A Babble Of Buses

I've Just Made That Collective Noun Up
Is there even a collective noun for a group of buses?  <Googles> not really.  I suppose if we're talking about a group of First Buses, then it would be either a "Useless of buses" or a "Lateness of Buses".
     Okay, if you are new around here you may not have heard of Conrad's Law Of Waiting For Buses.  This simply states that, whilst you are standing at the bus stop, before your own bus arrives, three will drive past in the opposite direction.  Art?

     Not, perhaps, the best of photographs.  I do apologise, since my phone had decided to instead display my face, not what I was looking at, and by the time I had redirected the Digital Devil Device, the shot had passed.
     What you see in that first photograph are the rear lights of no less than three 409 buses, all turning up at the same time, driving gloatingly past on the other side of the road.  CLOWFB validated in a single shot.
     My own 409 was, of course, late.  First Bus = Worst Bus
     Motley, is that injunction brought by the World Council Of Motleys - you know, the one banning me from being cruel to you - is it still in force?  It is?  Damn <puts away bucket of treacle and red hot poker).

More Of Project Orion
You recall, the nuclear bomb-propelled spaceship.  Apparently this methodology was rejected by Stanley Kubrick for "2001" spaceship design, the book I recall reading this in then going on to say he saw a ship 'put-putting' across the Solar System as faintly ridiculous.
     ARE YOU SERIOUS?!

The craft and (inset) the bomb

     The craft above would have utilised 15 kiloton nuclear devices to propel itself into orbit.  "Would" should perhaps be "Could", since there are international treaties about putting nuclear weapons into orbit.  Also, remember what I stated yesteryon: this thing would never be able to land, because once it's launched, it stays in space.  Consequently, it will need a whole lot of those 15 kiloton bombs in order to be able to move around over it's lifetime.
     You can probably see where this is heading.  Tsar Putin* and Winnie The Pooh*, neither of whom have any great fondness for South Canada nor NASA, would be sitting in their respective palaces, hunched nervously, whilst the Enormous Nuclear Bomber (as they saw it) sat above them in orbit, carrying a payload of, oooooh, say fifty nuclear warheads.  Maybe a hundred.  Which, being comparatively small, and without any kind of rocket motor, would be exceedingly hard to detect and intercept.

Sleep tight, Dimya.

Whilst Yarking On About Space -
Somewhat coincidentally - okay, Coincidence Hydra, could you get your teeth out of my behind? - here I am burning through "World War Z", and reading this very minute about how the staff aboard the International Space Station remained on-site during the Zombie War, helping to keep vital satellites in orbit.  I wasn't slacking off from BOOJUM! my laptop froze and I had to reboot it, which takes time, hence WWZ.
     Anyway, what I wanted to post was an image of a certain Lego construct that the Lego shop at the base of the Dark Tower had on display.  Art?

Behold!

     Yes, it's the International Space Station as done in Lego.  Your Humble Scribe isn't sure if this is a bespoke build or if it comes as a kit.  Let's check, hmmm?

Aha.  Clarity dawns.

     It only (!) has 864 pieces, though in compensation it does look very fiddly and perhaps brittle, too, which is why you need to be sixteen or older to make it.  

Some instructions for you

Back To That List Of 51 Greatest Sci-Fi Novels Evah
To judge by the cursor, we're about half-way through this list.  
     I just had to check if I'd already done the next one on the list, and I had, so we shall move on.  Art?

"Enriched" how?
(Pictures?)

     Yes, your humble scribe has read this one.  It was serialised in narrated picture style in a kid's magazine I used to get, and of course I've seen the film (Jems Meson in his best Received English pronunciation).  I don't remember much of the novel itself, though there was something about a shell with a very, very unusual composition being left-handed rather than right-handed and which gets inadvertently smashed when natives attack - and the crew of the Nautilus being armed with weapons that fired balls loaded with electricity that killed instantly on contact.  I think.  It's been several decades.
     Shall we have another?  O go on.  Art!

I believe that is Kurt on the cover

     Your Humble Scribe is pretty sure he read this when at college, back in the days when I had as a personal aim the intent to finish whatever book I'd begun, even if I didn't especially like it.  Can't say I remember much about this one, and certainly didn't like it enough to ever pick it up again.  There was something about corpse mines?  I much preferred "Cat's Cradle", about the creation of water with an alternate structure that is a solid at room temperature, all fine and dandy until one day -
     But I digress.
Finally - 
Proof, were it needed, that Conrad is not only a nerd, but a childish one at that**.  I was doing the weekly shop last night at Morrisons, and espied a display stand that informed passers-by it was "Manager's Deals", being mostly very expensive bottles of wines and spirits that were now merely expensive.
     Bar this.  Art?

Tah, and, indeed, Dah.

     It was pricey for what it was, but I had to have it.  The beer itself is a pretty nice pale ale that helped to wash down today's lunch in complementary fashion.

     And with that, we are done!

*  Shockingly disrespectful nicknames for the dictators of Ruffia and the Populous Dictatorship.
**  A badge I wear with pride.