I Know What You're Thinking
No! This is not about the military and administrative districts of the Middle and Late Byzantine Empire, which replaced the provincial system of the early empire. Art!
The word's origin lies in Latin <hack spit> but goes back even further to the Greek 'Tithenai', meaning 'To lay down, as in a blanket'.
Well, from Byzantium and it's Graeco-Roman heritage, we jump north to where the Scythians lived at the time, whom we now know as Ruffians, and one of their folklore monsters: Baba Yaga. Art!
The RSPCC's nightmare made concrete. Ol' Babs' name comes from 'Old Woman', which in Ukrainian is 'Babusya'. She had a very particular diet, to wit: young children. One presumes there wasn't enough meat on babies and older children were liable to either run too fast or deliver too hard a punch.
You can tell she's a witch because her mode of transport was an iron cauldron, which we all know is ridiculously un-aerodynamic, and besides which lacks a power source or even means of steering. Art!
She was said to live deep in the forest, which makes sense, since that way she wouldn't have to pay for utilities or council tax, either. Nor would other people have to put up with her, frankly, hideous visage. Art!
A real mirror-mangler
Before you go on about 'ugly-shaming', Conrad would like to pedantically point out that this is 'evil-shaming', quite a different matter altogether, because I say so.
ANYWAY what we're really here for is not the witch herself, but her domicile, because that had a few pretty unique features to be going on with. One wonders if she did it herself, with spells and witchcraft and sacrificing a white cockerel, or if there's a firm of bespoke architects and builders who work exclusively for witches and wizards. Art!
 |
| Her swanky pad |
Yes, it stood on a set of chicken legs, although the chicken in question must have been the size of a cathedral. I know, I know, the obvious question springs to mind: how did they not rot apart once forcibly detached from the Kolossal Killer Klucker of Kyiv? Or are they zombie legs, still capable of movement? Do they strut around the forest at random, or at the behest of Baba Yaga herself? So many questions.
The takeaway from this part of the Intro is that her house is intrinsically unstable, with only two points of support beneath the basement, when it really needs three, at least. Thus it looks permanently about to fall over due to the lop-sided appearance. Art!
Vladimir Mirov
That metallic screeching sound is us here at BOOJUM! abruptly switching tracks, which we are wont to do. Ol' Vlad was a big wheel in Ruffia, which naturally led to him becoming a target for technetiium tea or an attempt to fly from the fifteenth floor. He now lives in Lithuania, and recently published an academic report "Russian Economy: Still Standing But Stuck" which we've already mentioned a couple of times. Art!
This is supposed to be a Ruffian tank factory - I have my doubts with all that blue and yellow. It may be Swedish.
ANYWAY Ol' Vlad has examined the stated Ruffian military budget for 2024, which totals ₽10.7 trillion rubles. This is an increase of x2 for the military budget of 2023, and of x3 for the military budget of 2021, that is, before the Special Idiotic Operation began. Vlad further informs that there are NO clear sources to sustain such growth. An economy balancing on giant chicken legs, hmmm?
Moreover, he also looks at the Federal budget for 2024, which anticipates a total of ₽35 trillions, which is an increase from 2023 of 22% - with once again NO source for the supposed extra funding. Art?
Perhaps it'll all be done by magic? Or accountants will cook the books into a casserole and create money out of nothing, which spell is known as 'inflation'.
Ol' Vlad wasn't done with the doom and gloom prognostications, mind. He quoted the planned deficit for 2024, which was a modest (!) ₽1.6 trillion (which would swallow up a third of the remaining National Wealth Fund). However - bad news ahoy! - the deficit in Q1 alone was ₽0.6, so on track for a total this year of ₽2.4 trillion. Ooo-err matron!
Overall the Ruffian economy resembles one of those peculiar perching rocks you see in national parks. Art!
Ruffian economic model
"The Big Sleep" By Raymond Chandler
Conrad finished this last night in a determined push to get the last 40 pages read, and managed it. Of all the murders, and the red herrings and subterfuge and the bodies piling up, the only bit I remembered from reading it decades ago was the central mystery of where 'Rusty' Regan was, which is only solved right at the end. The blessing or curse of having a mind like a skip. Art!
I still had to do a bit of digging around, in order to find out what a 'walking-beam' derrick was. The horizontal beam you see above is a walking-beam, as used in the petroleum industry, to extract oil from the ground. So now you know.
Then there was a 'Bull-wheel', and that seems to be the following. Art!
A wheel turned by a rope running along a groove in the outer circumference of the wheel, usually placed horizontally. Another factoid none of us knew five minutes ago. I've got another 2 RC novels featuring Philip Marlowe to get through. You'll definitely get to know about those.
"City In The Sky"
The Doctor and Arskan are inside the Lithoi base-ship as Arcology One dumps hundreds of tons of water on the hydrophobic lizards.
More worrying still was the source of this
sudden downpour, revealed by craning their external cameras upwards at an angle
of ninety degrees: a slowly-descending orbital vehicle no more than nine
minutes from terminal descent, point of impact –
-
the
baseship itself.
Long, irreplaceable seconds ticked by as the stunned Lithoi realised
that they’d been decoyed by an internal threat to prevent any action against an
external one.
‘Deploy the cannon!’ yelped Arkan.
‘Target the human vehicle!’
‘We cannot,’ began one of the half-dozen technicians and mechanics busy
re-assembling a particular computer console, before collapsing dead as Arkan’s
laser-collar blasted away.
‘No excuses!’ snarled the Lithoi leader, now more worried about his
scaled skin than the Contract for the first time in over sixty years.
‘The cannon’s firing and acquisition circuitry was damaged,’ babbled
another mechanic before his erratic leader could roast him, too. ‘We are working to fix it.’
‘Then work faster!’ snapped Arkan.
O my, not a good example of enlightened management!
Quite!
Or not. Once again "The Daily Beast" is flogging miscellaneous tat in the name of profit, except one would need to know exactly what the walsprots are trying to sell. Art?
It looks rather like a niche-function microscope, possibly a bespoke version ordered by the Department Of Agriculture to examine pollen and spores out in the middle of nowhere, said remote location lacking any electricity.
Well, it's not. I have cheated and seen what it is, and am not telling you.
Hah!
A Wisp Of Chiffon Carbon
Another interstellar probe from the Galleries of the "Interstellar Research Centre", this time one of very low mass, which is where the wispy bit comes in. Art!
HOWEVER - again! - not so fast. The probe is accelerated by a microwave antenna system in orbit, as seen above. The specs for this are rather brutal, as it needs to be 520 kilometres across to generate sufficient power. What you might call a wisp powered by a whale. Art!
The inventor, Robert Forward - a pair of splendid names! - intended that all the transmission and reception gear would be built into the sail. Moreover, as this thing cruises along at 10% of the speed of light, it's not going to stop or slow down or otherwise dally in any way. Thus it only performs a fly-by, which is a bit of a let down after 40 years transit time, and several billion dollars to boot.
Finally -
Okay, Conrad is now officially allowed to consume alcohol, and he was so careful in putting away his postal voting form that it can no longer be found <sad face>, so I'll be upping my step count tomorrow by walking to the Polling Station.
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