Oh yes, I already know what you’re going to say. “You’re too late dude, the entire internet’s beaten you to publishing a list of the best and worst of 2009. You suck!“. To which I’d say: well, you’re right. But what else can you expect from a website that wasn’t updated for a whole year? Besides, better late than never, right? Right?

Well, like it or not, here I am with my very own “worst list” of 2009. A disclaimer before we proceed: This list is based purely on my personal choices and prejudices, and the amount of scientific research put into ascertaining facts is a big, grand zero. This explains why the list is dominated by Apple products. What’s more, some of these devices were actually launched much before 2009. If you don’t like it, go make your own list. Tthengaa!
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All around the world, the burial day of some godforsaken eponymous saint is celebrated as Valentine’s Day. As if having to celebrate the anniversary of your being entrapped in the “sacred bond of love” wasn’t enough, poor St Valentine’s burial is another occasion to let the big corporations steal your money, all in the name of love. How do most celebrate this day? Well, you generally waste money by giving and receiving gifts. The smart ones though gift 1 GB pen drives, hoping to receive a 500 GB external HDD in return. We at Gadgetted.com are good humans (honest!), so here we are, presenting a few gift ideas for a “Gadgetted” Valentine’s Day. With this article, I hereby grandly announce the end of the era of gifting Apple products to males and teddy bears to females.
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Japs are known for their weird taste in pretty much everything, including video games, gadgets, and cartoons. They come up with the strangest of gadgets — albeit with cutting edge technology — and still manage to sell them, mostly to their own weird countrymen; though after announcing to the world their “global” product. Say, recently, Sharp Japan launched a solar-powered mobile phone — admittedly, an idea whose time has come. Or how about the Japanese video game series Dead or Alive 4 [cough, cough]. This time around, Oriental Co Ltd, a Japanese manufacturer, has launched a new machine called the White Goat. This contraption looks like a double-door cupboard into which you feed office paper at one end and receive neatly rolled toilet paper out the other — in short, a device that seems to have come straight out of Dexter’s Laboratory. Sweet!
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The premier National Institute of Mental Health and Neuro Sciences (Nimhans) in Bangalore said they would like to study Marxist patriarch Jyoti Basu’s brain to unravel the mystery of his agility even in old age. “Jyoti Basu was 95 when he passed away, yet until the last moment he was very agile and active. Therefore, we would like to study his brain for research”, said D Nagaraja, director of Nimhans.

Basu died on Sunday at the age of 95 after battling multiple illnesses. He donated his body for the use of medical science and, after a state funeral, it was handed over to a government medical college in Calcutta on Tuesday. “We have a brain bank and our neuro-pathology department is eager to study the brain of such an active man. Generally, with age the brain also ages, but in the case of Jyoti Basu, it’s different”, explained Nagaraja, who is currently in Delhi. “We want to study the neuron cells and other parts of his brain to understand the functioning of human brains. We can know the mystery and it would be educative for us as well”. He added that his institution is in touch with the Kolkata medical college and would really like to have their cooperation.
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Monkeys can carry out basic math in their heads, says a new study, which suggests that basic mathematics is “hard-wired into evolution”.

