Ha! Gotcha!
Although I do remember a "Mister Monster" reprint where the Head Zombie was riding in a parade in a T-34 with the turret reversed, and the zombie nations waged atomic war on each other, because apparently even zombies don't play well with zombies of other nations. Art?
Three out of four's not bad.
ANYWAY we are back on the subject matter of things that end with "ETTE", which you will find all derive from the French.
"CORVETTE": Technically, as my Collins Concise has it, "A lightly armed escort warship" one step below a frigate. Art!
Note the single small-calibre gun. These ships are intended to protect convoys or defend territorial waters, not to take the fight to the enemy. The name originates from Old French by way of the Middle Dutch "Corf".
"But -" interrupt the South Canadian readers PATIENCE AND BE SILENT!
There is also a car marque called "Corvette", which they probably chose because it sounded cool. They look like this - Art?
Sleek, expensive, sky-high insurance and rubbish mileage.
"ETIQUETTE": My CC states definitively: "The customs or rules governing behaviour regarded as correct in social life", meaning that one always passes the port to the left, cocks the pinky finger when drinking tea out of china cups and does not eat by sticking ones face into the food on your plate. Not even because it saves on washing cutlery. Just no. Art!
Derived from the French "Estiquier" meaning "To stick", presumably to the rules of polite behaviour.
"LORGNETTE": I'm quite proud I remembered this one. A pair of spectacles mounted on a stick. Art!
"COURGETTE": Ah, how could we forget this? Better known to our South Canadian cousins as "Zucchini", which is just perverse. You can think of it as a baby marrow, because the name is derived from the French "Courge", meaning "Marrow". Art!
You can use these to make a variety of loaf, as long as they're grated finely - I think it was Courgette And Nut Loaf I made a good few years back.
As with yesteryon, I have more ETTE to come, but we'll leave it at this for today. Motley, fire up the engines!
Not Flying Cars Again
It seems to Conrad that another inventor or institution comes along every other month with plans for a flying car. Nor is this a recent development. Art!
Why? One very good reason to never, ever have flying cars is the dreadful standard of driving using only two dimensions. Can you imagine the unbridled chaos that would sweep the skies if idiots could manoeuvre in three dimensions? Of course, you could then arm the traffic police with anti-aircraft missiles
ANYWAY a company called Alef is bidding for money to create it's very own flying car, using a quite novel concept. Art!
2D travel
Artist's image of the "Model A" driving around. It will use electric batteries to power engines that give it a VTOL capability when the driver decides to get airborne. Then comes the clever bit; most of the bodywork you see above is actually a mesh cover that won't provide much in the way of air resistance. The two sides are solid, so when aloft the whole vehicle rotates through 90 degrees, whereupon the two sides are now top and bottom - and you effectively have a biplane. Art!
The driver's compartment swivels to stay oriented in the direction of travel.
It's a pretty neat idea and will only set you back quarter of a million BUT DO WE REALLY NEED THEM?
Lucky Tom
We occasionally feature globe-trotting Tom Scott on the blog, who goes and does cool things with cool bits of kit, and this one is no exception. He was at a military museum in Switzerland, where there is the world's only surviving analogue tank simulator. Tanks, you see, are big and expensive and it's unwise to let a learner get behind the wheel in case they demolish a row of houses. What the canny Swiss did was build a huge landscape in miniature, mount a travelling camera over their replica, and attach the camera to a set of controls in a simulator. Art!
Cam and land Simulator CAUTION! Not suitable for claustrophobes
Tom got into the simulator, which involved a bit of wriggling. He's not a big chap and Conrad might not fit in at all. Then he took charge of the camera, 'driving' around, and being told when to change gears. Art!
Tom kits up
That's Tom driving along a road. The simulator is gimballed and has hydraulics to simulate whatever terrain is being crossed. Tom had a whale of a time <makes envious face> but also found that he was sitting too far back, since every time he changed gear, the back of his head hit the steel edge of the turret. Art!
Very thorough, these Swiss. They even include snow-covered terrain.
"The Sea Of Sand"
The Doctor is about to appear before Lord Excellency Sur, whom he has taken an instant dislike to. Tyrannical despots have that effect on him.
An alien wearing what must be a cape stood at the end of the trench.
"Lord Excellency Sur, I presume," the Doctor began, trying to combine the correct degree of obsequiousness and vigour in his tone, and also not to laugh at the alien, who looked like an amateur dramatics villain.
Sur's tone, however, was anything but uncertain. It was that of a creature used to being obeyed, without the possibility of dissent. Behind it lay the threat of Evisceration.
"Tell me about 'rockets'," ordered Sur.
"Invented by the Chinese circa 300 BC, later refined by William Congreve, shortly to be mounted on the Typhoon aircraft for ground-strafing."
"Interplanetary rockets," growled Sur.
"Ah! Yes, shortly to be inaugurated by Werner at Peenemunde. Werner Von Braun. Yes, with the A4 ballistic rocket, using liquid fuel, the space age can be said to have begun. From there the various superpowers on Earth will create fleets of rockets powered by solid fuel, that are able to leave the atmosphere and travel to Earth's primary satellite. Nuclear-engined models are used - sorry, will be used - to travel to Mars, Earth's nearest neighbour in the Solar System."
Tricky stuff, keeping track of time when you whiz about in it the way us mere mortals take the bus.
Finally -
We only need a short item to reach the Adjusted Compositional Ton, so I'm not going to vent my spleen on Codewords or do another sci-fi spaceship assessment from Dr. S. Instead - actually I'm not sure. How about another daft question on Quora?
Ah, found one.
I suspect, as other replies have intimated, that quite a few of these questions are from teenagers who hope someone else will do their homework for them.
Why is it important? For once thing, winning meant Britain (at least they didn't put 'England'!) was able to dictate terms to the Central Powers, and seize various bits of the Ottoman Empire, including what was then 'Palestine' with all that entailed.
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