UH-OH

We have a very bad feeling about this.

(Thanks to Claire Martin)

Comments

[Tamara Rhymes With Camera]

*buys stock in Raid®*

[The Sardonicynic]

"What adult insects want to do is basically reproduce and lay eggs."

Sounds like The Sarcasticynic.

[CoastRaven]

That story just bugs me.

[nannie]

It's awe-inspiring to think what those Florida rat-sized cockroaches could accomplish. I'm scared.

[Cindy]

Manipulating Wasps sounds like a good name for a rock band.

[ASK]

A former director said in 1975: "When we fail, we fail big."

That's a great motto for any government agency.

[Johnny Urinalcakes]

with 240 people working there with $2B budget, you'd think they could buy a couple walkie talkies and have someone just walk the 100 meters and tell them if there's a bomb sitting there.

and i, too, can reposition internal organs around foreign objects. currently doing just that with a can of hormel beef chili.

JU

[Dylan]

Kinda weird and how the microchip will interface with the insect's biological flight controls is a bit difficult to envision, but the DARPA website is definitely cool. Does anyone know if they have a mail-order department?

[MOTW]

Doesn't CSI currently employ something along these lines in the form of redshirted walk-ons?

[judi]

hmmm... i thought i blogged that before but if no one remembers it, i must have just intended to. so: my apologies to whoever it was that sent it in.

[Bumble]

Don't worry judi. Odds are it was Claire Martin. :-)

[CoastRaven]

judi - I think you DID blog this before, but those evil Pentagon types didnt want this to be public information at that time, so they planted a pupa in your ear (and in everyones ear who might have read the blog that day) that ate the portion of your brain that held the memory of this insideous plan. If a CAT scan is done on all the bloggers who read that days posts, there will be a similar hole in each one of them! I saw this in an email not too long ago, so I KNOW it happens!!

[Wurm42]

Wow, this sounds even sillier than the World War II Bat bomb plot.

[Meanie the Blue]

DARPA Earwigs??!!
*Claws at brain*
*Relaxes when Under Construction sign is found*

[Lairbo]

Their next project is to genetically engineer a butterfly that really can cause a tornado in Texas just by flapping its wings in Brazil. Not that it's like Texas needs any help generating tornados.

[Christobol]

That may not work, but they have successfully trained wasps to sniff drugs. Apparently they can be trained very quickly (like in a day), which is good, since their life expectancy is so short.

[S_P_J_G.™]

What about the guy training Pelicans to carry bombs to Cuba and bomb Castro. It sounds like a government plot too.

[artist formerly known as "tsktsk"]

"Darpa's previous experiments to get bees and wasps to detect the smell of explosives foundered when their "instinctive behaviours for feeding and mating... prevented them from performing reliably", it said."

So...it's a, errr. performance issue?? Are they referring to performance in the "mating" sense?

What's next..viagra for bees & wasps?

[ASK]

Same reasons I lost my last job.

[Bill]

A similar scheme aimed at manipulating wasps failed when they flew off to feed and mate.

And who can blame them?

[«LabSpecimen»]

WWII: Attach a bomb to a cat and drop it from a dive-bomber on to Nazi ships. The cat, hating water, will "wrangle" itself on to enemy ship's deck. In tests cats became unconscious in mid-air
WWII: Attach incendiaries to bats. Induce hibernation and drop them from planes. They wake up, fly into factories etc and blow up. Failed to wake from hibernation and fell to death

That means there was some guy who got a report delivered to his desk, read about these plans, and said, "Brilliant!"

[Dr Acula]

Actually, the bat bomb was not such a bad idea. In a test, the bats were successfully dropped onto an air base in California. Unfortunately, some idiot had strapped on live incendiary devices. The bats flew into the base buildings to roost, and burned the entire place to the ground.

[queensbee]

arent these the same morons who wanted to set fire to castro's beard in the 60s??? not the hippies -- the cia! really.

[D. Esker]

I think its fair to say that EVERYONE wanted to set fire to Castro's beard in the 60's. I know I still do. I also want to set fire to C. Everet Coop's beard, although this would be difficult, insofar as it would mean exhuming him first.

[slyeyes]

Why do I get the feeling this story is 3 days early?

[sparrow]

your tax dollars at work...