This from Mike Bobick with many thanks.

This amazing video that is but one of many examples of everyday items (beanbags, water coolers, abstract minimalist techno that has now been successfully co-opted for military uses. I thus present the watercooler as modern weapon. If you are ever in need of an assemblage that now runs the gamut from object of workplace gossip to new military weapon, there’s always the water cooler.

One can only wonder how long it will take for this device to be deployed in ways that transform the ridiculous into the repugnant.  The pepper spraying of seated UC Davis Occupy protesters is an appropriate case to juxtapose with the water cooler canon.  An assemblage (pepper spray) initially designed as a non-lethal alternative for situations where citizens might pose a threat to others or themselves was misused to inflict harm upon citizens who posed no threat whatsoever.  The incident exposed the limits of what we might call an assemblage’s “toleration”.  Ill used by the police, the pepper spray incited the citizenry and shifted the political terrain away from weapons of enforcement and back to the “weapons of the weak”.