I've followed the progress in construction of the LHC with interest for a long while now, ever since the cancellation of the US supercollider project, and I will be following its activities with great interest. But...
I wonder if in the end this period in physics will turn out to be similar to just after the turn of the previous century when the answers to some very perplexing and puzzling problems arrived from a completely unexpected corner. There seem now to be so many different questions, and it would be very unsatisfying if in the end each had an independent answer. Maybe the brute force approach of the LHC will provide those satisfyingly unified and elegant answers, maybe the days when a thinker armed only with pencil and paper could provide the answers are long gone. Still, the answers may yet come from an unexpected source.
--Percy