Another Pi You Can't Eat

No!  Nothing To Do With Either Magpies -
 - Nor the mathematical constant which is based at about 3.142.  Don't get picky that I'm not very defined, there was a South Canadian state measure which wanted to determine Pi as exactly that, so there.
     Where was I?
     O yes, Pi.
     Enter the bagpipes.  Art?

A bag of pipes indeed.

     Now, it just so happens that there is a brand of bagpipe music known in Gaelic as "Piobaireachd", which is rendered in normal pronunciation as "Pibroch".  That's Gaelic for you; Conrad can make a fair stab at any European language, including the ones in Cyrillic, but - Gaelic? - just no.  Not at all.  I have listened to some of it, and have to say I prefer all the Drums and Pipes bands, since Pibroch sounds like a whole lot of lamenting at length in a long way.  A verrrrrrry long way.

Serendipity.

     I've never heard of this series, although it seems like I should have, so after this broadcast I shall probably go search it out on Youtube and Google.
     And there you have it for Pibroch.  I think it featured in "Terror Of The Zygons" in the BBC's dramamentary series "Doctor Who" but what do I know*.
     Motley!  Strap on your electric dudelesack and let's rock out!
The Hot Place
You might want to consider the following before you complain about your weather, or condemn someone to Hades.
     Okay, so some particularly clever boffins have been scoping out a solar system some 640 light years from planet Earth, where the planet of particular interest has been named "Wasp-96b".  Fair enough.  Wasp is a class of extra-solar planet known as a "Hot Jupiter", because it's a gas giant like Jupiter, but which orbits it's parent star at a ridiculously close distance.  This class of planets was utterly unknown before we started picking up extra-solar ones, and Ol' Waspy is a bit of a monster, being twice the diameter of Ol' Jove.  Art?

There you go

     It's so close to the sun that it orbits in only 48 hours, and is tidally-locked, meaning one face permanently faces the sun.  And hits 2,4000C.  This is so hot that on the "cool" side, which is only (!) 1,4000C, you get molten iron rain as vapourised metals condense and fall as precipitates.  I say "fall" when that ought to be "incredibly stressed churning in winds of 10,000 miles per hour", because that's what happens at the terminator between "Hot" and "Cool" hemispheres.

A poster they commissioned

     Just wow.  The universe - stranger than we can possibly imagine.

As Wan Aswan Swan
I'm not sure if there are actually swans on Lake Nasser, the artificial lake created by the Aswan Dam, but it makes a decent pun and tongue twister.  Art?

There's definitely a swan hiding amongst that lot.  I'll let you dig it out.

     For Lo! we are back yarking on about dams, after that BBC article on them.  Yesteryon we dealt with dam collapse, and how several million tons of water are not something you ever want to get on the wrong side of.  Unless you have a stout boat.      Anyway, the Beeb's article was looking at the debit side of creating the world's largest artificial lake, because there are some. 

     <"Daybreak"!  That's the series I couldn't remember the name of.  Sorry for the
       interruption and let's crack on with the Aswan Dam>

     There was an eruption of water hyacinths, which they made sound like a bad thing.  Art?

Hmmmm.  They may have a point.

     Ah.  Apparently it will spread uncontrollably and completely cover areas of water, killing off other plants and fish and helping to spread snails infected with disease.  So, on balance, not a good thing.
     Oh, and they had to move 100,000 people, as well as either leave to be sunk or remove various historical artefacts.  Art?

Thus
(There's a joke in here somewhere)

      In mitigation, the Aswan has controlled potentially devastating floods and droughts, besides generating hydroelectric power.  However!  Perhaps inspired by it's success, the Ethiopians are building the biggest, baddest dam that Africa has ever seen, which, since it is upriver from the Aswan, may well interrupt that dam's flow of water.  One presumes the Egyptians will have something to say about that.  And that it will be a variation on "Damn".

Put That On Your Plate And Eat It
If you are a regular reader, then you will know that Conrad is an occasional watcher of TIK, over on Youtube.  I say "occasional" because when TIK hits a subject, he does it at length, and the collected total for his coverage of "Operation Crusader", for example, lasts something like 9 hours.  Art?

TIK in his natural environment

     TIK used to be a retail store manager, employer unknown, who hated his job and went full-time on YT the instant it became possible.
     So, when I spotted an article of his that came in at only 20 minutes,  Conrad was intrigued.  What could this be about?
     Well, TIK was dealing with assertions that Nazi Germany should have waited until 1942 to invade the Sinister Union, in order to be better prepared.
     "NO!" stated TIK, and yes, that loudly.  "Not possible!" and he proceeded to explain why.  There was, you see, a serious food crisis in the land of the Teutons.  TIK read out a lot of anxious quotes from Goebbels, bemoaning the state of food supplies in the land in 1940 and 1941.

"The calories, the calories ..."

     Then we come to the Wehrmacht, which totalled 3 million men.  As of June 1941, they moved into the Sinister Union and stole all the food they could lay their hands on, the acquisitive goblins.  This meant 3 million less mouths to feed, and TIK's contention is that the Teutons simply couldn't afford to leave those 3 million stomachs in the Reich - there simply wasn't the food for them to last into 1942.

Finally -
Just so you know, and with hideous irony compared to the above, I am struggling through another plate of chili and rice. I may have to admit defeat and <sighs heavily and theatrically> chuck some of it out.

     And with that, we are done!


* A heck of a lot, actually.