According to movies and television it is a scientific fact that Nerds have long been plagued with debilitating social diseases such as acne, braces, limp wrist, four-eyes, and polio. But now the Wizards over at the Department of Genome Sciences at the University of Washington have crafted a method of casting the Sequence Genome spell on a fetus using only plasma extracted from the blood of a mother. With this conjuration the Wizard will roll for perception and may reveal any number of genetic cankers blighting the womb. In the end, of course, it’s up to the parents to decide the fate of their spawn.

In this video a handsome sounding scientists explains the benefits of the new magick:

.@BYTES1GHz is a single serving of undigested tech for the unfocused and/or unconcerned. Don’t be disappoint. Like. Enjoy.

Mars via Wiki Commons

Now that the Mars Science Laboratory Curiosity has landed safely on the set of 2000′s #SummerFlop, Red Planet, the Global Nerd Consortium can finally CUT TO:

INT. A CRAMPED AND STERILE SCIENCE LAB - NIGHT

Two mild-mannered molecular Biomancers are hunched over a petri dish. A single bead of sweat runs down ASIAN WIZARD's brow.

BLOND WIZARD

Eureka!

ASIAN WIZARD

At last. We've created a cellular organism that can survive the harsh conditions of Space Planet Mars.

#FutureOfStuff: Well I could be confused on the whole “Survival Of The Fittest” thing, but if you make a lifeform that can survive on Mars, couldn’t it totally kick our asses on Earth too? Let’s just hope they keep that little bug locked up tight till we’re ready to essentially Skeet all over Mars’ barren womb.

.@BYTES1GHz is a single serving of undigested tech for the unfocused and/or unconcerned. Don’t be disappoint. Like. Enjoy.

Bed bug via Wiki Commons.

.@BYTES1GHz is a single serving of undigested tech for the unfocused and/or unconcerned. Don’t be disappoint. Like. Enjoy.

#WhutItDo: SRI International is, like, my favorite wizard’s nest. These brains helped invent stuff like SIRI, the computer mouse, and those awesome gloves from Mission:Impossible – Ghost Protocol. Now the dudes are turning their magic against the Bed Bug menace. In a blog post, Rajeev Vaidyanathan, Bed Bug Wizard at SRI, was all, like, “[M]ost of the news coverage about bed bugs tends to focus on hotels or retailers, giving us the impression that we are at the highest risk for infestation when we visit these places. In reality, the most vulnerable populations live in low-income housing. They are the physically and mentally disabled, the elderly who may not be able to feel the bites, veterans, and those in homeless shelters, hospitals and psychiatric clinics. The bottom line is that we are failing these communities.”

The plan is to collect the critters one by one and flush them down a tiny toilet that cost a trillion $$$ in R&D—I assume. Why is the toilet tiny? Because they didn’t need a normal sized one. But, seriously: they’re going to cast Sequence Genome on the little devils and roll for perception till they can figure out something that works.

#TheFutureOfStuff: Well if Bed Bugs turn out to be super invincible, at least now we know—thanks to SRI’s supreme research skills—that we could just get rid of poor people. ZING!

Via Wiki Commons.

@BYTES1GHz is a single serving of undigested tech for the unfocused and/or unconcerned. Don’t be disappoint. Like. Enjoy.

#WhutItDo: JK. No bananas. But the wizards over at Washington University in St. Louis, MO, did find
something super unexpected while recording the neural activity of a pair of monkeys during some wacky
experiment. Apparently they could see what the little buddies were planning to do before they even did it!

#FutureOfStuff: Now, I’m no Brain Wizard, but if you can see something coming, chances are you can
catch it. By reproducing the neural ‘planning’ stage for an action, could you make a subject think it meant to
do something? Whoa.