Speed Limit Enforced By Aircraft

I love lying to people.

That's not true.

I love making up stories and trying to get people to believe absolutely ridiculous explanations for very regular phenomena.  I'm not sure why I do this or why I think it's so amusing, but it is. Most of my humor is very sarcastic and hyperbolic and the funny thing is, I'm pretty successful at getting people to believe what I'm saying. Like the time I convinced my brother that frog-eye salad is really made from frog eyes leading him to exclaim, "that's a lot of frogs!". Or when I convinced him that pasta grows from trees that originated in a pasta forest in Italy. Or that time when I convinced my other brother that a piece of wood was organic chicken and actually got him to eat it. Many of my lies are about food...

So I was in California a couple of weekends ago, and I'm always amused on my drive there because of these:

Really? Enforced by aircraft? Like California really has money to spend on jet fuel for planes to enforce the speed limit on I-15. That's not expensive or anything... So I did some EXTENSIVE research on the topic (i.e. I googled it). According to various, sketchy open internet forums full of apparent experts on speed limit enforcement, the topic is quite controversial. Some people claim to have been caught speeding by aircrafts who use little white flags on the highway to judge the speed of vehicles. When an aircraft identifies the offending vehicle they radio it in to a state trooper. Other people say, these signs were put up in the 90's when people thought aircraft enforcement would be economical. It wasn't, and it wasn't economical to take all the signs down either, so speed on. And still others say it's simply a psychological trick to make people think they're being watched so they obey the law.

So what's the real reason? What do these signs really mean?

There is surprisingly little, credible information on these signs, which led me to ask, "why is there so little credible information on these signs?" The answer is obvious. If we, as humans with little funds for such endeavors, were to enforce speed limits by aircraft, we would be wasting tons of money and time. Something bigger is afoot. Something bigger than a psychological trick to get us to obey the law. Maybe there's no information because it's kept secret and because no one who knows more has lived to tell the tale.

Speed enforced by aircraft means one thing: aliens. In the 1990's when these signs first appeared, the government was working on an intergalactic treaty with an alien life form. These aliens, being highly intelligent and way more advanced than us humans, were threatening to destroy the earth and use us as slaves for their own technological advancement. However, these aliens were surprised by our intelligence, not because it was anywhere close to their own, but because humans were intelligent enough to be protected by their ethical code for preserving intelligent life. But they still needed us for their own gain and were power-hungry enough to threaten world leaders, so they demanded a small portion of the human population as payment for not destroying Earth. After careful deliberation, alien experts and world leaders decided the most effective way to do this would be to have the aliens abduct people who break the law, namely, people who speed. All people who speed in designated areas are no longer protected by human, earthly laws but are under the jurisdiction of alien life forms who have free reign to do whatever they want with them. These areas would be well marked by signs saying "Speed enforced by aircraft" in order to warn those traveling to reduce their speed but not let on that other life-forms exist; secrecy was key because as soon as people began to catch on, the aliens might retract their agreement and destroy Earth anyway. And so it began. Since then, anyone caught speeding by the aliens has been beamed up into a spaceship and probably experimented upon, eaten, or cloned for slave labor. That's why no one knows what these signs mean.

Don't ever speed on I-15.

By the way, these are the same aliens depicted in the movie Cowboys and Aliens. This movie was only a flop because the government got wind of how accurate and awesome it was turning out to be and didn't want the Earth to be destroyed because of it. So they demanded that Jon Favreau and the writers of the movie make it slightly less awesome, and demanded that Harrison Ford not be an amazing actor in order to save the human race. It's ok Harrison, we know what really happened there and thanks for saving the world like you always do.

Something Greater

In 10^th grade during a free day in chemistry class, we watched a documentary. For those who don’t know, “documentary” is pronounced with the “ary” at the end, not a “tree”. Document-ARY. Yeah. Anyway, so this documentary was about these two French volcanologists (volcano scientists. Cool right?) who met in college, got married and became pioneers in filming volcanic eruptions. They traveled the world together, taking video and pictures of the world’s most active volcanoes. Nothing like this had ever really been done before. They wrote books together. They literally saved lives by showing footage of a volcano that was about to erupt to the president of Columbia who then ordered an evacuation. But in 1991, while scaling the side of an active volcano, they miscalculated the weak side of the mountain, the volcano erupted and they were killed instantly.

I remember sitting next to a friend of mine, who, after the film ended, said “Wow. That’s the most depressing thing I’ve ever heard in my life. Studying volcanoes is a stupid thing to do”. I was completely baffled by his response... because here I was thinking that the story of Katia and Maurice Krafft was one of the most beautiful, tragic, inspiring stories I’d ever heard.  That what they had is the only thing I want.  Not that I want to die in a volcanic eruption (even though that would be pretty epic) or that it’s a good thing they died prematurely, but they had something that so rarely is so explicit. They had passion.

Not only passion for each other, but passion for something greater than them both. I don't remember the quote exactly but Katia said of their relationship that they loved volcanoes, and they loved each other, and ultimately their love could not exist without volcanoes because that's what brought them together. They were a team. Not only with each other but with the volcanoes they studied. Maurice called the volcanoes their "friends" because they had built a relationship with them. They committed themselves to each other and to geology. They committed to walk where no one else was brave enough to walk. Am I the only one who sees how absolutely amazing they were? How brave and bold and how alive they were? They expressed volcanoes never scared them. Coincidentally, Maurice said the day before they died "I am never afraid because I have seen so much eruptions in 23 years that even if I die tomorrow, I don't care". They were that committed...

Then they died together, by the very thing that brought them together. They had accepted death long before this moment, and accepted the power volcanoes had, and how they could never control what would happen to them. They were not afraid to live, to pursue, to love, even though they knew of the potential to get hurt, to die even, Yet they didn't ignore the possibility of pain, they accepted it and respected it.They were submissive, yet bold. They accepted fate, and forged ahead anyway. And they did so together, in pursuit of the truth. How honorable and fitting is it that they died together, with the very things they loved? What more could we ask for than a life filled with passion and love and purpose? What more could we ask for than a life committed to something greater?

Now obviously, I don't know Katia and Maurice. I don't know how their lives really were... I only know what I've read and what I've seen and the impact they had on the world. I don't know if their relationship was perfect, in fact, I doubt it was. I don't know if everything presented to me was truth. But regardless of  what I don't know, I do know that if I had the love they had, I wouldn't be afraid either. Even though most of us aren't going to find true love by studying volcanoes, maybe their story is representative of what we all can have by loving others and committing to something greater.