A Tangle Of Tangents

Which Is Pretty Much Business-As-Usual
You ought to know by now that Conrad has a mind which hops around like a particle affected by Brownian motion, as one thing begets another which has entirely no relation to the first, and then goes off at yet another tangent - 
     Take "Walsprot" for example.  Your Humble Scribe first came across the word in Erskine Childers "Riddle of the Sands", where it is used as an insult.  Art?

It has lots of boats

     I only just decided to look it up.  Or try to - it's not in either my Collins Concise nor Websters, and Googling fails to bring anything up.  Given that the novel is 113 years old, it may well be local slang that has fallen into disuse.  Still, if anyone calls you a walsprot in future, you now know enough to punch them.
     What I did find in my Webster's - which is a dangerous tome to pick up and riffle through due to Tangentialism* - was the definition of "Sub Fusc", which I have read a few times, frowned at, then moved on without checking upon.  Art?

Lord Pete in subfusc

     It means a set of dark clothing that Oxford students have to wear at ceremonies and exams, being dark bar a white shirt or blouse (since they permit ladies to study there now).  The origin of the term is, inevitably, Latin - "suffuscus", meaning "Dark brown".
     Anyway, what I wanted to begin with was an entry in the fascinating and enlightening "Forgotten Tanks And Guns Of the 20s, 30s and 40s" (hereafter FTAG because I'm too lazy to type that out umpteen times), and the "WLT".  Art?

WLT 1, with puny human for scale

     This dates from 1940, when Perfidious Albion was looking at amphibious tanks.  The monster above was expected to mass 235 tons, carry 11 troops and mount a 9.2" gun.  It's designer, Mr Cargin, saw it as a war-winning wonder weapon that would invade and overthrow the Third Reich and then transform peace-time transportation, with perhaps the ability to whip up a Martini and translate the works of Shakespeare into Dalek.
     The various departments of British authority that he sent daily letters to investigated his background and found he'd been busy doing nothing for the past 8 years, living off his wife's money.  In those days this was looked on as Not The Done Thing and the WTL project died right there.

"THE - QUALITY - OF - MERCY - IS - NOT - STRAINED - IT - IS- EXTERMINATED!"

     There's more on the subject of amphibious tanks types, which rest assured we will cover again.  In the meantime, can we have a picture of FTAG's cover?

Aptly titled

     Okay motley, will a light omelette with spring onion and mushrooms do you?  And yes, they are merely mushrooms, not poisonous toadstools.

Oh, Hello Coincidence Hydra
I have escaped having this beast's fangs in my nethers for a while of late, a run of good luck that wasn't going to last.
     Anyway, I was listening to the podcast "We Have Ways -" last night, and I have now gotten up to the end of July, so I have pulled back the delay a bit, though it has taken me over 2 hours to do so.
     Jim and Al have been asked what they would recommend in terms of books to do with the Second Unpleasantness, and I already have the works they recommend for the Allies.  When asked about those from the Axis perspective, they said there's not that much which is good rather than earnest.
     Then another recommendation comes in from a listener - "The Guns Of War" by George Blackburn, which I am currently reading, and have been informing you about for these few weeks.  Art?

As Jim says, it's a big old book

     I think now is the time to extract the Hydra's teeth from my rear.  Where are my pliers?

Those Wacky Ruffians!
By various tangential sources I came across a metal beast called the "Uran A9 UGV", where "Uran" is the Ruffian for "Uranus" (NO SNIGGERING AT THE BACK THERE!), the UGV stands for "Unmanned Ground Vehicle", and if Art will get down to work -

Uran in the field

     This thing looks impressive, mounting a 30 m.m. cannon and 12 anti-tank missiles, and it is remote-controlled by operators at a distance, with sensors and cameras.  The idea is that it can scout ahead of the infantry and provide information, or take on enemy infantry and armoured vehicles or softskins.
     The Ruffians decided to test this thing out in Syria, and - O dear.  A list of problems came up about Uran.  The remote control range is only about 400 yards, which is a bit short, and it kept losing the signal, at one point up to 90 minutes.  The suspension system was pretty rubbish, too, and needed repeated repairs in the field.  Nor could it fire on the move, needing to stop before being able to shoot folks.  Plus, the sensors were limited in range.

In the salesroom

     Now, the nasty-minded amongst you may be clutching your sides and laughing at the mobile metal junk deployed in combat, chortling at the <insert string of cliches about Ruffians here> the T14.
     Not so fast!  What the Ruffians have done is exactly what needed to be done - test this thing under ACTUAL COMBAT CONDITIONS, rather than on some test range where everything is perfectly arranged and completely predictable, and the makers can smugly record 99% scores.  So, given this experience, the Ruffians may upgrade Uran 9 to address these failures, or they may design a completely new vehicle, again, taking advantage of their real-world experience.

Tsar Putin is - ambivalent

Finally - 
After all that martial strife and struggle, let's have something a little lighter in tone.  And no, we shan't be going into the mysteries of LITHIUM WAFER BATTERY DESIGN!  It will be a dark day indeed when we descend to that.
     <thinks>  I'm tackling the past month's discarded calendar pages from the MENSA calendar that Wonder Wifey gifted me, and the word and letter ones are fairly easy for one of my undoubted wordy ability**.  The ones involving mathematics?  Conrad does not like.

Conrad shows his dislike of maths
( - and his love for sharks!)
( - and pens!)

*  I've just invented this word to the Spellchecker does not like it.  Tough, Spellchecker!
**  No false modesty here.