Gwift list 2008

It is now time for science gift ideas that will make your family and friends think, laugh and probably never invite you again to next year’s holiday reunion. Some of these gifts really exist, some I wish existed, that is why I call them “gwifts.”

1. Have bum relatives who stay out in the street corner all day but never seem to have energy to work? It is time to recruit the Sun to empower them to become solar-powered relatives! With the help of solar garments, transform Newton’s spirit of inertia within your relatives into another Newtonian force- motion. Hopefully this “motion” will translate into activities akin to job-seeking. The good thing about is I did not make up this product (I just suggested a purpose for it). Covered by United States Patent Application 20070151593, this garment “consists of a hood, jacket, and pants that are embossed by thin film solar panels and/or individual thin film solar cells. The suit further includes at least one 12-volt port capable of powering electrical devices used for survival.” If all job-seeking efforts fail, you and your family and even your neighbors can just charge your cellphones by plugging them on to your solar-powered relative!

2. Need a visual aid to explain what it’s like to know someone who is quite unpredictable? You should get the “Impossiball — The Ball With A Mind Of Its Own” from scientificsonline.com. According to the description, it “does crazy bounces and rolls, defies gravity and logic, will come to a complete stop on a hill, will let you bowl backwards and surprisingly goes in “small or large circles and knock the objects down.” I will get this for my Dad who has ran out of metaphors to explain how I was as a child.

3. What if #2 gwift fails to make your life easier? Well, I found this same item on http://scientificsonline.com/product.asp_Q_pn_E_3053200 and it is a headspa. It is some sort of gladiator helmet that when you wear on your head, simulates the movement of “hundreds of fingers simultaneously massaging your scalp.” You have got to go online to see it. Try this — you lose a headache and gain a reputation.

4. Thinking of going herbal to aid the hydraulics of male passion? West Africa seems to have the answer to your botanical quest and they did not waste any euphemisms to veil its common name since they unabashedly call it “horny goat weed.” Science journals publishing studies on male impotence have mined the powers of this weed and the results seem to be promising enough to rival the active ingredient in Viagra, which is sildenafil. But if you are the cerebral type, you may want to call it by its scientific name - Epimedium brevicornum — and maybe you will impress the researchers and it will earn you a slot in clinical trials for the drug based on this weed for which I suspect scalpers are now selling slots.

5. Still at it with the War of the Sexes? Get the The Female Brain by Dr. Louann Brizendine (Broadway books, 2006.) and The Y Survival Kit. The Female Brain is a book that will tell the story of the female, mapping out her highs and lows, her eventides and tumultuous storms in the sea of hormones that marinates the female brain. Dr. Brizendine did it so well that if you read the book, you come out also understanding the male brain and why, for most of the male lifetime, it seems to only want one thing (see gwift #4). If you are a man getting this book for the woman in your life and you consider your emotional safety something worth ensuring, I suggest you entrust her with your Y survival kit which is basically a fat yellow tape that says “Do Not Cross” (same one you find in crime scenes) — that she can use to designate seasons in her days to signal you to stay away and save yourself from imminent emotional harm.

6. Want a botanical version of our local politics on your desk? Get the Desktop Carnivorous Plant. You can find it in http://www.thisnext.com/item/7AC0A72D/7BDC88A8/Desktop-Carnivorous-Plant-Set. But unlike plants which the Swiss Federal Ethics Committee on Non-Human Biotechnology (ECNH) and the citizens of Switzerland legally bestowed dignity on in a 24-page document they issued entitled “The Dignity of Living Beings With Regard to Plants. Moral Consideration of Plants for Their Own Sake,” our local politicians have still not done anything to deserve the stature of our majestic trees, the ones that are still standing anyway.

7. Can’t get someone to find his or her way by reading a map? Encourage them by giving them the study done by IgNobel Awardees Toshiyuki Nakagaki of Hokkaido University et. al., entitled “Intelligence: Maze-Solving by an Amoeboid Organism” where they found out that even slime molds can find their way in a maze. Do not expect your friends to whom you will give this gift to ever go on a trip with you again.

8. Know people who live their lives only through their earphones? Isolate them further with a portable personal lightshow projector that can even attach to their iPod, MP3 player, stereo system or computer blasting beams. It will encircle them with colorful beams moving to the beat of their music. Just do not blame the manufacturers if they get mistaken as a landing spot by aliens.

9. Hoax e-mail detector. This is more of a wish than a gift but if I really won all the money that all the hoax junk e-mails I get say they will give to me, I could single-handedly save the global economy and still have enough left to buy another planet.

10. Want to really know if you only use only 10 percent of your brain? This is a gift you can give to yourself or to those who surround you who insist that 10 percent is all you use. Sign up for an experiment that will prove that once and for all by removing 90 percent of your brain to see if you will still be the same. And if you actually sign up for this experiment, then you might just be really using 10 percent of your brain.

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