An air valve, to fit snugly over your freshly drilled trepanation hole, to allow you to control at will the level of air getting to your brain, thus enabling you to increase or indeed decrease the intensity of your psychic powers, as and when needed.
The valve dial will be made to look like the chromed dial on a safe and will be, rest assured, satisfyingly clicky.-- calum, Mar 20 2007 Trepanation http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trepanation [calum, Mar 20 2007] Baked! http://www.internat....co.uk/m/meansm.jpgOr not... The 2000A.D. character 'Mean Machine Angel' has a dial on his head. [Jinbish, Mar 26 2007] Amanda Fielding http://sonner.antvi...R/images/amanda.jpgreach me the self tapping screws please Igor [xenzag, Mar 26 2007] A little more on Amanda Fielding http://skepdic.com/trepanation.html [calum, Mar 26 2007] And more on Dr Bart Hughes and Ms Fielding http://amasci.com/hole.html [calum, Mar 26 2007] Does this count as baked? https://www.youtube...watch?v=IRyAuSE949w [notexactly, Dec 16 2015] This will never work - and I'm going to prove it.... reaches for Black and Decker +-- xenzag, Mar 20 2007 It'll need an 'exam' setting to stop those taking public examinations from taking advantage of extra psychic powers. ...reaches for Dremel...-- hippo, Mar 20 2007 ouch... reaches for aspirin.-- po, Mar 20 2007 Could you put a water-lock in it, so that when your brain starts to ferment, you know it's time to knock off the beverages?-- m_Al_com, Mar 20 2007 There've been too few sensible, practical inventions like this here lately. [+]-- imaginality, Mar 20 2007 To get an accurate reading on a blonde!-- the dog's breakfast, Mar 20 2007 Needs a pop culture setting .... adds a valve to connect to a vacuum pump....-- Galbinus_Caeli, Mar 20 2007 (knocks one off for [m_AI_com], with a nice frothy head on it)-- lurch, Mar 20 2007 Is it cheaper to order a whole set of these valves at once ? My lungs, kidney's, liver, heart and an undefined muscle in my right foot would be very happy to receive some air now and then.-- scampi, Mar 20 2007 I think it only works (?) with the brain.-- po, Mar 20 2007 sp.: trepidation.-- MaxwellBuchanan, Mar 20 2007 If it had a little window on it, you could get a brain-tan on a sunny day.-- AntiQuark, Mar 20 2007 "It's awful stuffy, let me just open the..."
"KEEP YOUR HANDS OFF OF MY FOREHEAD!"-- ye_river_xiv, Mar 21 2007 Forehead mounting, eh? I must admit that I hadn't envisaged it that way. I'd always thought that it should be positioned on the side of the head, pointing away from the skull in the same way as chimneys point from roofs in the drawings of children. The dial, I thought, would poke through the thatch of your thick and lustrous hair, like a volcanic plug, and would shine and glint in the light of the thin spring morning. With this arrangement, the dial could be easily masked by strategic placement of a jauntily angled fez, the fez being, of course, the hat of choice of psychics and mystics since time immemorial.
Forehead mounting is certainly a bolder option. It's a statement. Perhaps the main disadvantage is that you would lose the element of surprise, should surprise be part of your modus operandi.-- calum, Mar 21 2007 In general (and I learned this from black-and-white horror films) the kind of surprise that results in someone discovering that you've got what is basically a huge bolt protruding from your head isn't the 'good' kind of surprise.-- hippo, Mar 21 2007 If you look at the picture on the linked Wikipedia page, it is pretty clear
(a) that the patient's head does not seem to be attached to any sort of body. I'm not sure if this is a consequence, pre-requisite or motivation for the trepanning.
(b) The surgeon is going for a "through the ear" trepanation.-- MaxwellBuchanan, Mar 21 2007 What happens when you get on a plane then ascend to x thousand feet?-- the dog's breakfast, Mar 21 2007 Simply crank the dial up to 100 and use Maximum Psychic Powers to envelop your self in a protective ring of magickal fire.-- calum, Mar 21 2007 A small pump attachment should allow for fine-adjustments or just for fun.-- zen_tom, Mar 21 2007 This sounds about as useful as a hole in the h...oh, right.-- nick_n_uit, Mar 21 2007 Can you pour the spirits right back in and avoid all that nasty blood alcohol content business?-- Galbinus_Caeli, Mar 21 2007 That, or just for quick effect.-- Galbinus_Caeli, Mar 21 2007 A check valave would be useful accessory, allowing one to keep certain things from entering or leaving, depending of course on how it was installed.-- nuclear hobo, Mar 21 2007 It's not forehead mounted?
Hmm, with all this psychic mumbo-jumbo I thought forsure it'd be conveniently placed to include a lens leading to the "third eye" in the middle of the dial.-- ye_river_xiv, Mar 22 2007 I predict that this idea will receive no less than seventeen positive votes. PthhhhhhhhhT!
