Strike Lightning

<the sound of a foot tapping and eyes being narrowed is heard>
Yes, you'd better keep any critical comments to yourselves.  That is exactly what I meant to write and it's not been transposed by Blogger.
     I have to make an aside here, as it will help things make sense.  Well, as much as we ever get within spitting distance of sense here.  Art?

      This goes back to the early Eighties, when Your Humble Scribe was working at a bakery in Lytham, and to get there he rode there on his bicycle.  O Boy was I fit and healthy then.  Of course, all the calories that I biked off were immediately put back on scoffing the remaindered bread bought at knockdown prices -
     Which is not what I'm writing about.  No, you see there was an enormous factory complex belonging to what is now British Aerospace, with airstrips, at Freckleton, on the way into Lytham.  There were always aircraft flying in an out of there, and as I was cycling away I spotted a silver aircraft whizzing along.  It was clearly identifiable as a Lightning.  Art?

A Lightning

      Technically this was a "point-defence interceptor", more colloquially known as a pair of massive engines with a cockpit strapped on top, intended to <ahem> strike inbound Sinister aircraft.  It was monstrously fast, as I can confirm: it went screeching along at treetop height, then angled upwards and put on afterburners.  BANG!  Gone from view in seconds.  Literally - one two three out of sight.

NNEEEEEEEEEEYYOOWWWWWWWWW!!

      These things are long out of service so you're not going to see them on active flight operations again.
     So that explains what I've seen.  And yourselves?

      Motley!  Put on this hat with a giant metal prong standing up vertically from it and go stand in the storm*!

Say A Sad Goodbye To Our Resident Angry Czech
Take a bow, Marketa!  Because I cannot trust you lot I am not putting up a picture of her, nor her last name.  She deserves her privacy.  
     O Marketa!  What is the most annoying thing you feel angry about in the whole world?
     "Czechoslovakia"
     I feel your pain.
     I think it's time to wheel out the maps.  Art?

Pre-1993 nation state

     Marketa is barely able to type, so great is her rage, as she points out that Czechia and Slovakia both parted ways in 1993.  As she laments, this split took place 27 years ago and you still get hapless foreign tourists asking questions about "Czechoslovakia" - hopefully not of Marketa, as she is liable to disembowel them with a soup ladle.

"We Have Ways" Podcast
I've got this playing in the background as I type out these words of wit, wisdom and wonder <thinks of anything else that begins with "W" that's relevant> and it's very interesting, because their guest is Luke Daly-Groves, author of a book called "Hitler's Death: The Case Against Conspiracy".  Luke is trying to address and destroy the endless stream of conspiratorial scrivel put out that asserts Herr Schickelgruber is alive and well.
     Well, probably not alive and well now, as he'd be about 130.
     So, the issue is that so many conspiranoid loonwaffles claim Herr Schickelgruber managed to escape the Fuhrerbunker, by flying away on the back of a giant anchovy clicking his magic red shoes together taking the Hogwarts Express - take your pick.
     O Noes! squeaked my wallet.

Abebooks here we come!

     Luke seems to have an academic background and touches on some key issues.  We may come back to this, as Conrad is of course worryingly interested in the Second Unpleasantness and also enjoys poking malicious fun at conspiranoids.

I Know It And Show It
Those with retentive memories will remember Conrad's apoplectic howling on Facebook and Twitter about "I knew it!  I KNEW it!" earlier this week. which may have whetted your appetite for more information without satisfying it.
     What was I prating about?
     The siege of Bristol in 1643 during the English Civil Unpleasantness is what.  I'd looked at Wiki because my book was on the other side of the room, and I seemed to recall that the author (John Barratt) had described an exceedingly bloody affair.  Well, you wouldn't know from Wiki: "Casualties: Unknown".  Yesterday I got the book out again and checked the description.  It's been in print for 11 years so there is no excuse for Wiki being so threadbare.
     Mr. Barratt is unclear how many Parliamentarian casualties there had been by the time Chicken-guts Fiennes, their cowardly commander, asked for parlay, but it wasn't many; a couple of hundred at most.  Art?

Bristol is stormed

     The King's army, on the other hand, had suffered almost 1,500 casualties and was close to breaking.  As Ol' Bazza asserts, of the 4,500 Cavaliers present at the storm, only 1,500 were able to muster afterwards.  Doubtless hundreds of them had simply deserted once they laid hands on plunder, to sell it and drink and dice away the proceeds (for these are emphatically not professionals we are talking of here, but those are quite horrifying casualties.  They certainly horrified King Chaz, who was reluctant ever after to carry out a storming.

NASA And Exoplanets
Yes, we finally get to the matter of something astronomical, as teased earlier in the week.  Maybe it was last week.  At least we're not resorting to LITHIUM WAFER BATTERY DESIGN! so don't look so glum.
     Here an aside.  How, exactly, does one pronounce "NASA" correctly?  You hear South Canadians say "Nasser", when Conrad thinks it ought to be a long "A", and thus pronounced "Nah-Sah".
     Anyway, exoplanets!  One of my favourite astronomical subjects, and as I like to remind people, before they Put Pegasi in Place, in 1995, we had no idea if our Solar System was unique or not.  Art?

Pluto no longer included

     Now we are at well over 4,000 extrasolar planets detected, and it begins to look as if all stars have planets orbiting them, which will put the number of planets in our Galaxy in the trillions.
     The first planets detected were gas giants, due to the methodology involved ("wobble"), but thanks to occlusion and gravity lensing, it's now possible to detect planets of the order of Earth's size.  Not only that, we can in some cases do a spectroscopic analysis of their atmosphere, which sounds extraordinarily dull - but it means we can detect the essentials (as we know it!) for water, that is oxygen and hydrogen.  Art?

AN ARTIST'S IMPRESSION NOT A PHOTOGRAPH!

     Here's Kepler 186f, a planet near Earth-sized that orbits in the "Goldilocks" zone, where water is neither frozen nor super-heated steam.  Wave to your neighbours, Gentle Reader, because it's a mathematical certainty there's life there.
     One to ponder on!



*  Don't worry, motley's are shockproof**.
**  Mostly shockproof.