"There might as well be (an infinite amount of money out there) but most of it gets spent on pornography, sugar water, and bombs."

cretinbob: pudding7: But we're going to bring democracy to these illiterate goat herders who've been living a tribal society for a thousand farking years.

Democracy!

No. We're hunting Obama Bin Laden

Who?

Re-posted from the last thread:

This is ultimately going to be a good thing for Fermilab and science in the United States in general. This shutdown was the original plan for the Tevatron; this extension was something that not even everyone at Fermilab was behind. The United States also plays a very large role in the LHC project as well. The LCH can do everything the Tevatron can, and there are still years worth of Tevatron data to analyze. I would not be surprised if the collisions that will reveal the Higgs have not happened already, but that we are simply waiting to analyze the data.

This does not mean that the laboratory will cease to produce science once the Tevatron shuts down. NOvA, the fixed target program, the Linac, the Main Injector, MINOS, all of these programs are going to continue running, and that doesn't even include all of the tertiary R&D that goes one where a lot of the really exciting science is taking place.

The lab also has a very bright future with programs like Project X or the ILC and the Long Baseline Neutrino Experiment(shooting Neutrios from the lab to the Homestake Mine in South Dakota. Any future large accelerators in the United States will be built at Fermilab, that is one lesson that has been learned from the SSC failure. However, what direction "Big Science" takes in the future will depend heavily on what is revealed by the LHC. There are also plans drawn up for future accelerators that will make the LHC look tiny by comparison. This is simply one step in the process of moving forward in science, and does not mean that America is throwing in the towel by any means. Just that in this case to move forward it means we have to build on the past, literally.

This isn't just about not wanting to spend the money on it, it is more about needing the tunnels and equipment and people working on what will be the future of physics in the United States for the next 20 years now, not in 5 or 10 years.

Also, this article is wrong on another account. Particle physicists don't care what country they do their research in now, and they wont start caring any less in the future. If you want to meet a group of people for who national boundaries mean next to nothing, talk to a particle physicist.

Pathetic, farking pathetic. Just wait till the next big war, then they'll realize their mistake.

This is just further evidence that the Higgs is sending ripples back in time to prevent its discovery.

The US is on it's way to producing only billionaires and unemployed peasants.

syrynxx:

cretinbob: No. We're hunting Obama Bin Laden

If we can't find a dialysis-dependent cripple in a cave, we are never going to find the damn Higgs boson.

The difference being that we're actually *trying* to find the Higgs Boson.

But how will we activate the nanite bombs if we don't maintain our own particle physicists?!?

/hated GI Joe

cretinbob: That's an awesome way to put things into perspective subby
I know people were biatching about "Obamacare" costing $1trillion, but not really grasping how much the war in Iraq, just Iraq, cost.
Let me say it again, THEY WERE THE WRONG PEOPLE. Saudi Arabia and Pakistan attacked us on 9/11, not Iraq, if you want to use the logic that an entire countries' foreign policy is dictated by the actions of a few of it's citizens.

most reasonable people have problems with both.

what_now: Look, I don't anything about particle physics. It sound elitist, and probably french. But I do know that I get a stiffy every time I think about our brave boys shooting a terrist in the face, so I think our priorities are clear.

i feel like "lol" doesn't do this comment the credit it deserves.

Don't you love the unintended side effects of war.

- Federal Employees receive wage freeze, while Israel gets $9Billion.
- NASA gets relocated to a series of Janitor's Closets while we build duplicate airplane engines for fighter jets that will never be used.

Our priorities are so out of wack it is like we flipped into an alternative universe.

But, what is a decade without a police action?
It is one of our favorite past-times.

America is a militaristic theocracy.

Military: Obvious.
Theocracy: Capitalism.

Criticize either and you have no possibility of a career in politics or the public sector.

Guidette Frankentits: The US is on it's way to producing only billionaires and unemployed peasants.

You say it like it's a bad thing. Just buckle down your bootstraps and go all Machiavelli in achieving your competitive advantage over your fellow man and you're set.

This is why I have given up all hope of creating a sustainable society. There are powerful people who do not want to see a world with ubiquitous prosperity, because they only have social status if everyone else is poor. Thus we will continue to waste our treasure blowing up piles of dirt and rebuilding them.

Read some John Locke and you may understand the reasoning for being there.

With an unfavorable balance of trade, do as the Romans did.

in hopes of spotting the so-called Higgs boson before their European counterparts could discover it

Now see, I thought the LHC was a largely international affair and the US might have some dollars in there too... oh wait, here it is:

The US part of Large Hadron Collider program (US LHC) consists of contributions of Brookhaven National Laboratory (BNL), Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory (FNAL), and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL) to the design and supply of identified essential equipment for the accelerator.

Are we blowing an idiotic amount of money, that would be better spent on damn near anything else, on a war that should never have happened? Yep. Does Tevatron's operational lifespan really need an extension? Nope.

illegal.tender: America is a militaristic theocracy.

Military: Obvious.
Theocracy: Capitalism.

Criticize either and you have no possibility of a career in politics or the public sector.

Don't forget Israel. Criticise Israel and the Joooos make sure you go no further.

StoPPeRmobile: Read some John Locke and you may understand the reasoning for being there.

With an unfavorable balance of trade, do as the Romans did.

Set ourseves under a military dictatorship with no clear institutional structure except that the ruler is the one able to pay off the Praetorians the longest while the populace is driven into poverty by the taxes necessary to play this game?

This is Obama's war.

illegal.tender: America is a militaristic theocracy.

Military: Obvious.
Theocracy: Crony capitalism (new window).

Criticize either and you have no possibility of a career in politics or the public sector.

FTFM

while the war in afghanistan is ludicrously useless, cash for clunkers would have paid for the funding extension of the tevatron ten times over.

maybe fermi labbers should have figured out how to get the funding attached to a war bill; seems to be par for the road.

aside from nationalistic pride though, there isn't really a compelling reason to keep the tevatron operating. we don't need to discover the higgs in two places.

what_now: But I do know that I get a stiffy every time I think about our brave boys shooting a terrist in the face

How come most of your arguments revolve around your imaginary penis?

/not that theres anything wrong with that

006andahalf: StoPPeRmobile: Read some John Locke and you may understand the reasoning for being there.

With an unfavorable balance of trade, do as the Romans did.

Set ourseves under a military dictatorship with no clear institutional structure except that the ruler is the one able to pay off the Praetorians the longest while the populace is driven into poverty by the taxes necessary to play this game?

Here ya go.

Locke, John . Some considerations of the consequences of the lowering of interest, and raising the value of money : in a letter to a member of Parliament (new window)

No fungible molecule reference?

I am disappoint.

More generally, the choice between technological and scientific progress and war is an easy one, but one this country continues to fark it up.

"US now outsourcing particle physics research. Which could be saved by defunding 6 hrs. of the Afghanistan warusing about .004% of the failed American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 "

FTFS

So did the Higgs Boson give Osama bin Laden liver failure?

/confused

the Pentagon is draining Lady Liberty dry.

If the United States had diverted a tiny fraction of the DoD's budget to NASA in the 1970's, we just might have landed people on Mars by now.

20th Century astronauts would have died young from radiation exposure, but still.

Landing humans on Mars and bringing them home safely can only be done with 21st century technology - plasma shielding, VASIMIR drives, and tightsuits.

That's not even accounting for keeping food edible for years on end, or muscle and bone loss after all that time in microgravity.

But I think we'll figure it out.