From The This-Is-Way-Too-Weird-To-Be-A-Joke Department

by tristero

Looks like DARPA has a monopoly on all the good dope. And they've been having a high old time. They're seeking proposals for work on creating cyborg cockroaches, beetles, and moths:
DARPA seeks innovative proposals to develop technology to create insect-cyborgs, possibly enabled by intimately integrating microsystems within insects, during their early stages of metamorphoses. The healing processes from one metamorphic stage to the next stage are expected to yield more reliable bio-electromechanical interface to insects, as compared to adhesively bonded systems to adult insects. Once these platforms are integrated, various microsystem payloads can be mounted on the platforms with the goal of controlling insect locomotion, sense local environment, and scavenge power. Multidisciplinary teams of engineers, physicists, and biologists are expected to work together to develop new technologies utilizing insect biology, while developing foundations for the new field
of insect cyborg engineering.
via PZ Meyers, who explains in some detail why this is, shall we say, a bit unlikely to work. PZ writes, "This is like sending some guy who knows next to nothing about avionics into a 747 with a pickaxe, a voltmeter, and a 9V battery, and telling him to hack into the wiring and take control of the plane. It may not be impossible, but it is the next best thing."

Or like putting some guy who knows next to nothing about anything in charge of the world's most powerful country and giving him the opportunity to send troops to invade the Middle East without provocation. And expecting good to come out of it.

[UPDATE: Via comments comes this link to the world's smallest flying robot. Be sure to check out the groovy video of the gadget hovering and maneuvering with eerie precision in the air.]