Okay, Vorga, I Forgive You

There You Go

And a sci-fi classic never gets off the first page.  You see?  You see how all drama revolves around conflict?  Conrad once got a sci-fi novel from the library, a good many years ago, and stopped reading it after a hundred pages of nothing happening; it was so dull I cannot remember the author or title.  Then there was that supposed 'murder mystery' where the murder is discovered on page one, and then - again! - nothing happens for another ninety-nine pages.  Another library book I gave up on.  I think it had 'London' in the title.  London! Art -

London in Victorian times

     How many of Dickens' novels were set in London?  With this city as a backdrop you have to work hard to create something dull and listless.  Hmmm maybe the murder-mystery ("How did this book ever get published!") was set in New York - which is like London, except with a lot more guns.

     ANYWAY allow me to add in a couple of pictures from my shopping expedition to Gomorrah-on-the-Irwell yesteryon.  Art!

     Your Humble Scribe has never actually seen the whole of "Ben Hur" before, probably because when it was on television way back in his youth, he lacked the attention-span to manage it.  214 minutes long, you know.  Another reason for purchasing it is to see what matte work was done on it, because there has to be at least a few glass paintings involved in an epic like this.  I shall report back on my findings, gentle readers.

"Ben did not enjoy his Mediterranean cruise"

     And Conrad enjoyed "Ad Astra" precisely because it was bleak and chilly.  We shall see how it holds up on the small screen.

     The girl on the till at Oxfam asked me what "Sir Nigel" was about, so I tried to give her a potted account; it's a prequel to "The White Company", which was about English mercenaries fighting in Spain against the French in the thirteenth century (ah, some enmities have a long pedigree!).  SN is about his earlier exploits.  Darling Daughter may have another work winging her way when I finish it.  Art!

 - when spilling a man's drink could have serious consequences

     "Hard Times" is refreshingly brief, for a Dickens.  The sales girl said she liked Dickens as well, and I said yes I did too (or why would I be buying the novel?) but his stuff is usually three inches thick ("Bleak House" I am looking at you).  HT is only barely one inch thick.  I do remember being told that Coketown, a Victorian vision of Hades, was based on -

Preston!

    Conrad unsure of the veracity of this statement.  I will let you know if further reading uncovers more corroboration.

     That's not all the haul.  O noes!  Art!

     You shouldn't need any introduction to Judge Dredd; you know, lawman of the future, almost humourless, frequently accused of fascism, getting on in years but still tough as varnished teak - 

     ANYWAY Conrad had been studying the 'Vintage Films' section in Fopp! since charity shops never have anything dated pre-1990, and he noticed one title "The Heart Is A Lonely Hunter", which sounds fantastic but tells you absolutely nothing about the film.  What is the stand-out story in "Control"?  Why none other than "The Heart Is A Lonely Klegg Hunter" which is hilarious.  Art!

The Sensitive Klegg

     The irony is that the Kleggs were a race of vicious, carnivorous alien reptilicanoids*, used by the insane Judge Cal to occupy, oppress and occasionally  eat the population of Mega-City One.  Sensitive, however, does not eat meat, is very polite and well-mannered, and counts Judge Dredd as a friend acquaintance person he helped once.  Of course, everyone assumes the worst - and it has grammatical analyses!

Kleggs: the shockingly unsensitive variety

     You shouldn't need an introduction to Hellboy, either.  This is one of a series of comic shorts dating from post-Second Unpleasantness, well before the - well, let us avoid spoilers.

     And Your Humble Scribe binge-read the complete "Y - The Last Man" yesteryon.  I confess I cheated and looked at the ending when I encountered a volume in the library; which made no sense at all, because you need to read what came before.  Art!

A man and his monkey

     Wow, that was an Intro and then some.  Motley, man the Magma Moat, for I hear the sinister sound of steam locomotives!

Real-World Physics Versus Zombies

Conrad enjoyed "Army Of The Dead" for what it was, a B-movie with a whacking big budget that you cannot pause to look at with a critical eye, lest the plot holes become apparent.  Let us take the opening AND THERE BE SPOILERS AHEAD JIM LAD, ARRR!

