Excuse Me While I Blow Up The World -

Ha!  Gotcha!
It's not going to happen whilst I still live here, folks.  Of course if I pop off to Mars or Enceladus for a holiday - then, then you're on your own.
     Well, only kind of not blowing up the world, because I want to talk about volcanoes.  Volcanoes!  Nature's own apocalyptic awesomeness, explosions that come with a most excellent lightshow to boot.  Art?

Mount Doom, naked.

     Okay, that above is Mount Ngauruhoe, New Zealand.  It was dressed up a bit and appears as Mount Doom - hey, no foreshadowing here at all! - in "The Lord of the Rings", which leads me into my Big Idea for this Intro.  Okay, you've got that New Zealand has volcanoes.  It certainly does, and what's more it has the Kermadec Islands, an archipelago* that extends north-east of the Polite Australians.  Art?  Less slobbering over Mara Corday photographs and more pictures!

There you go

     These islands are the property of New Zealand and are in reality the peaks of submarine volcanoes; some of the seamounts in the Kermadec chain undergo periodic eruptions, which is where the question gets posed: if one of these underseamounts manages to create a sustainable volcanic island, will they name it -
     New New Zealand?**
     Now, time to scrub the motley's hideous scaly hide red raw and roll it in wasabi paste!

Topical, Nicht War?
I have not been to the Pub Quiz tonight as my partners, Phil and Rosie, are off babysitting in London with the grandchildren.
     "Don't mourn so, old beer sponge," I hear you commiserate.  "There's always next week."
     'Fraid not.
     For in the many weeks to come, they are venturing to the land of the Polite Australians, where lives Rosie's brother, unvisited for lo! many a year.  They shall not return till February.  Unless the Zombie Apocalypse arrives in the meantime, in which case I suppose Pub Quiz will become considerably less pressing an issue.

What do you bet they do at least some of these?

     They actually finish their holiday with a visit to White Island, which I think I've mentioned before.  It's a submarine volcano off the north coast of North Island, which you can visit by boat.  "Visit" as in "Get off the boat and wander around whilst wearing stout boots and a gasmask".
     There you go, two posts that fit together like the finely-tuned engine of a First Bus PSV/bodged-together Mad Max road buggy/Colin Furze jet-bicycle (delete where applicable).***

Topical, Mai Oui?
Yesterday your humble scribe broached the topic of the People's Populous Dictatorship landing a robot probe on the far side of the Moon.  What did I say?

  This, of course, will scarcely quell the legions of swivel-eyed loons who insist NASA and aliens have secret bases there rant rant rant Oh excuse me I need to take my lithium -
    .....  Cue also a BBC website Have Your Say on the subject, which will inevitably descend into bad puns and spiteful political comments.

Rover.  Down, boy!

     Yup.  Comment 4: "Good. The Chinese may be more open & honest than the US, and actually reveal the non-human artificial structures that exist on the far side of the moon."
     If NASA concealed the existence of these structures, how come the bumbletucks know ALL ABOUT THEM? Also note how the poster hopes that a dictatorship answerable to nobody will -
     The rest of the Comments are split between criticising the Chinese regime, praising the project for it's pioneering scientific endeavour, and yarking on about Brexit.^
     Ah, what's the point!

Hmmmm.  Okay, Art, we'll let this one stand.

Topical, Eh?
"Because Science" is always worth a watch, if for nothing more than to gawk at Kyle Hill's exuberant delivery and back-of-a-fag-packet maths calculations. 
     What he was talking about was the very finest point (or edge) you can get, with scientific instruments that are so sharp they verge beyond the microscopic and the limits of human vision.  Art?


     That there is an obsidian scalpel blade to port, and a surgical steel scalpel blade to starboard.  That obsidian blade gets down to 3 nanometres thickness - as mentioned, too thin for you to see.
     And where does obsidian come from?
     Volcanoes.  You see?  You see how everything links to everything else?   
     One of Kyle's correspondents also had a tale to tell.  His wife worked in disease research, involving the dissection of malaria-bearing mosquitoes.
     Mosquito dissection.  Two words you never thought to hear together -


     The ends of the tweezers used in these dissections are so fine they are, once again, microscopic, and extend beyond the resolution of human eyesight, which is pretty impressive stuff.
Beyond The (Very, Very, Very) Far Horizon
Yes, you guessed it, more about space and astronomy, specifically the New Horizons probe, which is one of the three most distant human-created objects ever.  The other two are Voyagers 1 and 2.
     To judge just how far away Ol'  New is, recall how distant that planetisimal Pluto is, because that's really, really distant.  Art?


     There you go: just over 3.6 billion miles.  This is so far off the Sun is just another faint star in the sky.  Yet the object NH has just whizzed past - Ultima Thule - is another billion miles further on.
     Here an aside.  Back in the days when Rome, either the Republican or Imperial flavour, was a going concern, the name "Ultima Thule" referred to a land 'beyond the known world'.  Quite possibly the northern bits of Perfidious Albion, don't you know.
     Anyway!   Back on track.  Ultima Thule, over 4.5 billion miles from Hom. Sap's homeworld.  Art?

It - er - rocks.

     At this distance it takes six hours for data to be transmitted back from NH, and at a painfully slow rate: it will take over a year for all the data about this ancient ball of rock?  ice?  both?  mashed potatoes? to get back to Earth.
     Just goes to show, you we human beings can be pretttty Dog Buns clever when we put our minds to it.^^
 



*  I'm pretty sure when you woke up this morning you never expected to read the word "Archipelago".
**  You may wince freely at this point.
***  You know, Colin Furze of the Thermite Cannon; an inventor with a death wish.
^  The Brexit bafoons crop up on EVERY SINGLE HYS.  
^^  Conspiranoid loonwaffles excepted.