Sharks Are Our Friends!

Although, If You Have Seen "Baby Shark" You May Not Agree
You know, that numbing plastic pop farrago on Youtube with Baby Shark, Mummy Shark, Grandad Shark and the whole family group - one recital was more than enough for your humble scribe.
     Anyway, Conrad was quite delighted to see an item on the Beeb website with the title "The life of a shark scientist"*, and a quite detailed analysis of why one lady decided to study sharks as her chosen career.  Being able to scuba dive in tropical lagoons is one perk of the job, although to balance it she has been bitten by a crocodile.  Art?

Scoping for sharks
(Apologies for all these tricky technical terms

Wearing lots of clothes, so definitely SFW

     She also rather puts to bed the myth of Unprovoked Shark Attacks.  There is a lot to read, so I'll just add a link if you care to enquire further:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-45359293

     Now, if only we can introduce Baby Shark to a fisherman looking to collect the one vital ingredient that Shark Fin Soup cannot do without ...
     Oh I say motley!  Those new shoes we bought for you - their squeaking is so high-pitched it's attracting the attention of a flock of GIANT VAMPIRE BATS!



When I Reach That Age!
As you should surely know by now, your humble scribe buys copies of the official histories of British Divisions from the First Unpleasantness from time to time.  Normally these are Print On Demand copies of the originals from Naval & Military Press, though I do have a rather ratty 1927 copy of "The History of the 17th (Northern) Divison)" and a very brown and spotty "History of the 20th (Light) Division".
     So!  Imagine my surprise when my latest purchase, "The 8th Division at War 1914 - 1918", turned up, having expected this.  Art?

Hmmmmm.

      - and instead got the following.  Art?

     This original volume has all the fold-out maps that a POD copy doesn't have, and there's a full colour set of Divisional insignia - I realise this sounds very, very sad, and it is, unless you are me, in which case it's brilliant!
     The advisory note that accompanied this volume made mention of "foxing", which is brown spots due to aged paper, and "rippling", which is a way the paper reacts over time.  "A very tired copy" they sniffily end.
     I should think so - this volume is 92 years old!  Check out the title to this post -

Let's Travel Far To - Kapustin Yar
<heaves a weary sigh> yes, yet another of those phrases that pop up into your humble scribe's rubbish-tip skip of a mind for no particular reason.
     In case you were wondering, you can't eat or drink it, nor can it be made into a durable yet attractive pair of foot-coverings.  Art?

Picturesque - BUT DEADLY!

     It's actually one of the first Sinister rocket, missile and test ranges to be set up after the Second Unpleasantness, from where test missiles were launched and a few barely-noticeable atomic warheads were detonated.  In the Sixties it supported the Sinister space programme, using the smaller famiy of launch vehicles and then went on hiatus until 1999, when it test-launched the S400.
     Inevitably, because it was a site used to develop and test cutting-edge technology, as much nonsense grew up about Ol' Kap as did about Roswell, and with even less cause.  Bah!

"Look, look!  A flying saucer and a monolith like from 2001!"
<Very loud slapping noise>
"Okay, so it's not.  Buzzkill."

Tanks And Atom Bombs And Zombies - In A Way
You are surely aware by now that Conrad is currently ploughing through the 'Lensman' series of novels by E. E.   <draws out the next bit for maximum suspense> 'Doc' Smith, and you are also hopefully aware that three of the driving forces behind BOOJUM! are 
1) Tanks
2) Atom bombs and
3) Zombies
     In 'First Lensman' our hero Virgil gets shot and wounded, which leads to the scrambling of an entire armoured task force of tanks to come and rescue him.  They ignore little things like right of way, pedestrians or other motorists and proceed to smash down garden walls, tear up lawns, generally drive like maniacs and - it's all perfectly legal.  Art?

Imagine this doing the ton in an urban environment

     There you go, that's tanks and Lensmen for you.  Atom bombs?  Sure, no problem: the Lensmen are based at 'The Hill', a metal-sheathed mountain fortress that comes under attack by the Black Fleet, who mount a sustained and deadly attack with - atom bombs!

x50 or so

     Here an aside.  All the frightful nuclear ordnance mentioned in the novels so far has all been strictly fission-based, since when Doc first wrote his works, and then fixed them up, there hadn't been any thermonuclear, fusion detonations.  It will be interesting to see if this is amended in the later novels ...
   Now, as for zombies - this is a bit of a stretch, but when Our Heroes are captured by Gray Roger in 'Triplanetary', Clio feels her skin crawling as she converses with what looks like a human female  being on the outside, but whom appears to be utterly dead in terms of emotions or expressly human behaviour.  Is that close enough?

Well, he seems happy enough.

     A double trifecta!  How clever am I?  DON'T ANSWER THAT QUESTION!
Finally -
It's a continually-raised question amongst geeks, freaks, nerds, absurds and professors of artificial intelligence and robotic engineering:  namely, "Are robots going to take over the world?"

