Lies Are Unwise

It Should Be Apparent 

That if you conduct a business using shady methods, and your staff are aware of just how thoroughly underhand and caddish you are as an owner, then you need to tread very carefully indeed.

     Of course - obviously! - some people are such monumental bottomholes that they ignore this fact or consider the little people to be so unimportant that they don't matter.

     Well, they do.  Art!

     This cautionary tale was related by Original Poster, who worked in a vape shop, having been hired by the original owner, who was a sweet old lady.  Sadly, she had an utter douchecanoe for a son, who forced her out of the job and took over.  His attitude was that he was always right, and if you contested his opinion then he'd either ignore you or fire you.  One of those types.

     It goes without saying that he was a cheapskate, too.  He refused to pay to have the attached car-park swept clear of snow, instead telling the staff to do so.  OP slipped on compacted snow and hurt himself, informing the manager that he'd need to stay seated in the shop due to the injury.  Art!

     OP gets told by the manager that he's going to be suspended for 5 days, which prompts OP to see the owner and challenges him to either fire OP or get him off suspension.  Douchecanoe refuses.  In fact he states that he's going to use OP as an example to the other employees.

     This is a super stupid decision, because OP is well-acquainted with everything illegal going on, and they promptly call the OSHA ('Occupational Safety and Health Administration' - South Canada's Health & Safety Executive).

     Then they call the Food & Drug Administration.

     Then they call the Department of Labour.

     Then they call the IRS.

You absolutely do NOT want these people on your case

     The OSHA carry out an inspection on OP's day off.  Owner lies and says he only got a small citation; OP then gets a letter explaining the owner was facing massive fines.

     OP is at home on his day off when a colleague texts him, saying that the FDA and IRS both rolled up at the same time, and their manager quit on the spot.  Just to egg the pudding, the Alcohol, Tobacco & Firearms also showed up and confiscated all the illegal house-made vape products.  It transpires that owner didn't have a manufacturing licence, which is essential if you want to make vape.  Cue more huge fines and very probably jail time.  Also - yes it can get worse for Douchecanoe - he was in the process of opening two more vape shops, which now cannot open.  Money spent to no end!  

     As I said, it is monumentally unwise to annoy people who know where the bodies are buried.  If your business is at all dodgy then the last thing you want is lots of attention from regulatory agencies.

     Manglement at it's finest!

Today's Edna Photo

Inevitably, as it is Saturday, the world and his wife were out walking the woofers.  Luckily for Edna and I it looked wetter than it proved to be, which again probably helped people make the decision to go walkies.  O well.  Art!

     She will probably get a bit whiny around 16:00 because it's still 17:00 in her stomach, so I've been feeding her ten minutes later each day.  I need to take her for walkies before it gets dark tonight, because - Bonfire Night.  There are going to be lots of explosions.  Given how wet it is now, there might not be too many.

     There you go, your daily dose of domestic duty.

Here's A Daft Question From Quora

Ooops, I meant to only check it over quickly to see if there were any people posting after they'd gotten back home from the pub.  Or bar, I suspect many of these people to be South Canadians.  Here we go:

Why didn’t Stalin shoot down the Berlin airlift plane and capture the pilot and use him as an example?

     I fear this person is labouring under several misapprehensions.  "The Berlin Airlift" was a massive air-transportation exercise intended to supply the French, British and American sectors of that city, when the Sinisters closed off all access by road and rail.  Art!

     Stalin thought he could choke the city off and then move in under cover of 'humanitatian' aid.  He didn't dare to invoke real war, because the South Canadians had nuclear weapons and he didn't.  Art!

     It didn't work.  The Little Sod With The Moustache completely underestimated Allied logistical capability and capacity, since they flew in over two and a quarter million tons of supplies.  Ruffians do seem to have a problem with logistics, don't they?

"The Sea Of Sand"

The Doctor has just produced a long metal rod from his sleeve, which he had smuggled back into the prison cell.

