I Know, I Know
Conrad has absolutely no room to talk given how deceptive, deceitful and damnably duplicitous the titles for BOOJUM! can be, but once again, whose blog is it?
Well, there I was, idly scrolling through various television series on Prime, wondering if I should watch any, when I came across an old acquaintance. Art!
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| Nothing to do with budget Spartans |
Your Modest Artisan remembers watching the first series many years ago, so long ago in fact that I suspect it might have been a coughpiratedcough version, back when 'The Pirate Bay' was a going concern. So long ago that all I remembered was someone getting impaled by a spear.
Somewhat to my surprise, it ran for 7 seasons, which is a pretty respectable run, starting in 2014 and ending in 2020.
Now to the plot. We pick up the story 97 years after a nuclear apocalypse killed off the entire planet-based human population, leaving only those aloft in 12 space stations to survive. They managed to cobble together 'The Ark', a single composite from the dozen precursors, and if Art will put down his bowl of coal -
It's a big beast, and the camera rides through the spinning superstructure - simulated gravity thanks to centripetal force, no fantasy about anti-gravity here, the hard science is pretty hard - you get a sense of how big it is. Art! The narrative voice-over info-dumps that it's believed the Earth will take another 100 years to fully recover, so another 4 generations will have to endure life on the Ark - Except not. That would be too simple, wouldn't it? You see, this cobbled-together antique has begun to fail in ways that would take so long to redress that everyone would be dead in 6 months.
Ooops.
This did strike me as suspiciously similar to a 'Doctor Who' fanfic I wrote, namely 'City In The Sky' and I wondered who influenced whom. Art!
CITY IN THE SKY by ComsatAngel reviews
12,000 human survivors aboard Arcology One are stuck in orbit: the Great Northern War destroyed all means of ever getting back to Earth. Their sphere is wearing out, time is short, and a hostile agency is loose on the planet below. Enter the 7th Doctor!Doctor Who - Rated: T - English - Sci-Fi/Adventure - Chapters: 35 - Words: 104,489 - Reviews: 9 - Favs: 12 - Follows: 2 - Updated: Oct 11, 2010 - Published: Oct 9, 2010 - 7th Doctor, Dorothy M./Ace - Complete
Well, that Oct 11 2010 gets me off the hook. At no point in the 3 episodes I've watched to date is any total mentioned for the Ark's population, so I'm guesstimating that it, too, runs into the thousands. Art!
This is the Juvenile Detention Facility, where criminals under 18 are incarcerated. If you commit a crime - any crime - aboard the Ark, and you're over 18, then it's an automatic death sentence. Less Than Zero Tolerance, you might say. You may be able to join the dots here: the Ark is running on borrowed time, there are expendable juveniles in detention using up scarce air and water, Planet Earth is deserted and uninhabitable.
Or is it?
Well, here's where the title comes in. 100 juvenile criminals are going to be sent on a one-way trip to the planet's surface, as guinea pigs, or canaries, to see if is is habitable or not. Art!
That's the one-way shuttle being launched, compared to the mass of the Ark in the second shot - and there are 100 people aboard that shuttle. Young people, who take up less room than an adult, but still 100 of them. The 'LIES!' about the title kicks in at the 8 minute mark, when the drogue parachutes open abruptly, killing two teenagers who were goofing off and not buckled up. We are now already at 98, title. Art!
This is a subtle nod to the cobbled-together nature of the Ark and it's artefacts - 3 different parachutes, one of which fails totally. Another ooops moment. Art!
By an Amazing Coincidence Created By The Scriptwriter, this parachute failure also causes all comms to be disabled, so when the 98 land they are on their own. Bar their electronic wristbands. More credibly, it also causes them to land waaaaay off target, a good 15 miles from their drop zone, Mount Weather. Art! When they exit their now expensively-engineered shed, this is the greenery they find, surprise! Couldn't they have seen this from orbit? I mean, binoculars and telescopes exist. They were able to send down a shuttle large enough to carry 100 people, is it beyond them to put together a probe or two? Wouldn't they be able to see herds of animals? Migrating birds? Shoals of fish? Don't forget, there are no humans to predate anything, or so they believe. It does make for a splendid contrast with the sterile high-tec environment of the Ark, though.
Of course, I could be over-thinking this -
Hacking And Backing
Yes, I'm looking at you, Aeroflop. Not changing a password for 3 years? Allowing your data backups to be copied by hackers before being completely deleted? Using a system that was outdated a decade ago?
Tut tut.
I have just read a cautionary tale on Youtube's 'Pro-Revenge' pages where a teen pupil was as thorough as the Silent Crow team. Art!
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| Crowing, silently |
There was a long preamble about how Teen Hacker In College, hereafter THIC, had an intense rivalry with Teen Untouchable Because Entitled, hereafter TUBE, whose mother was a teacher at the school, and whom broke rules to ensure her little darling got away with all sorts of academic abuse. THIC went to the Principal, who justified his position, title, salary and behaviour by doing exactly nothing.
THIC became incensed at this refusal to act, and using their computer skills, hacked into the school's database, which had been done on the cheap by a parent. There were no passwords at all, never mind ones three years old, because - done on the cheap by a parent. There were no backups of any information, because - done on the cheap by a parent. There were no physical yearbooks that held prior information because Principal Purse-strings Pulled Tight.
All pupil information abruptly vanished, deleted permanently with nothing recoverable, thanks to THIC.
Surprise! The school database automatically by default awarded 100% grades to anyone with no data entered, which was everyone.
The Principal was fired. This was in South Canada, so that was all, no danger of falling out of a sixth-floor window. If he'd had any principles he might have remained employed.
We Haven't Castigated Mordorvia Enough Just Yet
For many months prior to August, Ukraine has avoided targeting Ruffian oil refineries and depots, lest it upset the Orange Land Whale and his slavish lickspittle advisors. Now, the gloves are off and oil is back on the menu again. Art!
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| $1,000,000 in damages |
This is the refinery at Novokuibyshevsk, in Samara, one of Ruffia's biggest and most important refining plants, so of course - obviously! - it had zero air defences. The thinking might have been 'We're 500 kilometres from the khokhols, what can possibly go wrong?' Well, this can. The fireball here is so enormous because other and wiser observers claim it hit one of the distillation towers head-on, making this a verrrry expensive firerwork display.
Looking At September
For the visit down south to visit Bovington Tank Museum, and Darling Daughter has advised that they are looking at an Airbnb for Friday and Saturday night, so we can have two whole days of wandering round Bovvie, as we afficionados call it. Yes, I've been before, twice, on a solo motoring trip, and it's a verrrry long journey. Art!
That's a Matilda I, as used by the BEF in France 1940, and a Comet, as used by the BLA in Germany in 1945. Yes, R & D got a move on in the Second Unpleasantness.
