Hrmmm #1

I'm an information junkie. Especially about current events. Each day I wade through four dozen different sites (at least) and pour over the events of the past twenty four hours. Almost every day I find news that does not appear in the mainstream news for some unknown reason. I call it my, "Hrmmm Moment."

So I thought I'd post the links/news which inspire such moments. I'm operating under the theory that some day I'd look back and think: Wow, should have seen THAT coming.

• Aviation Week : Northrop Crafts Multimission N-UCAS - The Navy is testing an "unmanned combat aerial system" which will be armed with "compact directed-energy weapons." Um... combat drones with freakin' laser beams! Cool. Cool. Cool. I'd sign up for the Navy tomorrow if I could get a gig operating these monsters. I, for one, wish to welcome our future aerial overlords.

• 74000 Bridges at Risk, Rarely Inspected - Local News - Almost one hundred thousand bridges are classified as "structurally deficient." Sure would be nice if we had, say, maybe, um... six hundred billion dollars to spend on our infrastructure. These are bridges used every day by thousands of cars. And they're eventually going to cause deaths of men, women, and children. Would be great if we were working on our own problems.
  

• Air controllers alerted military to unresponsive airliner - Two upsetting points buried in here: 1) That both pilots may have fallen asleep, 2) Jets were never scrambled. Neither of those facts will help me sleep at night.
  
  
• Web sites under attack - Organized criminals from another country systematically attacking our citizens and reaping millions (if not billions?) of dollars. Money which is pouring out of our country never to be seen again. Rarely do I approve of government involving in our lives on a major scale. But this sort of attack needs to be fought on a higher level with more powerful resources than businesses and citizens can bring to bear. Also, I only see this getting worse, not better.