"Proof your companions are dead.  And our means of escape,"he wrote.  Using the pencil, which left a faint trace on the cell roof, he sketched a cross in the middle of the featureless glassy expanse, then mimed to Sorbusa.  The big alien picked up the metal prosthetic, which he recognised as an upper arm-bone replacement, and swiftly snapped it in two.  Using the now-sharp ends, he scored at the pencilled cross and rapidly scraped narrow grooves into the glass, drawing a horrid screeching noise from the ceiling whilst doing so.  The Doctor handed him a handkerchief, which Sorbusa wrapped around one mighty fist before punching at the cell roof.

     It took three blows before the glass panel cracked and split, great jagged gaps suddenly shearing across the roof, hot gritty air abruptly spilling over them.  The Doctor dragged Sorbusa back, away from the sudden cascade of shattered glass falling into the cell as the ceiling fell in, creating a storm of splinters, rapidly stilled by an avalanche of hot sands.  Bright natural illumination blinded them for the space of several seconds.  

     The prisoners looked up into the dry blue skies of Homeworld, from a vantage point below ground level, in a quadrangle of buildings.  Sorbusa boosted the Doctor clear of the cell's ruins, throwing him clear into the sand outside, to follow with a tremendous leap that only just cleared dangerously sharp edges of their former prison.  The heretic could manage this feat; his current brethren would not have been able to manage, with their smaller stature.

     Free!  Now for a little constructive mayhem.

Thank You Auntie Beeb

For taking up a bit of creative heavy lifting.  This item is about a guidebook to Scottish locations used for filming.  Art!

     It might surprise you that they list 150 films and 100 locations.  Yes, Scotland has been used as a dramatic backdrop, both because of the countryside and the architecture of Glasgow and Edinburgh.  The first film the BBC mentions is "Braveheart" but - Yes! - one of the more surprising ones was the opening scenes in "World War Z", filmed in Glasgow.  Art!

Glasgow tricked out as Philadelphia

     It probably made financial sense to film here, rather than the real thing.  One wonders if it's possible to pick out items on-screen that give the identity away.  Possibly not, if the continuity people were up to speed.

     And with that we are done!

Manglement Makes Misery

 Tee-hee!

Let's be honest, everyone enjoys seeing bottomhole managers getting a right shoeing and this is no exception.  Yes, it's 

     Hang on, I just had a thought about the Crimean War.  You know, the one from 1854.  It was Turkey, France and Britain against the Ruffians.  If my memory serves well, this was the first joint military co-operation between us and the M8s since we gave them a bit of a stuffing at Waterloo.  Art!

We get on better now

     ANYWAY this is another epic of revenge gleaned from Youtube.  Original Poster had been in sales for years and took up with a new start-up company that was seeking to sell phone contracts when the market got de-regulated.  Lots of companies sought to get a slice of the pizza since it was a free-for-all.  Art!

     The owners, a husband and wife, insisted people eat tasteless vegan snacks and do yoga, because even aging hippies like making money.  There was no base salary, all pay was on commission and employees could work as many or as few hours as they wished, getting paid on a weekly basis.  OP rubbed his hands and got stuck in, working 100 hours over the next seven days and hitting it out of the ballpark.  Out of the city, in fact, because based on the commission he'd be getting over $10,000 for that week.

     Except not.  OP was told that there were 'problems' with 95% of his contracts and thus he would only be getting a fraction of what he was owed.  Art!

     Pretty obviously, OP was not a happy bunny.

     Later that night Frank, the office manager, called OP and invited him to have a beer together.  When they met Frank explained that the business owners were in a panic, because based on OP's sales figures, he would have bankrupted them.  They had spread his contracts over the office floor and verified that they were all legitimate, so they decided to do him over.

     Frank realised that, if they were capable of doing that to OP, they'd most certainly do it to him.  Thus, would OP be interested in going into business with him against the company?

     OP was interested, and here is where things get trickier.  You see, the company didn't have a contract to work in that region; they were basically poaching business from the real contract owner, who wasn't operating at all and had no idea he had competitors elbowing in.

     Ooops.

     Frank and OP put together a business proposition and contacted Joe, the real contract owner.  He liked their pitch, so much so that the contacted the poachers and threatened them with legal action if they didn't cease operating.  Art!

