I Say, Spock, It's "Ragnarok"!

Okay, I Have To Admit Right There I Was Lying About Spock
And I'm not even going to differentiate between Mister Spock and Doctor Spock, because that's how much of a villain I am.  Art?

Go Google, I don't have time to explain

     Nor do I refer to that Thor entry in the Marvel franchise, about <thinks> things getting both Raggy and Rocky.  I have seen it, and it's pretty entertaining BUT it's not what I'm banging on about here.  Nice cameo by the director, by the way.
     No, what I mean is a Netflix television series set in Norway, which has unfortunately been dubbed rather than subbed.  I, for one, would rather hear the mellifluous tones of Norwegian rather than some bland South Canadian accents.
     Now, I shan't spoil things too much, because I want us to still be friends, so the outline is that Magne, his brother and mum return to their old home town of Edda, after a long time away.  There, Magne does a good deed by hoiking an old man with an eyepatch out of the road when the chap's electric scooter breaks down.  An elderly lady gives him a fond pat on the brow in recognition -
     - which is when be begins to acquire super-powers.

The bright young things, some of whom are neither young nor bright

     It's entertaining stuff, with Magne gradually discovering the extraordinary abilities he's slowly developing, and a potential conflict with the local landed millionaires, who are definitely not what they seem.

Plus there are hammers

     However, it does not appear to have gone down very well in Norway!  It has been dismissed as being far too "Danish" in nature, which Your Humble Scribe will have to take as a given; parsing the subtle differences between Norwegian and Danish contemporary popular culture is somewhat beyond him.  The production company is Danish - a possible clue?
     Episode Four also cleared up a misapprehension I have suffered since being a teenager.  I had read the title "Ginnungagap" as the final chapter in James Blish's "Okie" quadrology, where a small group of humans set out to affect the beginning of a new universe, due to pages and pages of physics that might be plausible or not, which seemed a very strange way to end the work.  I had somehow interpreted Ginnungagap as being a term relating to Hindu mythology.  Art?

Well, it's not.

     It is unabashedly Norse in origin and can be translated as "The Yawning Void", being the font of creation and the source of everything, so Mr. Blish was being quite clever with his title and reference.
     Now, if you know your Norse mythology, you will remember that Odin had only one eye and wore an eyepatch ...
     I say, motley, old fruit, shall we have a Viking swimming contest*?

Cruel And Unusual Punishment?
Hopefully without getting into too much trouble for skirting both Politics and Current Affairs, let us now examine the state of refugees in This Sceptred Isle.

     See that note about Glasgow: "Glasgow has the most asylum seekers in Britain, with 64 for every 10,000 people"**.
     I see.  The Government settled them there, did they?
     WHAT WERE THEY THINKING!
     Where do these refugees come from?  Hot, dry countries for the most part, although presumably some come from hot, wet countries, too***.  And where do they get placed?  In the coldest part of Perfidious Albion.

Glasgow in July

     Not only that, these hapless refugees, who may be able to speak English, are going to encounter one of the broadest accents in the country, which is nearly incomprehensible to most non-Scots and some Scots, too.
     Gosh, it's almost as if they're trying to scare them away ...

Back To Books!
Conrad is unsure why they picked 51 sci-fi novels you must read before the robots rise in revolt, as opposed to a round number like 50, but there you are.  We must deal with what is, not what we would like to be.  Art?

Take that, BookBub

     I see; now they have a "You must register and sign up to see more", which dialogue box sits over everything and ensures all the book covers are blurred out.  Well I'm not going to register, and just try and stop me, BB, hah <snaps fingers, breaks nail, cries>
     Your Humble Scribe has read the short story FFA, which formed the basis of the book and the film "Charly".  It's desperately sad and Your Humble Scribe isn't going to put his steely-eyed, flinty-hearted self through the emotional wringer by reading it again.  Briefly put, it's the story of a guy of very limited intellect, who briefly acquires above-average intelligence thanks to a new surgical procedure, and then reverts to his old IQ.  Oh - "Algernon" is a lab mouse.

Hot stuff

     Probably Ray's finest moment.  This is a condemnation of censorship, written in the years when that bottomhole McCarthy was lying his way to power.  As you should surely know by now, in this future South Canada, books are very, very illegal, to the extent that there are special incendiary units formed to seek them out and destroy them.  Eventually our protagonist, Guy Montag, acquires a conscience and revolts.


Merry Montag

     At this point I was looking at Bokmal and Nynorsk, which appear to be respectively the formal written form of the Norwegian language, and a lesser variant that differs from Bokmal, both of which have official status, except the whole subject looks a lot more complicated from the inside than it did before, so here's some snus.

Norwegian Sucking Tobacco

     Maybe at the weekend, when I have time to bloviate at length.

More Ships Of "The Expanse In Lego
Of course most of these are variations on the 'Rocinante', which is very popular as a build.  One reason, I suppose, is that it gets a lot of screen time and thus lots of shots of it from different angles, and you've seen people up against it to get a sense of scaling.
      Cue something a little different: the MCRN "Donnager" battleship.  In the show this thing is freakin' enormous, easily big enough to accommodate a couple of light torpedo bombers like the 'Rocinante', and someone out there was inspired enough to go build a version.  Art?

Woohoo!

     It's two feet long and the creation of Ethan Brossard, and here's the link to a more detailed description:

https://rebrickable.com/mocs/MOC-25286/EthanBrossard/mcrn-donnager/#comments

     Sadly, no info on how many bricks were used in the 'Donnager'.  Lots, I expect.

     And do you know what?  The end.

*  Actually, Viking "swimming" contests were more of a Viking "drowning" contest **  3840 total
***  Venezuala, we're looking at you