According to New Scientist's Feedback column this week, watching the film Armageddon (you know, Bruce Willis saves world from asteroid menace - sorry, does that spoil the plot?) is part of the US space agency Nasa's management training programme. But why?
If your first thought was that they're training NASA managers to put the proper PR spin on any doomsday asteroid, the door to the paranoid ward is on your right.
In reality, the screenings are just a game for NASA's space geeks: who can find the highest number of impossible things in the movie? The record, Feedback is told, stands at 168.
Which raises the obvious question on the computing and technology side: which is the worst film for the number of impossible things done before (and after) breakfast? We can offer Independence Day, with its "Apple laptop plants computer virus in alien spacecraft's OS" (I mean, come on, Jeff Goldblum wasn't even running OS X!).
So come on then -- The Net? Swordfish? Which is the one where computer people spend the most time going "Argh!" and "Oh no!" and "That could never, ever happen!"
Of course if it's Armageddon, then that's a film heading for a very special place in film history.