Sorry, no idea why I came over all Robert Newton there.

SPOILERS BY GUM!

Hmmm no idea why Bertie Wooster there, either.

ANYWAY at the very beginning of the film we have a zombie escaping from it's transport, because the container fell off a truck.  I think somebody underbid on the construction contract for that.  You can tell this bit needed to be glossed over as there are NO PICTURES on teh Interwebz, bar the one below that's about six minutes in.

     Well, the soldiers escorting the convoy blast away at Zombie Zero, who is entirely unaffected.  When we see him above, there are no bullet wounds at all.  Hmmm.  If someone unloads twenty or thirty rounds into you at point blank range, it would cut you in two, and knock you bottom-over-teakettle to boot.  'Ah, but - Zombie Physics!' say the scriptwriters. 

Smarter than the scriptwriters

     There are two survivors, one with an injured leg, whom immediately ABANDON THEIR PERFECTLY SOUND VEHICLE and start hobbling away.  It does not end well for them.  Because a zombie whose been bashed about a giant metal box, then riddled by gunfire, is OF COURSE far quicker than either of them, and must have hearing better than a hunting hound as well.

     I shall call a halt here, lest the next one thousand words are all about AOTD.  Next!

Picture Of A Despondent Dog

Edna knows how to look like the most miserable, downtrodden and neglected dog in the world - I believe this is a raw natural talent that all domesticated wolves have - whenever there is the remotest chance of food being in the offing.  Thus we have - Art!

     She did get to lick the plate later, so don't be fooled.

Finally -

Hmmm well, posting this a lot earlier than usual, so there is the possibility of madame above getting a walk in before Conrad trots down to Royton to see what's in the remaindered chiller.  Getting fresh air would be welcome, it's horribly clammy and fuggy in The Mansion today, without even the benefit of blue skies.  British Autumn weather, I say!

*  If this wasn't a word before, it is now.

Vorga, I Kill You Deadly!

Apropos Of Nothing, Really

If you are unaware of this phrase's origins, THEN THE EXIT DOOR IS THAT WAY!

     Less combatively, it's a quote from Gully Foyle, the anti-hero at the centre of "The Stars My Destination/Tiger! Tiger!" by Alfred Bester, which is unarguably one of sci-fi's greatest classics (even if it is "The Count Of Monte Cristo" with the serial numbers filed off).  It popped up in my head the way words and phrases do, hence today's title.  Art!

ANYWAY a list of links is all you're going to get today, so be grateful that you're getting even this much, because other concerns are calling me.  So, without further prevarication -

2020

https://comsatangel2002.blogspot.com/2020/06/pigeons-from-hell-rabbits-from-hades.html

2019

https://comsatangel2002.blogspot.com/2019/06/aha.html

2018

https://comsatangel2002.blogspot.com/2018/06/pinkys-question.html

2017

https://comsatangel2002.blogspot.com/2017/06/a-new-map-of-hell.html

2016

https://comsatangel2002.blogspot.com/2016/06/you-aint-nothin-but.html

2015

https://comsatangel2002.blogspot.com/2015/06/acerbic-horologist-meets-undead.html

2014

https://comsatangel2002.blogspot.com/2014/06/at-loose-end.html

     I did not make the mistake of accidentally reading any of these.  A narrow escape for all concerned.

More Dam Yankees

I Have Used This Title Before

In case your memory stretches back to March 2020, when we were looking at the Oroville Dam as it's spillway collapsed, whilst the emergency spillway had long since eroded into chaos.

     Well, now we're looking at a completely different dam, and a dam collapse that I'd not heard of before, despite a worrying interest in large hydrographic structures collapsing.  This, if I may, is a brief item about the Auburn Cofferdam collapse.  I apologise for the picture quality, since they are from a video tape of 1986 sophistication, which is to say, not very.  Art!

