A Travelling Tautology

I Take It You Pikers Know What A Tautology Is?
An argument that goes in a circle, to be concise.  You start off by asserting Proposition A, that leads to Conclusion B, because of Proposition A, and so on and so on, until you disappear down your own fundament.  Great fun!
     I refer, of course - obviously, how could it be anything else! - to that splendid televisual entertainment "Travellers", which, if Art will grace us with a picture -

The core team

     I suppose a precis is in order, or you'll be totally lost.  Okay, about 500 years into the future what remains of human civilisation is near to extinction, so, in an attempt to change this dystopian inevitability, The Director sends the consciousness of individuals into the past, to inhabit the bodies of folks who were about to die.
     With me so far?  It's an excellent premise for a sci-fi series because you don't need to create elaborate sets and expnsive props of the far future; everything is happening now. 
     However - one of my favourite words and one you knew, simply knew, was going to crop up here - Conrad has a problem with the Travellers ability to create futuristic technology.  You want an instance, don't you?  <sighs heavily>.

A quantum frame

     A quantum frame, whatever that is.  I wanted to get a shot of the medical nanites, but they remain coyly out of Google range.
     My point is that these Travellers now have the knowledge of five centuries hence, which involves technology far, far in advance of our primitive 21st Century clunkers.  This supposedly allows them to create MacGuffins like the above, but - how is it possible to construct 26th century technology with that of the 21st?  I mean, they construct an X-ray laser capable of impacting moving objects beyond the orbit of the Moon, so these are no mere gewgaws we're talking about here. Art?

Another example

     I've no idea what this is or what it does, but you can certainly agree it wasn't put together with a couple of hairpins and a bit of Blu-tak.
     HOW!  HOW IS IT POSSIBLE!
     Of course, I may be overthinking this ...

Meanwhile, Back At The Ranch
Conrad spent some of his birthday present book-voucher money on a couple of paperbacks, of which "Pandemic" was one.  Art?

My edition

     It could also have been subtitled "Editor?  What Editor?" as it is very, very long: over 700 pages, which is because it goes into the background of the major characters, and the background of their parents and siblings, and at first it drops info-dumps on you that appear to consist of Acronym Word Salad.  The latter part of the plot seems to have been predicated that readers will happily swallow Endless Coincidence Piled Upon Endless Coincidence, which distinctly does not apply to Your Humble Scribe.  Not only that, as I near the end it seems that this is only the first volume of at least two and possibly three volumes.  I shall leave it at this one.
     Not world-shaking news, I just thought you'd like to be informed.  And one reason I got this is because there was no "Infinite Jest" on the shelves at Waterstones.

"Yorick's days of jesting were long over."

The Mind Is A Strange Landscape
Well, mine is, anyway.  In evidence I present to you a cryptic note I made in my Botenook (or "Notebook" if we're being boringly normal) last night <clears throat in self-important fashion, chokes, goes red in face>:  ROTLA Ark Scene and Hitler.
     Here an aside.  "ROTLA" is "Raiders of the Lost Ark", and Conrad would like to point you towards the scene where Indiana is poised to shoot the Ark and destroy whatever's in it.  If Art will -

Gun freaks recoil in horror!

     That's a Sinister-era RPG, not around until well after the Second Unpleasantness and thus at least ten years too early.  Although protesting this is a bit rich when you consider that in the next scene some angry angels come out of a box and melt everyone's faces off by virtue of Purple Power; how many people get no their soapbox about that?
     Ah!  I remember now - I was listening to The Flop House podcast about - er - O yes!  "The Computer Wore Tennis Shoes".

Thus

     These guys go off on tangents more than I do, which is quite an achievement, and one of their tangents last night was that Indiana Jones is responsible for the whole Second Unpleasantness.
     Yes by gum.  TFH guys contended that, if Indy hadn't interfered, the Ark would have been taken back to Nazi Germany and opened in the presence of Herr Schickelgruber and all the assorted bigwigs of the Third Reich, who would have been disintegrated by virtue of Purple Power*. 

"Herr Schickelgruber is toes up"

Gradually Going Backwards
Or, Reversing Your Way To Defeat
For Yes!  We are back on the subject of how unmechanised the Wehrmacht of the Second Unpleasantness really was, as compared to the groovy newsreels that persistently pumped out pro-panzer propaganda.
     The totals of horsey used by the Teutons are quite staggering, as at any one time they had over 1,000,000 nags on strength, which meant an enormous amount of fodder needed to be sent up to railheads to feed horsey.

Stop yer idling!

     Additionally, the Teutons actually increased the amount of cavalry they raised during the Second Unpleasantness; they began with a single division and increased the total to six, thanks to a lack of truck transport and access to lots of horsey**.  One cannot imagine the armies of Perfidious Albion nor the South Canadians doing anything remotely like this (despite cowboys).  In fact this process is the exact opposite of what the Teutons did in the First Unpleasantness.  Fancy that!

Finally -
Tsar Putin will probably be foaming at the mouth and chewing the carpet with rage today (emulating a certain Schickelgruber ...) because the Ruffians have just been banned from taking part in the 2020 Olympics and the 2022 World Cup by the World Anti-Doping Agency.  The Tsar will be ranting and tanting because the bungling FSB failed to bribe, burglarise or bomb the labs that provided evidence of naughties; he'll also be blaming The West for targeting the poor innocent Ruffians with a relentless campaign of dirty tricks, and anyway someone else spiked all those athletes and footballers drinks, all 1,870 of them ...

"Conrad is mocking me again, isn't he?"

     Well well Cozumel; what goes around comes around***.

     And with that we are done!


*  Czechoslovakia weeps for what might have been.
**  Mostly other people's horsey, but what the heck: a horse is a horse, of course.
***  Tee hee!