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."

Comments

[Pro Libertate]

Uh, huh. Just wait until the first "controlled" shark attacks a tourist.

Incidentally, isn't this supposed to be dolphins? That talk?

[Adam]

Somebody at PETA is having a hissy fit right now, and that puts a smile on my face.

[ChrisO]

Mud sh-sh-shark...

[crimethink]

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

[Ken Shultz]

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.

[scape]

Didn't I see this on an episode of The Simpsons?

[will]

The navy already uses dolphins to inspect ship hulls and detonate mines.

[Stretch]

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.

[Pro Libertate]

Boy, are those terrorists in for it now. America will soon have all the powers of Aquaman. Tremble world and submit!

[ChrisO]

DARPA sounds like a pretty interesting place to work.

[eric mattingly]

Pro Libertate,

Yeah, especially the terrorists in Afghanistan and Pakistan! 🙂

[Pro Libertate]

Oh, yeah, ChrisO, DARPA is the place to be. Who else hosts a robot race in the desert?

[Pro Libertate]

eric mattingly, those countries have rivers, you know. Besides, why stop with sharks? Why not cows? Snakes? Bugs? Birds? Pigs?

People?

[Steve Zissou]

I'm going to find that Jaguar Shark, and I'm going to kill it.

[linguist]

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!

[thoreau]

Yeah baby!

[Kevin]

That's the coolest thing since the awesome lethality of the Alan Parsons Project.

[Godfrey]

Eric Mattingly:

Yeah, especially the terrorists in Afghanistan and Pakistan! 🙂

What, you think Land Sharks can't wear turbans?

[HillBilly]

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.

[smacky]

Mud sh-sh-shark...

Hey, I just listened to that song today!

Pro Libertate and Stretch, lol!

[V "walkie talkies. surround t]

Actually, Godfrey, he's just a dolphin...

HillBilly: is that what got into the belfry in that mosque?

ha ha.

ahem.

[eric mattingly]

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.

[thoreau]

Don't tell anybody, but they aren't actually sharks. They're sea bass. Ill tempered sea bass, of course.

[Isaac Bartram]

Man, with this and the goat thing it's two funlinks in one day.

And it's not even Friday.

[happyjuggler0]

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. 🙂

[Pro Libertate]

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.

[Isaac Bartram]

An army of cute animals!

Is that in your presidential platform? It ought to be. 🙂

[SR]

"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-20/

[bubba]

Mice.

Lots and lots of mice.

[Pro Libertate]

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?

[Eric the .5b]

Already the subject of a Vertigo comic book:

I'd have to actually recommend that one, especially to Grant Morrison fans.

[GILMORE]

You laught, but this is the same way planet of the apes got started.

[josh]

They have in fact tried cats, though the attempt was abandoned for reasons obvious to anyone who has a cat.

[Timothy]

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?

[Vanya]

That round headed git Karl Pilkington was right!

[Kwix]

PL,
Imposing ideals, even with cuddly but deadly animals, is NOT a very libertarian thing to do.

[peachy]

the Alan Parsons Project

which, I believe, was some kind of hovercraft...

[kevrob]

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

[Godfrey]

"Actually, Godfrey, he's just a dolphin..."

No Moose! Don't open the door...it's a tri-

Damn.

[stan]

maybe they could invent a way to win iraq.

[Stevo Darkly]

An army of cute animals!

Send in the Vewy Special Widdle Forces!

[Pro Libertate]

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.

[joe]

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!!!!

[Rick Barton]

The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency

Is it an evil agency?

[Rick Barton]

Are they evil sharks?

[Rick Barton]

joe,

Cracked me up- LOL-Out loud, really! And that's very good cuz sometimes the stuff you write makes me wanna cry. 😉

[tarran]

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.

[Dogzilla]

When news articles could be reprinted in "The Onion" without editing them, it's a sign of the coming Apocalypse.

[Navy Diver]

"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...

[Douglas Fletcher]

I think they should clone multiple Richard Dreyfus's and use them instead of those sharks -- I mean, who showed who in Jaws?

[Godfrey]

Joe, wai-

Damn.

[Slav]

That round headed git Karl Pilkington was right!

[R C Dean]

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.

[Ethan]

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.

[SR]

"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.

[Pro Libertate]

SR, you mean it isn't, "Live free or I'll kill you?" I always get my libertarian slogans mixed up 🙂

[bubba]

This gives new meaning to the phrase "pecked to death by ducks."

[Isaac Bartram]

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.

[Isaac Bartram]

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.

[Pro Libertate]

The lack of a libertarian dictator in world history has always bothered me 🙂 Oppression through excessive freedom; that's my new motto.

[amazingdrx]

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.)

[Stevo Darkly]

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.

[Isaac Bartram]

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. 🙂

[D.I. Carter]

"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!

[Rick Barton]

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.

[joe]

Sounds like Somebody's looking to get the wetlands behind his house inspected for unpermitted filling...

😉

[Pro Libertate]

joe, in the alternative, maybe you could get some of those sharks (with lasers on their heads) relocated to said wetlands.