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A lot of the time I make an attempt not to read the newspaper in the morning on the weekend. I have found that there is usually one and sometimes many articles that upset me so much that it becomes difficult for me to unwind and enjoy myself. I don't know why it was that on this particular Sunday morning I abandoned my own rules and picked up the morning rag. There I was fully pumped with caffeine, the sun was gently spread across my front porch and the birds were singing beautiful songs. Innocently I snapped open the first section and sure enough right there on page one was the end of the perfect start to the last day of the weekend. As soon as I finished the article I started squawking to my poor wife and I didn't stop until Monday at which time work put an end to all my insane rambling. I want to share the article with you here. "Have we almost solved the mystery of the neutrino?" the headline asked, and then went on to explain that a super clean laboratory has been built two kilometers deep inside a hot, dirty abandoned nickel mine near Sudbury Ontario, Canada. One thousand tones of ultra pure, heavy water mixed with salt fills an acrylic sphere stretching ten stories high. Surrounding the sphere are ten thousand supersensitive electronic eyes. Neutrinos by the way are ghostly particles that pervade the universe and hold the key to some of the greatest mysteries of science. They are so small that more than a hundred thousand will pass through your thumb before you finish this sentence. They are so small that it is believed they have no mass at all. The experiments being completed in this laboratory should help to better explain the inner workings of the sun and may force the rethink of the current standard model of physics if it is found that neutrinos actually do have mass. Total budget for the project - six hundred million dollars. So there it is. Did you get it? Does it make your blood boil? Are you ready to kill? Is your day ruined as was mine? If not then let me ask you WHERE THE HELL ARE YOUR PRIORITIES? The last time I checked there were thousands upon thousands of families in the G7 nations living well below the poverty line, having barely adequate food and shelter and other necessities for themselves and their children. When compared to the impoverished from the developing nations however these unfortunate people are living like kings. As we are constantly reminded every time we turn on our televisions millions of people on our planet are starving to death before our eyes. Our atmosphere is in dreadful shape , our oceans are polluted and dying, wars are raging across the globe, and farms and Forrest on which our very survival depends are declining at an alarming rate. Thank Christ that we just spent six hundred million tax dollars so that we may now better understand the inner workings of the God Damn Sun!!!! Now I am by no means against the advancement of science or progress in general. I find the quest for knowledge as exciting as the next guy. But I will tell you this. When I have an empty fridge and bills that need paying I am definitely not out buying a five hundred dollar gold lined set of encyclopedias. How did we get to this bizarre point in our existence? How is it that we, the taxpaying public have let ourselves be fleeced like this? Could we not have found better use for that money? If you consider the mars landers (or crashers), multiple shuttle launches, a space station, moon walks, telescopes, hundreds of secret projects that we may never even hear about - think of the dollars - and God help us. How many Einsteins, Motzarts, Rembrants, Martin Luther Kings have we let starve to death or go uneducated and impoverished without ever having a chance to emerge and shine, or perhaps save our planet. Well that's what ruined my day. That's what made me so upset and that is what I wanted to squawk about. Anyone care to squawk back?
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