Slashdot is linking to a story about an new CD made of corn:

Giving a new meaning to the term grassroots music, Pioneer Corp. said it had developed a next-generation disc made of corn to let the eco-conscious consumer dispose of data in the soil.

The Japanese electronics maker said the Blu-ray optical disc, which can be written once and stores 25 gigabytes of data, is 87 percent natural polymer derived from corn and biodegrades.

"If the starch polymer is incinerated, it will not emit dioxins and any other harmful chemicals," the company said.

While the disc can theoretically be eaten, it is coated by a 0.1-millimeter (0.004-inch) thick layer of resin and is too hard for even the strongest teeth.

Hopefully the first user of this new CD will be AOL... so when they send me their crap software, I can make popcorn out of it, instead of using it as a coaster. Actually I used to collect all those CD's at work a few years ago and created a big stack, seeing how tall I could make it. I never got it that high really, though I heard of someone else who did it, and got the stack to almost touch the ceiling. What do you do with your junk CD's? Come on - you know you have them. Not just all the AOL CD's... but all the CD's from groups that you're ashamed to admit you ever listened to.