     A week later Frank and Joe turned up at the now empty office to get their final paychecks from the bitter and resentful business owners, who wanted to know if he felt guilty for destroying their lives? (because they'd had to max out their credit cards to get the final paychecks together).

     "Nope!" he gleefully responded.

     Play stupid games, win stupid prizes.

More Of Food

The stomach-on-legs that is Conrad is always happy to talk about food.  Let me illustrate the point.  Art!

     Yes, it's the Ninja Foodi again.  This time I used the "Sync" function, which ensures two different food's cooking time ends simultaneously.  A much better way to cook home-made chips than a giant pan of dangerously hot oil, and the house doesn't smell like a chippy for days afterwards.  Art!

     This is Kim Chi Fried Rice, which was jolly tasty, and a good way to use up the last of my Kim Chi.  Only problem is that there was enough for two meals, so I now have a load of this left to reheat and eat.  O woe.  I may try Japchae this evening because that spinach won't last forever.  Apparently you need to SQUEEZE the beef strips, which promises to be fun.

Conrad: Still Furiously ANGRY!

<mashes Remote Nuclear Detonator madly> Yes, my righteous rancour still riles and you'll see why in a second.  Yes, Codewords again.  

"HOBNOB":  According to my Collins Concise, "to socialise or talk informally", derived from the phrase "To hob and nob", which meant to drink to one another in turn, itself derived from the Old English "Habban" meaning "To have" and "Nabban", meaning "To not have".  Art!

"KAYAK":  I know, I know, we recently covered the incredibly dangerous inflatable version of these, which is why I got the solution, no thanks to Eskimos.  Art!

"KOPEKS": A unit of Ruffian and Belaruffian currency, being one-hundredth of a rouble.  They seem to be used only for vending machines as they probably cost more to make than they're worth.  I just looked up the pound-rouble exchange rate, and a ruble is worth 1.4 pence, so a kopek is worth 0.014 pence.  Art!

Worth almost £1.37!

"The Sea Of Sand"

The posturing aristocratic alien dictator Lord Excellency Sur is feeling a bit apprehensive about exactly what the Doctor is plotting.

No, what made him uneasy was the diminution in conversation between Thedoctor and the heretic Sorbusa.  That damnable alien was alarmingly perceptive and well-informed, able to make unpleasantly accurate guesses about Homeworld's history.  What might he not conclude, egged on and informed by the heretic?  The only reason Sorbusa remained alive was because, unwittingly, he could draw information out of the alien.  Unfortunately resources didn't allow vision in addition to sound; there hadn't been enough time to adapt the cell.

     Yet  now they were hardly talking!  Could they suspect the truth about their prison?  No, impossible.  The cells were -

     " - directly underneath Sur's castle," wrote the Doctor in his diary.

     "I'm afraid all your companions are dead," he said aloud.  Sorbusa read the Doctor's notes and stared.

     "Yes, I expected as much.  Soon my turn will come."  "How do you know?" he wrote, slowly and awkwardly.

     The Doctor tapped the side of his nose, grinning.  A series of logical deductions.  The cells used trans-mat technology, but were far too small to utilise geo-thermal power as an energy source.  Ergo, they were part of a larger complex.  The air present in the cells came from an air-conditioned environment, swapped through on a regular basis.  Ergo, and using Occam's Razor, they were underneath the castle.  Still grinning, he produced a length of metal as thick as the pencil and as long as his forearm, from beneath his sleeve.  The grin vanished.

     Ah, now we're getting somewhere!

Doctor Siegel Sifts Ships

He's working from a list his Twitter followers created, meaning there are scads of others he could potentially suss out, and may do - he's currently watching "The Expanse" which is about as hard as sci-fi gets.

     ANYWAY the next spaceship is the "Hermes" from "The Martian".  Art!

     This film takes it's science very seriously, which includes spaceship design.  Dr. S. points out the only thing he can fault is the direction of the solar panels, which is a pretty minor quibble.  It comes in as Please Abduct Me.  Art!

     You can consider it more akin to a mobile space station as much as it's a spaceship.

