craveytrain

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!

This entry was posted on Friday, October 8th, 2004 at 2:34 pm and is filed under sharing. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.