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Some speculation that life might currently exist on Mars. Inconclusive, but interesting.

Wow. That's cool. Speculative though it may be.

Totally random hivemind question, because earnest Googling has got me very very little but I have deep and abiding faith in the Buffistas:

I'm looking for someplace to buy a particular toy - a little handheld thing the name of which I do not know. It's a little tin thing with a sort of pinwheel on one end; you push a trigger/button thingie and the pinwheel spins and sparks and makes a little grindy noise.

The last time I tried Googling for it, an hour's searching led me to an online toy store in England that called them something like "spinners" and cost an arm and a leg to ship them to the U.S. Has any USian Buffista ever stumbled across these things in a local toy store? They are beautifully hypnotic to babies and toddlers and my boss adores them, but he's down to one small box of used and battered spinners and the local toy store he used to get them from has closed.

Any leads anyone could give me on tracking down a handful of new, smart and sparky spinners would be received oh so gratefully and tangibly rewarded.

I know exactly what you mean, but have no idea what to call it.

We had those when we were kids. I don't think I've seen them in recent years, but you might try looking in stores that sell "funky toys". And no, I really can't define a "funky toy store."

eta: stores that sell a lot of educational toys and puzzles?

Damn it. EXACTLY what DX said. I can hear it and see it in my mind's eye, but I've never CALLED it anything.

Those spinners are sold in at least one of the funky toy stores here. JZ, do you want me to call them tomorrow and find out the name/cost/etc.?

Also, I'm prolly wrong but if you are using usted, you should say usted since the verb endings are the same for 3rd person singular.

That sounds vaguely familiar, but it's been forever since I've had to know.

The last time knowing Spanish came in handy was on my honeymoon, and most of that was spent in the hospital in such a bad state that I was barely speaking functional English, so the nurses were very forgiving of my atrocious grammar.

On eBay, it looks like most all sparking toys are either guns or robots. With the occasional Godzilla. But no spinners.

And I gotta say, they're freaking MAGIC. There was a toddler out in the hall yesterday, frustrated and miserable after being cooped up all morning long in the waiting room outside the ICU where his sibling was, weeping and doing that "uh-uh-uh melting down any second now" howling, mere inches from hysterics in the hallway, and I grabbed a spinner and started spinning it in his face. He snapped his mouth shut in mid-howl, stared, and then broke out into a huge tear-stained smile.

Anyplace that has to deal with toddlers should have boxes of these things. And now we're actually down one, since I let him keep that one (it was hugely obvious that any attempt to get it back would just lead to an even bigger meltdown and it was worth the loss of a spinner to not have him exploding outside our offices, but still, down one).

And they're unfindable. Did someone manage to lose a finger or put out an eye with one of the sparks and get them banned or something?