Slashdot Mirror
The Year In Ideas
No_Weak_Heart writes "The New York Times Magazine (registration required) presents its annual compendium of ideas. The list ranges from acoustic keyboard eavesdropping to land-mine-detecting plants to water that isn't wet. What catches your fancy? And what do you think is missing?"
A list of new and innovative ideas hidden behind a required login.
Agile Artisans
Flying cars.
The whole point of Liberal Arts education is to produce human beings incapable of doing something worthwhile, thus successfully eliminating them from the work pool (yay, more jobs for others). For decades, nay, centuries, this scheme has functioned flawlessly, keeping the World well oiled and working like a chronometer. And now, someone's trying to spoil it by teaching Liberal Arts majors Real World Stuff. I swear, if this is allowed to continue, you'll face the consequences pretty real soon.
Man is a slave because freedom is difficult, whereas slavery is easy.
"Worse, cows might be attracted to the weeds growing over mines, with disastrous consequences."
I think it's pretty obvious we have a winner.
http://www.aaplblog.com/ - News about Apple Inc.
They're the only things that will survive a nuclear war, right? So why not build bomb shelters out of them?
Secondly, given that anything buttered always lands butter side down, has anyone considered buttering a kitten's back? Caught between the duel imperatives of landing on it's feet and landing on the butter, it would rotate endlessly in the air. Stick on some magnets and voila, instant free energy
Slashdot: News for Nerds, Stuff that matters only to them
Yes, many many people have considered and attempted to build the butter-cat core reactors. Currently more energy must be put into the system than can be drawn from it.
As the core spins, the butter is flung outwards, causing the system to shut down quickly. Researchers have overcome this problem by cooling the system and containing the core inside a super-conductive bread 'bottle'. As any final year physics student will tell you, cold butter can not be spread onto bread, infact, it is repelled by it. By surrounding the core with high-intensity bread fields, the butter is pushed towards the centre of the reactor, sticking to the cat. Of course, this system requires large amounts of energy.
Much research has gone into this technology, and scientists believe that they have a design that will produce more energy than is put into the system.
Construction of the prototype is due to commence shortly, however it is an international effort. Currently progress has been halted because France and Japan are arguing over who should have the reactor on their soil. Supporters of the french claim that their skills in making french toast will allow for a higher quality core. On the other hand, Japan's extensive collection of 'hello kitty' products puts them at the forefront of feline technology.
Where ever the prototype is constructed, this is an exciting time to be alive. Cheap, clean power is just around the corner.
printf("Goodbye cruel world!\b\b\b\b\b\b\b\b\b\b\b\b\b\b\b\b\b\b\b\b");
That's a great idea. Then once you get the enemy to trust that the plants will tell them where the mines are, you swap out a batch of reactive plants with non-reactive plants and when they go strolling through recklesslly, blammo.
PeTA probably has plans about the cats to be used, as well as the poor cows that get milked for the butter.
And it has to be butter. Oleo (margarine) has about half the effect that Butter has.
i bet the year in patents is a much longer list than the year in ideas.
I can just imagine the plans that People for the Eating of Tasty Animals would have for cats and cows.
"I think so, Brain, but 'instant karma' always gets so lumpy." - Pinky
"Decepticons FOREVER!!!" - Ravage
Last time I checked, water only contained hydrogen and oxygen
Obviously you don't have well water.
Alex.
Another invention that gets piled with the :>
screen doors for submarines, and the
spaceship that only works underwater
Eh.. If PETA has a complaint about cat-butter reactors, we just need to remind them that the cat not need be living to have the desired effect as far as I know. Kill a couple dozen cats, they'll beg the scientists to return to the humane live cat reactors.
.sig: Now legally binding!
Clean? Obviously you have never replaced a litterbox. Buttered cats also have a tendency to toxic spills of hairballs, a tendency likely to be increased by buttering. And then there is the still unsolved problem of herding.
In my opinion, the butter-cat core reactor will never be more than a footnote of science. Of course, while it will never achieve large scale production, it will certainly continue to be a very popular lab demonstration.
"Lord, grant that I may always be right, for Thou knowest that I am hard to turn" -- A Scots-Irish prayer
If you want some real dehydrated water I'm happy to sell you some at a low price...