Today We Will Address Yield To Maturity Bonds And Gilts

Actually We Won't, I Was Lying

Doubtless that title made any stockbrokers, who accidentally stopped to peruse this site, feel their blood run faster.  Not for the rest of us.

     ANYWAY what I really wanted to cover was the impending Zombie Apocalypse, which will surely come.  Until then we have to analyse the evidence as provided from films and television, and judge them mercilessly in terms of accuracy and realism.  Er - yes - realism about the Zombie Apocalypse.  Indeed.  Art!

Nice homage to '28 Days Later'

     The title is a bit of a misnomer, they make reference to 'The Walking Dead' a lot.  Which is understandable, a television series that lasts for seasons and seasons can explore in far more detail and nuance than a ninety-minute schlockfest.   Also, a lot of what they cover can be applied to any post-apocalyptic landscape, so be sure to take copious notes!  This Heading is pretty much zombie-specific of all their Headings.

     Nor does Your Humble Scribe necessarily agree with their analysis, although by contrast I am happy to accept that the ZA is inevitably approaching.  Art!

Plot: ZOMBIES!

     All told, they tackle 10 headings, which I am going to analyse myself, as they do altogether too much handwaving and referral to Mysterious Un-named Sources.  Which is not to say they don't make good points along the way, just that they are prone to South Canadian exaggeration rather than based British matter-of-factness.  So!  Heading One.

INFINITE CARDIO

HTND use the example of a survivor 'sprinting for 6 minutes' in order to escape the shambling/sprinting hordes of the rotting undead.  They then extrapolate this brief exertion into '20 to 40 minutes of high-intensity cardio', assuming that the said survivor is going to be doing an Usain Bolt for all that time.  Er - no.  Art!

     Whom amongst us couch potatoes reading this could manage to sprint for 40 minutes?  Conrad would be hard-pressed to manage 40 seconds.  They then pay quick lip-service to an item that has it's own heading later on - 'If you're hydrated'.  If you read about the physical challenges of tackling Half Dome then hydration will not be a novel concept for you.  Art!

     Yes, the survivor above will lovely and hydrated, and also torn to bits thanks to being slowed down by all that mass.

     How fast is fast enough yet not excessive?  HTND boldly assert that what they capitalize as Real Survival Movement is no more than 2 to 4 PROUD IMPERIAL MILES PER HOUR on roads.  Instead of the 15 m.p.h. dash of Usain.

     Yes, well - that raises a lot more problems than it answers.  Art!

     Even a quick Google discourages rambling down Route 66.  To wit:

 or survival video games—you need to break line of sight, manage your stamina, and use strategic movements rather than just running in a straight line

     You are out in the open on a road, with direct lines of sight, barring any stalled vehicles, and if you keep hiding behind these you're not going to manage one-tenth of your best speed.

     When in dense urban terrain, HTND claim your median speed will be 1/2 m.p.h., presumable before rot, decay and subsidence take effect after the fall of Man.  You are far better hidden than out in the open, mind, with the ability to stop or duck and dive into cover.  Art!

     Nowhere do they mention bicycles, which are not only fleet, but also practically silent, which is one zed-attracting factor less.  

     HTND then venture into highly-questionable territory by flatly stating that 'fast zombie also burn energy', WITHOUT QUOTING SOURCES.  Where do they get this guff from?  Zombies are - you may be ahead of me here - dead dead dead and thus cannot access the normal human metabolic processes that allow enhanced performance.  From this dubious proposition about acetyl cholinesterase and mitochondria - three words you never expected to read today - they do reach the conclusion Conrad supports, that shambling revenants are more - er - realistic than the steroid-fuelled Olympic sprinters we see.  Art!

     Nowhere in their account do HTND mention stairs, which are an excellent way of escaping a pursuing mouldy maundering mob, whom have great difficulty either ascending or descending flights of steps without battering themselves into immobility.  Just a thought.

     Tying up the end of this analysis may I thoroughly torpedo HTND's claim that "Those trained to run would be the first to die".  Shades of Morrisey!

     Hmmmm.  I wasn't sure how long this Intro would be and whether or not we might not need another Heading.  We didn't, hurrah.

In A Swift Pivot -

Going from zombies to classics of literature is a big mental jump, but good exercise for you.  Art!