Finally -

Edna has been whimpering a bit whilst taking up space on the bed up here in the Sekrit Layr, not sure why - unless it's the fact that I'm concentrating on words of wit, wisdom and wonder, rather than madame herself.  I can now devote my attention to her.

It's ICBM Time!

 No, This Is Nothing To Do With IBM

Nor HAL, and sadly nor is it to do with Ice Cream Breakfast Man <a minute's silence please>.

     No, what today's Intro is about are the Big Bang Bombs, as we have tastelessly christened them here at the blog: Inter-Continental Ballistic Missiles.  These are the monsters that sit in massively-reinforced concrete silos, hopefully to endlessly sit there.  Art!

     This is a scene from the 1983 film "War Games" (ignore the rubbish remake) and is where one of the two missileers in the command capsule refuses to turn the key in order to enable launch.  Subscribers to Jake Broe's Youtube channel, in his 'Ask Me Anything' request, asked if this was feasible, and would be ever have done this in real life?

     The short answer is 'No' because dates are important here.  JB explained that in the late Eighties and into the Nineties, personal sidearms were withdrawn from service for the missile crews.  They had never been needed and as far as JB was concerned, it was one less item to bother about.  Art!

Minuteman III Launch Control Capsule

     These crew do a 24-hour shift, each of them on duty for 12 hours.  To stave off the boredom, there is a DVD player, and access to the internet - if the upstairs computer itself has access.  Plus, there is a chef on duty above ground and they could order a meal at any time of day or night.  Sounds good to Conrad!  Art!

JB and Deputy

     One inaccuracy about "War Games" is the removal of any human control over missile launching.  Herman Kahn analysed the idea in 1959 and dismissed it, because you cannot risk global thermonuclear war if the computer glitches, is hacked, or mis-interprets data.

     Back to Jake.  The last question he was asked in the Q & A session was about ICBM countermeasures, and if there is any way to shoot them down after they launch?

     This is a tricky one.  JB revealed that, in their terminal approach, a Minuteman III warhead is travelling at Mach 23, which is twice as fast as I'd previously understood them to travel.  To put it in perspective, that's 17,641 miles per hour.  Even if they had no weapons payload, an impact from an inert warhead would still take out a city block.  Art!

"Instant sunshine"

     JB re-iterated the analogy that attempting to use an Anti-Ballistic Missile to destroy an incoming ICBM is like trying to hit a bullet in flight with another bullet.  It can be done, but it's tricky when trying to get close enough to destroy with high explosive,  BOOJUM! has covered the insanely fast South Canadian Sprint missile, which was an early Sixties ABM; to get over the problems of having to get close enough, they used a low-yield nuclear warhead.  Well - yeah, that'll work.  Don't think you can get away with that today, mind.  Art!

     Go to Youtube and type in "Sprint missile launch" for jaw-dropping footage.

     I realise that's going off-track a bit, so here's a final metric for you.  The South Canadians have 5,400 nuclear warheads and spend $50 billion per annum maintaining them.  The Ruffians have 6,000 and spend $5 billion per annum maintaining them.  If the other shoe drops, whose missiles are going to launch?

     I shall leave you to ponder on that one.  Have a nice day now!

Daily Dose Of Dog

Because someone out there is bound to be missing the furry little pudding.  Art!

     Looking like butter wouldn't melt in her mouth, hmmm?

     Because I didn't take her out Tuesday afternoon - it was pelting down from mid-day onwards - Conrad dutifully bit the bullet and took her out last night.  The weather was so awful she was reluctant at first and I don't blame her, as it was lashing down and blowing a gale.  Still, a commitment is a commitment and we did a quick trot to Cherry Grove and back.  My socks got soaked because I forgot to take my Crocs off.

No More Empty Spaces Photos

Good news?  Bad news?  Only you can tell!

     However, there is this - Art!

On the BBC News page

     Well, actually, Auntie, I do.  It would be a black comedy about a small, specialist Whitehall team called the "Special Contingencies Planning Unit", whose job it is to draw up plans for deadly dangerous events.  Such as (but not limited to): asteroid strike; tsunami; nuclear war (how very topical!);alien attack; zombie apocalypse; AI takes over.  Fun stuff like that.  Hopefully it would satirise bureaucracy, and they'd run computer simulations with their own Cray supercomputer (acquired via dodgy means), and also be in perpetual awe and envy of their South Canadian equivalent, who have a team of hundreds, their own office block and a budget of billions.

