The Hammer And The Dagger

You Know How It Is

At first you're looking for sausage casserole recipes, and forty minutes later you are reading about deep-sea ore-nodule mining operations.  Thus it was that Your Humble Scribe felt obliged to do a bit of background digging into spaceships, after raising the issue thanks to those bampot conspiracy theorists who believe the Vatican is in league with the Daleks.

     Thus, via footling about on teh Interwebz, we come to Project Icarus, which is an update of the earlier Project Daedalus.  I think we may have covered the latter briefly, a long time ago, so a recap won't hurt.  Art!

Icarus with puny Apollo for scale

     The whole thing was a rigourous theoretical plan to design an interplanetary spaceship, using current or very near-future technology, with strict criteria to keep it plausible.  Visible above, Icarus was a beast of a ship, expected to tip the scales at 50,000 tons and which would need to be assembled in orbit.  It came in two parts - Art!

     The main stage would provide initial acceleration for two years before it was discarded and the second stage took over, accelerating again.  By the time it reached it's destination it would be travelling at 12% of the speed of light, far too fast to decelerate, so it would launch scads of secondary probes to scan the target system and send data back to Stage 2, which would in turn relay the information back to Earth.

     Then we have Project Icarus, a new initiative 30 years after the original.  Art!

     They never came to a concrete conclusion, and seem to have gone through several different design variants before settling back on the original.  For example - Art!

     One thing they did change was the original destination, Barnard's Star, which is now known to be planetless.  Proxima Centauri here we come instead!  

     Okay, we may not have the motivation or money to whip up a quick fusion-powered spaceship just yet; the design is sound and plausible, mind you, and inherently credible.  Giant space-going hammers is what these vessels are (hence today's title). Probably not what you were thinking when Conrad mentioned spaceships, as you have long been raised on a diet of "Starry Trek" and "Space Wars".  

     Which brings us to the other 'Icarus', a spacecraft Your Humble Scribe was quite unfamiliar with, at least in name.  Art!

A rare full-body shot

     Given this particular spaceship's sleek, aerodynamic lines, it must have been launched from the ground, and can manoeuvre back to land that way, too, since streamlining in space is utterly pointless if you're not going to make planetfall.  The ship does have a distinctly daggerlike quality, you have to admit.  It was only ever conceived, however, as a Macguffin to get the astronauts from A to B, so nobody on the design team was thinking "Would the British Interplanetary Society approve?"
     O, I nearly forgot to add - it's from the original (and much better) "Planet Of The Apes".

     No, motley, you cannot watch the film.  Don't want you getting dangerous ideas.

How to train your motley

The Hard Selle

For Lo! we are back to one of the last major battles that the armies of Perfidious Albion fought, as they beat the Teutons back from their defence line of the River Selle.  Art!

     In any river crossing bridges are important, all the more so if the enemy have blown them all up, for you then have to put up new bridges, which is supposed to slow down your advance.  Not really the case in the Second Unpleasantness, when the Royal Engineers could throw up bridges almost faster than they could be destroyed.  Back in the First, Ol' Pete above mentioned a mysterious "RSJ bridge" which baffled me for a short while.  I then realised that 'RSJ' meant "Rolled Steel Joist", a species of girder.  Art!

     Thus he means a metal bridge.  Well now, Conrad has heard of the 'Inglis Bridge', which was invented by one Mister Inglis in the First Unpleasantness, the better to bridge gaps quickly.  Art!

     This is one of the later versions, built especially to accomodate 30 ton tanks.  The earlier models could bridge large spans of water in minutes, although they were usable only by infantry.  When the utility of these structures was realised, the British Army immediately asked Inglis to design more, larger structures (not quite as stupid as painted, hmmm?).  Art!

     Ol' Pete makes no mention of these RSJ bridge's design name, and there isn't an entry in the index for the Inglis, but I remain confident that's what they were.  We need not dwell on the matter any longer, for I have spoken.

More Of Water Features

As mentioned previously, Conrad has come across a Mancunian whose principal passion is industrial archaeology in the Greater Manchester area: Martin Zero.  

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC3fqrmSkFjmkGGBPkoBO1GQ

     That's a link to his channel.  We've already covered the Chew Reservoir's history and construction, and today we're going to look at how it looks today, thanks to snaps I got of his long, long trek up there.  Art!

Spillway

     This is the spillway from the reservoir, where water drains off if there's too much accumulating.  Notice that masonry - nothing broken, nothing missing.

