GENEVA - Is it time to consider advanced physics a failure? The Large Hadron Collider is online and hasn't generated a black hole that destroyed the earth, and most scientists agree it never will. Which means the Pentagon and Congress are growing impatient with the lack of results from pure science programs. It has been left largely to the Europeans to sink vast sums into a field with diminishing returns on geopolitical dominance.

"Do you realize the participating governments - using tax dollars, no less - spent something like $8 billion on these silly science toys?" asked US Brig. Gen. Chester Rennick. "Why, with that money, we could buy a few stealth bombers or a tenth of a nuclear attack sub and have some real fun!"

The proliferation of identified subatomic particles has not correlated with an increase in practical applications for them, unfortunately.

"We've got an almost complete list now, we think," physicist Leon Kahn-man said. "There's anti-strange-fuzzy-dice, glue-guns, hardons, leptons, leptoffs, furryons, and a few other ones with funny names."

"Well, I'm sure some people sleep easy knowing a proton is made of two up quarks and one down quark. But I don't!" General Rennick retorted.

"What good does that information do us? Does it pinpoint terrorists and implode their vital organs? No! Does it reverse the cosmological constant around suicide bombers and transform them into a harmless red mist? Not that I know of! So I ask you, why are we spending such ridiculous sums on this intellectual indulgence?"

As physics theory increasingly forges into the realm of the untestable, critics have begun to question the point of further research. They point to string theory and its relatives as prime examples. There have been few applications to come from it - silly string being the only real result (and that more as a conceptual aid), and despite millions of dollars of R&D, the Pentagon has not found a way to make it weaponizable.

"It sounds pretty good - 'Atom Smasher' - until you realize how small atoms actually are," continued Gen. Rennick. "You don't even hear a 'poof' when they collide. Nothing. To say I was underwhelmed would be an understatement.

"Imagine trying to shock and awe evildoers with that. Do we expect them to lay down their weapons because we can show them equations describing brane topology which might describe our universe?

"Science only becomes worthwhile when it yields real-world applications that allow us to dominate our less enlightened fellow humans."