Just your average London commuters - or are they?!?!

     Don't worry about it, I assure you.  Conrad would never let a load of plastic cyber-bots rise up, enslave the human race and plunder Earth for it's natural resources -
     - because that's MY job.
    Sweet dreams!





*  No capitalisation?

Arnold Judas Rimmer - Space Pioneer!

Again, You'll Have To Stick With Me For A Bit -
This stuff is as tenuous as the Moon's atmosphere.* Okay, I take it you are familiar with that comedy classic "Red Dwarf", probably the only sitcom ever to feature the Esperanto language?  In case you've been living in a Solo-Operated  Concealed Underwater Nuclear Kill-pod at the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean, on a multi-year tour of du - no, hang on, that was Mega-City One, wasn't it?  So it hasn't happened yet - ignore those last paragraphs.

Art!  You're giving the future away!

     Where were we?  Oh yes - 'Red Dwarf'.  It may interest you to know that the eponymous mining ship itself appears to be a model or variety of a Bussard Ramjet.  Art (quickly, change subjects)!

Note the ramscoop

     That big thing at the front is intended to electromagnetically scoop up hydrogen from the depths of outer space, and use it as fuel.  That way you don't need to carry very much with you.  Neat, eh?
     Where were we?
     Oh yes, Arnold J. Rimmer, the butt of everyone's jokes, and deservedly so.  The man is a consummate plonker, with no redeeming features.  None!

Beloathed by all

     "Hang on, Conrad, if he's that much of a bumbletuck, how come he's got that 'Space Pioneer' credit?" I hear you ask.
     Pausing only to wonder that you do not mock or criticise me - are you going soft or just mellow after a realllllly big takeaway? - I shall propound. 

<hang on - quotidian balneomaniacs of epistolarian effulgency> okay, we'll come back to that.

     The relevant bit is that he was a member of the Seventh Day Advent Hoppists (or his parents were, which is close enough for BOOJUM! and our shoddy editorial standards).  They hopped everywhere.  Hop Hop Hop.  Lots of hops.

Art!  You bafoon!  That's twice in one post and you know what that means -
<atom-powered Tazer begins charging>

     If we leap back in time,** to the present day, allow me to introduce a Japanese rocket mission to investigate an asteroid, that rocket being Hayabusa-2 and the asteroid being 162173 Ryugu (as there are so, so many Ryugus out there - er - perhaps).  Art?

"Hay there!"

     That there is the probe itself, which is due to drop several separate instrument packages onto Ryugu from a bus known as 'Minerva'.  The Minerva sub-units are intended to rove about the surface of the asteroid, by - 
     Hopping.
     Yes, that's right.  These 'Rovers' have an internal spun weight that allows them to manoeuvre repeatedly to reposition themselves and take new readings at different locations.  Or, being succint, by hopping.  Art?

Poetry something in motion.

     There is also another larger instrument package called 'Mascot' which is also able to move from it's original placement by hopping - but only the once <sad face>.
     So there you have it:  how the noble and splendid Arnold Judas Rimmer clearly inspired a generation of Japanese sci-fi geeks into becoming space-explorers!
     Of course, I may be over-thinking this a bit ...

"Foundation" By Isaac Asimov
It is many decades since I last read what is probably one of the defining works of Space Opera, and I'm surprised at how chatty it is, with lots of dialogue between folks in between smashing solar systems to bits with miles-long battlecruisers.  Art?

Central mover and shaker Hari Seldon
(Almost as good at predicting the future as Gerry Anderson)

     One thing that strikes me is how casually the cast of characters use what are described as 'atom blasters', which seem to be hand weapons utilising the forces of nuclear fission, and which seem more suited to demolition work instead of anti-personnel use.  If you shoot someone's left hand with an atom blaster, you'd vapourise the whole of that side of their body.  What about their charcoaled radioactive remains?  Or localised fallout?  Or - are the citizens of the First Empire so inured to atomic weaponry that they are practically immune to it?

CAUTION!
Do not use in confined spaces
Do not use within 150 metres of bystanders
Do not use in the proximity of nuclear power plant
Do not aim upwards
Do not aim downwards
Do not use within a moving vehicle, aircraft, ship or submarine***

Wow, what extended wittering will do for you!  Since we are already at count, I would like to leave you with a nice example of bathos, from "The Rockford Files".  Rocky, Jim's dad, is reading some pulp noir thriller entitled "My Gun Is Deadly" and you hear the dialogue echoing in his head.
     Of course Jim gives this short shrift when he comes home to find such dubious subject matter.
     "Oh really?" he opines.  " 'My Gun Is Deadly'?"  and the carries on.  "His gun is deadly - mine is in the cookie jar."
     Kind of sums it up, really.  Chin chin!

CAUTION!
Can be high in sugar and calorific content

*  Yes, there is one, just vanishingly faint.
**  Do you see what - O you do.
***  You get the picture