Speaking of water tower mysteries.  What the Fermilab is this picture about?

Is that bolted down?

This comes from the CERN document server which is a whole world of mysteries unto itself. There is almost no context for this image, a visual non sequitur.  It gets the handy keywords ‘generalities’, ‘landscape’, and ‘nature’. From the title, View of the CERN by the water tower (Calendar 2002),  it seems to be for a calendar.  Really? There aren’t any cute kittens or scientists willing to pose naked? When in doubt you at least can’t go wrong with 12 months of beautiful landscapes; couldn’t the photographer have held out for a view of Mt. Blanc in the background?  (It’s behind that haze.)  I guess not.

I found six images on the document server for this “Calendar 2002.”  There are a couple photos from the dismantling of LEP and another couple of the fire brigade in action. Good hearty CERN fare. But, finally, there is also a very creepy image of a sheep.  I say creepy because, though I think the sheep has just been sheared, at first glance it looks dead or prepared for slaughter. Brilliant:

CERN, it’s where scientists do mysterious things with particles and sheep go to die.