Not feeling very positronic about all this

I got this from Steve, who got it from Nature, who got it from scientists who should have really known better.

To demonstrate special relativity, which says that time slows down for moving objects, the researchers jolted the single atom in their optical clock so that it oscillated at relative speeds of less than 10 metres per second.

Jolting and jiggling atoms, twitching neutrons, wiggling photons, bouncing light waves - don't these scientists ever leave those poor little atoms and quarks and leptons alone? Do they think they have a right to go around batting and banging items of indeterminate mass and velocity all over the place? It's a disgrace. Granted, all these little hadrons and leptons and quarks and positrons and what-not are too small, and in some cases too theoretical, to see, but what if some guy put those little things there for a reason? I know how I'd feel if a particular sub-atomic particle in my possession was being poked and prodded by interfering scientists, and the feeling that I would be feeling would not be a good feeling at all.

And I don't even want to give those theoretical physicists, with their particle accelerators, and hadron colliders (oh! oh! oh! how'd you feel if I collided into YOUR hadron one of these days, bastards!) the privilege of being talked about. Those hooligans of the physicist profession, spending all their days whizzing those teensy-tiny particles, that don't know any better, around at massive speeds, and smashing them into things! It's horrible, I tell you.

Let's face it, one of these days, those scientists will run out of particles to poke and prod and pull and jiggle and jolt and jump and bounce and bang and flick and oscillate and stimulate and tittilate and irritate, and then what will we do? Because we're made out of those particles, probably we'll be oscillating all over the place at various frequencies. And no-one wants that. This day will be billions upon billions of years in the future, of course - so I'd better put the tea on before it happens.

Scientists! Bunch of rapscallions, I tell you!