Nothing But Love :: golf blogger

Abandoning Hope

I was giddily surprised when I saw the headline "Scientists discover way to levitate tiny objects." Finally, here was the solution to all the problems in the world -- well, maybe not all the problems. But the flying car problem, for sure. That's a big one in my book of world problems -- well, maybe not a big one, but one that needs to be solved. Because it's the 21st Century, and everyone knows that we're supposed to have flying cars.

So, I saw that headline; and I thought that somebody finally discovered something like flubber. Okay, y'know, start with tiny objects because that's just the way you do things. Then move up to cars -- little cars, like a Toyota Yaris -- it's that easy.

And finally, we'd have something we were supposed to have a long time ago -- flying cars. And then I could laugh and say how my fourth grade teacher didn't know what she was talking about, not letting us do what we wanted to do in class -- like trying to figure out how to make cars fly. I was spending most of the kid-precious daylight hours at school, where this know-it-all teacher kept harping on me that what she was saying was the most important thing in the world and that if I didn't learn this or that, mostly, it was write between the blue lines and be neater about it, I'd never get anywhere in life.

It was as if writing between the lines and having a clean, neat desk was going to save the world from the evil Russians. Open the desk -- now clean it out, now make it neat. "And what is that flute-o-phone doing in the bottom of your desk under everything," she yelled at me. "Take it home!" she yelled, as if taking it home would magically make me play better because it didn't. Taking it home meant only that she yelled at me for leaving it at home on music day; so, it was better to pull it out from under a week's worth of stuff and fake playing and hope she didn't walk by and listen real close to check if I was really playing the flute-o-phone concerto.

Why couldn't we discuss how to make cars fly? That was important.

So, ha-ha-ha, now, scientists could levitate things. Just add some forward thrust and you have a flying car -- good deal. There's a picture with the article -- it says, "This illustration shows how the repulsive Casimir-Lifshitz force between suitable materials in a fluid can be used to levitate an object that is denser than the liquid."

Illustration? A drawing? What the hell?

So, I read the article. And I'm like totally flabbergasted. This isn't any big, fucking deal. This is kind of like ... bullshit physics. This is kind of like ... cold fusion. Just like a physicist to do something like this.

"Capasso said levitating is next. 'We just have to do it,' he said."

This really sucks. Hopes dashed once again.

I got more important things to worry about ... like golf -- and going deaf on the golf course.

Posted by Bill at January 8, 2009 11:18 AM