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It's funny. Laugh. Science

When Locusts Attack 135

Posted by michael from the FOX-special dept.
Robert Coulthard writes: "http://biology.queensu.ca/~dawsonj/LocustCar/index.html You've got to check this out!!! A friend of mine has designed a car that he hooks a locust up to. The little critter actually drives it! There's some pretty cool videos on the site that shows the thing in action." Somewhere, there's a member of People for the Ethical Treatment of Insects getting all riled up.
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When Locusts Attack More

When Locusts Attack

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  • Re:I forsee... (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    whaddaya mean, future? i drive that way already!

  • Re:That's twisted (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Don't worry about PETA, worry about the Animal Defense Miltia [chickenhead.com]. "America's only non-neutered animal rights grou - 100% pansy free." It's all fun and games 'till the ADM's secret services go after you.

  • Re:Laptops (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Finally, you can make bugs work to your advantage!
    Redmond will be investing in this new innovation soon. Locust 2001 Swarms on computer stores.

  • Man, you guys are behind! (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Virginia Tech has done this quite a while ago (1997) only with a cockroach instead. http://quixote.ece.vt.edu/ ece news/aug97/roachcar.html [vt.edu]
  • Would they?

    Can't speak for anyone else... but I'd lose my legs if it would save lives.
  • Read the article -- apparently a keychain's jingle includes ultrasound compotents to which they were testing the locust's response. They didn't expect it to be attracted rather than repelled, though.

  • Is this how prostheses work nowadays anyway? Say you just lost your hand. Your brain still sends impulses to that missing hand as though it were there. You can slap a few electrodes on your stump and re-learn how to control a new fake hand.

    More or less, but the interface is primitive at best. Typically, the hand can be opened and closed and the wrist rotated. While the better ones can apply user controled variable pressure, there's no feedback. A direct connect could allow for independant fingers, finer control and some sensory feedback. Part of that depends on improved understanding of how nerve impulse characteristics translate into sensation and movement.

  • because in the future we will steer our cars by clenching our butt cheeks left and right.

    That could add a whole new world of meaning to 'silent but deadly'

  • There is feedback, with the newer prosthetics they can feel temperature differences, they can also feel differing textures of objects.

    I've seen the ones that give temperature feedback, I hadn't seen the ones that give texture feedback. Can they give pressure feedback as well?

  • That doesn't mean legitimate research isn't being done.
    In the case of this article, the researchers said that it is to study the insect's reaction to ultra low frequencies. I would imagine the car makes the insect move in a sufficiently slow and obvious fashion for humans to observe.

    Did you notice that, contrary to their expectations, the locust moved *towards* the jangling keys?

    Things like that could be important, given how much of a menace locusts are in some parts of the world.
  • I was concerned about what would happen to our environment if every Chinese would be given a car.

    Now I am concerned about locusts!
    __
  • I think your reaction is a little strang. People regularly spray poisons to kill locus. They are killed by the millions. People step on them, swat them, ..... kill them in a myriad of ways. and what you want to complain about is a couple of guys having fun and doing research. Well, more power to you, but I think there are many more important things to worry about.

    Troy
  • I saw the picture and read the article... it seams the only thing they did to the bug was run some wire through it and max it to a stand... No where did I notice any indication that the wings were gone...

    "... That probably would have sounded more commanding if I wasn't wearing my yummy sushi pajamas..."

  • Re:Sad (Score:2)

    by pen ( 7191 )
    Lighten up! They're jokes. Do you get this worked up when someone tells you a joke that portrays all lawyers as greedy and insensitive? You shouldn't get offended at these unless they are actually meant to be offensive.

    --

  • Not only them... (Score:5)

    by Angst Badger ( 8636 ) on Sunday October 08, 2000 @09:02PM (#721641)
    Somewhere, there's a member of People for the Ethical Treatment of Insects getting all riled up.

    Well, I think a lot of the stances taken by PETA are silly, but this does seem a little mean in the sense of kid-pulling-wings-off-fly mean. If there's a legitimate scientific goal ---

    And... if you're wondering why... M.E.L. was built for the fun of it.