     That straight white line running at a slant from port to starboard is the top of the cofferdam itself, and behind you can see the level of the reservoir, which barely has any water in it.  To port at mid-centre you can see a spillway, right next to that bendy road.  The cofferdam was intended to keep the waters of the American River back whilst a permanent concrete dam was constructed, and a diversion tunnel was bored into the rock on the north side of the cofferdam, leading to a discharge point well downstream, to carry away the reservoir water whilst the concrete dam was built.

     It's important to note that the cofferdam (hereafter "CFD") wasn't a permanent structure and was designed to fail in stages were water levels to rise excessively high.

     Did they rise excessively high?  Of course they did, or we'd not have a story!  Major flooding thanks to rain and meltwater from the Sierra Nevada began flowing into the Auburn reservoir on 18/02/1986.  Art!

     You can see how high the water in the reservoir is, and how it has begun to flow down the spillway and erode it.  The idea is to gradually release water, not have it breach the CFD and abruptly destroy it.  Art!

     The upper picture here shows the diversion pipe positively and enthusiastically gouting forth torrents of floodwater.  The second picture shows how much water has flowed out of the reservoir, where levels can be seen to be decreasing.  Art!

     These pictures are the "After", viewed from downstream looking upstream and from the west side of the dam.  It's plainly obvious that half the CFD has been eroded away and very little water remains in the reservoir, at which point you might throw your hands in the air and exclaim "What a disaster!"

     WRONG!

     The Auburn CFD was designed to fail progressively, meaning that it still controlled the flow of water downstream, instead of allowing a tsunami of floodwater to travel like a ten million-ton battering ram*.  This is important because, one mile below the CFD - Art!

     - stands Folsom Dam, managing the water flow for the city of Sacramento and it's half-a-million citizens.  Thanks to the Auburn CFD's gradual collapse over nine hours, Folsom was able to manage the water flow without being overtopped; even if it was a little close-run at times.

     The ironic ending is that a permanent concrete dam at Auburn is vanishingly unlikely, due to the ruinous cost and the discovery that it would sit unpleasantly close to an earthquake fault.  Sorry, Auburn.

I think Art needs new glasses.
Or a bit of Tazering**.

"Around The World Under The Sea"

No, nothing to do with Jules Verne, even if there may be a touch of his DNA about this film's parentage.

     You see, Conrad was idly wondering and pondering yesteryon:"What's that film about a submarine anti-volcano mission with David McCallum?" because it's stuck with me all these decades (at least four) after seeing it once on television.  A touch of Google-jitsu and - Hay Pesto!  Art!

     I think there were giant eels, but what sticks with me was a vertically-mounted chessboard, adhering to one of the submarine's walls - because that's a more efficient use of space than having it sit horizontally, taking up needless space.  Art!

Hmmm, breaking the fourth wall, are we?

     Despite looking at a lot of stills, Conrad cannot find any with that chessboard in shot.  Sorry about that.

Well Well GET YOUR TEETH OUT OF MY BEHIND!

Conrad has cued-up "We Have Ways", to see what Al and Jim are pontificating about today, it being Thursday and their second podcast of the week, and - what are they hob-nobbing about today? - why 'Operation Chastise', that's what.

     What?  That means nothing to you?  Guy Gibson?  617 Squadron?  THE DAMBUSTERS?

That'll need more than putty to fix.

     Trust the Coincidence Hydra to come sneaking in when our attention is diverted, listening for the ever-present threat of infiltrating steam locomotives -

     ANYWAY I have discovered I cannot type these words of wit, wisdom and wonder and listen to "We Have Ways", so any denouement will have to await.

I also have some bites to attend to

O Go On

I've been good so far, up until now, but my Inner Rage can no longer be denied, so we are going to resort to CODEWORD COMPILATION COMPLAINING! in a return to form.  These are from days ago, since they'd run out of MEN at the supermarket yesteryon.  Let us proceed.

"STYMIES":  Conrad was originally going to vent volcanically about how we don't need any more South Canadian slang imported, ta very much, when he checked in the Collins Concise (always conveniently close to hand).  Apparently this is a golfing term, used to describe a situation where an opponent's (right word? not up on golf jargon at all) ball - stop me if I get too technical - is between your ball and the 'hole'.

