< Back to Front Page Text size – +

Brainiac's holiday gift ideas, part 3

Email|Link|Comments (0) Posted by Joshua Glenn November 29, 2007 02:09 PM

Remember "Clocky," the cute, shag-covered alarm clock on wheels designed and invented by Gauri Nanda, a research associate at the MIT Media Laboratory? When you pushed Clocky's snooze alarm, it would roll off the bedside table onto the floor, then race away into some corner of the room (speed, distance, and route changed every time) before ringing again. Which means you had to get out of bed to turn it off. Well, Clocky has been reborn as the less cute Runaway Alarm Clock, sold by Hammacher Schlemmer and Sharper Image for $49.95. It's still ingenious… but I miss the shag.

This spring, Brainiac was suddenly visited by thousands of new visitors after Boing Boing linked to a post in which I compared the Grimpoteuthis -- a rare, deep-sea octopus pictured in nature photographer Claire Nouvian's 2007 book, "The Deep: The Extraordinary Creatures of the Abyss" -- to Pikachu, star of the cartoon "Pokémon." What’s not to love about it? Wannabe marine biologist-cum-Japanese anime fans will surely thank you for this 160-page journal featuring a "dumbo octopus," as Grimpoteuthis is also known, on the cover. Buy 'em for $8.99 at CafePress.com.

Got a budding brainiac in your household? For pre-readers, I've suggested the simple-yet-sophisticated "Bow-Wow Bugs a Bug" (Harcourt, $12.95), the Crockett Johnson-like story of an intrepid dog’s surreal adventures and mishaps; it was created by the dream team of children's author Megan Montague Cash and alt-comics legend Mark Newgarden, creator of the Garbage Pail Kids. And for Harry Potter fans, was it naughty of me to suggest an $18 "Dumbledore Pride" t-shirt -- sold at DumbledorePride.com since October, when J.K. Rowling outed the Hogwarts headmaster. Less sophisticated youth might prefer "Uncle" (New York Review, $16.95), a reissued British children’s classic from 1964 about a millionaire elephant constantly at war with his loutish detractors.