>> Of course you can, just substitute "cool stuff" for a subject that you 
>> actually find cool.
>
> Such as...?
>
> There's lots of stuff that interests me, but none of it is exactly "new" 
> or "revolutionary".

People are doing PhDs in lots of things that you seem to be interested in, 
quick Google results:

http://www.liv.ac.uk/~su14/knotgroup.html
http://www.ph.tn.tudelft.nl/PRInfo/reports/msg00512.html
http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/groups/vision/default.aspx

Just try googling "PhD "+thing you are interested in.  You will be surprised 
what is on offer.  I was surprised to hear from my 4th year project 
supervisor that if I wanted I could carry on my project "how brake pedal 
feedback in vehicles affects driver response" as a PhD, I would have thought 
such a specialist topic to be of no interest to anyone, but now I see how 
companies would be very interested.

> Well, I guess it depends on what precisely you wanted to tackle. Either 
> way, I suck at research, so...

You seem to have demonstrated otherwise here, frequently you seem to have 
taken ideas and material and then expanded upon it yourself.  It doesn't 
matter if you were unaware that someone else had already done the same, if 
you were doing a real PhD you would search a bit more thoroughly before 
starting work.

> Yes, but does anybody actually employ PhDs? Most of the ones I know of 
> still hang around universities...

Over half the people working at my employer in Oxford have PhDs, it's mainly 
a research lab (my department is the exception, we deal with developing 
technology for specific customers).  Surely a lot of people at your place 
have PhDs too?  I think a lot of people who hand around Universities do so 
because they want to (they just enjoy academia) rather than because they 
can't find a job outside.

People with the PhDs are the ones inventing new things at the concept stage, 
then the Engineers like me get to work out how to actually make it into a 
product :-)

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