Real Genius was one of my favorite movies when I was growing up. It was in rotation with Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, Buckaroo Banzai: Across the 8th Dimension, and Clue. The primary McGuffin for Real Genius is that they are trying to make a super laser that, unknown to our heroes, will be used by the military to assassinate foreign targets from space.
In the 80’s that was science fiction.
Now kids are building the proto-version of that laser in their garage.
I present to you, on this fine Friday, a demonstration of a laser weapon that may not be powerful enough to fill a house with popcorn, is powerful enough to strike fear in the hearts of balloons everywhere.