     WHAT ARE WE EXPERTS IN THE DULLEST SPORT IMAGINABLE NOW?  ARE WE?  ARE WE!

     Bah.

I hope you hit it and BOTH explode.

"ANIMA": What?  After consulting my Collins Concise, this is a term from Jungian psychology, used to  -

     You know what?  I DON'T CARE!  JUNGIAN PSYCHOLOGICAL TERMS?  ARE YOU DOG BUNS JOKING! <pauses to let blood pressure lower>

Analyse this.

"BRIO": This is a musical term, isn't it?  About bashing away at the keyboard with lump hammers or similar.  Even if it wasn't, Your Humble Scribe has now decided that what it is.  'Con Brio' in musical terms now means 'Hit the keyboard with a pair of hammers as hard as you can.'

Halfway there!

     And, with that, we, like the joint, are done.

*  Sorry, can't be bothered to work out mass accurately.

**  Or both!

Don't Drop The China

Ha!  Sometimes I Amuse Even Myself

Not today, however.  Okay, we'll get to the Delft in due course.  Patience.  Lest you become some.

     Anyway, you recall yesteryon, where Conrad was blathering on about an amateur astronomer's suggested bundle of speculative technology, which when constituted as a starship, would allow humans to reach Alpha Centauri within 20 years?  Solar One, he called it.  Lasers were a big part of the onboard systems, being used to both clear a path through space, and provide additional boost behind.  Art!

This is not helpful, Art.

     Conrad suspects that the overall acceleration imparted by lasers in the kilowatt range is not very large, so they have to fire for years and years.

     There is an alternative, given that Solar One is supposed to have a solar sail one mile square.  Nominally, this would pick up the charged particles of the solar wind, which provide a tiny yet ceaseless acceleration (for FREE!) that becomes significant thanks to the sheer surface area of the sails.  Art!

     That above is Lightsail 2, which was able to change the orbit of a small satellite using the solar wind alone as a power source.  It was only 30 yards square, so since Solar One's sail is over one thousand times bigger, you can see the potential for (did I mention FREE?) acceleration.

     There is a problem, which I'm sure you've already spotted; the further you get from the Sun, the more attenuated the solar wind becomes <sad face>.  One solution is to put an array of lasers into orbit, which can then illuminate the sail and provide acceleration that way.  This would, of course - obviously! - be incredibly complex and expensive and time-consuming.  Already I know your fervid imagination is casting around for a solution, and coming up with ground-based lasers instead, which would be a heck of a lot cheaper to build and operate.

     Ah yes.  But.  Atmosphere.  This, don't you know, is not good news for the 100 million laser propulsion system postulated by some Australian boffins.  Except they propose to combat atmospheric distortion by pre-distorting their laser battery, which will then be un-distorted by the atmosphere.  How canny!  Art!

     Their proposed starship design is a lot flimsier than Solar One, being unmanned to boot, but would still get there in approximately the same time - 20 years.  Wouldn't it be fun to have both try and get there and see who wins*!

      Motley!  Spread this tin-foil across your rump and we'll see how far we can project you with this industrial cutting laser.  O don't whine, here's a crash helmet.

The Second Taiwan Straits Crisis

Your Humble Scribe alluded to this yesteryon, it being a crisis I'd never heard of before.  So a little Wiki-ing later I discovered that it was a clash at sea and in the air, between the Populous Dictatorship and Taiwan (I don't have a witty nickname for them yet), principally over - er - Dongding Island.  I'm not making this up!  Art!

The Populous Dictatorship and Taiwan

     The thing is, Dongding island is only 8 miles from the Pops shoreline, and three times that far from Taiwan.  This has led the Pops to grind their teeth in hatred and frustration, until in 1958 we got the Second Taiwan Straits Crisis.  The Taiwanese were prevented from sending reinforcements to the island, but the Pop's small landing force was beaten off decisively.  Aerial combat then began, with Taiwanese fighter pilots having a distinct edge over their rivals thanks to some S<coughcough>ian air-to-air missiles that appeared as if from nowhere.  Art!

