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Backyard Brains Shows You How to Remote Control a Cockroach (Video)

This is our second video starring Backyard Brains (Motto: "Neuroscience for Everyone!"). The first one was pretty lab-oriented, with a twitching roach leg here and there. This one has more roaches, with most of them crawling on command. Will the DoD see this and decide to make cockroach soldiers? Or roboroach bomb detectors and defusers? Or cockroach drone pilots? Anything's possible these days. But meanwhile, relax and enjoy learning about roboroaches and watching how, with little circuit boards on their little backs, they scurry hither and yon under control of their human masters. WARNING: Excessively squeamish people should not watch this video, but should stick to the transcript.

8 of 62 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Cruelty to animals plain and simple by fuzzyfuzzyfungus · · Score: 4, Funny

    Hmm, I must have been absent the day our history class learned about Nazi experiments in implanting electrodes in the antennae of Jews so as to control them with cute little RF backpacks...

    Also, Genesis 1:26.

    "And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth."

    RF cockroach backpacks are just an advanced technique for exercising dominion over a creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth. 100% authorized by the relevant deity.

  2. Re:Cruelty to animals plain and simple by sl4shd0rk · · Score: 2

    Also, Genesis 1:26.

    Don't forget Democracy 2:42
    "And heretofore the Pentagon sayeth, 'Thy Dammit! Awesomeness this would be to have on thy field of battle.'"

    You can also bet the Book of DHS will have something to say about how these devices could be used to combat Terrorism and make air travel safer.

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  3. Re:Cruelty to animals plain and simple by fuzzyfuzzyfungus · · Score: 3, Insightful

    I'm going to have to add more obviousness to my sarcastic posts, I take it?

  4. Re:Cruelty to animals plain and simple by Runaway1956 · · Score: 3, Insightful

    "Germans are monsters that enjoy doing horrible things to humans"

    How about this one? Nazis were people, like people anywhere, who with proper indoctrination, can be conditioned to do almost anything. And, what about the Jews? An entire people basically submitted. How do you explain that? More conditioning, albeit from a different source.

    I think it is safer to say that we still don't understand the human psyche, and that there are still a lot of surprises in store. Nazis were just as human as any of us, if less humane.

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  5. Re:Cruelty to animals plain and simple by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Funny

    What's a "God"?

    Think of it as an abusive father figure with undefined geometry.

  6. Re:Cruelty to animals plain and simple by Antipater · · Score: 4, Informative

    Actually, the translation of that particular passage is a rather interesting affair. The Hebrew word in question, the one that the King James Version translates as "have dominion", is "radah". Radah can mean "to rule", but it's really the verb form of "the point where the roots meet the stem", or in other words, "(to be) the center of strength". It's where we get the English words "radicle", the first root of a plant, as well as "radius", "radiate", and "radical", which all have definitions that relate to a defined center point. Genesis 1:26 says that man is the center of strength of the world. If you want to interpret that as "rule", that works, but it's a focus much more on the responsibility side of ruling, rather than the power side. As a counterpoint, take a look a few verses earlier at Gen. 1:16, where he sets the sun and moon to rule the sky: "God made the two great lights, he made the greater light to govern the day, and the lesser light to govern the night; he made the stars also." The word here translated as "to govern", "lememselet", is a much stronger declaration of rulership than "radah". Man doesn't get to lememselet the world, he gets to radah the world.

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  7. Re:Cruelty to animals plain and simple by ciaran.mchale · · Score: 2

    I mean, the only rational explanation is that the Nazis were using mind control devices on their own people to force them to be inhuman monsters. There was probably some resistance among the ranks, but that was quickly countered with the electrodes and Jewish antennae. As an American, I find it impossible to believe that an entire nation could voluntarily have chosen to have done the things that Nazi Germany did.

    On the other hand, if they weren't controlled by mind control, then the only logical explanation is that Germans are monsters that enjoy doing horrible things to humans.

    You might want to read the excellent book "Obedience to Authority" by Stanley Milgram, or at least the Wikipedia article that summarises it.

    Also, it is worth noting that Hitler did not suddenly start the Holocaust. Rather, when he came to power in 1933, he put in several years of preparation to demonise Jews. He did this by a combination of techniques, including: introducing increasingly more severe anti-Jewish laws; changing the school curriculum to teach his theory about racial hierarchies; taking control of the German newspapers and radio stations so he could disseminate propaganda to the German population; censoring any woks of art, literature, music and science that had been created by Jewish people; and requiring all children to join Hitler Youth.

  8. Re:Cruelty to animals plain and simple by Synerg1y · · Score: 2

    I think it is safer to say that we still don't understand the human psyche

    Educate yourself: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milgram_experiment

    They did a very famous experiment around this confirming what you're hinting at w far more credibility and control.