This proves they read BoingBoing down there. After the LHC doomsday thread, now they know there's nothing to fear and so came out. :-)

First, let me disclaim that I worked for CERN for a few years and now work for a US National Lab, doing research work for an experiment within the LHC (the ATLAS experiment, http://www.atlas.ch )

This mini-black-holes we expect to generate at LHC don't look at all like what most people associate to them. Have a look: http://atlas.ch/events.html

In fact what we see is the Hawking Radiation (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hawking_radiation) emitted by the evaporating black hole, which should disappear in about 10e-25s. Meaning, if it were traveling at the speed of light it would cover a distance of less that the radius of an hydrogen atom. This is a 8TeV black hole.

And as #2 said very well, particle collisions way more energetic that that happen every day in our atmosphere, and we're still around...

The danger of strangelet conversion (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strangelet) is even more exotic since it's not only merely a vague theoretical possibility as it needs matter densities way higher that what you have on earth to be of any concern. A strangelet, if it exists, is even more unstable that a mini-black-hole and so at the speed of light will barely cover more than the distance of a proton radius before disintegrating. Only in a very packed and dense environment (like a neutron star) it would be able to propagate.

Anyway, soon all this debate will be over...

The guy suing CERN also has a minor in physics and calls himself a "Nuclear Safety Specialist".

I seem to recall that was also the title of Homer Simpson at a nuclear power plant...

Yes, but would the TSA in Florida provide some pliers for the passengers to remove their own nipples?