boredIt's about time that the military came up with a viable beam weapon. We've been promised this sort of thing in sci-fi movies for decades now and progress has been unbearable slow. Now, finally we have something that can actually light people up like microwave popcorn. It's fantastic. No more tear gas, which didn't seem to work anyway. Instead, we can just plug in the "Sheriff", turn the knob to jiffy pop, and fry the hippies and rioters at a distance. I can't wait to see them wheel this sucker out at the next G8 or world bank protests. I love the smell of BBQ'ed anarchist in the morning. It's still not as effective as my idea of simply strafing the crowd with a belt-fed machine gun when they become violent, but I'm sure it's less of a PR mess to clean up afterwards.
In other news, there is this research whozit that follows the moods of live journal in an attempt to use it as a snapshot for how the world is feeling. It tracks those little emoticons that you pick to accompany each post multiple times a day and then puts together a graphical representation of how each one changes with time. For example, apparently the weekend before last was a very unhorny time for a lot of people for some reason. I think they're trying out some predictive models or something now. Who knows. Maybe LJ moods become a way of prognostication.
