I'm a private pilot. Every two years, I'm required to go through a flight review with a flight instructor that, except for the absence of an FAA check airman, mirrors almost exactly what I had to do to get my certificate. So I've been studying the plane's manual and the regulations, and this morning I got a formal weather briefing and started planning the flight. It's a big deal: my last BFR was in June 2004, so at the end of this month, I'm not allowed to fly as pilot in command of any aircraft until I take another BFR. (Imagine if we had to take a full driving test every two years, how much safer the roads would be.)
Right now at Pal-Waukee Municipal Airport, winds are calm, visibility is unlimited, there are a few little clouds at 1,700 m (5,500 ft), and it's 20°C (66°F). The weather is, in short, absolutely perfect for flying[1].
Only, the plane is broken—apparently someone had a good landing, rather than an excellent one—so they're replacing the tires and inspecting the airframe.
I could cry.
Oh well. It's always better to be down here, wishing you were up there, than the reverse.
Here's the aviation meterological report (METAR), which you can plug into the new METAR decoder at http://beta.wx-now.com/Weather/MetarDecode.aspx: 2006-06-14 13:53 KPWK 141353Z 00000KT 10SM FEW055 20/11 A3013 RMK AO2 SLP200 T02000106
Yesterday I sent Illinois Senator Dick Durbin an email asking him to support S.2917, the "net neutrality" act currently working its way through the Senate. His office responded quickly, but I have no idea from reading it what his position is. Can anyone help?
Thank you for contacting me about network neutrality. I appreciate having your thoughts on this issue.
Net neutrality is a principle holding that Internet access providers should not be permitted to engage in favoritism when configuring their networks and delivering Internet content. Such favoritism could occur if a provider transmitted its own offerings at faster speeds than those of its competitors or if a provider charged digital content and application companies a fee for equally fast delivery.
This issue has gained attention recently as several telecommunications company executives have made statements raising concerns that delivery may be impaired for content providers unwilling to pay additional fees for fast transmission. Many of these executives later clarified that they have no intention of degrading or blocking other traffic, particularly if it might prompt customers to switch to other providers, but merely wish to offer video delivery to their own customer base at a premium service level unavailable to non-paying competitors. Some in the industry have favorably compared additional network performance tiers to airlines selling coach and business class tickets or package delivery companies offering ground and air service. Other observers have expressed concern about the impact of such steps on consumers.
Legislation on network neutrality has been offered, building on an earlier, non-binding set of network neutrality principles adopted by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) in late 2005. Most prominent among these bills is the Internet Non-Discrimination Act of 2005, S. 2360, introduced by Senator Ron Wyden of Oregon. This bill would prohibit network operators from generally impairing, or discriminating between, any network traffic, in terms of bandwidth allocation, accessibility, or pricing. It also would require access providers to permit consumers to connect devices to the provider's network, as long as such actions do not harm the provider's network, while still permitting providers to take defensive measures against network threats. Consumers would be able to bring complaints to the FCC for action and request that a federal court review FCC decisions.
Opponents of network neutrality argue that a regime prohibiting "bit discrimination" would deny network operators the opportunity to differentiate their services from other providers, thereby stifling the incentive to create innovative content for their customers. They also argue that network operators may face greater difficulties in raising the funding necessary for planned infrastructure upgrades if the improved network speeds would benefit their competitors as much as themselves.
Proponents of network neutrality -- including major Internet content providers, hardware and software companies, and consumer groups -- point to the money that operators already receive from end user and content provider access fees, the technological innovation that network neutrality may encourage, and the lack of high-speed Internet access marketplace competition that leaves much of the country with little opportunity to switch providers if their current provider were to engage in bit discrimination against the services or applications preferred by consumers.
S. 2360 has been referred to the Senate Commerce Committee. I will keep your thoughts in mind in case this legislation reaches the Senate floor.
Thank you again for your message. Please keep in touch.
Sincerely,
Richard J. Durbin
I think he may be for it...I certainly hope so. Note that our junior senator, Barack Obama, is a co-sponsor of the bill, and he and Durbin are in the same party.
Why is Durbin being so cagey?
Today's Chicago Tribune story on sodium in our diets begins with just about the stupidest lede I have read in a long time:
Sodium, one of the planet's oldest substances, may be the American diet's newest enemy.
I imagined it continuing:
Only sodium, of all 90 naturally-occuring chemical elements, has expressed any hostility toward the American diet. In separate news conferences, spokespeople for hydrogen and helium, the planet's two oldest substances, stressed that they are essentially inert and take no position on the American diet, while statements put out by oxygen, carbon, and iron reaffirmed those substances' long friendships with the American diet. Arsenic and mercury declined to comment.
