The Coincidence Hydra, Don't You Know
As you should surely know by now, Conrad is unremittingly stalked by this beast, which in the days of old made sitting down difficult if not impossible, as it delighted in sinking it's teeth into my O-so-tasty buttocks. Thanks to a purchase from South Canada, however*, I can snap my fingers at the multi-headed swine. Art!
I cannot subject your glazzies to the sight of Conrad actually wearing them; that's what your imagination's for.
ANYWAY Your Humble Scribe was idly musing yesteryon - or perhaps musing idly, one of the two - and he recalled a newspaper article from back in the late Eighties, which involved an entity known as a 'glider gun'. No, this was nothing at all to do with anything military. What was it, exactly?
What it's not
Google to the rescue! The answer is a lot longer and more complex than I'd imagined, so let's get to it. Glider guns are entities that occur in a mathematical 'game' called The Game Of Life, usually abbreviated as 'Life'. More formally, it is a variety of cellular automata based on a grid, where each individual cell is either alive or dead. Art!
Examples
Whether a pattern thrives or dies off depends on the initial outlay, and the rules, which are very simple: a cell will stay alive if it has two or three live neighbouring cells of the eight possible; a formerly dead cell will come back to life as an hideous shambling zombie corpse if it has three live neighbours; live cells in any other configuration will die in the next move. Like Go - which the game's inventor John Conway used to model the processes - a set of simple rules generate incredibly complex patterns. On to the Glider Gun -
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| The Gosper Glider Gun |
There you go. There's an awful lot to this game which would constitute several complete blog posts on their own, and that's not the point of this Intro. You see, although Connie dreamed this computer version up in 1970, it had already been invented as a concept on paper by -
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| Stan the very clever man |
He was invited to South Canada by another very clever chap, John Von Neuman (also another refugee from Europe and the Teutons), and resided there after his homeland had been over-run by the Teutons, and he didn't go back when it was
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| You Teller them, Stan |
Motley, stand by for an invasion of rampant Weaselnanas**!
You Know, For A Republic -
South Canada is awfully interested in monarchies. Considering - and here I must bite the bullet and admit that the American Revolution happened and they won it - that they went to war in order to escape King George's rule, they do seem fascinated by our own royal family. As evidence I shall append a couple of images from "The Daily Beast" -
I'm not done yet. Art!
You see? Conrad, who is all-wise and all-knowing, suspects that this is what comes of not having a royal family of your own: jealousy. O and also - Burger King. Not Burger President or Burger Premier or Burger <thinks> Fascist Dictator - hmmmm perhaps not that last, you'd have trouble promoting that brand - or Burger First Citizen. No. Burger King. AND what does Budweiser call itself? Art!
Not "Champion of Beers" or "Best of Beers" or even "Really really good beer". No. They have to invoke royalty. Then there's that retail chain ... Art!
Have I made my point yet? STOP BEHAVING AS IF YOU WERE STILL A MONARCHY! WE have a Queen and a royal family, YOU DO NOT, and it's your fault for kicking things off in 1776. Yes I can bear a grudge for a long time.
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| The University of Princeton STOP IT NOW! |
HA!
Sorry, nothing to do with entitled South Canadian. I just noticed an advisory on my Samsung's task bar -
Are you kidding? The rain's already here and has been for the past five hours at least. As I look out of my Sekrit Layr's window I can see people canoeing downhill.
More Of Sergeant Dring
MM and Bar, which means he got the Military Medal twice, and as I never tire of saying, they don't hand those out in packets of breakfast cereal. During his time in the Sherwood Rangers Yeomanry he'd learned a thing or two about tank warfare. Art!
A rather dead Tiger
Stan Perry, in his talk on "We Have Ways" podcast, said the way to deal with a Tiger was to hit where the turret met the hull with an armour-piercing shell, which would jam it, and you could then sneak up on it -
ANYWAY Sgt. Dring acquired the habit of getting out of his tank to spy out the lie of the land ahead, and to see if he could spot any 'Hornets' as their slang went. Actually no, it wasn't slang it was their RT procedure. 'Hornet' = enemy tank. This was especially important in the Normandy bocage countryside, which was very close; it wouldn't do to shoot up a Hornet and then discover it was one of your own.
Stan said Ol' George had another tactic, which was to race in to attack, all guns blazing, as fast as possible, as it didn't give their opponents time to think.
Finally -
Given how wonderfully wet it is, Conrad is having second thoughts about his usual Sunday constitutional stroll into Royton, which seems more likely to be a swim than a stroll. I am definitely going in, because having read about Burgoo, I now intend to make some. This will replace Bigos, the Polish Hunter's Stew I've been cooking up on Sundays for ages now, in order to have a quick meal ready during the working week, since I only get 45 minutes. Now, where is that recipe?
* "Special Operations Armored Reinforced Underwear Steel-weave"
** Deadly yet delicious
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