in all the "best of" lists there was one line missing: best phrase for receiving scientific funding:

"A big concern is the protection of valuable information in the case of a nuclear catastrophe," says information technologist Pak Chung Wong, of the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory in Washington State."

thanks chris for reminding me. anyhow my favorite futuristic storage device is not a bacterium but a protein from a bacterium they call bacterio-rhodopsin. maybe because of its history, maybe because of its salty flavour of west-east scientific relationships or maybe because also back in the 70ies, a guy got military funding easely by saying: with this research we will be able to build a better computer than they have in the us. during the cold war juri owtschinnikow didn't have to say more.