For the win: they should ensure that any waste heat from the unit is reclaimed and used to heat the air in the store/restaurant/whatever where the unit resides (since, if it's cold outside, the conditioned spaces will have some kind of heater on anyway).

This is generally true for a "cooling" units: they don't "create" cold: they merely move heat around (and generate a little more heat as they operate due to friction).

At restaurants, when I get the entree, I usually bisect it ... half to one side of the plate, half to the other.

I eat one half, treating the other as "not my food".

When I'm done, I immediately ask the waitrix to wrap up the rest to go ... otherwise it's too tempting (especially if others at the table are still eating).

Bonuses: fewer calories, leftovers for tomorrow, and room for dessert!

A string quartet, playing something frenetic in a minor key. A man and woman in silhouette. He gives her a ring. She puts it on. Close up of her shadowy hand, with bright ring, stroking man's face. Man suddenly doubles over in agony. Voice over:

"Permanent scars, courtesy of The Killer Diamond Engagement Ring. How else can three month's salary last forever?"

And hidden pr0n images will start appearing in on webpages across the world in 3 ... 2 ... 1 ... NOW.

I think that should be 10^18 (10 to the 18th power), not one thousand and eighteen.

Comment number twenty-three nails it.

It's very cool, but .... couldn't they have built a jawbone out of something else? Say, something that might not have to be removed yet again because of cancer?

Larry Niven used the term "organlegger" in his fiction to mean just this sort of activity. I'm sure a number of writers (like Cory) would have learned it from him, if nowhere else.

Have they independently verified that these are *real* memories? It's possible for the brain to synthesize a plausible-but-false memory even without drugs or electrodes.

Obligatory Tom Lehrer:

http://www.privatehand.com/flash/elements.html

It's the mural which makes this photo for me ... especially since it seems to depict water under a sky whose clouds mirror the dunes.

Too insanely poetic.

I don't know what's funnier: that the "savvy" criminals are borrowing from 20-year-old episodes of "The A Team", or that no one on the Border Patrol ever thought of this dodge before.

I love it when a plan comes together...

@michaelk99 : All I can do is give you my point of view:

First, I love steampunk for the same reason I love antique wood furniture as compared to the particle-board, veneer, and plastic crap we produce nowadays. The antiques are more beautiful, more durable (chip oak, it still looks good; chip laminate and it's like an open wound), and they have a sense of history about them.

I'm writing this at an oak desk which was made around 1900 and will probably be around in 2100. That provides an enormous sense of comfort and "place" in a world of disposable things.

Steampunk has that same aesthetic. In the early-to-mid 20th century, technology became increasingly less simple and less "organic". Simple base materials of wood, copper, oil and glass -- and big chunky mechanical parts like wheels and gears -- were increasingly being replaced by aluminum, plastics, industrial lubricants, circuit boards and computer chips.

When I look at a train from the 1890s, I can see how all the parts go together, and I can even imagine myself capable of building one given the basic raw materials (and the machine shop of my dreams). Nothing requires a clean room or microscopic engineering tools. It's technology I can relate to -- "open source" in the physical world.

Now, that's just the Victorian aesthetic. But there's an added fantasy element of steampunk too: the idea that you could build a robot or a time machine with wheels and brass gears and maybe a handful of exotic material like Cavorite.

This type of Steampunk embodies the romantic idea that all our technological marvels (and more) might exist, but in a way that makes them more comprehensible, durable, and accessible to the common folk.

And that's what I like about it.

Oh, and @forgeweld: BoingBoing is free, and no one is forcing you to click the links or read the articles.

"Scotty, if we give him the formula for transparent rubber, we'll be altering the future."

"Why? How do you know he didn't invent the thing?"

And yet all I could think of was this ...

http://wondermark.com/d/102.html

@5 Not in the "get more energy out than you put in, forever" sense, because that's impossible. I suspect that one of two things is going to happen:

1) Eventually the system will reach a state of equilibrium and no further reaction will happen; or,

2) The color changing will continue indefinitely, but only because it's powered by the ambient heat/light of its surroundings.

My money is on #1.

@13 Obvious ... If he was well-hung, he wouldn't have bought the "Pimpstar" in the FIRST place ...