May the Force be with You

The dream of every child — having the ability to use an old Jedi mind trick on his or her parents in order to skip those Brussels sprouts — has become closer to reality. A toy manufacturer will soon be selling an interesting device called the Force Trainer which allows the wearers of its EEG sensor to control the floating position of a ping-pong ball within a plastic tube: the more the wearer concentrates, the higher the ball floats. While I sense the novelty would unfortunately wear off after the first 30 seconds or so, it gives us a new hope that soon we will be able to punish our adversaries with lightning from our fingertips.