OT somewhat. China, our aircraft, delays.

----- Original Message ----- From: Mike Ford <mikeford(a)socal.rr.com> To: <classiccmp(a)classiccmp.org> Sent: Sunday, April 08, 2001 10:17 PM Subject: Re: OT somewhat. China, our aircraft, delays. Flame-avoiders, skip to the end for a KIM-1 question. The rest, prepare for controversy. :) Not necessarily. Standard procedure is to harass and play chicken with enemy aircraft approaching your airspace. That means often matching speed and approaching very, very closely. It could as easily have been the prop plane that suddenly maneuvered into the jet. Besides, if it were deliberate, wouldn't the pilot have struck in such a way that survival was likely, especially given the much more vulnerable position of the small jet vs. the huge spy plane in an impact? I think it was an accident, but let's have some fun and imagine an at least equally likely scenario that USA deliberately hit the Chinese jet. It's a fact that the current Administration has been hell-bent on destroying relations with China and North Korea from the very start -- provoking China by negotiating arms sales with Taiwan, then sabotaging North-South Korea talks in the US by falsely accusing North Korea of violating its treaty obligations (even South Korea agreed it was just one obligation, and the North lived up to it perfectly.) Add to that telling Russia they're "just not that important", and you get the impression the Administration is angling to provoke as much anti-US sentiment in the East as possible. One reasonale analysis might be that it's a deliberate attempt to rekindle a cold war, with China and possibly North Korea this time. (Another is that the US President is a moron.) Not sure how submarines killing Japanese high school kids or then landing a nuclear submarine on Japanese soil in explicit (and unprecedented) violation of US treaties with Japan fits in with the theme exactly, but there can be no question that a major focus of this administration is to damage relations as much as possible in the shortest possible time. There are so many accidents, and diplomatic gaffes, that it reminds me of the famous saying: "Never attribute to malice what can adequately be explained by abject stupidity." It's sad when you wish it's stupidity that explains all this because the alternative is so much worse. Never has a presidency failed so quickly in modern times. The Republican's answer to Jimmy Carter, only far more so. So this discussion isn't totally off-topic, does anyone have any suggestions on how to fix my dead KIM-1 keyboard? I don't think it can be repaired, and If I were to add an external keypad, I'd want it to have the same matrix and legends as the originals if possible. Is there any kind of kit or system where you can make up your own semi- professional looking keypad? Thanks for any pointers. -- Ross