'Scientists Make Phone That Turns Into a Sunflower'

Headline of this morning's Reuters report that Dr. Kerry Kirwan (above) and his colleagues at the University of Warwick (England), along with materials company Pvaxx Research and Development, have created a cellphone cover made from a polymer that looks like any other plastic, but degrades into soil when discarded.

But here's the good part: they've placed a sunflower seed in the cover, so that when you toss the phone aside, the nitrates formed when the cover disintegrates will provide food for the seed to germinate into a beautiful sunflower.

"Let a hundred flowers bloom" may well be resurrected from the bad old days of Mao's China, as that country's booming cellphone industry creates a veritable Van Gogh's paradise.

FunFacts:

• In 2002, China became the world's leader in cellphone users

• In 2003, cellphone users in China numbered 237 million, for the first time surpassing land-line users (231 million)

• By the end of this year, China will have 310 million cellphone users

• Only 10% of the Chinese population has access to cellphones at present, with that fraction expected to increase sharply in the next few years

• By the end of 2005, the number of cellphones in China will reach 380 million, about 40% of the world's total

• How things have changed: in 1984, the majority of the 400,000 residents of Wushan, a Yangtze River county, did not know what a telephone was

• In 1984 China was one of six countries in the world whose proportion of phones to every 100 people was less than 0.5%

"So the last shall be first, and the first last." [Matthew 20:1-16]