A Lightbulb Moment

You Know Conrad, Mind Going In All Directions At Once

I know, I know, this has serious implications for when I become World Dictator.  How will I remember to send out Musical Inspectors in order to enforce their banishment, when I also have to keep track of how many Codeword compilers are being sent to Crossword Gulag?  Art!

"Damn you and your 'Seven across eight letters ..."

     ANYWAY what I - O and Conrad will also need to keep track of the Agony Booth Construction Project, because Alan Carr and Russell Brand are both going to be the primary test subjects for these - ah - motivational devices.  Graham Norton is safe as long as he keeps the beard.

     ANYWAY AGAIN I was wondering and pondering about 'Billion' and where it derives from.  As you should surely recall, we covered 'Million' a few weeks back.  Though I will recap for the short of memory.  It was coined in late Medieval times, from the Italian for 'Thousand', i.e. 'Mille', because economies at the time were beginning to generate sums in the millions and a more compact way of expressing a total than 'A thousand thousands' became needed.   Art!

Far more succinct than "A Hundred Thousand Thousand Suns"

     We then jump ahead a few centuries, to either late sixteenth or late seventeenth century - sources are a tad misleading - by which time, presumably, either national economies needed a number that was multiples of a million, or because mathematicians wanted a shiny new toy to work with.  So, using the suffix '-llion' they decided to be mathematical about things and use 'Bi' as a reference of raising this total to the second power.  Hence 'Billion'.  Which has come to mean the South Canadian version of 1,000,000,000. Art!

The BDB in question was a computer.
Probably got the processing power of a cheap mobile phone nowadays

     Here is where we come to my lightbulb moment.  The prefix used for large numbers is in an ordinal sequence, so for the next sum one thousand times larger than a billion, the prefix is 'Tri-' in reference to being raised to a third power.  Thus you get 'Trillion', or 1,000,000,000,000 and there's also 'Quadrillion' with 1,000,000,000,000,000 which is getting silly so we shall stop right there.

     Art!

Giant Black Polo Mints Identified

I know I resolved this back in April, but you might have missed it and then I'd feel so ignorant.   Whilst posting a link on Sunday I came across a post from almost exactly a year ago, where I was curious about an unidentified television image, which, if Art can put down his anthracite-and-coke salad -

     This is indeed London, as I had speculated.  The shrivelled corpses are the result of people having their brains fried by the alien's signal and promptly dropping dead - shrivelled because the dropping took place six months earlier.

     This is Season Two of "War Of The Worlds" which, at this point, has absolutely nothing to do with H G Wells.  Good thing?  Bad thing?  Only you can tell!

Meanwhile, Back In 1943 ...

Conrad was struck by an item on Quora - my latest guilty pleasure - where a person asked why Ukrainian police forcibly deleted a German camera crew's video of a Ruffian missile strike in Odesa*?  Targeting information, explained another member.  If the Ruffians got visible evidence of where their missiles hit - because they launch from beyond visual range (can you say "Neptune"?) - it would help refine their next strike.  I was immediately reminded of "The War Illustrated" and their deliberate policy of not publishing photographs immediately, for exactly the same reason.  Art!

Blimey!  He looks a nasty piece of work

     This, ladles and germs, is Major General Wimberley, OC of the 51st Highland Division.  He looks as if he'd like to rip your throat out with his bare teeth.  Given that a fair number of his soldiers would have been hard cases from the Gorbals**, this attitude may have been necessary.  Also, if you call his tam-o-shanter a 'beret' they will probably have to find your body parts with a map.  Art!

     A top we see British gunners taking on the foe with a weapon Axis soldiers dreaded only slightly less than the Churchill Crocodile - the 25 pounder gun/howitzer, capable of firing as fast as a rifle with a good crew.  From the very slight elevation you can tell this one, in action near Mount Etna, is firing at long range.

     The picture below shows morbidly interested onlookers in the centre of Milan, one of Italy's industrial northern cities, which had been paid a visit by the Brylcreem Boys the night before, with their big bang bombs.  One can read their minds; variations of 'O Dear' and 'This Il Duce character - what utility has he?'

    And lastly you have a map.  I don't need to explain what a map is, do I?

Meanwhile, Back In 1941

As you ought to recall, we left Sarah Jane and The Doctor at risk from sinister alien killer technology, life-sapping tanks made of black glass.  

This boxing-in process took time, which the Doctor chafed at.  He knew a third killer machine was loose in Mersa Mertuba, and worried about Sarah.  She ought to know to keep well clear of the evil thing.  But what if it was stalking her specifically?

‘Captain!  Captain!  Three o’clock!’ he yelled, suddenly seeing the black tank move out into the open, it’s space for manouevre constricted by now to nothing.  Captain Jolyon’s Sahariana darted forward and the cannon hammered away with a twenty-round burst.  The first few shells missed, but then Jolyon got the range and the target began to fly apart as great dinner-plate sized holes appeared in it, slowing the vehicle to a halt in a pile of shattered silicon dioxide.

‘Howzat!’ shouted the Doctor, now turning to look for the third machine.

To his alarm it had crossed the roadway and was now slowly circling the supply stack below him,  wary soldiery keeping a safe distance from it.

‘Oh dear,’ he said quietly.  ‘Shared intelligence network.  I’ve been identified as the greater threat.’

 From across the roadway, hiding behind wooden crates, Sarah looked on with horror as the glassy black killer began to circle the Doctor’s pyramid.  The vile thing had been stalking her, the surviving Italian prisoners and the depot soldiers, until it suddenly stopped before darting across the road.  Now it was hunting the Doctor.

     Escaping goblins to be caught by wolves, hmmmm***?  

If You Are Feeling At All Sorry For Yourself

Save it for a person who's really had the dirty end of the stick.  Let me introduce Nick Copson, who was in a near-fatal crash.  Art!

   He was airlifted to hospital in the helicopter you see behind him, and his injuries were so severe he would have died at the scene or en route if taken by a conventional ambulance.  He then - take a deep breath - underwent amputation of both legs, blood clots, blood infection, grade 4 bedsores, kidney dialysis and multiple-organ failure and sepsis.  And still has a cheeky grin for the camera.

     His wife is in no two minds about the Greater Northern Air Ambulance Service: they saved his life.  So she has a tattoo - Art!

     Next time the bus is late or it's raining heavily and you feel even slightly whingey, remember this bloke and count your blessings.

Finally -

Phew it's hot!  The people who designed The Mansion clearly didn't anticipate the effects of anthropogenic global warming.  

*  As a child of the Cold War it's realllllly hard not to type "Odessa"

**  A notoriously run-down and dodgy part of Glasgow.

***  J R R Tolkein reference for you there.