We'd still have the better architecture

"The Sea Of Sand"

The action has shifted back to Earth and the arrival of several hundred bio-vores from Homeworld, who have killed or captured the original 'heretic' garrison.

Once the surprise wore off, there had been a few short skirmishes.  Using stunners in defence, the heretics fell back to their armoury, Eviscerating any injured attackers they came across.  It took a co-ordinated assault to storm the armoury and kill the remaining handful of heretics, and their greater size and physical strength caused most of the fatalities within the Assault Detachment.

     Ihouda summoned the Sub-Leaders

     "Eviscerate the prisoners and wounded.  Send a message back to Homeworld informing of success.  Establish what the Factory unit has been instructed to produce.  Locate local bio-mass resources."

     He looked around the Infiltration Complex again, wondering when daylight would arrive.  You didn't know with these Target Worlds, and he felt more vulnerable in the darkness.  Then there was the immense nearby satellite, which cast a faint light over the sands.  Homeworld did not possess such a moon.  The novelty of the nearby orbiting body caused many of the Assault Detachment to look over their shoulders warily, feeling under observation.

Lord Excellency Sur felt uneasy.

     Not at the current state of things on Target World Seventeen.  No, that was highly satisfactory.  All the heretics dead, on a par with their Eviscerated comrade's remains lying in the approach trench of his audience hall.  No Target World natives aware of the presence of bio-vores.  The prospect of a whole world to plunder.

   "Locate local bio-mass resources" has an unpleasant ring to it.

"Hotel Del Luna"

Still enjoying this entertaining nonsense.  Jang Man-Wol, who is both owner of and owned by the titular hotel - we have yet to discover why - always goes on a champagne binge when she's in a bad mood.  Given that she is perpetually moody, she's gone through a lot of champagne.  Our hero Koo Chang-Sang (going by the on-screen translation not Wikipedia) realises her money has run out because she's resorted to drinking 'Makgeoli'.  Art!

     Conrad had never heard of it before.  It's a variety of rice wine with a cloudy appearance and a relatively low proof level of between 6% and 9%, more like a White Lightning than wine.  Historically it has been seen as a rural beverage consumed by farmers and peasant, so Jang is definitely slumming it if she's quaffing bottles of makgeoli.

Finally -

My Korean food binge continues.  I did the shopping yesterday and now need to write down a couple of recipes that were bookmarked yesteryon.  Chin chin!

A War In Crimea

We Return To The Mid-Nineteenth Century 

Back then, there was no question about whom Crimea belonged to; it was Ruffian, under the aegis of the Tsar, make no mistake about it.  It was attacked and invaded by Britain and France in 1854, as part of the alliance against Ruffia - the Ottoman empire was the other main contributor.  I did warn you we might come back to this topic and today we have, lucky you!  Art?

     I know, I know, nothing whatsoever to do with Crimea.  Sue me.  I got a good few hits yesteryon featuring Dredd so he's back again.

     ANYWAY mention of the Crimean War usually brings up how incompetent the generals were, lions led by donkeys, John has a long moustache, all that guff.  People seem to think it was simply the Napoleonic War, just smaller.

     Not so!  In the forty years since Nappy got his bottom handed to him on a silver platter, science and technology had advanced considerably.  Take the invention of the telegraph, for example.  Art!

State of the art for it's time

     This appeared on the scene in 1844.  It's first use on the modern battlefield was at Khutor, Lord Raglan's headquarters, which connected him to the front lines at Balaklava in 1855.  Later, a submarine telegraph cable would connect Balaklava and Varna, on the other side of the Black Sea.  This, found the general, was a double-edged sword as it allowed politicians of the day to interfere at the drop of a hat.  Effectively it removed the need to have messengers and couriers galloping back and forth carrying orders or reports.

     Then there was battlefield photography.  Given the nature of the medium, photographs of actual battle weren't possible, although the aftermath usually was.  Art!

