Cooling yourself with the sun?

Why not?  SolCool has just announced the pending release of its new Millennia Version 4, a solar-powered air conditioner.  (You can run it off batteries or a wall outlet, but it's optimizedto run off DC straight from a solar panel.)  The SolCool unit provides 18,000BTU of cooling on 500W of input power, giving it an energy efficienty rating of about 30, three times the minimum efficiency rating required to achieve federal Energy Star certification.

Building on ... er, with sand

richspk posted these photos from a sand-castle building contest in Vancouver, BC.  There's some stunning work here.