    Art, again - get working you lazy sloven!

     No I haven't read it.  Nor do I have any plans to.  If it crops up in a charity shop I might buy to peruse, out of interest.  Ol' Vic looks as if he's got a bad case of gout and someone stepped on his big toe, doesn't he?  One suspects THOND is not a barrel of laughs and that Disney sweetened it up considerably, even though I've not seen their farrago either and never ever intend to.

     My, what a curmudgeon I am.  My best feature.  Art!

Back To Brucie

For all me making a song and dance and having a long Intro dedicated only to Bruce Pennington's portfolio from 'Sci-Fi Art', we're still only 2:30 into a 7:00 minute slideshow, so we'd better crack on with it.  Art!

     One I am not already familiar with.  Hmmmm.   So, a church, and a procession of clerics, and a smashed and ruined cityscape in the background.  I wonder, I wonder - possibly 'A Canticle For Leibowitz', as that deals with post-apocalyptic religion and theology, leading up to another apocalypse*?  Or perhaps a speculative painting never destined for a novel or magazine cover?  There's no follow-up photo sporting a cover, so we need to dig dig dig.

     Well that failed completely.  No more details about the above painting.  Bah!

     Art!

     Unusually for this slideshow there is no pre-cover version, just the one above.  One has to wonder what a small girl is doing alone on the surface of a barren planet, and why she's racing towards what seem to be huge towers of high-voltage ceramic insulators.  Art!

     Not sure what 'The Airs Of Earth' might be,  perhaps a short story collection?  And Brucie seems to be the 'New English Library' house  artist for this period during the Seventies.  Nice gig if you can get it.  

Here's One I've Been Missing For Years

Any long-suffering regulars on this blog will know that Conrad yarks on endlessly about 'Forbidden Planet', frequently putting up illos on the subject such as the panoramic poster condensing some of the critical items together.  Art!

     Conrad is unsure if they've jazzed this poster up with a bit of AI, since I spotted this detail in a corner.  Art!

     Sinister, isn't it?  I think it's a manifestation of the Id Monster, albeit suddenly become visible, absent the disintegration beams of the world's nastiest electric fence.  Cool!  Perhaps I ought to go back over prev - No!  I will be strong.

Lesson In Marksmanship Needed

Given the recent news that Dolly Parton and Tim Curry, both aged 80, had been swept up in the icy clutches of the Grim Reaper, Wonder Wifey had a bit of a gripe with Death.  Art!

     She compared him with an Imperial Stormtrooper, that is, being unable to hit the correct 80 year old target even when it's as big as a barn door and bright orange.  

     Mister Death was unavailable for comment.  The White House has banned 'Pale Rider' from their film library.  Ambrose Bierce for Prez!

Finally -

Hopefully doing Episode 21 of "The Great War" this evening - that is, Thursday - as I like to get 48 hours ahead of scheduled posting.

*  It's got to be 70 years old at least so I'm not going to apologise for a lack of spoilers.  So there.

Rock And Stroll

You'll See

Were I to begin this Intro by blathering on about being 'Close To The Edge' and rock, you might well consider that I was yarking about Yes's seminal album from the Seventies, with immaculate production work by Eddie Offord.  Which, of course - obviously! - allows me to use the album as not-at-all clickbait.  Art!

     Artwork by Roger Dean; we like to give the artists credit where we can.  Not that I think such a hydrographical feature is possible in nature, given erosion over time and h

     ANYWAY were I also to make mention of a 'Pluton', you might, albeit a little confusedly, make a connection with the French tactical nuclear missile that they used to deploy back in Cold War days.  Art!

      Paris is known as the 'City of Light' and with this weapon the M8s could have turned Moscow into one, too, for all of three-fifths of a second.

     But nay! for we are talking about a natural phenomenon that is far deadlier than the Pluton, and which has been around for several million years longer than even vinyl records:  Half Dome.  Art!

     There you go, that's the 'close to the edge' title reference out of the way.  We need one of the feature in toto, mind, so let me inspire Art with this red-hot toasting-fork -

     You can see why it gets it's name, nicht wahr?  To all the South Canadian readers who are rolling their eyes in bored recognition, please bear in mind that 99% of the world is not acquainted with the stand-out features of Yosemite National Park.  Your Humble Scribe had heard, vaguely, of Half Dome but knew nothing but the name.

