The Doomsday Cluck

No!  Nothing To Do With "Cuckoo"
Unless you want more about captured Teuton panzers in the service of Perfidious Albion, during the Second Unpleasantness?  After all, it is surely impossible to get too much of TANK.*
     No, this Intro is about that interesting speculative device, the Doomsday Clock, and all the oohing and aahing currently going on about it standing at two minutes to midnight.  "Midnight", if it does arrive, will me you we humans will depart, in large quantities.  Originally this was due to global nuclear warfare, though the goalposts have been moved a bit to include global warming.

                                                       Take your pick 
   Oddly enough, the Clock was started in 1947, when the South Canadians still had a monopoly on Big Bang Bombs, and not a lot of them at that.  The risk of a deliberate nuclear war dropped to very nearly zero after the Cuban Missile Crisis, when both sides realised how hugely unwise such an enterprise would be.  There is always the risk of an accidental nuclear shooting match, which is why there are lots of checks and balances worked into the routines of monitoring the other guy.  And Hey! it's 70 years since the Sinisters detonated their own infernal engine, and you're we're all still here.**

RDS1 goes off.

     Personally, Conrad feels that the DC invigilators aren't taking the risk of disappearing up the nostrils of the Giant Space Goat seriously enough.  It was in that BBC Radio Documentary series about hitchhiking, so it must be true.
     Here an aside.  I think Linkin Park were referencing the Doomsday Clock with their album entitled "Minutes to Midnight".  Art?

I have it somewhere

     Contrary to what you might have heard, Wah! Heat's "Seven Minutes to Midnight" is not about the DC, not directly.  Rather, it refers to the four minutes of warning we would get if the Sinister emptied their missile silos at us, plus the three minutes it takes to play the aforementioned single.
     Now to contort the motley into the wheel arch of a Landrover going over the Army's Vehicle Assault Course!

O noes!  It's past midnight!  We're all - no, hang on, is that AM or PM?

The Youth Of Today
Here, you can imagine me tutting and shaking my snowy locks - they've turned that colour, I've not been out in it - in disparagement at the younger generation.
     "That covers an awful lot of people, Conrad," I hear you remark, "For you are greatly advanced in years."
     Hmmm.  Hmmmm indeed.  I shall ponder after posting this as to whether you are being facetious or not, and retaliate appropriately.

Look at 'em, being disgustingly young and shizzle.

     I say this because, a couple of weeks ago I happened to fall into conversation with Lee at work, and our conversation came round to the topic of "The Saint".  I can't remember why, and OF COURSE I refer to the original and only series.  There is no other.
     Here another aside.  The lead character in the series is nicknamed "The Saint" because his name is Simon Templar, hence the initials "ST" - also an abbreviation for "Saint".

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s2EaEsZntcU

     That there is a link to Orbital's smashing version of the theme tune.  I have the single.  
     Anyway, Lee mentioned that the youth of today wouldn't have the faintest idea what we were talking about, a proposition I tested by asking Anila, a charming young Asian lady of quiet mien, if she knew of "The Saint".
     "What?" came her baffled response.
     Bah!

ART!

<sounds of nuclear-powered Tazer being activated>

That's better.  Oh, go stand in the shower if you're still smouldering.

    Don't worry about Art, Neanderthals heal quickly.

Poor Ken
I was taking a gander at Youtube yesteryon and came across Ken Adams discussing about working with Stan 'The Man' Kubrick.  Ken found working with Ol' Stan on "Doctor Strangelove" such a trying experience that his wife made him promise to never work with him again.
     Stan, however, had other plans.
     Oh - there was a 1/32 scale model of a Hawker Typhoon in the background of Ken's study.  Which has nothing to do with the rest of this.***

Perfidious Albion hard at it's perfidy

     Stan wanted to film entirely on location in Northern Ireland, and - he wanted Ken in on the film, doing production design.  And when Stanley Kubrick set his mind on something, it happened.  So Ken set off to do location scouting, because he had to find locations suitable to stand in for France and Prussia at the time of the Seven Year's War.

An example.

     Those are all real candles, and there's no artificial light in that shot.  
     Fancy that!  Well, Ken inevitably had a nervous breakdown, and that was probably the first good rest he got during the production.
     The end result, consequently, is fantastic to watch: every shot is like a carefully-composed painting, and perhaps by way of a consolation, Ken won an Academy Award for his work on the film.  "Barry Lyndon" showed how versatile Ol' Stan could be - his prior film had been "A Clockwork Orange" and before that "2001" - if a bit hard on his production staff.

No!  Stanley did not assault that actor with his viewing device.

Hmmmm.  You know, I had absolutely no intention of covering this item before I started typing, and now it's taken us over the ton.  There's a lesson in there somewhere if you care to look.
     Okay, time to go put the oven on and eat things!


*  Your views on this might vary.  But it's my blog, so what I say goes.
**  This is good; my invasion fleet doesn't want to arrive at a giant radioactive cinder.
***  He flew them in the RAF during the Second Unpleasantness.