Unusually, the title does have to do with our subject matter in the Intro today.
No! That's not a spelling mistake, it's an hilarious tea-based pun. It IS funny!
What I want to start off today's scrivel with is Starship Naming Conventions. I don't know why, but this popped into my head last night, and it refuses to go away until it is expunged. So - expunging!
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| Constitution |
The 'Enterprise' is very much a case in point. What a noble name! Starship names are always like that - noble, heroic, patriotic. The USS Constellation or Ticonderoga or Discovery. The only novel that I can recall which bucks this trend is "The Centauri Device" (as it bucks many trends), which has names like "Atlanta in Calydon" or "The Wit That Passes All Understanding". It is an exception. Warships tend not to advertise their base nature; again their names tend to be patriotic stuff - who could tell from "Roger Young" that it was a big ball of badness, simply crammed with ultra-aggressive Hom. Sap. armed to the teeth?
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| Some people have entirely too much time on their hands ... |
You won't find warships being named "Ripper" or "Strangler" or "War Weasel", nor yet titles like "Blob" or "Whiffenpoof". Although having a voice come over the intercom announcing you are about to be boarded by the "USS Raving Loon" would certainly set you back on your heels.
I think that's enough Intro. Let us propel the motley over the edge of the cliff and run away sniggering*.
"Gaudy Night" By Dorothy M. Sayers
Let's see how many of you spot the error. I know, I know, I'm a stinker. What can I say? I was raised by weasels**.
I was puzzled at first by a couple of abbreviations that Dot uses liberally, without (that I recall) bothering to explain what they are. Finally I realised what they were, without recourse to either the Internet or a dictionary.
"S.C.R." - "Senior Common Room" - that is, a room where the academic staff of the college can mingle. Strictly off-limits to anyone not a tutor.
"J.C.R." - "Junior Common Room" - where the students may congregate and hurl bread rolls or wads of inky paper at each other.
"Viva Voce"; this one I was unsure of. Definitely Latin (hack! Hiss! Spit!), and to do with speaking? Apparently it is an oral exam, in contrast to the usual written ones.
Mum and Dad
Spigot Mortars
Casting one's mind back to "Dad's Army", let us now praise not so much famous men but the humble (or mighty, depending on whether you are on the giving or the receiving end) spigot mortar, a device that Perfidious Albion came to love. The device dates back to the First Unpleasantness, where both the Teutons and M8's used them. We in the Island Kingdom of Wonder were less enchanted.
Until! The grim summer of 1940 and the fear of invasion. Cometh the hour, cometh Colonel Blacker, with his Bombard. Art?
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| Prepare to meet explosive DEATH, Nazi scum! |
This was a cheap and cheerful (again, this depends on getting or giving) weapon, designed and created in a hurry, supposedly as an anti-tank weapon.
The spigot bit of this is a central rod that the projectile fits onto, having a hollow in the middle. Not conducive of high velocity, but what this weapon lacks in buck, it certainly makes up with in terms of bang. The projectile weighed in at 20 pounds; designed before the shaped-charge came into being, it would nevertheless have been quite successful against the ramshackle Teuton tanks around at the time. It may not have pierced their armour, but it would have given the crew the world's worst migraine, as well as crazing glass, shattering tracks and possibly jamming turrets, too.
Life Imitating Art
Well well what the heck. I take it you are familiar with the fillum "Moon", which features a standout performance by Sam Rockwell, and another performance by another Sam Rockwell. Sam's character Sam is on the Moon for a reason - to help monitor the machinery and equipment that is harvesting Helium 3 from the lunar regolith. There is a brilliant shot less than a second long that shows the enormous tracks left by the mining machinery, as seen from orbit around Luna.
Then what do I see but this? Art!
* Motley life is cheap. Sorry, but there it is.
** Rabid weasels.
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