Spillway close-up

     Here's more of the masonry making up the spillway.  The quality of workmanship here is outstanding; the stone may have a coating of lichen or moss or delicious green slime, yet it's as hale as it was when laid down, 110 years ago.

     This is the chamber where the overflow runs into the spillway.  They weren't in any danger, skies were clear and no rain forecast.  Still, you wouldn't get a coward like Conrad doing that!

NOPE!

     This is the 'siphon tunnel' where a giant pipe runs overground.  It is cramped, low, dark, awkward thanks to the pipe, and full of spiders.  That tiny dot of light at the end is the exit.  Which they hoped was not gated shut.

     And it wasn't.  Fortunately, or they'd have had to turn around and go back the way they came.

Finally -

Just to let you know that I am working today <grinds teeth in silent rage> so this is the ONLY post you get to see, you pikers.  Also, to those of you who wondered if I was seething with apocalyptic rage about Codewords, you betcha!  I don't want to go too far over the Compositional Ton, so have a photograph in preparation for a long, ill-tempered screed tomorrow.  Art!

The horror highlighted

     And I think with that we are jolly well done!  Vulnavia, bring me a bucket and release the gin tank's outflow valve.

When Flashing Meant Something Different

Yes Indeed, And You Dirty-Minded Perverts -

NEED TO WASH YOUR FILTHY MINDS OUT!  <ahem>  Okay, back in the Seventies Your Humble Scribe used to have a six-week summer holiday between the end of one school year and the beginning of the next.  This situation applied to the whole of England with only very minor variations.  Consequently there were millions of schoolchildren loitering around the house, because you cannot trust the British weather to be 'summery', especially in summer.

     Enter a clever person at the BBC.  They realise they have a near-captive audience, who are not very discriminating, and whose parents aren't home to ensure their offspring only watch wholesome and educational programs.  Thus we get -

NO SNIGGERING AT THE BACK!

     This was a French historical drama, made in France by the French, which was dubbed into English and split up into 12 brief 22-minute episodes by the BBC, one of which would play every couple of days during the daytime.  The central plot revolved about the Spanish siege of a French castle in 1630; Chevalier De Recci and his manservant are sent from the castle to request a relief from the French army, pursued by Spanish soldiers and agents.  They are racing against time, since the Spanish want to storm the castle before a ceasefire is negotiated.  Art!

The Chev and his mate

     Interestingly enough, the opening scenes for the siege were supposedly at the castle of "Casal", which, if Art can put down his drink of diesel -

Bit of a fixer-upper

     That's the year, not half-past four in the afternoon.  You see, the castle is actually the Chateau Gaillard!  Yes, I thought that would impress you, and it is a - sorry, what's that?  You've no idea what I'm talking about?  Shocking!  Art?

     It was constructed late in the twelfth century on the orders of Richard The Lionheart, being big, complex and expensive; he called it his "Saucy Castle".  There, now you know more than you did five minutes ago.

Not really what we were after, Art.

Darwin Runners-Up

Conrad was perusing some horrifying yet hilarious tales on a Youtube Reddit about spectacular violations of health and safety regulations; people don't seem to realise that H & S regs are there for a reason, because toxic, explosive, massive, incredibly sharp, red-hot or all five combined together in industrial equipment are - let's belabour the point here - DANGEROUS.  Art!

     This is an industrial-sized cardboard compactor.  Loose cardboard gets put in the port side of the equipment, until it either reaches sufficient mass to operate or an employee triggers the operation, and a tidily-compacted and bundled bale of compressed cardboard comes out the other side.  I don't see an emergency "Off" button but can guarantee there is one.  Probably on the other side.

     Okay, the DA aspirant in this story had been tasked with spray-gluing a sign on the side of the compactor that sternly warned against anyone getting into the machine, because of that weight trigger.  Our genius sticks the sign on, puts his spray glue on top of the compactor, and it falls inside.

     You are probably waaaaay ahead of me here.  Yes, he promptly jumped inside to retrieve the can, thus causing the compactor to begin compacting.  He was saved from being crushed into a layer 3 inches thick by a person who just happened to be passing by.

     As they say, you cannot cure stupid.

But you can cure concrete!

Last Night I Picked Up A Couple Of Names

One was definitely from Christopher Fowler over on Twitter, and Your Humble Artisan is unsure where or how he picked up the name "Erik Wilson".  The context makes me believe he's an artist, and whilst stooging about teh Interwebz this afternoon, I checked him out.  And guess what I found!  Art?

     There you go, lower starboard.  Conrad has no idea who the other people are - artists of some description I venture - but may check them out at a later date.  The poster is from "Printed In Blood", a website I've never heard of before.  As you can see, they are screening "The Thing" in a 70mm version, and booking your ticket also gets you a bag of swag.  Art!

