…if you want to see real cutting-edge technology, you should visit a toy store.

A company called NeuroSky is on the brink of marketing a toy that reads brainwaves. They’ve already got a prototype “Darth Vader” toy–when you concentrate, your light saber lights up–but they’re looking to revolutionize the way video games are played. Rather than your brain telling your muscles to move a game controller, your brain will move the controller by itself.

So you can play with no physical exertion at all. Big score for the geeks.

Link

At three minutes and four seconds after 2 AM on the 6th of May this year, the time and date will be

02:03:04 05/06/07

These Pixel Watches from ODM use electro-luminescent technology to display the time. From 9 p.m. to 3 a.m., the watch also performs an on-screen scrolling animation every hour. Available in white, brown or pink for $160.

I can see Roy Batty consulting one of these. “Hm, 4 p.m. Time to die.”

Link (via SciFi Tech)

Scott Adams mentions the new planet that Myst wrote about on his blog, and comments:

The scientists named the planet Gliese 581 C, evidently to showcase the reason scientists can’t get laid. Science fiction writers all over the Earth are muttering, “Fuck you very much.” No one is going to buy a book titled “Escape From Gliese 581 C.”

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Astrophysicist Stephen Hawking will go on a “zero-gravity” flight on a refitted jet today. The jet creates the experience of microgravity in 25-second bursts of steep plunges over the Atlantic Ocean.

“For someone like me whose muscles don’t work very well, it will be bliss to be weightless,” Hawking told The Associated Press in an interview Tuesday.

The article goes on to say that the jet does 10-15 of these plunges on a single flight, and passengers pay $3,750 for the privilege (the fee has been waived for Hawking). Me, I’d be willing to pay that amount to anyone who promised that I’d never, ever have to be in a jet that was doing sharp plunges.

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Geologists in Serbia have found a new mineral with the chemical composition sodium lithium boron silicate hydroxide. Upon searching the Internet for the chemical formula, one of the researchers found that this is virtually the same composition as Kryptonite. I…have nothing more to say about this.

Link

Astronomers have uncovered what could be the first Class M planet outside our solar system, and it’s in our own neighborhood too! Discovery News has the details, but it all boils down to “Location, Location, Location!”

In December 1900, the Ladies Home Journal published a list of predictions for the year 2000. Some of them are pretty accurate, some, uh, less so. It’s interesting to reflect that when these predictions were made, the Wright Brothers’ first flight was still three years away, let alone all the other technological advances since then.

Prediction #7: There will be air-ships, but they will not successfully compete with surface cars and water vessels for passenger or freight traffic. They will be maintained as deadly war-vessels by all military nations. Some will transport men and goods. Others will be used by scientists making observations at great heights above the earth.

Prediction #9: Photographs will be telegraphed from any distance. If there be a battle in China a hundred years hence snapshots of its most striking events will be published in the newspapers an hour later. Even to-day photographs are being telegraphed over short distances. Photographs will reproduce all of Nature’s colors.

Prediction #16: There will be No C, X or Q in our every-day alphabet. They will be abandoned because unnecessary. Spelling by sound will have been adopted, first by the newspapers. English will be a language of condensed words expressing condensed ideas, and will be more extensively spoken than any other. Russian will rank second.

Link (via BoingBoing)

Sometimes these titles just write themselves….

Astronomers have found that the looping magnetic fields along the Sun’s corona carry magnetic sound waves in a similar manner to musical instruments such as pipe organs. The frequency of the sound waves is a couple of orders of magnitude below the human hearing threshold, but researchers have recorded some of the “Sun Symphony.” Maybe somebody can amplify it, back it up with an electric guitar, and release it as a hit single.

Link

One of the grotesques on DC’s Washington National Cathedral is Darth Vader. I’ll give you a moment to boggle before I continue.

In the 1980s the Cathedral sponsored a competition for children to design decorative sculpture for the facade. One of the winners was 13-year-old Christopher Rader, who submitted a drawing of “this futuristic representation of evil.” Darth can be found on the northwest tower.

I suppose we can all be deeply grateful that Beavis and Butthead weren’t around in the 80s.

PDF Link (via BoingBoing)