Horse Power

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Yes, That's A Tad Ambiguous

What else would you expect from Conrad The Tangential?  A short, succinct, to-the-point recounting of anything?  Because you're not going to get it.

     First of all, let me assure you what this Intro is not about, as is our wont.

     It is not about "Horse Power", that track by The Chemical Brothers.  Art!

     It's an age since I last heard it played, so indulge me a little as I trawl Youtube.  Hmmmm.  Yes, as I suspected, not one of their better songs.  Here's a sample of the lyrics:

Horse Power

Horse Power

Horse Power

Horse Power

Horse Power

Horse Power

Horse Power

Horse Power

     Bless them, I like the Chems but one certainly doesn't listen to their songs for delicately nuanced lyrics.

     What I wanted to mention was 'Horsepower' as a definition of power, normally used to measure the output of an engine or motor - we'll get to why in a minute.   I don't intend to go into all the calculations used to work out what an engine's output is, because frankly I don't care.  Art!

ENTER JAMES WATT

     James Watt - who must have heard every possible pun about his surname by the time he was 7 - invented the steam engine model above, which used a rocking beam to transfer it's see-saw action to a rotary one, as well as having a condenser.  This made it much more efficient than earlier designs, so much so that Watt, a canny Scot who knew the value of a golden guinea, proposed to customers that he would get paid a fee based on how much coal the customer saved as compared to their old steam engines.  Art!

Watty the Scotty

     This wouldn't work with customers who didn't possess a steam engine and used horses instead, so Watty sat down with pen and paper and came up with the concept of 'Horsepower' that would enable him to calculate power output.  It's nice to record that Watty died a wealthy man thanks to his invention of a new steam engine, rather than starving in a garret.

     Of course none of this is central to what I really wanted to yark on about, which was about the flying machines of the First Unpleasantness.  Yes yes yes, I know it's quite a shift, do keep up, it's good mental exercise.  Art!

     The reason I picked this up is that it's atop the pile of books next to my armchair, and I idly flicked through it.  You can tell it's not been opened in years as the leaves all stuck to each other.  As you can tell from the dustjacket, there were some weird and wonderful aircraft knocking about the skies.  I also wanted to show a quite compelling photograph.  Art!

An RAF FE2d

     Bear in mind that this is only a dozen years after the Wright brothers kicked the whole flying thing off.  The aircraft above is a 'pusher' design with the propeller at the back.  This means the pilot and gunner have an uninterrupted view ahead, the pilot having his own fixed machine gun firing forward, and the gunner having his machine gun mounted on a pintle, so he can cover an arc of 1800.  He also has a third gun mounted to allow him to cover the rear, as this was a weak spot for pushers.  One notable feature is that there are no enclosures, or even protective windscreens.  Yes, it may look like wires, fabric and wood - because it is - but the FE in numbers was a dangerous opponent.  Art!

     The specs here aren't clear so allow me to inform you that the FE2d was powered by a 160 horsepower engine, an upgrade on the original 120 Hp version.  Conrad hasn't paid any attention to engine output previously, so I was curious what later model aircraft of the Second Unpleasantness were rated at.  Hmmm the humble Hurricane had an engine of 1,800 Hp, so eleven times more powerful.  I wonder - hang on - just looking up the Eurofighter Typhoon and they only give figures in Newtons and Lbf.  Ah - about 12,000 Hp.

     Hmmmm this Intro is now over half the total count.  Time to wrap it up.

Seeing Stars

Welllll only kind of.  Actually seeing Jupiter, which is just as impressive.  Art!

     This is another image taken by the hanky spanky James Webb Space Telescope, treated to create a bit of false-colour to bring out the image.  Here you can just see Jupiter's rings - did you know it had rings? - and two of the Jovian satellites: Amalthea is the larger bright dot and Adrastea is barely visible at the rim of the ring.  Also visible are the aurorae at Jupiter's poles.  The Great Red Spot looks a little wan, however.

"The Sea Of Sand"

Our next instalment of the saga you must so love, as nobody's Commented on it, which I take as vindication.

"As I said, the Dias is a gigantic trans-mat platform.  My guess is that curved building the machines keep popping back into is a combined factory and energy station."

