Fire on Call Anywhere, Anytime

FalconSLV-1
I was reading ‘Blogs of War‘ tonight and happened across this note about ‘project Falcon’:

The Pentagon is developing a suborbital space capsule within the next five years that would be launched from the United States and could deliver conventional weapons anywhere in the world within two hours, defense officials say.
This year, the Falcon program will test a launcher for its Common Aero Vehicle (CAV), an unmanned maneuverable spacecraft that would travel at five times the speed of sound and could carry1,000 pounds of munitions, intelligence sensors or other payloads,The Washington Post reported Wednesday.

(More here on Xinhua)

I found some more info on it over at military.com:

You’ve got less than 2 hours to strike an HVT 9,000 miles away. Who are you going to call? How about the FALCON program? Initiated by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) and the U.S. Air Force, the program hopes to give the U.S. a global prompt strike capability by using hypersonic sub-orbital vehicles — autonomous, remotely operated and reusable — to deliver its payload to targets worldwide.

(full text here: CRUISING IN OVERDRIVE: The FALCON Hypersonic Cruise Vehicle)
I’m going to group this into the same category as the new land robots with firearms mounted on them. It is something that if used for good could keep balance in the world, but if used for evil or against the common good, it could really screw up the planet. War should never become an easy option for anyone, but what can you do? Technology marches on, I can only hope that we gain the wisdom of the past so we can safeguard the future.
By the way, the flight opperations sound a lot like the old Dynasoar program on the ’50s. Up to 60km, glide and drop to 35Km and then boost up to 40Km and repeat until the target is reached.
If you ask me, getting 12,000 pounds of cargo 9000 miles in two hours would be the ‘killer app’ of the package delivery business. FalconFedEx anyone? (But then it wouln’t kill anyone and could never get the deep pocket funding that the military has. Baka.)

Toxic KFC!

KFC- in China
Humm… Toxic KFC in China? Sounds like someone was trying to save some yuan and use a substitute that should never be consumed by humans. In some cases, a strong body of government regulation is important to the welfare of the citizens because with all matters that involve money corruption is soon to follow unless it is overseen by somone.
I wonder if anyone will do a follow up on this story to see if a state run company was somehow involved… Not saying that they are corrupt or anything but I have talked to enough people to see that things aren’t always ‘above the board’ over there (hum, not here either come to think of it…) I’ll try to keep tabs on this one…

All KFC outlets in China stopped selling New Orleans roast chicken wings and chicken hamburgers Wednesday after the cancer-causing food coloring, Sudan I, was found in the sauce Tuesday.

KFC found using banned dye – Xinhua – English

Nikon D2X & Underwater Housing

This is a real double threat, not only can you take a 12 mega pixle photo but you can do it UNDERWATER! Looks like the housing will also take a D70 (so yeah, I could use one). I’d guess that the housing costs more than my camera did. The package should sell for about $5000 clams.
Nikon D2X & Underwater Housing Reviewed (Verdict: Awesome) : Gizmodo
(camera, underwater, review, gadget)