Scientists are in oversupply reports the Washington Post; the dream of earning one's Ph.D. and eventually running a lab has never seemed farther away. Which brings me to wonder what Apple Computer is doing with all its cash. If I were Tim Cook, I would set up a skunk works along the lines of Bell Labs or Xerox PARC, the legendary research centers that pioneered the technological discoveries without which Apple Computer would never have been possible. I would try to pick the best scientists and let them pursue independently directed long-term basic research. That's how we got the transistor and the graphical user interface (GUI), for example. We have the scientists. Let's put them to work.