Because not all sharks are the real deal.
If I can cast your metaphorical eyes backwards in time, you will recall me going on about criminal business scams involving pyramid schemes, which is fascinating stuff, because human greed and wickedness are always interesting to read about.
Here an aside for a bit of arithmetical analysis. Art?
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| An example |
If you only multiply by two, i.e. each person has to recruit two more below them, the numbers increase to totals of 1, 3, 7, 15, 31, 63, 127, 255 - by the eighth step over 500 need to be recruited, which is why these things fail locally, though with national levels of publicity and budgets it can be sustained globally for a while. If you have to recruit 6 people below you, then the numbers accumulate horribly - 1; 7; 43; 259; 1,555; 9,331; 55,987; 326,592. This does not bode well for multi-level marketing scammers, one feels.
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| Enter the |
Enter the Grooveshark. Conrad loved this site back in the day, the second iteration was really intuitive and easy to use, and you could draw up great playlists, and there was a massive selection of tracks to listen to. There was nothing bad about it.
Except for the minor fact that it was completely illegal.
Say what? How can this be!
Yes indeed. A cartel of music companies got together and took legal action against the Shark, threatening it with costs due to copyright issues that total £500 million. Bang! The Shark goes out of business. They still have a pathetically hollow web presence, which Conrad took some pictures of. Art?
Nothing to see here. Move along, move along. There are a few files still there, which are all years out of date. So, Conrad was unwittingly putting money into the pockets of criminals. Bad Conrad! Naughty Conrad!
And don't bang on about Spotify, either. To use their free service means promising to sacrifice your firstborn, and you have to listen to adverts, and you can only play a track once, if that.
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| An annoyed-looking Conrad |
Okay, motley, I'm going to boil some potatoes and spinach, would you like some? And yes, I'll use butter, and no, it won't be poisoned. The chicken fillets are all mine, mine, mine, however.
"The Guns Of War" By George Blackburn
Ol' Geo goes into some detail about why the British and Commonwealth - for Ol' Geo is a Canuckistanian - artillery of the Second Unpleasantness was so extremely effective, to the point that hapless Teuton stubble-hoppers sincerely believe that Allied artillery guns were belt-fed in a manner like a machine-gun.
| Not true! (though it would have been cool) |
The secret, as pointed out by Jorrocks, the British Corps Commander, and a chap who knew a thing or two, lay in the Survey Sections of the artillery units. If I may quote from TGOW: "Included in the party are the regimental surveyors under Survey Officer Len Harvey, who, from data supplied from 2nd Corps Survey Regiment, must establish pivot gun markers to the accuracy of 'theatre grid'".
The "Pivot guns" here are 25 pounders which will be located on an exact map plotting worked out from that Corps data, and will enable all the guns of 4th Field Regiment (24 of them) to be located exactly and precisely according to each other, and every other single gun in the British (and Commonwealth) army across Normandy.
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| A "director" that Len would have used |
Boring technical stuff, you may think! Well, no, because it allows all those guns to fire with extreme accuracy on any target, and to mass fire in a way that the Teuton artillery could never match. Hence those rumours amongst those on the receiving end that Perfidious Albion's guns were fed from a hopper.
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| No! Really, Art ... |
There will now be a short pause as I go to put the oven on. That remaindered food won't cook itself! Don't worry about the sell-by-date, it was only Wednesday, so it's practically fresh*.
WHWOMYT
Your Humble Scribe is back listening to this podcast by author James Holland and comedian (and history graduate) Al Murray, and My Goodness! I have a backlog to catch up on - I'm still in mid-July, nearly three months adrift.
I cannot in all good conscience recommend the podcast to listeners of a tender age, since Jim and Al both swear occasionally; obviously they do not seek to achieve or maintain the Family Friendly SFW rating that BOOJUM! has. Not that it's doing them any harm in terms of listeners. Art?
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| Jim to port, Al to starboard |
They cover a lot of ground, some of it created by listener feedback and questions, and others with their format of I Will Bring In An Artefact Related To The Second Unpleasantness - today's being Jim's South Canadian helmet.
One thing they covered was the effectiveness of Italy's army, with Jim giving a quite detailed description of how poorly it performed and why, and how the general Italian populace had absolutely no stomach for Il Duce's war; to which Al riposted that he got the impression that, even today, Italians take very little notice of what their government tells them to do. Whereas the Tuetons of that time ...
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| Some rather miserable Italians on the Eastern Front |
Finally -
If you don't want to know about yet more First Bus farragoes of failure, you can skip this part. It's probably all blending into one giant, frothing, rage-filled rant to you cool observers out there, which is fair enough. I do feel a bitter, irony-laden letter is gestating about this subject -
Anyway, when I got to the 181/182 bus stop -
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| Where it used to be, and where idiot bus drivers still pull in to. |
There were so many people standing around it was obvious the 182 hadn't turned up. When, five minutes after the 181, too, hadn't turned up, I shrugged and went around the corner to the 83 bus stop. Keeping my eyes peeled, well outside Gomorrah-on-the-Irwell's centre, I did spot the 182 coming in the opposite direct, to Picadilly. By the time it got there I doubt it could fit all the waiting passengers.
The saga has not finished yet, since, in Oldham Bus Station, the next 409 didn't turn up, either, and the one that did was a single-decker.
First Bus's motto: "Inconvenience the maximum number of people the most!"
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| "Cursssesss! Our secret is out!" said the First Bus spokesdemon |
* Food safety - a challenge not a warning!
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