Like your coffee hot, but not too hot. A new type of lid could help you identify if your beverage is too hot to drink. For instance if the lid is red, the beverage inside could burn your mouth. Smart Lid Systems has created a color changing plastic lid based on the tempature of your beverage. Best of all, they are only a penny or so more than a normal plastic lid. So it can be easily adopted by your favorite coffee shop.

The color changing beverage lid is the worlds first visual indicating lid system.

• Imagine a coffee cup lid that was smart enough to communicate to your client.

• A lid that glowed when it was hot, warning the client and all other pedestrians when being transported.

• A lid that communicated to your client that their beverage was fast becoming too cold to drink.

• A lid that showed that the lid had been correctly applied.

• A lid that offered a new media for advertising and branding.

• And a lid that could Speak every language in the world.

But if you can identify in advance if your drink is too hot, how can you sue McDonald’s?

Despite what you may have learned from BJ and the Bear, chimps are not nice people. A recent study in the behavior in chimps shows they lack an altruistic instinct. And will choose to reward themselves over other chimps everytime.

They devised an experiment in which chimps on one side of a window could pull a handle to provide a tray of food for themselves or to also give the same reward to a monkey in another room on the opposite side of the window.

Both groups of unrelated chimpanzees behaved in a similar way. They decided to reward themselves but not others, according to the research reported in the science journal Nature.

It sounds like an episode of Survivor to me.

The editor of the New Oxford American Dictionary has confirmed the use of fake words to track anyone copying their text. Akin to a watermark. In 1975 you could find Lillian Virginia Mountweazel in the New Columbia Encyclopedia. But there never was a Lillian Virginia Mountweazel.

“It was an old tradition in encyclopedias to put in a fake entry to protect your copyright,� Richard Steins, who was one of the volume’s editors, said the other day. “If someone copied Lillian, then we’d know they’d stolen from us.�

What did the New Yorker uncover to the be fake word in the 2001 New Oxford American Dictionary?

esquivalience—n. the willful avoidance of one’s official responsibilities . . . late 19th cent.: perhaps from French esquiver, “dodge, slink away.�

Way to dissemenate bad information!

In a world of SUVs and comically large vehicles like the Hummer. Researchers at Rice University have built the World’s smallest car, dubbed the Nanocar, it is 4 nanometers across and 3 nanometers long. The Nanocar is slightly larger than the cargo it is meant to carry.

The car is built from a single molecule. And thus the smallest you could ever build.

But why build a Nanocar? For bottom-up fabrication, of course. The Nanocar was built to transport cargo across a nanoscale surface, which has always been difficult to do gracefully. This cargo could then be used for fabrication on the nano level. For example, a fleet of Nanocars could carry the materials necessary to build a computer chip on a silicon wafer, and deposit them in the appropriate location. According to Tour, this provides a more graceful strategy for chip fabrication, and should enable more precise construction and fewer defects.

The axles really do work. And part of the research was proving it was rolling and not gliding across the surface.

At room temperature, strong electrical bonds hold the buckyball wheels tightly against the gold, but heating to about 200 degrees Celsius frees them to roll.

The next Nanocar will have an internal motor, which the team has already built, that will be powered by photons of light.

ipodsubwaymaps.com has received a new cease and desist letter. This time, not for so-called copyright violations over the use of subway maps, but from Apple. Apple objects to the use of the word iPod on the web site. So now the site is simply called iSubwaymaps.com. You would think that Apple would appreciate the added functionality and the free advertising for the iPod.

Yeah, you think you’re cool with your $85 Aéropostale belt? I think not! From the guys who brought you the original NES buckle, they have done it again, this time with the classic Atari joystick belt buckle.

I can’t help but say “Is that an Atari joystick or are you just happy to see me?”

They have a ton of funny pics on their website.

Getting tired of the same old M&M’s from the candy machine. Why not customize your own at M&M’s new web site.

Follow these steps:

1. Enter up to 2 messages
2. Select up to two colors
3. Buy a minimum of 4 bags (8 oz) at $9.49 each.
4. Taunt your friends/co-workers with your custom M&M’s.
5. Don’t share.

Sure it’s a little pricey. But can you really put a price on taunting your co-workers? I didn’t think so.

Ever wonder to yourself what it would be like to live in a bottle of water? Well Thomas Mottl did. He has a created a 360 image from the perspective of inside a empty water bottle.

How: Creative Thomas Mottl used four bottles; in three he cut a hole in different directions (center, edge, etc.) and the fourth he cut in half (for the up and down shots). He then shot six pics in a row, altering the bottles: two top shots, bottle open, bottle closed and one down shot.

Basic Instructions:

• Requires Quicktime
• Move around with your mouse
• Use Shift and Ctrl to Zoom in and out.

Even people who don’t play World of Warcraft heard about the Corrupted Blood spell. (Side note: the fact that wikipedia has an entry on it, blows my mind.) If you didn’t know, the Corrupted Blood event in WoW was not by design. It was a simulated virus that seemed to take on a life of it’s own. Now researchers are wondering if such a game could be use to model real-world disasters.

All Things Considered, October 5, 2005 · A recent outbreak of a “plague” in a popular online game has scientists considering how the virtual world may provide clues to what people would do in real-world pandemics. In the role-playing game World of Warcraft, a “corrupted blood” spell killed characters and affected players in unexpected ways.

In NPR tradition, text is not available, it’s streaming media only.

Leeeeeeeeeeeeeroyyyyyyyy Jenkins!

Dolphins have become the only mammals - other than humans - to recognise rhythms and reproduce them vocally. The researchers first rewarded the dolphins for performing different behaviors based on what music was played.

The dolphin spontaneously vocalised to the rhythms, so the researchers started to reward the male with fish whenever it matched its ’singing’ to the rhythms.

By the end of the studies, the scientists could show an object, such as the Batman doll, which represented a certain rhythm-vocalisation combo to the dolphin, and it would create the correct sounds both vocally and using the switch.

No word on whether the RIAA will be suing the dolphins. I just hope they have good lawyers.

Obligatory Simpsons’ Quote: Na-na-na-na-na-na-na-na Leader!