Pretzel Logic

Just Fr A augh
I thught I'd kick ff the Intr by using my d aptp, where the "I" and "0" keys have stpped wrkin - and the fu stp key as we, it seems.  In case yu were wndering, that's an upper-case "i", the number zer and a decima pint 
     kay, that's cnfusing enugh t reach the pint f annying.

Okay, I cheated with the title, otherwise nobody, instead of mostly nobody, would know what on earth I was talking about.

Look!  A spelling mistake - the horror!

Translation:  Just For A Laugh
I thought I'd kick off the Intro by using my old laptop, where the "l" and "o" keys have stopped working - and the full stop key as well, it seems.  In case you were wondering, that's an upper-case "i", the number zero and a decimal point.     Okay, that's confusing enough to reach the point of annoying.
Back on track.*  I have, of late, been listening a lot to Steely Dan, and especially the album named in today's second title, and especially the title track.  Which is apparently about time travel; not such a stretch when you realise that the composers Don Fagen and Walt Becker were science-fiction fans.

"We approve"

     Oh - thanks.  Er - anyway, back on track.  'Pretzel Logic" is the last time that the original band were together, as after this the people who were not Fagen and Becker left.  F & B detested having to tour, so they didn't.  After PL they simply recruited whole armies of immensely talented session musicians and had them play the same song for nine hours, before stripping out a single performance, such as a drum piece.

"I approve"

     This was a very expensive process, as top-flight session musos don't come cheap.  It did enable F & B to create absolute sonic perfection in the studio, and their records are frequently used by stereo enthusiasts as standards to judge technical performance.**
     Their process, as you can tell by the picture above (Art doing what he ought to do every time) also reminded me of Ol' Stan and his uncompromising approach to making a film.  We also got into SK in today's earlier post.***  

Rationalwiki
I came across this last week and have been hilariously entertained by it's refreshingly irreverent take on both woo and reality - 

     AAAAGH!  BDY HE!!!^  I had Youtuble playing Steely Dan in the background, starting off with "Pretzel Logic" and just turned over whilst it was playing "Hey Nineteen" and what picture came up?  Art?

     - which happens to be another film directed by Ol' Stan.  If the Universe is trying to 
     tell me something, can it please use Facebook?
     
     - okay, back on track <pauses to check over shoulder - no, it was only the wind> and yeah, Rationalwiki.  I forget how I managed to eventually wind up there, but I did check out their article on SK, which repeats an erroneous description.  Art?

 "Major T. J. "King" Kong (Slim Pickins) riding the bomb in Stanley Kubrick's 1964 film, Dr. Strangelove".

     This is Ken Adam, the film's Production Designer, getting things deliberately wrong.  This is actually a ballistic missile masquerading as a bomb, since all South Canadian nucl - ahem - foofoodillies were very much bomb-shaped.

Possibly a copy of the "Thor"Intermediate Range Ballistic Foofoodilly

     Okay, I think that's us done with Rationalwiki and SK.

How Did He Do It?
With a lead pipe in the library, but there were mitigating circumstances and I got off with a warning.
     No, I refer to an article on the Beeb website about Arthur C. Clarke, the British science fiction author who wrote "2001: A Space Odyssey".***Art?

They never answer their own question!

     "How was ACC able to see into the future?" they ask.  The short film they have illustrates how he came up with the concept for telecommunication satellites - sort of The Comsat Angle - and how influential artificial intelligence would become, even predicting the development of replicators, which you would know better as 3D Printers.
     They don't answer the how, so I'll tell you.  He was a very clever chap, who graduated from university with a combined mathematics and physics degree.  During the Second Unpleasantness he worked for the RAF on radar.  He also had quite the imagination, as evident by the number of books he wrote.
     That's how!


*  We can manage this sometimes.  Sometimes.
**  As is "Dark Side Of The Moon", which we referenced yesterday.  
***You see how everything is related to everything else?
^  As my old laptop would put it.