, eh?
I don't think so. I think you've just slipped up and revealed your
evil plan for world domination.
|3.2.06 @ 11:57AM|#
Now I'll have to fall back on my only other choices for
president, Fyodor or Stevo Darkly.
Though Stevo's humor is slipping lately. joe beat him for best joke
in the goat thread.
|3.2.06 @ 11:58AM|#
The lack of a libertarian dictator in world history has always bothered me :) Oppression through excessive freedom; that's my new motto.
amazingdrx|3.2.06 @ 12:53PM|#
Is Poindexter back at DARPA?
Wasn't he fired for his "department of silly walks" terrorist ID
reasearch program?
Poindexter..the eye in the pyramid dude.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Information_Awareness_Office
Maybe he's a consultant now, like brownie? Or was brownie finally
fired since he turned on the administration? So many questions, no
answers.
(Shouldn't libertarians be interested in this stuff, just a hint
editors.)
|3.2.06 @ 2:20PM|#
Though Stevo's humor is slipping lately. joe beat him for
best joke in the goat thread.
Oh, that hurt. But not much. When joe zings out a good one, it's
top-echelon good, one must admit.
I've been busy lately, okay? Grumble.
|3.2.06 @ 2:33PM|#
When joe zings out a good one, it's top-echelon
good,...
That's true, but he shouldn't quit his day job.
On second thought, most of us wish he would quit his day
job. :)
|3.2.06 @ 2:39PM|#
"The program was only killed when some of the bats blew up a
Brigadier General's jeep. Though the general was not in the jeep at
the time, I guess the general was not in a forgiving
mood."
PYLE!
|3.2.06 @ 8:55PM|#
On second thought, most of us wish joe would quit his day
job. :)
Yeah, and it's nothing personal cuz most of us also wish his day
job would be abolished.
|3.3.06 @ 1:19PM|#
Sounds like Somebody's looking to get the wetlands behind his
house inspected for unpermitted filling...
;-)
|3.3.06 @ 1:34PM|#
joe, in the alternative, maybe you could get some of those sharks (with lasers on their heads) relocated to said wetlands.
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