The Eyes Spies

Well Of Course They Do
I mean if they heard, well, you could go on some television programme that celebrated freakish abilities and make the Guinness Book Of Records, and perhaps there'd be a ghost-written autobiography about your otherwise terrifically boring life, which would sell for a couple of weeks and then end up in the Reduced bins of bookshops and on the shelves of charity shops.
     I say, that was a bit bleak, wasn't it?
     Anyway, it has only the very merest and tangential connection with what I wanted to go on about today, which is a follow-on from yesterday's wibblings about futurologist Gerry Anderson's "UFO".  Art?

Lights!  Camera!  THINGS EXPLODING!

     For Lo! was I not moving my eyes (that explains today's title, I hope) across the television screen, watching the episode "Reflections In The Water", which I had last seen a very long time ago.

SPOILER ALERT!

     Briefly put, those sinister aliens have amassed a fleet of 50 UFOs beyond the orbit of the Moon, and are clearly bent on mischief.  When they get the signal to go, their force splits into 2, and are initially unopposed as they approach Moonbase.
     Then, Perfidious Hom. Sap. reveals that it was all a ploy, and we see scads of (presumably robotic) tracked missile launchers emerge from cover, and we get a battle with lots of THINGS EXPLODING. Art?

Forgive the blur, I was working in a hurry

These things are cool!

Just visible starboard of centre - a UFO

<take that, humans>

     The reason I'm going on about this is that ages ago I distinctly remember writing a BOOJUM! article about this very same battle, and found it impossible to find any decent photographs of the Moonbase-mobiles.  Of course, now I've gotten all those shots, I inevitably discover a website that has a picture of same.  Art?

Not as good as my shots.  Less atmosphere.*

     I think it's now time for the motley to sit down and have a bowl of ice cream, fresh banana slices and strawberries.  No, motley, don't worry about the poison.  CALORIES!  I meant calories.  Sorry, the habits of years are not easily overturned.

Speaking Of Space Opera ...
(Or even Eyes Spies stuff) As you may be aware by now, Conrad is a member of the Facebook group "Space Opera", and makes occasional contributions there, mostly reactions to the much wittier <the unpleasant truth courtesy Mister Hand> postings of other members.
     Their main page artwork is not permanent, and rotates every few weeks, and their current one has really struck my Appreciation Node.  Art?

Scaled down from the original

     This is "Arrival At Gamma Taurus" by Arraxxon; whose work you can find over on DeviantArt, being mostly Star Wars stuff.  Dunno if this is supposed to be set in the SW universe or not, but whichever or whatever, Your Humble Scribe likes it.  Cherish it now, for it won't be there long.

     There will now be a short comfort break, for that tea has now worked it's way through me.  Back shortly.**

Theophrastus
And another apology from Conrad about yet another word that popped up in his mind.  I had to look this one up, as I'd no idea who or what or where it was.
     It turned out to be a he: Theophrastus was an ancient Greek philosopher, and a bit of an all-rounder.  Art?

Ol'' Theo

     He was interested in, amongst other things: plants, and has been given the title "Father of Botany"; logic; ethics; metaphysics; gemstones.  This last one seems a little incongruous, though he was typically thorough in his investigation and classification of same.  In fact his work "On Stones" was a basic reference work for about seventeen hundred years, until early modern science bettered it.
     Ol' Theo was very highly regarded in Athens, having headed one of their schools for over thirty years, and I could create a whole blog post on his efforts, because he was both clever and busy.

ART!
(One Tazering coming right up)

     The big question, of course, is exactly why his name came to the foreground in that rubbish-scape which constitutes my mind.  I know and care nothing about gemstones, have little interest in plants unless they are edible, and find the field of logic to be an utter pain.  Why, mind, why!

Sparring Spitfire
"But of course!" I hear you exclaim.  "It was designed, intended and used as a fighter aircraft.  Of course it sparred!"
     Not that kind of sparring, thank you.  I mean the spars that constituted the main structural support elements of the Spitfire's wings.
     This comes from - thanks, lads! - that just-arrived podcast "We Have Ways Of Making You Talk", where Al Murray is painting a word-portrait of an artefact he uses as a paperweight.  Art?

Pretty sure this is the object in question

     James Holland had to try and guess what it was, and couldn't.  You know, after the title of this particular article: a cross section of a Spitfire's main spar.  I did come across a picture that illustrates exactly how it was put together.  Art?  O stop whining and put some salve on the burns!

Thus

     So, you had six different lengths of aluminium which fitted inside each other.  This assembly was then put in a jig and bent at an angle.  This main spar was thus lightweight but immensely strong, meaning a pilot could put his Spit through extreme manouevres without the wings falling off - a matter of some concern for any pilot.  Al states that this spar design was absolutely unique, not done in any other aircraft, so nyah nyah.

     Item 3 in this cross-section is the main spar.  I'm not going to re-size this, just to see how it comes out when this gets posted to Blogger.  Hopefully it will not cause teh interwebz to implode and destroy Planet Earth in the process.

     Well, there we are, hit the Compositional Ton.  Now, time for some of that stuff you we humans call "food".



*  Lunar joke for you there.
**  Or longly.  Face it - you will never know <snickers>