Firefly is back, Singing Batman, and Cyborg Rats

Seriously, where else are you going to get a combination like that?

I’ve got three video clips for you today, and one of them is not fiction. See if you can figure out which one.

Firefly is back!

That’s right, Nathan Fillion has suited up one more time as Mal Reynolds. Unfortunately, it’s only a reference to his Firefly character on his new show, Castle, but it’s pretty cool, with a couple of good lines and music cues.

Singing Batman!

Okay, Batman doesn’t sing in this clip, but he does in this musical episode of Batman: The Brave and The Bold. To get a segue from the above clip, though, Nathan Fillion had a role in Dr. Horrible’s Sing-along Blog with Neil Patrick Harris. See if you can guess which one of them is singing in this clip.

Yeah, okay, you probably read the opening credits and know it’s NPH singing. Love the always-underappreciated Aquaman and Green Arrow bit. Also very fun to see the music played out on the utility lines. Favorite line: “His utility belt holds everything… can’t get that at the mall!”

Cyborg Rats!

What do you do if you’re a scientist with unfettered access to rats and robots? You build a cyborg, of course!

This is actually pretty cool.

I did some further reading on this, and it turns out that they went through a lot of groups of rats for this. Each group was given a letter designation (A, B, C, etc.). On some of the rats they used a serum to enhance brain activity. This was the enhanced group (as opposed to the “normal” group). It took 28 groups before they got a rat brain that was successful in controlling the robot. However, they never tested the Enhanced group because the successful rat (from the AB-Normal group) saw an active bunson burner and went on a rampage, terrorizing the Enhanced group before escaping. It’s said that he was lured back by the sound of a violin before being put down. The lead scientist, Dr. Franklin Stein, was annoyed but promised to press on with further research.

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