    --- but in this case, there's not. Maiming animals for fun, even a lowly insect, is the kind of uncool behavior that makes it difficult for real scientists with legitimate and worthy goals to perform research. It's getting hard enough to perform experiments for things like life-saving medical research without thoughtless boobs like these autogenerating propaganda for the more reactionary elements within the animal rights movements.

    --

  • I've got a theory as to why it turned into the keys. Bear with me. This poor insect finally reallized that he would never be the same again. Think of the thoughts going through its mind: "These giant alien monsters PULLED OFF MY LEGS! Now I am all wired up like some kind of freak from the Matrix sequel. Wait - is that a bat! I can end it all now! Goodbye cruel world!"

  • PETA would be upset (Score:3)

    by Barbarian ( 9467 ) on Sunday October 08, 2000 @09:18PM (#721643)
    From this recent kuro5hin [kuro5hin.org] discussion, PETA [mtd.com] themselves would get upset about this.

    Err, I guess the PETA we're talking about is here [peta.org].

    --
  • I've always wanted to build a radio control model airplane, preferably with an electric motor, and somehow strap in (comfortably) a parakeet, and fly it around. Talk about putting legs on a snake...
  • That's really some twisted stuff. Don't tell PETA.
  • They find out not only are they NOT batterys but they are NOT human.
    The each one of them represents THOUSANDS of locusts connected together as a massive computers driving cars.
    The artifical environment keeps them together and the "agents" are software defects...
    Our herros get swished by a big boot...
  • Bah, completely missed the point. If they all they wanted to do was to restrict the locust's movement to two dimensions they could have done it much quicker and more economically by ripping its wings off. What's more ironic about this story is that for all the advances in electronics, the best way to make a machine that can reliably steer itself is to hook an insect up to it. Nature is still better at this sort of thing than any purely electronic device.
  • rofl....i don't have the +1 ;). Then again, I don't try. But still, it's nice to set up mirrors for stuff. Even if the intent was karma whoring, i don't think it deserves name-calling. No reason to discourage behaivour which makes the world an easier nicer place.
  • I'd like to see what would happen if this type of experiment were performed on human males.

    Attach sensors to certain mucles umm.. down below. Use these sensors to control the direction and speed of a little go cart type device which the man would be sitting in.

    Have attractive women walk into the room and see how fast they'd get run over.

    Lee Reynolds
  • Revelations meets Terminator.

    ----
  • half bug, half car, hive mind; he is "locust of bug"
  • Or you could be stuck in a canister and taught how to fly [sci.kun.nl]!

    The Divine Creatrix in a Mortal Shell that stays Crunchy in Milk
  • "This is important for us because it means that we can use a small device called a "Zapper" (like an electronic dog whistle) that produces ultrasound to get locusts to steer."

    Why couldn't large emiters be placed around crop fields, steering locusts away from produce?
  • It sure would be a bizzare expierence to have your legs ripped off, electrodes stuck in, and finding yourself attached to a giant car, 10 times your height, which you could then drive by thinking about walking...
    Oh sweet mother of fuck, YES. This _is_ in fact exactly what I want. Okay, if you could do it without ripping off my legs, that'd be cool, but even if you've got to take that sort of Extreme Measure, I WANT MY GIANT ROBOT

    It's the YEAR 2000. It's practically the FUTURE. But I've got no rocket car, no vampiric machine-based immortality, no SHINY SILVER JUMPSUIT with GOLDFISH BOWL HELMET, no NANOTECH ASSEMBLERS, no giant robots, no NOTHING.

    Remember folks, there's NO PROBLEM that can't be solved by robots of the appropriate size.


    --
    "HORSE."

  • and they probably drive better too. And they're not whining about telephone poles either. Although that's just the dutch taxi-drivers...
  • and their probably right...

    //rdj thinks it's time for a shag (dutch). That's fag, for you brits out there. and (self-rolled) cigarette for the americans.

  • ...that this "discussion" is degenerating into a telling of sexist and racist jokes, and that it gets modded up in /.

