Black Holes (Funding and Literal)

Next week the Large Hadron Collider starts smashing particle protons, an event that some believe will cause the Big Bang Lite, and in an instant we'll have solved all the world's problems by ending the world.
The Large Hadron collider cost an estimated 6.4 Billion Euros (up to this point) and it's primary goal is to prove (or disprove) the existence of the Higgs Boson particle. For those of us who don't know what the Higgs Boson particle is, its basically particle physics answer to the great question "Why does a tiny proton have mass?"
Unfortunately for Particle Physicists, discovery of the Higgs Boson particle will in no obvious way benefit mankind in the foreseeable future. However, it will answer one of the fundamental questions about physics, and tie up the Standard Model of Physics.
Which leads to the problem. How will physicists convince their governments to fund ridiculous particle accelerators in the future if the LHC successfully answers the last great question? Several physicists who are involved in the LHC were interviewed last year in Science magazine. They suggested they hope the LHC doesn't find the Higgs Boson, becuase if it does they will essentially be out of a job. They are concerned that without the potential for a major discovery, they'll have no footing to fund their super-super collider, and the super-super-super collider after that.

Let me assuage their fears. The Fermilab accelerator has not had a major discovery since its finding of the "Top Quark" in 1995. However, they had no problem securing $320 million dollars for funding in fiscal year 2008. Then they complained that they weren't getting enough, so Congress earmarked another 29 million as an add-on to the current Iraq spending budget for the year. There are approximately 1900 employees at Fermilab. 350 million dollars divided amongst 1900 employees comes out to around 184,200 dollars per employee, many of which are graduate students and post-docs. I wasn't making 184,000 dollars as a grad student, then complaining to Congress for more, while producing no major research breakthroughs for 13 years...

Anyway, the LHC comes online next week and some believe the particle collisions might produce micro-blackholes that could destroy the earth and solar system. And although the physicists who believe this acknowledge it is a low-probability, the major study that found the LHC was safe was funded and produced by CERN, the company in charge of the LHC. That's like a used car dealer saying "oh hell yeah, this car has a great engine. You can trust me, I'm not biased."

The LHC is sponsoring a live webcast of the first particle collisions. There may be a small contingent of physicists going "I told you so" as the webcast shows swirling, bright energetic lights appear, then mysterious high-tech gizmos being sucked into a vortex, then the camera going dead.