VARIOUS NEWS
(Posted 2007-09-07 16:09:42 by ArchPaladin)

The kittens are really cool.  They are very friendly and like to play a
lot, and they will come and wander around my office when I get home and
keep me company.  In particular, I have nine cinderblocks neatly arranged
in front of my office table that they like to jump up on and crawl around
in.  On the downside, they are getting a little smelly and need to be
bathed.  I don't think the whole self-hygiene thing has really kicked in
yet.

Some of my readers know that I intended to put a custom VoIP setup in the
house when I moved in.   Well, I still do, and I've been slowly making
progress on it.  I haven't given many details to people when they ask about
setting up a landline other than "I'm handling it myself" because the
details aren't easily summed up in five minutes.  In short, one of my
computers is going to host a personal PBX [
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PBX ] [wikipedia.org] that will connect out to
the wider world through FreeWorldDialup [ http://www.freeworlddialup.com/ ]
[freeworlddialup.com].  It's a more complicated solution than just signing
up for Skype, Vonage, or even Comcast's VoIP services, but once the phones
have been purchased everything else is free and remains that way (ie. no
monthly charge to run the service).   Since I'm all about cutting personal
expenses and I don't mind a technical challenge, this is appealing to me. 
At any rate, I have ordered the phones today, and I've been going over the
technical documentation for the PBX to make sure I know what I'm doing.  I
intend to perform the PBX setup sometime on Saturday, though I don't know
if I'll be able to get all the way through it without actual phones to
use.

Recently in the news you may have read that a bomber flew with live nuclear
warheads on its wings over US soil to a base in Louisiana.  This has
received news coverage because (a) the military was unaware of the nuclear
payload until after the flight, (b) this kind of action is prohibited by
international treaty that the US is party to, and (c) nuclear weaponry has
not been flown on-wing (as opposed to within the plane as cargo) for many
years.  Of course, points (a) and (c) are public assumptions and may not
actually be true, but we currently don't have a good way of knowing
otherwise.

This piece of news hit the sites that I frequent, and in following a couple
of links and forum discussions on the incident I came across the following
information [
http://tpmcafe.com/blog/coffeehouse/2007/sep/05/staging_nuke_for_iran ]
[tpmcafe.com], which is quite chilling (even if written somewhat as
flamebait).  In brief, the military and Air Force are far too meticulous
and serious to let an incident like this occur, as there is a lot of
bureaucratic red tape to go through to transport nuclear weapons, so the
probability of this fiasco actually happening and being accidental is
basically nil.  In addition, the destination base in Louisiana that the
bomber landed at is one of the staging areas for Middle East operations. 
There is speculation in some military circles that this movement of nuclear
weapons was intentional, and that either (a) it was leaked by someone who
wanted the American public to know that the military was considering
nuclear options for Iran, or (b) it was leaked intentionally and made to
look like an accident so that Iran would know the American military was
considering nuclear options.

And if you want to get considerably more paranoid, you can add to all this
speculation a couple [
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/europe/article2093759.ece ]
[timesonline.co.uk] of incidents [
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2007/08/09/wrussia109.xml
] [telegraph.co.uk] over the past summer concerning Russian air power. 
I've heard some speculations about a new Cold War that may not be too
far-fetched.  True, flamebait and conspiracy theories are a dime a dozen,
but occasionally you get some out there that are real.  Personally I think
that the tensions with Russia have already been dispelled this summer and
statements about a new Cold War at this point are trolling.  However,
people have decried for years that the Bush administration has been running
military simulations on Iran, and I think that dismissing those claims
would be foolhardy.

It will be interesting to see if the aftermath of this nuclear incident
receives any press coverage at all, and if so, just what exactly happens.

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