     Neither men quite followed this explanation.

     "I mean, the machines are manufactured there.  The factory uses geo-thermal energy to create and power them - notice that they return there, probably for re-charging, every half-hour."

     Which begged another question, realised the Time Lord.  If the complex here used geo-thermal energy - and there was no doubt that it did - then what did those repellent destructive machines at Mersa Martuba drain biomorphic energy for?

     Perhaps that fallen spire would have used the energy in some fashion.  Long destroyed, perhaps it now rendered the alien technology's operations redundant.

     "Gosh, look at that!" whispered Albert urgently.  "Those domes!"

     He referred to the two intact domes, which had slowly shed their smothering blanket of sand.  Suddenly, any dust left on the glossy black curves shot into the air uniformly, drifting down to ground level without settling back onto the curved surfaces.

     Hmmm wonder what's going to be revealed inside?

More Picturesquenessosity

That's a word because I just decided it is, so there.  If you don't like it don't read BOOJUM! because I ain't backing down.  Art!

"Spreading Your Wings" by Thomas West

     Not sure what kind of bird this is - hang on - aha!  A white egret coming in to land.  One wonders how many other pictures he took that never got to this level of detail, clarity and action.  Not sure where the picture was taken as the egret has been spreading from southern Europe into the north in addition to living in Asia and Africa.  

     Hang on!  Quickly!  Let us check whether that archetypal Grumpy Old Man Of Rock, Donald Fagen, is still alive.  Art?

A face made for scowling

     Phew, yes, he's still hale and hearty and a pooper at yer party.

     You can carry on now.

Finally -

I've been so busy creating this scrivel that I've not looked out of the window for an age.  Last time I did it was all cloudless blue skies and now - it's night.  As black as the inside of a coal-sack.   One two three altogether now "The nights are drawing in".  For your information, "Coal" is a hard black substance that people used to heat their homes with, and which is a bit of a treat for Art when he gets peckish.  I've tried it myself and it's a bit meh.

     Toodle Pip!

A Lot Device

NO! That Isn't A Typo

In fact you'd better tread carefully, I've already Remote Nuclear Detonated three people before lunch out of sheer pique.  Perhaps I'll be more mellow after a meal of sauerkraut and pilchards.  Perhaps not.

     ANYWAY our title today is about a device now widely used in sci-fi yet which was quite ground-breaking at the time: the 'transporter' as introduced in "Star Trek", an obscure South Canadian television series from the Sixties that you may have heard of.  Art!

   The concept behind this technology is quite straightforward: you stand on the coil, get turned into energy by a weird noise, get beamed to your destination (usually a planet) and get reassembled into yourself again.  Conrad was never quite sold on the bit about turning up on a planet without a transporter coil to re-assemble you.  In the interests of brevity we'll ignore that bit.  Art!

The mixing deck

     This system is said to have an operating range of 25,000 miles but the Enterprise crew don't seem to use it over 19,000, implying that you might not get put back together properly when operating at extreme range.  In one of the endless sequel series that is set in an earlier time, the transporter is used only when there's no other option, implying again that it wasn't entirely to be trusted.

     So, the transporter is a convenient and rapid method of getting from A to Z without having to go through the rest of the alphabet.  It's also a convenient way to generate plot points When Something Goes Horribly Wrong because whilst this kit is usually reliable, it's not totally reliable.  Art!

"Mirror, Mirror"

     This is easily one of the best episodes of the series and it all revolves around a transporter malfunction.  The four protagonists above are beaming back to the Enterprise, but choose to do so during an ion storm - which possibly makes Uhura another Ion Maiden* - and step out of the transporter to a radically different reality.  In this parallel universe there is no Foundation - instead the ISS Enterprise is busy committing war crimes in the service of it's parent Empire.  Promotion is by assassination, mistakes are punished with 'agonisers' and big mistakes put you in the Agony Booth, which will kill you.  Moreover, in this reality Kirk has the Tantalus Field, a device that kills remotely at a distance; Conrad wonders if this is what impelled him to get JPL to construct his own Remote Nuclear Detonator ...  Art!

"I told you, it's MY t.v. remote and I'm not giving it up!"

