The Race For Mace

NO! That Is Not A Typo
You ought to know me better than that.  Perhaps calling it a "Race" is using a touch of poetic licence as there is only one side in it, but hey! that's what poetic licence is for.
     By "Mace" I do not mean the spice, which is closely associated with nutmeg.  Art?

Mace Iteration 1

     Nor yet do I mean the anti-personnel spray, which appears to be Hate-In-A-Can.  Art?
                         
                                                          A brace of Mace (Iteration 2)
     No, instead I refer to the hefty metal club as used in medieval warfare, especially by members of the Church who were forbidden to shed blood, as they could bash someone's head in, believing that since it wasn't done with an edged weapon, they were alright.  Art?

Iteration 3

     Okay, I think we've successfully identified the mace as a species of bludgeon, which can be used to club one's enemies into submission or an early grave, depending on how hard you hit them.  Not the last word in sophistication, but effective, especially if the arm wielding it is a brawny one.
     Anyway, that's by way of a preamble, because the word for "Mace" in Russian is "Bulava", and you could call it the world's biggest club, because - Art?

Mace Iteration 4

     It's an SLBM, or Submarine-Launched Ballistic Missile.  It's the most expensive military project in Ruffian history, though they coyly keep how much it cost a state secret, because Tsar Putin said so.  Theoretically it's quite the design improvement, carrying up to 6 warheads of circa 200 kilotons each, and with up to 40 decoys to chaff the defences of The Un-Named Enemy, and manoeuvring capability in the third state bus too.  
     However - and you just knew there was a however coming there, didn't you? - the thing is, Ruffians are good at creating innovative stuff, but they have the devil's own time of making it work properly.  As with Bulava; officially accepted into service in 2013, it was still having major reliability problems in 2018.

Giant phallic death-machine launch platform

     The thing about nuclear weapon systems is that they have to be 100% reliable; you can't plan a first-strike or a counter-strike if only 85% of your missiles can be guaranteed to launch and if 5% of those that do launch break up en route.  Bulava has been as low as 66% reliable in test launches, which will have been cause for some sucking of teeth in the Kremlin.  For one, it means planning your nuclear war becomes very sketchy, and secondly, it makes Tsar Putin look bad, which is pretty much a prison sentence straight away.
     I shall have more to say on this subject, later on, as I know that long screeds about nuclear weapons and strategy - meat and drink to Conrad! - alternately bore or terrify other readers.  Sorry, dear audience, you can't put the genie back in the bottle.
     Motley, how would you like to empty this bottle of cooking brandy I found in the cupboard?

Motley!  Not all in one go!
(sheesh)

"Chalcedony"
Oh boy, thank you, brain, for bringing up another word at random.  This one as I strode magisterially to answer a call of nature, and I did stop to wonder for a moment.  My Chambers Concise defines it as a gemstone, composed of quartz in parallel fibres, which makes it's appearance all that stranger, as Conrad has no use for, nor knowledge of, gems.  Art?

Stones

     As you can see there are lots of colour variations blah blah blah jewellery further blah treatments still more blah - I'm paraphrasing Wikipedia here - and so on and so forth.  The name appears to derive from that of a town in Asia Minor, Khalkedon, which seems to have Greek roots.  I wonder if we can get a map image up.  Art?

Nope, just a cafe in Istanbul

     Oh well.  There you go - chalcedony.

     Not to be confused with "Chryskylodon", which appears in the pages of "Inherent Vice" by Thomas Pynchon, and which is Greek for "Golden Tooth".  Although if you can afford golden teeth you can probably afford lots of chalcedony.

Ahoy the Chryskylodon!

The Long Walk
NO!  Nothing to do with Edna's longer second walk of the day, which I will be arranging after I've put out this electronic scrivel; at present she's curled up on the chair by the window, which allows her to immediately bolt upright and bark herself hoarse when the postie comes.  Sorry, Edna, no postie on a Sunday.
     No, I refer to a concept from the pages of 2000AD and "Judge Dredd".  You can relate to this as essential background information for the forthcoming television series <excuses self to go Google the subject> which IMDB claims is coming in 2019.  Hmmmm.  They've only 6 weeks to go and nary a smidgeon of advertising.  Conrad is dubious.  Art?

Mega City One

     To get you up to speed: "The Big Meg" is a city-state of 400 million people, crammed into an enormous urban conurbation that spans from the Canadian border down to Florida.  Rather than conventional policing, a judicial system and prisons, the city is patrolled and policed by 65,000 Judges, who are all three rolled into one.  Judges are enrolled as cadets and undergo training at the Academy, from where they go out to deliver justice, Big Meg style (frequently with guns and as frequently lethal).

Old Stoney-face himself.

     The question you might ask is, what happens to a Judge when they start to get old, their reflexes slow, they start to miss things and make mistakes?  No! they are not sent to Resyk to be turned into high-grade fertiliser.  They take The Long Walk, leaving the Big Meg to enter the Cursed Earth, those blasted, radioactive wastelands beyond the city walls, where mutants, criminals, struggling individuals and those who refuse to live in a mega-city all reside.  "To bring law to the lawless" is the phase used when a Judge takes the Long Walk, marked by a ceremonial exit from the city, because those who leave never come back alive.

Yup.  It's tough out there.

     Which makes Your Humble Scribe grateful he's only heading out into cold and damp, not fallout and Gila-Munja.

     Chin chin!