And Mental Lumber
I was thinking of giving today's blog the title "A Wander Down The Interlinked Wonder Warren Of Rabbitholes" because we all know by now that Conrad frequently ends up in very odd places on teh Interwebz, except it's a bit too long for a title and might not fit in. Art!
Mention of a warren of underground tunnels immediately brought back the claustrophobic chapter in the above novel, when the children and dwarves have to contort themselves through horribly narrow spaces and tunnels, in order to reach safety.
ANYWAY this Intro will be about the interview Professor Jeffrey Sonnenfeld gave to "Silicon Curtain", about the stresses and strains on the Ruffian economy. The Prof works at Yale School Of Management and is an economist, and whom helped organise the exit of 1,200 businesses from Modern-Day Mordor. Art!
That's Jeff, looking a bit scowly. Okay, Ol' Finky (who runs "Silicon Curtain") asked if the collective West (which includes the Sorks, Japan, Australia and New Zealand) has risked handing Ukraine a defeat through fear and doubt?
Jeff's answer was an unequivocal "Yes!", with weapons supplies from South Canada being delayed for months, thanks to Moscow Mike Johnson and Donald Judas Trump. Not only that, there are still politicians who cherish inactivity and what he described as 'un-necessary caution'. Yes, Scholz (which is "შოლცი" in Georgian), he mentioned you as an example. Art!
Because his DNA is 95% chicken
Then Ol' Finky raised the issue of reparations being paid to Ukraine. Jeff rephrased the question as being Compensation for Ukraine, not Punitive Payment (although the Ruffians will squeal about it either way). Conrad can inform you that the reparations bill for Ukraine was calculated at $486 billion a couple of months ago and has certainly reached $500 billion by now. So, asked Finky, could Ruffia's frozen assets held in Western financial institutions (totalling $286 billion) be given to Ukraine?
Again, Jeff unequivocally said "Yes!", which is the polar opposite of many pundits and commentators. He backed this assertion up with mention of Professor Lawrence Tribe - a name I was vaguely aware of - who has written a 200 page document that completely demolishes the "No" hypothesis. This is where rabbit holes come into play, because Your Humble Scribe definitely needs to get access to this monograph, or at least a summary of it. Art!
Larry
Jeff then took aim at the IMF (International Monetary Fund), whose figures are helping prop up Putin as they are so roseate in nature. Conrad thinks it was Big K of "Inside Russia" who said that the IMF just accept any data given them by Ruffia, without any kind of analysis, critical or otherwise. Jeff said that nobody else's figures correlate with the IMF and he reeled off a list of other fiscal analytical bodies: the World Bank, Barclays, Standard Chartered, Citigroup and JP Morgan. In fact, since Q2 of 2022, Putin has been concealing the data that the IMF requires parties to submit. Art!
Jeff dropped into the conversation a couple of facts that the IMF seems to have either overlooked (possibly) or ignored (probably). Namely, that foreign direct investment in Russia has gone from $100 billion to - zero. Plus, every sector of their economy has fallen by between 60 to 90 per cent. This is chilling stuff for Ruffian economists, who now have to be verrrrry careful about what they report. Rosstat, the Ruffian statistics bureau, has had staff sacked or imprisoned for putting out valid economic data that tells the unpalatable truth. Art!
Sorry for bringing up the Farting Flabby Fraudster again, but Jeff did mention that Putin is trying to hold on until November, in the hopes that Pumpkinhead will get elected, and then bow down to his master. However ..... Art!
This stony-faced beggar is Kyrylo Budanov, head of Ukrainian military intelligence. You recall that crack I made about Johnson and Trump and their delaying South Canadian aid shipments? Conrad feels it likely that the reason they changed their minds was that Budanov's kompromat* was much, much worse than Putin's kompromat. Jeff feels that, if Pimpkinhead is not re-elected, Putin's survival time will be measured in minutes.
Fingers crossed.
More Starship Screenshots
From the "Interstellar Research Centre", here comes one I've never heard of either. Courtesy Penn State University, dubbed "Aimstar", depicting an anti-matter fuelled spacecraft. Art!
I did a bit of digging and this design concept is from the Nineties. The anti-protons are used to create fission in pellets of fuel, in a variety of nuclear pulse-engine. It was intended to eventually travel to Alpha Centauri, accelerating to a speed of 600 miles per second, whilst primarily studying the interstellar medium. Yes yes yes, that sounds like a lot. It's not when you consider AC is 26 trillion miles away, so it would take AIMStar 1,300 years to get there. A round trip of 2,600 years is a bit long for a commute, even for First Bus.
You What?
"The Daily Beast"'s sidebar adverts throw up mystifying MacGuffins on a regular basis, as we like to bait you with various Scunge Bobblers and Rotary Chamfering Knives. This one is not mysterious at all, until you sit back and think about it. Art!
Yes, these are various models of mobile generators. Why would anyone reading TDB suddenly feel the urge to hire (or buy outright) a mobile generator? "I suddenly realised I had a giant mobile-generator-shaped hole in my sad inadequate life, which is why I'm getting one from Hampshire" said no reader ever.
"City In The Sky"
Davy, effectively the leader aboard Arcology One, is experiencing the muted terror of atmospheric transit in an orbital space-station now de-orbiting.
It was true.
Instead of rotational force providing the illusion of gravity, he sat
still and felt a whole lot less than the normal. Or was that an illusion, his mind playing tricks? Ah!
That sliver of sunlight playing underneath the warped rim of a
hull-plate spoke true. The plate was a
potential risk during this descent, because it might be ripped away by
friction.
A
dismounted monitor screen taken from the Communications shack showed the view
directly beneath the sphere:
Another
line from the Doctor’s Tab-bound instructions came back to Davy: “Whilst still in the upper atmosphere,
aerofoil-sprung releases will allow the deployment of the drogues, which will
slow Arc One’s descent significantly.
These will in turn deploy the multi-hectare braking parachute.”
The
astronomy staff had insisted on sticking
remote cameras on the outer hull, both to view what lay beneath the sphere and
what lay above it. Only a couple of the
lower-hull cameras survived, displaying what Davy could now see. The astronomers themselves were looking as
the first dozen parachutes came whipping out of the storage bins, giving the
sphere a gentle tug as they did so.
Several attachments failed, leaving tangled parachutes slowly fluttering
behind the sphere’s wake. Finally the
tension in their cables became sufficient to extract the giant parasail from
it’s central bin – actually an adaptation of Pangolin’s dock – and another tug
came, harsher, more sustained than earlier.
I think it's a given that they had enough Whatever to construct parasails. Ignore that question and move on!
More Of Meccano
I didn't include this item yesteryon due to space and time constraints (O for a TARDIS) so here it is. You may be aware of James May's use of childhood toys in novel, full-scale roles, such as the house made of Lego. Well, one of his challenges was to build a working bridge over a canal, one that would take the weight of a person. Art!
 |
| - and to make it out of Meccano |
It worked. I've never seen James more nervous, however. There are no handrails on the second section because it swung out to marry with the first section and consequently swung James back again. All went swimmingly, if you see what I mean.
Finally -
Conrad is confused by today's weather, which is once again five seasons in one day. Typical British summertime.
* 'Kompromat': a portmanteau of 'Compromising Material'. Blackmail, in plain language.
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