How Alliterative!
No, I'm not going to define it, go look it up.
Okay, in this Intro I will be whanging on about design and purpose, in an interesting way that won't cause you to fall asleep. Hopefully.
Now, if your criteria were that you have to propel a bunch of soldiers across the modern battlefield, protect them from small arms fire and shrapnel, provide them with offensive ordnance and use the new-fangled internal combustion engine, what would you come up with? Art!
Mark IV TANK with puny humans for scale
Nothing less than this beast. Let us use the Snip function to further elaborate on it's design and construction. Art!
Tracks
Yes, a series of caterpillar tracks, that enable it to cross rough ground or inclines, mud, craters, barbed wire and trenches, thanks to having a long wheelbase (or trackbase). Also any Teutons incautious enough to not get out of the way quickly enough. Art!
Here you can see the hatches for the driver and co-driver, in the raised position to give better visibility. When going into action the hatches would be lowered to give better protection, and both would wear a chain-mail visor to protect their face and eyes. No, they didn't stick the exhaust in the wrong place, that's a Lewis gun, place to cover the frontal arc. Art!
This is a 'Female' tank so it only comes armed with machine guns, as opposed to the 'Male' that carried 6 pounder cannon, and the 'Hermaphrodite' that carried both types of weapon. Not sure you could get away with that kind of nomenclature nowadays. Art!
That object which looks like a large wooden beam is, in fact, a large wooden beam. It's the 'Unditching Beam' and was carried on the back of the tank. If it got bogged down - always a possibility on the crater fields of the Western Front - then the crew would emerge, and chain it horizontally across the tracks. They would start up the engine again, the tracks would carry the beam around (note the rails to carry it over the driver's cab) and hopefully heave the tank, rather like a stranded whale, out of the slough. Sounds simple? Not so, especially as tanks attracted artillery fire, and every Teuton able to fire a weapon would be pelting the big steel beast with bullets.
Now, to prove my titular assertion about form and function, allow me to move the clock forward to the Second Unpleasantness, and the Sherman Tank. Art!
Yes, this is the AI art generator at work again. Looking at this - well, one wonders if Skynet is going to be all that much of a threat. Yes, it seems to be like a tank, until you look a little more closely, at which point it resembles something more like the Army Surplus Special from "Wacky Races". It has a hull suspended between two tracks, a turret, a large gun and there all resemblance with the Sherman ends. Art!
Now that enormously long preamble is out of the way, let us now approach what triggered this analytical Intro, thanks to "Science Girl" on Twitter. For Your Information, she appears to put out science-related content. Who would have guessed, hmm? Art!
This creepy little critter is the LIMX Dynamix' P1, a bipedal robot that they were putting through their paces. As you can see, this is a forest floor, where the ground is uneven and unpredictable, so the robot has to learn how to cope with such terrain. Also -
They hit and kick it - no going Awww! it's a robot not a living creature - and it lurches about drunkenly yet doesn't fall over and recovers it's balance in short order. It also has to learn how to navigate in a clutterered environment with irregularly-spaced obstacles. Art!
Ooops Ouch
If you remember 'Roko's Basilisk', this was an AI that decided to punish all Hom. Sap. who did not collaborate in creating it (that is, most of you us). Conrad suspects that P1 may well be discovered, it's metal 'feet' covered in blood, with a dead AI robotics researcher next to it. Clutching a stick.
Just to polish off this theme of FFFF, let me prod Art into reluctant sentience.
The Empire seems to have created a turkey crossed with a lemon here, because this grown-up version of P1's great-grandchild manages to get defeated by a load of fnorping koala bears armed with sticks.
Proof That The Stupid Plague Is Spreading
Really, all you need to do is hang out on social media and a swivel-eyed loonwaffle will be along soon enough, which will provide a nexus of stupid that attracts more of them, until you reach critical Stupid Mass and a Logic Explosion occurs. Art!
May I just point out that the Titanic sank in 1912 and the CIA didn't come into existence until post-Second Unpleasantness.
Yes, there are parody accounts that are as stupid as this on, except they take pains to point out they are, in fact, taking the mick.
Hom. Sap. worries me at times.
Proof That Conrad Is A Terrible Person
I was cruising through "The Daily Beast"'s website and came across this, which needs no extra comment, apart from a shake of the head and a bemused look.
"The dropped suits appear to end a long saga involving the Schlapps and Carlton Huffman, an ex-campaign staffer for the former Senate hopeful Herschel Walker who has since been accused of sexual assault himself.
In a statement shared with Politico by Schlapp’s lawyers, Huffman apologized to the Schlapp family and said he regretted ever filing the lawsuits against them, CPAC, the ACU, and Caroline Wren, an adviser to Matt Schlapp."
In fact matey does such abject grovelling one wonders what behind-the-scenes influence was brought to bear? We may never know, because I'll bet there's a Non-Disclosure Agreement in there.
"City In The Sky"
The alien 'squatters' are debating eeeeeevil things. Being evil and all.
‘We would need to create it from
scratch. None of the old cultures are
viable after such a long delay from their first use.’
‘Ensure it is more destructive than the last disease,’ added Miskan
54. ‘Much
more.’
‘Agreed,’ added Arkan 22. Anger
in a Lithoi didn’t die down quickly.
‘Inevitably some humans will survive.
In the hundred years it will take for the Northern hemisphere to become
completely viable, they will breed back up to the required level.’
Orskan 94 put in a technical objection.
‘We do not have a delivery system any longer. The flying eyes spread the initial disease
cultures.’
Arkan 22’s tail thrashed in anger (to a Lithoi; to any other observer he
merely twitched, slowly).
‘Then the artificers will have to build more flying eyes! No rest for them.’
‘I would also suggest a more short-term solution for the littoral
communities,’ added Mirkan 54.
‘Missiles, with cobalt warheads.
We cannot wait and allow them to interfere.’
‘No!’ hissed the leader. ‘Cobalt
pollutes excessively. Simple fission
warheads will do.’ He swivelled to look
at Orskan 94. ‘Have the artificers work
on a dozen such missiles.’
Like I said, eeeeevil.
More Mikey Mayhem
We're now halfway through "Mike's Book Review" and at Number 5 in his list of Dystopian And Post-Apocalyptic Novels we have "The Road" by Cormac McCarthy, which Conrad has read and not enjoyed. Art!
There's a couple of reasons for this. Firstly, McCarthy eschews punctuation, so you've no idea who's talking to whom about what. Secondly, there's no explanation about what ended the world. So, all you end up with is two tramps mucking about in heaps of filth.
Now, the film is far better as entertainment. Conrad would say this is similar to "The Time Machine": read once then ignore and concentrate on the film. Art!
Grim yet entertaining
The Mars Volta Reprise Of A Little Musical Critique
I did threaten to carry on with "Cicatrix ESP"
<sounds of Tazer and screams>
Finallly -
I think we're done here.
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