Stop Right There!
This is nothing to do with Tolkein, before you start going on about how "The Rings Of Power" isn't canon yadda yadda yadda. But - actually I will be bringing the Ents into this, so perhaps it's semi-applicable. Anyway, it gives me an opportunity to post a click-baity picture, so let us awaken Art with a white-hot poker.
ANYWAY let us now abruptly change tack and deal with the science of -
Dendrochonology! Or, the noble and ancient art of tree rings, which has been around as a science since the mid-nineteenth century, probably longer than you realised. Simply put, a tree will gain a growth ring each year it's alive, with the environment having an effect on the depth of the ring. Art!
This is a decent primer on how the rings work. In poor growing seasons where there is drought or constant cloud cover, the rings are thin. When things are good the rings are thick.
I can hear your frowns from here. So what? Well, here you have the climactic history of the area that tree grew in, meaning you can reverse-engineer what the weather was like, going back potentially thousands of years. I believe the oldest dated tree-rings go back over thirteen millenia. Dendrochronology is also useful for dating recent historical events, because carbon-dating is not specific, it merely gives a range of dates, and it cannot be applied to some media. Art!
Dendrochronology is also useful for dating paintings that used wooden panels, before canvas came into use as a medium to paint upon. This means that artwork can be verified or denied as being from a certain school or artist, thanks to their being dated as confirmation. Art!
A Nork triptych dated via non-invasive dendrochronology
'Non-invasive dendrochronology' is a phrase you never expected to hear today. Then you have dendroarchaeology, which is another word you never expected to hear today. This is the accurate dating of buildings with wood used in their construction, although things are slightly complicated by the practice of 'seasoning' wood after timber had been felled, which might take a couple of years. Thus today's title, because dendrochronology has such wide applications. Art!
"Cut him in half and count the rings" not a winning option
Yes, I did warn you about the Ents. These chaps are obviously extremely long-lived, which you can tell by their height and girth. Trying to get an accurate 'birthday' need not involve severing them in two; it would mean drilling a hole halfway through them to get a sample core, which would be highly hazardous to the driller's health. "You get the sample, Professor," is the wise response to an instruction from your superiors.
Finally, let us quickly examine one of the largest living organisms there is, the Californian Redwood. Art!
Cutting one of these monsters down seems like a major engineering exercise, because they are freaking massive. The largest ones have a mass of over 6,000 tons, so felling them must be a delicate exercise. Art!
Unglamourous Yet Essential
Yes, we are returning to the career of the SS 'America', which by 1942 in the Second Unpleasantness was known as 'West Point'. One thing often overlooked in descriptions of Allied operations was having to trans-ship everything overseas, from beans to bullets to bodies. Those tanks coming out of Detroit arsenals won't miraculously appear in Italy, and the GIs coming out of training cannot be expected to swim the Atlantic.
Hence the import of passenger vessels such as the WP. After successfully getting away from Singapore, she docked in Bombay to offload passengers, then sailed to Egypt to pick up Australian troops being re-deployed to defend against the Japanese advances in the Pacific. Art!
During the rest of 1942 she made three crossings of the Pacific, then transferred to the South Canadian East Coast and crossed the Atlantic four times. Art!
A trouper of a troopship.
A Sign Of Omission Becomes A Sin Of Commission
Your Humble Scribe is greatly enjoying his "Short Stories Of Sherlock Holmes" and remembers 'Silver Blaze', about the purloined race-horse of that name, in fact I think it was the first SH story I read, so it rather stuck in my mind. Art!
It is also notable for one of Sherlock's typically pithy analyses.
"Is there any other point to which you would wish to draw my attention?"
"To the curious incident of the dog in the night-time.'
"The dog did nothing in the night-time."
"That was the curious incident," remarked Sherlock Holmes.
It's a key plot point, so I'm not going to explain it. Tee hee!
"The Sea Of Sand"
As you should surely recall, our narrative had jumped back to the bio-vores barren Homeworld, where the bombastic aristocrat Lord Excellency Sur is being impelled by his fellow bombastic aristocrats to hunt down the Doctor.
Sending so many Warriors meant
that logistics became a major issue.
Bottled algae would need to be harvested and sent through in huge
amounts, so the Farmers needed to be chivvied into working harder, and a few
Eviscerated. “Pour encourage les autres”
wasn’t a phrase Sur knew, although he would have approved of it entirely.
A
huge combat contingent wasn’t the only novelty.
On the authority of the collective coastal aristocracy, heavy weapons
unused in centuries were taken out of storage, re-assembled and tested. They were sledged to the departure platform
and sent with the first wave of Warriors.
Lord
Excellency Sur arrived with his personal bodyguard as part of the second wave of
arrivals. Trying to maintain a semblance
of imposing dignity, he kept his cape on and made sure to swirl it
commandingly.
Target
World Seventeen! he exulted when the unfamiliar surroundings of the
Infiltration Complex appeared in place of the departure platform. Hot, and dry.
No moisture in the air. Nowhere
near the sea, then.
His bodyguard
hustled him off the platform, allowing another consignment of bottled algae to
come through.
Assault
Detachment Leader Icono hurried over to Sur, bowing and grovelling with just
the right amount of subservience. Sur
knew that the Regional Leader back on Homeworld, Boma, didn’t feel very
positive about Icono’s performance so far.
Too many casualties.
Hmmm so both of them are on thin ice. And, betimes, lots of the Warriors that police Homeworld and oppress the Farmers are now absent. And the Doctor's infectious message about freedom is abroad in the land.
Pile It On, Joe
I speak of Joe Blogs, Youtube vlogger, who's just put out another vlog about how the Ruffian economy is burning and crashing. To re-affirm what J.R.R. Tolkein said, things that are dark and grim and full of danger make for great stories, whereas reading about a positive balance of trade or an increase in GDP is, frankly, desperately dull stuff. Art!
The viewers have it that the cheerier Joe is in his greeting, the worse the news is going to be, and they're not far wrong. If Joe begins with a laugh, expect WW3 to erupt in the next half-hour.
Finally -
The weather has definitely taken a turn for the worst. It was bright if a little chilly when Edna got her walk this morning. Now the clouds have rolled in, and there's so much moisture in the air I cannot see Oldham Edge any longer. We shall have rain. Perhaps even snow.
And with that, Vulnavia, we are done!
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