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Artist Garnet Hertz has equipped his cockroatches with robotic vehicles. The roach uses a ping-pong ball as a mouse wheel for steering. They seem to navigate around obstacles just fine most of the time, but "roaches aren’t the most predictable bugs".

As with technology so often, this experiment has philosophical implications. Accoring to Mr. Repetto of Columbia University, while robotics has always been about amplifying human ability, Hertz’s device "gives roaches skills they wouldn’t normally have, which brings up all sorts of questions, including many about responsibility and consciousness".

Science Magazine celebrates its 125th anniversary, not by celebrating advances in our knowledge but by pondering 125 questions to which we don’t know the answer. "What is the universe made of". Hmm. "Will Malthus continue to be wrong?" "How did Cooperative Behavior Evolve". These are among Science’s biggies. "Why does the phone always ring when you start eating dinner" is still, apparently, not top priority. I guess scientists are willing to let the real tough questions to Dirk Gently.