Microwave Pain Ray Keeps Frost From Killing Crops

An anonymous reader writes "Philip K. Dick's novella Project Plowshare was set in a world where deadly new weapons are 'plowshared' into consumer products. A few years after that book was set, defense giant Raytheon is spinning its raygun-like Active Denial System from a weapon into an agricultural tool to prevent frost from damaging citrus and grape crops."

Comments

Re:why do people work for Raytheon?

[khallow]

Yea, um, you don't bring freedom and democracy with a gun any more than you bring religion with a sword.

Bringing religion with the sword has been wildly successful. Islam, for example, is the largest religion in the world today precisely because of its military efforts in the first few centuries of its existence. Bringing freedom and democracy doesn't work as well because those things require voluntary participation of the group you're "freeing". If they don't want it collectively, then it won't stick.