From The Economist:

"TOWARDS the end of the cold war Ronald Reagan announced plans to use powerful lasers to shoot down any incoming intercontinental ballistic missiles that the Soviet Union aimed at America. The lasers were real but the plan was fanciful. Scientists now propose a more modest system, aimed at insects rather than nuclear warheads. They think lasers could be used to zap the mosquitoes that carry malaria, a disease which kills more than a million people each year, most of them children, and debilitates hundreds of millions more."

Have Jim and Ted gotten it all wrong?