Notes From the Weekend

Short takes from my web-surfing this weekend:

--Looks like India might be getting France and Germany into a bidding war for future Indian submarine business. While it looks like France has the inside track, Germany is trying to get back in the game. Either way you look at it, it'll be a win for the Indian sub force.

--Ninme has a lot of good coverage of the London bomb attacks.

--Connoisseurs of nutty conspriracy theory crackpots (like myself) were disappointed when Daily Kos put the kibosh on some of his more "imaginative" commenters. Luckily, they were able to move over to DU and continue their rantings. "Reality-based", my ass...

--This is not good:

"It was a significant turning point this past spring when the Justice Department joined a whistle-blower lawsuit accusing Hunt Valve, a key maker of critical valves for U.S. Navy submarines, of defrauding the government.
"The decision to intervene against Hunt, a Salem, Ohio-based maker of valves for Los Angeles-class, Virginia-class and Seawolf-class submersibles, brings to bear the weight of the U.S. government against the company...
"Hunt now stands accused in the civil suit of knowingly defrauding the government by having non-qualified personnel working on valves, having non-qualified inspectors - including a janitor - conducting inspections and knowingly creating false documents after the fact attesting to the valves' safety."

Kinda puts a whole lot of the basis of the QA and SubSafe programs in question... (Intel Source: The Sub Report)