The Perfect Troll: Woman Roughed Up at An Airport

So I have been seeing this blog being passed around a bit here and there:

"While still in her car, she took a picture of the decorative helicopter shell with the intention of posting it on her personal “Support Our Troops” web page.

As Nancy Genovese was preparing to drive away, she was stopped and approached by Robert Iberger, a lieutenant with the Southampton Town Police. Lieutenant Iberger demanded to know why she was taking photographs. Nancy showed the lieutenant her camera, but Lieutenant Iberger grabbed her camera and handled it “without care”. In an attempt to prevent the lieutenant from damaging the camera, Nancy removed her memory card, which Lieutenant Iberger confiscated. To date, Nancy’s memory card still has not been returned to her.

Lieutenant Iberger demanded that Nancy remain where she is, and he refused to allow her to leave. At this time, Lieutenant Iberger notified the Suffolk County Sheriff’s Office and the authorities at Gabreski Airport of Nancy’s presence outside the airport, and falsely and wrongfully informed them that she posed a terrorist threat."

--Long Island Lawyer Blog: Mother of 3 Arrested for Taking Pictures of Tourist Attraction at Airport

That's the lawyer's version by the way.  Then we have the government's version:

"A Quogue woman was arrested Thursday night after Air National Guard Officials called the SuffolkCounty Sheriff’s Office to report a woman taking pictures of both the air base and surrounding airport property."

--Suffolk County Government, Long Island, NY: Armed Woman Arrested for Trespassing at Suffolk County Gabreski Airport/Air National Guard Base

So this is a classic case of "there are three sides to every story, yours, mine and the truth".  So I googled the darn thing and here is what I found:

"The airport is both a general aviation facility utilized by corporate businesses, private aviation and air taxi services and an Air National Guard (ANG) base used by the 106th Rescue Wing (106 RQW), an Air Combat Command (ACC)-gained of the New York Air National Guard, which is also based here."

--Wikipedia - Francis_S._Gabreski_Airport

Turns out this place is both a civilian facility and a military facility.  I blame dumb state officials for making this place A GRAY AREA.  If it's a civilian facility she can be there taking pictures, if it's a military base then she should not be there. So which one is it???

Although I also have to add there are many more stories of women out there being roughed up by the government at airports.  I don't think this is a healthy trend and I'm glad someone out there is testing the limits of authority. It helps keep the Constitution fresh without the need for the blood of patriots like Jefferson says don't you agree?

The Universe Could Hold up to 21,600 Habitable Planets

Quoting NASA:

"The findings increase the number of planet candidates identified by Kepler to-date to 1,235. Of these, 68 are approximately Earth-size; 288 are super-Earth-size; 662 are Neptune-size; 165 are the size of Jupiter and 19 are larger than Jupiter. Of the 54 new planet candidates found in the habitable zone, five are near Earth-sized. The remaining 49 habitable zone candidates range from super-Earth size -- up to twice the size of Earth -- to larger than Jupiter. The findings are based on the results of observations conducted May 12 to Sept. 17, 2009 of more than 156,000 stars in Kepler’s field of view, which covers approximately 1/400 of the sky."

--NASA - NASA Finds Earth-size Planet Candidates in the Habitable Zone

We can assume the planets in the universe will be evenly distributed as that 1/400 part Kepler analyzed. If so, then out of the 1,235 possible planets in just 1/400 of our view of the universe, 54 are in the same habitable distance from their suns as Earth. That means there could be up to 54 x 400 = 21,600 possible earth-like planets of different sizes with us in the universe.