     This is the Ruffian fortification 'The Redan' and no, that's not Ruffian soldiers being dirty layabouts, it got quite a bit of knocking about during a siege.  Roger Fenton is the chap responsible for taking a metric ton of photographs during the war, being commissioned by a publishers to travel from Rochdale (local lad!) and document the war.

     And of course that most British of inventions, the railway, eventually came to Crimea.  During the first winter logistics were barely adequate at best, with the Commissariat bungling delivery of supplies to the front lines.  By the second winter a railway had been laid, Art!

     This is the 'Grand Central Crimean Railway' which, once completed, instantly made logistics vastly more efficient.  To begin with the wagons were horse-drawn, until they were substituted by actual locomotives.  Art?

     Conrad wonders if any Ruffian PoWs were ever transported by this means.  They would probably faint with terror at being told they were going to be eaten by the great iron-and-wooden beast, and that at the end of their journey Roger Fenton would steal their souls with his box of deviltry.

     Another military innovation was the use of a rifle-musket by the British army, superceding the previous smoothbore musket.  The rationale for this was that a rifled weapon possessed far superior accuracy than a smoothbore, and indeed the Enfield was sighted up to 1,200 yards, far beyond the range of a smoothbore.  Art!

     Even though it was still muzzle-loaded, the actual 'ball' was shaped more like the bullets we know today, giving a superior ballistic performance.  One quirk was that the ramrod needed a recess to avoid deforming the bullet.  Art!

     Getting hit by one of these was no fun at all, as they were 0.55" calibre, made of lead and arriving at 767 miles per hour.  They tended to go right through the victim, shattering any bone encountered, and were thus a lot more lethal than the old-fashioned ball round.
     Another innovation that the army and politicians generally disliked was that of 'The Times' correspondent William Howard Russell, who had been sent out to report on the war.  His accounts of incompetence, inability and outright fat-headedness in the British command hit home like a thunderbolt - in fact he helped to bring down the government.  Art!

MISTER Russell to you

     I haven't even touched on the medical side of things, and shan't today or this Intro would be the whole of today's blog.     

Pancakes!

Not your normal pancakes, because Your Humble Scribe is rubbish at cooking those.  No, I am talking about Korean 'Pajeon', which are a savoury pancake made with veg.  Quite a messy faff to make, as you need a separate dipping sauce cooked up in a pan, and the veg have to be julienned, which is pseud for sliced into very small bits, before mixing them in with the batter.  Art!

     There's the dipping sauce, which has a real briny tang to it, and the first pancake.  Very tasty and also pretty filling.  I shall be having what's left of the second one for lunch later.  Art!

     That's an official recipe image, so Conrad didn't do too badly on my first try.

Back To The Theme Of 'Empty Spaces'

This is the last on on the BBC's page for a photographic competition, and is amusing and also horrifying at the same time.  Art!

     I don't think I need explain any further, do I?  Also, this is one reason Conrad ALWAYS has a piece of kitchen towel roll in his back pocket.

"The Sea Of Sand"

The Doctor is planning and plotting whilst stuck in his underground prison cell.

"A self-sustaining slave state," muttered the Doctor, not happy or impressed.  To take his mind off that problem, he started talking aloud to Sorbusa.

     "Not feeling too hot, are you?  No, I didn't think so.  Neither of us are gasping for breath, are we?"

     The big alien looked around, paying close attention to the cell for the first time.

     "Correct.  A cell this small would have it's air consumed very quickly."

     Then the air was being exchanged by trans-mat.  Nice, cool, static air.  Non-desert air.  Air from a controlled environment.

     An idea began to form in the Doctor's mind, beginning small.  Small, yet with prospects.

 A hundred and fourteen trillion miles away, Assault Leader Ihouda took careful stock of the situation in the Infiltration Complex.  

     Of the thirty-nine person garrison of heretics:  prisoners, six; fatalaties thirty-three.

     Of the four-hundred strong Assault Detachment: fatalities, fourteen; injured, five.

