Use stimulus for people, not particles

Fermilab hopes to get stimulus package money and is scrambling to see the best way to use it. Their Tevatron collider (FY 2008 budget $158 million plus $62 million to support U.S. scientists in Switzerland) is racing against Switzerland to find evidence of a hypothetical particle called the Higgs boson.

Plus, they think their chances of finding it are at least 50 percent. Let's do the math here: 50 percent of zero. And, they think they have a reasonable chance to see hints of the Higgs theoretical particle by 2010 or 2011.

The best way I see that Fermilab can use any stimulus package money is to send it to a special education school like Kirk School in Palatine, part of NSSEO, that has found its federal funding cut year after year after year. There the particles are not hypothetical and are called Tim, Ryan, Adam, Greg, and Steven to name a few. I'm sorry, but in the economic times we find ourselves in, Fermilab is one of the last places to need any stimulus funding. That money would fund the entire North Suburban Special Education Organization for six years, hypothetically speaking.

Patricia Grabowicz

Wheeling