<HTML>Object of the week: the microwave oven
---------------------------------------------------------------------
The heat is on
Brian Logan
Tuesday November 5, 2002
The Guardian
[
www.guardian.co.uk]
Have you ever thought of your microwave as a weapon? Have you ever
stopped to think, as the pork fillets with apple mash rotate behind
the spattered glass door, that this machine could be re-applied as a
means of disciplining the unruly? Perhaps, by way of drawing a line
under domestic spats, you're wont to grab the oven from the counter,
punch "start" and flip open the door, then direct the beams at your
lippy opponent (your partner, perhaps, or your child?) until they're
writhing on the floor in well-deserved agony...
But if it hasn't crossed your mind to put your microwave to violent
use, don't worry. That's natural. It takes a special kind of
imagination to refashion household appliances into instruments of
torture. An imagination battered out of human shape by cynicism,
paranoia and, perhaps, a few unfortunate experiences in the kitchen.
Who would apply their creativity so monstrously? Who could so pervert
this useful technology, this force for gastronomic good?
Step forward "British and US military leaders", who, according to
Sunday's papers, are developing just such a weapon for use as a
"persuasive tool" against overseas baddies and protesting populations
back home. Move over, rubber bullets. Cheerio, tear gas. The Vehicle
Mounted Active Denial Technology, otherwise known as the "people
zapper", has arrived. It looks like a satellite dish but can warm
cold soup at a hundred paces. Try picking up Sky Sports 2 with this,
and fried pigeons will start falling from the sky.
This Frankenstein stove works by sending out concentrated microwave
beams which burn the skin of their luckless recipients. The theory
is, the zapper will disperse insurrectionist crowds. If I were in an
insurrectionist crowd and my face started bubbling like the cheese on
a jacket spud, I'd disperse, pronto.
The US military has blown a cool $40m developing this latest wheeze,
which may seem like money well spent to those who offered up their
brains for preliminary testing. Those against whom the zapper is
likely to be applied - blameless Iraqis, Moscow theatregoers,
civic-minded Brits - haven't got so much cash to burn...
Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2002</HTML>