     I can't see any prices*.  You can bet with the kind of ephemera offered above it won't be cheap.  Still, if you happen to live in South Canada and are anywhere near Portland in October ...

Clover Field

No!  Nothing to do with monsters.  Rather, this is the product of another Reddit thread, this one being to do with neighbours who hate each other, and the results.  So, we have Neighbour A, whose lawn is an utterly immaculate expanse of exquisitely manicured grass, without flaw or blemish.  Neighbour A lives and breathes only for his lawn.

     Then we have Neighbour B, who puts as little effort into his garden as possible.  Neighbour A will call the police if Neighbour B's leaves or twigs get blown onto his - excuse me - His Lawn.  This goes on for ages until Neighbour B decides revenge is in order.  He deliberately plants clover in his garden, so that when they flower, all the seeds will get blown onto Neighbour A's garden, and to leave nothing to chance, he hires an industrial fan to speed the process.

Heh

     Of course we cannot condone such wilful behaviour, even if we do have a certain sneaking regard for it.

Finally -

Conrad has been bigging-up the Free French/Fighting French of late, and feels it necessary to point out that cruel jokes about their inability to fight completely ignore that minor sticking point we call the First Unpleasantness.  It is a real possibility, say pundits with more and better information than I, that during the Battle of the Frontiers when the Teutons invaded in 1914, the French suffered more casualties on one day than Perfidious Albion did on 01/07/1916.  This is an assertion, not a fact; it does give you an idea of what the French were doing from Day One of the conflict.

The Hairy Ones advance

     Jumping forward a few years, the canard "French rifle for sale; never fired, dropped once" is an hilarious allusion to France's being overwhelmed by the Teutons, implying that the Gallic chicken carrying it surrendered at the earliest opportunity.  In fact the campaign continued for weeks after Dunkirk, with the Teutons having to advance and attack south against the remaining French armies, who were learning on the job about how to deal with blitzkrieg attacks.  Principally they adopted a 'hedgehog' formation that was highly effective in slowing down the Teutons and causing lots of casualties.  If they had begun the war in this fashion they might very well have held their foes to a stalemate.  But of course that doesn't make for a funny meme.

     Gosh that was serious.  Quick, nurse, a tray of pistachios for the patient!

*  A little digging reveals the Artbook going for about £30 (O alright $38.99)

The Vatican; It Can Indeed!

"But Conrad,"I Hear You Quibble, "What About That Injunction On Religion?"

Fear not, gentle readers, the injunction remains in place.  No, this Intro concerns a little-known division of the Vatican that deals with - <drum roll> Art!

ASTRONOMY!

     I bet you never expected to see that as a juxtaposition, did you?  We have tiptoed around this subject before, as it came up as part of a staggeringly stupid conspiracy theory. Let's poke an endoscope down the rabbit-hole and see where it leads, shall we?

     Okay, as you may or may not be aware, the Vatican is part of the Roman Catholic church, which is regarded with frothing hatred by extremist evangelicals, who are convinced that i) it is anti-Christian and ii) it is trying to find an alien whom they can present to the world and thus take over.  Their search for alien life is being conducted by a telescope dubbed LUCIFER (nudge nudge wink wink these incipient world dictators are pretty stupid, what?).  

     This, I deem, is proof that only the Universe and human stupidity are infinite.  Art!

     This is the Vatican Advanced Technology Telescope, situated in the hills of Arizona, far from any light source that might bother their sensitive instruments.  Note that it is i) not called LUCIFER and ii) it is still not called LUCIFER.  The staff there are all Catholic priests as well as professional astronomers, and they tend to do long term astronomical research, because unlike their academic counterparts, they don't have to worry about research grants and funding.  Art!

That VATT

     The VATT is an impressive telescope in it's own right; however, it is not remotely capable of detecting alien life on a distant exoplanet; even the soon to be launched cutting-edge James Webb Space Telescope will have trouble managing this and it may take until 2050 to get an orbital telescope capable of achieving this feat.  None of these conspiranoid LUCIFER-loonwaffles have explained how said aliens are going to be communicated with, let alone transported to Earth.  Proxima Centauri is our nearest stellar neighbour and a reply to a message sent would take eight and a half years to arrive.  If it was Tau Ceti, then you're talking 22 years.  

"Thank you for travelling Vatican Spaceways and for being patient on our 257-year long journey.  Fasten seatbelts and secure helmets."

