pumpkinstrokemarrow

Then back home I came across the efforts of a decapitated horse chestnut tree to come back to life. The tree in question had a trunk maybe two inches in diameter when it was chopped off at around one foot from the ground. The chopping being, I am reasonably sure, more than a year ago. In addition to putting out shoots of various sizes from what is left of the trunk, the longest being maybe 3 inches long, the top of the stump is completely ringed with wannabee shoots which are forming between the bark and the sap wood. A continuous ring of green. Must keep an eye on them and see how many of them - there must be fifty or so starters - make it.

In the case of the tequila bottle on the window cill, the sunflower seeds after a reasonable germination rate, maybe one in three, have all snuffed it, with the tallest not having got much beyond the two inches last reported on April 12, at which date I had been worrying about what would happen when they all started up the neck of the bottle. They appear to have been overwhelmed by the otherwise rather quiet gray mould. Or maybe they do not like growing in waterlogged ground.

That apart been pondering about the potentially game changing development reported by the DT the other day; that is to say that a Russian company (see http://www.morinsys.ru/, a site which appears to have moved down the Mr G. rankings over the last couple of days) is now marketing a cruise missile in a box, or, to be more precise, a standard shipping container. According to the DT the evil wheeze is that bad people can buy these things, hide them on trains, lorries and container ships, from where they can be fired to see off any invasion by good people.

On closer inspection it seems that you need three modules for this to work: a launch module (containing 4 missiles), a support module and a management module. Not clear how many containers you need for this little lot. Not clear how you tell the missiles where to go. Does the management module include fancy radar for target identification? Sounds a bit strong for, say, Somali pirates.

And then, I have no idea how big a bang such a thing might make, but presumably it is only any use against reasonably large targets. Ships, for example. And not masses of tanks bearing down on one. Airborne targets appear to be excluded. On the other hand, depending on range, one might have a go at rear bases or big buildings in town centres.

Can the things be shot down with Patriots - or whatever the current round of anti-missile-missiles are called?

Presumably a launch could be detected and the launcher taken out fairly quickly, but maybe not before it got the rest off.

So is the DT is worrying unnecessarily or not? In any event it doesn't seem to have pursued the story. Plus worrying seems a touch saucy. I imagine that we in the west have been selling all kinds of stuff to all kinds of people for years; bit hard for us to get all holy about the Russkies having a crack at the game. No doubt the Chinese will be at it soon. Dirty business all the same.