It's An Hilarious Pun, Hilarious I Tell You!
Laugh or you get a taste of the Remote Nuclear Detonator. No, this is not about the recent flooding in Modern-day Mordor, although trailing that coat does permit me to put up a picture of orcs learning to swim in the environs of Barad-Duh. Art!
Just to rub it in, let's have a double dose of flooding in Bilhorod (the Ukrainian name for 'Belgorod'). Art!
This is what happens when funds for civilian infrastructure get embezzled, stolen, skimmed and otherwise Fail To Reach Destination. Looks like they could do with a fleet of DUKWs.
ANYWAY I would like to turn the clock back to the eighteenth century in This Sceptred Isle, where transport was limited to roads, which were usually in pretty poor condition given that motorways were a long way off, or via ship. Shipping meant being able to move large amounts of freight, yet one still had to move said freight to and from a port. Riverine movement was more restricted still, as you were only able to traverse the river, and whilst sending goods downstream was a doddle, sending them upstream was a right pain. Art!
'Vulgar Boatmen' circa 1960
Then, suddenly - CANALS!
Well, not that suddenly. The Chinese can lay a claim to have invented them, although the Romans might dispute this, and we can leave them to squabble amongst themselves. What I refer to is the pre-eminent British canal (or 'navigation') constructed in Manchester in 1776: the Bridgewater Canal. Art!
This is the Bridgewater Canal at the Manchester end, and this is quite the evocative picture. There is the eighteenth century canal, a nineteenth century railway bridge and the twenty-first century footbridge.
Trust me when I say you could do an entire Intro on the Bridgewater. Let us press on to wider matters. The commercial success of the Bridgewater spurred on other canal enterprises, because it proved that one could move very large tonnages of freight (coal for the BW) quickly and easily, which meant cheaper. Businesses always like that word 'cheaper'.
Thus This Sceptred Isle spawned a network of canals that criss-crossed the country comprehensively <can't think of other relevant words beginning with 'c'>. A map would be handy. Art!
Thus began the heyday of canals, which lasted for a good seventy years or so, until the arrival of the railway. The chemin de fer could ascend and descend hills and mountains that canals found very troublesome, could connect to anywhere instead of needing a watery connection. Not only that, trains were fast, a lot faster than an ambling narrowboat.
Sic transit gloria canali. You might expect Britain's canals to silt up and get clogged with weeds, be forgotten and vanish from the landscape. Not so! For the 'Canal & Riverside Trust' sprang into being. In fact it emerged from 'British Waterways' in 2012 and is the curator of 2,000 miles of canals in England and Scotland. Art!
This is local legend lad Martin Zero - check out his Youtube channel - at the bottom of the emptied Bridgewater Canal near the Hacienda, emptied so they could clear out all the debris. 'They' being the CRT, whom invited him along.
Now, onto what sparked this whole reminiscence. Art!
This is the Barrow Bridge on the Trent and Mersey Canal, looking a bit poorly. The bridge itself is 250 years old and was designed in the days when a horse and cart were the largest and widest things it might accommodate, rather than modern-day motor vehicles. Art!
This was the damage inflicted. Police suspect it was hit by an HGV, because your average family car would have been a crumpled tin can afterwards. The driver didn't bother to either stop or report the accident in, which means they are now in hot water. This selfish neglect also meant CRT were unable to recoup expenses from the driver's insurance company, having to fork out £100,000 to repair the bridge and dredge the canal. Art!
Barrow Bridge back and beautiful in brick
The risk is that Matey the HGV Hooligan is a foreign driver from The Continent, and thus made a getaway free from punishment, although he might have a problem explaining to the boss how, exactly, the offside of his cab is extremely bent. I know BOOJUM! has an international audience. Keep your eyes peeled.
More Mordant Money Matters
No wonder Putinpot wants a ceasefire. The hits keep on coming, and they're not musical numbers, they're body blows. The Fun-Sized Foot Fiddler is having to raise taxes to generate more money for the war effort, which will go down like a mink in your drink. No citizen ever in the history of civilisation asked for their taxes to go up, so we shall see what this brings. Art!
The South Canadians normally provide kit, not kash*, except that as of June they are going to be providing $1.5 billion in humanitarian and energy aid.
Another project coming to fruition is the Czech initiative led by Petr Pavel, their President, whom is handsome snowy-haired rascal. Art!
'Twas he whom initiated the hunt for artillery shells to give to Ukraine, which has now come on-stream to the number of 100,000 shells per month. There's no definitive answer as to how much a 155mm artillery shell costs, so we shall guesstimate $1,000 each. There fore $100 million-worth of ammunition per month for Ukraine.
