invention

I was just in the midst of catching up on my daily dose of Oprah on Friday, when who should appear on her Friday Live! episode, but Anne Wojcicki, the wife of Google co-founder Sergey Brin. Alongside her 23andMe co-founder Linda Avey, Wojcicki talked about her Retail DNA Test Kit, which was named Time's 2008 Invention of the Year. For only $399 (a price drop from $1000), you can now purchase one of these kits that are easy to use (you spit in a tube and send it back), and it will be shipped off to a lab where 600,000 genetic markers are read. Once the results are in, you will be notified by email and then you can log in to view your very own genome.

During the show, Oprah asked Anne if she was six months along in her pregnancy, to which she replied — "I'm nine!". She also explained that after testing her and Sergey's genetics, they realized that her unborn son has a 50 percent change of inheriting a high risk for Parkinson's disease.

I Iooked at Sergey's profile and I looked at me, and we saw that the child has a 50 percent (chance of being) lactose intolerant. Because of Sergey, the child has a very, very unlikely chance of having blue eyes.

Very exciting stuff indeed —personal DNA testing, baby Brin on the way. As much as I would love to know my entire genetic makeup, I can't help but wonder what the moral implications will be. Even though on May 1, President George W. Bush signed a bill that makes it illegal for health insurers and employers to deny coverage due to a potential genetic condition, I can't help but wonder if and when this could change.

Images Courtesy of Oprah.com

Does anything scream "single and ready to mingle!" more than Teenar, the Girl Guitar? It looks as though Sideshow Bob pictured above (otherwise known as Lou Reimuller) combined two of his favorite fetishes to invent Teenar. He took a vintage department store mannequin (that he "happened" to have on hand) and converted her into a fully-powered electric guitar. Why play tunes for a lady, when one can just play a lady? Classy.

Source

Introducing: The Rip-Away 1000. These twin cuties invented a pair of wedgie-proof underwear, but from what I can tell, it leaves bullies with an elastic waistband in their hands (to parade around the schoolyard) and their victims with a fallen pair of underwear gathered at their knees. I'm not quite sure how this makes the situation any better, but good try boys!

The Self-Sustainable Chair is actually an unflattering dress made of the finest polyethylene. Two pumps extend from the bodice and attach to foot weights that force air into a bubble of fabric positioned over the booty (heyyy!) while walking. The result is a ready-to-sit-on chair you can use anywhere-- for five seconds. That is, until the weight of all the junk in your real trunk deflates the cushion and leaves you looking plain dumbass. For more awkward demos, click here.

Here's an ad for an automatic paper towel dispenser. Yes folks, someone came along and thought that tearing a pre-perforated piece of paper from its roll involved too much effort. The Towel-matic promises to "make your life a lot easier at home"-- because getting a paper towel really zaps the energy right out of you. The irony is that even after using the product, you still have to rip the paper from the roll yourself! Am missing something here?

Oh how I love science. Or should I make that, oh how I love Japan. How about, oh how I love Japanese scientists... An environmental consulting firm based out of Tsukaba, Japan has come up with an amazing new product called "Hotto! Raisu." The product, which amazingly turns cold water into hot rice, is a non-perishable food pack that could be put to good use during a natural disaster.

So how'd they do it?

By subjecting rice to 4,000 times normal atmospheric pressure, the developers were able to preserve rice for long periods in a soft form that holds moisture. When water is poured over an exothermic agent in the pack, steam warms the rice contained within, and after about 15 minutes, the dish is piping hot.

Right now the product is decently priced, (10,000 yen for 30 packs, or approximately $85 for 30), but I don't know if that's cheap enough to be ideal for natural disaster zones. Either way it's still absolutely awesome.

Source: Mainichi News via Boing Boing

Man attempts to improve upon the automobile. Man radically fails.

Thanks to modern science, you will no longer have to wonder exactly when your soft-boiled, medium-boiled or hard-boiled egg is ready. Why's that? Because the egg is going to tell you itself! Okay, so it's not going to shout out and say "Hey, I'm ready!" but it will have magical (aka science) invisible ink that turns black the minute it is ready. You just have to decide which sort of notification you'd like before you purchase your eggs.

Now if you're wondering why they're doing this:

A spokeswoman for Lion Quality Eggs, the [British Egg Information Service]’s quality assurance scheme, said: “We had a lot of inquiries. We said OK, this is a big issue — people can’t even boil an egg.”

So there you have it. The eggs will hit UK markets this fall. No word on whether or not they'll cost more.

Source: Times Online

This group of geeky fellas deserves a medal. Lead by Jon Peck, who is a Zend Certified Engineer and Technology Support Professional at the State University of New York at Oswego, Ed Forth and Chris Van Deuson created the ultimate Wii experience: movie theater Wii sports. The group figured out how to play their Wii in a movie theater on a 344" screen using a homemade wireless sensor bar. Geek out!

For more on how they did it, just read more