Set your phasers to "male bonding" setting

Did anyone else see this hilarious bit of news? In the mid 1990s (oh, those heady, carefree times) the Pentagon invested considerable time and energy researching non-lethal chemical weapons. They seriously attempted, in what reads more like a story from The Onion, to develop a drug that would make all enemy fighters irresistible to each other, thus rendering them incapable of fighting. One can already picture the enemy soldiers holding hands, lobbying for marriage rights and taking a sudden interest in home furnishings. Another one of the whacky ideas was to give guerilla fighters severe halitosis so they could not easily blend in with regular citizens (not much use if they were fighting in France, of course, where bad breath is not only common, it is mandatory). Another stroke of genius was the idea to make enemy positions attract swarms of enraged wasps or rats. Quite, quite surreal.

It all reminds me of that routine by Eddie Izzard about the original Star Trek series. Eddie suggests that having only two settings on their phasers - kill or stun - was a bit limited, so comes up with a few more that would have made things interesting: "bit of a cough" setting; "depression" setting; "ice-cream van nearby" setting; "sudden interest in botany" setting; "left the oven on at home" setting.

And people claim the military was under-funded when Clinton was President? Sounds like some people had too much money and time on their hands to me.

Anyway, the British army has had a surefire method of making its officers gay for years now. It's called "boarding school".