A Slice Of Life

You'll Like This Kind Of Slice -
It has no calories, emits no greenhouse gases and possesses zero carbon footprint.  Actually you still might not like it as it concerns the day-to-day events of your humble scribe.  What the heck, whose blog is it, once again?
     Let the recollections begin!
     <embarrassed pause as Conrad tries to think of something - anything! - interesting>
     Aha! (the sound of the Muse hitting your modest artisan with inspiration.  It hurts, but I'll gladly put up with it).

An older, more genteel version of the Muse in action

     Conrad, your humble scribe - which I might capitalise from now on in order to inflate my importance in a minor way, yet never abbreviate to YHS, since we have a word count to hit - was somewhat at a loss when midnight rolled around yesterday (at which point my scrawl has here appended "May have rouble redding thisx laterrr on as it's very bampy and thisd bus nas ho suspension" - do you see what a writer has to put up with to satisfy the Muse?  Do you?

A Chinese steel works.  Just because.

     I was not cavilling at the fact that it was midnight, since we expect this to happen at least once per day.  Rather, it was the dizzying speed it had arrived with.  Or, with which it had arrived.*  What, I pondered, had Your Humble Scribe gotten done that evening?
     Well, there was the blog, which takes a tad or two to compose (counsel of perfection and all that).  I made my lunch for Monday, then had tea, and those remaindered frankfurters a week past their sell-by-date were delicious.** Read more comic, then watched a couple of hilarious Youtube videos concerning Experts reviewing film scenes of their particular specialism (physics and artificial intelligence).  More of these later.  And the real thief of time - that blasted jigsaw!

Like this x 1,500 times

     Because you know Conrad: no internal moderator.  If I get stuck into a task, then I will doggedly pursue it for hours.  And then wonder where the evening has gone.
     And there's still 1,200 pieces to go!
     Okay, motley, you're naked and we've got Giant Hogweed stems dripping with hideously toxic sap; you have a five-second start - GO!

The hoggy weed indeed.

A Bigger Bang
You know Conrad, childishly gleeful whenever he comes across anything that's markedly more explodey than anything else, because you can never have too much BANG in your life, that's what I say.
     I do hesitate a little about continuing with this particular post: in the past I was severely chastised for posting on a web forum how Israel could covertly destroy the Iranian nuclear facilities at Natanz.  Neither Mossad nor the Sayeret Matkal paid me a visit, so I think I got away with it.

Natanz's sole tourist attraction
(IAEA inspectors not welcome)

     Today I want to talk about anti-matter.  You might dismiss this stuff as being firmly in the province of obscure science-fiction shows like "Starry Treks": you'd be wrong.  Since the first creation of anti-matter back in 1955, it has been produced in ever increasing amounts, although still only at the millionths of a gram scale.
     It's devilishly difficult and expensive and energy-consuming to create - or at least so reckons Wikipedia - because of it's fundamental nature, which is to mutually annihilate both itself and whatever normal matter it comes into contact with.
     Let's be clear about this: such annihilation produces 100% conversion of matter into energy, which is at least 10 times the efficiency of the most efficient thermonuclear warhead.

The B43 Big Bang Bomb

     This means that even a minute amount of antimatter goes off with an appallingly big explosion.  A single gram will produce a 42 kiloton explosion.  Or, take the Minuteman III warhead, with a "physics package" (as they coyly call the nuclear warhead) of 350 kilotons yield, which weighs in at 750 pounds.  An anti-matter warhead could reach that same yield with only 9 grams present.
     Ooo-er, missus, to quote the late great Kenneth Williams.
     There is more, but -  you can only take so much terror in a single dose.  More tomorrow!***

Very probably the only time antimatter weaponry and Ken have been combined.

"The 59 Sound" By The Gaslight Anthem
I have been listening to this again today, and think my dismissal of the album as "all samey" with only the title track having merit is a bit unkind and hasty.  They definitely have a formula for songs, of which the title track is the best example.  They do avoid this on several other songs - "Great Expectations", "Miles Davis and the Cool", "Even Cowgirls Get the Blues" and "The Backseat".
     So take note, for you will not often see these lines, and especially not about music:  I was wrong.  I may even buy another of their records, Ha!

The band in question

    I know what you're thinking here - "My, what a refreshing change from babbling about nuclear weapons and tanks."

"It's The Russians, John - They're Still On The Moon!"
(Not sure quite whom "John" is, but we'll gloss over that and carry on).
   If you were paying attention yesterday and have a memory beyond that of a senile goldfish swimming in a barrel of brandy, then you will recall the Sinister's "Lunar Engineering Machine", a roving beast for crossing the lunar regolith, in addition to drilling in it and shovelling it about.

"Lunar regolith" = "Moon soil" to you.

     The Sinister's plan was to drop 2 LEMs onto the surface, where they would act as tow vehicles and excavators, helping to bury a giant environmental module that would have been sent up to establish a permanently manned lunar base.  Art?

The environmental module

     The module would itself co-operate with the burying plan, rotating about it's own axis and embedding itself thanks to a system of cutting blades arrayed in a helix on the exterior.  Why bury yourself?  To provide decent protection against radiation, long and short wavelength, to protect against micro-meteorite impact and also as insulation, in order to avoid extensive and excessive changes of temperature in the outer walls.
     Clever chaps, them Sinisters, when they put their minds to it!

And with that, we are done!

*  We don't want any split infinitives here.
**  Also, I'm still alive and healthy, so take that, food labelling laws.
***  Providing neither MI5 nor the CIA come calling.