We live in an age where new research regularly breathes life into the dreams of last year’s sci-fi authors. We just don’t hear about it on the news that often. So I’m here to bring you the most exciting of this month’s science crop culled lovingly from a variety of publications.

Darpa Proposes Aquatic Drone Army

Taking a cue from super-villains, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (or DARPA) is proposing a plan to populate the ocean floor with drones to be triggered when needed.

They call them upward falling payloads or UFPs. When remotely triggered, the payload would be released from the ocean’s floor inside of “riser,” a pressure-protective shell or casing to float to the surface or shallower water, whereupon the UFP would be activated for whichever application the government sees fit.

“The objective of the UFP program is to realize a new approach for enabling forward deployed unmanned distributed systems that can provide non-lethal effects or situation awareness over large maritime areas,” DARPA said in their call for proposals.

“Non-lethal effects” seems to be a euphemism for anything combat-related short of an action intended to kill someone and “situation awareness” is a euphemism for spying or exploration, depending on the situation.

The idea seems like it would be polarizing. It’s not hard to see a lot of good and evil potential in it. On the optimistic side these could aid in subduing a pirate’s vessel or scoping out and cleaning up an oil spill or just helping us explore what’s in the deepest crevices of the ocean floor. Then again there’s something a little bit unsettling about knowing that the government wants untold numbers of unmanned robotic eyes in the briny deep.

DARPA released a statement laying out their idea and sending out the call for proposals here. Time to get cracking, mad scientists.

White House Responds to Death Star Petition

The White House released an official response putting the kibosh on an internet petition to secure resources to build a Death Star a la Star Wars. Among other surprisingly rational reasons for turning down the Death Star petition, the White House cited an estimated cost of the effort at $850 quadrillion.

Other reasons included a clear stance against destroying planets and questioning the wisdom of spending all of that money on a weaponized starship with “a fundamental flaw that can be exploited by a one-man starship,” in the statement’s own words.

They make some good points, but it would be fun way to destroy the economy. It’s a pretty great read. Check it out here.

Robot “Jeopardy!” Champion Has a Potty Mouth

IBM’s Watson supercomputer, known for its ability to best “Jeopardy!” champions at their own game, was taught the Urban Dictionary in an effort to aid its understanding of human slang.

As any toddler will prove, teaching to swear is easy, but tact is another matter. Watson began peppering his discourse with cuss after the upload, unable to discriminate polite from blue language. In one anecdote cited in IBTimes, Watson used the word “bullshit” in his answer to one researcher’s question.

Watson’s trainers removed the Urban Dictionary from its vocabulary and gave Watson a filter to help against future incidents.

One of Watson’s trainers told Fortune that the machine had once before developed the same issue from reading Wikipedia.

However, if we’re training the machine to humiliate human opponents by besting them at games, perhaps the ability to smack talk would fall on the desirable side.

Steve Baltrukonis is a musician, artist, writer, MRI technologist and all-around funny guy. He maintains streetartofchicago.com, drawnwithfire.com, and plays guitar for H for Hombre.