Traveller Vignette 005 “ Beck's World is notable for its unusual tax system, as it was originally settled by a utopian group who believed allowing excessive accumulation of capital damaged social cohesion. Residents are thus taxed based on their assets, rather than their income. The government allows citizens to value their own property, but any other citizen has the right to buy it at that valuation. The month following the annual tax day usually sees numerous property transactions as people scour the public tax declarations looking for undervalued properties, and it is common for taxpayers to put an unrealistically high valuation (and thus pay more tax) on properties that have been in the family for generations and have strong emotional ties”
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Henrician Breach Loading Gun Being a trustee of the Royal Armouries has occasional odd perks. This is a breach-loading gun made for Henry VIII in 1537. The breach flips up for a pre-loaded chamber containing powder and ball to be inserted; it's potentially the first breach loading gun made in England, probably from initials on the weapon by William Hunt, Keeper of the King's Handguns. It was probably originally made as a wheel lock, but later converted to a matchlock. I got to handle it, but carefully - damaging royal treasures is frowned on, even if you are a trustee
Traveller Vignette 004 I'd flown Falcon-6 atmosphere fighters in the war; they had exceptional performance, but also a fearsome reputation as widow-makers. Over a quarter of those made were lost in accidents, because the price of that high performance was that they were very unforgiving to fly, a real ensign-killer. The main engine's rotating mass had a strong gyroscopic effect pulling out of manoeuvrers in atmosphere, dragging the nose out of line. You could correct it by using the rudder hard if you expected it, but let it get away from you, and it quickly developed into an irrecoverable spin. Worse, hard manoeuvring distorted the airflow to the engine, and could cause compressor stall. Put both of those together at low level and a pilot unfamiliar with the type could find himself simultaneously out of airspeed, altitude and luck. I flew one for three years, and referred to it mentally as “the bitch”. But if you survived long enough to get the hang of one, it'd ...
Traveller Vignette 003 War had consumed the village utterly. The cottages had provided cover in the initial fighting, and taken a pounding. Rear echelon troops stripped the broken shells for canned food that offered a change from rations, and used the broken furniture and doors for firewood to keep warm. Finally, the stone and rubble from the buildings was used to patch potholes in the roughly-made roads that carried an endless procession of supply trucks across the churned-up battlefield, until nothing was left of the village except a name on the map that no longer marked anything on the ground.
Traveller Vignette 002 The Ministry of Penance and Reconciliation wasn't the tallest building in New Harmony, but it cast the longest shadow. Offworlders usually think of the Reconcilers as the churches' secret police, but it's not really accurate to call an organisation “secret” when you can see its agents with their distinctive robes and staves on almost every street. You could bet that at least someone you talked to every day reported to the Reconcilers, too – either loyal church members doing what they thought was right, or because they'd been caught in some minor heresy or sin and opted to work off their penance by informing rather than taking a public whipping. Either way, I was pretty certain they didn't know I was here yet, since I was still walking the streets rather than having an unpleasant meeting with to a confessor and his instruments.
Museum Visit - Soldiers of Oxfordshire, August 2022 As I had a day when (unusually) I wasn't pre-committed to something else, I popped up to the "Soldiers of Oxfordshire" museum, partly simply to see what they'd done in terms of museum design. Overall, it had some nice ideas (I liked that the first exhibit is a reproduction of the legionary tombstone from the Roman fort at Alcester near Bicester, and thus of the first "Soldier of Oxfordshire" by a significant margin), but overall, it was very lightweight. Physically, it has only a couple of "big" exhibits (a 25 pdr and a section of a reconstructed Horsa glider) with a few weapons in cases (two Lee Enfields, a Bren and a Sten), along with personal ephemera. It doesn't even have a Vickers gun, which I thought was completely obligatory in any military museum. It is definitely not a regimental museum, though the local regiments obviously do feature, but it is very interested in local con...
Stranger Things, Maverick and Prey. With Kate Bush's "Running up That Hill" and Metallica's "Master of Puppets" both back in the charts courtesy of "Stranger Things" and the news full of worries about inflation and war with Russia, it's easy to think it's 1986 all over again. Current cinema isn't doing much to dispel that, since the last two movies I've seen were "Top Gun - Maverick" (sequel to the 1986 Top Gun) and Prey (next instalment in the franchise kicked off by the original Predator movie in 1987). Apart from the chronological synchronicity, all three have more than just nostalgia going for them. I admit, I'm exactly the target demographic for Stranger Things, but even so I'm genuinely impressed by the fourth season - the performances are excellent, the characters may get things wrong but rarely do things that are gratuitously dumb in the way that teens in horror movies usually do, and the story throws a ...
Traveller Vignette 001 “ The circle lakes are an unusual geological formation on Heya / Regina – a group of five perfectly circular lakes between two and four kilometres in diameter, clustered in an otherwise unremarkable area of tundra. They are best seen from the air, as their distinctive shape is not obvious at ground level. Investigations suggest that each lake is actually a partial hemisphere, with central points at varying heights above the surface. A number of theories have been suggested to explain their origin, notably that they were caused by an unknown weapon during the War of the Ancients, but this remains entirely hypothetical and no other Ancient sites are known from the world”