Set The Controls For The Start Of The Sun

I Shall Probably Have To Explain This
Since none of you striplings are old enough to remember early Pink Floyd, back in the day when they were just another interesting prog rock band, alongside contemporaries like <thinks hard> Ten Years After or Procol Harum.
     Bear with me - this is going to take a lot of association and assertion, and it's quite parenthetical.
     Okay, first of all we have to go back to a Ray Bradbury short story "The Golden Apples Of The Sun".  Art?

The most apt cover art

     The curious title comes itself from a poem by W.B. Yeats - I did warn you this was parenthetical.
     I read the story once; it concerns a misson from Earth to the Sun, carried out by a super-refrigerated spaceship that is going to harvest a cupful of the solar fusion star itself.  The only thing I recall about it is that one crewman gets a small hole in his spacesuit, and dies instantly, frozen to death.
     So, then, to Pink Floyd, back in their overtly sci-fi days.  Art?

Roger Waters giving a gong some welly

   "What does this have to do with short-circuiting the continuum on a four or five parsec level?" I hear you ask.  Or was that "Forbidden Planet"?
    Well!  It concerns the Parker Solar Probe, being sent by NASA to orbit and investigate the Sun, from the remarkably close distance of 7 million miles.  That's very close in astronomical terms - something like only 28 times the distance between Earth and the Moon; practically sitting in the Sun's lap.  Art?

This time,without a thumb

      The idea is that this probe will report back on the behaviour of the Sun, allowing a better understanding of things like sunspots or coronal mass ejections, and thus how better to protect all those delicate (and expensive!) satellites in orbit.

     Since Parker will only be orbiting at the very outer edge of the sun, you can call that the start of the sun - hence today's title.
     Now that we've staked the motley out on the lawn, can we parboil it with a magnifying glass five feet across?  We'll find out!

Go on, guess the title

Well, that's our default description of "Astronomy" covered.  Now for - tanks!

Krasnaboos, Here's Looking At Youse
If you are unfamiliar with this word, that's because I made it up. It refers to those loonwaffles who insist that, because it's Tsarist/Sinister/Ruffian, it's automatically the best there is, for ever and ever; you can see them oozing out of the mud on Facebook.  Even if the video is about the plumage of the European Lesser Egret in winter-time and how it's changed since the Industrial Revolution, they'll be there going "T34 BEST TANK EVAH it won against Napoleon" - and similar.     Hence this post.  Art?

The Armata T14.
Broken down.

     This is the T14 Armata, which the Krasnaboo's collectively wet themselves over, babbling about it's crewless turret and enormous gun and bright shiny missiles - and the one above broke down, exceedingly embarrassingly for Tsar Putin, during rehearsals for Red Square parade day.  "It didn't break down"  "It was all planned" "It was a novice crew" were some of the excuses offered.
     Yeah.  Right.

Putin on a brave face

     Oh, and the damn things are so expensive the Ruffian Army can only afford a hundred or so.

Zombie Technology
You know how it is - that particular piece of electro-mechanical kit that you can live without, it's just you'd rather not, suddenly dies on you.  Out of respect to the sphygmomanometer, you don't just bin it, and it sits on the shelf for months.
     Then, one day, you decide to stop treating it as a piece of modern art and take your blood pressure with it - and it works!

I knew you'd ask, so here is one.

     I am delighted to say that the same applies to the dehumidifier, from which I extracted the sump last night , and then put it back in again - incorrect insertion is probably what goosed it in the first place, and it is humming away even as I type.  Art?

     I'm sure you're pleased for me; I know I am, because now all the thousands of books and comics in my Sekrit Layr aren't in danger from condensation.  Hooray!
Finally - 
If there are any people reading this who hail from the land of kvass and kasha,* and who are a bit cross at my citric mocking, then I can only claim that my faults are due to being raised by weasels.

                 Mum and Dad say "RRRRRRRRRRRR!"

Rabid weasels.



*  Russia, for the uneducated amongst you.