Wired has a fantastic post on MIT students Justin Lee and Oliver Yeh, how figured out how to take the above picture for . . . wait for it . . . $148. They put a camera 18 miles above the earth -- that's half-way into the stratosphere and high enough to see the earth's curvature and the yawning maw of space -- for less than $150. Their ingenius contraption used a helium-filled weather balloon towing a styrofoam beer cooler. Inside the cooler was (1) a digital camera with an 8 gig memory card set to take pictures every 5 seconds, (2) instant hand warmers to keep the electronics from freezing; (3) a GPS-equipped disposable cell phone to act as a homing beacon once the rig landed. (From that altitude, the beer cooler took 40 minutes to fall back to earth.)