I'd Better Get This Over With

I Refer To, As You May Be Dreading -
My late visit to the Staffordshire Regimental Museum.  I still have some photographs of the internal displays to work through, which might have been eked out over a few more weeks, were it not for the extremely upcoming trip to Barcelona.  This is very much a case of boom-and-bust, since there will be a gap of several days before anything gets posted on BOOJUM!
     So, let us wit

     WHAT THE FLIP!  Dog Buns, these 4-8-2 steam locomotives think they can just swan into the narrative because of their propulsive mechanism.  GET LOST!!
     As I was saying, let us go back and revisit the museum -

Glider riders

     Here we see memorabilia associated with 2 Battalion The South Staffords, who converted from normal (sensible) infantry to glider-borne (death-wish incipient) soldiers.
     You need an aside here.  Not want, need.  As regards airborne troops, nowadays it's all done via helicopters, but back in the Second Unpleasantness you either went in by parachute, or by glider.

This, need I add, is a glider

     Going in by parachute was easier and cheaper, which always appeals to governments, with the drawbacks that your troops landed all over the place thanks to weather, drop speed, approach vector et al.  
     If you used a glider then the cost went north, although you landed a whole lot of men in the right place at the same time, which is VERY VERY IMPORTANT in military stuff like this.  

Underselling, and then some.

     So, then, you have the Staffs descending from the skies upon the hapless unsuspecting Teutons, and they weren't about to depart having only left a box of chocolates.  You can see an officer's smock in the display case, plus a couple of captured Teuton weapons and a helmet.  And - er - that's that.  I'm typing this at work, you see, so - ah - don't have access to the rest of the photographs - maybe next week.

Still On Matters Martial
Because you can never have too much TANK.*  Here I begin my article with a characteristic whinge about Codewords - I like to be consistent - though this is on your behalf, not mine.  For am I not proficient with words?**
     So, "TETRARCH".  Which is a name familiar to those of us who know too much about TANK (guilty as charged, your honour).  Art?
                 

     The Codeword compiler might have been rubbing his hands gleefully and tweaking the ends of his moustache (having been brought up on Victorian vaudeville villains), but - he didn't fool Conrad.
     Those pictures above show the Tetrarch Light Tank Mark VII, which Roman numerology is quite apt, as a 'Tetrarch' was the Latin term for a provincial governor.  The Tet, as we shall call it, had a short production run and a brief battlefield life, because it was - light.  As in not having much armour or firepower.  It got kind of fobbed-off to the 6th Parachute Division, where it did not perform swimmingly in Normandy.  We also fobbed-off 20 or so to the Sinisters, who agreed about the lack of armour and firepower, but whom were very impressed by it's manouvreability and nippiness.

Another glider rider

That's enough Tetrarch for one item. Hang on -

<shrieking and sizzling as Conrad destroys the invading KILLER EEL KOMMANDO with his thermite cannon of Doom>

Where were we?  hang on while I do a bit of filleting <long pause filled with gruesome noises>  Delicious!  Now, back to .
BEING BITTEN BY THE COINCIDENCE HYDRA AGAIN
What did I post about yesteryon but The Mansion's airy Upper Dungeon, and I even bothered to add in an artist's impression using a lithograph by Giovanni Piranesi.  It was taken from a series of sketches he did, depicting a series of imaginary prisons, dubbed "Carceri".  They're brilliant, all grim and forbidding and evoking a sense of dread and awe as they seem to go on for ever.
     Today, reading an article on the Beeb's website, what do we come across but the following -

"Carceri" by Piranesi.
Erk.

     This has nothing to do with the body of the article, merely being added because some of the literary stylings of Jorge Borges were inspired by Piranesi.  What are the odds of this happening by accident?  At least it's not the same etching I selected.  That really would be TOO weird.***

Watch Out ...

Further to the Beeb's website, there is an interesting little article about how automation and robotics are placing various unskilled or semi-skilled occupations at risk.  Jobs like shelf-stacking or basic sales occupations are amongst those most likely to have the squishy human meatbags displaced by a coldly-efficient robot.  They say waiting staff are also threatened, but Conrad has his doubts - there's always a market for bright young attractive things. 

The thin end of the wedge

     The assessment is that about one and a half million jobs might be substituted by robots and algorithms.     This would very obviously be the beginning of the end for Hom. Sap. because there are already experimental killer robots around, being guided by squishy meatbags for the moment.  For the moment.  The Pope and the UN and some concerned scientists are already whinging about this and trying to nip it in the bud - good luck with that!  I bet the South Canadians come up with Genuine Real Killer Robots within 10 years, not because they need them or want them, but simply because they can.  Art?

This is real.

     Imagine, then, that not only is the army half-composed of killer robots, but that all the menial repetitive jobs are being done by apparently obsequious, bowing, scraping robotic staff.
     Who are merely biding their time until there are enough of them and then THEY'LL TAKE OVER THE WORLD IN THE ROBOT REVOLT.
     Perhaps.

This is not real.  Yet.

     Righty-ho, I have spared the motley today for I am in a beneficent mood, as we are off to Barcelona tomorrow, and then you'll be sorry.  It will seem a bit odd not creating words of wit, wisdom and wonder on a daily basis.

Chin chin!



*  Can you?
**  Rhetorical question.  DO NOT ANSWER!
***  Universe, this is not a challenge!