     So, convenient travel method and plot device.  The real reason the transporter was created and used came down to cost.  Originally the Enterprise would have physically landed on the surface of planets, which would call for expensive special effects shot, models, mattes and so on, which meant spending $$$.  There was the shuttlecraft, yes indeed - but it hadn't been completed by the time shooting began, so transporters it was.  Thus we have today's title.

     Motley, I am feeling both idle and hungry.  Transport me to the kitchen.

Another BBC Photography Exhibition

As you should surely know by now, Conrad loves to post these pictures and pontificate about them, because it minimises the creative effort required.  So - Art!

"Snowy Red" by James Officer

     The theme for the photographs is "Wild and Free" and will be on the front of the BBC's "Countryfile" calendar, so quite a bit of kudos to the winner.  Pretty obviously that above is a squirrel dusted with snow on a branch.  Yes, except it's a RED squirrel, not one of the indigent upstart grey ones that infest Tandle Hill Park.

More Of Post-Apocalypse Entertainment

Conrad cannot recall how he came up with a website called "Culture Vulture", nor exactly how he got onto a webpage titled "25 Post-Apocalyptic Films You Have to Watch", yet he did.  And do you know what?  It's not a bad list.  Having said that I have seen 18 of the films present, so yeah I probably would think it good.  I won't go through the whole list, just the ones I've not seen.  Art!

25: "Bird Box"

     That's the one where invisible monsters make you commit suicide if you look at them.  Or something.  So the protagonists have to wear a blindfold all the time.  Quite what this has to do with a box of birds is anyone's guess.  Conrad hasn't seen it and doesn't feel he's missing anything.  Perhaps if it pops up on Netflix as I'm not going to hunt it down.

From Wet To Sweat

Yes, our next instalment of "The Sea Of Sand", with our three humans - well, two humans and one Time Lord - watching alien machines slowly removing an overburden of sand from a complex of buildings.

Gradually the black glass building those machines came from emerged into daylight, a long structure that curved round in a semi-circle with one end open to the elements.  Periodically one of the machines would return there, only to re-emerge a few minutes later.  To the east of that structure, directly north of the Dias, sat a squat cuboidal building.  Diametrically opposite, on the south side of the Dias, a row of three smaller cuboids were slowly exposed to view.  At the eastern cardinal point of the compass, if the Dias were viewed as central to the Complex, a jagged black stump ten feet high showed where a damaged building had stood.  When the excavation neared it's end, the remains of the missing part could be seen: a two hundred-yard long needle that lay shattered in pieces, pointing to the south-east like a stuck compass.

     This toppled monolith had smashed open a domed building when it fell, but two more similar domes lay north and south of the smashed one.

     "Do you know what those buildings are for, Doctor Smith?" asked Templeman, humbly, probably the first time in his life he'd ever been so abject.

     Things are about to get even more interesting, and definitely alarming.

Artemis Foul

NO!  No relation to the series of books about the child mastermind which Darling Daughter used to enjoy when younger, and which has been made into a film, I believe.  One wonders how they get around the fact that Artemis is an amoral criminal

     ANYWAY that's not what we're here about.  No, Conrad is referring to the delayed launch of the Artemis rocket, due to execute an un-manned circum-lunar orbit as a test for a manned return to the Moon.  Art!

     There were problems with an engine so the lift-off was cancelled.  No word on when the launch will be on again <sad face> but it WILL happen <happy face>.  Back on the Moon by 2025!  Art!

    
     <sounds of Tazer being charged up>

Finally -

Don't need much to hit the Adjusted Compositional Ton.  What can I wibble witlessly about for less than a hundred words?  Aha!  "FLABBERGASTED", an English word which means 'To be utterly amazed' just in case those unlucky enough to not live in This Sceptred Isle are not familiar with it.  In fact I think I've used it recently, which is why it sprang to mind.

     The thing is, nobody knows where it comes from, only that it first popped up in the 18th Century.  Nothing about origin in either my Brewer's or Collins Concise, not even on teh Interwebz.  My challenge to you is to come up with a suggestion for it's origin.  

And with that, Vulnavia, we are done and over the Ton.  Pip pip!

*  Sorry.  Couldn't resist.

