Firstly, Of Course - As Is Traditional
WASH OUT YOUR FILTHY MINDS! Let me get that in first. For we are talking about the Coincidence Hydra once more, that ferocious beast which likes nothing more than to fasten it's teeth in my nethers. Since purchasing my wonderwear, as I have dubbed them, Your Modest Artisan no longer fears the rending of my rear by a faceful of fang.
Since I don't want the default image on Facebook to be a pair of armoured underpants, let's instead have <picks page at random in his Collins Concise> - Kofu! Art -
It's a city in central Japan, for your information.
Also, going off at a tangent to the tangent, Conrad noted further down the page an entry for "Koine", which is apparently the dialect of Greek used as a universally comprehensible one across the empire of Alexander The Great, surviving into Roman times. Art!
If you can get by in Greek then you can also have a fair stab at the Cyrillic alph
ANYWAY let us now get back to the subject of Wild Coincidence, because that's what's happened. Art!
No, Art. The novel, please*.
Cast your mind back a week or so, and you'll recall that Conrad was venting his righteous rage at the Codeword (yes, again) for using the word PROSODY, because it's completely archaic and outdated and would only ever be used in an academic sense, and even then only occasionally. Well, Fate must have been listening extra-specially intently because - Art!
Under The Bonnet Redux
Yes, I'm afraid we're back to that car chase again, because there's more jargon I want to throw at you, out of a sense of bemused bafflement and gleeful sadism at your baffled bemusement. Okay, so: "Bullitt". Yesterday I described how the two cars, a Ford Mustang and a Dodge Charger, were modified in terms of their suspension architecture**. Art!
The various machinations carried out under their hoods are described as follows: "The Mustang's 390-cubic inch/325 horse engine received milled heads and ignition and carburettor upgrades, but could never really keep pace with the stock 440-cubic inch/375 horsepower Dodge". Conrad thinks that this refers to how large the engines were, with the bigger engine putting out more power and therefore able to go faster. Art!
Must 'ang a right
What Conrad likes about the ten-minute chase scene is that there's no dialogue: Frank Bullitt is all alone with nobody to talk to, and two hitmen are laconic professionals, not friends, who know their craft well enough to work without idle chatter. Just a thought.
Where the Mustang utterly outclasses the Charger is in worth. The Charger, when last sold, went for £90,000. That Mustang, though, went for (short pause for dramatic effect) over £3,000,000.
Sunshine
Or, if you prefer, nuclear fusion and the energy it creates. And no, this is nothing to do with that film of the same name. No, we are looking at a new attempt to create a self-sustaining nuclear fusion process.
"Pshaw!" I hear you scornfully sneer. "The old fool's gone senile, we covered this months ago with that spherical fusion plasma chamber."
WRONG! O SO VERY WRONG! DID I TELL YOU HOW WRONG YOU ARE?
Art! Hustle now -
Rather than go the spherical tokamak approach, the South Canadians have been blasting deuterium and tritium pellets with incredibly powerful laser beams (192 of them!) in order to create fusion and turn the hydrogen into helium. The eventual aim is to extract more energy from the fusion that is expended on the lasers, and they have just managed to get up to 70% of the 100%-plus they need to achieve this. Yes yes yes that's not 100% but their previous yield was 8.75% and three years ago it was a mere 2.8%, so within a couple of years -
An artist's impression. For obvious reasons.
The challenge in real live industrial circumstances will be to have this process occur several times per second. Still, the longest journey starts with the first step. If we ever do get functional fusion power plants then the spaceships as seen in "The Expanse" will not be that far out of reach. Whoopee!
Quickly! Let us check if the archetypal Grumpy Old Man of rock music is still alive and well - you know, Donald Fagen. He is? Phew! So much for my sense of foreboding.
Sliddery
We continue on our very small odyssey around the Kyles Of Bute, thanks to Conrad's retentive memory and mention of three (very) small towns that the Clydeside puffer "Vital Spark" put into every now and then. This boat is one of the characters in the tales of Para Handy by Hugh Foulis, a small tramp steamer that acted as a kind of marine taxi-cum-freighter-cum-passenger ship around Glasgow and the Clyde. Art!
Pronounced "Fital Sperk" in the local dialect
Sunny Jim, taken on a ship's cook, has trouble believing the names of some destinations Para Handy has been to, and Sliddery is one. Is it real?
It certainly is!
It is actually located inland, about a quarter mile from the sea, and has no harbour or port, so if Para went ashore, he did so from anchor in a boat. Quite what business he might have there, and whether it was entirely legal, we shall gloss over. Art!
As you can see, the Vital Spark isn't very large, so it would stick close to shore when possible and avoid the briny deeps; Para liked to boast of once having sailed across to Ireland, with Dougal standing at the bows striking matches to avoid collisions.
Finally -
Hmmm. I've finished a Codeword from the "Oldham Times" and they've now gone down the route of the "M.E.N." by only giving you two letters, which raises the difficulty a quantum level. I can't decide whether to be moderately outraged or not by their inclusion of "SCHISM", "QUAFF" (which I guessed at early on) and "SEQUESTER". I''ll get back to you on that.
* See how patient and forbearing I am? Also, the Tazer is in for servicing and the cattle-prod is charging-up.
** This makes it sound like I know what I'm talking about
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