Glass Bees

[brstein@midway.uchicago.edu (Jessica Burstein)]

Re. The Glass Bees

FYI: The New York Times (English Edition--sorry, guys) had an article 1 and
1/2 weeks ago about mechanical protoypes, albeit after the Jungerian fact,
of mechanical surveillance devices patterned along the aerodynamics of
insects--a brave new world for the designers, given that the truisms of the
physics of flight dynamics do not translate down to the micro level; they
have to approach this differently because wind resistance, or whatever,
works differently when you are a bug: that is, tiny. These mechanical insect
walk, jump, and fly, and presumably sting. The article, in the Science
section, ran along side a lovely image of several of these critters--it
would be simple to track it down (and if you do, I would appreciate the
specific cite--I forgot to clip it). Which is all to say that 
your class is working alongside a wholly nonvirtual application of Junger's
ideas. Which does not answer the more philosophical version of your
question, but I leave that more ethereal aspect  to the multilingual polymaths. 

JB

PS The monster in Frankenstein's problem was exactly that he failed to be an
automaton. This is the problem with frequenting used dealerships. But that's
another story.