What's In A Word?

Apart From A Load Of Letters
Plus the occasional apostrophe and hyphen.  Conrad guesses that if he were to put the word "mortar" in front of you, that your immediate connection would be with the stuff that binds bricks together in construction. 
     But - what's this serendipitous discovery?  You might want to go brew a pot of tea, for what follows is rather long and convoluted.

Yup, an apt analogy

     There I was, staring at the Codeword, which had the partial solution "11 A A 11" to it, which of course you will realise can only be solved if "11" is "M" or "N".  Except is it NAN or NAAN bread?  I went to check MA'AM first, and yes, it does have an apostrophe in the middle since it's a contraction of "MADAM".

A niceness of naan.
(I just made that collective noun up)

     Whilst flipping through my Collins Concise, an odd word caught my eye: "Melanchthon".
     I know, I know, it sounds like an alien race from "Doctor Who".  It was the assumed name of one Phillip Schwarzterdt, a sixteenth-century Lutheran Protestant, whose "Loci Communes" (back then all the clever folk wrote in Latin) was a central tenet of the faith.  Now, Your Humble Scribe is not big on religion yet even I have heard of Martin Luther, and it was a bit odd that I'd never heard of Ol' Mel.  Art?

Totally rocking it with that hat, Phil.

     Of course I resorted to Wiki for a fuller picture, and - more serendipity!  There is an assessment of his life and works and practices and here's one - "As an exegete".  I'd never come across this word before it cropped up in a Codeword a couple of weeks back, yet here it is again.  Or - is this the Coincidence Hydra getting ready to champ on my nethers again?
     By the way, in case you were wondering, "Schwartzerdt" can be translated as "Black Earth", which is what "Melanchthon" means in Greek.  Them clever folk liked to do this with surnames in those days.  Poseurs.
     Right, time for me to maliciously dream what I'd like to do to the motley, and the World Council of Motleys, too ...

Interfering busy-bodies ...

Damn Your Teasing Ways, Amazon!  Damn You!
No, this is nothing to do with buying stuff online and having it delivered to The Mansion.  I refer, obviously - obviously! - to "The Expanse" and Season 4.  Conrad has of course read the novel it's based upon, yet the television series differs from the novels and isn't simply a shot-for-shot adaptation.  Art?

Our heroes arrive

     The 'Rocinante' is sent to investigate a rogue colony that has established itself on a world already earmarked for official colonists, and the trailer makes much of our chums arriving on "New Terra".  Then it ends with the news that we have to wait until DECEMBER before it comes out <sad face>.  
     On the other hand, Netflix had washed it's hands of the show, as it cost too much and didn't have enough viewers, or some silly nonsense like that.  The fools!  The blind fools!
<sneering satisfaction face> so a grudging thank you is due to Jeff Bezos.

Jim, being all captain-y

Back To Mortar
I did threaten you earlier today with a bit of didactism, and Lo! it has arrived.  We were discussing guns and howitzers, and I also threw mortars into the mix.  I refer to the grandfather of them all, known as the "Stokes Gun", which, if Art will put down that plate of coal -
                 

     This is the light trench mortar that Robert Graves describes as "efficient but greedy", since it simply ate up ammunition thanks to it's high rate of fire.  It was simple and could be broken down into three loads, as above, with at least another ten men carrying as many bombs as they could.  The muzzle velocity was quite low, so it didn't need an enormous stressed steel barrel as an artillery piece did, and consequently the bomb could be packed with lots and lots of explosives.  The bombs travelled in a high parabola, similar to that of a howitzer, just with a much shorter range.
     The Stokes was the property of the infantry brigades in Perfidious Albion's army, as it was needed and used by them.  Heavier mortars were crewed by the Royal Artillery, who probably felt a bit threatened by these new weapons and wanted to keep their hands in (and on) in order to stay relevant.  Art?
            

     Those two are the Newton 6" and the 9.45" "Flying Pig", and as you can clearly see, they fired fearfully big bombs.  The inset shows a Stokes round next to a Newton one - 10 pounds of HE versus 52 pounds.  For when you need a bigger BANG.
     So, that's the mortar; an unrifled high-elevation weapon, firing a thin-walled bomb at a relatively low velocity and out to a relatively short range.
     Then there is the Teuton use of the word "Morser" or "Mortar" in German - but that, we think, is a topic for another day.

The Cars Hiss By My Window -
So do the buses.  The rain has held off all day, surprise surprise.  Sitting by the window, Your Humble Scribe gets a splendid view of the 409 buses travelling past, including all their various film posters.  Grist for the mill of my imagination.
     There is one that puzzles me, a poster that I feel like sharing with you.  Art?

Suggestions on a postcard, please

     At first glance, not paying a lot of attention, I thought it was flogging "Haribo", those bits of coloured gelatin.  Paying slightly closer attention, I wondered if it was flogging e-cigarettes?  Or - what, exactly?
     Conrad, being perverse - but we knew that already - has determined he's not going to look up Habito, come what may, and he will live in eternally ignorant bliss about whatever it is.*

    Righto, time to post this, get some tea and put a laundry load on.  See you!



*  Come on, seriously, what is it?  Nicotine patches?  Vegan sausages?  Ethical grass?  Aesthetical glass?  Jellied-eel-on-a-stick?