Conrad Is - Pleased

Despite The Ballfoot Season Ending
Not that I will miss the wretched sport itself, where prima donnas are paid a lifetime's wage per week for hoofing a pig's bladder around.  O no.  As I have said before, for all Your Humble Scribe cares about the game, the captains of each team could walk onto the pitch and flip pennies to see who wins. 
     No, what I am dolourous about <swears at Spellchecker for it's South Canadian bias> is the absence of Have Your Say Comments on the BBC's sports webpages.

Conrad being sad
(Or he has wind - the symptoms are the same)

     There used to be a positive torrent of ill-humoured invective and bilious observations there; whereas now all you can hear is crickets chirping and tumbleweed rolling in the wind <sighs>.
     But, as to why I am pleased, and pleased with myself?  A little intellectual detective work is why, concerning - Art?

"Pictures of Finland"

       A previous owner had thoughtfully cut out the title and index pages, so there was 0% information about the authors, the publishers or even what date it came out.  A cunning bit of detective work concerning Finland's acquisition of French tanks meant it had to be from May 1920 onwards.
     Okay, using Google Translate I have worked out the first words in print.  Given that I did it one word at a time, I think this proves that idiom, context and grammar are all absent, but what the heck, it took ages to do, so you're going to get the benefit, like it or not:

"The First Phrase

All areas the world development ['kay' - I couldn't translate this one without the umlauts] today from so rapidly on the beat, that few people may is more time create to himself wholesome the image of surrounding the world or at least the nearest the environment and own country."

     Pretty obviously 'The First Phrase' is the equivalent of "Foreword" or "Introduction".  I think the sense here is that things in Finland (or Suomi if you prefer) are changing rapidly, and that the time to capture this culture in transition is now (whenever 'now' is).

"Two years later, this became Helsinki"

     Then I skipped to the end of this Foreword - that was only the first paragraph and it was already night.  Art?

"Kustantaja" = "Publishers"

     Aha.  Names.  Conrad worked them in reverse order (just out of sheer perversity), and BINGO! we discover than these are indeed authors and Kaarlo Hanninen was quite a prolific chap.  I even managed to find and translate an autobiographical page about him.  Art?

About half way down

     There we go!  "Pictures from Finland", Otava press, published 1927, and those three names at the end of the Foreword are indeed the authors.
     Very possibly my best ever find at a car boot sale - Abebooks list a single copy, at £40, so mine was a bargain at £0.50.

     Okay, Shelli, yes, you got a bargain too.  Can we move on and admire my cleverness a bit more?
     My copy won't be worth anything like £40, given that those pages have been cut out, and it's suffered a little from damp, yet it's my copy, that I discovered the details for, which makes it very much my baby.
     Okay, motley, today we're conducting cattle-prod trials, as I don't think the Tazer teaches Art a powerful enough lesson, and you are going to help me evaluate all fifty-three models.  Yes, that's why we super-glued you to the chair.

Very possibly the motley "co-operating"

Lest you think this tale bestows any kind of intellectual stature on Conrad, don't forget this is the man who loves cheesy old B & W Fifties sci-fi films and "Police Interceptors".

How To Prevent Abuse Of Superpowers
"Ban them" I hear you say.  Yeah.  Right.  How did that work out for Prohibition?
     Besides, if there's a way for governments to make money out of licensing superpowers, believe me they will.  Morality and legality rapidly become elastic terms when the £££ signs appear in a politician's eyes.
     So.  Conrad was thinking about how, exactly, you could grant someone superpowers, and not by going down the Syndrome route of hi-tec equipment.*

CAUTION!  Usage can cause delusions of capehood

     Okay, if we take physical instrumentalities** off the table, how about using specialist nanotechnology that works on the brain or body or both, to gift an individual so-dosed all kinds of superpowers?  Actually, I think this is one of the central MacGuffins in "The Boys", a needleful of glowing blue crud that costs a billion dollars a shot.
     The twist in the tail for Conrad's Costly Cobalt Crud - Art?

Also doubles as a handy torch

     - is that it has a limited lifespan - engineered to be effective for about six months.  After that the superpowers it granted abruptly come to an end, so you'd better not be flying on Day One Hundred And Eighty Three, or cruising the ocean depths, or hanging out with your best buds that pride of lions.  
     I think you can see the benefits here.  For the government, a big chunk of taxes; and if you want to keep your superpowers, why, you have to keep paying, and so the taxes keep rolling in.  Moreover, if you turn criminal, you only get a six month window to be criminal in, after which the law will fall upon you like an anvil from a mile high, and you can forget about ever ever ever getting any of Conrad's Costly Cobalt Crud in your veins again.

"Conrad pinched himself to be sure he was still awake and not dreaming"

     There.  I think that item will take care of any worries that Your Humble Scribe was turning into a refined intellectual sort <burps, farts, scratches self>.

"Amortisation"
I did wonder what this was, and then I found out.  It's an accountancy practice where an intangible asset like a brand name has it's value spread out over time and decrease -
     Boring, right?  Art?

Surely this cannot be real?
(and it's "DOUGHNUTS")

*  Or the Batman route, for the virtuous.
**  Little 'Forbidden Planet' reference for you there.