What's more unnerving than magnetism, ghosts, and unpurified water? Gadgetmongers who purport to protect us from metaphysical monsters that go bump in the New Age night. We took to task some of their hocus-pocus.
Roundup: The Exorcists
Learn How We Rate ##### Wired
The instructional DVD is pure Internet gold: You'll be certain that the four sub-infomercial-quality tracks must be comedy sketches ... but they're not.
Tough to install—add the cost of a plumber to the already high price. At least a 50 percent chance that the science used to develop it is 90 percent bullshit.
Roundup:
- 1/10A complete failure in every way
- 2/10Sad, really
- 3/10Serious flaws; proceed with caution
- 4/10Downsides outweigh upsides
- 5/10Recommended with reservations
- 6/10Solid with some issues
- 7/10Very good, but not quite great
- 8/10Excellent, with room to kvetch
- 9/10Nearly flawless
- 10/10Metaphysical perfection
1. DDP Safe Space 1 | $98
According to the intergalactic magi at Dimensional Design Products, "harmful earth and man-made radiations [sic] can cause serious biological damage." To protect you from these ubiquitous radiations, DDP has crammed some metalized plastic into a mesh-top box that looks like a paperweight from Logan's Run. The device is supposed to work like an emotional ShamWow, absorbing negative energy, but I think it actually created more when I realized I'd acquired one more gadget that didn't work.
2. KYK Genesis Water Ionizer | $1,995
You know you've got a home run when the packaging is emblazoned with Korean writing and photos of Ed Begley Jr.—because everyone knows Asian = UNQUESTIONABLY WISE and Ed Begley Jr. = THE LEFT TEAT OF MOTHER NATURE HERSELF. The ionizer attaches to your kitchen sink to deliver alkalized drinking water, which theoretically makes your body inhospitable to illness. Well, that's only if you can hook it up. I had trouble: After screwing in the new faucet head and pushing some buttons, the screen turned red and said "EO" while my tap sprayed liquid failure all over me and my kitchen.
3. TriField Natural EM Meter | $195
The TriField tells you the strength of a magnetic field, an electrical field, and a radio or microwave. The point? Ghost detection. Once you measure and pool the data, what happens is ... I don't know. The three stapled pages of instructions supposedly explain, but in terms so confusing I felt as if I were trying to upload the data to my brain by scraping it onto my eyes with a toilet brush. According to the spirit meter, either the Hollywood Forever Cemetery is paranormally vacant or my house is ghost Bonnaroo; the two places had identical readings.
WIRED You can use it to find true north.
TIRED I don't care about finding true north. There's no indication of what normal readings are, so you have no idea whether you're sensing a spectral infestation or frozen spinach.
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