Or is it more applicable to our chilly, reserved island race here in Perfidious Albion? According to 'Brewer's' it is "To dispel the stiffness and reserve of a first meeting or conversation."
Well, get ready for a discursion about ice. Art?
Not that sort, you bafune! Ice in the seas and oceans and at the poles. Pole ice.
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| <sounds of Tazer charging-up in the background> |
Now, were Conrad to say "Ice-Nine" then you could be forgiven for thinking I was referring to the spooky concept at the heart of Kurt Vonnegut's novel "Cat's Cradle" which I have, of course - obviously! - read, though it was decades ago. Art! O stop whining and put a bit of Sudocrem on it.
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| By far and away the best cover illo |
Ice-nine is a form of metastable water in solid form, that only melts at temperatures waaaaay above zero. Rather than being an interesting scientific gimmick, it causes the destruction of all life on Planet Earth, because it acts as a seed crystal when coming into contact with liquid water. That is, when it is incautiously and accidentally released, all liquid water becomes ice. At least according to Ol' Kurt. Conrad is pretty sure there are isolated water sources not connected to any ocean or riverine system, and surely there must be an Ice-Ten that turns
ANYWAY what I actually meant by 'Ice Nine' were the nine nuclear-powered icebreaker ships that were the property of the Sinister Union and which latterly passed into the service of Ruffia. Art!
NO! This is not a Ruffian icebreaker. Thanks to the AI Art Image Generator, this is what you get from the prompt 'A short history of icebreaking' and either by accident or design, it's rather accurate. You see, back in the 14th century, the better-heeled burghs and towns of Lowland Europe used ice-breaking boats to keep their moats ice-free. A moat your enemy can walk over is pretty useless, after all.
Later still, in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, ice-breaking boats would be used to keep canals free from ice during winter. Art!
This is the Ruffian icebreaker 'Yermak', which went into service in 1899. As is plainly visible, she is a coal-fired steam-engined vessel, which lasted in service until the Sinisters finally scrapped her in 1963.
What must have galled them for every single minute of her service was that she was constructed in Newcastle-Upon-Tyne, IN GREAT BRITAIN. 64 years service: they built to last in those days, hmmmm?
Ruffia has considerable need of icebreakers, given the propensity of the Baltic Sea and the port of Leningrad (or whatever they're calling it this week) to freeze over.
Not only that, as Charlie Chipmunk Cheeks has gloated, global warming has reduced total ice cover in the Ruffian Arctic to such an extent as to make new sea routes via the polar route now viable. Art!
This is the 'Lenin', the world's first nuclear-powered civilian vessel and the first nuclear-powered icebreaker, which went into service in 1957. Atomic power proved to be an ideal solution for this class of ships, as it removes the need to rely on ports and harbours where fuel needs to be stored.
In fact I fudged the total of nuclear icebreakers in the service of Modern-day Mordor. The 'Lenin' is now a museum. There were six of the 'Arktika' class ships laid down but only two are still working. Art!
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| 'Arktika' in the - you may be ahead of me here - Arctic |
Then there are two icebreakers that were built by the FINNS IN HELSINKI (sorry not sorry for shouting there), of the 'Taymyr' class. Art!
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| "Rosatomflot" |
That makes four active of nine so far. Art!
This one of the new 'Project 22220' class icebreakers, confusingly called 'Arktika' as well, one of four. So that's eight total so far. Art!
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| One of only four ever globally |
This is very much a rara avis: a nuclear-powered civilian freight vessel, the 'Sevmorput', which is designed and optimised for transit through ice, and that makes nine. Yes yes yes, it's not strictly an icebreaker, sue me.
One of the functions of icebreakers is to create lanes through pack ice and to keep them clear, and also to escort freight vessels through said ice. To this end an icebreaker, of whatever propulsion system, needs an especially reinforced hull, a bow optimised to penetrate ice, and powerful engines with plenty of ooomph (stop me if I get too technical). The secondary ability actually mount the ice and crush it by sheer mass is also an essential design feature, for when pack ice gets too thick. That the whole hull needs to be reinforced is due to the dangers of 'pinch', which sounds like a minor inconvenience but which can stove in the sides of a vessel. Art!
The pinch comes when tides or winds or both in concert move pack ice laterally against the ship's hull, which in a conventional ship is not designed to resist solid object impact. Of which more later.
I think that's enough of Atomic Arctic hi-jinx, I still have 'Invincible' to watch. I'm treating as homework. First world problems, hmmm?
"The War Illustrated Edition 203 March 29th 1945"
A cover illo from the Mediterranean, specifically Northern Italy, rather than France or Germany on the cover of this issue. Art!
I doubt you can resolve the text here, so let me: it informs that the weather in Italy for February had been execrable, showing a flooded airfield as an example and proof that the weather in Italy was only rarely of the sub-tropical variety so fondly assumed by those not there. It also illustrates the parlous condition of the Teuton (and Fascist) forces in Italy, who were having to process beta vulgaris to produce industrial alcohol as vehicle fuel, since there was almost no petrol left. Art?
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| How to beet the Teutons |
Talking Of Blades -
Propellor blades, you numpties - either on aircraft - see photograph of TWI cover - or on ships - see the Intro. Or even, as my 'Brewer's' has it: 'Blade: a former name for a dashing or swaggering young man.' 'Blade' because at the time of this description being minted, a young man wore a sword. By the 21st century this would have been replaced by a gun. Art!
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| Or a Voight-Kampff machine |
Yes, we are back on 'Blade Runner' again and if you don't like THE EXIT DOOR IS THAT WAY! Today I want to bring up the 'Box Office Mojo' details to show how unsuccessful it was in commercial terms.
So, going by the 50% rule, it made back $20 million at the box office, on a budget of $28 million, so quite a flop. At the time. The six different versions - Ha! in a film about Nexus-6 replicants - released since then must have put it into the black by now. It's probably like Kubrick's films; generate a profit over a looooong time.
From Best To Worst
Yes I say, Hastings Ismay. Ol' Bladey Runnings is now widely recognised as one of the bestest sci-fi films evah, which is fair enough. What about worst ever films? Well, for 2024 we need to look no further than Jeremy Jahns list of the top bottom films of last year, and we're now down to Number 7. Art!
Yes, he is cheating here by nominating three films for the same slot, but he excuses this by stating that they are uniformly either padded, generic rip-offs where you need only see the trailer and not bother with the film, or are completely absent of imagination. I have excluded the next frame of the film as Jezza resorts to alcohol, and who can blame him, he's got to watch all this stuff whilst we need only deal with the recaps. Conrad has never heard of any of them and does not feel any the poorer for this absence. Why yes they are all three of them horror films. Because this is one genre where a zero-budget film can make a profit. The other is pornography and we shall end this item right here.
Ooooh, The Lowest Blow Of The Low
There has been a message on our corporate G-mail office board about NOT stealing other people's lunches from the fridge at HQ. Apparently this has happened a couple of times. It really is one of the most despicable behaviours your compatriots can exhibit, and there are riotous tales on Youtube's Reddit channels about the various schemes that have been used as expedients by the victims of this thieving. This can vary from dosing cake with Ex-Lax (risky in legal terms), filling chocolates with oil of liquorice (also dodgy if slightly less so) or using Ghost Chillies in a stew (no legal recompense there, thiefy-boy!). Art!
I shall have to dig up a couple of these revenge fables and recount them.
Finally -
Out of nowhere I've been making recipes from my 'Diabetes Cookbook', and today is weekly shopping day (I'm typing Thursday's blog on Wednesday), so I shall have to scan a few recipes for the required ingredients.
CYA!
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