Charles Dickens: Criminal Mastermind!

Maybe
I remember once having a conversation with Terry at work, about how we could become a pair of criminals and commit crimes, and how difficult it would be for law enforcement to track us down.  To begin with, we had no criminal history, so we were utterly unknown to the police (I disqualify a couple of parking tickets here).  We did not have any criminal acquaintances to whom the police could turn for information.  We were both clever, which is a quality very rarely found in criminals - the idea of a "Napoleon of Crime" as coined by Conan Doyle is very unrealistic.

Ol' Chas, looking quite well-groomed

     So, Ol' Chas might, perhaps, have been a bank robber or hijacker of stage coaches, except with the advantages mentioned above for Terry and I, nobody ever caught him.
     Anyway, that's not what I meant.  It transpires that Ol' Chas's artistic ingenuity had him creating at least two criminal swindles that are very well known today, though under different names.

Montague Tigg, swindler, the dirty cur!

     In the first version, we have MT as depicted above, establishing a company with a very long name "The Anglo-Bengalee Disinterested Loan and Life Insurance Company", which pays off early investors with the premiums coming in from later investors.  You may recognise this as a Ponzi scheme, because it is.  And, like all Ponzi schemes, it falls apart in the end.  SPOILER ALERT!  Plus, MT gets murdered by one of his equally unpleasant business partners.

Ponzi, the originator, and Madoff, the biggest practitioner of.

     The second example is when the unscrupulous and unpleasant and unlikeable - in fact, just imagine all the "Un-" words at this point - Ralph Nickleby helps start up the "United Metropolitan Improved Hot Muffin And Crumpet Baking And Punctual Delivery Company".  To this end he enlists the aid of some prominent politicians, the better to float the company's stock launch.  Ralph will own a considerable portion of the stocks, which will soar in value thanks to said politicians pontificating about them - and then he'll sell them.  This will cause their price to immediately plummet, leaving 1) the duped investors with stocks worth practically nothing, and 2) Ralph with an immense amount of money.

RN - avaricious and pernicious

     You might find this kind of thing familiar in the present day as a "Pump and dump" stock scheme, which you would be entirely correct about.  I believe it was featured on "The Wolf of Wall Street".
     Enough of scum and villainy!  Sit down, motley, and have this plate of biscuits (one of which is wired to explode).

More Of Green Mace
I take it you recall this monstrous piece of anti-aircraft ordnance?  In case of a failing memory, let us prod Art into action with this pitchfork -

Green Mace.  Takes up lots of space.

     Bear in mind that this thing was designed as an anti-aircraft gun, which means it has an extremely high muzzle velocity, the better to get the shell to great height all the quicker.  Consequently, of course, you then have a load of military anoraks asking if it could have been utilised as an anti-tank gun?*
      Welllll - not very effectively.  It needed to be accompanied by two trailers, one to supply power and the other carrying shells, and a small crane to remove, reload and refit the two ammunition drums.  Having said that, it did have a range of over 4 miles, so - maybe just perhaps. 
     I think we might come back to this topic as related to the Second Unpleasantness.

More Mace

More Of Maths
So, back to a subject that I regularly bore you with:  BOOJUM! traffic stats.  A good day may see figures going as high as 150, though this tends to be on a Saturday or Sunday when I post 2 new blogs per day.  On a bad day, we may be down to 40 hits.  Art?

     In case you have trouble reading that, for yesterday the total was 1,475.  Conrad has seen this happen on one day last month, where the figure on one day was about 700.  Either the Blogger traffic algorithm has gone potty, or - and this is the worrying option - there really were that many visitors yesterday.  Today we are only on the sensible total of 40, so I wait to see what the evening update brings with some trepidation.
     I can hear your quibbling from here.  "But surely a lot of traffic is a good thing!"
     Not if it brings the various slanders and libels that we are wont to dish out on a regular basis to the attention of those slandered.  First Bus, Tsar Putin, The Only Fat Man In North Korea, Killer Eels - the list goes on.

Yeah, I think I've made an enemy there.

"Morays Are Not Recommended For Human Consumption"
No, they certainly are not!  For one thing, you've got to catch and kill them in the first place, which entails getting into their environment, finding them and then offing the nasty big things - preferably from a distance with a speargun, and have another one ready to hand as well.  Just to be on the safe side.
     Once you've slain this devil of the deep, you'd better not eat it.  Morays, it seems, are at the top of the food chain, and thus acquire concentrated doses of a toxin called "Ciguatera" by eating other fish that have eaten other fish that ate the original toxic organism "Gambierdiscus Toxicus".  Whilst not often fatal, Ciguatera poisoning is extremely debilitating, for possibly weeks.
     So, no: Hom. Sap. not eat morays.

Good lord aloft!  So many teeth!

Finally -
Despite it being a Bank Holiday, I do have plans other than sitting here for several hours on end, taxing my imagination, typing away and generally generating words of wit, wisdom and wonder.** Plus, Edna needs to be walked, so this post is the only new one you're getting today.  Whether this is a good thing or bad is a matter of perspective.

Later!

*  Military anoraks, eh?  They ask this about EVERY anti-aircraft gun going.
**  Well, two of those, at least.