Ion Maiden

"Conrad Narrowed His Eyes Menacingly"

Hoping, in his fond imagination, that this made him look fearfully hard and not like a person suffering from a migraine.  I AM WARNING YOU! because the Remote Nuclear Detonator stands ready for anyone quibbling about today's title.  Am I not master of the English language?  Yes I am, before you get any sarky remarks in.

     Okay, I know what you're thinking*, so let's get rid of a few ambiguities first.  Art!

You need a better moisturiser, mate

     IM were one of a cluster of British metal bands that came into existence back in the Eighties, in what "Sounds"  delighted in calling the "New Wave Of British Heavy Metal" and they're still going, if somewhat slower than they used to be.  That repulsive character above is known as "Eddie" and is their mascot, widely used in promotional material and publicity.

     Here an aside.  There's even a brand of beer that features his unlovely presence, which Conrad confesses some curiosity about.  Art!

     Right then, we've established that this Intro has nothing to do with the band.  Nor is it anything to do with one of these - Art!

     You get the idea - victim goes inside and then the doors are closed.  Not so much a torture device as a killing one, because being impaled upon multiple spikes simultaneously is known to be bad for a prolonged life prognosis.

     No, what we're on about today is one of the most famous Poles in history, a lady known as Marie Curie.  She was born in Poland and studied there at the Flying University - an underground education institution that secretly taught Poles what the Ruffians would not allow - before moving to France and becoming a naturalised French citizen.  Art!

     She was one of the pioneers into radioactive research, helped along by hubbo Pierre, and discovered both radium and polonium - the latter named after Poland, because she never forgot her Polish roots; she had her daughters visit Poland and made sure they spoke the language.  Uniquely, she won two Nobel awards, which is being a bit greedy if you ask me.  One was for Physics, due to her work on radioactivity, and the later one was in Chemistry, for her work on radium, polonium and thorium.  These things have isotopes and are full of ions, right?  So that's where today's title comes from.

     In a horrible irony, her death at 66 was due to severe health problems incurred by working with radioactive substances, since the risks of doing so were completely unknown when she and Pierre began their experimentation.  Art!

Marie and Pierre

     Motley!  I thirst.  Go fetch me a glass of Irn Bru.

Not A Thing I'd Ever Considered

Welcome to the wonderful world of - Art?

OIL RIG DISMANTLING!

     When you stop to think about it, it does make sense.  An oil rig, like other marine engineering constructs, will have a useful lifetime, after which maintenance costs will become prohibitive as bits break down - or off - and it's ability to operate is compromised.

     What then?  Previously these rigs were taken from Scottish waters and towed all the way to India, quite a feat in itself.  Once beached they'd be cut up by cheap sweatshop labour working in horribly unsafe conditions, with nil provision for dealing with chemical contamination.  The ones above are now being towed to a breaker's yard in Turkey with appropriate certification, which, again, I'll bet you never stopped to think about before.  Art!

From One Sea To Another

"The Sea Of Sand" that is.  As you should so surely recall, The Doctor, Albert and Professor Templeman were watching a dlozen alien machines excavate sand from the dig they had been working on.

Similar in function to piping and pumping equipment used to bring Titanic back to the surface in fact - or was that in the next century?

     The appearance of these modified machines bespoke a responsive intelligence, able to react to the long shrouding of the site with sand.  An intelligence, moreover, that had only recently become aware.  Or else why had the whole site been left to abandonment?  

     "I think we ought to leave," said Albert, visibly nervous.

     "Tch!" scorned The Doctor.  "I make the mean speed of those machines at twenty miles per hour over loose sand.  How fast can you travel?  Three miles per hour?  Six?  you wouldn't even get to the rim before they ran you down."

     Albert stared back accusingly.

     "You said they weren't dangerous!" 

     The Doctor nodded.

     "Certainly.  As long as we remain here.  A vehicle only six feet tall cannot surmount an eight foot perpendicular step."

     Albert acknowledge the truth of this by looking embarrassed.  Professor Templeman continued to look at the excavation taking place beyond their refuge.

     "Remarkable!" he murmured.  "Look at that, the work of months done in hours."

     The diligent machines slowly cleared sand away from a collection of structures, moving it to half a dozen different locations around the complex, from where it was carried by pipe and ejected over the wall of the sand basin.

