Termites manage to power themselves by eating wood, which is a pretty neat trick. Sony has just come up with a battery that does the same thing: feed it shredded paper or cardboard, and it produces enough electricity to run an MP3 player.

You see it all the time in the movies: someone finds a pile of shredded documents proving just how evil the evil bad guys is, takes a picture, and sends it to their lame computer geek sidekick. Much clicking of mice and typing on keyboards ensues, and lo, the documents are magically reconstructed. DARPA thinks this is cool and wants to make it happen for real.

Don't know if you can hold out for the real iPad? Do you find yourself holding your iPhone up to your eye so that it looks bigger? It's okay, friend, we won't judge you. Not in writing, anyway. Although if...