No! Nothing To Do With Tranquillity Or Peace
Let us get our definitions correct, please - "Serendipity" is defined in my trusty and ever-present Collins Concise Dictionary as "The facility of making fortunate discoveries by accident".
Yes, and I'm thinking along the lines of Fleming or Rutherford - we may come back to this - BUT I'll bet you don't have an inkling of where the noun 'Serendipity' comes from, do you? Art!
 |
| The top swept bare |
 |
| ... and repurposed |
I know what you're wondering - where did all those bottles and cans go? Art!
They're safely out of the way until November.
Whilst clearing up the top of the bookcase, I also picked up a rather daunting read, which I remember having a stab at in 1977 and giving up. It's long, dense and deals with a whopper of a subject. Art!
I had begun to make a serious study of this umpteen years ago, conscientiously annotating it up to page 211, which progress was marked with a fibre-tip pen.
Except the annotations have gone. Not with the book, not on top of the bookcase, not in the miscellaneous holdings on the windowsill. As I said, the opposite of an accidental discovery, this is an accidental discard.
Nothing daunted, Conrad sat down late last night and - Art!
I have begun to annotate it again. Call me ambitious or foolish or the very opposite of a rock'n'roll lifestyle, I am going to do my best to wrestle Ol' Hermie into conceptual submission.
Apropos of that, the new (for 2007) Introduction does mention that contemporary critics of Ol' Hermie liked to dress him up in the apparel of Macchiavelli, you know, being eeeevil and plotting and eeevil and sly and eeevil to boot. In fact, as Mr. Jones corrects, OTW is more derivative of Clausewitz, which Ol' Hermie echoed in his title, because Clausy's best known work is "On War".
Talking of serendipity, Conrad did come across the following, ensconced as it was between two old copies of "Empire". Art!
At a mere 9 months past it's Best Before, it's really only just maturing nicely in my opinion. I shall let you know if i
ANYWAY Conrad's thoughts turned to a global event of seismic proportions that took place scant years after OTW was published: the Cuban Missile crisis. This took place just over 60 years ago, and frightened all involved so much that a great deal more common sense was introduced into nuclear war plans - with probably more than a nod to Ol' Hermie. The thing is, Conrad is now wondering what the nuclear arsenals of NATO and the Sinisters looked like at the time OTW was published, and at the time of the CMC. I know, I know, I'm going to go off on a tangent doing questionable research. Sue me.
 |
| Atlas snarled. |
Right! Time to put those chicken goujons in the oven. Back soon.
O Delicious Schadenfreude!
Apparently the ballfoot season started a while ago, which is news to Conrad, as he's not remotely interested in it. What I do find compulsive reading are the Have Your Say Comments when the BBC opens their website up for a little audience interaction.
I think the comments would be best served by a diagram that displays the performance of various ballfoot teams in the Primary Laager (I think). Art!
There is no love lost between Manchester In The City and The Manchester United, I can tell you. Nor, to be honest, are the supporters of any other 'clubs' (stop me if I get too technical) fond of TMU. Art!
That's how many Comments there were as of two minutes ago, and I can guarantee that 95% of them will be vituperatively hostile, with 4% being reactions from TMU supporters and 1% being sportsmanlike.
Then you finally drop him from the team. And your defence gets even worse!!
Man United fans have egg on their face once again! Time to just accept their your entire defence is ****
FYI, Harry Maguire sticks in my mind as he was the team captain, wickedly described as 'Having a turning circle slightly larger than the QE2' and also 'Wanted for impersonating a ballfooter'.
Conrad is looking forward to a rancorous, bilious season.
"City In The Sky"
The TARDIS has landed and the crew are venturing forth into a frightening landscape devoid of human life -
Australia.
Well, Adelaide, to be precise, and the Botanic Gardens, to be specific.
When they emerged into sunlight, Alex winced and shaded his eyes. There was no visible curvature of the land that he could see, everything ran
off in all directions equally. Or seemed to, since they had materialised amidst
a riotous jungle of flowers, shrubs, trees and grasses. Daringly, he raised his head, seeing a
distinct break between land and sky –
‘A horizon,’ he muttered, recalling lessons from long-gone
schooldays. When he tilted his head
back, the sheer blank enormity of the empty heavens above made him reel. A firm hand on his elbow steadied him.
‘Don’t look up!’ cautioned Ace, when he returned a wide-eyed gaze to
hers. She felt a sympathy for him after
what she’d endured to begin with on Arc One.
The two young people looked around their landing zone. A solid wall of greenery, interspersed with
bright flowers, lay on all sides. Whilst
not impenetrable, the near-jungle looked forbidding. Ace wondered why on earth they’d landed in
such a spot, difficult to traverse without machetes. Her mentor simply stood and soaked in the
atmosphere, umbrella dangling from one elbow in a pose that radiated smug satisfaction.
Clearly he knows something she doesn't.
The Chieftain Sits In Judgement
We have mentioned this chap before, real name Neil Moran, who hails from Ireland yet somehow ended up in the South Canadian army commanding first an Abrams tank, and then a Bradley IFV. Another mystery is how he fits in a tank in the first place, since he's about 6' 4".
ANYWAY 'Insider' asked him to examine scenes from television and film involving tanks (or armoured fighting vehicles) and judge how accurate they were, figuring that since waffling about tanks is his day job, he ought to be fairly well informed. Art!
As he and I both agree, this episode is how it looks when you do it right.
The episode is "Carentan" and things are not going well for Easy Company; their right flank company has collapsed, they have no heavy weapons and the Teutons are attacking in force with armour. Art!
As Chiefy points out, the Teutons don't actually have any tanks present; what we see here are the cheaper and easier to produce assault-guns, lacking a turret. This is pretty realistic as the Teutons were always chronically short of tanks by this point in the war. Art!
Suddenly, to the accompaniment of the horrendously loud BAP-BAP-BAP of Browning .5 machine guns, a wall of Sherman tanks appears on the Teuton flank. Second Armoured Division have shown up in the nick of time. Art!
Being tactically canny, the Teutons immediately retreat rather than face being annihilated from the flank. One feels their recon troops must have been asleep.
Chiefy considers this to be one of the best possible depictions of an action involving armour. Art!
He'll be glad to know that we here at BOOJUM! concur.
Guess Who's In Court Today?
No! Not Lord Lucan, nor yet Donald Buck. Sam Bankman-Fried, that's who, the crook who scammed and gambled with billions of other people's money. Surely you remember FTX, the crypto-currency exchange he founded? No? How have the mighty fallen, hmmmm? Art!
The administrators are trying to track down a missing £6.5 billion from the incredibly obscure and deliberately convoluted corporate structure at FTX.
Interestingly, SBF is the only one of the senior executives at FTX who has plead Not Guilty. One anticipates that his erstwhile colleagues have all done deals and dropped him in the doo-doo, and his anticipated defence of "I was an idiot" is not likely to get him very far.
Bring more popcorn!
Finally -
Clever me, I've managed to create a whole blog without mentioning the R word or the T word. Can't promise to keep it that way.
Tot siens!
No comments:
Post a Comment