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I was offline last week when the news broke that <a href="http://www.cernland.net/">CERN</a> folks announced they'd found a discrepancy between the assumed speed limit of the universe and the way their neutrinos appeared to behave, <a href="http://arxiv.org/pdf/1109.4897v1">20 parts per million</a>. That's a pretty big anomaly when you consider dogs can detect salami in 9 parts per billion of the kitchen (that paper will be published once I've got 99 other co-signaturies who don't mind their crotches being sniffed). I was offline because I was feeling pretty crap after a boozy weekend, lightweight compared to previous exploits but after the hangover had passed I was left in an ultra-violet funk.
Incidentally, for a few days, going to sleep I wound up picking a random, unloaded word that flashed by on my <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cartesian_theater">Cartesian plasma screen</a>, "mink", repeating it as a voiceover in said theatre as a mantra to keep demons at bay. I have since rationalised the word - it's a potential HTML5 rel value to correspond to <a href="http://sw.nokia.com/uriqa/URIQA.html">URIQA</a>'s MGET. But that's by-the-by.
The too-fast neutrinos went from CERN to <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gran_Sasso">Gran Sasso</a>. After dopplering my funk, I was curious about the constant thing. I knew where CERN was (because I watched <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Champions">The Champions</a> as a child) but though I'd heard of Gran Sasso, couldn't place it. As any good mental illnessity goes, my funk featured a good proportion of guilt (getting sweary on social networks leaves you a bit shamefaced).
Now looking on the map my funk shifted back up the spectrum, if you draw a line on the globe from CERN to Gran Sasso it goes straight through this house. Those faster-than-light neutrons came through here (ok, a little underground, but I do leave my empties in the cantina). So how's that for something to feel guilty about - screwing up the model of the universe..?
Which is why I can be sure they got their sums wrong. My empties would have slowed them down. You're probably 40 parts per million out guys.