"What Kind Of Weapon Are You"?

Asked The Facebook Quiz
Well, there's a question.  Ask this of the adolescents out there and they'd probably go for some variety of electro-magnetic pulse device, because that would destroy all electronic technology and is therefore terrifying to them.  Older males would probably plump for being a Terminator, the lexicon-light killing machine akin to a sentient bulldozer. 

Yeah!

 Ladies of all ilks would choose to be a stilleto, as getting in close with a sharp-edged tongue is universally acknowledged to be good practice for knife-fighting.
     Whatever you might wish to be, this question was asked of a quiz, where you choose bizarrely inappropriate answers to peculiar questions, and a randomly-selected weapon appears against your name.

     "Put us out of our misery, Conrad!  Tell us what you are!" I can hear you chorus.
     Well okay.  After going through the 29 questions, Quizony decided this:

Really?

     Conrad would beg to differ.  I think the most appropriate weapon to classify your humble scribe as would be - a poison dart.
     Just think about it.  Delivered via silent blow-pipe, in the dark from behind into your hair, the unseen assailant sneaking off into the night as you go into convulsions, and even if the attack took place outside a hospital, the rare and exotic poison* has no antidote ...
     I think you'll agree A Poison Dart is so much more Conrad than a crude explosive device.
     Now, let the phaeton of phantasy roll slowly forward!

Does It Anti-Matter?
Ladies and Gentlemen, and those undecided, allow me to introduce you to the next level of Utter Frightfulness in terms of things that go BANG! I talk of Anti-Matter, which is like matter except with the charges of all the atomic components reversed.  The anti-matter proton, instead of being positive, is negatively charged.  The anti-electron is positively charged, instead of being negative, and so on.
     "So what?" I hear you muse, bored and wondering how quickly you can slip away to watch the Coronation Street omnibus.
     So - if you put anti-matter into conjunction with matter, you get an ENORMOUS explosion, because the efficiency of conversion for anti-matter/matter is of the order of 100%, whereas nuclear fusion only rates at about 4%.

A pipsqueak thermonuclear explosion

     This means a gram of AM will explode with a yield of 43 kilotons, or about 2.5 Hiroshimas. About an ounce of AM will produce an explosive yield of 1 megatonne, or one million tons of TNT, and a kilogramme of AM will give you an explosion of 40 MT.  In effect, a weapon the size of a hand grenade would be capable of destroying a city**.
     Before you go rushing to the basement shelter a la 10 Cloverfield Avenue, there is a bit of a proviso here - we can currently only produce AM in microgramme amounts at horrendous cost.  There is also the problem of storing it, as any contact with anything - anything AT ALL*** - will cause a city-levelling explosion, so we first of all need to create foolproof force-fields.

Like this but a bit handier

Bake Off - 12th October 2016
I thought I'd include that in the title just so you're not fooled about your humble scribe's efficiency.  Heck, if you don't like it, go look it up on I-Player, it's not like I'm getting paid to be up-to-date.
     That moment of sulkiness over, the theme for last week was "Tudor", confronting our five heroes - Jane, Andrew, Selasi, Candice and Benjamina.

     Signature:  Shaped individual hot-water crust pies, in 3 hours.  Mary and Paul pointed out that the pie has to hold it's shape and NOT LEAK!  Not to be confused with Not Leek, there's no prohibition about vegetable of choice in this bake.
     Jane did 16 pies, which looked good and were without leakage, tasty, too.
     Andrew, being showy, had his arranged so that they would mesh and turn like a gear-train.  Looked good, and it mechanicked properly, and they were crusty and tasty.
     Benjamina had to restart her pastry, never caught up with the time and as a result her pies were underdone and a bit weepy.  Good taste, though.
     Candice, as ever the overachiever, had to do 2 type of pastry and ended up with at least 18 pies, although the pastry was problematic.
     Selasi did well with his guinea-fowl pies, which had good shape and a delicious flavour.

Candice looking SMUG!

Ah the evil Technical:  12 "Jumbles" which were a variety of woven biscuit, 2 lots of different flavours in 90 minutes, which is not a lot of time, frankly.  Especially when working with a menu missing critical bits!  Dexterity the key here, because you really did have to weave the dough, and everyone had difficulty.
     In order of descent:  Candice; Andrew; Selasi; Benjamina; Jane

Selasi wrangles and wrestles his dough into shape

Showstopper:  This featured "Marchpain", the Tudor name for Marzipan, in large amounts and then some, all made from scratch, too - none of your packet shortcuts!  It had to be big and in 3D and in 3 hours.
Benjamina's Tudor Garden was disappointing, Jane's Swan cake tasted amazing, Andrew's cake with jousting knights looked clumsy, Selasi's cake was a tad underdone and messy, whilst Candice's Peacock cake trounced all comers.  "Exceptional!" said the judges.  And it was.

The girl is such a show off!

Star Baker = Candice, deservedly.  Going Home?  Benjamina, tee hee!

Right, off to bake a cake before Pub Quiz!


* Made from manticore blood, cobra scales and household cleaning fluid
**  Grenades suddenly became a lot cooler.
*** This stuff is infinitely more reactive than the Chemical From Hell, Chlorine Triflouride.  Which can be said of just about nothing else.