Ken Nelson

I hope someday, maybe soon, that most of the 18 wheelers rolling down the Interstate will be replaced with airships like this:

Wouldn’t that be nice?  A stream of these things all chained together heading somewhere without tearing up our roads?   Imagine the money we would save by building roads that would last decades?

Will it happen? I’ve no idea.  But anything we can reasonably do to keep trucks off our roads while maintaining our commerce lines of communication would be a huge win.

In the Artic, where there aren’t any roads, they are considering airships for freight movement.

British airship manufacturer Hybrid Air Vehicles has announced a major contract with Canada’s Discovery Air Innovations to build airships capable of lifting as much as 50 tons, delivering freight at one-quarter the cost of other alternatives. Though various militaries have expressed interest in airships, this is HAV’s first commercial contract. The first ship is expected by 2014.

Fingers crossed. I’d love for airships to flourish to the point where I could get an airship RV and cruise America, or the world, without driving.

The Goodyear Blimp crashed in Hindenbergesque fashion over the weekend:

This bums me out on many levels. I’ve thought for a long time that blimps could play a role in changing how we move freight and people in this country. Or hoped it could. But if they still explode like this, no thanks.  I suppose anywhere you have fuel, you have a fire risk.

I haven’t been blogging lately… I’m traveling.

Currently I’m in Charlotte, NC. We picked up this beauty yesterday and we are going to head back west with it later today.

Once back in Utah, this 1960 Ford Starliner will donate its good glass, trim and hood and other components to two Ford Starliner’s  being rebuilt in my father-in-laws old Ford laboratory.

And yes… Gas is getting expensive.

The Atlantic has pictures

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I’m not a fan of NASA or the Space Shuttle.  Our manned space flight programs have been wasteful, single minded, and have probably hindered our advancement into space more than they have helped.

I think it can be handled readily commercially and the only governmental space stuff I support is military activities, like spy satellites, death rays and orbital facilities for growing clone Armies.

Source: Internet

http://www.caradvice.com.au/25172/volkswagen-introduces-worlds-most-economical-car/

It seems like an ATV that is covered. But that works for me.  For driving around town, where I know its just me and I don’t need to pick up plywood or anything, this would be just fine. And at $600, I could get a couple and be well ahead on gas.

Let them eat…

Not everybody has to go through this crazy airport security…. Nancy Pelosi doesn’t. Tim Geithner doesn’t. John Boehner doesn’t. And didn’t on his last trip.

I don’t mind exempting pilots. But politicians don’t deserve, nor should expect, special treatment.

Especially ones like Geithner and Pelosi, who are more dangerous to the country than the typical Muslim extremist.

I’m tired of them thinking they are so special when they are clearly just a bunch of morons and political hacks.  And in that I include Boehner, who should have been savvy enough to NOT use special TSA favors.

 
Inconvenienced flyer?

A study by Cornell University estimates that 130 drivers die because security inconveniences pushed them over the threshold of “fly/drive” towards drive.

This study was done in 2002 after the TSA began screening checked baggage.

As the inconveniences and time spent clearing security mount, so do avoidable driving fatalities.

Somebody SMART needs to be in charge. Not EDUCATED… smart.  They aren’t the same.

This pretty much precludes the government.

The fancy scanners that show you naked… even their manufacturer admits they wouldn’t have caught the underwear bomber.

And those pictures they delete right after you clear security… they don’t delete them.

Do you think a dedicated Muslim terrorist would mind cutting his “junk off” and replacing it with a bomb shaped to look eerily similar?   Or would a dedicated Jihadist  that got a job in ground systems at a major airport, gradually, day by day, smuggle in small amounts of a bomb or other weapon in quantities too small to notice?   Or how about this idea… they spend 10 years and have a mole go through flight school, and eventually end up in the side-seat of a jet, and then chloroform the other pilot and do as he or she wants. Or maybe just by-pass the TSA… steal a private jumbo-jet, perhaps from Travolta’s house.

