History, Politics And Current Affairs

Context is important.
Also, per 'Chekov's Gun', plot building...

IIRC, isotope analysis has shown Cornish Tin was traded as far as Eastern Med.

Probably teamed up with Cyprus' Copper.

Western Med, Iberia and Atlantic Coast seem to have got their Copper from Great Orme in N. Wales...

Nik-Note: Sorry, spent *days* recursively shuffling paragraphs between #147 and #148 in edit buffer... -- City of Fresno #141 We'd travelled far enough to change our perspective on that third auroral source. Within moments, 'Fresno' sensors plucked that now-brighter planet from its de-cluttered back...

City of Fresno #140 'Fresno' had been in 'Cruise Mode' for several days when I half-remembered the pre-glean query by Doc. Meredith about the 'Main Plant' processing rate. I dug into my notes from that rather hectic project and its intensive commissioning phase. Step by step, I matched our 'rough' t...

When a pressure hatch with a central 'wheel' drives its 4/6/8 radial bolts to 'dog' to coaming hard-points, what are those hard-points called ??

Ashore, a dead-bolt mates with a striker plate or, if surface-mount rim-lock, a robust 'keeper'...

Murphy strikes...

Yes, definite goose-bumps time !!!

( And a story that, read several years later, still makes me think, 'Did I really write this ??' )

Thank you. I'd tried several ways to coax Chrome to auto-translate, as it used to, 'Some Updates Ago'. {Spit !!} -- Yikes !! Yes, that is unlikely to prompt a calm, reasoned, measured response from Kremlin. "Bring me their heads !!" will so be the knee-jerk reaction. Oh, and perhaps a para...

WICKED !!!
Sadly, my Chrome browser seems unable to grok the Polish announcement...

City of Fresno #139 The next weeks would be 'Hurry Up and Wait'. Our target, a dozen light-years distant, presented as a very, very ordinary orange 'K2' star, slightly bigger, hotter, brighter than the 'K4' in the system we'd just left. Spectral Doppler had found no 'Close Binary' or 'Hot Jupiter'. ...

Didn't they reverse engineer the Wallis bouncers to small size suitable for anti-shipping ? Snag is any bomb Stukas could haul, even short-range, was unlikely to scratch dam... And a float-plane is further restricted... Chemical ? That would go very, very badly. Like the 'Special' war-heads planned ...

NW UK = A temporary respite:
Over-night, wondrously cool. Managed to sleep fairly well.
This morning stayed at 20ºC with a pleasant breeze.
Sadly, even with 40cm air-mover fan roaring at top of stairs, has not yet dissipated week-end's 'heat soak'...

City of Fresno #138 'Cooberra' had a much more powerful Radar system than 'Cwm Fahr', so made a swifter passage to 'Odd Bod' than we'd managed on our return leg. The Tug needed less than a week there to brim-fill both pods, then headed back. Meanwhile, aboard 'Fresno', the last 'Anchorage' surface a...

Up here in coastal NW UK, garden was still ~~25ºC at 0400 local. Okay, that was significantly cooler than house interior but, despite clear sky and a pretty crescent Moon, 'Flat Calm'. Even with doors, windows open and sundry fans running, a ghastly-ish [REDACTED] 'Air Fryer'. At least the temperatu...

Inadequate, but, WOW.

City of Fresno #137 After those preliminaries, my log showed I spent many, many long days preparing, delivering two lectures a week. Given our circumstances, I was careful to flag the accumulating differences between the Convention's 'Local Bubble' and the current galactic region. Again and again, I...

Been a few years, but I remember staring at a 6x6 Landy in B&Q car-park.

I waited for owner to return with 'Building Stuff', politely asked if it was original or kit-bash.

He said it was one of the carrier vehicles for RAF SAM air-defence system.

StarStreak ??

Must wonder if having Megs about drove cetaceans to hone their sonar...

NW UK significantly cooler today, but house suffering from 'Hot Soak'. And, yes, wind direction does not encourage ventilation... But, a minor victory: Realised I could park a desk-fan atop end-wardrobe in bedroom !! Okay, had to deploy 5-metre extension cord to get power to it, nocturnal trip-hazar...

Given her conniving Deputy seems to have played her like ruddy bagpipes, 'Diminished Responsibility' applies.
For now...

City of Fresno #136 To my surprise, after the Engineers' training was complete, at least for now, Lt. Richards asked if I could run some basic Geology and Astronomy sessions. As there was ample material in Fresno's library for self-teaching to that level and beyond, this seemed a little odd. To his ...