     Firstly, I am going to use the 'United States Geological Survey' description of Half Dome, as proof I'm not just copying Wikipedia.  The giant half dome sits 8,800 PROUD IMPERIAL FEET above sea level, consisting of three smooth sides and a sheer cliff face on the north-west aspect.  It is 5,000 feet high itself.  It goes without saying, even if Conrad has to say it, a theme we shall return to frequently, that you ought NOT TO CLIMB HALF DOME if you suffer from altitude sickness.  You know, it being at altitude.  Composed of granodorite, a name you never expected to see today, HD is a magma chamber, technically known as a 'Pluton', that formed geological ages ago, waaaay underground.  After quite a few years, erosion and uplift have brought it to light, whilst weathering has smoothed down most of it but caused expansion joints to form the sheer north-west face.  Art!

As close as Conrad ever hopes to get

     The USGS notes, without making a song and dance about it, that 'weathering' continues to this day, meaning rockfalls are to be expected.  Art!

     I shouldn't have to say this, except of course - obviously! - I have to: hiking up Half Dome is DANGEROUS, especially the last section when the cables are up.  Being HAZARDOUS and potentially DEADLY and LETHAL on occasion means, obviously! - of course - that Hom. Sap. simply has to climb the benighted thing, a feat that was first achieved in 1875.

     In order to limit the sheer number of people who feel that life is a gamble worth throwing the dice for, the National Park has a lottery system to award permits for ascending HD, giving out up to 50,000 permits per hiking season.  Which will cost you $20 a pop.  Land of the conditionally-free.  They go up for sale in March for the 'season', which itself lasts from approximately late May to early October.  Art!

     As you can see from the map above, ascending to the top of HD is a long, long hike, with the round trip being from 12 to 16 PROUD IMPERIAL MILES.  It is all uphill and involves ascending 4,500 feet.  Average times to complete the whole circuit vary from 12 to 16 hours (!).  So, the Parks Service strongly recommends that hikers check sunrise and sunset times, as these are going to vary wildly over the span of 5 months.  A flashlight and spare batteries are essential, and as they acidly explain, the feeble illumination provided by your mobile phone's puny light is not sufficient.  Worryingly, they also suggest a compass and map, because that implies that the trail is either not apparent enough or marked well enough, so you may stray into the untamed wilderness alongside.  Ooops.  Art!

     Please note that the Parks Service advise that 'relatively few' people have died on HD since 1919, which is when the cables were put up in place of an old rope system over the last 400 feet - the most dangerous stretch of the whole hike.  Another point that Parks made is that you need to stay INSIDE the cables, which proves that common sense is not that common.  Nor should you attempt the cable ascent if there are storm clouds rolling in - common sense again - OR if the rock is wet, because then the cables will be wet, and most of the fatal falls have been - you may be ahead of me here - when the rocks (and cables) are wet.  Who knew!  Art?

     What's this?  O I thought you'd never ask!  A 'bear-proof trash can'.  Yes you read that correctly.  Even if This Sceptred Isle has hazardous mountain features galore, one thing we cannot boast is wild bears.  Hikers are warned that the greedy but cowardly Black Bear is present in Yosemite, and if you come across any yell loudly and wave frantically to make yourself seem bigger and meaner than it is.  Also re the trash can above, this is where you put your rubbish, or carry it out with you.  I'm not going to go into detail about 'solid waste' or how there aren't any public toilets on the route.  Art!

     Are you a glutton for punishment?  An absolute glutton for punishment?  Do you intend to traverse the whole of the HD trail?  Then you need one of the above.  A one-gallon water bottle.  Imagine hiking up the trail carrying that.  Nature being what it is, the level will decrease as you sweat it out.  DO NOT DRINK RIVER WATER! as will be forewarned in the 'Everything Zombie Movies Get Wrong About Survival'.  Either boil or use iodine tablets on it, or risk horrible waterborne diseases.  Or carry a gallon of H₂O around.  Art!

     This is the Emerald Pool, which is strictly off-limits to hikers.  No swimming, paddling or kayaking, although nutters willing to carry a kayak for 8 hours are few and far between, and, needless to say though I say it again, NO DRINKING!  The sloping descent into EP is known as the 'Silver Apron' and is, once again, strictly off-limits.

