No! Nothing To Do With Peter Jackson's Seminal Debut Film
Although it is hilarious, and oozily repellent in parts, and a sterling example of what you can do on a shoestring budget, even if it takes you years to accomplish. Ol' Pete, in the 'Making Of' film, admits that they did go a bit far in creating realistic prop Sterling sub-machine guns but hey! it's all for the art, right? Art!
No, what I meant was that I have no internal censor, so if I think something is funny, it will get said or typed - often. Sometimes I look back at a comment on Quora or Facebook or Youtube and decide it might be a little too much and delete without posting.
ANYWAY if you're not at all interested in Infantry Fighting Vehicles, look away now. Art!
This is the South Canadian Bradley Infantry Fighting Vehicle, named after General Omar Bradley, who rose to prominence during the Second Unpleasantness thanks to native skill and intelligence. The Bradley carries an infantry section of about half a dozen fully-armed men - because 'fully-armed' means that there's an awful lot of kit accompanying them - onto the battlefield and then provides them with fire support. It mounts 2 TOW anti-tank missiles that will turn any tank they hit inside out; it also has a 25mm cannon that will demolish anything less than a tank. The whole thing is armoured sufficiently to shrug off incoming fire unless it's a large anti-tank missile or an anti-tank round.
Conrad tends to think of these bits of kit as light tanks that carry soldiers. As you can see from the above, there's no way for the 'dismounts', as the infantry section are called, to shoot whilst on the move. They would have to move their lazy bottoms outside to 'put rounds down-range' as I believe the South Canadian military argot goes. Art!
Brad demonstrates his map-wrestling skills
Okay, you have probably heard that the Ukrainians are using Bradleys in their counter-offensive, and that 34 have been knocked out to date.
Bad news, right?
Well, yes and no. The thing is, these things are NATO-standard IFVs, meaning a great deal of thought has been given to crew survivability. Most of the crews and dismounts are still alive and walking around thanks to this design philosophy. The other thing is that South Canada has THOUSANDS of earlier models in storage. Art?
Sierra Army Depot
You can bet the band that these are not being stripped of copper wiring by their maintenance crews. It would be child's play for the South Canadians to replace everything lost in Ukraine ten times over, the rate limiting factor being crews to man them. O! The crews are still alive.
ANYWAY here's a still from a short clip that Suchomimus showed over on his Youtube channel. Art!
Slightly blurred because the Brad was still moving. Note also the live crew member in the turret. Other and wiser heads have declared that this was a hit by a T-72 HE-Frag 125mm round, which is supposed to explode inside the target and which does not appear to have done so. Treacherous munition!
O and who's this in the Comments? Why none other than Your Humble Scribe.
FYI, I have absolutely NO IDEA why on earth I chose the Youtube handle "PsilocybinCocktail" because illegal drugs are BAD! BAD BAD BAD!! Perhaps bad taste*?More scratch-built kit
Circus Of Death
No! Nothing to do with The Human League's song, and more a Fairground Attraction Of Death - NO! nothing to do with that band, either. Let us move on apace.
Okay, there was a question asked over on Quora, and this is the answer. Art!
The question was "What is the weirdest thing you've seen on the internet?" and that scale model above is the answer. It was built by Juiljonas Urbonas and is designed to kill 24 people simultaneously. The presumption is that these are 24 terminally-ill people who want a say in when they encounter the Grim Reaper, before he encounters them.
If ever constructed in real life, the passengers in their cars would be cranked up to a height of about one-third of a mile, and then descend at over 200 m.p.h. to loop repeatedly for one minute at forces of over 10g, which would starve their brains of oxygen and kill them.
Only in Lithuania.
It's not, but it'll do
"City In The Sky"
The Doctor has realised just how closely he's been cutting it in a deserted, evacuated London circa 2065.
The Doctor set up
a cracking pace to reach the TARDIS, leaving Ace with a stitch before they got
there.
‘Come on!’ he warned her.
‘I saw a brill pair of boots,’ she tried,
only to have a hundred-watt glare directed at her. They passed an empty shop with the windows
smashed in, and what seemed to be the remnants of computers lying in various
discarded poses, arranged on tables with attendant chairs.
A webstraunt! she realised, and noticed a
little piece of twenty-first century emphemera.
Her mentor didn’t relax until they were
inside the Tardis.
‘Sorry to rush you, Ace, but I’ve cut the
timing very closely on this arrival. I
don’t doubt that missiles will be coming this way very soon.’ Ace remained silent. Looking up from the TARDIS controls, he saw
her glancing at a piece of paper. ‘What
do you have there?’
She held the half-sheet of paper out to
him.
‘From that webstraunt we passed. You said that there aren’t any
newspapers. I guessed they might print
stuff off, but only if it’s very important.
Like news-headlines-very-important.’
Ah, yes, here you see Dorothy's applied logic as taught by her mentor coming to the fore. Well done Ace!
"How Dangerous Was Blendo?"
Conrad had never heard of 'Blendo', whatever it was. Exploding toothpaste? Autonomous cheese-grater? Intelligent lubricating fluid?
None of the above. Art!
The question was asked of Adam Savage on his Youtube channel, 'Tested', where he explained that it was a combat robot designed and constructed by Jamie when he was head of M5. The robot had a circular baseplate that spun at 400 r.p.m. and in the picture above you can see one of the cutting blades at lower port. Jamie had originally wanted the r.p.m. to be 30,000 but was told by a physicist that a speed that great would cause the cutting edges to disintegrate due to air resistance. Art!
It was terrifyingly effective. In fact it was TOO effective, because those cutting blades sliced bits off the opponent robot at such speed that they flew over the protective plastic walls and landed in the audience. No harm done, thankfully, but M5 were sent on their way with a First Prize and a disqualification, which is an unusual combination.
CAUTION: Lions In Close Proximity!
This has come up twice in different posts on Quora and I thought I'd share with you, because you never know how many readers (or tourists) we have in Africa. Art!
Lions are quite lazy, it seems, and will generally give you the benefit of the doubt if you happen to suddenly come across them, because Hom. Sap. are not a typical prey species. The trick is to back away slowly, talking in a calm voice, because that way you assure the lion you're not a threat and you may also persuade yourself.
DO NOT TURN YOUR BACK ON THEM!
Not only are you unable to see what they are up to, you will trigger their instinct to pursue AND TEAR THE PREY INTO SMALL DIGESTIBLE PIECES. One tour guide explained how he and his party were backing away from a pride of lions, which inexplicably kept closing the distance. Except when he turned his head to see how his nine charges were doing, seven of them had run back to the Land Rover, hence the steadily advancing lions. Art!
There are exceptions
Finally -
At about mid-day today Conrad glanced out of the window and it was chucking it down. Ten minutes later, there were blue skies and fluffy white clouds, so I bit the bullet, seized the day and <Mister Hand redacts a lot of pompous metaphors> took Edna for a walk. Since we've had non-stop rain ever since 14:00 I am grateful I danced between the raindrops.
* Apparently you need to mix psilocybin with a citrus flavoured mixer to hide the unpleasant aftertaste, so you get a kind of Lemon Scented Drink**.
** WASH OUT YOUR DIRTY MINDS!
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