     Not a bad result, he considered.  They had come storming out of the trans-mat in two waves each two hundred strong.  Most of the heretic garrison were overwhelmed straight away, taken by surprise initially and then bewildered that their fellow bio-vores were attacking them.

     Dog eat dog, eh?  

Speaking Of Dogs ...

What a miserable morning it was earlier.  Cold, windy and damp.  None of which bothered Edna, who of course - obviously! - simply had to sniff at every patch of grass on our route.  Art!

IMMOBILISED BY DOG!

     Here the little scamp has deigned to grace her Human-Shaped Cushion with her presence.  Thank you O Your Majesty.

Dr. S And His Spacehips Quest

Back to Mike Siegel - how modest is he? - and his assessment in technical terms of spaceships his Twitter fans asked him to rate.  Next on his list is "Space Battleship Yamato", which Conrad has heard of yet never seen.  Art!

     You know you've arrived when they make a model kit of you.  

     Dr. S. points out an obvious flaw in the design, which is inherent in what seems to be a re-purposed battleship - no weapons beneath the hull, leaving a huge vulnerable area.  It pains him to only give it Enjoy The Ride, because it's one of his very favourite series and he reckons it still holds up today.  Conrad may have to check this one out.

     And with that we are done indeed.  Chin chin!

Sunk Tank Punk Prank

When I Say "Punk"

I mean it in the sense that Judge Dredd (or Dirty Harry Callaghan) would use it, which now gives me an excuse to bring in a picture of Old Stoneyface himself.  Art!

     That's one of the Mek-Judges, which were introduced without proper testing, and it did not end well.  Contemporary ones are a lot safer and predictable.  I'm glad I could put your mind to rest on that matter.

     ANYWAY what I wanted to look at in this Intro

     Sorry, here an aside.  Just listening to Youtube in the background, where Jake Broe put up a Q & A session.  Inevitably he got asked about being a Nuclear Missile Operations Officer and directed the query to a Youtube channel called "Airman Visions" where he did a sixteen-minute presentation on that very topic.  Art!

     It transpires that before he did his stint with the Big Bang Bombs, he spent six years in South Korea, teaching English.  He confirmed what I suspected, that Korean is not easy to speak but he did clarify that it's easy to read.  The Korean alphabet was created in the fifteenth century to form a language different from Chinese, which had been used up to that point.

     ANYWAY - back to the Intro.  I read a headline on the BBC website that rather stumped me:

Damage to sunken WW2 tank in Studland Bay probed by police

     What?  A sunken tank?  

     Well yes.  You may be aware of the famous Duplex Drive Sherman tanks that were used (successfully) by Perfidious Albion on D-Day (not successfully at all by the South Canadians).  Art!

     As a proof of concept, the Duplex Drive with it's propellors and canvas screen was tested on the then-obsolete Valentine tank.  For one thing, it was a lot smaller than the Sherman, weighing only 16 tons instead of 30.  Art!

     There was a test going on in Studland Bay in early 1944, with Valentine DD tanks when disaster struck and six of them sank, killing six crewmen.  The problem with DD tanks is that they are very vulnerable in a sea state if it gets even slightly choppy, since they have limited freeboard (i.e. how much clearance there is between the top of the waves and the top of the canvas screen).
     The sunken tanks are considered a heritage site and are regularly visited by local diving clubs, their locations marked by buoys placed by English Heritage.  Art!

     Conrad, of course - obviously! - recognised them as Valentines immediately, because his tank-recognition skills are excellent.

     But - what on earth has been going on there?  One tank is described as having been damaged in late September, with the turret being completely detached and the hull also being damaged.

     Now, it is possible that the hull has become corroded and weakened after nearly 80 years sitting in saltwater, so that damage could be inflicted should one wish to do so.  But who would?  And why?  Not to mention how? because swinging a sledgehammer underwater is a lot harder than it is in the open air.

     Then, too, that turret must weigh a couple of tons on it's own, whether it's fragile or not.  How the dickens could anyone shift it?  And why?  Art!

All at sea

     All rather a mystery.  The police are investigating and Conrad's sense of nosiness is hopeful they'll come up with an answer to the submarine vandals.

     Motley! We're going to do a re-enactment of this.  Get into that inflatable kayak and paddle.