     The Buzzkill Boys, a.k.a. the Park Rangers, will prosecute and fine anyone they catch lurking in the Emerald Pool, because it is DANGEROUS.  Art!

     The Silver Apron sports submerged rocks, which the current will carry unwary swimmers into at high speed.  Guess who comes off worst between a rock and Hom. Sap.?  Nor is that all, the Emerald Pool has strong currents despite looking treacherously placid, and where does the overflow lead?  To the Vernal Falls as illustrated above, where 19 people have died over the years due to going over the Emerald Pool edge.  This ought to put people off - yet DANGEROUS has a cachet all of it's own.  Art!

Oxfordshire's most dangerous tourist attraction

     That's a memorial obelisk to all the people who had drowned at the Sandford Lasher lock and weir - an obelisk that Jerome K. Jerome describes as being used by strapping young men as a diving platform.  DANGEROUS!

     Back across The Pond to Yosemite since we've not finished with all the hazards yet.  Art!

     Yes, the heavens may strive to kill you when you get to the top of HD via lightning strike, especially as hikers are the only outstanding features on the barren rock and thus become lightning conductors by default.  The Parks Service advises - you may be ahead of me here - that hikers get off HD if storm clouds approach.  

     So, if you've gotten this far, enjoy your murder meander up Half Dome!  I can assure you that you will never encounter Conrad on the route.  

     And with that we are done!

     

Bite The Brucie Bullet

Bruce Pennington, That Is

A few very old, very confused readers might be confabulating today's title with a phenomenon from the Seventies, "The Generation Game", a British gameshow that featured the MC Bruce Forsyth, whose effusive personality drove the whole thing.  Art!

     The Youtuber 'Suchomimus', whose channel used to be all about dinosaurs, posted from his expatriate home in Taiwan with his giant pet rabbit, occasionally mentions a 'Brucie Bonus', a phrase taken directly from the show, so one assumes he grew up with it, too.

     ANYWAY less of what's not and more of what's what.  First, of course - obviously! - we have to explain the origin of 'Bite the bullet'.  Art!

     Hmmm.  Looks more like that one of Peter Gabriel downing Jagermeister shots.   It is not a tricky stage show event performed with a NATO 7.62 rimless round, as your teeth - indeed your entire head - are likely to fly apart practicing such a stunt.  No!  No gory pictures.  What it really refers to is the old, pre-anaesthetic practice of military surgeons giving a patient a bullet, i.e. a spherical lead shot, to bite down upon as their leg got sawn off.  This lessened their screaming, which might lead to hearing loss for the surgeon in a small operating-theatre tent.  O and distract his sawing.  Can't have that!  Thus the phrase has come to mean 'Bearing up well under strain or pain.'  Art!

Suspiciously pristine 18th century teeth*

     ANYWAY I was looking at the 'Sci-Fi Art' portfolio of screenshots of Bruce Pennington's artworks, that I have been posting singly on BOOJUM! realising that the whole slideshow is just over 7 minutes long, and I've only managed 2 minutes of single screenshots so far.  So! I'm going to post a whole lot all at once.  Live with it if you don't like it.  Also, rather than repeat ad nauseum during this Intro, bear in mind that Brucie's artwork as depicted frequently has a large blank space at the top, so that a publisher can fit in the title and author without sacrificing the painting that he spent hours producing: the 'Title Gap'.  Art!

     Another trope of Bruce's: a line of aerial objects receding into the background.  In this case, we've got a whole lot of hostile flying saucers, inaccurately blasting away at fleeing Hom. Sap.  Come on little green (or grey) men, surely your craft capable of crossing interstellar space can target a few scuttling hominids better than a First Upleasantness biplane?

     Annoyingly, there is no follow-up illo about the book or magazine cover this was used on, if any, nor did a Google search reveal anything.  So, this may be a speculative painting that Brucie did, which was never purchased.  Art!

     Conrad unsure if you can call .his a UFO and it barely resembles a flying saucer, more like a flying saucer that ate all the pies, in addition to looking well-worn and grubby.  One expects invading aliens to observe a little cleanliness.

     ANYWAY Conrad definitely recalls this as being a cover illustration, perhaps for a Poul Anderson novel?  Art!