Whatever security you do, if you let people on planes, or let people work at the airport, the jihadists will figure out a way to do something nasty.

And I could sit down and in the next 1/2 hour  think of DOZENS of ideas that the TSA could never stop. Assuming I had a terrorist that was willing to die.

The KEY is to keep them from having comfortable bases here. That means limiting Muslim immigrations to virtually nil.

The next KEY is to keep killing them, and especially their leaders, abroad. With Predators, smart bombs, and troops.

The final KEY is to NOT LET THEM WIN by ruining our travel sector in foolish, CYA, security measures and approaches that only a mindless idiotic bureaucrat could love.

Fortunately, Bush started doing the 2nd key, and Obama hasn’t stopped that yet.  Neither have done a good job keeping Muslims out.  And both failed the last key – the terrorists win every time somebody is patted down, or when security lines stretch to Disneylandesque distances.

One for three… not bad in baseball – terrible for anti-terrorism.

Update… something is going to have to change.

Give us choice. Schedule flights which do not have security checks.  But… the crew is trained and armed. Perhaps they are ex-Seals (in my perfect world). They don’t serve, they protect.  If I want a snack, I bring it with me.  And the plane has sturdy cockpit doors. And give the air crew the right to say “sorry, you can’t take this ride” to any passenger for any reason.

This would be easy to do… just have a low security terminal. If you board at Terminal “L”, you just walk in, just like the old days.

I’d fly that way.

And eventually we could tell the 67,000 new Federal employees we’ve hired for the TSA since 2001 to go be a pension burden for somebody else.

The problem with our TSA is that their only solution is MORE TSA, LESS flyers, and LESS liberty.

Long, steep, escalator, Woodley Park Stop, Red Line, DC Metro.
Imagine this thing sliding free for 18 seconds…

The DC Subway system seems proud of a 90% escalator safety rate…. that’s right 90%.   If you frequent the DC metro, as I did when I lived there, that means it is WHEN not IF an escalator will fail on you.

 
Driving Mr. Ken

I’m now at ATL airport hoping my guns and other baggage arrive with me in Las Vegas in a few hours.

The scale of modern airports (I’ve traveled miles already and haven’t left the airport), the security hassles, and the invariable crowding of the new cut route airlines make modern air travel quite uncomfortable. Add in $70 bucks for bags and it is downright irksome. Plus, except for Southwest, they are all union and couldn’t really give a crap about improving.

Frankly, my threshold has just about been reached.  Anything under 1500 miles… driving sounds pretty good right now.  Especially with my “new” plan… hire a driver. That way I can read, relax, work and watch the miles go by in the comfort of the passenger seat.

This gets old. I travel. The airline screws up. They act like they don’t care. I waste lots of time.

We arrived in Atlanta at 7:15 tonight.  Now it is almost 11PM and we are still waiting for bags.  Normally, I’d say “fine – deliver them”, but one contains firearms and we have to wait.

At Las Vegas when we checked in there was chaos until a few more energetic passengers, myself included, organized the baggage check in line.  4 Delta employees, no-doubt unionized, stood around doing nothing.

The clerk then had no idea how to check firearms as baggage. I had to explain it to him. They then wanted to charge me $125 for a bag, when it was supposed to be $25.

The flight went okay.

Landing though… the baggage never showed. They said it was on another flight, which has now arrived but has sit away from the gate for 1.5 hours.

Nobody knows anything. It shouldn’t be this hard.

I’m flying Southwest from now on.  If they don’t go there, I probably won’t go.

 
We could spend it on roads, or lower tolls, or extravagant bonuses!

A New Jersey toll taker earned $300K last year.

Auditors say the New Jersey Turnpike Authority wasted $43 million on unneeded perks and bonuses.  In one case, an employee with a base salary of $73,469 earned $321,985 when all payouts and bonuses were included.

Other people’s money is FUN. Print more! Tax more!