Since I've Used It Recently
But what the heck, my sense of guilt has lasted all of ten seconds. No moral compass, that's me.
Right, let's type out what I should have put as today's title:
"If I Were To Say 'Clipper'"
Yes, rather ambiguous. That's how we roll here, get used to it, good mental exercise doncha know. Art!
"Cutty Sark"
Yes yes yes, I could have gone with "Hark Hark It's The Cutty Sark" which doesn't have the word "Clipper" anywhere present, does it? WELL DOES IT? No. Thank you so much. Can I continue, now? Thank you. So kind.
The Cutty Sark was a variety of 'Clipper', or a notably fast sailing ship back in the days before steam-power replaced canvas and wind. According to "Brewer's Dictionary Of Phrase And Fable" they followed a design initially laid-down at Baltimore in 1830, more formally known as 'sharp-built raking schooners'. The Cutty Sark herself was built at Dumbarton on the Clyde in 1869 and served for decades carrying tea - "The cup that cheers and not inebriates" - and wool from China and Australia*. Art!
At the other end of the spectrum comes this humble device, the clipper as a haircutting tool. CAUTION! practice before use, as looking like a divot-dug lawn can often offend. They were invented by Mr. Leo Wahl back in 1919, him being the first person to manage a compact enough electric motor for hand-held use.
The company is still around, proof that hand-held hair-hackery has history. Longer than tea-clippers, anyway.
Then there's this, which I just noticed in a sidebar on my news page. Art!
This looks like a sport. What or who are 'Mavericks'? Likewise the 'Clippers'? What on earth is 'NBA'? Allow me to dig a little. Art!
Aha! So - the "National Ball Activists", whom must be Soutb Canadian afficionadoes of the ballfoot game, right? It all makes sense now.
At a bit of a tangent, there is also the 'Clippie', which is a diminutive of 'Clipper', as applied to the young (and not-so-young) ladies who staffed the buses and trams of This Sceptred Isle during wartime, because in those days you had the driver, who drove a bus or tram, and issuing tickets and taking money was FAR BENEATH him. Probably a union issue, too. Then you had - Art!
The lady Clippie, who took and clipped tickets and accepted coin of the realm in exchange for travel aboard her conveyance.
You may well be wondering what this talk of 'Clipper' is about. Well, you should be well aware by now that BOOJUM! rarely takes the most direct route between two points, partly because we are fickle like that, and also because it's nice to see the scenery along the way. Art!
Courtesy BBC
Behold! NASA's 'Europa Clipper', being launched from Cape Canaveral as of Monday 14th October. This baby is off on a six-year jaunt to Europa, one of Jupiter's moons. We have mentioned it briefly, a year and a half ago, but today you're going to get both barrels.
BOOJUM!: Roger DOJer (comsatangel2002.blogspot.com)
Firstly, I'd like to introduce the EC itself. Art!
Clipper with puny humans for scale
What we know of Europa is intriguing; the moon has a ice surface full of fissures that project water out into space, which has whetted interest from scientists pondering about alien life beneath the moon's icy crust, water being one of the sine qua non of life. One of EC's functions will be to fly through a water plume and analyse the contents to check for things like microbial life. Art!
Europa, looking haggard
One of the things about buzzing about the vicinity of Jupiter is the amount of radiation emitted by the gas giant, which on each pass by the Clipper will subject it to the total dosage of undergoing a million X-rays. Thus all the delicate electronic gizzards will be secured inside a 'vault' to keep all the nasty radiation out. Art!
Vaulting ambition
The question here, obviously - of course! - is whether Hom. Sap. will be around in 2030 to receive Clipper's data. Probably, yes, but not definitely.
Conrad Is ANGRY! Yes Again
Every time I come to complete a Codeword the surviving compilers prove that they have a collective death wish. I allow them to breed back up to adequate numbers and they mistake mercy for weakness.
GULAG: Firstly, it's a Ruffian word, that culture being regarded with an extremely jaundiced eye in today's world, and yesterday's world, too. It's an acronym of Glavnoye Upravleniye Ispravitelno-Trudovykh LAGerei, or 'Main Administration for Corrective Labour Camps', and has, by transference, come to mean the camps themselves. Art!
HOW DARE THEY USE IT IN A CODEWORD! <hammers the Remote Nuclear Detonator extremely hard>
TAHINI: Imagine peanut butter made with sesame seeds instead of peanuts and you've got tahini. It's hardly everyday fare here in the Allotment of Eden, even if Conrad occasionally indulges in it, SO WHY IS IT IN A CODEWORD! Art!
 |
| Sesame seeds crushed to a pulp just like the compilers will be |
VALANCE: Sounds like the rugged, brawny, stubble-chinned hero of a Western series, doesn't it? "Valance versus the Rabid Rustlers of the Rappahannock River" or "Valance versus the Sinister Shenandoan Sheriff" or "Valance versus the Daleks" (fan-fiction cross-over).
Er - not quite. Art?
"A fringed drapery hung on the edges of a bed".
"Valance versus static cling"?
"The War Illustrated Edition 195 8th December 1944"
A couple more images from their central page montage that focussed on the liberation of Walcheren Island at the mouth of the Scheldt River, thus freeing up the port of Antwerp, a big plus in logistics terms. Art!
This is a bit of a cheat, since there's two photographs here with no easy way to untangle either of them In Number 5, at bottom, you can see Admiral Bertram Ramsey hobnobbing with Royal Marines who manned the landing craft.
Above them is Number 3, showing landing craft taking on casualties for evacuation to the mainland an better medical facilities. TWI wrongly calls them 'Buffalo's (Landing Vehicle Tracked Personnel) as I shall prove. Art!
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| A herd of Buffaloes |
The Norks <Hack Spit> Are In The News Again
You can tell by the opprobrium being ladled out that these are the North Koreans, not the Norwegians. Perhaps Conrad ought to invest a little imagination in coming up with a nickname for the Land Of Norge. The Weggies? The Piners? The Skallys?
AHA! "The Norsks"!
ANYWAY let us lead on with another sidebar item that caught my eye on the BBC's News webpage. Art!
Shouldn't that read "connecting with"? said the Grammar Nazi
This is rather similar to cutting your throat to spite your neck. The Sorks have absolutely no need to have road communications with the Norks, and in fact are probably happy that another route across the border has been rendered ineffective. Conrad remembers slagging off the Norks and their land as a 'Starving Shothule' way back in the early days of BOOJUM! and do you know not much has changed since then. Art!
The Ukrainians also managed to kill 6 Nork officers, who were serving alongside their Ruffian buddies in Ukraine, which is probably a whole lot more merciful than allowing them to go back home. Where they would be executed for having had contact with another culture beyond the borders of the Starving Shothule, meaning that they understood what squalid poverty they'd been living in. Imagine the Ruffians alongside them, being looked up to (malnourished midget military, you see) as pinnacles of worldly sophistication and materialism.
Finally -
I think it's time to make another Giant Sandwich and empty the fridge of all the old and date-expired food, because that's how noble I am.
* No aphorism about wool because you can neither eat nor drink it.
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