TIME's Best Inventions Of 2008

Well, it's almost here. The end of 2008. In the coming months, we have many things to look forward to, primary among these the inevitable "Best Of 2008" lists from almost every single media facet on Earth. Kicking it off in style was TIME Magazine, with their annual "Best Inventions" list (to be honest, last year's list was, like, a billion times better). I'm here to be your guide to what some editors somewhere determined to be the top breakthroughs of the year. In the number one slot, we have The Retail DNA Test, as deserving an invention as any. The $400 home package presents itself as a saliva test that can apparently determine your predispositions to disease and genetic aberrations to a fairly accurate degree. The inventor of the test (pregnant at time of press) trusts the analysis enough to tell TIME that her unborn son has about a 50% chance of developing Parkinson's Disease. The reason that the test is so controversial is the unexpected avenues that it may open up. If the test becomes common practice, thousands will be unable to secure health insurance, as many companies would be able to instantly determine your predisposition towards costly illnesses. Why would they insure you if they know that they'll end up paying for a tumor to be removed? The article goes into this with a bit more depth, check it out. The remaining 49 inventions on the list range from the innovative to the downright wacky, often times causing me to go "Best invention? More like worst invention." (I was sleepy, cut me some slack). I think they just got lazy after doing so much work on the number one spot. That's the only reason I can come up with to explain the presence of three electric cars (four if you include the futuristic MonoTracer), which are apparently not just for gay people anymore. If TIME Magazine is to be believed, they're making a comeback.

The list also has the baffling inclusion of the following: a creepy-ass robot (not to be confused with the creepy ass-robot), the new Mars rover, Obama's campaign, the camera work that made Speed Racer possible, that invisibility cloak they've been working on for over a decade now (nice photo, guys), the newest prime number, a "new" ping-pong serve, instant replay for umpires (as if baseball didn't go on long enough already), and easily the weirdest inclusion on this list, a piece of pretentious art.

Among the cooler things on there, we can find The Doomsday Seed Vault (when I was doing research for this, I stumbled across the phrase "biopiracy". Much cooler-sounding than it is), the Memristor (trust me, it's cool), the Synthetic Organism, bionic contact lenses, cheap solar panels, cement that cleans the air while it just sits there, and a new way to eat food. Honorable mention goes to Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog, just because I believe in my geeky, geeky heart that Joss Whedon is a god. There are a bunch more, but these are the ones that stick out, so go ahead and read the rest if you want. That's about it, except for this freaking awesome John Coltrane rendition of "My Favorite Things" from The Sound of Music. Righteous.