Hark! Hark! About The Ark

This Is Going To Be A Bit Ambiguous

Because when has BOOJUM! ever been straightforward and unequivocal?  Okay, okay, okay, there was that time in 2018, but it was a one-off and we've been as duplicitous and divergent as possible since then.

     So!  We have been talking about 'Ark's on several occasions recently.  There was 'Ark Station' on 'The 100', a conglomerate space station formed from 12 smaller units, which is a bit past it's warranty if you ask me.  Art!

     Several episodes back one character mentioned a 13th station, which got destroyed.  We've never heard anything more about this mystery station, which makes Conrad wonder if this was either a red herring, or foreshadowing.  We shall see.

     THEN we had an item about Noah's Ark, which is a bit cheeky, as it was Noah and seven other family members who constructed the Ark.  You can explain this away as 'Noah and Ham, Shem and Japheth and their wives and sons Ark' is a bit clumsy in narrative terms.  Art!

     A tad small for thousands of animals and their hectares of fodder. don't you think?  And where would they put the giraffes?  How would they stop the beavers?

     That's not the only Ark in our purview.  Art!

     This is the 'Ark Of Bukhara', in Uzbekistan, which I had never heard of before today until Googling for content.  It is a town-sized fortress in Bukhara, constructed as of 500 AD, home to various monarchs and rulers until the Sinisters conquered it in 1920, whereby it lay under their imperial yoke until independence.  Which they celebrate on 1st September.  Art!

     What's going on here?  Has one tank killed the other and is driving over it's carcass?  Do these strange metal apparati appear randomly in the North European countryside?  Is there any provenance in a metal ramp suddenly appearing against a steep embankment?

     Cool your jets.  This is a Churchill 'Ark', which has been horribly transcribed as an acronym, 'Armoured Ramp Karrier' <shudders in grammatical horror> because it's a carrier of an armoured ramp.  Art!

     This is an Ark in mid-operation, it will shortly descend into the stream at bottom, having left a bridge behind it, and shortly to deploy a bridge in front of it.  This turns a major riverine obstacle into a muddy inconvenience, until engineers can construct a permanent bridge over the waters.  Art!

          Here is a lady Ark and a  an illustration of how important the Churchill Ark was, because they did not need to replace an existing bridge.  They could instead create a new bridge at a point engineers had determined traffic and geology could sustain traffic, rather than the hydrogeology of millennia past.

     ANYWAY us get to the meat of the matter, which is another Ark - 

    THE ARK OF THE COVENANT

     Not just any old Ark, this one is the original housing for the Covenants - contractual data literally written in stone - about how the tribes of Israel agreed, with zero wiggle room, to their adherence to conditions with God.  Art!

     What you see here is pretty close to how the original appeared, minus any exotic light and sound display.  We are told that the Ark was carried forward of the tribes of Israel as they eithered wandered or conquered, enabling them to blam the opposition flat, as the Bible states.  Art!

     You may recall this film, which was a cultural phenomenon waaaay back in 1981 <shudders in horror at the time-gap> and which I still recall the British ITV television network gloating, absolutely gloating, about in 1983 when they had it on their Christmas broadcast schedule.  There was that much disconnect between a film's cinematic release in the UK and it becoming broadcast via television, the internet being a closely-guarded secret of DARPA.
     In Biblical history, the actual fate of the Ark becomes opaque after 587 BC, which is when the Babylonian empire invaded Canaan - ancient Israel or Palestine as you see fit - and conquered the lot.  There are any number of conspiracy theories about the Ark being rescued or hidden or transported to safety, yet none with any proof or evidence.  Moreover, as my copy of "Seventy Great Mysteries Of The Ancient World" has it, the original Ark is over 3,000 years old and would likely be flinders and ash by now.

     Comment if you disagree!

     

Wires And Fires

Further to yesteryon's item about barbed wire and how British gunners used low-burst shrapnel shells to 'thresh' it, which technique Australian gunners were learning to copy, I thought I'd add in a bit more detail from the 'Ockers in France' official history*.  Art!

     As you can see, barbed wire in defence was an interconnected mass, many yards deep, that needed to be cut before an infantry attack went in.  No use trying to get through that lot with wire-cutters.

     The Ockers were faced with two Teuton lines to assault, not merely one, and both positions were heavily wired.  The second line was partially hidden from view, meaning artillery trying to cut it was firing blind.  Also

     " The Australian batteries were also at a disadvantage in being unable to advance closer than 3,000 yards from their target without great risk of coming under direct observation and being destroyed."

     So they were firing from over 2 miles away, and unable to see part of their target, which is not conducive to wire-cutting.  Art!

     Over the space of 3 days they fired 4,900 shrapnel shells to cut the Teuton wire, which is an awful lot, to mixed effects.  Airplane pilots asked to report on the wire's condition related that parts were well-shredded but others still strong.  The planned assault had a fixed timetable to start and there wasn't time to do any more cutting.

Here's One I Can Get Behind

A provocative headline at the BBC's News website.  Art!

No.

Next!

To be a little less brusque, Conrad doesn't follow the ballfoot game and is consequently completely disinterested if these clobs spend £3 billion or £3 trillion on trance-furs or whatever.  Don't forget, make the most of it, because when I take over the ballfoot game will be gone, along with 'Strictly Come Dancing' and Russell Brand**.

Here's Another One I Can Get Behind

Just spotted a picture 'Bricktop NAFO' put up on Twitter, which definitely piqued my curiosity.  Art!

    Without digging, I have no idea what this is, except that the name on it is 'Anduril'.  If you possess a skip-like memory like Conrad then you will, of course - obviously! - recognise that name as being the re-forged shards of Narsil, the sword that was responsible for Sauron being the Nine-Fingered, foreshadowing Frodo.  Not that anyone would call him that to his face.

     <proceeds to dig>

     Now, the first thing Your Humble Scribe noticed is that whilst this thing is streamlined, it's not aerodynamically stable in any way.  Obvious use would be as a marine drone.  This turned out to be correct: it's a remote-controlled naval drone called 'Dive' used for what's coyly termed 'payload delivery', which usually means a couple tons of TNT.

     Nice to see a company named by nerds doing business with the Pentagon.

On This Day

I am going to steal one of the ideas that my still Coyly Anonymous Employer, because it takes the heavy lifting out of content creation and is rather close to cheating, which is why I like it.  Tee hee, what a rotter I am!

    So - on this day in 1666 ended the Great Fire Of London, after destroying 13,200 homes, which doesn't sound particularly great to Conrad.  Art!

     Grate rather than great, I would judge.

     Also, on this day in 1800, the French garrison on Malta surrendered to the British, who had blockaded the island and whom were to occupy it for the next 167 years.  Art!

     And with that we are done!

*  "Official History of Australia in the War of 1914 - 1918" if we're being formal

**  Brand gets life in the uranium mines if I'm feeling merciful.  Otherwise, it's the organ banks.