There’s definite story potential in this Harper’s article about the business of International Marriage Brokers. Although it’s just touched on, there’s definitely an element of long tail, Internet-enabled new economy magic here.

The thing is, planetary rovers are pretty cumbersome. There’s a lot of places they can’t get to very easily. So in place of one large exploration device, MIT techies propose sending a swarm of baseball-sized miniature probes to Mars instead, where they could roll and bounce around the surface, gathering data and exploring in great detail. It would mean a lot less worries over attrition rates, for starters.

Whoa, stop the press! Sandia National Labs have had a great idea. It’s called energy surety – basically, you supply power to, say, a military base, not from one centralised power station, but from a distributed network of generation technologies! Huh? Someone thought of it before? Well, maybe Sandia will actually get the US military to buy into the idea…you never know your luck.

It’s always pleasant when scientists affirm beliefs you’ve held for a long long time. I, for one, will be looking forward to the worldwide replacement of middle-management pen-pushers and desk-jockeys by computers that will inevitably do their jobs far more effectively – not to mention logically, and without hogging the best desk space.

That carbon dioxide stuff – what a bummer. We have so much of it, and urgently need to get rid of it somewhere other than into the atmosphere…what’s that you say? We could just store it in caves and cavities underground? Well, that’s a fine idea you have there, but what if it just starts leaking back out?