No chorus of "Because we've had enough of Conrad and his vapid vicissitudes for one day!" thank you.
I did have some other stuff that could have gone into the Matinee blog, but it would have been stretched to elephantine proportions, which is quite sublime if you're an elephant, but rather to be avoided if you want to have a post that people can read in less than 30 minutes.
Besides, I have done the laundry, made lunch for tomorrow, written up more of The Zombie Novel and got in a serious amount of reading.
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| Conrad - rich in underpant! |
Auntie Beeb is usually quite staid in her headlines, so the sub-heading "Gecko sex satellite back in touch" did make Conrad stop and frown in bemusement.
Occasionally one does find that editors and sub-editors contract and prune a headline until it makes no sense to anyone but them, or anyone with telepathy, but this one really did take the biscuit.
What is the story? The Russian Foton-M4 satellite had been out of communication with the control centre, until it's engines were successfully re-started. The experiment payload includes five geckos, to see what microgravity does to their sex life, apparently.
There is also a vacuum furnace aboard, to conduct experiments on metals and alloys in microgravity - but "Furnace satellite back in touch" doesn't have quite the cachet, does it? Although if you perhaps amended it to "Dirty slag satellite back in touch" ...
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| The slag in question. |
Ah, at last we turn the scalpel-sharp gaze of BOOJUM! back upon Simon and Garfunkel, who are doubtless quivering in their Dolce & Gabanna sandals at the prospect. Heh!
Let us examine the song "Why Don't You Write Me", because - well, because I can, and I enjoy the dizzying sense of power it gives me.
"Why don't you write me"
Sorry but this is the 21st century. People text and e-mail and Skype. They don't write!
"I'm out in the jungle"
There's your first problem. Do you know how difficult it is to get mail into the jungle?
"I'm hungry to hear you."
Oh - be consistent, please! First you want a letter and now you want a phone call -
"Send me a card,"
Will you make your mind up!
"I am waiting so hard"
Can you quantify this on a scalar metric?
"To be near you."
If that's the case, why are you off gallivanting in the jungle, hmm?
I think we'll leave it there for today, as this critiquing business takes up a lot of space. Also, I know Paul and Art will take at least 24 hours to get over this critical roasting, the poor schmucks.
| So it's in Russian. So what. Come on, whose blog is it? |
Fun With Dangerous Chemicals
I've not posted anything under this title for a while, so allow me to come back with Sulphur Trioxide, chemical notation SO3. This is a gas at temperatures above 160C, and is to be avoided unless you can regenerate your lungs and windpipe, as it is corrosive and hygroscopic (that is, it goes Blam! in the presence of water).
What's that? Pictures or it never happened? Why certainly:
In this case the end product is so disgusting even Conrad, with his fusion-powered food-processing unit (a.k.a. "stomach"), would refuse to eat it.
NS Savannah And Nuclear Transport RIP
You whippersnappers of today have probably never heard of the "NS Savannah", in which case you don't know what you're missing. She was designed to showcase the civilian possibilities of nuclear power back in 1959, in a combined cargo-and-passenger ship role, looking like something that wouldn't be out of place in a Gerry Anderson series, to wit:
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| Queen of the sea |
Conrad, with fond regard, remembers her from the 1960's, and articles in the pages of "TV21" and "Tell Me Why".
In one sense nuclear-powered transport was and still is viable, in the fission-engined military vessels of the Cold War, both ships and submarines, but in the wider world it hasn't caught on, for two reasons.
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| Atomic-powered aircraft! What could possibly go wrong! |
Reason 1: Nuclear reactors are bloody huge! The idiot who proposed a nuclear-powered car probably ended up in a padded cell. You'd need a pair of 30 ton articulated lorries welded side-by-side to carry a nuclear pile, let alone use it. Lord aloft only knows what kind of horsepower it would develop and what maximum speed it could achieve, and given the general idiocy of drivers on the road, would you ever, ever, ever consider allowing a boy racer with the IQ of a ham sandwich to get behind the wheel of what is, essentially, a self-propelled nuclear bomb?
Reason 2: Nuclear power scares people. You can't see, hear, taste, touch or smell* the kind of radiation generated by a nuclear pile, but it can kill you dead in minutes, and poison the land for millenia. You don't see the residents of Pripyat petitioning for atomic-powered saloon cars, do you?
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| Project SWORD - one of Gerry Anderson's text-only series. This bit of kit is probably worth £hundreds**. |
* You can, apparently, feel the dosage on your skin at levels that will kill you in 30 minutes.
** Nothing to do with this article (sorry!), but do you realise how rare articles on Project SWORD are?
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