We have been hammering* on about stones and megaliths and the Stone Age for several weeks now, and have still not run out of content, which is a consequence of just how long the Stone Age lasted, and how may stones there are. Well, from Stonehenge we move to Bikini Atoll. Art!
This is one of the nuclear test shots at Bikini, where the dark dots at the base of the explosion are uneffulgent warships anchored there to see what happened to them. Nothing good, I would guess.
How does this have a connection to the Avebury Stone Circle? O I thought you'd never ask! You see, the weapons tests at Bikini eventually moved on to thermonuclear weapons - my favourite sort! - and the core of what we have come to call a Hydrogen-bomb is actually lithium. Art!
Here, the 'spark plug' is made out of lithium and isotopes of hydrogen, which is where 'Stone' comes in, because that is where 'Lithium' is derived from. 'Lithos' meaning 'Stone', which baffled me to begin with, until I discovered that lithium was the first alkaline metal discovered as a mineral, not plant matter. 'Drinking heavy water from a stone' as Thomas Dolby IV would have it.
ANYWAY let us now tackle the subject of stones, which we began previously and have yet to finish. Art!
No, his connection to stones is not being Keith Richard's grandfather. This, I'll have you know, is Sir William Matthew Flinders Petrie, whom has an awesome triple lock on stones. His surname, 'Petrie', is a Scottish derivation of 'Peter,, which itself comes from the Greek 'Petros' meaning - you may be ahead of me here - 'Stone'. 'Flinders' is derived from the Old Norse 'Flindra', meaning a thin piece of haggis - only testing! - a thin piece of stone. Third count: he was a very prominent Egyptologist and archaeologist. Art!
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| Well, they're not made of cottage cheese, are they? |
THE BLACK STONE: This is the sacred stone installed in the Kaaba at Mecca, which every pilgrim there was intended to kiss. It predates Islam by centuries and was associated by the Persians with Saturn. Art!
BLACKSTONE: That's the wonder of 'Brewer's', there's always another interesting entry on whatever page you pick. Directly above the item above is this entry, which is apparently the short title for William Blackstone's 'Commentaries on the Laws of England', published in 1769. It bravely attempted to make comprehensible the laws of England as present in the British constitution. Art!
STANDING STONES OF STENNESS: Another megalithic structure and one I knew nothing about. Art
These are on the isle of Orkney, with only 13 remaining erect of an estimated 60, though 'Brewer's' doesn't say what happened to the others. I mean, who is going to steal a one-ton slab of rock and what nefarious purposes might they want it for? Improvised roof? Extra-large dining table? Unfeasibly large plate? I guess we shall never know. They were famous enough to be mentioned by Sir Walter Scott in his 1821 work 'The Pirate'. Art!
THE BLOWING STONE: Here we have a block of red sandstone, which is situated at the splendidly-named Kingston Lisle in Oxfordshire. There are several holes pierced through it, which allegedly produce a wailing or moaning sound if properly blown. What wags they were in the Stone Age! for coming up with such a device. 'Tom Brown's Schooldays' floats the theory that it was used to warn locals of hostile forces approaching. Conrad thinks shouting and screaming would have been a lot more effective, not to mention less labour-intensive. Art!
SNAKE STONES: Loooong before the scientific explanation of what fossils were, people would uncover objects like the above and promptly decided that these were snakes. Wicked snakes - snakes don't get much good press in myths and legends - that were turned to stone out of their sheer wickedness and sin. We now know that these were ammonites, and we have an impression of what they looked like when alive.
COADE STONE: This is an interesting one, again novel to Your Humble Scribe. Coade stone was an artificial stone, a variety of terra cotta, used between 1775 and 1830 for statues and architectural decorations, notably the red lion on London's South Bank. 'Brewer's' ends rather sadly 'The secret of it's manufacture has been lost.' Art!
I think that's enough of being stoned for today.
Conrad Is ANGRY!
Yes, again. Yes, it's those Dog Buns! Codeword compilers again, again. just because it's not been front and centre in BOOJUM! doesn't mean that Conrad isn't a frothing pudding of hatred about it, because he is <hammers Remote Nuclear Detonator furiously to work off his temper>.
ENDOMORPH: What the Dog Buns? Conrad doesn't remember ever seeing or using this term after his Psychology course, which is the only reason he knows what it is. The word refers to a particular body type and is not exactly common in everyday communications. Art!
On the grounds of rarity I think this solution is horribly unfair.
WASSLE: You what? Conrad has chucked the MEN this solution was in, so I can't go back and definitely confirm this was the correct one. What on earth is a WASSLE? It's not in either my 'Collins Concise Dictionary' nor 'Brewer's' and the only help teh Interwebz came up with was - Art!
Not a lot of help there. Art!
LLAMA: Dadblast it, having a double 'L' as the beginning of a word? How desperately deceptive and unfair is that, using a solution that requires one to be a Spanish-speaking zoologist? Art!
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| Less a B-movie and more a Z-movie |
Our Daily Dose Of Dismal
It may have escaped your attention, but the Bunker Grandad Putinpot was 73 a couple of days ago, an occasion that the Ukrainians celebrated by launching 209 drones into Mordorvia, causing the usual mayhem at refineries and exacerbating the ongoing petrol crisis amongst the orcses. Art!
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| Emphatically Before |
In a change of targets, they hit the Sukhodnaya pumping station with 10 drones, leaving it ablaze and crippling another pipeline.
Bunker Grandad has been dealing with this devastating Ukrainian campaign, and the subsequent petrol shortages as he always does with a difficult problem: completely ignoring it. Thus RT and other state media are refusing to admit there's a problem, blaming 'panic buying' and 'scheduled maintenance', when ordinary orcs can see refineries ablaze across Mordorvia.
A Cultural Comparison By Conrad
Of course I cannot find the news item and picture when I need them, so you're going to have to use your imagination. Art!
'Jumped the shark' is a phrase that has entered South Canadian pop culture and is used as a definition of when a person or program became self-satire or worthless. It derives from an episode of 'Happy Days' where in an act of sheer ridiculousness, The Fonz is forced to water-ski over a shark. I dunno, sounds fun to me. Art!
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| Fonzie flies fearlessly forward |
Conrad recalls a bizarre speech Trump made that involved sharks. It had a sinking boat that possessed a powerful electrical battery in the engine compartment, a shark swimming nearby and whether the shark risked being electrocuted. Poor old Donold seems to think electricity is akin to magic. It is, just that the rest of us know enough to remain silent about it and not look stupid. DJ Tango, on the other hand...
You might argue that the shark itself would be jumping thanks to the electric current, which is proof positive that you're overthinking things.
* See what I did the - O you do
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