Filed under: Holiday Gift Guide 2008

Tokyo Bay Tokibot Clock (Domestic God/Goddess, Under $50)

When the robots come to enslave us all-and they will-a little forethought in the form of a devotional idol will surely go a long way to saving your hide. Tokyo Bay’s retro-styled robot clock doesn’t do much other than tell the time, stand and look pretty cool, but for devout tech geeks that’s more than enough to ask for in a timepiece-you had them at “robot.”

Price: $36

Gift Guide: Tokyo Bay Tokibot Clock originally appeared on Switched on Sat, 15 Nov 2008 00:01:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Movies have long had an obsession with erasing memories. ‘Total Recall,’ ‘Eternal Sunshine of a Spotless Mind,’ and ‘Men in Black‘ all feature the intentional manipulation of memory as a central plot point. Until now, the concept of selectively erasing memories has dwelt in the realm of science fiction, but scientists believe they have made a major step towards making such a procedure a reality.

American and Chinese researchers have identified a protein, present in both mice and humans, called CaMKII that they refer to as the “memory molecule.” CaMKII is key to the development and retention of information, and researchers have developed a method to turn its production on and off in mice.

Scientists exposed mice to potentially traumatic stimuli, such as light shocks to the paws. When the production of CaMKII was overproduced (during an attempt to force the mice to retrieve the memory of the stimuli), it appeared that the memory was not only blocked, but completely erased, without affecting other memories.

Of course, how exactly they can tell if it affected other memories isn’t clear. They could simply mean that the mice still remembered how to walk and breathe, which isn’t really terribly impressive. The research is interesting, but we’ll keep our memories, even the painful ones, thank you very much. [From: Yahoo! News]

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That whole calm and peace thing didn’t seem to work out this past weekend for these monks who started fighting in Jerusalem’s most holy church.

(priest, temple, holy land)

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Animals are often confused by seeing themselves in the mirror but this little feline decided that there could only be one cat in the house. Take at look at this flying leap.

Cat Pounces at Mirror Image - Watch more Animal Videos

(pounce, pwned, angry, jump)

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Heidi Klum is just one of many celebrities doing their best Tom Cruise ala Risky Business impressions for the Guitar Hero World Tour commercials. This one isn’t the PG version you see on the tube. She’s prancing around in her underwear people!

(hiedi clum, naked, Victoria Secret)

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These parents did a great service by showing their kids how adults really fight at their football game. None of that Jackie Chan stuff, just ugly, ugly fighting. Watch for the kids yelling ‘Mommmmy!” at the end.

Pop Warner Parents Brawl - Watch more free videos

(pee wee football, fist fight, werner)

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It’s getting down to the wire and things are getting crazy. This Montreal, Canadian radio team prank phone called Republican Vice Presidential candidate Governor Sarah Palin into thinking she was talking to French President Nicolas Sarkozy. Classic!

(sara, punked, live)

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We thought Darth Vader died in Episode 6 but how wrong we were. Here, you can see the Dark Lord reduced to playing his violin on the street for tips. Wonder how long it’ll take for him to build a new death star that way.

(darth vadar, star wars, costume)

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Filed under: Audio/Video, Celebrities, iPod

There’s certainly no shortage of eye-catching iPod docks / speaker systems to choose from, but this new so-called AeroSystem is the only one to get Jean-Michel Jarre’s stamp of approval, and that’s enough to get at least a few folks to take notice (though we’ll personally stick with our Joy Division Zune). In addition to being a conversation starter, the speaker unit also look to be capable enough audio-wise, with it packing two 20W RMS speakers and a 45W RMS subwoofer into its retro-inspired enclosure, plus a USB port and a 3.5mm jack to complement the requisite iPod dock connector. As far as these things go, it’s also not too ridiculously expensive, with it running €450 (or close to $580), though you’ll likely spend a bit more than that if you hope to get one of these out of France.

[Via Gadget Lab]

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How do you celebrate a win over your biggest rivals? If you’re a Penn State student, you riot! Yeah!! Well, there were no cars on fire or anything but still, a riot.

(PSU, students, OSU, crowd)

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