No! Not The Film
Although Your Humble Scribe did indeed take Darling Daughter to see it all those - <gags and gasps in horror> FIFTEEN YEARS AGO! and, to be honest, feels that he enjoyed it more than she did, which is fair enough and we may even ask her when next we meet.
You know how it goes - teen offspring of super-powered parents doesn't have powers, then suddenly acquires them, then super-villain turns up(shades of "Invincible", right?), everyone lives happily ever after, including the bus-driver who ends up as a giant robot-fighting champion for the city - practically Hero Plot #003.
Except that's not what this Intro is about. Don't behave as if you were surprised! We have frequently spent 500 words beyond this level, only to revert or resort to utterly unrelated stuff. No, what we really want to talk about today is - er - <looks hard at archives> "Ariel".
I apologise on behalf of Art. Let's try again -
Better. I should explain that Ariel is a character in the Barf of Avon's "The Tempest", which of course was remade in an infinitely-better version as "Forbidden Planet" when she was re-imagined as "Altaira". Are you sure you don't want to hear my 5,000 word monologue on - okay then.
Here an aside. There is, apparently, a musical <shudders> called "Return to the Forbidden Planet", which Your Humble Scribe ain't ever going to watch - CONRAD STILL HATES ALL MUSICALS - which really doesn't make any sense at all. The titular Planet That Is Forbidden of the original film, Altair IV, is blown up in an epic explosion as the 900 fusion reactors that power the Krell's mighty engine of invention detonate. You can't very well return to a planet that's just a cloud of radioactive vapour, can you?
Ah yes: Ariel. This is an European Space Agency mission to survey for exoplanets, with a title they really stretched at: Atmospheric Remote-Sensing Infrared Exoplanet Large-survey. Conrad guesses ARSIELS sounded a little too vulgar, hmmmm? Art!
Ariel will be tasked with scanning up to 1,000 already-located exoplanets as they 'transit' either in front of or behind their parent star. This will enable their atmospheres to be analysed, most especially to see if any of them possess liquid water, widely seen as the Number One prerequisite for life to evolve there. As Conrad keeps reminding you rather blase readers out there, before 1996 we didn't know of any exoplanets - and now we're examining a thousand of them. Rather than actually limiting it's height above earth to the few hundred miles that being 'sky high' would take it (which long and tortuous explanation is how we get today's blog title), Ariel is going to be 1,000,000 miles from Earth. What you might call <ahem> pretty far out.
Speaking of range, Motley, let's see how far away you have to be for me to miss you with my Thermite Cannon, shall we?
Sausage And Bash
No! That is not a misprint, it is an hilarious pun, I tell you! Hilarious! It so is!
For yes, we are back on "Field Guns In France" again. Colonel Neil Fraser-Tytler (hereafter NFT), his battery and brigade had little to do on 1/7/1916 as the Teuton defences had been shattered, their infantry over-run and all targets up to the skyline taken, and at little cost, too. This was partly the result of both British and French having a height advantage over their opponent, meaning they could see everything.
I've got a picture from my Osprey on British field artillery of a 4.5" howitzer, as they crop up so rarely on teh Interwebz. Art!
By the time NFT wrote home on 17/7/1916, the Teutons had recovered from their very nasty surprise on the lower Somme; they had assumed that the French army, having been ground to powder at Verdun, was incapable of attacking at all, and certainly not on the scale seen. So NFT reports a lot of incoming artillery fire, including lots of tear and poison gas. By this time his battery had needed to move forward to get back in range and because it's positions were now becoming rather over-run with "sausages", as he calls the Royal Artillery's balloons, in addition to the heavier artillery. I have a neat picture of a British Sausage -
The balloon crew (and there were 16 of them around NFT's battery) could see for miles into enemy territory, and would radio or telephone down to their control, who would pass on the information. This ability and importance made them exceedingly tempting targets for enemy planes and they were usually defended by an arsenal of anti-aircraft guns.
So there you have this item's title. An hilarious pun**.
Pardon My Pride
Conrad made a bit of a boo-boo last week, zipping over to Peppi's to get a haircut, except it was the wrong Thursday. Ooops. So we re-arranged for today, and Your Humble Hairy Scribe is considerably tidier than previously. Art!
Less of me, yet more appealing (I tell myself). You should know Conrad by now, an utter scruff with absolutely no standards about personal appearance, especially if that means less time reading or doing crosswords, so such gratuitous effulgence can be tolerated, just this once.
J2
No! I did not mistype "J2O". J2 refers to the Directorate Of Military Intelligence, or the Irish Republic's intelligence service. Yes, they do have one. No, not a lot is known about it, since it's one of the most secretive (!) and discreet intelligence services in the Western World. Not surprisingly, whilst The Troubles were on it concentrated on dealing with that, yet it's also active globally in support of the Irish Army on peacekeeping duties.
And talking of aerials is where we came in ...
* For now.
** YES IT IS.
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