craveytrain

well, last night we had another softball game. This is the 2nd game in our 3rd season. We have yet to win a game. Sounds pretty pathetic, but if you consider our starting point, it isn’t as bad as it seems. We are competetive now, which we weren’t before. Like last night, we lead the game through the 4th inning. Then we fell apart. Well, I say we, I mean the team, cause I was spectacular. I went 4/4, which puts me at 6/6 for the season. That is a big improvement over the last 2 seasons for me. 3 of the hits were line drives right back at the pitcher. One of them he narrowly ducked in time to avoid. However, I readily admit it’s a team game and the whole team has to do well to win. We’ll get there.

But the fun part was running the bases. Granted, I was fricken tired, I’m not used to running the bases that much, but it was a blast. The best is how big the eyes of the catchers get when I come sprinting home. You see, I’m 250lbs, so I’m not a small mass, but I still move pretty quick. I would imagine I can still pull a sub 5 sec 40 yard dash. That’s a lot of weight moving at a pretty decent rate towards home. When I ran home last night the catcher was standing on the plate at first. But I ran full throttle off the bag and his eyes got really, really big. He stepped out of the way by the time I was at the plate, and good for him, cause I wasn’t stopping. That’s the thing about momentum, I can get up and moving fast, but stopping and turning around, fugetaboutit….

So, I was reading down my list of other people’s blogs I read semi-regularly, and was linked to an an article on antimatter. I read the article, where it gave a very brief description and I came to the realization that I know nothing about antimatter. I had heard of it, sure, in sci-fi films. But I really had no idea what it is. So I start to research (by searching on google of course). Top hit is a surprisingly comprehensive antimatter page for kids.

Now, this started to disturb me. I thought antimatter was something new, cause I really hadn’t heard about it, and I consider myself pretty educated. I was surprised to learn how old the idea and proof of said antimatter is. This site wasn’t even like a science site. It was site geared towards youth explaining it. That made me feel like a fool for not knowing about something that kids could understand. Unfortunately, this is not a new feeling for me.

I am a knowledge whore. I really like learning. It’s amazing I didn’t finish college considering my thirst for info. None-the-less, researching random stuff is one of my favorite things to do when I get bored or am just looking for something to spark my brain back into functioning. But the more research I do, the more I learn how ignorant I am. There is little I hate more than feeling like a fool. So it’s an uncomfortable feeling that forces me to scour the web on a topic so I can feel knowledgable about it and retreat back to my facade of wisdom.

This triggers a revelation. Why am I ignorant? I graduated high school with relatively high marks. I’ve done a lot of the college basic classes, just not the major specific stuff. I can come to 2 possible explanations: 1) my high school education sucked and was dumbed down for the masses (no question the high school does this now, but I wasn’t aware of it when I was there), or 2) I just wasn’t paying attention. Either is quite possible, but if there is so much shit I wasn’t paying attention to, how the hell did I graduate in the top 10%? 90% of people are more ignorant than me in my graduating class? That’s a scary thought. Signs point to the former.

That’s not even the reason I felt the urge to post. Now, I was relaying my thoughts to a coworker, and I was talking about the article with the Air Force personnel, so I tried to send him the link. Of course I had already closed the window and couldn’t remember where I had gotten the link. I thought it was on cnn, so I go to cnn.com and search cnn for antimatter. That, as you would imagine, brings up their search results page for antimatter. Simple enough, except look at the ad on the right of the results.

If you know anything about antimatter, you will know it’s very hard/expensiveto produce and next to impossible to store stable at any volume. To date, about 1 billionth of a gram has been produced. But they have it for sale on ebay… Well then, that solves the supply issue, let’s get some WMDs, baby!