Number One with a Bullet

It's a gorgeous spring afternoon in Lancaster, PA, which itself is a surprisingly interesting little city. If you want to wake to the smell of cow manure, it's got you covered. If your thing is tattoo parlors, hipster artisan foodstuffs (we've had gourmet pickles, hella good pretzels, and cupcakes, too), or local microbreweries (been to three of those), the heart of Amish country has that, too. Bowl haircuts? Check. Horse-drawn carriages? Sure.

Looked for Ishmael, to no avail

But I didn't come here to pimp Lancaster, or to lament the fact that I've spent the better part of this beautiful weekend inside a Marriott watching pre-teen girls dance. (I also watched a 6'2, 250-lb boy take the stage for a tap routine. Kid wasn't all that good, and I'm guessing he's dancing to improve his footwork for the gridiron, but he took it seriously, and certainly didn't embarrass himself. Right on, young man.)

No, I came here to warn you of yet another threat scientists pose to our future.

The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), the people who brought you the Internet (which goes to show that they can't be trusted, at all), are back with a vengeance. According to circa.com, DARPA "has developed a new .50-caliber bullet that uses optical sensors to hone in on targets."

Put in English, the U.S. military now has a bullet that can adjust its path in flight in response to the movement of its target. after a recent field exercise, Jerome Dunn, DARPA's Extreme Accuracy Tasked Ordnance (EXACTO) program manager, said this about the experimental munition: "This live-fire demonstration from a standard rifle showed that [the bullet] is able to hit moving and evading targets with extreme accuracy at sniper ranges unachievable with traditional rounds."

In the words of the great Chet, game over, man, We're fucked.

G:TB's crack espionage team has managed to get a glimpse of the thing that'll kill us all. At least you'll know what you'll see right before the lights go out.