Tuesday evening roundup and rambles

Peter Marks echoes my take on "Good People": excellent play, horrendous Boston accents.

Yes, shifting gender roles complicate dating these days:

"Men are almost afraid of being in the role of pursuing because they don't want to be perceived as creepy," Battista said. "And successful, independent women still want men to step up. As a result, it's almost like a standoff."

Yup, it is almost like a standoff. And yes, I still want men to step up. If they don't, I can only conclude that they're not interested. I'm not going to run after them; even if there is relationship potential, that would set a bad precedent for the rest of that relationship.

British Airways designs an in-flight tea.

***
My roof is done; it looks good. The roofers also kindly took the fence segments that had fallen in one of the recent windstorms away for disposal, so my backyard looks less like a trailer park--just in time for AVD, too! As for my bank account, let's not talk about how that looks.

***
I like art and I like science; and so it follows (as surely as night follows day) that I love science-art. It may sound crazy to those of you who know how inept I am in the physical sciences (and visual arts), but I really do appreciate the aesthetics of a well-photographed collider. There, I said it: colliders are cool-looking. I got to see one in person a few years ago for work (actually, that was an accelerator and I don’t think all accelerators are colliders). Anyway, having developed an appreciation for the artistically-photographed collider, I couldn’t resist checking out the Global Particle Physics Photowalk finalists. Those are some hot colliders (no pun intended)!

They were so appealing that I went on to check out some of the finalists from previous years and came to these quadrupole magnets at DESY. They are certainly beautiful. It's as if they were designed by Georgia O’Keefe, if you see what I’m getting at. The "global jury" certainly didn’t:

The global jury noted the photo's sense of humor, and the DESY jury’s association with this image was “monstrous force.”

Hmm... humor and monstrous force. Is there something the global jury is missing here? Is there something these guys—and you know they have to be guys—apparently don’t see a lot of? Just sayin'.