- A new 23 mm × 31 mm ZigBee/ARM wireless transceiver (FreeStar Pro, +20 dBm, 4 000 ft range) is being eyed as a potential low-power radio link for implanted neural electrodes and BCI experiments.  
- Discussion of “transgenic cats” sold by Lifestyle Pets for $31 k—marketed as hypoallergenic—prompted skepticism about the actual use of genetic engineering and the ethics of high-priced bio-pets.  
- Participants compared open-source hardware projects: the Fusor.net amateur fusion reactor (featured in the Wall Street Journal) and David Hahn’s “radioactive boy scout” story were cited as cautionary and inspirational DIY science examples.  
- iGEM 2009 came up as a possible target; although UT Austin once fielded a photobacteria team, current faculty resistance to BioBricks and MIT’s perceived territoriality were cited as barriers to forming a new squad.  
- A quick-deploy MediaWiki instance (austinbrains.org/wiki) was spun up overnight to serve as a local dumping ground for Austin-area transhumanist, neuroscience, and DIY-bio events.  
- Calendar formats were debated: kanzure proposed treating calendar events like Git commits—discrete patches that can be merged, versioned, and distributed—seeking an XML-like standard for event data.  
- Book recommendations swapped: Sean Hobin praised Ribofunk; kanzure endorsed Greg Egan’s Luminous, Joan Slonczewski’s Brain Plague, and signed copies of Niven’s Ringworld Engineers.  
- Links collected: Miro and Hulu for video aggregation, asciilifeform.com’s parallel-eye vision project, and various back issues of Nuts and Volts magazine were noted as resources.