Conrad Is - Apprehensive

Science-Fiction Is For Reading -
Not for living.  I love watching (and reading) "The Expanse"; which doesn't mean I want to experience that life, especially since I know what happens to Earth ...
     This is only partly an aside.  Your Humble Scribe spent Wednesday at an all-day staff event, which was quite diverting - Penny Mallory a good public speaker - but which meant that nobody was answering the phones or e-mails for the whoooooole of Wednesday.  Naturally, this means a BIG spike in phone and e-mail traffic on the Thursday.
     Conrad's day off was - Thursday.

"The proof-readers were on strike."

     So, hopefully - source of Apprehension #2 - all that excess traffic will have been dealt with by the time my mis-shapen, over-sized and horribly taloned feet cross the threshold on Friday.
     We'll see.
     Back to Apprehension #1.  
     You may by now have heard of the photography concerning a super-massive black hole at the centre of the M87 Messier Galaxy.  These pictures, it needs to be emphasised, are from a galaxy far, fa - er - 53 million light years away.  A pretty long commute.  Art?

Black and hole-y

     As mentioned at length, the actual black hole is the - well - it's the black, hole-shaped thing in the middle of this picture.  That coruscating band of gold around it is super-heated gasses, though as yet nobody has come up with an explanation as to why they radiate so strongly.  
     Call me shallow, but I was delighted to discover that the chief astronomer behind all this is a lady (Katie Bouman), and she's pretty easy on the eyes, which is a good thing since Heather Couper is getting on a bit.  Art?
                    
                            Katie                                              Heather
     Hot science nerds (especially with glasses!) are always a good thing, for <thinks> science and women in science and engineering and stuff.  Role models!  That's what I meant: role models.  Yeah.
     Where were we?  Oh - the ineluctable future.  Yes.  It seems that the technology needed to compose that black hole picture was of quite staggering proportions, involving enormous amounts of data being shuttled back and forth between telescope sites across continents.  The BBC even put up a diagram of the various places involved.  Art?

     The relevant bit is right at the bottom and just above the "and" I typed there: the "South Polar Telescope".
     Have you ever heard of this entity?  No.  Of course not.  Is it publicised at all?  Certainly not.  Who runs it?  Nobody knows.  Exactly where is it located?  Top secret.
     What is the relevance here?  Okay, cast your minds back to the earliest days of the BBC's premier drama-mentary series, "Doctor Who".  Where did the Cybermen make their first entrance?
     Why, none other than the "South Polar Tracking Station", which sounds like an embarrassingly thinly-disguised South Pole Telescope.

Coming soon!

     I'd lay in your stocks of gold right now.  You might also want to practice that "I most humbly and abjectly welcome our alien overlords!" speech in the bathroom mirror a few times.
     Meanwhile, let us see if the motley can fight it's way out of a locked room containing one million flesh-eating butterflies!*

Talking Of Willies -
NO SNIGGERING AT THE BACK!  This is a proper subject, and it has reference back to the First Unpleasantness I'll have you know, and besides, which you ought to have tattooed on the inside of yer eyelids by now, BOOJUM! is always Safe For Work.  Why do you think the harshest expostulation here is "Dog Buns!"?  Anyway, one of the questions at last week's Pub Quiz was on a subject close to my fusion-powered pumping unit: TANK.  You can never have too much TANK in your life.
    Q:  "Big Willie" and "Little Willie" were types of tank in the First World War" - True or False.
     Okay, Art - Little Willie first -

Not really that little.

     This was the original TANK prototype, built as a proof-of-concept vehicle.  Originally the design had been blueprinted with a turret atop the hull, but this was dropped as it was feared the profile would become too high, and perhaps top heavy.
     No controversy there.
     When it comes to "Big Willie" - both vehicles named after the Teuton Kaiser and his son - matters are a little more opaque.  The second prototype TANK was originally named "Big Willie", briefly, before it became the far better-known "Mother".  Art?

Mum in  a ditch

     Of course, Your Humble Scribe had never heard of Big Willie before so - I still insist my answer was correct.


No Barca today.  I did load up the remaining photographs into the "Insert Image" function box shortly before dashing for the bus, but now, sitting down at work, they've all vanished.  Well, you are going to get these photographs, MAKE NO MISTAKE ABOUT IT.  Just not today.  In the meantime, have a picture of <thinks> a Venetian gondola!

Just because

     And a Zeppelin gondola!

Again, because

     And a slice of Gorgonzola!

Why?  Why not!

     There you go, and that has incidentally upped the word count a little.


How Very Apt
Conrad is about to have his daily dry crust and sip of ditchwater, it being lunchtime, most of which I spend hammering away on the keyboard, creating words of wit, wisdom and wonder - DO YOU SEE THE SACRIFICES I MAKE FOR YOU?  DO YOU! - <pauses whilst veins in temple cease to throb>
     Ahem.
     Anyway, yesterday I began watching "Santa Clarita Diet", which is an amusing black comedy with moments of grossness thrown in.  At only 28 minutes per episode it doesn't overstay it's welcome, though Your Humble Scribe cannot see how it has made it to a third season.  Art?

Perhaps better titled "Santa Clarita Die"

     So far the body count is a modest two, though we are only at the fourth episode, so prospects look good.
     I'll let you know.


     And now to see how that three-day old remaindered sandwich has kept.  In the meantime, Keep Watching The Pies!  Because those pies made with eels - okay, Eel Pies - may only be a cunning variety of edible Trojan Horse, allowing them to smuggle themselves into your domicile, whereupon one morning you open the fridge and -

"Sur-pies!"***

Later, you pikers!

*  This was a crucial plot point in an episode of "The Invaders"
**  Or is that just me?
***  Do you see what I - O you do.