Big Bertha Thing blogs

Big Bertha Thing sedan
Cosmic Ray Series
Possible Real World System Constructs
http://web.onetel.com/~tonylance/sedan.html
Access page 19K JPG Image
Astrophysics net ring Access Site
Newsgroup Reviews including uk.railway

Painting showing, so called hands up the pole sedan chair.

Caption;-
A Mandarin in his sedan-chair.

Extract;-
Jostling along is a most motley crowd. Here, for example,
comes the handsomely-decorated chair
of a mandarin who is engaged on state business.
Before him run two attendants armed with whips to clear the way,
and behind them are boys carrying large painted boards
on which is written, "Stand aside!" or "Respectful silence, please!"

From the book
The World and Its People
Asia With Special Reference to British Possessions
Published by Thomas Nelson and Sons 1903
Without Author or Editor Name
(C) Copyright Tony Lance 1998
Distribute complete and free of charge to comply.


Big Bertha Thing Bertha

First Big Bertha posting was to first aid tent
in OUSA Classical Particle Conf.,
to provide aid and comfort to victims,
who had been set upon by unnamed e-mail thugs.

There was no way to make direct contact,
with shell shocked victim, so we tried Big Bertha.
The trick worked and first victim is well again,
after saying, "At last, a normal man!"
Since then Big Bertha has developed a life of her own
and actually caught some thugs in the act.

First posting consisted of two anecdotes effort and repairs,
from Big Bertha Thing gamma and particle respectively.
Effort was also the last assault rifle shot fired.
Rollover and shotgun below, were the first Big Bertha
sent in anger, with reply to all sender and copy to conf.
Progress and anecdote forward was first cannon shot fired.
Spider and fact(newsletter and readership for astronomy)
was first landmine explosion,
which was not even deployed on OUSA Astronomy.

Big Bertha Thing apology(Rollover)

Please accept my apologies for troubling you.
It will not of course be repeated.
However 3 net surfers have responded
to my call to help out on the Conf., by volunteering.

In emergency situations, needs must.
You and your fellow net surfers number 3, I see.
Net surfers have broad shoulders,
thick skins and I trust, compassion.

Big Bertha Thing shotgun

By way of light relief, a similar general apology,
to the one above, would bring solace and comfort,
to the victims of such well intentioned postings.
Please put it in a Big Bertha and address to conf.
That of course, would be the end of spam.

Tony Lance



Big Bertha Thing warlord

The last time I heard that an apology given under duress was valid,
was in the Monty Python' comedy sketch on the Spanish Inquisition.
Everytime anyone said Spanish Inquisition,
then 3 red cardinals turned up to organise it.

What do I have in comon with a Texas cattle baron?
He thinks that he is a bigger liar than I am. I think I am.

What does a drill sargeant have in comon with a chinese warlord?
He says that the sun will not rise tomorrow. His men believe it.

What is the difference between a Texas cattle baron and a
chinese warlord? The one knows he is lying. The other has never had the problem.


Big Bertha Thing adversity

Milton (1644) from The Liberty of Unlicensed Printing.

First, when a city shall be as it were besieged and blocked about,
her navigable river infested, inroads and incursions round,
defiance and battle oft rumoured to be marching up
even to her walls and suburb trenches;
that then the people, or the greater part, more than at other times,
wholly taken up with the study of the highest and most important matters
to be reformed, should be disputing, reasoning, reading, inventing,
discourcing, even to a rarity and admiration,
things not before discourced or written of,
argues first a singular good will,
contentedness and confidence in your prudent forsight,
and safe government, Lords and Commons;
and from thence derives itself to a gallant bravery and well-grounded contempt
of their enemies, as if there were no small number of as great spirits among us,
as his was, who when Rome was nigh besieged by Hannibal, being in the city,
bought that piece of ground at no cheap rate
whereon Hannibal himself encamped his own regiment.
Next, it is a lively and cheerful presage of our happy success and victory.
For as in a body, when the blod is fresh, the spirits pure and vigorous,
not only to vital, but to rational faculties,
and those in the acutes and the pertest operations of wit and subtilty,
it argues in what good plight and constitution the body is;
so when the cheerfulness of the people is so sprightly up,
as it has not only wherewith to guard well its own freedom and safety,
but to spare, and to bestow upon the solidest and sublimest points of contyroversy,
and new invention, it betokens us not degenerated,
nor drooping to a fatal decay,
by casting off the old and wrinkled skin of corruption to outlive these pangs,
and wax young again, entering the glorious ways of truth and prosperous virtue,
destined to become great and honourable in these latter ages.
Methinks I see in my mind a noble and puissant nation rousing herself like a strong man
after sleep, and shaking her inincible locks;
methinks I see her as an eagle nursing her mighty youth,
and kindling her undazzled eyes at the full mid-day beam;
purging and unscaling her long-abused sight at the fountain itself of heavenly radiance;
while the whole noise of timorous and flocking birds,
with those also that love the twilight, flutter about amazed at what she means,
and in their envious gabble would prognosticate a year of sects and schisms.


