Pocket Protector Pit Crew At CERN Insists Einstein Was Wrong

CERN's Hadron Collider, where scientists claim they have
discovered neutrinos are faster than the speed of light, as
long as the light comes from a three-wheeled scooter. 

It gives me great pleasure to announce that genius extraordinaire Albert Einstein was wrong.

To me, it's not really important what the frizzy-haired whiz was wrong about.  It could be an errant answer in a game of Trivial Pursuit and I would celebrate his mistake.

I say this because the guy who turned the cryptic equation E=MC² into a successful t-shirt franchise was known as the smartest man on the planet until he died in 1955 from terminal stubbornness.  It was actually an aortal aneurism that laid him low, but it was a correctable malady even in 1955 when surgical tools still included leeches and chopsticks.  Einstein simply opted not to have the surgery.

So now we're aware of the German-born scientist making two mistakes in his life.  The second one was outed recently by the guys with the big electron race car track called CERN near Geneva.

According to Einstein, nothing in the universe is faster than the speed of light.  Unfortunately, that's because Old Al lived in the first half of the 20th century.  Since then, there have been a lot of things shown to be faster than that, including:

• A Kardashian marriage
• A Lindsay Lohan jail stay
• The length of an American Idol winner's career
• The shelf life of a Hostess Twinkie at Rosie O'Donnell's house
• The time spent on Jessica Simpson's deepest thought
• How long after election it takes a new Congressman to accept his first bribe

According to the guys at CERN, Einstein was incorrect.  They claim that recent tests at their Hadron Collider prove that a particle called a neutrino is actually 60 nanoseconds faster than the speed of light.

I find it hilarious and telling that you can take a collection of mostly men with diplomas listing more advanced degrees than a Redman tobacco thermometer, give them a couple of billion dollars, and the first thing they do is build a 17-mile oval race track and start holding races and time trials.  I guess the white coats help really set off the red of their necks.

However, I'm not sure I buy their hypothesis.

How long is a nanosecond?  Who knows.  Not even Bulova can make a watch that will measure such a minute (pronounced "my-newt," not "min-nut," which is my ghastly attempt at a pun) fraction of time.  But it seems to get the guys in white lab coats all excited like Tony Stewart's crew chief following a 12-second pit stop.

The bigger question remains, "what is a neutrino?"

I got out my biggest Egghead-to-English translation dictionary only to find that it basically means "little neutral one" in Italian.  It's allegedly like an electron, but without being electrically charged.  It's neither positive nor negative. 

In other words, it's as completely politically correct as they come. 

But I believe that those guys are as wrong as Einstein.  As Congress has proven beyond a shadow of a doubt for more than three decades, nothing in nature is completely neutral.

However, the brainiacs in Switzerland insist that neutrinos exist.  The skeptical newspaper man in me suspects that the neutrinos also have an exquisite wardrobe made with the finest thread that only those with superior IQ's can see and appreciate (which would lead me to label them "emperor neutrinos").

I find it fascinating that people have been seeing actual ghosts for centuries, including documented and photographed proof of their antics.  Yet scientists continue to insist that ghosts don't exist, but that we should believe in these mystical neutrinos despite the fact that you could take all the PhD's in the world who claim to have "seen" a neutrino, and they could comfortably fit into the space of a single Spock Ears booth at a Des Moines Star Trek convention.

Who would have thought that the Mensa crowd would glom onto a phrase that used car salesmen wore out a quarter-century ago: "Trust me."

But to me the important thing remains the fact that a collection of virginal electron nerds armored with pocket protectors on both sides of their shirts insist that the smartest guy ever to walk the planet was wrong. 

If I had a nickel for every time someone pointed out a mistake in my writing with the suffix "Workman, you're no Einstein," I could now cash them in and be a millionaire.  But more importantly thanks to the new claim by the pit crew at the CERN race track, that Einstein was also occasionally wrong, I now have a flawless retort:

Apparently, yes I am.