Output Stream of Consciousness

I just encountered this little gem of a quote in the book, The New Physics : For The 21st Century on page 185:

The word laser is an acronym for light amplification by stimulated emission of radiation, (Actually, most lasers are not operated as amplifiers with an input and output beam but as stand-alone oscillators; however, the acronym with "o" instead of "a" has less appeal!)

Fortunately for us, the cool, destructive applications involve amplification, or else we would be perhaps agog at the use of loser beams in the 22nd century.

They'd probably figure out a way around that, though, perhaps by switching the "L" of light with... "P" for photons?

POSER beams! Even better!