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

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.):

Fido Party of Four, Your Table Is Ready

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.

My father has posted his very first eBay listing: 50 decorative tea tins, mint condition. I'm so proud of him.

By the way, if you need any tea tins—perhaps for a school project, or an art installation—you have until next Thursday to bid on them.

Over at Talking Points Memo Cafe, Gene Sperling lays out the problems with the proposals to repeal the estate tax:

The nation is at war and troops have been having trouble getting the safest equipment. Child poverty has been on the rise for four straight years. Deficits are projected to total $4 trillion in the next ten years, our entitlement challenge is unresolved, working wages have been stagnating or declining, and fixing the estate tax for the top 3 of every 1000 estates in 2011 is what we should rush to the floor of the Senate in the summer of 2006?

Anne reports a disturbing trend in modern communications:

Apparently "add up" is the new "touch base:" "Let's add up this afternoon to see where you are on the research."

I've heard it 5 times this morning, from 2 different people.

At least with "touch base" one can kind of see the meaning, even if the phrase doesn't exactly hit one out of the park. But "add up?" I have no idea.

One of my daily digests contained a link to "How to choose the best database for your business." By Oracle.

Golly. Which database do you suppose they recommend? Think it's MySql?