Ooooh, Skirting Controversy Today!
Don't fret, this constitutes History more than it does Politics, although you'll need that as a bit of background.
Okay, back when South Canada foolishly rebelled against This Sceptred Isle, they drew up a Constitution. There are libraries full of books about the South Canadian Constitution and it's intricacies and interpretations, which would be incredibly dull as opposed to a blog full of tanks, atom bombs and zombies. Art!
Atomic-powered tank with puny zombie for scale
Blimey. Not sure why they have a duck-bill on it. For crossing rivers?
ANYWAY I thought I'd look at the Second Amendment. This is one of a clutch of ten proposed amendments to the Constitution that became law in 1791. Again for background, you can't just amend the Constitution on a whim, there has to be a two-thirds majority in favour in both Senate and the other bit. So if President McWong* decided that 'Marshmallow is the Devil's confectionery and should be FORBIDDEN!' she's going to have a bit of an uphill struggle in enlisting support from the Ice Cream Bandits and the Wizard Lizard Gizzards (I forget which party is which). Art!
The Pentagon has a contingency plan for this happening
Okay, so the 2nd Amendment states: "A well regulated Militia being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms shall not be infringed." This has led to oodles of controversy about being able to walk around with a shoulder-slung M2 Browning -
Which we're going to ignore. No, I wanted to point out that this legislation was passed in the era of what wargamers call "Horse and musket". Your army would consist of infantry, cavalry and artillery, with some additional specialist units added-on, such as engineers. Infantry were equipped with muskets, cavalry with sabres and artillery with cannon, the first and last using gunpowder. Art!
This is an excellent wrap-around cover illustration which shows the very disparate state of the South Canadian regiment opposing Perfidious Albion. I've got the book somewhere <quick search> probably hidden in the Book Cave.
My point is that the smoothbore musket didn't take much training to become adequate with, even I could probably manage. Powder down the barrel, wadding, ball, wadding, cock, powder in pan, aim and pull the trigger. Cannon would require teamwork and perhaps a little ballistics knowledge for anything more than firing at the opposition in the field. A trained horseman would need to know how to hack with a sword. Art!
The Black-powder Bang-bang Boys
I don't think that one was loaded or it would have recoiled - Newton and all that and it's generall very unwise to stand dir
ANYWAY that's what they had at the time. There were a few rifled muskets, which had a fraction of the efficiency of modern rifled weapons. Everything was drawn by horses, no motor vehicles. No aircraft, not even lighter-than-air ones (the Montgolfier brothers had only gone up in a balloon eight years earlier). No electricity and certainly no electronic communications. No palletised loading. No railways. Conrad unsure if they even had rocket artillery but doubts it. Certainly no guided missiles. No antibiotics, pre-packed plasma, anaesthetics or painkillers. Art!
I bet Georgie Porgie Washington would have liked a few of these on strength
Nowadays, rather than a militia of eager civilians armed with muskets, you have the South Canadian National Guard, which rather bridges the technology gap mentioned in the paragraph above. Still, in 230 years of progress they still don't have an armoured vehicle with a Boiling Vessel to make a decent cup of tea.
More Of Those Film Spaceships Rated
To precis: we are looking at a clutch of spaceships that Dr. Mike Siegel's Twitter correspondents recommended, against his categories. Next up is the USS 'Cygnus', a design he really, truly does not like. Art!
"It's not a spaceship, it's a cathedral," he declares, since the film it is from, "The Black Hole" is more a horror than a science-fiction film. He has a point. It has cubic hectares of empty space that serves no purpose, and who would design a spaceship hull that is mostly made of glass? Art!
All that lighting - for just one person
This one is "Blows Up At Launch". Conrad not going to argue with that.
Next up is "Flight Of The Navigator" and Dr. S. says he's unsure if the shape-shifting silver-hulled ship has a name or not - allow me - "Trimaxion Drone Ship" and you're welcome, Mike. Art!
This one doesn't really have much of a science background to it, although you could argue that it's the far-future equivalent of swing-wing jet aircraft like the Tornado. He gives it the Not Great, Not Terrible median classification. Never seen it myself, not persuaded I'm missing all that much.
"The Sea Of Sand"
Fellow captives Sorbusa and the Doctor have been doing a bit of an exposition dump, the better to get you the audience and our Time Lord up to speed.
"And on my planet, Earth, your Infiltration Complex landed in a desert with no indigenous life."
"We closed down operations and went into hibernation, Thedoctor. Better an endless sleep than a dusty death on Homeworld, we thought."
How lucky for Earth that the Complex landed in a barren landscape with no nearby sources of food for the bio-vores! If even one were to be allowed to grow unrestrictedly on Earth, given the super abundance of energy resources, they would proliferate like a plague, a literal plague. They would kill the entire planet in a matter of years.
Food for thought. The Doctor extrapolated from what Sorbusa told him. "Formal, strict and authoritarian" government indeed! That was an euphemism for a ruthless planetary dictatorship, established to maintain order at all costs. Doubtless it had lead to a stratified society, the scientific one that Sorbusa came from. Matters hadn't rested there, however. No. Whils the Infiltration Complex on "Target Seventeen" lay dormant, society here on Wasteworld evolved into further stratification. Probably three layers with sub-layers within those.
"Lords, soldiers and peasants," said the Doctor to the cell walls. "Self-perpetuating neo-feudal fascism - despicable!" he shouted, genuinely annoyed. "Might is not right!"
Ah, I can see where this is going and it's not going to be good for His Excellency Lord Sur.
That Dog Buns! Crossword
I keep pecking away at this one, and we're not even done on the Across clues <heavy sigh as I know you feel my pain>. Here's another clue: " One word has served, but he in ranting vein; "Lend me your ears" must mouth o'er Caesar slain (6)".
And the solution? "LISTEN".
Hmmmm being honest here, I'd never have got that one. The clue seems to be more about speaking than paying attention in my humble opinion. Art!
Caesar gets ceased
"The War Illustrated"
Don't forget, gentle reader, that although this edition has an October date, it deals with events of the previous month - 'Operational Security' as they say. Art!
These pictures refer to the 5th and 8th Armies getting ashore in Italy, and principally mention Salerno, where the Allies invaders got a very rough handling from the Teutons; if you look at the bottom starboard picture you can see the invasion beaches overlooked by rings of hills, allowing everywhere to be covered by Teuton artillery. The text actually admits this, with typical understatement as being "extremely critical", which is British for "OMG WE'RE ALL GOING TO DIE! WE'RE ALL GOING TO DIE!!**" Whilst there is an illustration of a British mortar team in action and a 'Four-Five' being towed, what really swung the balance at Salerno was Allied naval gunfire and air attacks.
* Pretty sure I nicked this name from a character in "The Outcasts Of Heaven Belt"
** Two exclamation marks because that's how bad it was.
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