     Welllll I got it nowhere near right.  There's no connection between Vogt and Anderson in anything but being South Canadian.  Nice field of corn and flowers, mind.  Plus a rather sinister air over the whole thing, because which children would happily go gambolling towards a fat flying saucer?  Art!

     Blimey, flying saucers receding into the background deluxe, not to mention giant hovering phallic sentinels, one of which seems to be on the fritz and needs an electrical engineer pronto.  Looking a bit closer, the cityscape below and behind the angel looks pretty wiped out, perhaps resulting in a lowering of property values.  There's no Title Gap so unsure if this was for a publication or just Brucie having fun with paints and pigments.  Art!

     A search of Google revealed no publications.  So this is just Brucie having fun, which is a telling insight.  Art!

     There's a lot going on here, isn't there?  One has to wonder at the mindset of the three chaps headed towards a nuclear detonation, possibly they're the parents of those children approaching the floating fatty.  This is definitely a cover illustration, possibly Chris Priest?  Art!

      Hmmm, I am unsure how happy Ol' Brucie will be with this cover, as it uses the middle portion of the artwork to display the title.  Also, 50 brownie points to me for remembering the author - purely on the strength of the cover illustration, I've no idea what 'Indoctrinaire' is about <brief dig> hmmm sounds very Seventies and doomy and gloomy, not interested.  Art!

     Another great illo.  I know this one is a book cover because I've read the book: 'Out Of Their Minds' by Clifford Simak.  Note that Don Quixote and Sancho Panza appear to lower port, and that the 'wall' is really made up of teeth.  Art!

     I was so so right, you can't quibble about the 'D'.  There cannot be that many Clifford Simaks in the world.  Art!

 - and of course - obviously! - if it's a really good illo, others will nick it.  From the late lamented SFM.  Never heard of 'Peter Borski' or 'Robert Web' or whomever.

     Okay, enough art for an Intro.  Let the defamation deluge begin!

More Of Those 20 'Classics' You Need To Read Before You Expire

This one looks especially dull, so we're going to whiz through it at speed.  Art!

    This is a satirical look at French society through the eyes of a couple of fictional Persians - SOMEONE SLAP ME AWAKE! - I would suggest jazzing them up with a few daubs by Brucie.  Next!

      This novel was hot stuff in 1774 when first published.  Conrad is familiar with the author's name, being revered as one of the pillars of Teuton literature, but I've not read what is described as the perfect work about unrequited love - MORE SLAPPING NEEDED PEOPLE! - perhaps it could be jazzed up by being published by Mills and Boon?

Missing A Sensation

It has just occurred to me that there is a bit of an omission on the Youtube channel 'Flavour Trip'.  You're familiar with the bopping twosome, who play dance mixes whilst they cook.  Art!

     I didn't keep track of what they were cooking - yellow and liquid, based on beaten eggs?  - and don't intend to rewatch over 2 hours of them moving between deck and kitchen to find out.  

     ANYWAY AGAIN my point is that none of us watching have any idea what their cooking tastes like - the missing sensation of this item's title.  Good?  Bad?  Indifferent?  They may be pretending that it's wonderful when in reality when the cameras are off them it goes into the bin.  We can see them, we can hear them, but we have no taste and we must cream.  To coin a phrase.  

Harlan was not amused at Conrad

Ooooh I Am Going To Bookmark This One

I know, I know, I was supposed to be cutting down the number of Favourites and Bookmarks that are cluttering up my browser.  Sue me.  Art!

     For your information, that's Seventies-era Pink Floyd, and Nick Mason their drummer, second from starboard, wrote a memoir that might still be knocking around my Sekrit Layr.  I shall report back on this one, you bet.

SIT BACK DOWN!

I briefly mentioned Bookmarking this lecture whilst getting rid of other Bookmarks, for I am nothing if not capricious.  It's a rather long set of time-stamped comments on a lecture given by a Finnish ex-intelligence officer, and jolly interesting it is too.  Art!

How Russians think, and why they do what they do

     The lecture is from 2018, so is not up on contemporary events, but since it's looking back over 1,000 years, that isn't too impactful.  Well worth tracking down.

     I now have to work out how to shoehorn it into BOOJUM! because rest assured I'm going to.

*  Ignore that it's a photograph