Squash Stuffed With Meat And Groats!

No, This Is Not Mere Word Salad*
This story takes a bit of telling, so hopefully you'll appreciate it in the end.  Okay, several weeks ago I got a pack of Polish Barley Groats for a bargain price, all of £0.60 or something like that.  Figuring out what to do in order to cook the groats was quite simple.  Making sense of the Polish recipe on the packet was a lot harder, because Google will translate literally, rather than getting the idiom right, which is what makes all the difference.  Art?

Cooked groats

My bargain.  I don't care if they taste horrid, they're my bargain and I'm going to eat them

     However, your humble scribe is nothing if not resourceful, so I asked - well, let's be frank, I pestered - both Damian and Ania at work about translating the ingredients and instructions.  Here we have the squashes (courgettes) busy being broiled - Art?

     They were swines to get out of the pan once cooked, because they're long and soggy and fingertip deep in boiling water.  I resorted to a palette knife to get them out and here is the end result.  Art?

     And after all that they're not bad, which is solely down to my cooking.  Of course if they had been horrid, that would have - of course! - been down to Ania's translation.
     Now, time to put the motley behind the driving wheel of a car wearing square wheels!**

From 'Rufus' To 'Ruthless' In A Microsecond
You will probably never get the chance to muck around with enriched plutonium at sub-critical masses, but just in case here is a cautionary tale, which might also be subtitled "Clever people doing stupid things".
     Okay, once upon a time 'Rufus' was a subcritical mass of plutonium, engineered to be close to the limit without exceeding it.  This is 1945 we're talking about, when atomic fission was new and exciting!***It would not explode no matter what, because it simply lacked the necessary mass.
     However.
     Rufus was quite capable of going supercritical, if the amount of neutrons it absorbed got beyond a certain level, which means it would give off a huge burst of radiation.  No explosion, just about a bazillion X-rays worth of radiation.
     You can see where this is going, can't you?  Art?

Nuclear safety: the early days

     Above, you see Rufus within two halves of a beryllium sphere, which was a neutron reflector.  The two halves were prevented from closing by our hapless victim Louis Slotin, who used the very tip of a screwdriver to keep them apart.  No screens, no protective clothing, nothing but a Philips flat-head between himself and perdition.
     You can guess what happened next: the screwdriver slipped, the sphere became complete, sufficient neutrons were reflected from inside the whole sphere to induce a supercriticality in Rufus, and Louis got a fatal dose of radiation.

Rufus at rest

     The strange and rather sinister thing is that this was the second lethal accident with Rufus, whose name was abruptly changed from that homely moniker to "The Demon Core".
     So remember!  No fiddling about with subcritical masses without proper protection and remote-control machinery.

It's A Thin Link -
Bear with me on this.  Today is the RAF's birthday, that organisation formed from the amalgamation of the Royal Naval Air Service (who got their long intrusive fingers into many more pies than they were entitled to), and the Royal Flying Corps.
     Then we briefly dart aside to mention Squadron Leader James Bigglesworth (DSO, MC and Bar), who enjoyed a long career in both the RFC and RAF, to the confoundment of Perfidious Albion's enemies.  Art?

The man himself

     The reason I mention this is because in "Biggles Second Case" he ventures forth to the Kerguelen Islands, whom you will have never heard of, and for good reason.  They are one of the most remote and desolate places on Planet Earth, the nearest population being in Madagascar, over 3,000 miles away.  There is no airport and all travel to and from is by ship - and before you ask, Biggles used a flying boat.  Art?

The location

     It is administered by France, and has a transient population of about 100 scientists at most, so if you do happen to call in on your round-the-world yacht marathon, I'm sure they'd be glad of the novelty.



*  Do you see what I - O you do.
**  Mythbusters tested this once.  Hilarious and dangerous in equal parts.
***  Or, for the fuddy-duddies amongst you, novel and terrifying.