And Back To The Theme Of "Empty Spaces"

I have skipped a couple that looked rather dull.  Maybe I'll come back and re-post them when I hit the end of this article.  Maybe not.  I can be fickle that way.  Heh.

Art!

Courtesy Raj Padai

     This is the Bandra Worli Sea Link Bridge in Mumbai, India.  Bleak, if atmospheric thanks to being in monochrome.  And indeed empty, not a person or vehicle visible.  No birds, no planes, and although the bridge lamps are on, none of the buildings in the distance have any lights visible.  Conrad wonders what time of day this was taken?  It reminds me of a horror site's title page, except I can't remember which one it is.

"The Sea Of Sand"

The Doctor has been returned to his cramped oubliette with his co-prisoner, Sorbusa.

The Doctor and Sorbusa were both struck by the same idea simultaneously.  They turned to each other, Sorbusa gesturing for silence and the Doctor reaching for a blank page in his 750 page diary.  

     "Could the aristocrats use hibernation to extend their rule?" scribbled the Doctor.  Sorbusa nodded in agreement.  He picked up the pencil, which he found awkward in his massive hand.

     "The aristocrats may hibernate to prolong their lives."

     The Doctor whistled at the sudden insight this gave him.

     "How long does your species live, Sorbusa?  I see.  Approximately two hundred years."

     What perfect sense it would make!  A way to extend their reign over millennia; hibernate for ten years, emerge for one, then back into hibernation again, extending their lifespan over thousands of years.  Select a small number of hibernating bio-vores to serve as Warriors, Technicians and so on.  Use the remaining population to keep the planet alive, barely, with the constant threat of death to keep them in line.  Increase the percentage of hibernating bio-vores to eighty per cent, to allow the rulers to keep their subjects in obedient servitude.

     I suspect the Doctor is plotting to end the aristocrats and their perpetual dictatorship.  Trust him!

I've Not Finished With Either You Or Lord Peter's Dog Buns! Crossword

We are nearing the end of the Across clues and solutions.  So nearly half-way done.  Here's the 'clue': "Seven out of twelve this number makes complete; As the sun journeys on from seat to seat (9)"

     The solution?  THIRTYONE

     I didn't get it either, until I checked and yes, this is one of Ol' Dots clues that was so obscure she provided a note.  Seven months out of twelve have thirty-one days.

     Bah!

Thank you, Art.

     Hmmmmm the skies are beginning to look rather grey after a very sunny morning.  Hopefully the heavens will hold off until Edna gets Second Walkies.

"Okean Elzy"

Conrad has no idea what this is, nor whether you can eat it or drink it.  I found it scribbled in my notebook inside a set of quotation marks.  Let me just check Google -

Ah.  Now we know

     A Ukrainian rock band.  I wasn't expecting that.  Of course - obviously! - I shall now have to go check them out on Youtube and hear what they sound like, because only in doing that can we tweak the hairs on Peter The Average's bottom.

Finally -

It definitely looks like rain.  O well.  You might think "O it's chucking it down, nobody else will be stupid enough to be walking their dog in a vertical bath" but no, that's when the world and his wife take woofer walking.

     ANYWAY what I wanted to finish with was an interesting question on Quora, one that came in two parts.  

Why did Churchill misshandle two major military opperations on the Balkans during both of the World Wars (Gallipoli during WWI and the Dodecanese during WWII)? Didn't he know the geography of the Balkans that well or are there some other reason?

Gallipoli

     One reason was the failure to practice an opposed landing.  The Royal Navy had drawn up meticulous timetables of how to deploy men into ships and boats, but their planning stopped the instant anyone got out of a boat.  This proved to be a disastrous error.  They didn't know that there was a strong off-shore current that pushed the ANZACs to land in completely the wrong area.  They were also unlucky in that Colonel Ataturk, an extremely astute commander, happened to be (for the Turks) in the right place at the right time.

     All this was rather out of Churchill's hands, to be honest.  When the campaign ended with a fantastically-effective evacuation, he did the decent thing, took the blame and resigned his political position.  You won't see many politicos doing that today.