    The Asian locust couldn't drive in any direction...Male or female, it really didn't seem to make a difference, and no matter how much they waved or yelled at it, it just kept going on its merry way.

    'Ha ha, yeah, that's brilliant! I think I'll give that a +1: Funny, and how about a +1: Informative, too! Gather 'round the fire, boys, and let's share some more good ones about Nigger and Spic locusts while we're at it!!!'

    I hope the poster, and the moderator at least have the good sense to be ashamed. Too bad the poster didn't use his account so I could tell him personally what I think.
  • I don't really understand what the big deal is about this piece of expiriment/research. We all know that locusts don't fly into anything except lights and windows. They just tapped the signal the insect uses to steer... They could have used any other insect/animal that has some intelligence about direction and tapped it's muscles. The tapping of muscles is not new.

    I think a useful option might be using ants because ants have a tendency to follow a sort of 'invisible path' left by the ant(s) before him -the ants leave some sort of chemical-. This could be used to steer vehicles along a certain path and that could be quite useful for unmanned vehicles in factories etc. . Although I'm not sure how an ant would respond to travelling at 30 km/h instead of 1 km/h ?


    ok, let's see YOU plug an electrode into an ants ass.... Go ahead, try it!
    The reason the used Locusts was clearly explained on the site if you had bothered to read it. Their nervous system is accesible (and the electrodes aren't bigger than the target organism).

    Kintanon
  • that's not the point, the only reason that they used electrodes is to measure muscle activity, they could have used an optical device to measure the wing activity with the same effect. For the ant just use a suitable device that will measure the relevant directional parameters...


    I don't think you were paying attention to the endeavour here. They are translating the muscle movement of the locust into steering for the vehicle. If they changed their method of input then it would be an entirely different experiment now wouldn't it!?
    Now, as an excersise for you, go build an optical device that will measure the wing activity of an ANT well enough to tell which direction the thing wants to turn in, then harness an ant up to a little car without killing it in such a way that its wing motion is still discernable.

    Sometimes I get the feeling people aren't thinking before they post.

    Kintanon
  • I don't see why you have to say stuff like Sometimes I get the feeling people aren't thinking before they post all the time, who do you think you are anyway ? obviously you didn't even think about an ant not having wings before you posted either, so that feeling might originate from your own expirience. or was it a *flying* ant you were thinking of ? - that's probably what you're gonna say....


    Ants do have wings. In fact, every true male ant has wings, as well as the queen. This occurs when the ant colony has grown large enough to migrate. So it's easy to find winged ants. Once again, you didn't bother to do any research before you posted. Stop doing that, it makes you look uninformed.

    Kintanon
  • . you contradict yourself by saying that every ant has wings and then later on you say it 'only occurs when...'


    Woahwoahwoah!! Slow down boyo, I never said every ant has wings. I said there are winged ants. There's a difference. It's quite obvious that not all ants have wings. I grew up in the south eastern US. My main ant issues were with fire ants and army ants (Our army ants are WAY smaller than those big red fsckers y'all have in africa) and these was larvae called Cow Killers that are big ants. Now, fire ants almost always have a bunch of winged drones if you dig down a ways. I've seen some winged army ants too. So there are winged ants. However NO WHERE in ANY of my posts did I even IMPLY that all ants have wings.

    Kintanon
  • In fact, every true male ant has wings, as well as the queen

    See the part after EVERY, where it says TRUE MALE? That's defining a subset of ant. And what I said is correct. Every TRUE MALE ant has wings.

    Kintanon
  • Thanks for the informative site link. Interesting. I was almost certain that true male aunts (ie, capable of reproduction) were only produced a couple of times in the life of a colony and were winged....Thanks for the info.
    I may have been a little unclear in a couple of places, sorry about that.
    Yes, this is so obscenely offtopic it's great that I'm immune to moderation... I haven't been moderated up or down in months...

    Kintanon
  • [ot]
    They should compress those AVI-s to MPEG1 at least, don't you think ?
    Not everybody has wideband conection tought :(
    [/ot]

  • Maybe he can race the cyborg eel! (Score:3)

    by gad_zuki! ( 70830 ) on Sunday October 08, 2000 @09:22PM (#721665)
    This isn't half as freaky as this cyborg eel. [newscientist.com] It may only have a few neurons, but its still a real cyborg. No pictures but this is the robot model they used, [diwww.epfl.ch] scroll down its the one in the middle. This is a picture [cornell.edu] of the lamprey eel.

