Thursday, November 09, 2006

Let's start off with a bang!

Literally!

French Missile Test

Now, as a matter of principle, I don't comment on world affairs, but this article was begging for it. A few excerpts that I'd like to draw to your attention:

"...the first experimental flight of the M51 strategic missile carried out, as always, without a warhead..."

Does this even bear mentioning? Are people really worried that they were testing a missile that could quite possibly explode on the launch pad with a nuclear warhead? I mean, the launch pad is near Bordeaux! Can you imagine what that would do to the wine industry? "Oh, 2006 was a terrible year for Chateaux Poutine... It might be okay if you age it though... How long, you ask? Hmm, what's the half-life of weapons-grade plutonium, again?" And even if it did lift off with a nuclear warhead, isn't less of an experiment and more, I dunno, an act of war?

"A heavy police presence was in place around the missile testing center to prevent disruption of the launch by environmentalist groups."

Umm... I thought these things were usually disrupted by peace activists, not environmentalists. Did the environmentalist movement change vision statements lately? If so, then sorry for my ignorance.

"Its enhanced accuracy is designed to reduce "collateral damage," according to the defense ministry."

Well, that's certainly good news. It would certainly be embarrassing if they fired at the US (come on, you know they WANT to!) and hit Belgium instead. Though I'm not sure that reducing "collateral damage" is a top priority when using nuclear weapons.

Ok, that's it for this post. I will make the next one a lot more frivolous, I promise. Kittens! I'll write about cute fluffy kittens!

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Good post man, those wacky french are always doing something funny.
Like testing a submarine-fired missile from a launch pad. That's useful. Now they have to buy some launchpad-shaped submarines.