Metallic Ah

 And Lars Ulrich Can Try To Sue Me If He Wants

For today, gentle reader, we are going on a journey of discovery and exploration, all done in the comfort of your own house/castle/cavern <delete where applicable> without moving from your chair.

Though if it's one of these you may want to move

     This is what comes of having 1) a mind like a skip and 2) too much curiosity. 

     Firstly, as an introduction to the subject, we need to abruptly change the conversation and head on over to that splendidly educational Youtube channel "Doctor Hope's Sick Notes", where our resident medic is either geekishly reviewing medical procedures as in films and television, or going on about Covid-19.  Since we are already living the latter, let us skip lightly o'er it and focus instead on the medical content of "Iron Man 2).  Art?

     Our nerdy medic points out that the scene above, establishing Ivan as a villain with a grudge against Stark Industries (who 'let go' his dad), has paid attention to palliative care in terminal patients, as ice cubes are frequently resorted to when in the final stages of illness.  

     Then too, this is eminently practical technology, using a drop of blood to analyse the patient's pathology and come up with an analysis and prognosis.

     You'd better believe Conrad is going to work out "topless" into his Facebook prompting page re the above, O yes.  This is where we get to the meat of the matter, because that there Arc Reactor set in Tony's chest is powered by Palladium, which also seems to be slowly poisoning him.  Doctor Hope did some mathematics about the toxicity of Palladium, and worked out that there is a very real chance Tony would be suffering from medium metal poisoning.  Pd46, to use the scientific abbreviation, affects the liver, lungs, heart and immune system, so Tony is well-advised to keep his distance from a sniffly Pepper Pots.

     Later on, he gets an involuntary assist from Black Widow.  Art?

The Doctor is squeamish about neck injections

     This is a dose of Lithium Hydroxide, according to Nick Fury, which the Doctor points out is a light metal used in compounds that ameliorate bipolar disorder; Conrad points out that it's used in the core of fusion weapons.  Neither of these mean you'd inject it into someone for therapy*.
     There was another brief analysis from the Doctor featuring Thor, and you might expect Conrad to derail onto Thorium, a heavy metal, but NO! we're sticking with Palladium.

Thorry

"Wolfbane" By Pohl And Kornbluth

Fred Pohl and Cyril Kornbluth produced some corking collaborative sci-fi novels back in the Fifties, premier of which is "The Space Merchants", originally published as "Gravy Planet".  Art?

     Which is not what I wanted to talk about.  Direct your attention to "Wolfbane", which is more an adventure romp than the dark satire of TSM.  I shan't ruin the plot for you, just bringing it up as the practically-extinct aliens, who feature as a supporting cast, revere Palladium as a precious metal, rather than Gold, long the avaricous target of greedy Hom.Sap. After all, there's a lot more you can do with Pd46 than you can with Au79.  Art!

The edition I had

     An aside for all you perverts out there; Wally Wood, one of the giants of illustration back in the Fifties, managed to do the magazine illustrations for "Wolfbane" in "Galaxy" which depicted a revolt of naked human prisoners, yet managed to keep it SFW because they were either turned away or holding large weapons, strategically placed**.

Still In Keeping With The Metal Theme ...

It took ages to dig this one up, so you'd better appreciate it.  Okay, as alluded to in yesterday's Facebook promoting, there is a theatre in London called the "London Palladium", in order to distinguish it from all those other Palladium theatres (perhaps, Conrad a little hazy on This Sceptred Isle's theatres).  It seems to put on musical shows <hack! spit!> more than it has bands on stage, which means I needed to do a bit of digging.  Art!

So good they named it twice.
(Why, that sounds almost like a song lyric -)

     Should we bother with an interior shot?  O go on then.  Art!

     Happy now?  Can I continue? O, thank you so much!

     Your Humble Scribe tracked down the following shot of a band onstage -

CRADLE OF FILTH!

     You see, I wanted to get a heavy metal band, appearing at a venue named after a metal.  It took a while.

Meanwhile, Back In North Africa

I am adding a selection of my own to that list of Italian kit that The Chieftain was going on about, since it falls out of the time-frame he was looking at, which was from about June 1940 to April 1941.  Art?

The Sahariana AS42

     This was a rather tasty vehicle, based on the chassis of the AB41 armoured car, designed and intended to either copy or chase the Long Range Desert Group and the Special Air Service of Perfidious Albion.  As you can see, it is open-topped rather than having a turret, meaning a considerable weight saving.  There was provision to store sufficient petrol for it to make a 500 mile journey each way; you can see ten of the twenty jerrycans on the port side above.  Note also the sand channels, those bits of metal full of holes, which would be used for getting out of soft sand.

     Normally they carried a Breda 20 m.m. cannon, though the one at top is armed with what we wargamers love to call "heavier metal", and must be a 37 m.m. or 47m.m. gun to judge by length, recuperator and calibre.
     As already said, they were very good vehicles, which arrived just in time to join the Axis retreat from El Alamein.  Ooops.
 

Finally - 

The reason Conrad was up so remarkably early this morning is because, like the mercenary rascal I so truly am, there was overtime going.  This is because the stores whom I normally support (by dozing off in a corner on Floor 17 of the Dark Tower) are now busily recruiting for Christmas and our e-mail and phone traffic has multiplied many times over.  There are going to be dozens of temps in to help us, yet they will take time to get up to speed on what is a fiddly and lengthy process.  So it is possible that I'll be up just as early next Sunday <shudders, then thinks of books>.

The Dork Dark Tower

*  Mind you, we are talking Nick Fury here.  He could well be lying, just out of habit.

**  NO!  You do not get an example.  Get your minds out of the gutter.