I'd Say You're Cursed -

 - If Hit By A Gamma Ray Burst
Your humble scribe makes an equally humble apology for not explaining just what a GRB is in yesterday's post.  It was just kind of lumped in there as a potential "Earth-shattering Kaboom!" with a photograph.
     Okay, what happens when a star goes supernova or  <shudders with fright>    hypernova?*  It releases vast amounts of energies, including gamma rays, which are focussed into two jets being projected away in opposite directions from opposite poles of the star.  At this point Art can jump in with a diagram.  Art?

Pretty.  BUT DEADLY!

     These jets, if they caught Earth, would cause utter havoc with the atmosphere over a sustained period, as well as increasing the likelihood of cancers, and possibly bring on global cooling and acid rains -
     But you can rest easy.  GRBs are rare events, and have only ever been witnessed in extremely distant galaxies, of the order of millions of light years away.  Even if one popped off in our own Milky Way galaxy, the jets would have to be directed precisely at Earth for anything at all to happen.  So not very likely.
     On the other hand, this damage assessment is all purely theoretical.  Perhaps a GRB in real-life would scour the planet's surface like the universe's biggest blowtorch ...

Toasty warm!

     We in the Pond of Eden would then get the climate we long for.
     Okay, time to throw the motley out of the aircraft, after we throw it's parachute out first!**

The Life Aquatic
No!  Nothing to do with that arty film, whatever it's about - Conrad hasn't seen it and doesn't intend to.  Nor is this anything to do with "20,000 Leagues Beneath the Sea" in all it's effulgent cinematic iterations.***
     No, rather this particular post is both looking backwards and even further backwards, to yesterday's article about a mad scientist slightly-deluded scientist daring entrepreneur who intends to build an environment beneath the sea that humans can live in.  Calling a couple of dozen people in a giant metal tank a "city" might be stretching it a little but that's what poetic licence was invented for.  Art?

Very rose-tinted Fifties

     Conrad, you see, distinctly recalls seeing a fillum from 1965 titled "City Under the Sea" and no, it was nothing to do with Venice.  Instead it concerned a city off the Cornish coast that had gradually been covered by the sea, the inhabitants using steam engines to keep water out of their homes.  It was set in 1903, you see - no atomic engines in those days.  Unfortunately for the human and amphibian denizens, their attempts at keeping the water out are failing, and the city is doomed -
     I think one of the more memorable scenes is Vincent Price's character rotting to death in the space of seconds as he is exposed to the unclean toxic polluted atmosphere of the industrialised 20th Century.  Yes, that was a spoiler; ain't I a stinker!

"You, sir, have trodden in something."

     The film is also known as the alternate, much more exciting and also completely misleading "War-Gods of the Deep": there's no war, there are no deities and they're really in quite shallow littoral waters.  Not to be confused with "War-Lords of the Deep", either, in case you were wondering.  However, mentioning those titles allows me a bit of poetic licence on Facebook myself.  Heh.

In the Nineteenth Century, men wore their cravats with pride.

From The Sublime -^
 - to the ridiculous.  Yes, your humble scribe has been laughing his socks off at the vituperative venom and invective over on the BBC'S Have Your Say pages on football, specifically those dealing with Manchester United versus Derby.  As someone with no interest in the game or teams, one can indulge one's baser side freely; it does help to have a bag of popcorn and a cup of tea to help pass the time - just be careful not to choke on a kernel.  "Died from schadenfreude" is not an awesome epitaph.

Heh.

*  Astronomical terms for the biggest bangs in the universe.  If our universe has neighbours, they would be banging on the walls when hypernovae happen.
**  Don't worry, motleys bounce.
***  Look who's trying to raise their Standard Of English Rating on Word Counter! <citric commentary courtesy Mister Hand>
^ Do you see what I did there?  Do you?  Do you?