Spending our Tax Dollars on (or at) the Speed of Light

DARPA is giving Sun Microsystems $44 billion to "explore the high-risk idea of replacing the wires between computer chips with laser beams."

So I've pretty much decided working for DARPA, or for a company contracted by DARPA, would be the best job ever. They fund projects like the Urban Challenge, where independent teams build robotic cars that drive themselves and race for a prize (usually in the millions). And other projects like the robotic dog I posted about earlier.