HYPERSONIC!

 There's A Name Getting Bandied About Quite A Bit Lately

No!  Even if it sounds like a track from Thomas Dolby.  Nor is it anything to do with an hideous mutant offspring of Sonic.  You know, the blue spiky thing that claims to be a hedgehog that can travel at speeds in excess of 100 m.p.h. when hedgehogs are only slightly faster than snails in real life.  Art!

I don't think we're going for 'realism' here

   Frankly, whatever this is, it looks like a refugee Hybrid from "Sweet Tooth" and no

     ANYWAY technically a 'Hypersonic' missile is one that travels in excess of Mach 5, or 3,800 miles per hour, or about a mile per second (3,600 seconds in an hour, folks).  Of late, ever since the beginning of Peter The Average's Special Needs Military Operation, the Ruffian fanbois and trolls and Krembots have all been clutching themselves in transports of delight over the much-vaunted 'Kinzhal' missile, because it's 'hypersonic'.  It may be sonic, it's certainly hyped.  Art!

     There you see the 'Dagger' being carried in flight, as it's an air-launched cruise missile.  According to the Kremlin, it is clever enough to stop and read Ukrainian road signs in order to arrive on target, getting there before it was even launched, as it's so fast it destroys the laws of spacetime.  When the Kremlin sobers up, it is claimed to have a speed of Mach 10, and it cannot be intercepted because it deploys an invisible shield of Copium can manoeuvre in flight.

     The reality is, of course - obviously! - a little more prosaic.  The Kinzhal is actually an Iskander missile with an additional engine bolted on.  Art!

Baby Kinzhal at top, mother Iskander at bottom

     In that painful version of the universe we call 'reality', it can only do Mach 8 at best.  Nor is that all.  Because it originates from a ground-launched ballistic system, all data has to be input into the control systems before launch, as would be done with an Iskander.  However - and this is an 'However' in bright neon lettering six feet tall - as you may have already realised, the Iskander sits firmly and squarely on the ground, totally static and unmoving (unless there's an earthquake, which I don't think either Ukraine or Ruffia are prone to).  The Kinzhal has to be launched from an aircraft, meaning that the pilot ABSOLUTELY HAS TO be on the correct bearing, height and speed when he presses the big red button.  If he's not, and Ruffian pilots are not very good (also an endangered species), then you get this.  Art!

$4 million up the spout

     That price tag is why only a handful of Daggers have been thrown at Ukraine so far; they are Dog Buns! expensive.  Of that handful, one crashed wildly off-course, and the last one launched was shot down by a Ukrainian Patriot missile.  This is a South Canadian anti-aircraft/missile system specifically designed to shoot down missiles like the Kinzhal, so Raytheon got that one right.  Of course the Krembots and fanbois and trolls all denied that it ever happened, that it wasn't a Kinzhal, that it wasn't shot down, if it was shot down it was because of flying unicorns and pixie dust, and that they reject reality and substitute their own.  Art!

     The killing joke is that the Kinzhal was aiming for the Patriot battery that shot it down, ho ho, hollow laughter if ever there was any.

     Now, if you want a GENUINE Mach 10 missile, look no further than the insanely fast South Canadian 'Sprint' missile, which was designed as a point-defence interceptor way back in the mid-Seventies.  Yes, the South Canadians had a hypersonic missile fifty years ago.  Modern missiles launched from ground platforms tend to have two stages; one rocket pops it out of the tube and gets the missile aloft, then a second one puts in a sustained burn.  Not so the Sprint.  Art!

     This thing was launched from it's protective silo by a rocket-powered piston, before it took off in a ball of fire, hitting Mach 10 in something like 3 seconds.  The first test launch was thought to be a failure, watching staff thinking it had blown up on the launch-pad, until they started to receive telemetry from the Sprint.  If you watch the launch sequences on Youtube it looks like a real-world version of a Loony Tunes cartoon.  Art!

Sprint launch: "A barely-controlled explosion"

     Parts of how Sprint was tracked and guided are STILL top secret and have never been revealed, because why gift information expensively acquired?

"Zharkoe"

Your Modest Artisan dug up a recipe for this Ukrainian beef and potato stew yesteryon, and since we had all the ingredients, Conrad made it with his own fair hands/oversize mitts/taloned grabbers <delete where applicable>.  Art!

     The time-consuming bit is the prep, as you have to peel and dice potatoes and an onion, mince 5 cloves of garlic, mix soured cream and cornflour together, puree a tin of plum tomatoes, cube the beef and make up a litre of stock.  After that it's mostly letting it stew.  Tasty and filling too.  Later today I may attempt the Braised Cabbage and Sausage recipe I found.  Slava Ukraina*!

"The Sea Of Sand"

When last we left them, the few surviving bio-vores at Mersa Martuba were about to start the engine of an apparently abandoned truck -

A bright orange flash lit up the whole desert for a mile around, making every occupant of the Sahariana flinch.  Awestruck, they saw a great boiling cloud of smoke, flame, dust and debris rise from the depot not half a mile away.

          ‘Ahhhh.  About nought point nought two five kilotonnes yield,’ estimated the Doctor, screwing up his eyes and judging from flash, intensity, duration and location.

          Tenente Dominione, once again quick on the uptake, threw the desert car into reverse, skidded into a half-circle, faced them back across the sands and raced forward, punishing the clutch and gears in order to get a safe distance between them and the great crimson, curdling explosion.

          Sarah looked backwards, appalled, seeing great secondary explosions and the arc of shells set off by sympathetic detonation.  An enormous dusty curtain of sand and dust raced over the gravel towards them, eventually hitting the car like a hammer.

          ‘Stop!  Stop!’ called the Doctor, coughing and choking in the half-light left by the passing blanket of dust and sands.

          Dominione cocked an inquisitive eyebrow, braking to a slow forward.

          ‘Before we left Makin Al-Jinni, I set the geothermal spike array to  maximum intake but minimum discharge.’

          People looked at each other.

          The Doctor sighed.

     Don't worry, a radium fissile warhead doesn't create fallout (because it cannot possibly exist).

Collecting Cooking Oil - It IS A Thing

Whilst you or I can just tip it down the sink, catering organisations ranging from hotels to fast food joints have far, far more to dispose of, and they cannot legally 'just tip it down the sink'.  So what do they do?  Art!

Conrad unsure what IBC's are.

     Apparently said caterers have a legal responsibility to safely dispose of their cooking oils and have to do it via a legally registered and licenced organisation, obtaining a Waste Transfer ticket that needs to be kept for up to 6 years.

     In this case the 'Waste Cooking Oil Collection' business recycles the waste oils into bio-diesel, which Conrad suspected was the case.  Being green and making money for the planet!

Hmmmmmmm

As you should surely know by now, Conrad's Facebook persona loves nothing more than to down a snifter or ten of gin, whatever a snifter is.  Art?

     In reality <shakes fist at reality> Conrad is not fond of raw gin.  Thus, the Ginfusion bottle, where you can add various flavourings to soften the acerbic bite of naked gin.  Art!

     This is a citrus-y blend of orange, lemon and lime with coriander added in.  You don't get much sense of the cori, but it's certainly citric.

     And with that we are done!

*  Or, in my case, Slaver Ukraina.  Conrad - thinks with his stomach.