     Counsel in South Canada then began to ponder what to do if the Pops decided to mount an amphibious invasion of Taiwan, and their immediate and eagleish (which is like hawkish but more so) response was to wheel on the nukes straight away.  No messing about, tactical nuclear strikes on the Pops airbases and ports from the get-go, and if that didn't stop them, then it was the big nukes all along the eastern seaboard -

     Fortunately Ike, the POTUS at the time, had experience of what total war leads to - it was called World War Two, you may have heard of it - and politely demurred.  It took a couple of month until things cooled down.

     Mind you, that was over sixty years ago now.  One wonders what the Pops are planning now that they have an aircraft carrier ...

"O a life on the ocean wave,
Can lead to a watery grave -"

From Grim To Whim

Let us now revert to some light and airy nonsense, as a welcome relief from the heavy hands of horrid history.  To wit, a bit of Heath Robinson.  Art!

     I've not seen this one before.  I nicked it from an article in "Engineering & Technology", where they wonder if this would work in real life.  Conrad suspects only if everyone sat down and got up simultaneously, or you risk transmitting energy through what seems to be a giant spring waiting to be sprung.  And you'd have to move extremely slowly to get your food, or risk it leaping off the table into Aunt Gertrude's lap.

Mojito Jo

That's me.  Your Humble Scribe remembers having a deliciously sharp and refreshing mojito or two when on cruises a good few years ago.  So this afternoon I dug out the recipe, the only element of which The Mansion lacks is fresh mint.  Since this evening was the weekly shop I remedied this deficiency, but will have to wait until Friday evening to conjure one up - no booze on a school night, don't you know.  The fridge might be redolent of Moroccan mint by then, which is fine by me.

     

     Three days and counting of no shrieking expostulations about Codewords.  I'm doing so well.  How long can I last?

Finally -

Your Humble Scribe has conceived an interest in the Signals Corps of Perfidious Albion during the Second Unpleasantness, and enquired if anyone within the Society had works they could recommend on this subject?

     Hmmm not really, try the IWM was a suggestion.

     Bah! I thought.  I shall dig around myself.  And I did.  Art!

     Hmmmm it looked to be what I was after, but at £62 for the sole edition on Abebooks, that also required a chiselling £53 p & p from South Canada (when it ought to cost £10 at most) - Conrad can wait.

     And with that we are done!

*  Hey, astronomers would find it interesting.

Fireball XL 5,000

Greetings, Earthlets!

Er - I mean fellow humans.  Yeah, humans.  That's what I meant.  Okay, this is probably going to be a bit of a long Intro, so I'd better begin by explaining the title, as just whom amongst you is familiar with futurologist Gerry Anderson's Sixties classics is a moot point.  What I'd like to get is a Mike Noble illustration, because his artwork was masterly in it's clean lines and attention to detail.  Art!

A thing of beauty

     Yes indeed, except this was how the past saw the future of spacetravel.  Our present has a different perspective, as exemplified in the suggestion from one Alberto Caballero, an amateur who has proposed marrying-up speculative technology into a spacecraft (can't really call it a 'ship') that will whiz it's merry way to Alpha Centauri at over one-fifth of the speed of light.  Art!  Picture!

"Solar One"

     Rather gauzier than XL5.  I cannot find a decent picture of the whole thing, unless I pinch one from 'Popular Mechanics', as there don't appear to be any others lying around on teh Interwebz.  Art, again!

     Most of the acceleration would come through the use of a solar sail one mile square, so no thinking small here.  This technology has already been designed, although nobody seems to have actually trialled it in orbit; NASA had a design called 'Sunjammer' after the Arthur C. Clarke short story, but chickened out of deploying it.  So this part is feasible.

     Rather less feasible and still conjectural is the 'Compact Fusion Reactor' that is supposed to supply power to Solar One, because this is still on the drawing board.  The South Canadian Navy, of all institutions, filed a patent for a working fusion reactor, two years ago.  Nobody has yet built one, and a patent is no guarantee the thing will work anyway, and the Europeans may get there first thanks to M.A.S.T.  Regardless of whom gets there first, this isn't going to happen for years if not decades.  Art!

