Slashdot Mirror
When Locusts Attack
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.
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.
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Proud member of the Weirdo-American community.
From this recent kuro5hin discussion, PETA themselves would get upset about this.
Err, I guess the PETA we're talking about is here.
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This isn't half as freaky as this cyborg eel. It may only have a few neurons, but its still a real cyborg. No pictures but this is the robot model they used, scroll down its the one in the middle. This is a picture of the lamprey eel.
I can also see the preview for 'cyborg wars' on Comedy Central.
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.
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
Build5a.avi
Car7a.avi
Car9a.avi
Car8a.avi
Error loading humorous sig.
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...
Drag n' Drop DVD Recommendations
...swarms of locusts driving those huge harvesting machines across the midwestern US...
Treatment, not tyranny. End the drug war and free our American POWs.
See my user info for links.
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!
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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.