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Heh...looking at my little stats at the bottom of this page, I've been getting a small spike in traffic, like 175 unique frontpage visitors instead of my usual 100 or so. I wonder if its that reference in the December Popular Science I previously mentioned? It's easy to forget how much bigger mainstream print is than most of the web. I need to be extra-interesting these next few weeks, hopefully some people just dropping by will become regulars.

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News Funny of the Moment

For months, soldiers at Camp Doha, Kuwait, have been wearing T-shirts that say, "Operation Iraqi Freedom: Mission Accomplished." But recently a new T-shirt has appeared suggesting that the mission may be more open-ended.

It reads, "Operation Iraqi Freedom: Established 2003."

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Articles of the Moment
Speaking of all things Popular Sciencey, MSNBC has Seven flights of fancy that fizzled...where are the flying cars, indeed. In a similar, albeit very retro, vein of technology not living up to its promise, Wired reports on a failed idea for a dual cannon that would launch two cannonballs, connected by a chain, to take down big swaths of soldiers at once. Cute idea, the technology wasn't up to the accuracy needed to launch both balls exactly at once, however...

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Sneaking of the Moment
Took an extended lunchbreak today to catch a matinee of The Matrix: Revolutions. First off, if your company has a reasonable pseudo-flextime policy, I highly reccomend doing this. It's an extremely satisfying way to catch a movie you're jonesing to see, about the cost of a video rental. And you know? I thought it was a pretty good movie over all. I know the reviews all said it sucked, and a few of my friends advised me not to bother, but I was satisfied by its apocalyptic tone and way of wrapping up the trilogy. Admittedly, maybe it would've been better if the first movie was just all there was, but I had a good time.

There's a laugh-out-loud funny site, The Matrix: Resolutions (WARNING: MASSIVE SPOILERS), that makes fun of a lot of the directions some of the scifi geeks speculated or wished that it would end. Well worth the read.

For an opposing view, from the same site, and still with MASSIVE SPOILERS, check out 50 Reasons to Reject The Matrix. A bit toungue-in-cheek (sort of like The Onion's Jackie Harvey's The Outside Scoop meets the Simpsons' Comic Book Guy) but still some good points. One quote:

The cybernetic army that took over the Earth, says the film, was solar powered. The human resistance responded by blotting out the sky.

A desperate measure, but surely the only choice they had. It was that, or, I don't know, postpone their counterattack until evening.