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I decided to check upon the infrequently updated Pokey the Penguin web comic and was met with a giant blue link that simply said “YOU BUY IT!!!!!” This took me to an eBay auction for the very ownership rights to Pokey the Penguin himself. On any other day I would be shocked, intrigued, and saddened all at once, for this would mean the end of Pokey along with the possibility of me (or someone else) becoming The Authors. Today, being what it is, I am not convinced. If the auction is seen through its seven days without being cancelled, though, maybe we can all get together and buy ourselves a web comic. SMASHING

UPDATE: Turns out it was a joke after all. You almost had me going, you sneaky The Authors!

So let’s talk web comics. There are a million of them. Literally. I counted. Yet amongst the vast multitudes to be had online, only a very few stand out to me. I’ve already mentioned Pixel, which documents the daily and often bizarre lives of our favorite digital image constituents. As you may imagine, today will cover Dinosaur Comics.

After going back through the archives, you might think I’m pulling some elaborate joke on you. “All of these comics are the same!” you’ll yell, throwing your drink in my face. As I dry myself off and silently laugh at your wasted beverage I’ll declare, “Au contraire, you square!” The comic features the same configuration of the titular dinosaurs day after day, but in different- sometimes wacky- situations.

We are normally greeted by three characters: T-Rex, Utahraptor, and Dromiceiomimus, but are occasionally treated to guest appearances by the Devil and none other than God himself. Also, sinister raccoons and cephalopods have been popular recently. T-Rex would be the “main” character, appearing in every panel and having the most poses. Being forever locked in a house-car-girl crushing sequence doesn’t seem to get him down, though, as he is always able to bring up an interesting and frequently misguided topic. The unchanging canvas lends itself to consistently clever dialog and funny punchlines, since the author needn’t worry about getting the panels drawn. And, if once you’re done reading a given comic you still want a little more, check the image’s ALT tag and the “comments” link at the top of the page. Further insight and/or comedy is held within these hidden fields.

Lastly, it seems to me that the author wants his readers to feel awesome, and he awesomely does just that. It’s awesome all around. You don’t have to take my word for it, though; the community of fans speaks for itself with a huge page of reader submitted stuff. Awesome stuff.

On this, the first day of 2005, I feel compelled like so many to title my post with a pun. I mean, make a list of my New Year’s resolutions. What do you mean it’s the fifth? I’ve had enough of your cynicism.

Monitors have resolutions. The UN has resolutions. I’ve never really been one for resolutions. Still, now is a time for looking forward and possibly sideways. Diagonally, if necessary. But mostly forward!

• Update my blog regularly. Seems simple enough. I give it until March.
• Finish editing my novel. Seems simple enough. It’ll probably take me ’til October.
• Stop using puns. I was originally going to title this post “I’m Feeling List-less,” but that wasn’t quite as relevant. I give this resolution about 11 nanoseconds.
• Go back to school. I believe there is nothing more important than – HA! Really had you going there, didn’t I?
• Turn my web page into a leading center of commerce and scientific exploration. Wait, that’s Deep Space Nine.
• Come up with some actual resolutions. This whole post really went nowhere, didn’t it?

So there you have it. Proof that I am not a resoluting kind of guy. I could mention my “to-do” list that would wrap around the planet three and a half times, but it’s full of terribly mundane things like “get a new chair,” “fix the broken fence,” and “put a person on Mars by the end of the decade.”

As comics go, PIXEL (which I will henceforth stop refering to in all caps) is kind of strange. The comics are spartan and make sense only in reference to themselves (and other Pixel comics). They take great liberties with the concept of comedy, yet are almost always amusing. A whole world of pixels, vectors, polygons, and voxels has been created with clever and random connections. The entertainment value is bolstered by the structure of the dialogue (which is nearly Pokey-esque) and the haiku-like comments the author writes beneath each comic. The rest of his site isn’t half bad either.

Why, atoms of course! And what’s smaller than that? Protons, electrons, neutrons, gluons, gravitons, and even things that don’t end in -on like up quarks and tau neutrinos! And beyond that of course, there are strings, and then hopefully nothing else, otherwise M-theorists will have a lot more work to do. Woo, tangent.

What I didn’t know from my travels through the everyday world of things like cars and people, which are all very easy to take pictures of because untold megazillions of photons are bouncing off of them every second, is that somewhere along the line some smart people got together and figured out how to take pictures of atoms. And soon, they hope to go smaller than that! First of all, why didn’t anybody tell me we had actual pictures of atoms? Does this mean that they could actually isolate a single molecule of, say, caffeine and then slap that on shirt a la Think Geek? Further, if we will soon be able to image things half an angstrom in size, can I get a picture of a proton? Actually, I don’t think that would work. The nucleus of an atom is very small realtive to the whole atom, much smaller than even half an angstrom (which is very small indeed, two million times smaller than the width of a human hair. More if you have thick hair!).

What this has made me realize is, that while I know how small an atom is, I don’t truly comprehend it. It’s kind of the same thing with space. I know the size of the moon and how far away it is, and I can deal with that pretty well. Same with the planets (though Jupiter’s Great Red Spot, a storm three times larger than Earth, is always astounding). It’s a bit trickier with the sun, but I can still get a good handle on that. But when we start talking about stars that are a thousand times larger than the sun, at distances so vast that light takes centuries or more to cover it, or nebula that span dozens of light-years, my brain stops trying to associate meaning to the sizes. I think it’s why I’m always dissapointed when I hear the sizes of colossally huge things like galaxies and say, “Two hundred thousand light-years isn’t that big.” Oh it’s plenty big, I just can’t wrap my head around it. And so it goes for the subatomic. “Protons aren’t that small. Why haven’t you given me a picture of one yet, science?” Well? I’m waiting.

NASA is at it again. Just days after their questionable logic surrounding the Mars rover Opportunity, they are now reporting that there may be an ice volcano on Saturn’s moon Titan. Slow down there, NASA! This isn’t an episode of Star Trek, this is a little thing we call reality. You can’t just make up words like “cryovolcanic” and expect us to accept it. You can’t have an ice volcano, either. The word “volcano” derives from the Roman god of fire Vulcan. Hey, it’s another Star Trek connection! Imagine that! And besides, we already have a name for molten ice. It’s called “water.” Look scientists, we know that you’re smart. You don’t have to come up with crazy discoveries every week to keep us interested in space. Now, don’t get back to us until you find moon whales swimming in the “molten ice” under Titan’s surface.

Ice volcano: suprisingly similar to a normal volcano tinted blue.

Apparently, Opportunity received an unexepected power boost recently:

Overnight, Opportunity’s solar panels produced between 2% and 5% additional power, perhaps due to Martian dust that had settled on them being removed.

I think I’ll skip this Opportunity for a joke.

Suuure, NASA, whatever you say. Dust magically fell off of the rover’s solar panels. Wind? Where do you think the rover is, Earth? And somehow the power increase happened overnight? You know, night? As in no sunlight for the solar panels to collect? Explain that one, o mighty scientists. You couldn’t hypothesize your way out of paper bag. I could come up with a better theory in my sleep. More plausible scenarios include:

• Opportunity had the power all along but it was stored in the metric system
• Opportunity stole the power from Spirit
• Friendly Martians gave the rover extra power
• Unfriendly Martians accidentally gave the rover power
• Dinosaurs gave the rover extra power
• NASA made up the whole mission
• There’s no such thing as Mars

Put that in a rocket and smoke it, NASA.