    I can also see the preview for 'cyborg wars' on Comedy Central.
  • Bah, completely missed the point. If they all they wanted to do was to restrict the locust's movement to two dimensions they could have done it much quicker and more economically by ripping its wings off.
    Which actually makes the time spent that much ironic, no?

    Anyway, don't worry, I get the point. It's an engineering marvel (or, at the very least, a curiosity), but I was looking at it from a different view point.

  • I can't help but see the irony. (Score:5)

    by Kupek ( 75469 ) on Sunday October 08, 2000 @07:59PM (#721667)
    It takes humans intensive effort to produce a vehicle that restricts the movement of a creature to two dimensions when it can normaly travel in three dimensions.
  • I wonder if ants can accomplish better than locusts? j/k!

    Anyone know of strange experiements with ants like thos project?

  • In the AVI video clips, does that look like a chain of keys to attract the locust? :)

  • I hardly think PETA would be interested in topics like "Are viruses alive?", or "Are animal or plant like?"

    I'd love to see the uproar should we discover that the human body produces viruses to do some of its work.

    PETA and other such groups fail to back up most of their claims with research.

    How in hell you make a religion out of a simple concept demonstrated by bursting a baloon is beyond me.
  • The whole reason recycling is a good idea is that there is a limited supply of material, of disposal space, and thresholds where contamination becomes poisonous. Exceed those bounds and you've got trouble.

    Unfortunately some think this calls for worship to Gaia and certain social attitudes rather than rational thought and action.
  • Yes, but only if you were capable of thinking about it. (An unpopular argument, but...)

    ------

  • Mirrors (Score:3)

    by CosmicEntity ( 100265 ) on Sunday October 08, 2000 @08:45PM (#721673) Homepage
    The Everest Story got 2.1 Million hits in 12 hours. Just in case this one ever gets truly slashdotted (it's slow at 2:45am EST) here are copies of the files on a nice, quick connection.

    Build1a.avi [umich.edu]
    Build5a.avi [umich.edu]
    Car7a.avi [umich.edu] ;
    Car9a.avi [umich.edu] ;
    Car8a.avi [umich.edu] ;

  • I was just discussing with my wife the other day how most of the successful robot forms I've seen and tinkered with happened to be based on insect forms. It really sort of gives me the heebie-jeebies, to think that the first cyborg creations are going to be based on spindly, creepy-crawlies... must be getting closer to Halloween.
  • If I see one more goddamn locust driving while talking on the cell phone, I'm going to go ballistic. I don't have a problem with insects driving in general, but when you try to get one to drive properly while talking on the phone, all bets are off. They switch lanes unpredictably, can't maintain a constant speed, drive in the fast lane while going way too slow, and have no awareness of the world around them. Hell, you could have a south west brown bat driving a motorcycle right next to one of these cell-phone-talking-locusts and the bug wouldn't have any idea. Can't we pass a law or something?


  • Until we have rednecks exploiting locusts as the new entertainment sport? Living in Mississippi (not that anything's wrong with that), I can assure you that if one locust can drive a car, then someone somewhere will find a way to have a locust destruction derby. And they'll sell beer while many men (intriguingly all named Bubba) watch and hoot and holler. And they'll have air horns as well.
    My god, what have I done.

  • Imagine if it was you... (Score:5)

    by intmainvoid ( 109559 ) on Sunday October 08, 2000 @07:40PM (#721677)
    It sure would be a bizzare expierence to have your legs ripped off, electrodes stuck in, and finding yourself attached to a giant car, 10 times your height, which you could then drive by thinking about walking...
  • Last time I implanted the front grille of my car into a locust's left and right forewing first basalar flight muscles as I was cruising down the interstate, he didn't help my steering at ALL.

    In fact, I only remember being annoyed when I had to remove the implants..

