Second go at this
typing-stuff-at-work experiment. Nobody
has pulled me up about doing this last week, so fingers crossed! Although I shall probably use that codeword
“foofoodilly” for those things that make loud noises and craters. The reason for typing this in work time is
that work time doesn’t finish until 6 post meridian, meaning I probably won’t
get home until 7:30 – I can hear your tears falling from here.
Enough wibble! The Intro has an Intro, which must be
post-modern or meta or something equally clever*.
Oh, and apologies for that awful title. Still with the tea!
 |
| The fruit of the foofoodilly |
Men
Are Not From Mars
Martians are. And if you think you can ride on over and
steal their real estate, think again. In
fact, they had the idea first – for yes, we are back to Conrad’s obsessive deconstruction
of “The War of the Worlds” (1953). We
are back at the Goofs page, and here we sneer at some of the nit-picking
nonsense there encountered. If there’s
any nit-picking to be done, it’ll be that prescient, pertinent pedant in the
corner (me!).
For instance, one character has added in
as an objection “Radio isn’t working therefore radar wouldn’t, either.”
NO!
Radio and radar can both be jammed – which, by inference, is what has
happened to radio communications across the world – but they work on different
frequencies. Whilst it makes perfect
sense for the Martians to jam your comms, why bother with radar? It would mean a lot of effort for little
utility. Watch this space to see how
it’s really done.
 |
| Hom. Sap. - abusing the right to be stupid. Again. |
Less
Is More
Actually, it’s that Twitter
feed again - #LesserTributeBands, because you know your humble hack – ever a
one for mucking about with language. So!
Making-quite-ill Joke
The Boatles
Shallow Purple
Quite Sensible Punk
Tinny Dan
Brontosaurus Rex
The Windows
The Founders
The Things of Leon
Dexy’s Midnight Strollers
Raspberry Jam
The Mars Ampere
Saneness
The Allman Mothers Band
Flexible Little Fingers
Guns and Tulips
Car Halen
And in my trusty notebook there is the
scrawl “I should stop now as this is getting silly”
 |
| Conrad with silly head on. |
“Ring
Of Steel” By Alexander Watson
I have finally finished ROS –
it looks longer than it actually is, thanks to about 200 pages of index,
bibliography and notes.
What is it about? The First Unpleasantness, from the German and
Austro-Hungarian perspective. Hitherto
the point of view I’ve read has been British or Commonwealth, and this book is
a welcome corrective. It shows that the
ruling elites of both empires were willing to bet the farm on winning, no
matter how much Joszef Public had to suffer.
You push people too hard and they become revolting – literally.
Here an aside. Recall, if you will, Field Marshall Haig, who
has been rather reviled in the press by those out for a soundbite. He presciently warned that allowing the
Teuton army to march home, weapons intact, was a major mistake, and he was
right. This is where the legend of the
“Dolchstoss” or “Stab in the back” legend springs from, which provided rich
loamy soil for that Adolf Schickelgruber chap …
Back on track. Note that Erich Von Ludendorff, post-war,
busily lied about who and what was responsible for the Teuton defeat; he was
one of those wrigglers who blamed everyone else rather than admit any
responsibility.
Actually the Pond’s naval blockade was a
source of much whinging amongst our Teuton brethren - but then again, we are
Perfidious Albion**.
 |
| A fine, if lengthy, work indeed |
ICBM
Construction And Design
Sadly – THANK YOU SO MUCH
DIABETES – this acronym can now only ever mean “Intercontinental Ballistic
Missile” and no longer “Ice Cream Breakfast Man”. Ah well.
Into each life a little rain must fall, or a whole lot if you live or
work in Manchester. As I do.
Anyway, there is a bit of a furore going
on at present, regarding the Norks <hack snort and spit of contempt so you
know this is the North Koreans we’re talking about, not the lovely
Norwegians> and their missile-rattling rhetoric about firing missiles ‘near’
Guam.
Welcome to the concept of “Circular Error
Probable”, which is a measure of accuracy.
The CEP of a missile system refers to a circle that 50% of projectiles
will hit, so the higher the CEP, the less accurate it is. IIRC, the Iraqi missiles fire at Israel had a
miserably high CEP, on the order of kilometres.
Now, we actually have a metric quoted by
some fossilised bampot Nork general, stating that their Ding-Dong missiles will
fly 3,340 kilometres***and that they will impact – with a CEP of 11.2
kilometres. This is not good, frankly,
as the Dog Buns things are so bloody inaccurate they might well actually hit Guam.
Which would be bad for all involved. And this is taking the word of said fossil,
who is probably boastfully overstating the accuracy of these projectiles.
 |
| Think of the bunnies! |
* Like what I am
** It’s bred into the bones
*** I hate using metric
measurements normally so believe me this is essential
No comments:
Post a Comment