Big Bertha Thing liberty

Milton (1644) from The Liberty of Unlicensed Printing
What should ye do then,
should ye suppress all this flowery crop of knowledge and new light sprung up
and yet springing daily in this city?
Should ye set an oligarchy of twenty engrossers over it,
to bring a famine upon our minds again,
when we shall know nothing but what is measured to us by their bushell?
Believe it, Lords and Commons! they who counsel you to such a suppression,
do as good as bid ye suppress yourselves; and I will soon show how.
If it be desired to know the immediate cause of all this free writing and free speaking,
there cannot be assigned a truer than your own mild, and free, and humane government:
it is the liberty, Lords and Commons,
which your own valorous and happy counsels have purchased us;
liberty, which is the nurse of all great wits;
this is that which hath rarified and enlightened our spirits like the influence of heaven;
this is that which hath enfranchised, enlarged,
and lifted up our apprehensions degrees above themselves.
Ye cannot make us now less capable, less knowing,
less eagerly pursuing of the truth, unless ye first make yourselves,
that made us so, less the lovers, less the founders of our true liberty.
We can grow ignorant again, brutish, formal, slavish, as ye found us;
but you then must first become that which ye cannot be,
oppressive, arbitrary, and tyrannous, as they were from whom ye have freed us.
That our hearts are now more capacious,
our thoughts more erected to the search and expectations of greatest and exactest things,
is the issue of your own virtue propagated in us; ye cannot suppress that,
unless ye reinforce an abrogated and merciless law,
that fathers may despatch at will their own children.
And who shall then stick closest to ye, and excite others?
not he who takes up arms for coat and conduct, and his four nobles of Dangelt.
Although I dispraise not the defence of just immunities,
yet love my peace better, if that were all. Give me the liberty to know,
to utter, and to argue freely, according to conscience, above all liberties.


Big Bertha Thing indomitable

(1938) about biography of Lord Grey of Falloden

Lord Grey of Falloden sprang from a Northumberland family of country squires,
who for generations had played a part in public affairs.
His own pleasures lay in the country, but his sense of duty drove him into politics.
He was happiest fishing for trout, and watching wild birds,
but once he was a member of parliament his abilities and character
won for him a prominence that gave him little time for such pursuits.
From 1905 to 1916 Lord Grey was Foreign Secretary.
It is strange that the man whose heart was never entirely in politics
should have risen to such a high office, should have held it so long,
and in such crucial years.

It is possible to consider Lord Grey's life as a failure.
His sense of duty prevented him from living the life he loved.
His efforts to preserve the peace of Europe suffered the defeat of August 1914,
that darkened the rest of his life.
He sacrificed his eyesight in his wartime service in the government.
When at last release came, and he returned to his birds and books,
he could no longer see them. Domestic griefs beset him.
Yet as our extract from his biography shows,
from this tragic material his serene and strong nature
won a greatness that is an inspiration and splendid example.(Two extracts follow)

He was equally cut off from books, of which as life advanced he had grown scarcely less
fond.

I classify the different parts of my body as being
of different ages, as thus:
Sense of smell aged 99 years
Eyes 95
Stomach 85
Sense of Hearing 56 (My age)
Brain 56
Heart and lungs 45
It makes an unequal team to get along with.