And From The Lofty Heights Of Space -

I do apologise for not keeping you up to date on the viewing figures for that combination train-wreck and dumpster-fire "Batwoman", and can only plead in my defence that plotting world domination eats up a lot of my spare time.

     ANYWAY From the lofty heights of space, to the nadir of BW's viewing figures.  I can get you a screenshot of the two most recent episodes.  Art!

     Those figures in Column Six are the viewers, in hundreds of thousands.  As you can see, the viewers rose very suspiciously on April 18; Az (reviewer on "Heels Versus Babyface") suspects there was a Twitter campaign to boost numbers, which has rather backfired, as the more recent figure of 426,000 is the lowest ever for the series.  And CW, the channel who make it, have announced that this season is to get five extra episodes, though one wonders how many will be watching by the end.  One also has to feel for Az, who endures and suffers horribly watching these episodes so we don't need to.  His theory is that these five new episodes might be instead of the threatened Season Three, and that the show will be allowed to quietly die.

Hatwoman

Whither The Weather

Your Humble Scribe came across an "Insider" video on Youtube, featuring meteorologist David Yeomans, who took a long and scientific look at a whole swathe of disaster films, pointing out what was correct and what was howlingly inaccurate.  First up was "The Day After Tomorrow" and Conrad took a photograph of one particularly dramatic scene.  Art!

Ignore the reflection!  Ignore the reflection!

     This scene is simply not possible due to the weather conditions in Los Angeles.  For a tornado to form the air needs to be warm and moist, and also in motion; the air in Los Angeles at ground level is cool and stable.  There have been a few, very weak tornadoes in the city previously, and never more than one at a time.  So: the scene looks epic but is never going to happen.

     The news channel helicopter in the air is actually realistic; news organisations do send out choppers to follow and film tornadoes, presumably on impressive danger pay whilst also being heavily-insured.

     Conrad prefers a safer distance, just to be on the safe side.  Five miles ought to do it.

Playing Bridge

Okay, I cheated, this is nothing to do with the card game.  No, what I refer to is the construction of engineering structures to allow passage over water obstacles - bridging.  I mention this because I am at that point in "The Battle Of The Selle" where the Third and Fourth Armies of Perfidious Albion have pushed the Teutons back from the line of the Selle River.  This is in mid- to late October, where the use of elaborate trench systems protected by acres of barbed wire, concrete bunkers and pillboxes and elaborate logistical networks have all gone bye-bye.  The Teutons make use of river lines as defences, making sure to have blown all the bridges first, making it even harder to cross.

     Enter the mighty WELDON TRESTLE BRIDGE!  Art?

     I think the lower placed picture was taken in Mesopotamia, judging from the solar topee, flat landscape and very wide river.  The Weldon Trestle Bridge was used by the Royal Engineers to cross the Selle, once the pesky Teuton machine-gunners had been sufficiently displaced.  The process only took a few hours and reduced the discomfiture of blown bridges to a mild inconvenience.

Finally -

The jigsaw is manifesting itself pretty well, although I have now come to the hardest part, with large parts of indistiguishable blue, white or pink pieces to add.  Art!

     This is resolved by simply trying a piece of a particular colour to see if it fits, until you get one that does, rinse and repeat.  

"The French Are Cowards"? Hold My Bir!

NO!  That Is Not A Spelling Mistake

If you were here present as Conrad balefully hammers his keyboard into submission, then you would witness his eyes narrowing with either a maleficent squint or a migraine.  Probably the former.  Possibly both.  No, I have not mis-spelled "Beer", although the two words are pronounced the same.

     For Lo! we are back with "The War Illustrated" and it's contemporary coverage of the Battle of Gazala.  The photographs are frankly rather poor quality, often being retouched via the negative and some end up more like a painting than anything coming from a camera.  Wartime expediency, one supposes, and also being nearly 80 years old.  Art!

     These are the Free French Brigade members at Bir Hakeim, and at top port you have some of the hard-bitten French Foreign Legion (which ironically contained a fair few German left-wing refugees from Herr Schickelgruber's repellent regime).  Top starboard are black soldiers from either Chad, Mali or Cote D'Ivoire who probably confounded some racial theories amongst the Teuton attackers.  At centre is a 75mm anti-tank gun and crew, at lower port is Susan Travers, a British lady who served in the French Foreign Legion as a nurse and ambulance driver, mistress to General Koenig the French commander at BH and later on as an anti-tank gunner*.  And at bottom starboard we have the ubiquitous French 25 mm (sorry for the metric) anti-tank gun with a party of "Fusiliers Marins", French Marines, who must be wondering why they are serving in the middle of a desert.  Art!