    But really.. I do have a question. With this sort of thing possible, what kind of *practical* solutions could it be expanded to? I mean, while we might be able to steer a car with a locust, how are we going to teach it to use a GPS and maps.yahoo.com?

    Is this sort of thing being done just for the sheer geekery of it? The bragging rights one gets by being able to say "I built a robot car steered by a locust"?

    Unless of course, they could expand this by attaching paralyzed people to their wheelchairs, enabling them to motor around with simply activating a few certain neurons in their brain.
  • Toyota are using the word "bugger" in a TV ad? I take it they are counting on most of the American population not knowing that it means male-male anal sex.

    What next? "Bollocks"?

    Rich

  • Hah, if I could. I'd mod this up.

    Rich

  • Tomatoes are the fruit of the tomato plant which is a vegetable.

    It's all the result of some weird reasoning that we decide to categorise the various parts of plants into being fruit or vegetable. It's the same thing as when I see signs in supermarkets which point me to "beers and lagers". Lagers are beers dammit. It's the same kind of thing where you get goods labelled "Organic". Well, of course it's organic. It has carbon in it doesn't it? All part of the dumbing down of society I'm afraid.

    Oh, by the way, mushrooms aren't vegetables. In the three kingdoms, animal, vegetable, mineral, fungi dont fit into any of them (I'm sure someone can explain it better)

    Rich

  • I don't think the bug gives a rats ass whether or not you think it's justified to rip it apart. If ripping your legs off could be to the benefit of 'legitimate life-saving medical research', would you let them?

    Well, unless there's some more weirdy experiments in wiring insects up to web browsers, I don't think the poster was a bug so your question is absurd.

    Rich

  • Sorry, my writing was ambiguous. What I was trying to say was that fungi (of which mushrooms are a member)do not fit into the kingdoms of animals, vegetables or minerals.

    Honest :)

    Rich

  • Except I wouldn't call "Not in my species" arbitrary.

    Rich

  • In Australia, the word doesn't mean what it does to you Yanks

    Er, me English. You son of dingo ;)

    Rich

  • Nah, I just keep an eye on your progress to becoming a republic. I'm hoping we can beat you to it and offload the Queen on to you.

    Rich

  • Women Drivers, Drivers who wear gloves Drivers who wear hats Drivers who wear hats and gloves Women Drivers who wear hats and gloves and now LOCUST DRIVERS ! Can it get any worse ? yes - Women Locust drivers wearing hats and gloves !
  • Had a buddy at that East Coast NerveNet where they presented, he was really impressed with their work.

    Frankly I was too considering my friend just doped up crayfish with seratonin (5-HT) and studied their relative agressiveness.

    Tonight on Comedy Central Locust Wars

  • I was all - what the F%$# when I saw it was just a remote. I mean, hell, anything can control a remote - but to drive a real car... hmmm, judging from the taxi drivers here in Boston I'm pretty sure the locust would do just fine with a regular car too.
    -------------------------------------------- ------

  • first thing i thought (Score:5)

    by small_dick ( 127697 ) on Sunday October 08, 2000 @10:00PM (#721690)
    ...swarms of locusts driving those huge harvesting machines across the midwestern US...
  • Now lets use the same technology to make laptop batteries last longer. I know there has been research done into this, now lets implement it.I figure that whether fragging or typing I could put a little more time to the battery life.
  • Actually, biologists recognise seven kingdoms of life now... Animals, plants, two for bacteria, protista, eumycota (what you usually think of as fungi), and chromista (kelp is an example).
  • I'm in Jeff Dawson's department here at Queen's University. It's nice to see his side-project has got some publicity. I ran into him testing the thing in the hallway one night and it kind of freaked me out, whirring across the floor like some kind of wheeled bug-Borg...

    The "Myo-Electric Locust" (MEL) is presumably named after his academic supervisor, Dr. Mel Robertson. Their lab [queensu.ca] studies the neural control of insect flight using locusts as a model. IANAE(xpert) but it seems like this sort of thing would be of interest to the automation and robotics community.

  • they had a campaign a while ago to outlaw sea monkeys because they decided it was cruel to keep brine shrimp as pets.

