<Sighs> Not Really, But A Man Can Dream
Conrad hopes you liked his impromptu time-and-motion analysis of Starry Trek last night, all the result of a whimsical moment wondering "What if ..." That's the good thing about not having an editor, you can do things on the fly.
No, Art. NO. There will be Tazers.
Actually, hang on a moment <turns Electric Elephant Truncheon off> because that picture sparks a debate from what I remember about "The Fly". It's from 1958 so I don't care if I post a whole lot of spoilers. You've been warned.
Okay, in the film our Resident Mad Scientist manages to matter-transport both himself and a fly, resulting in the horrid upright houseflan above, and a fly with a human head and arm. HOWEVER the houseflan retains it's human intellect, which is both highly convenient and It's In The Script, meaning it doesn't immediately rush to to the dustbin and begin eating the contents (don't want an "X" rating, do we!).
It'll all end in fears.
The conceit that this houseflan retains a human intellect is somewhat modified by another plot device, that this intellect will degrade over time, because that lends an element of time being of the essence. You know, tension is the heart of drama.
HOWEVER - and if you are familiar with BOOJUM! then you saw that coming a mile away* - we are also clued-in about a mysterious 'white-headed fly' which transpires to be the original buzzing bluebottle that got molecularly intermingled with the human earlier on. We even witness it's almost being eaten alive by a spider. Art!
 |
| "Help me! Help me!" (Classic dialogue Shakespeare would have been proud of) |
The thing is - this is a human head and arm on the body of a fly, hence a humly. Which appears to have human intellect rather than an IQ of 0.00067, since it can speak in comprehensible English and understands the concepts of imminent peril, not to mention human compassion and mercy. Insect politician my hairy white hindquarters!
That's not all. How can this humly possibly manage to articulate speech when it has no lungs? Go on, try speaking whilst not breathing in or out and see how completely silent you are. AND I have to ask - us hair-splitting pedants like to be thorough - what is this head and arm using for blood? Hmmm? Because an insect's circulatory system certainly doesn't use haemoglobin to transport oxygen around the body.
"Vincent mourned his inability to make viable tennis-nets."
Of course, I could be overthinking this a little ...
"Jinx"
This word came up in polite conversation today, where Your Humble Scribe castigated Georgina for welcoming in the Spring. Really. Georgina has lived in This Sceptred Isle for her whole life and ought to know better when it comes to both seasons and weather.
https://www.facebook.com/search/top?q=spellbound%20scents%20and%20fragrances
Let me sweeten the blow with a link to her perfumery.
Of course, Conrad then had to wonder, "Where does 'Jinx' come from?" because that's the way his mind works (and it's too late to change now).
Okay, my Collins Concise states that it's probably from the Dutch, which makes a nice change from Latin, derived from "Jynx", which is " - the genus name of the wryneck" which itself comes from the Greek "Iunx", which was their name for the wryneck - " - a bird used in magic".
What?
Can you eat it?
Conrad unsure if the dictionary compilers were on their ninth gin and tonic by then, or if they are simply making it up ("Go on, go on, who's ever going to look it up or check!"). Still, there you have the origin of jinx. Which we can enjoy reading about as thunderstorms and hail and tornadoes roll in for the whole of March.
Hard Rain
Ha! Do you see what I did there? Tornadoes - rain - asteroid descent from the heavens - destr - O never mind, I'm wasted here. Wasted!
Hard rain a-falling
I forgot to add in another methodology of preventing that image above from ever happening: mass ejection. This is undoubtedly a long-term plan, given the extent of the machinery required. The plan would be to soft-land a series of robotic mining excavators, which would dig down into the body of the asteroid (or comet, we're not fussy), then begin hurling their mining spoil into space as ejecta. Art!
This is where Newton comes in, because every time these robots fire a one-ton lump of loam into space, they also divert the asteroid. Very, very minutely, it is true; yet they still deflect it. Not only that, every load they launch makes it that much easier for the next launch to deflect the now-smaller asteroid. Of course - obviously! - this would take months to have any cumulative effect, if not years, so definitely one for the grandkids.
Would it be difficult? "Don't argue the difficulties," growled Winston Churchill. "The difficulties will argue themselves." Although if a difficulty confronted Winston Churchill it would probably run away and hide.
This Is Why Procedure
Conrad has finally finished re-reading "The Martian", and notes at the end that the incredibly driven Mitch Henderson - widely described by everyone as a bottomhole - is getting very, very nervous when it comes time for Mark Watney, the Martian of the title, to launch his cobbled-apart Martian Ascent Vehicle. In reality Mitch isn't a bottomhole, merely a man with only one focus, who will die trying to get the job done. Art!
BRITISH. British, just so you know.
Mitch getting nervous means he double and triple checks the ordinary, the routine and the mundane, because when one's team is under incredible stress and pressure, someone somewhere might overlook something.
Does this matter?
Why yes. Art!
NO 
YES
Here we see NOAA - N', which had been bolted into the upright position shown at 2, before the technical team went off for a long lunch. Along came another technical team, who removed all the bolts for shizzle and giggle another test, WITHOUT NOTIFYING TEAM ONE. Who came back from lunch and tried to lay the satellite down to the horizontal position, with the results seen at 1.
The details of how much it cost to fix the damage are "somewhat obscure", meaning that nobody wants to admit it, so it's got to be pricey. And an example of why Mitch Henderson is right by default; yes, checking everything five times over costs time. Do you want to have to rebuild your £25 billion nuclear submarine because they missed a weld?
"Depends. Whose submarine are we talking about?"
Finally -
I know that Kublai Khan decreed that a pleasure dome be erected at Xanadu, but was it a geodesic array? Enquiring minds want to know!"Get orf me shed!"
* None of that metric drivel here.
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