Shit man, I don’t even know where to begin on this one. Except this: FUCKING RAT-BRAIN CONTROLLED ROBOT. The connotations are seemingly so benign, but the future of rat-brain robotics strikes me as no less than totally menacing. I imagine herds of roborats deestroying New York…someone please write that script for me?

So they take a fetus rat brain, break it down to its individual neurons, plop it on a dish inside a robot and BOOM! Rat-brained Robot. And then the learning begins…Fuck yeah!

From BBC:

The blob of nerves forming the brain of the robot was taken from the neural cortex in a rat foetus and then treated to dissolve the connections between individual neurons.

Sensory input from the sonar on the robot is piped to the blob of cells to help them form new connections that will aid the machine as it navigates around its pen.

As the cells are living tissue, they are kept separate from the robot in a temperature-controlled cabinet in a container pitted with electrodes. Signals are passed to and from the robot via Bluetooth short-range radio.

The brain cells have been taught how to control the robot’s movements so it can steer round obstacles and the next step, say its creators, is to get it to recognise its surroundings.

Once the robot can do this the researchers plan to disrupt the memories in a bid to recreate the gradual loss of mental faculties seen in diseases such as Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s.

I heard something about a rare black watermelon being sold in Tokyo for about $6,000, so I had to do a bit of research, right?

From CNN:

TOKYO, Japan (CNN) — There’s nothing better than a sweet, juicy watermelon on a hot summer’s day, right?
But what if you had to pay six grand for it?
A marine products dealer in Japan plunked down a record $6,125 (650,000 yen) Friday for a black Densuke watermelon — grown only on the northern Japanese island of Hokkaido.
Premium melons regularly go for eye-popping amounts there. Only three years ago, someone shelled out about $3,000 for one.

But man, doing a google image search for “black watermelon” turned up some embarrassing results. I never quite got the racist connotations of black Americans and watermelon. I mean, I just don’t get it. I am a Jew, and I love the hell out of watermelon. Can someone explain that one to me?

(side note: It also turns out, that I am now allowed to eat giraffes, as they are considered kosher. I will probably eat 1,000 black watermelons before I ever eat giraffe.)

The race relations connotations in this post might seem staggering - i.e. Jews, blacks, watermelons, giraffes - but it all comes together when you consider the Lemba. Think about it.