The Hub

Dork Tower #804 by John Kovalic

Read all the Dork Towers that have run on GeekDad.

Find the Dork Tower archives, DT printed collections, more cool comics, awesome games and a whole lot more at the Dork Tower Website.

Dork Tower #802 by John Kovalic

Read all the Dork Towers that have run on GeekDad.

Find the Dork Tower archives, DT printed collections, more cool comics, awesome games and a whole lot more at the Dork Tower Website.

With Wondercon 2010 in our sights, we thought it would be fun to revisit the awesomeness that was our chance to interview Bruce Timm, the mastermind behind the last two decades of great animated DC superheroes at last year’s ‘con. Probably the best part of this interview is learning that he’s perfectly happy continuing to play with the toys Warner’s and DC have given him, and so we can expect plenty more coolness to come. Enjoy!

Photo from Pres. Obama’s former Senate website

Everyone always dreams of getting super powers and using them in the eternal fight for good (or, in some cases, fame and fortune). But what if it wasn’t about the BIG issues? What if you could just use a super power to help in day-to-day life?

Now, everyone will jump to powers such as being bullet-proof for police officers, or having water powers for fire fighters, but that’s still a bit on the heroic side. What we’re talking about is practicality! With a little Twitter crowd-sourcing, we’ve compiled a list of super powers and the day-to-day jobs they could be practically applied to. Feel free to add your own in the comments!

1. Super Strength: Fruit Pickers – instead of relying on those tree shakers, one person should smack the ground and all the fruit comes down
2. Super Speed: Postal Workers – Would make the daily rounds go a lot faster
3. Weather Control: Elementary School Teachers – the ability to turn off the rain when it’s time for recess
4. Elasticity: Plumbers – who needs a rooter device when you could just reach down a pipe and clear the clog?
5. Phase Shifting: Electricians – nice to be able to re-wire a house without knocking a lot of holes in the walls
6. Clairaudience/Super-hearing: Librarians – like they don’t have it already
7. Flight: Roofers – saves a lot of time going up and down the ladder
8. Multiplicity: Daycare Workers – when the kids start going a little crazy, there’s always someone around to help
9. Accelerated healing: Florist – makes working with roses all day a little less intimidating
10. Acid Generation: Blue Jeans Maker – ’cause acid wash is coming back, baby!
11. Animal Mimicry: Zoo Keeper – for those days when the Bonobo is sick, but the crowds still want to see poo flung
12. Echolocation: Caddie – always find your client’s golf ball no matter where it landed in the rough
13. Invisibility: Movie Theater Usher – catching those camcorder pirate will be a piece of cake now
14. Invulnerability: Crash Test Dummy – the job, not the band
15. Kinetic Absorption: Football Linebackers’ Coach – they can grade tackles very subjectively
16. Merging/Combining: Wedding Planners – the caterer and coordinator combine to become the minister
17. Self-detonation or Explosion: Stunt Man – makes the effect budget a lot cheaper if the stun man blows up without additional pyrotechnics
18. Sonic Scream: Quality Control in a Glass Factory – it’s not the wavelength, it’s the frequency
19. Superhuman Breath: Barista – steam the milk with a straw
20. X-ray Vision: TSA Employee – might make the lines move a little faster
21. Telescopic Vision: Tornado Chaser – because the school teacher got the weather control
22. Wallcrawling: House Painter – no more scaffolding
23. Waterbreathing: Pool Cleaner – for that hand-washed look
24. Astral Projection: Museum Docent – saves a lot on new shoes if you don’t actually have to walk around
25. Empathy: DMV Employee – it could revolutionize the service
26. Telepathy: Waiter/Waitress – Your glass of water would always be refilled… until you weren’t thirsty anymore
27. Animation: Housecleaner – efficiency the likes of only Mickey Mouse could imagine
28. Darkness or Shadow Manipulation: Black & White Photographer – anyone could be the next Ansel Adams
29. Density Control: Kevin Smith – then he’d never get kicked off another Southwest flight
30. Disintegration: Busboy – ensuring clean plates down to the molecular level
31. Elemental Transmutation: Pawn Broker – every gold chain is 24 carat
32. Gravity Manipulation: Personal Trainer – you’d only need a bar and one pair of dumbbells for a complete weight training facility
33. Light Manipulation: Real Estate Agent – then every house could have “great afternoon light”
34. Magnetism Manipulation: Supermarket Shopping Cart Wrangler – get along little doggies
35. Mass Manipulation: Carnival Game Runner – win the “guess your weight” game every time
36. Molecular Manipulation: Short Order Cook – make sure the plate of grits that’s been sitting waiting for 10 minutes is still hot when the waitress shows up
37. Probability Manipulation: Dungeon Master – because you never want your players doing TOO well
38. Radiation Manipulation: Animal Rights Activist – you could save the cat every time
39. Time Manipulation: Tax Accountant – take on more clients and spread the work out
40. Air and Wind Manipulation: Air Traffic Controller – constant headwinds make for quicker take-offs and landings
41. Cold and Ice Manipulation: Bartender – no need to put ice in the shaker
42. Earth Manipulation: Organic Farmer – watch out, Monsanto
43. Plant Manipulation: Topiary Artist at Disneyland – talk about a dream job
44. Electrical Manipulation: Prison Guard – keep the prisoners on their best behavior by dimming the lights, and then humming “another one bites the dust”
45. Fire and Heat Manipulation: Furnace Repairman – “Sorry, sir, but it seems to be working fine now”
46. Water and Moisture Manipulation: Spa Attendant – it’s a sauna, it’s a steam room, it’s a sauna, it’s a steam room
47. Illusion: Politician – sometimes the jokes just write themselves
48. Shapeshifting: Car Salesman – when the first guy goes to “get his manager,” can you really be sure it’s a different person?
49. Summoning: Valet – make sure the right car shows up immediately
50. Telekinesis: Bowling Alley Operator – just in case the pinsetter breaks down

