2667 Things that go boom.

Saturday, November 21, 2009

Ignorance is not knowing something you should know.
Nescience [ne'-she-ence] is not knowing something you should not be expected to know.
If someone calls you ignorant, correct them. You are probably nescient.

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It's been a while since I visited here. Miss Thunderfoot is still alive, and I don't understand how. She drinks water, sleeps in the nest box in the kitchen (I put a heating pad under it), and occasionally wanders the house. She is no longer interested in milk, nibbles a tiny bit off the top of canned cat food, and other than that I'm pretty sure she has eaten nothing else in the past ten days. She has refused tuna fish, tuna can water, baby food, pureed peas (an old favorite), and cantaloupe. She hasn't asked for food. It doesn't seem to interest her. The vet has nothing to recommend other than putting her to sleep, but after a horrendous experience twenty years ago, I swore I'd never do that again.

So, we wait.

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Remember the excitement in September of 2008, when some physicists were worried that the Large Hadron Collider at Cern would create a black hole that would eat Earth? Remember how we heard nothing else after it was turned on? Well, there was a faulty electrical connection that instantly fried the works, and it has taken the past 13 months to repair it.

They'll be turning it on again this weekend.

I'm hoping for another barbecue.

There are photos of the insides at http://www.boston.com/bigpicture/2009/11/large_hadron_collider_ready_to.html. It all seems so very ridiculous to me, so much money, time, effort, materials, expended simply to satisfy curiosity. I can think of so many better things to do.

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I once had a coworker at The Company who is now (probably still) working at Cern. He was the most arrogant person I'd ever met. The man didn't just speak - he made pronouncements, in a very loud voice. He not only didn't listen to others, he didn't care what anyone else had to say on any topic. He wasn't exactly nasty, he simply didn't consider anyone else in the world worthy of his consideration.

For a long time after he left, he sent email "reports from Cern", all about what he was working on and how exciting it all was. I don't know how I ended up on his email list.

I think part of my hoping for catastrophic failure has a lot to do with my feelings about him.
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