Blue-On-Blue With The Killer Cuckoo

Yes, Really
For some bizarre reason not easily explained, the cuckoo has come to be a byword in the Pond of Eden for the barminess of mild insanity.  If you butter your toast with toothpaste, or toboggan down the stairs at work on a tea-tray, or insist that the original  series of "Battlestar Galactica" has any merit, then - you're cuckoo.

                                          Cuckoos in twos
     Why this is so is open to question, and I don't have time to go check in my Brewer's as it's already 19:13, and we the BOOJUM! staff are on a deadline, you know.  Personally, Conrad views the cuckoo as a bit of a beast, sly and irresistible, just waiting to be invoked for murder.*
     Anyway, this has next to nothing to do with our Intro, which is about TANK (see our default description on Facebook).
     Okay, here we have the Guards Armoured Division of the Second Unpleasantness, who were equipped primarily with Sherman and Churchill tanks.  Art?

                  Sherman                                            Churchill     
     These tanks were up against the extremely formidable later-war Teuton mobile metal forts, such as the famous Tiger and the Panther.  We don't have time to go into the arguments about which was better - that argument has been running since 1945 - so we will merely nod in a knowing fashion and move on.
     Now, however good the Teuton tanks were, they were crewed by callow Hom. Sap. who tended to "bug out" when things got rough.  Thus the Guards got their hands upon an intact, running Panther tank in August 1944, discovered abandoned in a barn, whose callow crew hadn't bothered to destroy or sabotage it at all.  Naughty crew!
     The done thing would have been to report this discovery up the chain of command, and somebody from a testing establishment back in Perfidous Albion would have come out to take charge of this windfall, so they could take it to Bovington and test if for - etcetera, etcetera.
     The wicked Guards Division didn't report their discovery.  O no.  No, they decided to keep this tank, paint it in Allied livery and - O horrid irony! - use it against it's former Teuton masters.  Naughty guards!  Art?

A Cuckoo in the West

     Now you know where the "Killer" part of tonight's title originates.  
     Cuckoo's fate was a little ignominous.  Rather than go out in a blaze of glory, her fuel pump broke in February 1945, and she was euthanised.  Perhaps.  Nobody seems to know exactly what happened to the poor redundant hulk.

The Panther in winter

     I realise I've not gone on about 'Blue-On-Blue' here, which is going to come up as a topic tomorrow, for Lo! this Intro has gone on, rather.  Let me just clarify that a BoB used to be called "Friendly Fire", although as Michael Herr wrote, if it's coming at you, then it's not friendly.
     Now, time to send the motley down the zipline, with a 200 pound bag of rocks chained to it's ankles!

Poor motley.  That's a looooong zipline.
(This was a practice run absent bag)

What Were They Thinking?
Conrad had to argue with a magistrate earlier in the week, having been detained for promoting child abuse, child endangerment, grievous bodily harm, assault, assault and battery and failing to use two spaces after a full stop.
     Fortunately I was wearing my Comsat Angels t-shirt, as the magistrate was also a fan, so I got off with a bit of finger-wagging and admonitions about "Don't do it again!"
     What gross and egregious calumny had I perpetrated?** Why, merely reciting the first line of that nursery rhyme, "Rock-a-bye baby".  Art?

CAUTION!  Your parenting skills are severely lacking!

      The second line is even worse than the first.  Let us illuminate -

!

     This might be permitted in Perfidious Albion, yet this illustration comes from South Canada, where they have TORNADOES.  And hurricanes.  Oh, and vultures.  Not to mention snakes and wolves.  Blimey, why don't you just put up a sign "DELICIOUS HUMAN EATS HERE!!"

That Dam In Brazil -
I knew I'd gone on about this topic last year in some detail, and I was right.  See this here link to the original post -

https://comsatangel2002.blogspot.com/2018/09/make-mine-minerva.html

     What's significant about the Brumadinho dam disaster is that this was a 'Tailings Dam', which is more an earthen barrier than the conventional reinforced concrete dam you are envisioning, such as the Hoover Dam. The latter was created for water retention, with a throughput of flow that can be regulated.  Art?

Dam, impressive

     A tailings dam, on the other hand, is more a gigantic sump that accommodates the waste slurry from mining operations, which can be horribly toxic stuff in it's own right.  The exact number of these aspiring-to-be dams is somewhat hazy, as the regulations governing them are a lot less stringent that those for gravity dams.  I note that, forbiddingly, my article of last year states that tailings dams fail between 2 to 5 times per annum.

A tailings dam when intact
(This one is in lovely green Eire)

     Part of the problem at Brumadinho will be the clean-up operation once rescue, recovery and remembrance ceremonies have ceased - at present only 9 deaths are confirmed, though this is going to rise in a horrible and inexorable fashion.  The mine that the dam serviced produced iron ore, which means there is going to be widespread contamination from that element, and consequent decontamination procedures.  It could be worse: some tailings dams contain effluents that include cyanide, of all things.

Wowsers, that was a grim reminder of why BOOJUM! generally avoids Current Affairs.  Hopefully it also educated you about the danger and ubiquity of tailings dams.

Finally -
O goody!  I see that there is some controversial ballfoot game activity over on the BBC website, and that they have opened a 'Have Your Say' about Millwall versus Everton.  Conrad looks forward to a feast of bilious invective and frothing antimonic ire!






*  "Forbidden Planet" reference there for you.
**  Can you tell I'm reading Charles Dickens at the moment?