    ________

  • > ...they are such excellent fliers and have an accessible nervous system

    Note to self- Make sure nervous system is NOT easily accessible by using the BrainAlarm. "Please step away from the neurons! Please step away from the neurons!"

  • Just think about it, this may seem really silly now, but the technology that is being developed here could be really useful. Someday, we will no longer have to worry about the idiots who talk on the phone while driving, because in the future we will steer our cars by clenching our butt cheeks left and right.
  • I was wondering who was flying my United 767 flight...
  • Are you trying to defend racist jokes?
  • Please enlighten me as to the meaning of the following statement
    "How in hell you make a religion out of a simple concept demonstrated by bursting a baloon is beyond me."
  • You have prove positve that 1) the locust does not think and 2) that you do

    You would have to prove both statements true

    You would be be the base line once we can prove what thought is in you, we can set out to prove that the locust is in some way different.

    of course I strongly suspect that the Locust is aware that its legs were ripped off.
  • great. thanks so much. now when the biblical swarm of locust comes forth, they'll be cruising along on harleys.

    tangently, i think i heard about this being done on roaches but this was by some university task-force group, not this grass-roots-ghetto-style thing

    /me goes off thinking about Baron Harkonnen like locust crusing around on floating disks...

  • I was quivering in my shoes the second I saw this. And the story's title seemed so positive as well :/

    -------------
    Andrew Francis locust@iinet.net.au [mailto]

  • It's a locust steering a car towards one of those blue zapper things.

    cue A Bug's Life... "it's so pretty, i can't help it..."

  • goatse.cx has been taken down... wow!

    MOD THIS UP!
  • Are you trying to defend racist jokes?
    ummm I will.

    Lighten up. Dont take yourself so damn seriously. If you dont find it funny say so, but dont try and shut someone down simply because you dont agree... ever heard the concept of free speech ? That includes speech you dont find 'comfortable'.
    Remember - I may find YOUR opinions offensive - thus I must ask you to stop saying things like "Are you trying to defend racist jokes? because I find that idea very uncomfortable. I find it discriminatory. I dont believe you should be allowed to express that opinion.

    see how it works.. how many times must this be explained... some sheeple will never learn...Wake the fuck up buddy; Friday Night Sitcoms are NOT REALITY.

  • It's the same kind of thing where you get goods labeled "Organic". Well, of course it's organic. It has carbon in it doesn't it? All part of the dumbing down of society I'm afraid

    Im sure you are joking - but in case you aren't.. when you see "Organic" at the grocer it means that the product was grown/raised without the chemical soup that is unnecessarily dumped on EVERYTHING other than the items labeled as "organic" at your grocer.
    This is a Good Thing(TM)

    Please see this link [usda.gov] for some information regarding Organic Food Products. And try and support responsible food products - buy Organic!


  • Baron Harkonnen like locust crusing around on floating disks...

    Disks? What disks? Not in the movie OR the book (and the movie got it wrong anyway).


  • You want to use Yahoo's maps to get around?!? Good luck. Hope you don't mind being late.

  • This has to be the quote of the week:

    Steve Grand, a expert in artificial life with Cyberlife Research in Somerset, describes the work as "laudably perverse"

    The article talks a little bit about transhumanist stuff like mapping a whole human brain to a robot body, but cautions:

    More realistic... is connecting electronic devices such as mobile phones directly into our brains.

    While I have long suspected that some of my colleagues have mobile phones connected directly to their brains, this does not strike me as an appealing idea.

    "I have this horrible ringing in my ears."

    "Of course you do. I've been trying to call you all day!"

    -

  • i dont think locusts count as a Tasty Animal :)
  • I just thought of a new betting sport. . .

    -Fantastic Lad

  • I found this story to be a little disappointing. . .

    I thought the bug was going to be piloting a real car.

    That would have been way cooler.

    -Fantastic Lad

  • Re:when locusts attack (Score:3)

    by Daemosthenes ( 199490 ) on Sunday October 08, 2000 @08:03PM (#721713)
    Screw NATO, my man; go straight to the UN security council. I have a resolution drafted up, right here, yes....

