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"Bureaucracies hide their mistakes, because people's careers are tied to those mistakes. Therefore, bureaucracies are a perfect mechanism for perpetuating mistakes."
- Frank Herbert
 |
| Bee Zapper | ||
| A laser-based insect remover. |
| At least the bee zapper was working. For years their hives had been under siege by Africanized swarms, seeking to take over as they had everywhere else in the area... But a few weeks ago Claire had found a net reference by a fellow in Egypt, who'd discovered that the African strain beat their wings faster than the tame European variety. Burrowing into archaic TwenCen military technology, he had adapted sensor-scanning designs from an old defunct project called "Star Wars..."
Like a glittering scarecrow, the cruciform laser system watched over her squat hives. When she had first turned it on, the surrounding fields had come startlingly alight with hundreds of tiny, flaming embers. The next morning, ash smudges were all that remained of the vicious invaders within line of sight... |
| From Earth,
by David Brin. Published by Bantam in 1990 Additional resources -
|
See the references below for examples of real-life bee zappers.
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and Technology from Earth
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and Technology by David Brin
Tech news articles related to Earth
Tech news articles related to works by David Brin
Bee Zapper-related
news articles:
- Laser Kills Mosquitoes Like Brin's Bee Zapper
- Laser-Based Mosquito Killer Demonstrated
| Drone Assassin Fails To Kill Venezuelan President |
| Musk's Boring Flamethrower |
| Poland Starts With 1000 Warmate 'Suicide Drones' |
| TIKAD Armed Drone Ready To Fight |
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Technovelgy (that's tech-novel-gee!) is devoted to the creative science inventions and ideas of sf authors. Look for the Invention Category that interests you, the Glossary, the Invention Timeline, or see what's New.
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'...lifted themselves to skimming flight upon whirling helicopters."
'Twenty rocket tugs towed it from its Earth hangar out into space.'
I don't need it to go fast, it just needs to amble along.
'The program raced up the screen one scan line at a time, subtly smoothing, deleting and coloring.'
'... a sound tape to supply the noise'
'The spotter descends, and we think it searches the vicinity, looking for the victim's face...'
