I Don't Need To Warn Of Mockery About Typos, Do I?
Because the Remote Nuclear Detonator stands ready aye ready to vapourise a few dozen miscreants who confuse mercy with weakness and satire with sausage-fingeredness.
What Conrad is about to pontificate on is a pet peeve that also affects many wargamers and military historians, especially those who study modern warfare, and it was triggered by the 'Atomic Tank' image I blithely put up yesteryon. Art!
No, I didn't lead with the original illustration, because that would be lazy. Instead we have what the AI Art Generator thinks a nuclear-powered flying tank looks like. Just for clickbaitiness. Now, let us bring on the hauntingly haphazard hilarity of the 'Atomic Tank'. Art!
ANYWAY the design basis seems to be Jap tanks from the Thirties. Art!
Type 97 Chi-Ha Tank, late property of the Imperial Japanese Army
That circular object atop the turret is in fact an aerial, in a design that was popular in the Thirties, because it meant your position wasn't given away by a vertical aerial ten feet tall. Art!
Problem was, it instantly identified a command or HQ tank, which made it a shell-magnet. Next!
Compare this monstrous weapon with the diminutive real-life 37 m.m. gun on the Chi-Ha. What the illustrator doesn't know is that there is a breech to this barrel, which will probably be half as long as the barrel is - meaning there's no room left inside the turret to load shells into the breech, let alone fit a couple of crewmen inside, too. Art!
At first glance I dismissed this as a hull machine gun, then wondered if it wasn't the 'Atomic' part of the 'Atomic Tank', being a fanciful 'Atomic Blaster', then I wondered if it wasn't, really, a Japanese machine gun of the Type 92 variety. Art!
Note prominent cooling fins
I think I favour the Atomic Blaster because otherwise that's a very stupid way to mount a machine gun in the glacis, with lots of open spaces to allow various high-speed impedimenta to come say hello to the crew.
Parents who rashly purchased these toys must have felt a touch of dread when reading "With Siren". Art!
In the cold light of day
It looks like an M24 Chaffee, a South Canadian light tank of later Second Unpleasantness years, and absolutely NOTHING like the box illustration.
How is this an 'Atomic Tank'? I ask you. No, I don't believe it can fire atomic shells, because the lowest gun calibre capable of firing a shell like that is of 150 m.m. and is far, far larger than the humble short-75 m.m. of the M24, which I think we need a photograph of. Art!
Nor can you assert that this Tank is Atomic because it is powered by a nuclear pile, thanks to things like scale, mass and output. The M24's engine is a compact little power-pack, and if we throw in a diagram - Art!
A capacity of a few cubic metres. Whereas a nuclear powerplant in a mobile vehicle - Art!
These are decomissioned South Canadian Navy nuclear reactors, and there's a large industrial plant vehicle to starboard to give you an idea of scale. The only land vehicle that could accommodate one of these brawny beasts would be the hypothetical Teuton 'Ratte'. Art!
Ratte with puny humans for scale
Of course, I could be overthinking this .....
Tornadoes!
No, not the comic. Nor yet the fighter aircraft. No, I am referring to the weather phenomenon that graces South Canada on a regular basis and which Kyle of "Geography King" has detailed in his video essay of disasters that strike South Canada, on a regular basis. Art!
The redder the less better. That's 146.7 in Texas, easily the winner, though Your Humble Scribe is unsure how you get 0.7 of a tornado. Also note Rhode Island, which gets 0.2 annually, which I think is mathematician for one tornado every five years. You could live with a statistic like that. Art!
As you can tell from the first map, tornadoes are a lot less common in western South Canada, but the frequency of these storm systems has changed and they are moving in concentration further east. Which is great for California, if not Louisiana. Art!
Kyle's tornado advice is not to avoid any particular state, as they can occur anywhere, but rather to have a nice, secure storm cellar. Well, unless you live in an apartment, and then you're doomed. Sorry!
Our Journey With Berni
Here we are at FPG trading card #33, and yes I checked and it's present on teh Interwebz. Mister Wrightson had a run of Edgar Allan Poe inspired images, because one begets the other. Art!
Conrad seems to remember that this story involves one hated rival being walled-up alive by another hated rival. The significance of the cask escapes me. Perhaps a little digging is merited.
Ah, the cask was a mere ruse. Fortunato, the walled-up chap, is about as poorly-named as possible, since nobody knew where he was or where he'd gone and his skeleton has stood undisturbed for 50 years. One wonders which got him first, insanity or thirst? How typically dark of both Berni and Eddie.
Oho!
First of all, I have to say WASH OUT YOUR FILTHY MINDS. Having got that out of the way we can proceed, for I have spotted an interesting sidebar item on the BBC's "News" website.
Where do you think 'Uranium' got it's name from?
The data collected by Voyager 1 waaaaay back in 1986 were seriously flawed, thanks to an excess of wind. Solar wind, not flatus. This solar effect cleared the Uranus system of any stray molecules that very probably got ejected from some or all of the five major Uranian moons, meaning that scientists interpreted five barren wildernesses devoid of the conditions needed for live to emerge.
Not so. Once again, one or more of these satellite bodies may have a sub-surface ocean made of water, meaning the possibility of life.
If so, I wonder what they taste like? Art!
Blimey, some clever posing pseud went to town in order to show off his Shakespeare skills, didn't they? Art!
A plague on all of them I say. When can we expect planets named after the Banana Splits characters?
When It's Done The Right Way
Once again we deal with wood-chopping machinery, this time a dirty great circular saw, except the designer and operator are both sensible and diligent people, who feel permanently-attached arms and legs are a good thing. Art!
The Oehler WS 700
That blurry silver object is the circular saw blade, whizzing round at hundreds of revs per minute (probably) and it would take off a hand or fingers in about 0.05 seconds flat. Except - Art!
The timber is boxed up in a secure and robust frame, meaning the operator never gets near the jagged blades of death, merely having to push the compartment forward onto the blade. Art!
All fingers, hands and arms intact. What did you want, blood and dismemberment, you ghouls?
Finally -
Having cleaned out the cake ingredient cupboard, I decided to use up the dried apricots that had been living there for - actually I never bothered to check out the packet details, so who knows. Thus the 'Apricot Coffee Cake' was made, and I did promise a photograph of it. Art!
It's quite passable, best eaten spread with butter and a pot of tea, which is how Conrad consumed it this morning. No more than one slice a day, I feel, which works out at about 15 grams of sugar, and which also means the Mug Cake Carrot Bake will have to sit in the fridge for longer. O the humanity.
Chin chin!
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