‘Black Hole Emporium’ and other science gift ideas

Tired of the usual gadget gifts this season? The December issue of the Scientific American magazine drew up Holiday Catalogues of Tomorrow. The three I loved the most from their list are the first three enumerated below with my own take on what they could mean. The rest are my own gift ideas from science today. You have to find them yourself though as this column does not take orders.

1. Anti-matter. Have friends who seem to have everything? Scientific American recommends this for those people. Anti-matter is what scientists suspect was created in equal proportion with matter during the Big Bang, the creation of the universe. However, they are still cracking their heads on where it went since none of it seems to be left to be detected. The Starship Enterprise of Star Trek is known to be fueled by anti-matter. Maybe it has exhausted all the supply of anti-matter with all that power needed for Scotty to beam back all those guys back to the mothership when they are confronted by beings who evolved with better hair (or any hair for that "matter"). 

2. Einstein’s outlet. This outlet offers a wide array of stuff for the academic on an intellectual budget. It includes heavily discounted items like experiments that ended up nowhere, unsolvable equations, erroneous data and scientific methodologies that sound like they will lead to a revolutionary Unified Theory of Everything but just really means the scientist who wrote it (most likely a "Y" chromosome) was lost but still refused to ask for directions. 

3. Black hole emporium. "Black hole" is what scientists call that "spot" in the universe so dense that not even light can escape from it. It is the ultimate, "point-of-no-return" garbage disposal. I recommend it for all the bad ideas, malicious intentions and flawed reasoning of those who influence public life, with special discounts for politicians, or would-be politicians, who possess the same. I think it is even "free" if the politician himself goes into the "black hole" with his bad ideas. It is also known to contain a lot of past election promises.  

4. Membership in P.A. or "Plagiarists Anonymous." This is a back-up gift for the intellectually "budgeted," if you cannot make it to Einstein’s Outlet (no. 2) during the rush-shopping hours. Here, if you cannot be original or not give due credit to the originator of the idea, at least you will have company who will also steal your non-original ideas. 

5. An autographed crystal ball from James Randi with a Smiley "gotcha!" greeting. James Randi is a magician known around the world to expose deceptive techniques of people who claim to be "psychics" or those magicians who claim that their craft is not "magic" but "paranormal." You can give this crystal ball to your chosen "psychic." Or you can just send Randi’s webpage (http://www.randi.org/) to your chosen psychic.  

6. "VRES" or Virtual Reality Evolution Simulator. This is for humans who insist on national television that they have given birth to fish, or other equally wonderful creatures whose genetic make-ups are separated by thousands or millions of years from humans. This gift is also good for those who even serve as "ninongs" and "ninangs" to the fish. I also recommend this gift to news networks that air or print them with unbridled enthusiasm and conspicuously absent scientific notation. If this is beyond your budget, an elementary biology textbook will do.  

7. "House Dust Biology." Written by Dutch scientist Johanna E.M.H. Bronswijk, this book pieces together the microscopic food chain from fungi to mites, from flea larvae to microscopic pseudo-scorpions present in all households. It is guaranteed to jolt your messy teenagers to clean up their rooms (though it is known to be less successful with teenage boys) or the stereotype "colegiala" to yelp "kadiri!" ("yuck!") in diva proportions. 

8. Solar system model. This is for celebrities in all aspects of public life (and the ones who indulge in them far beyond the limits of what is "interesting" in media) who need more than the regular human dose of the basic reality that the world is larger than their private lives and that the rest of humanity is interested in basically OTHER things like living and improving their OWN lives. Yes, the poster model of the known universe would be much better but it’s Christmas and we want to be gentle with these people (no artistic attempt could yet make humans figure at all in that scale; in fact, it was really a "stretch" already with the solar system model). And if this does not work, give them Item # 9.  

9. Dust. Any kind of dust – organic, mineral, vegetable or even space dust. (Fact: A speck of space dust could be found in every square meter of the Earth’s surface.) This is to remind them of how special they really are. It is the same old "dust to dust" story, for everyone, now and forever.  

10. A portrait of Galileo’s face with a thought bubble that says "I told you so." This is for the scientist who risks alienation and persecution from religion and society for what she or he found to be scientifically correct in nature. (For those who need reminding: Galileo was persecuted and made to recant his revolutionary idea that the Earth revolved around the Sun. He was pardoned by the Catholic Church only in the early 1990s. As of this writing, the Earth still revolved around the Sun and the "pardon" had no known effect on this fact.)

11. Comparative, drawn-to-scale figures of the "cingulate gyruses" of a man and a woman. This is for couples who have problems communicating "relationship issues." Recent studies have shown that the "cingulate gyrus" is that part of the brain which in Miami Herald’s Pulitzer-winner humorist Dave Barry’s words, holds "a vast quantity of complex, endlessly recalibrated emotional data involving hundreds, perhaps thousands of human relationships." Barry claims that "presumably in women, it (cingulate gyrus) is a structure the size of a mature cantaloupe; whereas in men it is basically a cashew filled with NFL highlights."

12. A plastic, squeaking hammer (P30) or a foam-stuffed hammer that gives off the sound of breaking glass (P100). I myself keep both kinds in my car and I use them in the order I wrote them depending on the degree of "idiocy" I encounter. It is for instantaneous punishment or "brain-repositioning" for friends and relatives you hang out with a lot, who are dearest to you but who come up with really bad ideas, who just "don’t get it," or who cannot acknowledge facts even if the facts are, relative to their size, as big as Belgium right before their eyes. The hammers work, I think. I bonk my head at times with them. In fact, I did so before I wrote this column and…oh well, most times they really work…really!

Merry Christmas!

Bonk,

Your Nature/science columnist

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