Make Mine Mercury

No!  Nothing To Do With That Queen Film
Your humble scribe is in two minds about Queen; alongside every other person in the land he is familiar with, and likes, "Bohemian Rhapsody" -
     Here an aside.  Yes, already!  Bohemia is one of the provinces of the Czech Republic, immortalised in native composer Bedrich Smetana's* "From Bohemia's Woods And Fields", so I'm a little puzzled how it cropped up as a composition by a certain rock band. 

Beardy Bedrich

    
     You know, the Dandy Warhols and "Bohemian Like You".  What, being Czech is a hot ticket to fame and adoration nowadays?  Conrad likes the Czechs, whom he usually describes as a race you'd get if you crossed the Teutons and the Ruffians, in a good way, but Really!  Let's get serious, chaps.

Bohemia.  With woods.  No fields, sorry.

     Where were we?
     Ah yes.  Today I want to talk about spin-stabilised ceramic-lined californium harvesting reactors - oh - hang on - they haven't been invented yet, have they?
     Well, we'll just look at the Caduceus, then.  If Art will put down his plate of coal -

Thus.

     This was the symbol of the Greek god Hermes, who transmuted into the Roman god Mercury.  Remember that, it comes into play later.  It's two snakes coiled around a winged staff, and was originally known as a "Herald's Wand" by the ancient Greeks.  Kindly put all thoughts of Harry Potter out of your mind: it had no magic qualities.
     Now, them ancient Greeks were a pretty sophisticated lot for people who didn't have electricity or mobile phones, and one of their conventions in warfare covered negotiations, because the white flag of parley hadn't come into being yet.**  Instead, they recognised that a messenger or courier carrying a Herald's Wand was immune from detention or death, because they had something to say.

Like The Monkees!
Er - well - perhaps not quite like The Monkees ...

     Pretty nifty, hmm?  Thus you could have a bit of a chat with the oppos, and come to an agreement, ancient Greeks being prone to rationality and logic and weird behaviour like that.
     The association with Mercury comes through the alchemical representation of the caduceus, which again if Art can be bothered to implement -

     This symbol came to be associated with the planet as well as the liquid metal.  Oddly enough, another alchemical symbol for 'Saturn' - Art?

Thus

     - appears to have inspired an iconic design for another rock band.  Art?

And they have a track called "Astronomy"

     Which is pretty much where we came in.

Hmmm.  We appear to have covered a lot of ground there.  Also, I'm not done with the Caduceus.  We shall come back to it again.  Perhaps tomorrow, if you behave.

More Musical Critique
Yes by jove!*** For Lindisfarne got off far too lightly with yesterday's rather approving analysis of "The Fog On The Tyne".  However, it was only the first verse, I'm sure I'll find lots to rant and tant about once we get to the chorus.  Speaking of which - 

" 'Cause the fog on the Tyne is all mine, all mine,"

I see.  I was unaware that there was any competition for this particular esource.

"The fog on the Tyne is all mine."

Yes, you told me that already.  Believe me, I am not going to challenge you.

"The fog on the Tyne is all mine, all mine."

ALL RIGHT!  Why are you so insistent? Is fog rare? Or valuable?  Can it be taught tricks?

"The fog on the Tyne is all mine."

You have made me change my mind.  Next fog, I'm going to be out there, harvesting it.

Quickly!  To our Fog-Harvesting Boat!

     That's more like it, a bit of spiteful hair-splitting pedantry.  Or, business as usual.  Heh!

The Working Of Conrad's Mind
You may want to skip this bit, as it concerns that dangerously unstable and unpredictable landscape, the inside of my head.  I contend that my brain works, just in ways that are 'measurless to man'.  And me.  Oh, and women as well.
     As evidence I would like to put forward -
     - Rabindranath Tagore!  <flourish of trumpets and drum roll>
     You can be forgiven if you've never heard of the chap, as he shuffled off this mortal coil a good 78 years ago.  However, I'm pretttty sure all Bengali schoolchildren are fed up of him by the time they leave school.  Art?

A beard to aspire to!

     Ol' Rab was a bit of a clever one, good at music, art and poetry, and he really shaped the sub-continent's art scene, especially with his poetry.  Heck, he even won the Nobel Prize, and you know that's not the same as getting a toy in your Kinder egg.  A really big noise in Indian art, then, especially in Bengal, where he's like the Modern Shakespeare.
     The thing is, I've never read anything by him, nor listened to his music, nor seen his art and - as you should surely know by now - Conrad detests poetry, and there's been no recent anniversary or celebration about his life and work. So -
     Why on earth did his name pop up in my head?

Wowsers!  he even has his own university.  Rab, old chap, you have definitely arrived.
(All you need now is a Mega-City One tower block named after you)

      Here an aside.  I just asked a work colleague if they'd heard of Ol' Rab.  "No" the answer, so that proves he's not been mentioned in recent media exposure.
     The plot thickens.

To You - Cruel And Unusual Punishment
I have just finished reading "The 18th Division in the Great War" and, as threatened before, I intend to pick up the sister volume by the same author, "Defiance!" and cross reference the two.  This, gentle reader, is because G.H. Nichols (the author) quaintly anonymised all the senior officers and battalions in "Defiance!".  Which is not nearly crafty enough to deter me.

Conrad - steely-eyed and determined.  Or just sad.

*  There's probably a ton of diacritical marks missing from that.  Sorry, Czechs.
**  I'm not sure when it did. Future post material?
***  "Jove" - better known as "Jupiter", which is both an astronomical object and a part of that classical suite by Holst, "The Planets", thus covering music again, and proving what an unbearable smarty-pants your modest artisan can be when he puts his mind to it.