Our second son left for college a couple of months ago and took everything with him except a pile of dirty laundry and five huge boxes of junk. The one other reminder of him is the monthly science magazine he subscribed to and I've been too disorganized to get forwarded to him.

This weekend, I sat down to page through the magazine, which featured the latest advances in science, technology and physics. I'd never really looked at it when my son was home, and now, with a little bit more time on my hands, I thought I could benefit from a little mental exercise.

In a cruel twist of fate, I was born with the mind of a jock and the body of a nerd. I am neither intellectual nor athletic. You might not know it to look at me: I wear bifocal glasses most of the time, so a lot of people think I'm a big reader. In reality, I just have weak eye muscles. Maybe, I figured, if I were to struggle through this monthly scientific journal, I could add a few points to the old I.Q.

After a few minutes, though, I got bored with the articles. Well ... I didn't really get bored. I was just lost. One article was about a "microwave emitter that extracts the petroleum and gas hidden inside everyday objects" and another was about startling advances in "holographic data storage." I don't know what these things are, and, let's face it, fancy graphics and 3-D diagrams weren't gonna help. Eventually, going through page after page looking for something, anything I actually understood, I found myself at the back of the magazine, where they have 10 pages of ads aimed specifically at the brainiacs who pay for subscriptions.

Well, at least that was interesting. I might not be able to read the stuff smart folk read, but at least I could see what kind of things they buy. Of course, they had ads for scientific stuff like Bunsen burners and test tubes. I was not surprised to find that there were plenty of ads for laser pointers, microscopes and coin collections. There was an ad for metalworking equipment, necessary, I suppose, for building home robots. And a lot of the ads were for geeky products like geodesic dome houses, radio-controlled toy helicopters and fishing poles that fold down to the size of a pen. I'm surprised there weren't ads for pocket protectors and ultra-high-waisted khakis.

I also noticed plenty of ads trying to take advantage of that creepy nexus where science and lust collide. There were full-page ads for all kinds of pills, herbs and potions which could make you more of a "man," all of them with names that can't be printed in a family newspaper. I pictured nutty professors by the score dropping their calculators and picking up phones and credit cards in eager, but slightly creepy, anticipation.

I saw plenty of ads for pheromones -- "synthesized human sex attractants" that lonely poindexters could add to their cologne to attract women. According to one ad, 74 percent of men who used the product increased their sex appeal to women during a scientific eight-week study. (I felt a little sorry thinking about that 26 percent of scientists who were so nerdy that even a dose of concentrated love potion couldn't bring on the ladies.)

On the next page was an ad for "Liquid Trust" spray, a little bottle of chemicals nerds could spray on women to make them more trusting. It would be a lot easier for geeks if they could just find a chemical that made a female's eyesight go blurry and her judgment go haywire, at least for a little while. (Oh, sorry, it's called champagne.)

If all else fails, there was an ad for a tiny little wireless camera, designed, I suppose, for nerds who can't capture women in their arms and instead will settle for capturing them on their hard drives. It was clear that the geeks of the world are after our women, and they have the technology to take them. It was chilling.

Ladies out there: If a nerd approaches with an amorous look in his bespectacled eyes, don't smell him. And if he pulls out a little bottle of spray, run like heck. If you don't, next thing you know you'll end up housekeeping in a geodesic dome, waiting for hubby to get home from the lab so the two of you can go through his coin collection.