But First - Hello To Those Abroad!
As you should surely know by now, Darling Daughter is up for a visit, and as part of keeping both her and Edna occupied, she agreed to walk the dog when we had our daily dose of sunshine, all thirty minutes of it. No sooner had the sun's rays broken through the grey gloomy layers than mention was made of a "trot" at which Wunderhund's ears pricked up and she became positively animated, a marked contrast to her lethargic pose of "O look how the wicked humans have ignored and neglected me". Allow me to demonstrate how we utilised our brief window into summer. Art!
There is the champ of scamp. Given the re-appearance of the Uniform Grey Layer forty minutes later, Your Humble Scribe is glad we got the walkies in when we did.
There you go, a remarkably concise Intro for once. We like to mix it up from time to time. Motley! Put down the nitromethane, no cocktails before six o'clock.
Annnnd Back To Today's Title
BEWARE! for my finger is poised over the big red button on my Remote Nuclear Detonator, lest any of you confuse today's title with that Swiss cheese who wrote reams of twaddle about UFOs.
We are, perhaps, defining "Chariot" a little broadly here; although the artwork that follows does undeniably feature dogs towing various wheeled vehicles, so you can't quibble too much. Art!
The Belgian Army of the First Unpleasantness was not one of Europe's mightier juggernauts, mostly because it's a small country with a small population now as then. Why, therefore, have a large draught animal such as a horse pulling your machine-gun chariot when you could use two considerably smaller - dogs? Art?
Uniforms barely recognisable as such
They require less fodder and water than a horse, and you can use them as sentries. Plus they would keep evil cats at bay. If you allow that the vehicles these beasts hauled were indeed chariots, then I think we've found our original Chariots of Fire. Perhaps, more accurately, Chariots of Fire Support.
"Snowpiercer"
The television series, that is. Darling Daughter chose to play the first season last night, which is why Conrad took so long to complete his blog. You can either watch television or do your blog, not both.
Of course, Conrad being Conrad, he couldn't just sit and soak up the program. No. O noes indeed! First, there's the matter of the temperature outside the train, given as -1170C. This is cold enough to kill immediately upon exposure. It would also make steel brittle, meaning not only the monstrous train itself could well suffer structural failure, but so could the rails it runs upon and bridge components. Art!
Then you have the train itself, repeatedly described as being 1,001 cars long. Conrad guessed each car to be 30 yards long, giving a total length of 17 miles. BUT this is contradicted by a lead character saying it's only five miles long, so it looks as if average car length is more like 10 yards. Your average unloaded rail car weighs 30 tons and we must assume that many of Snowpiercer's cars carry cargo or equipment; say an average of 45 tons per car. That means the locomotive has to shift 45,000 tons deadweight - egad! No wonder they don't want to slow down - getting 45,000 tons of train moving again would be an immense undertaking. Art!
Conrad is unsure if the people who built the train have a master plan, or if they merely intend to roam the earth until supplies run out and they eat each other. Also, given that this is an enormous engineering project, exactly how much in advance did Mister Wilford know of the impending climate catastrophe?
Of course, I could be overthinking this ...
My Blue Heavens
NO! This is nothing to do with that song from the Twenties, nor yet the two films from the Fifties and Nineties, mind you having a dog named "Fungool" (sp?) is a stand-out moment in the latter, because it's actually something very, very rude in Italian and if the censors had any idea what it meant the film wouldn't have gotten a PG certificate*.
For Lo! We are back on that shortlist for Astronomy Photographer Of The Year, so let's have today's entry. Art!
"Pleiades Sisters" by Jashanpreet Dingar
No doubt a bit of filter-messing about going on here. This shot is of the Pleiades star cluster, also known as the Seven Sisters. Clearly, there are far more than seven stars here (800, I checked for you), so I expect when you gaze at the constellation of Taurus, they mean the seven brightest stars. Try it on a clear night and get back to me about it. Better be quick, though, as these stars are going to burn out in a few hundred million years - the light that burns twice as bright, etcetera.
More Of Italian Weaponry
Thanks are due to Magicfingers, he who runs "With The British Army In France And Flanders" and his introduction of another Italian - I will come up with a nickname for them, don't you worry - hand-grenade, again entirely unfamiliar to Your Humble Scribe. I have never made any claim to know much about the Italian front of the First Unpleasantness, so you cannot castigate me**. Art!
Carbone Type C
This appears to be one in his own personal collection; don't worry about him being shuffled off this mortal coil too soon as another photo posted shows the empty interior. Normally it was filled with explosive; you removed the safety catch, pulled the fuse tab and then had six seconds to get rid of it, preferably in the direction of people you didn't like very much. Art!
It strikes Conrad that this would make a pretty good trench club, if you emptied out the explosive charge and filled it instead with sand. One wonders if this was ever actually done; Magicfingers, who has researched this a lot more than I have, says he's never come across a photograph of this grenade in use. I do possess an Osprey about Italian Arditi of the First Unpleasantness - perhaps it's time to go re-read it and check for Carbones.
No 'Finally -' needed, we are up to the Compositional Ton. Pip pip!
Close enough
* Nope, not saying anything more about it. SFW, remember?
** If you do, I shall ignore it.
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