The Norks are also contributing - $103 million on electricity-related funding, which will help repair the Ukraine's national grid and provide links to the general EU grid. Lykke Till! Art?
 |
| Bravo, chaps! |
The flip side of the coin is that inflation - or the official rate of inflation - in Modern-day Mordor rose to 8.3% in May and shows no sign of slowing. Tee hee!
You can see the imbalance here. As Georgie of "Ukraine Matters" aptly determined, this conflict is now becoming one of resources, where Ukraine is being backed by NATO, the EU and sundry other nations, whereas Ruffia can count on lukewarm non-military aid from China - that they most definitely have to PAY for - and those economic titans North Korea and Iran.
More Starship Shenanigans
From the "Interstellar Research Group", to whom many thanks for gathering these images together. An expository blurb with each would help even further, chaps, in case you ever read this. Art!
This is the 'Icarus Ghost" and you can see why it is so-named, perhaps, as there is so little of it spread across so much. Only problem here is that there's no sense of scale. Is it, perhaps, one of those micro-probes only a few feet across? Alas that there are no puny humans for scale. Art!
Much better! Clearly this thing is a bit larger than a couple of feet across. No mention of how it works so a little digging is in order.
Ah. So, yes, it amasses 153,000 tons, thus a bit more than a few feet across. The fusion drive works by laser fusion of deuterium, generating lots of lovely neutron flux, which is lethal to humans but packs oodles of energy. The 'Ghost' would accelerate up to 6% of c, aiming to transit to Alpha Centauri in only 54 years. The giant 'sails' you see are a braking mechanism helping to slow down the approach to the target system.
"City In The Sky"
You might say The Doctor is steaming.
Rather than risk half an hour of pocket
emptying and explanation, the Timelord slapped the bottom of his lower right
jacket pocket, causing the contents to fly outwards and fall to the ground.
‘What have we got? Let’s see – nineteen thirty-two one cent
piece, twenty grammes of the Berlin Wall, elastic band, ampoule of smart gel,
Sir Isaac’s plumbob - ’ and he shuddered from head to foot as he brought his
metabolism back up to normal, shivering in a reflex that made his teeth rattle
together ‘ - oh, and that big yellow
plastic thing is full of water that would
explode into a cloud of steam if it were lasered - ’
Every Lithoi on the Bridge not attending
to outstandingly important work was looking at the strange human exhibiting
strange behaviour – strange even by human standards.
So they missed Orskan – that extra seventh
guard – hitting the novelty water gun with a laser bolt, which caused a cloud
of vapour to form instantly.
Every Lithoi on the Bridge fled in terror
at the apparition of dihydrogen monoxide in super-heated form. Of course they were beaten by the Doctor and
Orskan who rapidly descended stairwells, until Orskan started to flag.
Sabotage by Donald Duck Super-Soaker. That's got to be a first.
Having A Mind Like A Skip
Does have it's advantages, in that nothing which goes in is ever really forgotten, even if book titles and authors can be a tad obscured by the mists of time. Art!
I remember picking this paperback up in 1984 and reading the back cover blurb about " - the men of the Triple Nickel" and it being a novel set in Vietnam, which was a trope beginning to take off.
Forty years later I couldn't remember the title or author, just that line, which, when plugged into Google, brought up this solution.
"Eric Helm" is the pseudonym of a two-headed creature, one of whom is Kevin Randle and I can't be bothered to recall the other. There was a whole library shelf of these 'Ground Zero" novels, which means Conrad regards them with suspicion. Hack potboilers run off a production line are not literature.
THE VIETNAM: GROUND ZERO SERIES:
BOOK 1: Vietnam: Ground Zero
BOOK 2: P.O.W.
BOOK 3: Unconfirmed Kill
BOOK 4: The Fall of Camp A555
BOOK 5: Soldier's Medal
BOOK 6: The Kit Carson Scout
BOOK 7: The Hobo Woods
BOOK 8: Guidelines
BOOK 9: The Ville
BOOK 10: Incident at Plei Soi
BOOK 11: Tet
BOOK 12: The Iron Triangle
BOOK 13: Red Dust
BOOK 14: HamletBOOK 12: The Iron Triangle
BOOK 13: Red Dust
BOOK 14: Hamlet
BOOK 15: Moon Cusser
BOOK 16: Dragon's Jaw
BOOK 17: Cambodian Sanctuary
BOOK 18: Payback
BOOK 19: Macv
BOOK 20: Tan Son Nhut
BOOK 21: Puppet Soldiers
BOOK 22: Gunfighter
BOOK 23: Warrior
BOOK 24: Target
BOOK 25: Warlord
BOOK 26: Spike
BOOK 27: Recon
BOOK 28: Pioneer Post
Finally -
I'm typing this at work, since the phone lines are utterly dead this morning. To quote from "The Battle Of Britain" ' - the dastards are up to something.' Or, rather, nothing.
May your Super-Soakers sustain you.
* Forgive me
No comments:
Post a Comment