     Of course there's not a lot left of it.  The Teutons and Italians were unkind to it with bombs and shells, and the desert is harsh and unkind.

     ANYWAY the fort was also defended by 50,000 mines and everyone there had a burrowed funk-hole to hide in.  The defenders knew where lanes through the minefields existed, and would come out to raid the Axis supply convoys that travelled south of the fort, trying to get round this southernmost part of the British line.  This left Rommel feeling unloved and under-supplied, because he had planned for the fort to get over-run on the first day.  The Free French did not agree with this and sent their Italian attackers packing, with many rude Gallic insults hurled at parties sent to negotiate surrender.  Art!

Under New Management

     To cut a long story short, the FF stood off all the Axis attacks, which included incessant dive-bombing and artillery bombardments as well as infantry assaults, for two weeks.  By then, their original 3,700 had dwindled to 2,600, so they were effectively outnumbered by fourteen to one; all their ammunition bar a small supply of small arms ammo had gone; and the Teutons and Italians were poised to storm the fort.

     So they withdrew.  "Withdrew", because you were literally taking your life in your hand in the bars and restaurants of Cairo afterwards if you use the word "Retreat" in front of the FF - who were now the "Fighting French".  Alan Moorehead, the Australian author of that most excellent work "The Desert War", described how he nearly got stabbed by an enraged FF soldier when on the subject of BH.

Alan unpunctured.
(Though looking a little cocky, frankly)

     You could write a book about Bir Hakeim, and indeed Richard Holmes did, which I have lying around here somewhere.  You now have a bit of ammunition against those who hold forth about "Cheese-eating surrender monkeys".

     The motley and I are now going to indulge in a little Blindfold Trampolining, back in a minute!

 - maybe a little longer

Hoorah!

Good news for Conrad today.  So good, in fact, that I went and got a bottle of Prosecco in modest celebration, in order to merge in with the rest of you Hom. Sap. Art!

The bottle in question

     Yes, as my annual bonus I got five gallons of fresh human blood AND enough plutonium to build two 5 kiloton warheads, which is jolly handy as The Mansion's atomic arsenal was looking pretty ropey.  Since Your Haemovorous Scribe only expected a pint or two of plasma and a pound of radium, this is all good news.  There was also a free Seasoning Ticket to Manchester In The City (spelling?) which made a good blotting pad when I spilled some tea.  I weep for the spilt tea; a ticket for salt and pepper isn't worth bothering about.

Nuclear weapons are big and scary. Have a cuddly bunny instead**.

Like A Violent Eruption

Well, that's being a bit dramatic.  What Conrad refers to is the tendency of his mind to throw up mental detritus, as a volcanic crater hurls molten magma to the four corners of the compass, yet with considerably less reason.

     Today's mystery word, pilgrims, is "Chimborazo".  This has been echoing around my cranium for a couple of days now, so I finally bit the bullet and Googled it and  - good Lord aloft, it's a real thing!  Art!

Kind of a Hulkier Mount Fuji

     It's an inactive volcano - that snow covering probably gives away the "extinct" bit - in Ecuador, that imaginatively-named country which lies on the equator, whose bestowers came from the "It's New Found Land Therefore We Shall Call It Newfoundland" school of thought.  Art!

     Note that "inactive" part, since the vulcanologists amongst us reckon that it erupts once every 1,000 years, and the last time it blew it's top was 1,400 years ago.  Yellowstone Syndrome ...

Finally -

Conrad has been peripherally aware of the James Webb Space Telescope, which has been under construction for what feels like several decades, so frequently have dates been slipping into the future - hey you know what, that sounds like a lyric from 

     ANYWAY as I was saying, the whole farrago is intended to launch on, of all dates, Halloween 2021, which sounds kinda like an inverted April Fool's joke.  Note that Conrad is making all these jokes long before JWST launches, because once it is spanning the heavens, it will be a quantum level beyond even the Hubble.  And you may recall comedians making hilarious quips about one of the HST's cameras not functioning properly when it was launched.  You probably don't, the error was fixed by space-walking astronauts working from the Shuttle, and - who were these 'comedians' again?

JWST with puny humans for scale

     Are we done with that?  Let me check.  Yes!  Yes we jolly well are!  Chin chin, chaps, make it 'definite' and not 'perhaps'.  

*  One feels she is a bit of an over-achiever, what?

**  "Cuddly" as defined by Conrad.  Your views may vary.  But they're not important because - once again - whose blog is it?