Pentagon brass hats decided to make wide publicity of the so-called 'spin off
of military research for civilian purposes. Once a most sophisticated weapon
was now put on sale for everybody to buy it for household usage. A salesman
proceeded to put a new model through its various paces to a prospective buyer.
"This is a tremendous computer-assisted weapon developed initially for military
purpose. But now it's no less tremendous peaceful weapon which is called a bug
killer. Now, madame," he said, "you will notice that when you spy a bug in your
home you hurriedly take out this device and insert a special formula in the
programming appliance marked 'H-2-5-0-Y'. Very simple. Then you plug in the
thing, point the tube on the bug to concentrate 220 deathly laser rays on the
insect and in no time he's dead."'
"But why go to such much trouble?" asked the housewife. "If I see a bug I step
on it and it's dead."
"Yeah?" the salesman was amazed. "That's a pretty good idea too. It was not
enough sophisticated for military application, probably."