You Must Be Dotty

Not In The Normal Sense
That is, "You are sanity-challenged", as usually applied to that mad aunt you have who lives in a house with 57 cats, no internet, and a portrait of King George V in every room.
     No, this term actually encompasses all of you out there, including those who don't even read BOOJUM! (the fools!).  Everybody on the planet, in fact.
     "Quite what he's getting at now is a bit beyond me," I hear you mutter.  "Is he saying that everyone alive is secretly called "Dorothy"?"
     No - although that would make a cool conspiracy theory.  Instead we shall summon Art to make a point.  Or a dot.  Art?

Earth, helpfully circled

     The titular Pale Blue Dot is indeed planet Earth, taken from a distance of nearly 4  billion miles away, and snapped by the Voyager 1 space probe as it headed out into deep space beyond the Solar System.  It was taken at the request of astronomer Carl Sagan, who must have had a bit of clout with NASA if they agreed to do this and transmit the data back home.  Carl later gave a lecture that included this opening:

We succeeded in taking that picture [from deep space], and, if you look at it, you see a dot. That's here. That's home. That's us. On it, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever lived, lived out their lives.

     The Earth, at that distance, is barely a pixel in dimension, which ought to give you a sense of proportion about your our place in the scheme of things.*
     And I presume that the Blue Dot Festival takes it's title from that very same image.

Some good acts on there

     Now, time to roll the motley into a giant ball of clay and bake it in the embers!**

     The only problem about Voyager 1 is that it left the Solar System 38 years ago, which is plenty of time for it to have been discovered by a sinister alien civilisation, who would only have to track it's trajectory in reverse for - ah - yes, let's not go there.

Spare Parts Salad
One notable observation made by war correspondent Alan Moorehead in "African Trilogy" was the multiplicity of British tank types, as compared to the Teutons, and he's not wrong (he rarely was).  The Afrika Korps arrived in North Africa with 4 models of tank, to wit: the Mark I, the Mark II, the Mark III and the Mark IV.  Let us prod Art with a fork and illustrate one of these.  Art?

                              Note: a tank is not a surfboard

     That on the left is a Mark I, on the right a Mark II.  The Mark I proved to be pretty useless, there weren't many of them and when they were lost, for whatever reason, they weren't replaced.  The Mark II was more successful, but after a year there were hardly any of them left.
     What's the implication here?  A the title implies, spare parts.  The desert environment was horribly unforgiving to machinery and tanks were always breaking down from a multitude of causes.  With only two main types to cater to, the AK had a relatively simple supply chain and storage requirement.
     Perfidious Albion, on the other hand ...
     (We shall come back to this.  O yes indeed!)

Damn.  I wish this weather would make up it's mind.  We've had sun and wind and now the leaden-hued clouds are depositing snow upon us.  I know I whinged about not getting any snow when it was promised, but a little consistency wouldn't go astray.  Okay, weather?

Two kinds of snow at once!
(Value for money is important to us here)

Oh!  My Behind Is Being Bitten - 
 - that damned Coincidence Hydra at work again.  If you remember, yesterday I was banging on about "Protochronism", which put forward the bizarre worldview that everything of any historical importance whatsoever came from - Romania.
     Shifting topic with the speed and agility of a leopard on the African savannah - okay, okay, with the speed and agility of a warthog in a wallow - we then look at "Comrade Detective", which Conrad glimpsed briefly in a sidebar on IMDB.  Art?

This has promise

     However, this is nothing like our old pal Arkady Renko: it is a spoof thriller set in the Eighties, adopting western tropes whilst mimicking Communist propaganda.
     And the kicker is - it was all filmed in - Romania!
     I think the universe is trying to tell me something ...

     What's that unpleasant burning smell?  It seems to be coming from - Ah.  Ooops.  I guess motleys aren't as fireproof as I thought.

Later!


*  No HHGTTG jokes, please.
**  Don't worry, motleys are fireproof