How do novels do it? There must be plenty of Star Wars novels out there.

From http://science.howstuffworks.com/life/human-biology/two-lungs-one-heart1.htm:

Interestingly, when we are in the embryonic stage of development, we actually do have two hearts. The heart primordia (which describes the stage of the heart's development) in the embryonic stage is actually two hearts, which eventually fuse together into one heart with four chambers. Embryologists in the 1920s and '30s kept the heart primordia from fusing in embryonic frogs, and the frogs that grew up developed two hearts. The same also goes for our eyes. We begin with one primordia of the eye, which eventually separates to form two. If the primordia is kept from splitting, one central eye develops, like a cyclops, says Dr. Neff.

A quick web search reveals people who actually do (or did) have two hearts. Here's one about a guy who was born with 3 legs and two hearts!

In the summer of 1906 George Lippert died of tuberculosis at the age 62. The autopsy revealed his two hearts and also showed that one heart died two to three weeks before his eventual death. Doctors declared that if Lippert had not had tuberculosis he could have easy lived on for many years. He would have been sustained by his secondary heart.

An alternative to a super reliable pump is an array of less reliable pumps (like a RAID in hard disk terminology). If one pump fails, you can switch it out while the other pumps keep the blood flowing. Might want to have them mounted outside the body to make replacement easy.

Results are just as good, and they respect your privacy.

What all the big 3 gaming consoles seem to be lacking is the ability to make menu selections with either the motion controller or the regular controller. Too time consuming when you have to home-in on a menu selection for each of several levels of menus. Let me use the regular controller for that stuff and keep the dedicated motion selection for the gameplay itself.

Suppose an asteroid's path is changed during mining, putting it on a collision course with Earth (not necessarily on the first pass).

Rep. Alan Grayson on the NSA: American As Apple Spy

Seems to me that wifi-enabling the light switch would be more useful and cost-effective (for most people) than doing the same to the bulb.

Hopefully he doesn't fall into the "been here, done that" groove that so many older action hero actors seem to fall into (I'm looking at you, Bruce Willis). It's not exciting to watch. Make it a fresh challenge and put your soul into it.

If the NSA don't tell people what they're capable of or their algorithms, the problem space for criminals becomes much larger than if they know they have to avoid doing X, Y, and Z in order to avoid getting caught. I'm not trying to defend this huge spying dragnet, but perhaps that's part of the thinking behind keeping it so secret. The IRS doesn't publish its algorithms to find tax cheats, either, otherwise it would be much easier to get away with it. You could call that security through obscurity, I suppose, so maybe there's a way to improve security by allowing wider scrutiny, identifying loopholes and closing them.

How about forced declassification of any policy/program involving more than, say, 5000 people. That way actions on targetted individuals stay secret but actions on a populace (local or foreign) must be made known.

Someone's got their Microsoft hate-on with this "rape joke" insinuation. They should be sued for slander and/or defamation of character.

6,199,076 and 8,112,504

Just because a private company was smart enough to protect its own business by investing in appropriate infrastructure for its chosen location doesn't mean the rest of the area (let alone all us yankees) will follow suit.

Power, Internet connections, food, water. They've built a castle (complete with inner walls!) and a tornado is providing the siege. How long can they last?

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/health/healthnews/7576357/Muslim-staff-escape-NHS-hygiene-rule.html Pretty outrageous, but if they change their sleeves/gloves religiously, it's possible they will actually be cleaner than the doctors and nurses who only wash their hands 30% of the time.

I've been tempted to ask a doctor whether he's washed his hands but that seems a little like criticizing the chef who is going to cook your meal. Maybe he'll spit in your food.