     Still not very sinister - yet.  I know, I know, I used that line yesterday.  Just wait!

Conrad: Still Furiously Angry

So what's new?  And, as ever, it's the Codeword solutions that continue to irk me.  How they irk!

  Ho ho.  That's Art being funny.  The River Irk.  Don't give up the day job.

"IMBUE":  Defined as 'to instil or inspire" in my Collins Concise, and it predictably derives from Latin <hack spit> which is as far as we're going in that direction.  Another word only used by poets of pseuds.  Art!

A Centurion tank, which would imbue fear in the opposition

"EXCHEQUER": GRRRRR a word that includes both "X" and "Q"?  This is technically the accounting department of the British Treasury, and it comes from the French <small hooray!> "Eschequier".  I believe in turn that this word comes from the checkerboard pattern of a large sheet laid out so that funds could be allocated to specific tasks or purposes.  Art!

"JAMB":  Really, this is getting ridiculous.  Another word derived from French, namely "Jambe" meaning 'Leg', since this refers to the vertical component of a frame such as that of a door or window.  Fair enough BUT SHOULD NOT BE A CODEWORD SOLUTION.  Art!

Sounds painful

The Mighty TOG 2

There was a rather daft question on Quora I came across earlier today, asking "What was the biggest tank?" with the distinct impression that the Quoran in question thought bigger was better.  This is definitely NOT the case with tanks; beyond a certain size and weight you get severe problems with engines, being able to use bridges, being able to mount on a railway low-loader and being able to traverse the turret on less than level ground.  There is that monstrosity the "Maus" which proves that the Teutons have a sense of humour.  Art!

188 tons of Maus with puny humans for scale

     Another mention was a South Canadian model, the T95.  Art!

Another puny human for scale

     This one only - only! - weighed 95 tons.

     And then we have the British entry, the mighty TOG 2, which was rather puny in terms of mass - only (!) tons but a lot more imposing.  Art!

"DOMINATE BATTLEFIELD AND PUNY HUMANS"

     That's the almost-equally mighty David Fletcher giving you a sense of scale.

     And with that, Vulnavia, we are done!

*  THIS IS A METAPHOR!  Yes I returned the prototype telepathy helmet to DARPA.

Greetings From The Mansion

Time For Our Weekly Look Back In Irk

Your Humble Scribe is busy listening to Perun, an Ocker Youtube Vlogger, who is the Nobel Laureate of Powerpoint presentations.  This one is about the Ruffian arms export market and it's future prospect, an hour long and very detailed.  Excellent stuff!  

     However, we're not here to girn over other people's creative work, we're here to facepalm over Conrad's historical blogs of ages past.  First of all we need a SFW image that will reel 'em in.  Art!

The new sport of Extreme Shaving

     Not sure if this cover is referenced in any of the titles on there.  Conrad certainly doubts that this is anything to do with "The Cannibal Cruise Of The Essex".  Why does the lady appear to lack a brassiere yet has an entirely superfluous hat?  Why is there a cowboy in the background?  What on earth does the title have to do with "Queen City Of Sex"?  I may come back to this.  Or I may not, I'm fickle like that.

     Now, on with the links!  And just to be perverse, I shall do the dates in reverse order as compared to the usual, just because I can.

2013

BOOJUM!: Project Damnation (comsatangel2002.blogspot.com)

2014

BOOJUM!: Life's Plus And Minus (comsatangel2002.blogspot.com)

2015

BOOJUM!: I Say Scotty, You Look A Bit Grotty! (comsatangel2002.blogspot.com)

2016

BOOJUM!: A Farewell To Charms (comsatangel2002.blogspot.com)

2017

BOOJUM!: Redundantea (comsatangel2002.blogspot.com)

2018

BOOJUM!: Twenty Four The Birds (comsatangel2002.blogspot.com)

2019

BOOJUM!: Well Well Well! (comsatangel2002.blogspot.com)

2020

BOOJUM!: Can You Jig It? (comsatangel2002.blogspot.com)

2021

     BOOJUM!: Herman (comsatangel2002.blogspot.com)

Grand Sand

 No, That Is Not A Typo Of "Grandstand"

I do not refer to the BBC sports program, which was always on just before "Doctor Who" so when it's jaunty theme ended you knew the eerie theme from the BBC's premier dramamentary was going to begin, and for kids brought up on "The Woodentops" or "Bill And Ben" that theme tune was quite terrifying.  Well, now that I've mentioned the series I'd better put up a picture, hadn't I?