Make that eighteen.-- 2 fries shy of a happy meal, Mar 22 2007 Lungs? I don't need no stinkin' lungs!-- croissantz, Mar 24 2007 I want one - 20-- po, Mar 24 2007 [calum], was this intended for the public? I think you have a new market to fill. Unless, of course, we are all psychics.
So, will there be possible upgrades? I think you could suck the alcohol from the brain using one of these, which would work wonders on the drunk driving problem. Oh wait, but you could also pour more in. Hmm.-- daseva, Mar 24 2007 //was this intended for the public?// That's an interesting one. I'm swithering. Part of me - the happy joy fun time flower fairy part - believes that advanced psychic powers and conscious control over those advanced psychic powers should be a benefit held by every man, woman and child on the planet. Another part of me - the cape-sporting, moustache-twirling nefarious ne'er do well part of me - thinks that these fools, these meek, thoughtless mental sluggards are not fit to drag themselves up to my elevated psychic plane. No! They are good for little but pathetic, malnourished servitude, eking out their soot-smudged existence by polishing the brass of the stands of my alchemickal equipment. Why should the lumpen, witless proletariat have sight beyond sight, access to and power over their own febrile subconsciouses, let alone over those of others?! No! No, I say! Never. But then again, there's money to be made from this. Lots of money. However, given the level of preoccupation here with the possibilities of having another means of inserting alcohol into the body, I foresee that if I do take the Valve to market, I shall have to draft a fairly robust disclaimer.-- calum, Mar 26 2007 If only I had another bun for thee! *gigglin'w/glee*-- the dog's breakfast, Mar 26 2007 No, you'll have to draft a draught.-- shapu, Mar 26 2007 I have an amazing photograph in a book of Amanda Fielding, just after she drilled holes in her head... blood streaming down her grinning face - must have worked as she seems very happy. Have found one on net, but not same as grinning example in book.-- xenzag, Mar 26 2007 Thank you, xenzag; I'd never heard of Amanda Fielding before. Very interesting.-- calum, Mar 26 2007 "Pfffft"
<air rushes in to fill 1400cm3 of vacuum>
<eyes unglaze, slightly>
<clicks "For">-- wagster, Mar 26 2007 If you make your head into a bud vase, does that make you a Volkswagen? Perforated bun.-- elhigh, Apr 09 2007 I read somewhere that the human brain sucks up a greedy 20% of the oxygen we breath. With a direct source of oxygen to the brain, would that leave an extra 20% more oxygen available to the rest of the body? Could we have psychic powers *and* super strength?
(or if not 'super,' then at least pleasantly enhanced?)
(please?)-- Desidiosus, Apr 10 2007 Our brains also burn more than 20% of our food intake. So you should be pouring glucose syrup into your trepanation valve too.-- Galbinus_Caeli, Apr 10 2007 Or suck it out. Call it weight loss (though the valve may weigh more than the lost fat).-- daseva, Apr 10 2007 Well, I take Ginkgo biloba to increase oxygen to my brain, but this just may be the fast track to success:-) I can't wait to take it to the streets after I get one installed. Those criminals won't know what hit them. I'll need some sort of a costume... but what do you think of the name "Fissure"?-- MrDark, Apr 11 2007 Isn't anyone going to mount a mind-blowing supercharger over the hole?-- lurch, Apr 11 2007 Oooh, now if trepanation could be used to generate not only psychic powers but also an increase in physical strength then I could sell [lurch]'s supercharged valve to Olympic athletes. Queries from the IOC about the cheatingness of having such a bodymod could be neatly circumvented by means of Mind Control. But we'll need to be careful, yes. The last thing we want is a freakshow of steroid-abusing, crazy-eyed psychically-gifted athletes each trying to give the others the horrors as they pound round the track, wailing and clawing at the ants under their skin.
[MrDark], I think it's fine for you. I don't think it'd make much of a disguise for me.-- calum, Apr 11 2007 If someone says you're not open minded enough, just open it a few clicks! This is worth a croissan'wich.-- luxlucet, Apr 11 2007 /the dial could be easily masked by strategic placement of a jauntily angled fez/
calum, I hope you live in a place where there is occasion to wear costumes of ones own device. If so the dial and fez (with according regalia) would be excellent. Somehow I associate this angle on psychic power with Aleister Crowley; you could do worse than to consult his repertoire for regalia ideas.
The trick, and why you must start work on this now, is that the dial must go "click click" when turned by charmingly tipsy partygoers, but not come loose from your head.-- bungston, Dec 15 2015 /The last thing we want is a freakshow of steroid-abusing, crazy-eyed psychically-gifted athletes each trying to give the others the horrors/
This is actually near the middle of the pack of the things I want.-- bungston, Dec 15 2015 //This is actually near the middle of the pack of the things I want// I'll see what I can do.
[normzone], that is alarmingly close - including the drilling! - but the valve there, looking so like your own awkwardly-placed stopcock, is clearly designed for controlling the ingress or egress of steam or water, rather than, in the case of the Trepanation Valve, MIND POWERS.-- calum, Dec 17 2015 random, halfbakery