From a recent article: Scientists with the Robot Engineering Technology Research Center of east China’s Shandong University of Science and Technology say they implanted micro electrodes in the brain of a pigeon so they can command it to fly right or left or up or down.
How does this relate to networks? There is a RFC standard (RFC 1149) on using pigeons to carry IP datagrams.
(And if you are really interested in the absurd, look at this article on similar work on sharks!)
Recently, I’ve been at two interesting meetings:
1st: Post-grad student club meeting of the Centre for Security and Crime Science (CSCS). It’s a nice opportunity to network with UCL students and faculty members who are interested in security. I was amazed at the number of projects dealing with sensors of which I’ve never heard a word 
The club will host some very interesting talks.
2nd: UCL Enterprise Society. Great talk by Sumit – CEO of Kuluvalley. The talk was a Lessig style one – for each slide he had either one huge text sentence or one big image (here is an example). Cool stuff!
(From The Economist) The technology revolution may be coming to poor countries via the mobile phone, not the personal computer, as it did in rich ones. … TradeNet, a software company based in Accra, Ghana, will unveil a simple sort of eBay for agricultural products across a dozen countries in west Africa. It lets buyers and sellers indicate what they are after and their contact information, which is sent to all relevant subscribers as an SMS text message in one of four languages. Interested parties can then reach others directly to do a deal.