     Where were we?

     O yes.  Your Humble Scribe finished watching "Lawrence Of Arabia" last night, and then spent another hour watching "The Making Of" documentary, which was just as interesting as the film.  Art!

Ignore the reflections!  Ignore the reflections!

     FYI, since he was only a Captain he should not have retained his rank.  Liddell Hart was a shameless self-promoter who buffed his reputation up whilst alive, since when it has tarnished severely.

     Then we come to casting.  Marlon Brando was initially in the producer's sights, except he noped out soonest.  Then they selected Albert Finney, who did a full screen test with costume and set and everything, and the crew thought he was superb.  Art!

     Except he turned them down.  Enter Peter O'Toole, who explained it was no picnic being out in 127 degrees in the Jordanian desert, and full of fleas, because when you see him riding a camel, that's Peter O'Toole riding a camel.  He arrived a month before shooting started in order to acquire camel-riding skills.  Art!

     Because the director was David Lean, when you see a mass of hundreds of horse and camel cavalry, that really is a mass of cavalry, and Ol' Pete was concerned that if he fell off, since there was so much dust, nobody would see him and his mangled corpse would only be found when the whole horde had passed.  To prevent this Mister Lean had his best riders behind Ol' Pete, to make sure nobody bumped into him.  He didn't tell Petey, though.  Art!

     Here we find where today's title comes from.  When a scene was shot, it had to be on pristine virgin sands, which created a problem thanks to the paper cups used for drinking, as these would often blow onto the sands and have to be recovered by a crewmember, who then had to smooth out their footsteps with a rake.  The Production Designer described his incandescent rage when one of the local crew drove a Landrover right across the sands they had prepared to shoot against.  Art!

     It was so hot during daytime that the temperature began to affect the film in it's reels, to which the answer was a wet towel draped over the top of the camera and kept wet, with unused and shot reels being stored in a refrigerated truck.  I bet there were envious glances from cast and crew at that truck ...

     There is more, and we may come back to it.  For the time being, motley, we'll sit in the oven on Gas Mark 1.5 to get a sense of the Jordanian desert.

Wow.  Just Wow

As you should surely know by now, Conrad is fond of astronomical subjects, so anything to do with the Apollo moonshots is of interest automatically, and what's this on the BBC's webpage?  An item about Apollo photographs and how a property developer from Cheshire became a self-taught expert in film re-mastering.  He is Andy Saunders, who went through 35,000 photographs to process 400 that now have a level of clarity that is gobsmacking.  Art!

Before

Very much after

     There are other photographs that have been compiled from film sequences rather than still shots, which again show a startling increase in detail.  Art!

     Conrad hasn't yet checked out how much this volume is going to cost, but you can bet Abebooks is going to get a search or two on this title.  Art!

     Dog Buns.  £45.40.  Hey, I was fearful it might be in the hundreds of pounds.

A Bit Of Gloasting

Conrad was a little flabbergasted when checking the blog's visitor stats earlier this morning, because we're now looking at totals as they were before traffic fell off a cliff in May.  Allow me to motivate Art with this toasting-fork -

     I wonder, I wonder - Art!

     I see Pavel and his mates are still hanging in there - probably a few of the FSB chaps that got themselves fired.  Must come up with another insulting nickname for Bloaty Gas Tout.

Back To "The Sea Of Sand"

Our favourite Time Lord and two archaeologists are warily keeping tabs on an alien machine that has emerged from beneath the desert sands at Makin Al-Jinni.

The funnel lip became shallower, allowing another machine identical to the first to appear and begin to shift more sand.  This process was repeated every five minutes, until a dozen vehicles were moving around the complex.

     "What are they doing?" asked Albert.  

     "Excavating" replied Templeman.  "Completing the work we started.  Which proves that there's a structure under there to be excavated."  He turned slightly to face The Doctor, whilst still watching the synchronised ballet of the excavators.  "We probed the sand with poles and there is an unyielding object at that location.  It is too level and regular to be a natural rock formation."

