It's Brent Spiner - With A Minor!

Put Your Tongue's Back In -
 - you dirty-minded rascals, your imagination's are a foul as the coal cellar that we put Art into*!  

Perfectly innocent

     I believe one of the reasons that Brent wanted to stop doing "Star Trek" films was because his character, Data, never aged.  Brent, sadly, as with all you Hom. Sap., is not immune to the effects of aging and decided to get out when he can do so with dignity.
     He's also great as the longhair Prof Brakish Okun in "Independence Day", to which there might be a sequel in the near future.

"On Thermonuclear War" By Herman Kahn
There's still a lot of this text to go, and I should probably go back to the beginning to re-read with a more critical eye.  Since I don't expect you to work your way through this very long and involved work I shall point out some matters of interest.  Well, of interest to me.  Your mileage may vary!
     Remember that Herman wrote this work in 1960.  At that time he wrote that a "long" nuclear war was expected to last between 2 to 30 days.  Conrad recalls reading in 1975 that the "long" version of thermonuclear war had contracted, down to 2 - 21 days.  In current terms a long thermonuclear was is down to probably 2 - 10 days.  

Herman Kahn.
(Art, is this right?  It looks like -)

     Another point that Hermie makes is about Soviet - for which now read "Russian" - retaliation against America would come if America attacked China.  At the time, 1960 remember, China and the Soviet were still best-buddy-kissing-cousins - but by 1961 they had split as rancourously as a poisonously divorced couple.  In fact, prior to Kissinger's detente missions to Beijing, the Soviets tentatively floated a joint US-USSR pre-emptive nuclear attack on China.  Which just goes to show how badly lovers can fall out ...
     Then again we have Hermie's assertions about soft targets and hard targets.  A "Hard" target, I should explain, is one that is designed to be protected against nuclear attack by virtue of gigantic reinforced concrete defences.  A "soft" target has no such protection.  You might compare a soft target as being a soft-boiled egg, and a hard one as a bowling ball.

Peter Sellers.  From Doctor Str - no, hang on -

   Is this relevant?  Well, rather to you and I.  You see, soft targets here in the UK or mainland Europe could be destroyed with mere kiloton airburst weapons.  There would be local damage, yet not too much.  On the other hand, to destroy hardened targets you need the Big Bang Bombs, ones with a megatonne yield that wouldn't leave much of Europe left at all.

A Minor Coincidence
Nothing too much if rated on the Coincidence Hydra Bottom-Biting Scale.  I did babble on last week about "4G" and being convinced that we were talking "4 Gravities", this being the level of stress experienced by astronauts on launch or fighter pilots pulling a high-speed turn.

Apparently not

     Here you see the "#4G" tag, which proves that Conrad is mortal and can make mistakes, and that 4G refers to hideous mobi - excuse me - Hideous Mobile Phone Technology.

Oh Dearie Me
If you recall, earlier in the year Conrad had a whole slew of theories, or excuses, about why a burned-out lightbulb in The Electric Goldfish Bowl took weeks to be replaced.  Telekinesis, teleportation, absence of superhero lightbulb replacers, all sorts of nonsense.  It was quite fruitful as a source of material for the blog, but it all fell into abeyance when the lights got turned off at the beginning of summer.

One down!

     When I say "summer", I refer to that mythical season that comes between Spring and Autumn, lasting all of two weeks spread out over five months here in the UK.  
     Of course, as these light bulbs are on the fifth floor, it's not a simple matter of standing on a chair to replace them.  That dead one has been out for a week and I shall be starting a sweepstake in the office to see when - or if -  it gets replaced.

Poirot - The Kidnapped Prime Minister
Hmmm. I saw the double-cross in this well before the fifth minute elapsed.  After that it was only a question of motive**.
     Anyway, that's not what I wanted to post about.  No!  Banging on about period sets and locations has been a consistent theme here on BOOJUM! for Lo! these many weeks.  If the Location Manager and set design people have done their job well, then you DO NOT NOTICE the work that's gone into them.  Take this shot of Charing Cross Station:

     I presume that the real station has a statue just like that in the background - this is what poseurs like to call "verisimilitude" - and since the filming is done at night the shadows can conceal a whole lot of stuff that isn't 1935 vintage.  Then we have the high-angle shot:

Sic

     Please note that this combines the station statue, a period vehicle that drove in under its own power, a vintage train and several cast in uniform.  It also, by virtue of it's position, excludes anything not of 1935.  Not only do we have an element of drama courtesy of the angle, it's also eminently practical.
     Which the producers would have not wanted you to notice!

As has been the case lately, this is only part of what I intended to post, so you lucky people might get EVEN MORE tomorrow.


* Both as punishment and because he loves eating coal.
** Either I'm clever or Agatha isn't.