I was a nerd and thinking like you only some years back. But when I touched a MacBook and typed 'ps -l', 'vi' etc into it, my opinion of Apple changed. Now I do ssh on a MB to my Linux servers, get my news from my iPhone 5 times a day. Nerdiness can have a shiny skin too.

Right on. Unix is the core of every Mac and iPhone and iPad today.
Without Unix, Apple will have devices that crash and burn all the time just like the old Mac pre-OS9.

I am not a physicist, so pardon me for the bad science.

Maybe particles have cores that are non-space (as opposed to space, ie. vacuum).
I do not know how to calculate the number of particles a neutrino need to 'tunnel' through in 700km of solid matter. But let assumes it is N; knowing that the neutrinos 'skipped' 18 meters during this journey, then 18/N meters might give us the diameter of each particle's core. This seems to be able to explain all the observations thus far: SN1987A, CERN-OPERA, numerous past measurements of 'c', and consistent with theory of relativity.

The significant aspect of CERN-OPERA experiment is that we have been measuring 'c' in vacuum and this is the rare occasion we are measuring 'c' in solid matter. It is unsurprising that we get new data. It will be interesting if CERN's scientists can 'point' the neutrino beam at other neutrino detectors on the other side of Earth (ie. distance of 12,000 km - diameter of Earth) . This will give us new sets of data (distance-time pairs) to prove or disprove this and other hypotheses.

I don't see people mentioning this glaring factor in this experiment: the neutrinos are traveling through SOLID MATTER, ie. Swiss and Italian earth, whereas c is the speed of light in VACUUM.

If the CERN measurements are correct, it might mean that there is some anomaly when neutrinos travel through the core of other particles (protons, neutrons etc). This explanation is consistent with SN1987A observation since the distance between SN1987A and Earth is mainly vacuum.

Bad physics alert: Possibly neutrino's top speed in vacuum is still 'c' but when traveling through matter it can somehow enter the core of a neutron or proton and exit simultaneously at the other end. If you sum up the lengths of all these core particles, it might give us the missing 18 meters.