Greg In The Desert

Since I’m doing a lot of traveling right now I pay extra attention to airline travel related news. I found this story about the name “Dean Martin” being on the Do Not Fly list.

This situation was found the hard way by the State Treasurer of Arizona Dean Martin. Who thinks it’s politically motivated because he doesn’t get along with the former Governor of Arizona Janet Napolitano. Janet Napolitano now runs Homeland Security who is in charge of the Do Not Fly list.

It seems odd that Homeland Security would put such a common name on their list. Actually the whole concept of the Do Not Fly list is odd.

If you haven’t seen the videos on youtube of the water popelled jetpack by Jetlev Sports Inc., then watch here.

Essentially this is a compact device which sits on a persons back and sucks from a large body of water to propel the user using water. The advantage: It’s small and James Bond like. The disadvantage: it has a big tube that needs to sit in a large body of water.

Water sports are popular. This is a whole new category of water sport vehicles.

A few more details from slashdot:

Called the JetLev-Flyer, the design purportedly can reach a height of 15 meters, a speed of 72 kph, and a range of 300 kilometers based on four hours of flying time. A digital fly-by-wire system is used to control the throttle. Future designs may achieve higher altitudes, higher top speeds, and extended range, and even travel below the water’s surface. The American manufacturers claim it is ‘amazingly easy to learn and operate’ and they’re taking orders now at $130,000 each.

I’ve had the opportunity to travel to Portland Oregon on short trips several times this year. There is very rarely a direct flight from the Sunport to anywhere except a state directly next to New Mexico. This time I went through Denver International Airport for the first time. I was pretty interested to fly through Denver this time because of the conspiracy theories associated with it.

Lets start with the murals. I didn’t get a chance to see them, I wasn’t sure if they were past the security area and if I had time get to where they are. I’ve read about them and there many pictures up on Flickr. When you see the giant picture of the nazi dude with the dead children, well that’s just disturbing. There is another mural showing different people of the world bringing down this nazi dude. I think the point of which is to show what happens if the people of the world don’t come together to eliminate the bad guys. Still, this is pretty odd. It doesn’t help the rest of the conspiracy theories.

anomalies-unlimited.com is the main source for the conspiracy theories. As I read through the sites, its easy to dismiss many of their claims. First one being that “Denver already had what everyone said was a perfectly fine airport – Stapleton.”According to Wikipedia, Stapleton was serious too small and poorly designed to be the 4th busiest airport in the US, which is what DIA is now. I believe Wikipedia’s explanation more then anomalies-unlimited.

I won’t go through all the things that anomalies-unlimited points out. Some of it just doesn’t make sense that it’s part of a conspiracy. However there are some odd things they do warrant future inspection. Such as the fact that DIA was 2 Billion (with a “B”) over budget. Where did that money go? anomalies-unlimited seems to suggest that it went to a vast underground military complex that exists under the airport and that the purpose of the airport was really just to build this complex. Seems to me that one would build such a complex under a less busy airport.

My limited experience at the airport indicates that the airport is pretty well designed and huge. I think the A gates went from 1 to 99. Although I generally dismiss the conspiracy theories, I did note something strange at the A gates. There are these mosaic tile images of people standing and walking through the terminals located on the floor. They are kinda weird in that they are top views and you can only make them out if you get up high (there is a higher level one can view them). In between these mosaics are a border and on these boarders are words like “North America”, “Europe” and “Antarctica”. Next to these words are random symbols that seem to have no purpose at all. These are all mosaics which are pretty easy to make out, with continent names in upper case. Near some of these content names are other words in lower case and the tile colors are really close to the back ground making it hard to figure out what they say. The symbols kinda look like random characters from the Zapf Dingbats font. Perhaps these are codes to the Aliens that come through DIA to tell them which continents they need to go through when they arrive.

anomalies-unlimited.com does have one final item that I agree is strange, the odd tablet with a masonic symbol on it. Above that tablet is what appears to be a keypad. What the heck is this thing and why are there no better pictures of this thing than the poor quality ones on their website?

Lifehacker compares Vista’s BitLocker vs. FileVault. They like BitLocker better.

OS Encryption Showdown: Vista’s BitLocker vs. Mac’s FileVault – Lifehacker

FileVault encrypts the users’s home directory and all the files in it. As you read and write files to your home directory, in the background, FileVault encrypts and decrypts those files on the fly. Only the user’s login password can decrypt and mount this drive image, so at login the home directory becomes available as usual – its icon, however, looks like a lock. To other users on the same Mac, however, all files in the user’s home directory cannot be accessed.

BitLocker doesn’t just encrypt the user’s files, it encryptes the entire operating system partition, including Windows files, all your software applications as well as all the users’ data stored on the drive. You create a USB key with the password on it and plug it into your PC in order to start it (like a key for your car.) BitLocker uses a small boot partition to check for the right password, and only boots up if it’s present. If not, the hard drive is completely inaccessible.

Yet another reason not to fly.

Without their knowledge, millions of Americans and foreigners crossing U.S. borders in the past four years have been assigned scores generated by U.S. government computers rating the risk that the travelers are terrorists or criminals. The travelers are not allowed to see or directly challenge these risk assessments, which the government intends to keep on file for 40 years.

Sunday 9 October 2005 the X Prize foundation will be showing off the the ships for the next X Cup. Tickets are $6 for adults and $2 for kids. I will be there, will you?

Come meet the astronauts who will fly them and imagine yourself inside them, watching the earth turn below you. The future is closer than you think. We’re not talking about models. We’re talking about the real thing.

Last year the X PRIZE Foundation gave away $10 million for the first private spaceflight a history-making achievement that blanketed the front pages of newspapers across the globe. This year we’re unveiling a new generation of private spaceships at the X PRIZE CUP in New Mexico.

Bring your friends and family to the Las Cruces Airport on Sunday Oct 9th See six different spaceships currently in testing. Watch them fly. Meet the pioneers, pilots and astronauts who conceived them.