As most of the Periodic Table rushed to distance themselves from sodium's manifesto, two—argon and sulfur—voiced objections to sodium's seniority claim, suggesting that sodium arrived on the planet through the post-solidification accretion of solar material and was therefore not part of the original complement of substances that first formed Earth.
At press time, sodium had neither responded to these criticisms nor retracted its declaration of war.
The American diet could not be reached for comment.
But, alas, the article merely went on to remind readers that sodium in large quantities is bad for us, and that sodium is the principal ingredient by mass in table salt.
Anne will hate that I know this now:
Coffee may counteract alcohol's poisonous effects on the liver and help prevent cirrhosis, researchers say.
In a study of more than 125,000 people, one cup of coffee per day cut the risk of alcoholic cirrhosis by 20 percent. Four cups per day reduced the risk by 80 percent. The coffee effect held true for women and men of various ethnic backgrounds.
Not that I was ever a candidate for cirrhosis, of course. But it's nice to know that both vices work together to keep one happy and healthy.
From the "Jeez, People, They're Not People!" category in yesterday's L.A. Times (by way of the Chicago Tribune (reg.req.):
By P.J. Huffstutter
L.A. Times Staff Writer
Published June 12, 2006
CHICAGO—Chef Didier Durand has spent months testing his restaurant's new menu on his most finicky customer: Princess, his 2-year-old French poodle.
The ostrich country pate? To drool for. The bone marrow gateau? Delightfully crunchy. The grilled steak hache? Gone in a gulp.
Durand and other chefs across the city are preparing to serve a canine clientele as the Chicago City Council considers an ordinance this month that would let dogs eat next to people in outdoor cafes.
Forgetting the story's content for a moment, does it seem odd to anyone else that the Chicago Tribune is running a story originally run in the Los Angeles Times about a Chicago ordinance? No?
Talking Points Memo has a list of the Senators supporting, opposed to, and dithering over S.2917, the "Net Neutrality" legislation currently winding its way through the Senate.
Illinois Senator Obama is a co-sponsor; I've just sent our Senator Durbin an email asking him to do the same.
The City of Chicago has floated a plan to designate more than 800 km (500 mi) of bike lanes and paths by 2015 (reg.req.):
[W]ith a strong track record of delivering for cyclists, the city is thinking big: a bike route within a half-mile of every resident; a 50-mile circuit of bike trails, with some off-road paths to be announced later this year; 185 miles of new bikeways altogether.
By 2015, planners hope, 5 percent of all trips shorter than 5 miles long will be made by bike.
Now, if only Mayor Daley hated small airplanes less than he likes bicycles...
Welcome to the 2006 Atlantic Hurricane Season. Our first guest: Tropical Storm Alberto, now churning in the Gulf of Mexico.
The National Hurricane Center is monitoring Tropical Depression 1, currently in the Carribean but expected to move up the Florida coast this week:
AT THIS TIME...THE MAIN THREAT FROM THE DEPRESSION IS HEAVY
RAINFALL. THE DEPRESSION IS EXPECTED TO PRODUCE TOTAL RAINFALL
ACCUMULATIONS OF 10 TO 20 INCHES OVER THE WESTERN HALF OF
CUBA...WITH ISOLATED TOTALS OF 30 INCHES OVER THE HIGHER TERRAIN.
THIS COULD CAUSE DEVASTATING FLASH FLOODS AND MUD SLIDES. GRAND
CAYMAN ISLAND HAS REPORTED 22.72 INCHES OF RAIN DURING THE PAST 24
HOURS... AND ADDITIONAL RAINFALL OF 5 TO 10 INCHES IS POSSIBLE OVER
THE CAYMAN ISLANDS. RAINFALL TOTALS OF 3 TO 5 INCHES ARE POSSIBLE
OVER THE NORTHEASTERN PORTION OF THE YUCATAN PENINSULA. THERE IS
ALSO THE POTENTIAL FOR HEAVY RAINFALL OF 4 TO 8 INCHES POSSIBLE
OVER THE FLORIDA KEYS AND WESTERN FLORIDA FROM SUNDAY INTO MONDAY.
I read every word in her column today, and I still have no idea what Maureen Dowd thinks of bloggers (sub.req.):
If I had to be relegated to the Dustbin of History, I'm glad it was in Vegas.
I, Old Media, came here to attend a New Media convention of progressive political bloggers aiming for a technological revolution that would dispatch mainstream media to the tumbrels. It was the journalistic equivalent of mingling with your own pod replicant in "Invasion of the Body Snatchers."
Bemused, perhaps? I truy can't tell.