THE festive season approaches, and for many of us this means the annual ordeal of finding presents for loved ones. We all want to be regarded as great gift givers, but as panic sets in it鈥檚 all too easy to fall back on old staples like slippers, scarves or socks.
So this year, New 杏吧原创 has come up with an idea to ease the burden. We want you, dear reader, to share your greatest gift ideas. Tell us about the best presents you have received, or given. We鈥檒l sift through your ideas and put the best ones on a website, www.nomoresocks.newscientist.com, available for all to rummage through. Think of it as our contribution to a stress-free festive break.
The ideas are already coming in. Jeff, a reader in San Francisco, recommends Zoob, a simple but remarkably flexible construction toy 鈥渇or the child of any age鈥�. Based on just five fundamental building blocks, Zoob can be used to make anything from a molecular model to a movable action figure. Its designer, Michael Joaquin Grey, studied genetics and mathematics at the University of California, Berkeley, and fine art at Yale. The pieces snap together using variants of a ball-and-socket joint, so the final creations can be bent, stretched and twisted into new shapes. An ideal gift for the amateur animator, perhaps.
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You can already find Zoob and lots more on www.nomoresocks.newscientist.com, but we want your contributions too. So cast your mind back to birthdays and Christmases past, and email us your smart, innovative and delightful gift suggestions by filling in the form on the website.
As an added incentive, every week we鈥檒l send a bottle of champagne to the winner of our chosen 鈥済ift of the week鈥�.
ANYONE who has had the disconcerting experience of sitting on a warm toilet seat, or a too-cold metal chair, should note that the neutral temperature of buttock skin is 32.6 掳C. As several considerate readers have informed us, this need-to-know number was discovered by Gook-Sup Song, a researcher at Bucheon College in South Korea.
In Energy and Buildings (vol 50, p 65) Song explains how this temperature provided optimum buttock comfort for eight students sitting cross-legged on a floor with underfloor heating. His paper 鈥� surely another contender for an Ig Nobel prize 鈥� is entitled 鈥淏uttock responses to contact with finishing materials over the ONDOL floor heating system in Korea鈥�.
THE UK鈥檚 record companies are now suing 28 people who have been illegally sharing music on the internet. That鈥檚 in addition to around 6000 being sued in the US, Canada, Austria, Denmark, France, Germany and Italy.
At the press conference held in London to announce the legal attack and encourage more people to pay for legitimate downloads, the assembled top brass of the record industry were asked if any of them had ever downloaded an MP3 file for themselves to avoid paying for a CD.
Most just looked blank and kept quiet as the question and answer session was hurriedly shut down. But the famous record producer Pete Waterman helpfully admitted what a lot of people surely suspected.
鈥淲e are in the record industry. If we want something we just call EMI and they send it over.鈥�
TELEVISED debates are intended to help voters in next month鈥檚 US elections assess the differences between presidential candidates, although as TV commentators keep reminding us, what the candidates actually say is far less important than their tie colour, hairstyle and 鈥渟tature鈥�.
Now there鈥檚 one more measure swing voters might like to know about 鈥� blinking behaviour. While Kerry blinked infrequently during recent debates, a recent study by John Stern of Washington University in St Louis found that Bush had several severe blinking bouts, particularly when Kerry was describing his tax plans.
According to a press release from the university, excessive blinking shows that a person is 鈥渆ither anxious, scared, tired or bored following the learning or storing of information鈥�. So there you go.
MIKE SIMPSON recently received a new cutlery basket for his Ariston dishwasher. It was the standard loose plastic basket found in one guise or another in all dishwashers, but the invoice carried this warning: 鈥淚n the interests of consumer safety these parts should only be fitted by a suitably qualified person with the machine disconnected from the mains supply.鈥� Simpson now wants to know where in the Yellow Pages can he find a person suitably qualified to put cutlery baskets in dishwashers.
FINALLY, Dave Stupple did what the IT people at work said he should do and upgraded his Windows XP. In the process he gained a pop-up blocker, which, each time it manages to block a pop-up, proudly announces the fact in 鈥� you鈥檝e guessed it 鈥� a pop-up.
While she was out shopping in Amsterdam recently, Marjolein Katsma was impressed by a gadget in a hi-fi shop described on the packaging as a 鈥渞otating turntable鈥�.