     More activity at the brink of the sand basin caught their attention.  The Doctor's telescope resolved another black object, a cylindrical tube, the end projecting well beyond the edge of the sand basin, and running back to the sands within.  It was supported clear of the sands by a pair of transverse rollers and the muzzle began to spout a steady stream of sand, throwing it beyond the brink.  Very slowly the rollers moved the tube along the crest.

     "Sub-surface sand removal," explained The Doctor to a puzzled Albert.  "That pipe extends all the way back into this complex and is moving sand from around the very bottom of buildings."

     So, shifting sand, hmmmm?  Clearly not very sinister - yet.

Rail Fail

File this one under "Unsolved Mystery" because the evidence is there, it's just that there's no explanation for it.  Okay, let's have a look at picturesque Lake Pend Oreille - pronounced 'Pend O'ray' over in South Canada.  Art!

     Like all lakes, it is big, wide and wet.  Unlike all other lakes, this one has a train at the bottom of it, as discovered by a local diver.  Art!

Rail

     It appears to be a Baldwin locomotive, from 1900 plus or minus a few years, but there is absolutely no story about a locomotive going missing in state records searched through from 1880 to 1920.  There are no news stories about it.  Indeed, until that diver found it, nobody had the remotest inkling it was there.

     There is speculation that it may have been a train fleeing the gigantic forest fires of 1910, took a bend too fast and went into the lake - but again, no reports of missing trains.  A rather large Hmmmm!

Finally -

Blimey, I've had to put a great big tub of the stew I made earlier this week in the freezer, after having more of it on toast for a hearty breakfast, and having it for a couple of meals, and that was only from the Overflow Tub, not the big one.  There's enough to serve eight people, and in this weather - it's a good few months too early for stew.  Plus, I don't know what ingredient turned the whole thing grey?

It's A Mystery Tour

NO!  Not The Single By Toyah

Although you have to be pretty long in the tooth to remember this one.  Nor is it anything to do with The Beatles and their Magical Mystery nonsense.  However, mentioning them allows me to bring up a click-baity picture to entice the passersby in.  Art!

     Ah, that's better - just had a couple of rather dire tracks by The Chemical Brothers and Unkle but we have now moved on to Vivaldi and "The Four Seasons".

     Where were we?  O yes, mysteries.  Conrad has - because he is a very sad individual - been reading a couple of Youtube Reddit compilations, where they asked the question "What Is The Strangest Unsolved Mystery?" so we can look at a few of these, which is where today's title comes from.

     Overtoun Bridge.  Art!

The bridge, in Scotland

     The 'legend' has it that hundreds of dogs - between three hundred and six hundred depending on which yellow rag you choose - have thrown themselves to their death from this bridge and that even those that survived went back up to jump off again.

     Nope.  The real total is six.  Obviously this wasn't impressive enough so clearly the blaggers added a couple of zeros.

     Here's a real mystery.  A 24-year old South Canadian college student, Tim Molnar, who was very close to his family, chose not to go to college in Florida one day, withdrew all the money from his bank account and drove off.  That was the last his family ever saw of him.  Twelve years later a television program featured him and was contacted by a man who ran an ice block lot in Wisconsin, who recognised the clothes.  They had been on a body he discovered frozen inside an ice block, and DNA sampling confirmed that the body was that of Tim Molnar.  He'd abandoned his car in Georgia, so the question is how on earth he ended up dead in an ice block 1,300 miles from home?  Art!

Neosho, Wisconsin

     We're not going to ever get a resolution on that one.

     One more, and this concerns astronomy, notably a star called Przybylski's Star, after the Polish astronomer who discovered it.  The Reddit poster had got things garbled, stating that it was full of plutonium.  Actually it's full of every element ending in "-ium" of which plutonium is merely one of a positive chemical cocktail - take a bow praseodymium, ytterbium, einsteinium and berkellium - and yes those are real elements.  Nobody has come up with a convincing explanation that resolves this star's odd qualities, so of course the blaggers immediately jump to "ALIENS!  ALIENS!  IT CAN ONLY BE ALIENS!" as a solution.  Art!

