Greetings from Salt Lake City International Airport! This is what I had hoped to start my ill fated entry with yesterday. In reality, It's "Greetings from my home's basement!" Due to my misunderstanding of available Wi Fi in the airport, need (want) of/for food, and other extenuating ($.25 word) (do they have a "cents sign" key on the computer keyboard?) circumstances, I was not able to post yesterday. You know, I realize the need for the new heightened security measures at airports, and I'm on board with this, but it's still quite an ordeal. When you travel, the real "trip" is getting through security screening, it's all easy after that compared to the security thing. I tried to be a conscientious, aware, and prepared traveller. I printed literally several hundred pages of travel/security info from the web, and actually read most of it. No where did I see anything about having your laptop out and ready for inspection. So, I had mine in a bigger bag, with various items on top of it, including a donut, medications, and camera. I was already running late, and had to empty part of my bag on the floor in the middle of a very long security line. I did make it through, putting things back together the best I could as they were already boarding my flight for Denver, enroute to Salt Lake City. I did make the flight, successfully arriving in Denver from Omaha. Ok, I know about the huge amount of thrust generated by the airplane's jet engines, I am aware of how, due to a low pressure area being created above the wings, therefore the plane is able to lift (and fly), and I have heard more than once that mile for mile it's safer to fly than to drive your car. But, realizing all that, my common sense mind tells me there is no way that huge thing weighing who knows what itself, and all the passengers (roughly 100 (seats/passengers) x their weight individually, and lots of luggage, even so good that Frontier (no commercial payment) has the Air Bus brand of airplane ( a French company, but don't get me started on economic ramifications and the effect on our GNP, that's for another post) as the flagship of it's entire line, there is no way something like what I flew on can fly. Just no way. Science aside, it just can't be. But it is "be" millions of times per year. However, in favor of my common sense, If you are driving your car and it has trouble and quits, well you at least just roll to a stop. In the airplane....not so simple. Thankfully, that occurence on airplanes is very rare, rare enough in fact, to account for the large number of passengers flown each year. Since I disregard my common sense on enough other occasions, the scientist/engineer wannabe in me wins out and I will still fly. Besides, you still get that complementary soft drink, no peanuts though, on most flights! Enough of my travel tales, maybe more later, here is the Technology Tidbit for today: The Air Force has used artificial intellengece voices (pre-programmed computer voices) to talk to the pilots on some training flights (why , I don't know, and it's not really relevant for this story) They have found out that the pilots respond quicker and execute the commands faster when given by a female voice. With respect to the scientific explanation for this, I will be glad to discuss/debate this with you. With regards to implications in real life, I'm not even going there. Sorry for the longer rambles, maybe I'm just debriefing myself from the trip. Another post bites the dust.
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