nerds break really expensive machine

The Large Hadron Collider has suffered a setback. The very-important-piece-of-equipment that holds three magnets in place broke. A representative of CERN- the organization building the LHC - said that they could not say whether or not this would cause a delay because they did not yet fully understand the situation.
That doesn't exactly inspire confidence in the organization that plans to build lots of black holes underneath the French-Switzerland border. Very, very safe black holes, I should add... or at least, safe according to Stephen Hawking.
American scientists are now saying that America is losing the edge in particle physics, by ceding it to Europe and the LHC.
Let them have it, I say. Particle physics was a fast moving, important field fifty years ago. These days it's the preserve of tenured professors who are big on gravitas and short on imagination. The sharp young minds of today are working on the problems of today. That is to say, they're getting into genetics, robotics, computation, cognitive science, AI, medicine. Not particle physics.
These days, particle physicists and particle accelerators are mainly producers of spin of the P.R. kind, not the nuclear kind.
But if CERN can't build a black hole factory for the shoestring budget of eight billion dollars, maybe they should hand it over to the americans. That way, if it blows up the world, we can blame it all on George Bush.
And he won't care. One more screw-up will be neither here nor there.