2017 Summer July 6 Thursday

74 degrees this morning, walk 35:28 minutes

Walk was ok this morning, pace was 24 seconds slower than my goal pace.  This morning I did realize I was walking slower, but it may have been because it is Thursday!

It may be interesting to correlate my pace with the day of the week to see if there is any correlation between the day of the week and my pace on the walk.  Interesting but meaningless to some degree and probably a waste of time.

I’m not quite sure what I would do with the information except perhaps marvel if there is some correlation between my pace and the day of he week (or day of the month for that matter).  

This journal may be a little erratic as far as time of publication over the next several days, (it is already erratic!)  but don’t despair, it will be published sometime during the day.  

Read an article in a newsletter about “personal aircraft” and how this trend may lead to personal aircraft being used more and more, if not an “aircraft in every garage”, a “shared use” or more likely an “on demand” type of service where an aircraft is always available.  

Again, I think the key to this is the development of batteries to provide for electric flight for noise and fuel efficiency reasons.

There is a lot of reasons to believe this (on demand aircraft) is  feasible.  

I remember about 15 years ago, I went to a conference where even then they mentioned that the technology existed to remotely control an aircraft so it started, took off, flew to it’s destination and landed, all without any human intervention.  

If that was 15 years ago, the technology definitely should be here today for “on demand” flight, although for safety reasons there probably would be a human who could take over.  

This could certainly affect the plans for infrastructure improvement etc., as much of the infrastructure might not be needed if “on demand” personal aircraft are developed for daily use.  

I certainly thought when I was  child that we would not be using basically the same type of transportation system now that  we used when I was a child.  Cars are much improved in a lot of ways, but are still the same basic concept, as are trains, and airplanes etc.

I really thought we would be using something like jetpacks by now, or something like a personal  helicopter and certainly have driverless cars. 

However, …. it isn’t so, and I really don’t know if it (on demand aircraft, driverless car s  etc.) will develop all that fast even today.  

Again, I see the development of batteries as kind of a basic requirement before we can have big advances in on-demand aircraft and driverless car. 

It also will take some advanced thinking by State Legislatures.  The current State Legislature thinking is to “tax” hybrids and electric cars since they don't use gasoline, where logically if they really wanted to develop a “fair” system, they would look at some kind of “miles driven” model.  Of course, apparently the kook brothers are spreading money around to try to stop development of non-gas/oil related vehicles and power etc, which says something about their thinking.  

I still think houses powered by batteries (perhaps “peak” power  and emergency power at first) powered by solar etc. is a big future trend.  

On demand aircraft may not be actually commonplace in the near future, but then 10 years ago, no one could have foreseen the impact of the iPhone, so who knows?

That’s it for now, Thursday, July 6, 2017.