    The United Nations security council,

    Recognizing that locust's contolling hude tanks and taking over the world constitutes a grave threat to humanity,

    Noting that a locus is hugely different from a locust,

    Taking into account the need for a UN police action to battle the evil locusts,

    Proposes the creation of a subcommittee UNIDEVDL (United Nations Initiative for the Destruction of Evil Vehicle Driving Locusts) to combat this danger;

    Commissions the "superpowers" mentioned below to muster all military strength (including but not limited to ground forces, aeronautical strike teams, thermonclear weaponry and bug spray) to form a UN "policing action" against these evil bugs:
    1.United States,
    2.China,
    3.Russia (well, they're not really too powerful anymore, but hell, why not?);

    Requires all members of this "policing action" to watch "Starship Troopers", translated into the vernacular of said members;

    Prays for Humanity against this terrible crisis.

    HA! I knew all that time in Model UN would pay off some day! Now I'm off to save the world!
    - - - - - - - - -

  • Now we just need to figure out how to get locusts to do more productive stuff...like powering a laptop's battery or something. :)


    __
  • Thanks for letting know about what is the BEST Animal Rights Satire site around. A great "time waster" :-)!!!!
  • "Experiments at Armstrong Laboratory's alternative control technology laboratory have unleashed the energy of brain waves, patterns of cerebral electricity, to command a flight simulator to roll left or right."

    I love the part where one of the simulator pilots says "'After doing this for a while, pushing a button seems so laborious,' said Calhoun. 'It's very addictive--you get lazy and comfortable.'"

    Check it out: http://www.af.mil/news/airman/0296/look.htm [af.mil]

  • You forgot to make an ethnic or religious insult.

    Oh, and cellphones. Don't forget cellphones.

    (I mean what the fuck is with all these "jokes". I take these as Karma Whoring if the attempts weren't so half-assed. Oh no wait. I get it now. A ha ha. Ha. Ho. Haa.)

  • Daniel son. Here, here and here.
  • Well posts like that usually get me marked a troll or offtopic (honestly, no respect). So as to my intentions I wouldn't say that I was in any way whoring votes out of moderators. As opposed to the post you've linked to in which I get miffed over 80s-sub-Steve-Martin-esque humour and the shoving jokes down a drowning man's throat.

    I couldn't give two hoots what any of my posts get.

  • I stand corrected.

    Something about "how long do you think it'll take them to port freebsd to this baybee" wouldn't have gone a miss. Or something.

  • They tried a female locust first. (Score:5)

    by CukO ( 215293 ) on Sunday October 08, 2000 @07:43PM (#721726)
    The researcher first tried using a female locust to drive the platform, but even after hours of trying they could not get her to reverse park properly.

    The male locust is a far more accomplished parker and driver but unfortunately he and the platform have been lost as he was to stubborn to ask for directions back to the lab.
  • What's with you guys? All night and not one Toonces joke? Anyhow, somebody has got to nominate this for the next Ignoble awards.

    He, M.E.L., you can drive pretty good. Hey, watch out for that sharp curve! Oh no!!!!

    #@%)(*&#$!@!!!!!! [CRASH]

  • Locusts are most often noted for the damage they cause to crops when they aggregate into large swarms.

    Sounds like lobbyists to me. Could they be brought under control by hooking them up to little carts, with special code to prevent them from going into the offices of politicians?

  • "And... if you're wondering why... M.E.L. was built for the fun of it." I'm sorry, but who told this guy that "implanting EMG electrodes" into bugs was fun? And here i've been spending my time on crazy "un-fun" stuff that didn't involve locusts in ANY way...
  • ...People for the Ethical Treatment of Insects...

    And that would be "PETI?" I just checked, and - unfortunately - peti.org is already taken.

    Darn. I was all set to put up a website called "People Eating Tasty Insects" just to bug them...
  • Maybe on a hamster wheel? That'll be Transmeta's new low-power laptop solution.

    "Yes, folks, this laptop - not only does it have a Crusoe chip, but it is actually powered by a locust running inside a small wheel!"

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