Once In 900 Years!

Apparently Today Is A Palindromic Date

Although only if one adheres to a particular date and time convention.  For Lo! the second of February 2020, as expressed in South Canada, comes across as 02/02/20.  And in other agencies across the globe.

     I am told that this numeration happens only once per millennium. Or, at best, every 900 years, which is neither here nor there given the average human lifespan.  I think this must have tickled my mind earlier today as I wrote the date in my notebook, thinking that there was something unusual about it, yet it took Wonder Wifey to explicitly point out the palindromery of the date to me.
     "Palindromery".  There's a word I didn't think I'd ever type.

Him neither

     FAST FORWARD TO 03/02/2020.
     Lo, here we are, at the very top of the Dark Tower, and for once the perspective is a fair one, absent mist, fog, snow, sleet, hail or rain.  How long this balmy state of affairs lasts is quite another matter.

     Right!  That's the Intro over.  Motley, let's play "Silent Hill" in real life.  You put on a blindfold and I'll get the fog-blower going -

A Taste Of The Twenty-First Century
As you should surely know by now, one of Conrad's small pleasures in life is in attending the weekly pub quiz at the Pleasant Inn, my local hostelry.  It is a <thinks hard> Smith's pub, that brewery out of Tadcaster in foreign country*.  The head of said brewery, one Humphrey Whatnot, is determined to be a 21st century King Canute when it comes to digital technology, in that he does not want any of it being used in his pubs. O no.  There have been signs put up, and now what do we see?

This!

And this!

      Sir Humphrey is wont to travel the land, sneaking into his chain of pubs and seeing if anyone dares use their Digital Devil Box technology, whereupon he will IMMEDIATELY BAN THEM and chastise the pub staff, too.  Pub Quiz partner Rosie speculated how dead this policy would be in Babylon Major ("London" if we're being formal), since everyone there is biologically grafted onto their mobile phone**.  I wonder - does the Sam Smith's brewery have any pubs in the Sinful City?  O to be a fly on the wall if they do, and Sir Hump turns up ...
     O, and Sir Hump?  That beermat I stole from your pub?  Photograph of it taken LYING ON A LAPTOP <evil snigger>.

A "Phew!!" Moment
I don't apologise for using two exclamation marks, either.  To what am I referring?  Why, my I-pod, of course, which I could not locate in my mancave yesteryon.  This is worrying, as it has about 800 CDs of music upon it, and it would take 135 weeks to upload all of them onto a new one, were I to have lost the old one.  Plus, it is my armour of choice when faced with the inevitable squalling reptile in a pram, whose indolent mother has brought aboard the bus.  That, and the people who can talk for an hour on their mobile whilst saying exactly nothing.
     Fortunately I had simply left it at work.  It had been charging up and lay behind the 2019/2020 financial calendar blu-tacked to my monitor, so on going home at close of business Friday, I'd forgotten about it.

Best gadget in human history, no question***.

     I realise this is kind of small-earthquake-in-Chile news to you.  To me, it is a source of considerable relief.

Back To The Future, Again

Since I can't access that list of 51 sci-fi novels at work, which is where I am typing this, I shall instead return to that list of items the BBC insisted were invented in the pages of sci-fi books long before the real world caught up.  And today we have -

"AI, virtual assistants and tablets"

     A 'tablet' in this case being a hand-held electronic device, not the pills that Conrad has to take daily in order to minimise the psychoses -
     Where were we?  O yes.  The Beeb insists that Arthur C. Clarke invented the tablet, and also the voice-activated computer, namely HAL, which is fair enough.  They also reckon he warned of the dangers of over-reliance on compinguters, and what challenges they pose to Hom. Sap.
     This rings true.  Also on the Beeb this week was the case of an 8 year old child who managed to amend the lock on her tablet from her parent's numerical one, to her own thumbprint.  She then went on to play some computer game about Robot Jox (I think, I was skimming a bit) and bought £1,450 worth of additional kit.  Her parents are surely nodding their heads at Arthur's warning.


Some mistake, surely?

Getting Up There
Whilst walking into Royton yesteryon, Your Humble Scribe was pondering upon the topic of how to get large amounts of payload into orbit most efficiently - you know, the sort of stuff you ponder whilst walking to the shops, right? - and he began wondering if the Project Orion pusher-plate vessel might not be the best way to go around this thorny problem.  Art?

Thus

     The thing is, Project Orion is achievable now - heck, it was achievable back in the Sixties - and it could be used to establish a foothold in Earth's orbit.  You could send stuff up in remotely-controlled Orion ships, which could be sent up without any kind of buffer or suspension system as you don't have vulnerable meatbags in the craft.
     There is a problem, quite above and beyond lofting a vessel into orbit, and that's the propulsion system, which is small-yield nuclear warheads.  These need to be detonated at a precise location aft, which means you need a shaft beneath the craft, with the warhead at a set depth.  You can't make the shaft too elaborate, since the first explosion will destroy it.  After that, your Orion spaceship is, oooh, at least a mile into the sky, meaning the next detonation will encounter nothing but fresh air.  Likely spectators should be wearing lead-lens glasses at this point.

"Payload" to include Hom. Sap.

 

     And we shall that about that, in a ten-gallon hat.

*  That is, Yorkshire.
**  Absolutely and literally true
***  THIS IS NOT OPEN TO DEBATE IT JUST IS.