Professor Andreas Nieder, who led the study at the University of Tubingen, Germany, said: “It is a primitive version of maths which we think has a survival advantage. If you are foraging then it is an advantage to choose a tree with more berries on it. Similarly, it is important that a monkey knows the number of individuals in his or her social group and compares it with rival groups, to know whether to attack or retreat”.
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The two 3D models you see above are made from office paper. The one on the right cost $1 (Rs approx) in parts to produce. The one on the left, just 37 cents (Rs approx). They were spat out by a new 3D printer called the Matrix, from British company Mcor.
Source: Wired
Web link: Mcor Technologies
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According to the Pink Tentacle Oto-Shigure, a high-tech umbrella that functions as a personal audio speaker system, gives music lovers a reason to dance in the rain. Developed by Keio University and IT company Toa Engineering, Oto-Shigure looks like an ordinary traditional Japanese umbrella made of bamboo and oiled paper, but the entire object emits sound when connected to an iPod or other portable audio device, thanks to a tiny built-in amplifier and four small vibrating motors mounted along the periphery, which effectively turn the canopy into a large speaker cone. More info after the jump.
Source: Pink Tentacle
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A Japanese man has enlisted hundreds of people in a campaign to allow marriages between humans and cartoon characters, saying he feels more at ease in the “two-dimensional world.”Comic books are immensely popular in Japan, with some fictional characters becoming celebrities or even sex symbols.
Source: The Daily Telegraph
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The nose may be the where the information about the face is balanced in all directions, or the optimal viewing position for face recognition, the researchers from UC San Diego’s Jacobs School of Engineering claims in a paper recently published in the journal Psychological Science.
Source:University of California
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What stands a better chance of surviving 50 years from now, a framed photograph or a 10-megabyte digital photo file on your computer’s hard drive?The framed photograph will inevitably fade and yellow over time, but the digital photo file may be unreadable to future computers – an unintended consequence of our rapidly digitizing world that may ultimately lead to a “digital dark age,” says Jerome McDonough, assistant professor in the Graduate School of Library and Information Science at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
Source: University of Illinois
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According to a report in the Telegraph new research suggests that the type of television you watched as a child has a profound effect on the colour of your dreams. While almost all under 25s dream in colour, thousands of over 55s, all of whom were brought up with black and white sets, often dream in monchrome – even now.
Source: Telegraph UK
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As reported in the Daily Mail UK, designers have unveiled the “ultimate property” that they say will provide a solution to beating the floods – a walking house. The property has been built on six hydraulic legs and was designed by art collective N55 in Copenhagen, Denmark, who worked in conjunction with engineers in Massachusetts, US. The 10ft high home is solar and wind powered and can stroll at walking pace across all terrains. More Info, pictures and video after the jump
Source: Daily Mail
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Ever felt curious about what our outer space smell like? Outer space smells like fried steak, hot metal and welding a motorbike, scientists say. Nasa has commissioned Steven Pearce, a chemist and managing director of fragrance manufacturing company Omega Ingredients, to recreate the smell of space in a laboratory.
His research will be used to help astronauts prepare for the conditions they will encounter in space. Mr Pearce began working for Nasa in August and hopes to have recreated the smell of space by the end of the year. He said: ‘I did some work for an art exhibition in July, which was based entirely on smell and one of the things I created was the smell of the inside of the Mir space station.
Source: Daily Mail
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Researchers at McGill University, King’s College London and GlaxoSmithKline Inc. have identified two genetic variants in Caucasians that together produce an astounding sevenfold increase the risk of male pattern baldness.About a third of all men are affected by male pattern baldness by age 45. The condition’s social and economic impact is considerable: expenditures for hair transplantation in the United States alone exceeded $115 million in 2007, while global revenues for medical therapy for male-pattern baldness recently surpassed $405 million.
Web link:McGill University
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Deborah Anderson had heard the urban legends about the contraceptive effectiveness of Coca-Cola products for years. So she and her colleagues decided to put the soft drink to the test. In the lab, that is.
For discovering that, yes indeed, Coke was a spermicide, Anderson and her team is among this year’s winners of the Ig Nobel prize, the annual award given by the Annals of Improbable Research magazine to oddball but often surprisingly practical scientific achievements.
The ceremony at Harvard University, in which actual Nobel laureates bestow the awards, also honored a British psychologist who found foods that sound better taste better; a group of researchers who discovered exotic dancers make more money when they are at peak fertility; and a pair of Brazilian archaeologists who determined armadillos can change the course of history.
Web link:Physorg
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The private company planning to take wealthy tourists to the edge of the atmosphere starting in late 2009 or early 2010 has refused a million-dollar proposal to film a sex video while the participants are floating gravity free, the company’s president said.
Will Whitehorn, president of Virgin Galactic, said the offer, from an unidentified party, “was $1 million, up front, for a sex-in-space movie. That was money we had to refuse, I’m afraid.”
Whitehorn disclosed the rejected transaction here on Tuesday during the International Astronautical Congress. He said Virgin Galactic, part of Richard Branson’s Virgin Group, is planning to begin flights of the White Knight Two aircraft in late 2009 or early 2010 from Sierra County, N.M.
Source:msnbc.msn.com

Paul Slocum an artist and musician from Texas combined his laptop running a software he made called Pi House Generator that randomly generates house music using the number Pi. Much like the number itself, the music stream never repeats and constantly continues to evolve. Check out the sample below, words from the artist after the jump.
Web link: http://qotile.net/
Source: Noise addicts
Audio: 1 minute clip 1 hour clip
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Immigrants who seek a better life in Western countries may not be able to escape the influence of their home country when it comes to their children’s academic performance, according to findings from the October issue of the American Sociological Review.
Sociologists Mark Levels, Jaap Dronkers and Gerbert Kraaykamp find that large-scale influences such as country of origin, destination country and immigrant community play a role in educational outcomes for immigrant children in their host country.
Source: American Sociological Association
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There is a theory that the spark of genius lurks hidden within all of us. Now scientists are developing a ‘thinking cap’ that could turn that theory into practice and unlock the amazing potential of the human brain. The device uses tiny magnetic pulses to change the way the brain works and has produced remarkable results in tests. Wearing the hairnet-like cap for a few minutes improved artistic ability and proof-reading skills. If the technique is perfected, the device could be marketed as a cap slipped on to boost creativity when inspiration is low.
Source: Daily Mail
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Build up your GK with useless but entertaining knowledge like “Five percent of the people who use personal ads for dating are already married” or our favourite “Rabbits are the only animals that lack the ability to vomit”. So if you are looking to educate yourself with useless knowledge head over to the Web link below and enjoy.
Web site: Unnecessary Knowledge