Sharks Are Our Friends!

Although, If You Have Seen "Baby Shark" You May Not Agree
You know, that numbing plastic pop farrago on Youtube with Baby Shark, Mummy Shark, Grandad Shark and the whole family group - one recital was more than enough for your humble scribe.
     Anyway, Conrad was quite delighted to see an item on the Beeb website with the title "The life of a shark scientist"*, and a quite detailed analysis of why one lady decided to study sharks as her chosen career.  Being able to scuba dive in tropical lagoons is one perk of the job, although to balance it she has been bitten by a crocodile.  Art?

Scoping for sharks
(Apologies for all these tricky technical terms

Wearing lots of clothes, so definitely SFW

     She also rather puts to bed the myth of Unprovoked Shark Attacks.  There is a lot to read, so I'll just add a link if you care to enquire further:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-45359293

     Now, if only we can introduce Baby Shark to a fisherman looking to collect the one vital ingredient that Shark Fin Soup cannot do without ...
     Oh I say motley!  Those new shoes we bought for you - their squeaking is so high-pitched it's attracting the attention of a flock of GIANT VAMPIRE BATS!



When I Reach That Age!
As you should surely know by now, your humble scribe buys copies of the official histories of British Divisions from the First Unpleasantness from time to time.  Normally these are Print On Demand copies of the originals from Naval & Military Press, though I do have a rather ratty 1927 copy of "The History of the 17th (Northern) Divison)" and a very brown and spotty "History of the 20th (Light) Division".
     So!  Imagine my surprise when my latest purchase, "The 8th Division at War 1914 - 1918", turned up, having expected this.  Art?

Hmmmmm.

      - and instead got the following.  Art?

     This original volume has all the fold-out maps that a POD copy doesn't have, and there's a full colour set of Divisional insignia - I realise this sounds very, very sad, and it is, unless you are me, in which case it's brilliant!
     The advisory note that accompanied this volume made mention of "foxing", which is brown spots due to aged paper, and "rippling", which is a way the paper reacts over time.  "A very tired copy" they sniffily end.
     I should think so - this volume is 92 years old!  Check out the title to this post -

Let's Travel Far To - Kapustin Yar
<heaves a weary sigh> yes, yet another of those phrases that pop up into your humble scribe's rubbish-tip skip of a mind for no particular reason.
     In case you were wondering, you can't eat or drink it, nor can it be made into a durable yet attractive pair of foot-coverings.  Art?

Picturesque - BUT DEADLY!

     It's actually one of the first Sinister rocket, missile and test ranges to be set up after the Second Unpleasantness, from where test missiles were launched and a few barely-noticeable atomic warheads were detonated.  In the Sixties it supported the Sinister space programme, using the smaller famiy of launch vehicles and then went on hiatus until 1999, when it test-launched the S400.
     Inevitably, because it was a site used to develop and test cutting-edge technology, as much nonsense grew up about Ol' Kap as did about Roswell, and with even less cause.  Bah!

"Look, look!  A flying saucer and a monolith like from 2001!"
<Very loud slapping noise>
"Okay, so it's not.  Buzzkill."

Tanks And Atom Bombs And Zombies - In A Way
You are surely aware by now that Conrad is currently ploughing through the 'Lensman' series of novels by E. E.   <draws out the next bit for maximum suspense> 'Doc' Smith, and you are also hopefully aware that three of the driving forces behind BOOJUM! are 
1) Tanks
2) Atom bombs and
3) Zombies
     In 'First Lensman' our hero Virgil gets shot and wounded, which leads to the scrambling of an entire armoured task force of tanks to come and rescue him.  They ignore little things like right of way, pedestrians or other motorists and proceed to smash down garden walls, tear up lawns, generally drive like maniacs and - it's all perfectly legal.  Art?

Imagine this doing the ton in an urban environment

     There you go, that's tanks and Lensmen for you.  Atom bombs?  Sure, no problem: the Lensmen are based at 'The Hill', a metal-sheathed mountain fortress that comes under attack by the Black Fleet, who mount a sustained and deadly attack with - atom bombs!

x50 or so

     Here an aside.  All the frightful nuclear ordnance mentioned in the novels so far has all been strictly fission-based, since when Doc first wrote his works, and then fixed them up, there hadn't been any thermonuclear, fusion detonations.  It will be interesting to see if this is amended in the later novels ...
   Now, as for zombies - this is a bit of a stretch, but when Our Heroes are captured by Gray Roger in 'Triplanetary', Clio feels her skin crawling as she converses with what looks like a human female  being on the outside, but whom appears to be utterly dead in terms of emotions or expressly human behaviour.  Is that close enough?

Well, he seems happy enough.

     A double trifecta!  How clever am I?  DON'T ANSWER THAT QUESTION!
Finally -
It's a continually-raised question amongst geeks, freaks, nerds, absurds and professors of artificial intelligence and robotic engineering:  namely, "Are robots going to take over the world?"

Just your average London commuters - or are they?!?!

     Don't worry about it, I assure you.  Conrad would never let a load of plastic cyber-bots rise up, enslave the human race and plunder Earth for it's natural resources -
     - because that's MY job.
    Sweet dreams!





*  No capitalisation?