Ha. Sometimes I Slay Me
For Lo! we are going to take another look at astronomical observatories in South Canada, after having a peek at Yerkes and Goldstone. This is a topic we could keep going for months, since South Canada is a big place, with lots of observatories. The state of California alone has thirty-five, possibly a consequence of mountains and sea breezes. Art!
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| The Lick |
No, it really is an observatory, they're just doing stuff with lasers and you're seeing the collimation as the beam hits particulates in the atmosphere.
ANYWAY this place has quite the history behind it, being constructed with funds supplied by Mister Lick, who was quite the business mogul, back in 1877. As you can kind of see here, it sits atop a mountain - Mount Hamilton. Let's get a better picture. Art!
It is currently staffed and run by the University Of California Observatory - see, my intro to the Intro was accurate after all - and can claim to have been the first astronomy site after Galileo to discover a new Jovian satellite, in 1892. Amalthea, if you were feeling curious. Not bad after a pause of two hundred and eighty-two years.
One of the incidental features of the site is it's access road, which Mister Lick wanted to be a splendid example of South Canadian artisanship. Art!
You are now looking at Highway 130, which was initially carved out of the mountainside in 1876, back when everything had to be hauled up in carts and wagons drawn by horses. Because poor Dobbin couldn't manage a steep gradient, the road's incline is very gentle, meaning that it meanders all over the place - hence the hairpin bends you see above. There are enough of them to have Highway 130 closed down if it snows. Well, that's a trade-off; the mountain top position keeps the telescopes away from light and smoke pollution and meteorological turbulence (not a phrase you expected to see today) above the peak is very low.
There you have it. Hamilton's Lick is looking slick.
NOW The Seething Apoplectic Rage
I bet you can't wait, can you? Today's afternoon post was already over the Compositional Ton without including the righteous rancour of your ranting writer, critiquing Codewords. Fret no more! Conrad is here with that vein in his temple a-throbbing like a bass drum and I shall type until the red mist comes down.
"LUCENT": Er - what? Conrad hasn't come across this word before. I'm guessing that it has roots in Latin, because "LUCID". Allow me to consult my Collins Concise. Ah, close. "Brilliant, shining or transparent" After the Latin "Lucere" for 'Shining'. Yeahhhhhhh right.
"I have a very shiny axe!"
"ALLEGRO": This one was confusing because a seven-letter that ends in "O"? Besides which, the car went out of production a good thirty years ago, and was an inferior design poorly constructed. It was derided at the time as an unreliable rust-bucket, which stuck, whether true or not (hint: true). WHAT ARE WE ALL VEHICLE HISTORIANS NOW?
The mobile blister itself
"EXPLICATE": Conrad only includes this because he's thinking of you, gentle reader, and your lack of familiarity with long words. Of course he regularly uses this word himself to answer your baffled questions about what on earth I'm waffling on about. So IF you read BOOJUM! then you'll know what I'm talking about. And if you don't, then that's your descendants ticket to either the organ banks or the uranium mines.
"Explicate" is dull. Have an atomic-powered tank instead.
I shall have to stop there in order for my blood pressure to fall. Also, the red mist is making it difficult to see the keyboard
Back To 1943 Again
Yes, more of "The War Illustrated" since I've already taken the photographs and you'll just have to put up with them, even if we've already had TANK. Once again, whose blog is it? Precisely. Art!
They are referring, of course - obviously! - to North Africa, not Lincolnshire. You see pilots trying to purchase goods from a local, probably frustrated that not everybody in the worlds speaks ENGLISH The Queen Of Languages. Next to that is a squadron Intelligence Officer listening to aircrew immediately after an operation, when memories are at their freshest. That chap with the stick? He's cutting notches in it to keep score of Axis victims; it's also a tentpole so if the squadron is too successful they're going to have a canvas coverall. To starboard of that is a humble, trusty yet practically obsolete Hurricane getting bombed-up in preparation for making someone's day truly awful. Bottom picture shows pilots returning from a sortie, with their planes waaaay in the background. These shots are most likely in Libya, thanks to the flatness of terrain in that last picture; Tunisia is a lot hillier and mountainous.
Here we see the 'Priest' Self-Propelled Gun. Despite what you might think IT IS NOT A TANK! It's the hull of an old and out-of-date Lee tank, which has had the top taken off so a South Canadian 105 m.m. <hack spit> howitzer can be placed within. It got the name because the sponson that used to house the 75 m.m. <hack hack spit spit> now resembles a pulpit. There was another version called the 'Sexton' which had a British 25 pounder gun, which makes more sense as the British Army already used 25 pounder guns, so no need for different ammunition and spare parts. The idea behind an SPG* is that it puts artillery on tracks, enabling it to keep up with the rest of the armour, and gives it a certain degree of protection. And that burning vehicle in the last photograph is NOT A TANK either; it's an Italian Semovente assault gun. I may explain the difference later**.
Are We Sitting Comfortably?
Then I shall begin. Up to Page 50 of "Tormentor" so far, thus only another 30 pages to go. Is that a sigh of disappointment I hear? O it was your bowels frothing. Go drink milk.
The
Powerpoint display had taken him several hours to compile. Mostly random images, with the target ones
thrown in at random points in the series.
The hypothesis was that such stimulation would cause relevant neurone
activity in the subject’s brain, which they could detect thanks to the sensors.
For the second part of the test,
McMahon had to predict which one of nine squares would be selected by the
computer at random, indicating his selection by touching the screen.
Feeling slightly bored, Nige paid
close attention to McMahon, who got progressively angrier and more visibly
annoyed as the session went on.
‘Someone’s getting narked that
their so-called abilities don’t transfer to the lab,’ he commented sourly,
getting a dig in at Paula.
‘Do try and remain professional,’
she shot back.
When Nige spoke through the
microphone to inform their test subject that the test was over, McMahon couldn’t
get out of the room quickly enough.
‘You ought to teach your
assistant some bloody manners!’ he snapped, slamming the door on his way out.
Paula stared at Nige
apologetically.
‘He can’t mean you, can he? Oh dear, why is it always the quiet ones who
turn out to be nutters.’
Louis ran into the two science
staff in the canteen. He finished his
meal before making his way over to them.
‘I have now calmed down,’ he
benevolently informed them.
‘Oh good. I thought you might have damaged the hinges on
the door,’ commented Nige, sarcastically.
‘People get like that when we don’t prove they have ESP.’
‘Nige!’ scolded Paula, between
forkfuls of food. ‘Don’t gloat.’
‘ESP? I could care less what you discovered, it was
how your lab assistant behaved. Was he
supposed to be winding me up? I’m surprised you could concentrate with him
acting like that.’
He got up and moved off, dropping
the dirty cutlery and crocks in the wash bins.
Behind him, Nige and Paula
exchanged looks of blank incomprehension.
‘Lab assistant?’ they both said,
simultaneously. Nige stared after the
lecturer. Playing mind games, eh?
Gosh what can this possibly mean?
Finally -
O go on, even if I need to go get a meal. A Spectrum Pursuit Vehicle.
* NOT TO BE CONFUSED WITH AN S.P.V. - 'Spectrum Pursuit Vehicle'
** Or not. I'm horrid that way.
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