Common Sense - UPDATED

I don't mean to harp on the undersea cables, but being somewhat obsessive-compulsive, I can't stop myself.

First of all, it reminds me of old movies (before cell phones) when the killer would snip the phone wires outside the house while the babysitter was inside making out with her boyfriend. The act is done with a purpose.

Second, ships usually pull their anchors when underway (duh), and they anchor in ports, at things called piers, where they probably use these things called ropes to tie up the ship. I'm just guessing here. Presumably ships leave port and sail to the next port, where they dock at the next pier and do the same thing all over again. I don't know how much use anchors actually get, but it seems to me that captains who operate ships with the anchors dragging are incompetent. In my experience, the boat anchor gets dropped for fishing and beaching.

Third, four cables cut in a manner of days? Come on. Try and find an exact spot twice while out on the water. Now find a cable lying on the sea floor with your anchor, and make sure to drag the anchor just so to cut the cable. Repeat four times. What you can't do that??? No shit. And it's just the most ridiculous thing to believe that this could happen four times in a week, by accident.

Fourth, here's a cutaway diagram of undersea fiber optic cables. As the gentleman says, it's more likely the cable would capsize the boat before the anchor cut the cable. These things are not manufactured out of string and tape, but of steel cables, industrial plastics, and aluminum.

Fifth, we are heading into Super Tuesday. If some sort of terrorist attack should take place, it will certainly rattle the cages of voters. Under such circumstances, they will probably flock to John McCain and Hillary Clinton.

Let us hope this is all crazy speculation and laugh it off next week, shall we?

UPDATE: No ships in the area...

Egypt denies the earlier reports on the Mideast Internet outage, saying there were no ships present around when the cables were cut off.

Egypt's Ministry of Communications announced in a statement Sunday that "a marine transport committee investigated the traffic of ships in the area, 12 hours before and after the malfunction, where the cables are located to figure out the possibility of being cut by a passing vessel and found out there were no passing ships at that time.”

And...repairs to start on FLAG cable linking Egypt and Italy:

Flag Telecom will start repairs next week on a damaged submarine telecommunications cable linking Egypt and Italy. A repair ship is expected to reach the site of the damage, 8.3 kilometers from Alexandria, Egypt, on Tuesday. The repair will take a week to complete, Flag Telecom said Friday.

Breaks on Wednesday in the Flag Telecom Europe-Asia cable, owned by India's Reliance Communications, and on the South East Asia-Middle East-West Europe 4 (SEA-ME-WE 4) cable, owned by a consortium, disrupted Internet and other communications to the Middle East and India.

Flag said the Europe-Asia cable was cut at 8 a.m. GMT on Wednesday. The company also said it was able to restore circuits to some customers and was switching to alternative routes for others.

...Another submarine Internet cable owned by Flag Telecom, the Falcon cable between the United Arab Emirates and Oman, was cut on Friday at 6 a.m. GMT, at a location 56 kilometers from Dubai, Flag said Friday. A repair ship has been notified, and is expected to arrive at the site of the damage in the next few days, the company said.

Yup. Take your time. No problem.