GesTuring

NO! That Is Not A Spelling Mistake -
How often have I counselled that BOOJUM! is incapable of making same?  Go on, guess. 


      No.  Wrong.  Guess again. 


      No.  Still wrong.  


      I have told you about this ONE HUNDRED AND EIGHTY SEVEN TIMES.  
      I refer, of course - obviously, how could anyone misunderstand! - to that splendid-looking educational tool, the "Turing Tumble", which if Art will put down his bowl of coal -

This is where the Turing comes in

     This fascinating children's game is a physical, three-dimensional depiction of the logic that operates inside a computer, all the better to understand what those mysterious black boxes do.  They claim, in the advert, that their instrumentality could cope with mathematics problems as posed on a mobile phone, except that the TT would need to be as big as Texas -
     Here an aside, because this has bugged me for a long time, and you know Conrad - a pedantic hair-splitting oxymoronist - but there is a scene in "Armageddon" where we are introduced to the Smartest Person On The Planet - A BRITISH CHARACTER ACTOR - O! my how did that get in there?

Jason Isaacs, hooray!

     Here we are introduced to a Planet-Killing Asteroid that is, quote ' - as big as Texas - ' ah yes well except there are no asteroids that big, and even if there were, we would already know their orbit and if it interacted with that of Earth for decades if not centuries hence.  Mind you, it is a Michael Bay film, which means Reality takes second place to Cinematic.  With men boldly walking in slo-mo.  I know this is nothing to do with Turing in any way, I just wanted to get it off my chest.  Thank you for listening.

Big ass Texas

     Not only that, we have "Neuromancer" by William Gibson, wherein he introduces the "Turing Police", who intervene whenever they think someone is about to help an Artificial Intelligence develop beyond what Hom. Sap. deems safe. You can view this as either healthy awareness of the potential problem AIs will develop in future, or a stultifying sabotage of evolution.
     Then we have the Turing Test, which is where an AI is asked questions by a human interrogator, and if it can pass as human with it's responses, then it's passed the test.  Which means it will probably be blown to perdition, as Hom. Sap. doesn't tolerate threats to the species like that.

Take that, Turing Traitor!

     I think that's enough of both Turing and Texas for one day.
     Motley, shall we wrestle with a saguaro cactus?
Norman Jackson VC
You don't often find Victoria Cross winners amongst aircrew, as their combats tend to be either solo or in very small groups, with nobody around to verify stories.  Not so with Ol' Norm.  He was aircrew on a Lancaster bomber, one of the RAFs giant flying mallets, when it got attacked by a nightfighter and an engine caught fire. 
     There was no way to put the fire out from inside the plane, so Norm volunteered to climb out onto the wing, with a fire-extinguisher, and tackle the fire.  Those staying inside held onto his parachute to prevent him from being thrown off.
     Okay, he was wearing a parachute but it wasn't packed away for proper release, and this is at 33,000 feet up, at night, with a plane travelling at 140 M.P.H. 

The upper part of the page.  Just so we're clear.

     The night-fighter came back and shot up the plane again, hitting Norm.  Using a hand-axe to chop secure hand-holds into the wing, he tried to put the fire out, only for the night-fighter to come back* and, in the process of strafing the plane, hit Norm again.  At this point he lost the fire extinguisher, his grip failed and he slid off the wing.
     The crew were pretty sure that was the end of Norm.  They had to bail out of the bomber as the fire got worse.

Norm looking insouciant

     Imagine their surprise when, captured as prisoners of war, they come across a very much alive Norm.  He had been able to open his parachute sufficiently to hit the ground only hard, instead of at terminal velocity, then dragged himself to the nearest village, where he was roundly abused before being marched off.

Can't Stop The K-Pop
Okay, so I found entries for Jang Yoon-Jeong on Spotify and I have made a note about her being a "balladeer" whose backing includes lots of orchestration and what sound like traditional Korean instruments (making a characteristic 'plunky-plunky' sound.  She sings in Korean and seems quite emotive, so is therefore someone I won't be listening to again, and in fact I was quite worried that people might hear me listening to it and think ill of me.

JYJ trying not to look unattractive

     Well, that takes care of her.  Next up was Lee Seung-Cheol, who is down on Spoify as "Chul" so I wonder if other artists I couldn't find have variant spellings.  As for LSC, I would classify him as a Korean version of Robbie Williams, except younger.  And that takes care of him.

LSC attempting to be manly by growing a moustache.
Not gonna happen, Lee.

"Giving It Rice"
Which peculiar expression came from a Scouser I used to know.  It translates as "Going at some task or exertion with impressive vigour", and here I am referring to - obviously! - he enormous meals that Koreans used to eat.  Actually more like devour.  Conrad cannot remember exactly how he came across the article, which makes somewhat frightening reading.  Europeans of the sixteenth century onwards were stunned by the amount of food that normal, everyday Koreans scoffed unthinkingly.  Art?

That's two pounds of rice alone

     As the article states, all that above is for one man, at a single meal, and he'll have another two meals like it during the day.  One European priest observed:

“Laborers usually eat around a liter of rice, which fills up a very large bowl. It is not enough for each person to finish one bowl, as they are ready to continue eating. Many people easily finish two to three bowls. One man in my parish is aged between 30 and 45, and in a bet he ate seven bowls—and that’s not counting the bowls of rice wine he drank. One old man, aged 64 or 65, said he had no appetite, and finished five bowls.”

     I should point out that five bowls would come to ten pounds of rice, and that seven would be a stone of rice.
     Conrad salutes the valiant Koreans and their devotion to eating.  All hail the Korean stomach!
     I wonder - could you overindulge so much that you suffered a stomach or intestinal rupture?  Because that would be <waitforitwaitforit> - K-Pop.

Enough peaches to feed three, or even four, Koreans.

*  Vindictive bumbletuck.