"Ten Years Before The M.A.S.T.*"

     Then there are the lasers ...  These are again more conceptual than actual, although they are achievable.  The idea is to have a laser barrage ahead of Solar One, vapourising any spatial debris that could damage the vessel, which would also be used as a braking mechanism once closing in on Alpha Centauri.  Another battery of lasers at the rear (the stern?) would provide additional acceleration.  Art!

Ha!  Take that, rock!

     Finally, Arturo really eggs the pudding with the use of a Bussard ramscoop at the bow of Solar One, because not only have we never built one of these, we have no idea how to build one, or even if it's feasible.  A ramscoop, the theory goes, uses electromagnetic fields to capture molecules in the vastness of space, and - well, scoop them up, using them as fuel.  Quite how they become fuel is only vaguely addressed.  Art!

Bussard ramscoop in artistically-rendered action

     Since the CFR is already providing energy, the ramscoop might be considered only an auxiliary.  At any rate, building a functional one is a long way off.

     Then there's the claim that Solar One will get up to a speed of 0.22 of the speed of light, which is an incredible velocity for anything staffed by a human crew to achieve.  It would have to be done incrementally; squishy human meat bags do not take well to abrupt accelerations.  The vessel would need to be able to decelerate, too, otherwise it would simply go waltzing past Alpha Centauri, and I bet it has an enormous turning circle.  Art!

Tourist's destination

     Will this vessel ever cross interplanetary space?   Hmmm Conrad inclines to the sceptical.  I am prepared to be proven wrong in the next 50 years, so get back to me if it happens.

From The Heavens To The Depths

Yes indeed, from touching starshine to guzzling wine.  Conrad read, with some incredulity, an account of a Darwin Award winner wannabe, and even came up with a few poor-quality snaps of the event.

     Okay, Gabriel was desperate for alcohol. DESPERATE.  Whilst driving along in only his boxers, he passed a tanker carrying wine in bulk, and was stricken with wild inspiration.  He put on his hazard flashers (a state he was not far from) and had the tanker pull over.  Art!

     The driver, who feared he had an undiagnosed mechanical problem, decided Gabriel's undiagnosed mental problem was best left to medical professionals and drove off. Gabriel was having none of this.  Abandoning his car (DESPERATE, remember?) he jumped on the back of the tanker - Art!

     - and then, still wearing only his underwear, clambered underneath the tanker, which was by then travelling at over fifty miles per hour.  Art!

     That's Gabe, disappearing under the tanker.  He then unscrewed a valve beneath the tanker, which began shedding hundreds of gallons of wine, most of it going over the highway, with a portion of it being sluiced down by Gabe.  The driver noticed he was losing his cargo (about a thousand gallons in all) and called the police, who found Gabe still alive and in one piece beneath the tanker.  Bear in mind he was covered in wine, inebriated and underneath a vehicle that was doing fifty miles per hour in traffic and one can only wonder he managed to hang on at all.

     Sorry, Gabe, wine not served in prison.

Back To The Heavens

Conrad, whom as you know likes to knock around odd bits of the internet, came across a blog last night that rejoiced in the name "Moon City Garbage Agency", whose rationale seems to be looking behind the scenes of film sets and film shooting.  I came across it in an effort to find out more of the making of "The Longest Day", and there are a couple of items about Point Du Hoe and a beach scene.  Nothing about the train wreck <sad face>.  Here's the link if you care to examine for yourself -

http://www.moon-city-garbage.agency/

     Beware!  There's a lot of stuff there and it will eat up your evening if you are not wary.  Art!

Finally -

Shall we pull up some nonsensical Heath Robinson inventions?  Yes, yes we shall.  Let us take a random example - Art!

     This is actually a detail from a larger picture, which is supposed to illustrate how the modern family cope with crowded accommodation, which if Art will bestir himself - 

     You could get away with that in the Thirties.  Health and Safety would never allow you nowadays <shakes fist at nanny-state>.

And do you know, with that we are done.  Done!

*  With apologies to Richard Henry Dana.