Marmite Flavoured Cashews!

No, This Is Not An Exotic Codeword - 
 - designed to fool those foreign and domestic intelligence services still lurking in white vans up and down Tandle Hill Road, outside the Mansion.  In fact -
     - WHOAH! didn't see that coming.  The snow, I mean, not the extra white van.  That makes three, count them -

From the back door

      - and gosh hasn't the weather been variable today, for here's the view from the Mansion's front -

Not sure how significant the red van is -

     Who else can have joined in?  I think we've already got representatives from every Western agency, plus UNIT, and - could it be?  The Research and Analysis Wing agency from India!  Poor devils, coming from the subcontinent to English weather.  Five seasons in one day, pal, five seasons.  Their acronym is RAW and I don't doubt that's how they'll be feeling today.
     Oh, I think the red van is a specialist undercover covert-operations mobile catering unit, given how many eavesdroppers and sneaky-peeky people are hanging about the premises.  After all, if you're a bunch of death-dealing secret agents you can't really drop your observation of the borderline human being/alien spy in camouflage* in order to go get 37 fish suppers from the Golden Bowl in Royton, can you?

Where I Was
All that is by way of coat-trailing, decoying our internet snooping masters the hamsters away from the real BOOJUM! which today has a packet of those very nuts as mentioned in the title.

Read 'em and - not sure what follows after.

     For those of you unfortunate enough not to live in the nation that gave you Parliaments, Railways and Soccer, I should explain that "Marmite" is a malt extract, dark brown in colour, treacly in texture and intensely, intensely savoury.  There are two schools of thought about Marmite:  
     1) I love it to bits
     2)  It's a war-crime in a jar
     Conrad, predictably for those of you who know him, loves his Marmite of a morning - but as a drink.
     We shall see where this gustatory experiment ends up, as I shall be posting later on.

"Flight Training News"
NO!  Not another codeword intended to smuggle a particular concept past either the white van band nor the Hamsterminators.  It's a publication.  Art?  put down that plate of coal and do some work!

News!  About - what else, Flight Training.  What, you expected "Pork Belly Future Predictor Technology"?

     Conrad has not read it for these many years, although it was a favourite of mine back when I worked at Connexions.  I never fathomed quite why we got it quarterly, since the cost of getting a commercial pilot's licence for a fixed-wing multi-engine passenger jet came in at about £35,000.  A bit beyond the pocket of your average seventeen-year old.  Plus it takes months and months and you'd have to travel to Ame - I beg your pardon, South Canada - to undertake it.
     The Labour MP Lembert Opik used to contribute to it, they had a humourous back page with aircraft-related jokes, and articles on a subculture you or I will never otherwise encounter, that of - personally-owned aircraft.  You wouldn't believe the kind of elaborate technical infrastructure that underpins non-commercial flight in the UK; unless you read Flight Training News, that is.
     Truly a window on another world, a kind of aerial sub-culture if you will**, as alien as Rotary Wood Lathe or Miniature Wargaming.

Less Of Your Humble Scribe
Given that "Fatty", as the birds have dubbed your modest artisan, has a full head of hair for a man in his mid-nineties, even if it is so glaringly white that you risk snow-blindness by looking at it in full sunlight, it is inevitable that at some point it will require getting trimmed back.
     I would have done this last week, except I was doing overtime and then shopping for CDs, the latter task which obviously - oh SO obviously! - trumps getting a haircut that it got delayed until this morning.

An appropriately fuzzy photo of "Before"

     Conrad, normally as chatty, expressive and communicative as a geologist's hammer, has thawed enough over time (nineteen years) to actually have a bit of banter with Pepe, the hairdresser.
      "Is this relevant?" I hear you ask.  "He's not going to go on about "Be like Bill", is he?"
     Thank you for your concern.  
     It's relevant because my hair is now much shorter.  
     This means it dries quicker.
     Which means far less risk of catching a cold at the freezing cold bus stop of a morning.

Scowly, but thanks to Dry January, not too jowly.

     Conrad:  looking after his health as he hopes to hit 96 next year, and to do it above ground, thanks very much.

Oh, and here's a geologist's hammer, just so we're clear:


* ME! of course.
** Yes, I KNOW that's a mixed metaphor.  Go on, whose blog is it?

Einstein A GoGo!

