I think there were some on the old tv show, The Adamms Family.

Then there was the Lost in Space episode, "The Great Vegetable Rebellion".
(on Hulu?)

As the Robinsons celebrate the Robot's birthday, Dr. Smith sneaks off in the space pod to a planet dominated by plants. After pulling a flower, he is accused of murder by Tybo, a carrot-man, who punishes him to an eternity of literal tree-hugging. The family lands to search for Smith and meets a purple-haired botanist named Willoughby who explains that Tybo is the one in charge. After Smith is transformed into a talking stalk of celery, and Penny grows into a flower bed, the Professor and Major West try sabotaging Tybo's moisture-control system to stop the plant tyrant.

Perhaps a more massive plant should be the subject of experimentation:

The Couch Potato.

Unfortunately while recycling works to extract useful fuel, since that is a small percentage of the total it does nearly nothing to reduce the amount of high-level waste posing a storage problem. It's also a very complex and hazardous process, far more so than refining raw ore was originally. An additional problem is that some of what is recovered poses even greater weapons-related concerns than the original fuel. France, which processes more spent fuel than anyone else, still does so with only a small percentage of what they produce.

Beyond coping with products of normal fuel production, operation and dismantling, Japan has vast amounts of contaminated material to put somewhere. Someone was joking that they should make another island out of it, and have some government, power industry, and banking officials live there.

So other countries are off-shoring fuel processing, and requiring that the waste not be shipped back. If that's not obscene exploitation of a poor country, I don't know what is.

A significant percentage of the population doesn't have electricity. I doubt that a free-phone will make them forget that for very long. I suppose those people would also have to be given some sort of solar charger?

Although much has be said about incompetence and insufficient infrastructure related to the recent wide-scale power outages, A few things suggest that many have jumped to conclusions. Here's another possible explanation:

1) They routinely have shorter outages from a practice called "load shedding" (what the U.S. called "rotating outage blocks"), so high demand along with insufficient generating capacity should not cause a grid failure. The frequent outages seen by many are of this non-failure variety.

2) The first outage wasn't at a time of peak demand, being around 2 AM.

3) The outages occurred during a minor geomagnetic storm and the arrival of a CME (coronal mass ejection) that followed a flare event. Storms sometimes may trip protective circuits without major components failing.

4) The last wide-scale outage there was on January 2nd, 2001, also during solar events seen of the previous solar maximum.

Or people could have merged wireless toys with tractors.

They'd be a bit much for crowd-control (Soylent-Green style) but might be helpful in scraping up nuclear messes?

There's nothing like a vehicle that can make its own parking space.

So that's why the dolphins are talking so fast. I can't even understand them.

Maybe the caffeine is getting some extra kick from some Japanese cesium.

Protest!!! Don't use guns.

(tractors would be entertaining however)

Test it in a modified VM?

Will it run on Surface?

Let them trade the shares for credit default swaps.

This one seems too closely tied to actual (vaporous) announcements.

But for variety feel free to put some blame on Facebook, or something new like propaganda from the Department of Commerce. (I wish they or someone would help restore some component/tooling/hardware manufacturing)

Then figure out who is behind other things (all better stories)-
Some stock was so volatile today that trading was suspended. I wonder who.
Facebook will likely slide more after it coming out that 80% of clicks billed were bots.
1.5 meters of rain expected in Thailand.
Swedish Teddy Bears infiltrate Belarus via air-drop
Solar storms possibly contributed to Greenland Melt and power failures?
NHK show Today's Close Up on July 4th reported that a U.S. power plant had (previously) lost the ability to monitor a reactor due to the Stux. It was a one sentence mention.

I wonder how long it would take Windows 8 to "arrive" at 300 baud?
3 months is a long time. In this era there should be a service pack by then.

McCains VP choice was simply misunderstood. The role of the vice president is to be a spare. McCains young but clueless choice made sense if the VP was viewed as spare parts.

From his venture-capital experience he's had practice at seeking out what profits him while avoiding risk. So when he knows that revealing his tax returns or saying more about owning 9% of a Chinese electronics appliance manufacturer that many U.S. companies outsource to, he knows to clam up. (That is also a lesson some learned from Richard Nixon, whose approval rating went down every time he spoke publicly). McCain had full access to Romney tax returns and went with Palin instead. That says something. Romney also heavily panders or at least pays momentary lip service to whatever group he's targeting at a particular moment. It's not moderate to be unwilling to publicly support any restrictions on assault weapons, it's pandering. He comments and actions later often don't agree. Ask any log-cabin Republican about that.
Saying whatever profits or otherwise suits him, he cannot be trusted.
His non-scripted comments in the EU down he's not very good on his feet. Unless you're impressed with him not even remembering a British officials name and calling him Mr. Leader. While he promised transparency and press access including to fund raisers on the way, but he denied them access in Israel. Policy comments made relating to Iran were reckless. Describing the differences in quality of life between Israelis and Palestinians as "cultural advantages" with no mention of settlements or occupation could best be viewed as Palinism.

He only answered three questions for the press traveling with him, and a Romney representative actually said "Kiss my ass" and "shove it" to the press while in Poland.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/mitt-romney/9441636/Mitt-Romney-aide-in-new-kiss-my-ass-gaffe.html

And, in catering to older confused Republicans that think the cold war is still going, he names Russia as number 1 geopolitical foe. This as Russia grants NATO supply routes to Afghanistan. (A bunch of supply trucks coming from Pakistan were blown up recently).

I wonder what he thinks of the Swedish Teddy Bear invasion.

Do they realize that shilling actually fosters more hatred of them?
I wonder where they outsource the shills from.

Research has been uncovered that dates back to 1953

http://archive.org/details/Cat_Women_of_the_Moon

I'm not talking a commercial product, just a hack that would be interesting to see. Certainly the desktop OSes won't scale down to smartphones well. But I suspect that whatever experiments Steve passed over in the labs would still be interesting, and probably more fun/functional than what the other guys will ship. Access to OS X apps on something that wouldn't get used otherwise would be a fun twist.
Apple has done quite a bit with multi-touch. They could likely apply it in new places, maybe toggling it on for sections of the screen or a flat KB.