Special thanks to the following for their suggestions: John Madden, Luke McKean, Jenny Williams, Chuck Gamble, Matt Blum, Matt Rower, Matt Middleton, D.A. Schweiss, Bactchan, Joshua Miller, Nathan Barry, floax, Lorri Miller, kpereyra (my 1st autograph!), and Jonathan Liu.

Much of this list of super powers was culled from Wikipedia.

Dork Tower #801 by John Kovalic

Read all the Dork Towers that have run on GeekDad.

Find the Dork Tower archives, DT printed collections, more cool comics, awesome games and a whole lot more at the Dork Tower Website.

The GeekDads talk about Portal 2 buzz, and the new OK Go video. Enjoy!

GeekDad.com is the parenting blog at Wired.com, edited by Ken Denmead, Matt Blum and Chris Anderson. It is a community of like-minded geeky parents writing about our experiences raising our kids in the digital age, and about our obsessions with technology, family-friendly projects, and pop-culture. The GeekDads podcast is a bi-weekly discussion of anything and everything that impacts us as geeks and parents.

You can subscribe to the podcast in iTunes.

You can subscribe directly with this RSS feed.

You can download GeekDad Episode 62.mp3 directly.

Or you can listen in this embedded player.

Related articles by Zemanta

• The GeekDads Episode #61: He Shoveled 15 Tons of Snow (wired.com)
• The GeekDads Episode #60: iPadCast (wired.com)
• The GeekDads Episode #59: Please Give Generously to the GeekDad Haiti Relief Fundraiser (wired.com)

The secret ingredient for cool kid’s projects is a low-temp glue gun. It will glue almost anything instantly, including fabric (great for zany fashions or costumes), styrofoam, cardboard, and wood. It’s the “instant” part that really appeals to kids, who otherwise lose interest in projects while glue dries.

[This post by Kevin Kelley originally ran in March, 2008]

The other day I set up my son and a friend with a large box of popsicle sticks from the craft store, two glue guns, some cardboard boxes and a challenge. Could they make a bridge that would span at least 10 feet?

They quickly glued up trusses on the floor. Then they glued cross-bars across the two parallel trusses.

Then they glued a cardboard “road” on the bottom. They decided they wanted to drive some remote control zip-zap cars across this awesome bridge, so they glued a cardboard railing inside.

We hoisted the bridge, which successfully spanned the library in my office. I must admit that I was surprised the popsicle stick bridge was able to support itself over that span since low-temp glue is not very strong. But it worked.

And the road was drivable.

MONOCHRON – open source retro clock from adafruit industries on Vimeo.

They call it something else (for understandable reasons), but it still satisfies our grumpy old geek rant: “When we were kids, video games had two lines and a dot, and we LIKED IT THAT WAY!”

Hardware hacker “Ladyada” has released an open source retro arcade style table tennis for two clock called the MONOCHRON. According to MONCHRON project page they “wanted to make a clock that was ultra-hackable, from adding a separate battery-backed RTC to designing the enclosure so you could program the clock once its assembled.” It includes a ATmega328 processor (with’Arduino’ stk500 bootloader for easy hacking). It’s completely open source hardware, all firmware, layout and CAD files are yours to mess with.