Monsters!

No!  Not The Blue Oyster Cult Track

Although you cannot deny that the cover art for "Cultosaurus Erectus" is quite impressive in it's own right.  Art!

     That's one big beastie.

     ANYWAY I am looking at my Collins Concise and how it defines 'Monster': "1) An imaginary beast, usually made up of various animal or human parts 2) A person, animal or plant with a marked deformity  3) A cruel, wicked or inhuman person 4) A very large person, animal or object."

     Of course there are monsters of different ilks.  Take these ones, for example.  Art!

     These are so obviously designed to be child-friendly.  After all, it would be hard not to get a PG rating if they were shown as they really are - Art!

     Yeah, one can imagine children being afraid of these two hiding under the bed or in the clothes cupboard <rubs hands in satisfaction> and having a nightlight.  Then we have the monsters that are undeniably horrid, shot through and through with sheer eeeeeevil.  Art!

CAUTION! Not suitable for minors

     If you want scale, there's always the Toho Studio array of supersized kaiju, which range from turtles to butterflies via whatever Godzilla is.  Art!

The scarier modern version

     Of course - obviously! - this is only scratching the surface of 'Monsters', especially when "Starry Trex" turned up in the touchy-feely Sixties and loudly declared that what we'd always considered to be monsters were actually only aliens, and that we needed to treat them with respect instead of phasering them into a glowing ash.  Spoilsports.  Art!

Seriously.  Would you hug it?

     ANYWAY back to the fourth definition of 'Monster', that being something excessively  large, which is where we come to Le Tourneau.  They are a South Canadian heavy engineering firm who specialise in large construction plant, and we have covered a few of these.  Let us recap the Tactical Triphibian Tree Crusher.  Art!

With puny human for scale

     These beasts weighed in at 60 tons each and were used for getting rid of forests, by the simple fact of pushing them over thanks to the push-bar at the front and sheer engine power at the back.  The six-bladed wheels would then cut the trunks up as it drove over them.  Art!

TTTC in action

     When a pair were sent to Vietnam the difficulties of operating in a combat environment became apparent, since it was unarmed.  Plus, they broke down a lot thanks to the soggy boggy terrain.  However, when they worked they were highly effective, and cleared over 3,000 acres of forest.

     Of course - obviously! - this isn't what I wanted to post about, which I have finally gotten around to describing.  Art!

The Gregg Crawler-Crusher
(With puny human for scale)

     This monster machine weighed over 300 tons, was 58 feet long, 24 feet wide and 22 feet tall.  Again, it was used to get rid of forests, just not in Vietnam this time.  You see, a canal project was underway that required a vast area be cleared of trees, so one Mister Gregg came up with the CC, which was intended to be amphibious, thanks to the swampy conditions it would operate in.  The side 'pods' were hollow and waterproof, so they could be filled with water to increase the machine's effective mass.  Art!

     'Big Charlie', as it came to be dubbed by it's operators, was highly efficient at clearing forests and crushing tree trunks into the ground, and it cleared over 5,000 acres of forest.  However ... it had been tested on northern trees, which were all hardwood and which would sink in water.  When the cleared ground was flooded to create a reservoir, the southern softwood trees all floated to the surface.  Oops.  Art!

Before

Long after

     This is to grossly simplify a seven-year story of political intrigue that is still ongoing even today, 50 years after Big Charlie made the forest go away.  Art!

Hmmmmmm.

Sharks Are Our Friends!

Yes, I am still ploughing that lonely furrow.  However, a Quoran poster came up with a few interesting statistics about our finny friends.  There are about 450 species of sharks, of which only three can be considered 'repeat offenders': the Great White, the Bull and the Tiger shark.  Art!

Tiger shark

     They also posted that the chances of being attacked by a shark are about 1 in 3,750,000.  So not a major concern, especially for the Swiss, the Austrians, the Slovaks and the Czechs.

     Another statistic was that there have been only 548 deaths from shark attacks in the period from 1580 to 2014, or 3 deaths every couple of years.  You'd expect worse from a species that has to cope with Shark Fin Soup.

The Mystery Zig-Zag Bridge Of Harlow

This was mentioned in one of the feed articles on Bring (sp?) and is an architectural feature I've never heard of before.  Apparently this bridge was put up in the Sixties and has never undergone preventive maintenance or upgrading, to the extent that parts of it wobble when walked upon.  Conrad was trying to get an overhead shot of the whole thing, which just doesn't seem present on teh Interrwebz, so let's have a few discrete shots from Art.

     Your Humble Scribe will continue to monitor the situation for future reference.


"The Sea Of Sand"

The Doctor appears to have moved directly from frying pan and into the fire without passing Go or collecting £257 (adjusted for inflation).

An Element Sieve!  Rocketing down the terraced slope at increasing speed, striking sparks from the granite, smashing the stones once it passed them.  A group of bio-vores lurked at the very top of the terraces, surely the ones who had propelled the twenty-ton device over the lip of the amphitheatre.

Horror-struck, and paralysed with fear, Url was smashed under the squealing metal of the massive object as it cannoned along the floor of the punishment basin, ploughing straight at the pole restraining the Doctor.

  

Keeping watch on the sentry platform, Doretti whistled loudly to the sandbag emplacement, where Davey snored whilst Tam kept a lookout.

‘Look lively,’ said Tam, elbowing his companion awake.  Davey spluttered into wakefulness, muttering blearily.

‘What’s up?’

Tam nodded in the direction of Doretti, who pointed across the desert.

‘He hasn’t cranked the siren, so it ain’t the nose-goblins.’

Davey brightened temporarily, hoping it might be a relief column sent down from Tobruk or Benghazi, tanks and artillery preferably.  He scanned the distant horizon, unable to see far or clearly in the rippling haze that danced over the gravel and rock.

No tell-tale column of dust.  Every vehicle travelling raised dust, except during or straight after rain, so where was the relief column?

     Hmmm, dearie me, the bio-vore aristocracy of the coast seem to be perishing in numbers of late, don't they?

"Gasogene"

Nope, not one of the hideous war chemicals as concocted by the Teutons in the First Unpleasantness.  How do I know?  Because it's from a Sherlock Holmes short story set in 1902, that's why.  The name does have a familiar ring to it, so we may have covered it already, but if we have then Conrad's aging brain cannot remember what it was.  Art!

     From the diagram is appears to be a device for carbonating water, that is, a precursor to the CO2-powered soda-siphon.  Well, that makes sense in context, as Holmes was offering Watson a drink.

     Thus you see what was contemporary over a century ago becomes obscure and mysterious today.

Finally -

Time for a comfort break and lunch.  Tot siens!