The stalwart and doughty researchers over at Philips have been working on an interesting project for a few years now. It's called the iCat, and though it looks similar to the menagerie of virtual pets that have come and gone, it's actually a refreshingly practical research endeavor.

It's hard to fathom now, but many years ago, I was but a youthful undergraduate with a triple major in Physics, Mathematics and Toxicology. (Actually, the Toxicology curriculum was more like independent study, conducted in the various taverns and inns of our quaint college town.) I remember at one point becoming aware that the university offered a degree in Packaging. This was amazing to me -- you could actually major in gift-wrapping?

Good news this week from the world of law enforcement. Evidently, a man in Berlin was charged with disturbing the peace after hurling his computer out of his apartment window in the middle of the night. Police found the street below littered with the shattered remnants of personal computing technology, and identified the culprit.

Why, when I was a boy, we didn't have these ultraslick consumer gaming devices for entertainment. No sir, we had to make our own toys! Of course, even at that tender age, I was a little different from the other kids. While they fashioned yo-yos and paddleballs, I devised a series of handheld gamma-ray projectors. Many were the happy summer days I spent accelerating the evolutionary development of the frogs and lizards in the local pond. Ah, youth!

I don't know about you, but I prefer my applied sciences to be dramatic and full of spectacle. Ideally, with pyrotechnics involved. I've spent a good part of my career exploring various theoretical avenues regarding detonation and deflagration, but always with a practical goal in mind: I want to see stuff blowed up real good. So I was heartened to see this slight variation on the theme: The Portable Hurricane Machine.

I love tech media trends. The iPhone hype crested for several months before giving way to the inevitable iPhone-hype backlash. Now, with the anticipated retail launch on June 29, a second wave of hype is rolling in, promising to be even more ridiculous than the first.

I can't prove this, but I have a working hypothesis that fluorescent lights , of the variety typically deployed in offices, are more than simply depressing -- they can actually suck the life-force right out of you. I did some work for Quantico back in the 1970s, and for security reasons was assigned to an office approximately 17 doors away from the closest natural sunlight. The overhead fluorescent lights gave everyone a delightful corpse-like glow, and began my lifelong hatred of argon plasma.

I can't prove this, but I have a working hypothesis that fluorescent lights , of the variety typically deployed in offices, are more than simply depressing -- they can actually suck the life-force right out of you. I did some work for Quantico back in the 1970s, and for security reasons was assigned to an office approximately 17 doors away from the closest natural sunlight. The overhead fluorescent lights gave everyone a delightful corpse-like glow, and began my lifelong hatred of argon plasma.

Interesting item today on the solar-powered gadgets beat. Reminds me of my days at NASA, when I headed up a program that put solar arrays in orbit to beam microwave energy back to earth. I'm not kidding . The program was called off when we accidentally broiled several offshore islands in the Caribbean.

Reporting from the 2007 Software Exhibition of Korea today. I've had a frustrating few weeks in the lab -- my attempts to introduce artificial intelligence to the undergarment industry are going nowhere fast. Turns out, people don't really want Smart Underwear . And the AIs aren't crazy about where they're being dispatched, either. So I figured: road trip. South Korea in June is always lovely. Anyway...

An outfit called TaxiTech announced today it has won approval to offer passenger touch-screen computers to New York City's 13,000 or so taxicabs. Clearly, TaxiTech has recognized our current cultural crisis -- a desperate need to increase the time we spend in front of a computer monitor.

All right! More news I can use. The New York Times recently reported on the latest in biometric convenience -- the fingerprint-scanning home door lock . Unlike ultra-high end biometrics used for corporate or military security, the SmartScan lock is simple, relatively cheap ($199), and self-contained. That is to say, the fingerprint recognition system is strictly local and built into the mechanical hardware of the door lock itself. It can't be hacked.