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I woke up at about 3 am this morning, as is my habit these days, and instantly my mind was filled with worries and concerns, stresses and sorrows. But this time, rather than allowing myself to wallow in that misery, I decided that I wasn’t going to let myself go there. For a change, I said to myself, I’m going to stop those thoughts dead in their tracks and focus on some happy thoughts.

Later in the morning as I was perusing the latest news on the web, I came across a link to a Time Magazine list of the best (according to them) inventions of 2008. What a great find! I thought to myself, and began to go through and read about all of the entries on their list. Some of them I can live without; for example, their number one choice, the “Retail DNA Test”. You can send a sample of your saliva to various companies and they will tell you all about your genes, including your predisposition to 90 different traits. Well, personally, I don’t care to worry about the chances of my getting various diseases. What would be the point in that? It would just give me something crappy to worry about at 3 am which would ruin my happy thoughts plan entirely.

However, there were some other great inventions that I didn’t even know about on that list of 50, and it makes me wonder why the heck don’t we see these stories in the headlines for a change? I know North and South Korea have a lot of problems with each other but I get tired of hearing it, and frankly it’s been 56 years, can’t they get over it?

I’d rather hear about this new algae biofuel that they’ve been working on at Arizona State University, which would practically be identical to gasoline, but without the carbon. There’s a lot more to why it would be such a great replacement for gasoline, so click on the link to read all about it.

But wouldn’t it be nicer to read headlines that talk about new biofuels rather than ALWAYS having to read about our planet being in peril? I mean, I understand that a lot of people don’t accept climate change yet, but you’ve gotta give a person (especially me) hope!

Then there’s Eistein’s Fridge. You betcha this guy was smart! He invented a refridgerator that uses amonia, butane and water to cool the interior instead of that crappy, atmosphere-destructive freon. It wasn’t all that efficient when he was working on it, so scientists at Oxford University have taken the invention and improved upon it enough to bring it into the 21st century. You mean I can have a fridge that works just fine but doesn’t poison the atmosphere? Thank you Albert, you are the gift that keeps on giving.

Okay, how about this? Smog-eating cement!! I’m not kidding. They mix an extra chemical into cement, and it reduces the nitrous oxides in the area by as much as 60%. It’s being tested in Milan, Italy. I’m all ready to email my city council and ask them if they can start mixing it in our city sidewalks.

There are other inventions on Time’s list that I’m not so excited about, like social robots. You know, those robots the Japanese seem to love that have facial expressions and can interact with you. I’m thinking that I’m not that desperate for friends.

Yet. Maybe when I’m 90 and nobody wants to deal with me, I’ll get myself one of those robots to give me a bath with a smile. He’ll be really cute and tell me how gorgeous I am, and he’ll feed me grapes and maybe even chew them for me.

And unless Nike‘s new Zoom Victory track spike running shoe can actually do the running and huffing and puffing for me, I’m not too excited about how light it is. Can it make me light? Lighter? I don’t like running anyway.

So I was pretty happy to find a list of inventions that included a few things that could end up making our future a little brighter.

You can read the whole list at Time Magazine’s website. And I’m vowing to report right here whenever I find more good news out there in the universe. ‘Cause I just know it’s out there somewhere…

IJ