ediron2's Journal: Submarines apparently aren't slashdot fodder...

I've spent the vast majority of my casual browsing the past few days trying to track the status/news on the Russian 7-man sub.

For anyone that didn't hear, they're on the surface and ok.

Meanwhile, finding current and accurate news has been horrible. I didn't realize how used to immediate news via internet sources I'd gotten until this. Usually, if I can't find news streams that are immediate/current enough via news.google, I resort to slashdot's story on the subject, read the comments to find suggestions on the best feed around.

But not on this.

Slashdot's coverage? (cue sound: Crickets)...

Between the geopolitical significance of US/UK military aircraft *landing* on Kamchatka, the technical issues, deep-water rescue talk, the nature of the grid-thing that they were tangled up in, URL recommendations for good news feeds, comments by nerds with connected friends, etc... this story screamed a need for slashdot. news.google had 2700 stories in the story index earlier this evening.

And where the bleeding hell was slashdot? I have looked, but been unable to find any story on this. Did I miss it!?

By the way, WTF are the scuba-at-200-meters implications, since the scuba depth record is 300 meters... I'm sure cold and other issues are why one of these ultra-deep divers wasn't just flown out there to dive down with a hacksaw or 700 feet of air hose and an extension cord for power, but I'm curious, in case anyone knows.

And how is it possible that some other mechanism for rescue couldn't be deployed 700 vertical feet, including bladders capable of buoying up 70 tons, those dudes in the captain-nemo/Men-of-honor gear, or whatever. I understand 3000-12000 feet gets hellish, but are things truly that ugly 600' down?!

It took ages to scrounge up weathersat photos, I was nearly driven *mad* trying to keep track of times being reported in Eastern, GMT, Moscow, China, Kamchatka and a half-dozen other reference frames, I found some great quotes when I babelfished my way around some russian news sites (pravda.ru and a tv site... ntn?)... and throughout, I was a bit in awe of the fact that military aircraft from US and UK were given permission to fly into a soviet military base that is so restrictive that KAL-007 was shot down for coming within 50 miles of it.

(OK, on checking, KAL-007 got shot down near Sakhalin, after crossing Kamchatka... and why KAL-007 was shot down is a story full of surprises.)

A last thought: a couple hours ago, as the british sub started hacking away on cables, it finally occurred to me that a journal would have been better than nothing at trying to build a peer-discussion. By then, it was too late. But next time...