I, Cockroach
Have you heard about the lastest brainstorm from the "neuroscience for everyone" company, Backyard Brains? It's a cyborg cockroach for the mass market. Because everyone wants to own a RoboRoach, right? Or maybe that's just me.
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"This product is not a toy, but a tool to learn about how our brains work," says Backyard Brains. The goal is to teach us non-neuroscientists about how our brains respond -- or don't -- to various types of stimuli. The developers chose the cockroach because, as I just learned from one of the company's TED Talks, the roach brain is very similar to the human brain.
You'll be able to control your pet science project with -- you guessed it -- your smartphone. Impulses sent from the app to the roach's antenna cause neurons to fire in its brain, allowing you to direct RoboRoach to do all sorts of Things.
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I can't wait to see if the company can raise the funds to mass produce the Thing. If they do, it will be the first commerically available cyborg in the world. And that's really someThing.
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Meantime, I have a few high tech roaches of my own to teach and entertain me. See you next week,
Bobby
























A good puzzle