"Hey, you're blocking my sunlight!"

     Motley, time to practice Nitro-Glycerine And Chainsaw juggling.  You first.

     Ah! - Death Cab For Cutie.  Excellent.

Philip Madoc

Welsh actor chappie, no longer with us, whom popped into my mind yesteryon for no good reason - thank you Steve and Oscar - whom you will recognise if you ever watched old "Doctor Who".  Art!

     He did tend to be a bit typecast as a villain, which was great, as he had a fantastic speaking voice and so could really ham it up.  There was an exception in "The Power Of Kroll" where he plays a corporate security minion - Art?

     A bit morally ambiguous, and he admits he's not fond of the local 'Swampies', with enough of a conscience to call out another corporate wonk.

     He was a very skilled linguist, initially acting as a translator for various politicians, which and whom he got to loathe, so he switched to acting.  Skilled in seven languages, including German, which is relevant because -

"Vot iss your name?"
"Don't tell him, Pike!"

     He played the captured U-boat captain in "Dad's Army: The Deadly Attachment" with the classic scene above.

     That will be all, thanks.

Death And Destruction

Because calm and serene lacks dramatic tension.  Yes, back to the last of those Post-Apocalyptic TV series, this one titled "Sweet Tooth" which Wonder Wifey has seen and liked, but which brings back unwelcome memories for Your DIABETIC Scribe.  Art!

     Hmmmm so a disease called the Sick ravages civilisation and causing the Great Crumble, whilst hybrid half-human half-animal babies start to be born, possibly being the cause of the virus pandemic, possibly not.  That lad above is Gus, who is kept completely isolated from the outside world by his father, until the latter dies of the Sick, leading Gus to begin a trek to Colorado.  The big man behind him is Big Man, a former pro-footballer (South Canadian rugby that is) who reluctantly helps Gus.

      People must have liked it, they renewed it for a second season.  Conrad may indulge.

More Death And Destruction

Because if I wrote "The Sea Of Sand" then you are most certainly going to get to read it.  DON'T ARGUE!

Nothing seemed obviously different.  No movement anywhere, only the thin sound made by the hot desert breeze as it rushed around the pillars, the dust it carried tickling the nose and eyes.  The whole place might have been undisturbed for centuries, such was the air of dereliction.

     A slight disturbance in the sands to their north caught the eye of Albert, who tugged at The Doctor's coat and pointed.  All three moved behind the cover of pillars, just in case.  

     A dimple appeared in the un-excavated sands north of the Temple, growing larger by the second, until a big funnel-shaped depression thirty feet across existed.  With little noise, a big black glassy machine drove up out of the sand funnel, pushing a small wall of sand ahead of it in front of a glassy dozer blade.

     Albert and Templeman froze in fear, getting ready to flee.  The Doctor stood still, carefully noting the difference between this machine and the ones he's seen at the Depot.

     "Stay still.!" he hissed at the other two men.  "That one's not dangerous."

     Instead of the flailing, energy-draining arms, this machine only mounted a big dozer blade on the front, and there were no circular aerial ringing the central 'drum'.  The machine began to scrape tons of sand away from area near the funnel, shoving it into the area between the Temple and where it had emerged.

     Obviously only a mechanical minion.  What will it uncover?  Nothing good!

Yet More Death And Destruction

Another set of photographs from "The War Illustrated" which by definition can only be more of this item's title.  Art!

     This is Air Marshall Sir Arthur Coningham, commander of the North West African Tactical Air Force, explaining how his aircraft have been pounding the living daylights out of the Axis air forces.  The claim is made that 1,691 Axis aircraft had been lost over or on Sicilian airfields, which frankly sounds rather high to Conrad seeing that the Italians only had 1,400 planes there in the first place.

"John Barleycorn"

Another random selection from my Brewer's.  This is a nickname for malt liquor and has been around for centuries, becoming popular after the publication of Rabbie Burn's "Tam O' Shanter" with the lines:

Inspiring bold John Barleycorn,

What dangers thou canst make us scorn!

Finally -

By the time I've finished typing this coda, we will have hit the Adjusted Compositional Ton, meaning time to quit and go sort out my tea, because man cannot live by beer alone.  Though I tried quite hard the other week.