Google Trends

Work was interesting today. Not because of what I was working on, but the fact that in the two weeks I was gone two people left and three people arrived in my group.

Anyways, tonight I've been surfing the internet. It's not always a good thing to do. It might make you jealous when you find out that your wife is jogging through mountain canyons after work. I mean, she doesn't even like running! Life's not always fair, I guess. But I did find something new that I thought was cool.

Google usually comes up with neat stuff. I found out they're trying something called "Google Trends", where you can plot the relative volume of web queries and news stories. It is interesting to see what the news seems to think is important versus what the public is interested in. For kicks, I checked "moon" versus "mars". Moon is twice as popular as Mars, but Mars only receives more press when its an anniversary for the Mars rovers. You can even do three-way comparisons, like with "space shuttle" vs. "space station" vs. "spaceship one". Interesting information for space policy debates.