Burlingon-IBM turn semiconductor scrap into photovoltaics
...first Ben & Jerry's, then Phish, now this!

Here's another cool story out of PhysOrg, about a Vermont IBM team who have pioneered a way to turn semiconductor waste in to solar grade silicon for PV panels (well, actually, that part is not brain science, the new trick was more about erasing IBM's intellectual property before it leaves their hands and ends up on someone's roof). And this is good news, because in the semiconductor world, 250,000 silicon wafers are used a day (and 3.3% of that get scrapped on the factory floor) and so there are about 3 million silicon wafers sitting around waiting to be made useful. They would look nice on my roof :p

...speaking of computers, have you heard the one about OLPC the one laptop per child group has been looking at that run on cow power? No, seriously, and not what you might think, from some cow-poo biofuel or biogas.. but actually hooking the Mumbai cows (for example) up to pulleys and generating electricity from the cows... I dunno, sounds cool, but a little too much like the Professor from Gilligan and not enough like a gizmo from a Brice Stirling book = (