Conrad Is Improvising Here
 - and it's only taken a couple of hours to manage it.  Okay, you'll have to put up with me as I work through a miasma of weak connections, bad puns and non sequiteurs.  Business as usual, in other words.
     Go!
     No, I am not talking about the Lemonjelly track "Go!", as voiced (rather than sung) by William Shatner.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F2s03sH1VgQ

     Although there's the link if you want it.  
     Nor am I talking about the Moody Blues track "Go Now!" which was in the days before they bought a Mellotron.  No link, it's not that good*.
     No, I am talking about the game of Go.  I have played it a few times and concentrated so hard I gave myself a headache. 

Go.  Do not pass.

The game is the consequence of taking a very simple grid and a very simple set of rules, generating an end experience of staggering complexity.
     Why mention the game now?  Because of THIS!

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-35423572

     To quote the headline:  "Google's Deepmind AI beats Europe's Go Champion" where "AI" means "Artificial Intelligence".

     Did I say "Go Now" wasn't relevant?  Actually it is, in the worrying sense of "APOCALYPSE NOW!" because this triumph of the machines was predicted to be as many as ten years away.  So, our evil machine overlords might be only just around the corner instead of safely distant in the middle future.  Perhaps the most terrifying concept in any of the "Terminator" films is that Skynet is INEVITABLE.  Not only can this amoral AI arrive, it WILL arrive. And you humans have been helping it arrive for, lo, these many millenia - I've just been reading about how the ancient Babylonians invented calculus to study astronomical movement.
     The fools!  I bet they ignored the big, grey, grumpy-looking chap with bad eyesight, sat in the corner looking grim, who predicted trouble.  Skynet ahoy!

     NO, ART! SKYNET NOT DOG BUNS! SKYLARK!  GET IT RIGHT!  NOW!!

Art, are you sure this isn't the Stockport Pyramid?

And For Yesterday's Creepy Coincidence -
See Page 115 of Woolrych's "Battles of the English Civil War", where he mentions, in the context of the battle of Naseby, the village of Stony Stratford.  An obscure English village never encountered before, and never to be heard of again.
     A reasonable assumption.  But WRONG!

"The white heat of technology missed Stony Stratford entirely."

     Here's an employee querying about another employee on the phone, and why what is the organisation they are based at?
     None but - Stony Stratford.
    I'm sure there's a perfectly goo - DON'T SNEAK UP ON ME LIKE THAT!

The Wordless Birds
Well well, what a refreshing change.  Utterly silent at the bus stop this morning.  Highly unusual, as you surely realise from these many weeks suffering from their sarcastic squawking sobriquets.  Apparently it takes a high wind to silence them.  They don't get off with a dignified silence, mind -

CONRAD:  I say, apart from the wind soughing in the trees, how silent it is.
DANROC:  "Soughing"?
CONRAD: Er - I read it.  In a book.
DANROC: And you wonder why the birds mock you, let alone people.
CONRAD:  Don't you start!  Can't I at least have an inner dialogue without criticism?
DANROC: Depends.  Do you want me to be honest or tactful?
CONRAD: Honest.
DANROC:  No, you can't.
CONRAD: Tactfull!
DANROC: Still no.
CONRAD:  Dog Buns! what an alter ego - I think I preferred the birds.
 

                Conrad                                    Danroc

Happyword Occured
You'll just have to take my word for the performance rating here, as the paper is downstairs and I can't be bothered to go get it and take a photo to post for verification purposes.  Today's Cryptic Crossword was done in 16 minutes with no recourse to outside help (like Tom).  As mentioned yesterday, on occasion it's better to be older and wiser (though still handsome**) than young, good-looking and dim.  Plus, as cannily observed by my dad, over time you get to know how crossword compilers think.
     Which is a bit worrying.  Over time, those colleagues at work will have figured out how your humble scribe thinks.  Oops.

Last Day Of Sobriety
Yes I say, Michael Bay!  Tomorrow from 6 p.m. I shall be snorting bucketfuls of beer and cider.  Well, probably not.  Moderation in all things, and after being off the sauce for over 4 weeks I'd better take it slowly.  
     It has been remarkably stress-free, for me at least, although all those around me have had to endure my witless babbling about it and will probably be grateful that SpongeGob doesn't have an excuse to wax boastful any longer.

My 5 litre aperitif

Time to post and depart, as I am dogsitting and the supply of crunchy dog treats has run out, meaning Edna is getting whingy and fretful.

Na zdravye!


* There.  Go x 2 = GoGo, + computer genius = Einstein
** Allow me to dream, gentle reader