Wednesday, July 6, 2011

Cogware

What is it about brain prostheses and rats? Theodore Berger of USC has spent a decade working on a brain implant for rats that will replace the synaptic connection between sections CA1 and CA3 of the hippocampus, which will be very useful indeed for restoring long-term memory to rats who have suffered selective injuries to the temporal lobe. He now has software that may not be implantable but works as long as the brain-damaged rat remains within a cable-length of the mainframe.

Berger's system also holds out the prospect of improved quality-of-life for laminated slices of mouse brain. This is only fair given the use of robotic rats as prosthetic right hemispheres, as documented in Rudy Rucker's memoirs:
Nevertheless, here at Riddled Research Laboratories we are not convinced that electronics are the way to go. For my own prosthetic temporal lobes -- who could possibly have predicted that the GABA-receptor pathways in the fusiform gyrus would prove to be so vulnerable to datura liqueur in large amounts! -- I intend to stick to a mature technology platform. Like clockwork.


Admittedly there were some teething problems in the early experiments with clockwork temporal lobes, as shown here where the test subjects are not displaying what is known in the business as "appropriate affect". It may be that the weights for the escapement mechanism need to be heavier. For feck's sake, it's a funeral; if they can muster no expression other than a vacant simper then the rehabilitation program is not looking good and there is little prospect of careers and independent lives unless they marry Republican politicians.

Also what is Subject 3 planning to do with those tongs?

15 comments:

mikey said...

Ok, thank goodness I was there to clear this up. The babe with the book ("subject 3", as you so cybernetically choose to call her) is clearly a dentist. And everybody else is going "HEY STUPID! We pretty clearly don't need a freakin' dentist here, you roger?" Now the babe next to the dentist on her right, with the smirk, well, that can be explained by the fact that she's sewn a quick-access rig into her kit to hold a forty of bud. She's buzzed to beat the band, man. There's no THERE there.

There's a couple more appalling concerns here. The nuns, creeping up to get their hands on the nails and thorns - eBay, baby. I mean, that's just blatant corruption. And the little kids playing in the puddles of blood under the table - those stains are wicked hard to get out, mom.

But the guy that concerns ME the most is the big fella on the left. He seems to have some kind of emotional connection to a 4x4 piece of cypress. What's going on with that? Is the splinter this year's hair shirt? Did his mom used to hurt him "down there"? We have to acknowledge the possibility that he has a ruck fulla extended mags and he's gonna snap.

Smut Clyde said...

And yet tigris has accused me of treating all of life like a projective test.

Substance McGravitas said...

Admittedly there were some teething problems

Oh Smut, I do not recommend, in an ambulatory gentleman, the use of a pundulum.

Dr.KennethNoisewater said...

I am also saying something witty.

mikey said...

And yet tigris has accused me of treating all of life like a projective test.

Wait. What?

You mean it's not?

That's crazy talk. You gotta say what it IS then...

M. Bouffant said...

Pls. remember to differentiate between L.A.'s own University of Spoiled Children & the other side of the country's University of South Carolina.

Us: Trojans. Them: Gamecocks. Clear now?

Big Bad Bald Bastard said...

What is it about brain prostheses and rats?

Get a brain, Morat!

zombie rotten mcdonald said...

All Clockwork And No Bodily Fluids Makes Hal A Dull Metal Humbert.

mikey said...

I'm pretty sure you'd have to be at LEAST in your third year at that other USC (you know, the one with bad teeth and John Deere caps) before every single mention of 'gamecocks' didn't make you and your friends giggle...

zombie rotten mcdonald said...

how does mikey know that 4x4 is cypress? cypress is a rare wood these days, due to the over-harvesting of the swamp wood. Also, mikey has never really come across as an expert in identification of lumber.

Questions remain, is what I am saying.

Meanwhile, Dropkick Murphys are warming up....

exfddd legs said...

A fucking ladder up to the cross? SOFT!

Substance McGravitas said...

cypress is a rare wood these days

Richie Rich elitists like to rub their oh-so-fancy time machine in the faces of the not-quite-morlocks at every opportunity.

ifthethunderdontgetya™³²®© said...

Us: Trojans. Them: Gamecocks. Clear now?
July 7, 2011 8:35 PM


When the log rolls over we will all be dead.
~

fish said...

You antipodes are so behind the times. I have ha a steampunk hippocampus for ages.

fish said...

I am not saying who it belongs to.