There’s been some light buzz about National Review contributor Rod Dreher’s recently broadcast NPR audio essay.  In short, the scales have fallen from his eyes.  I can’t say that I’m particularly moved by it, but it has generated some interesting analysis.

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Bet you didn’t know that, in addition to the prying eyes of the FBI, the NSA, and the TSA, you’ve now got to contend with . . . the United States military:

The Pentagon has been using a little-known power to obtain banking and credit records of hundreds of Americans and others suspected of terrorism or espionage inside the United States, part of an aggressive expansion by the military into domestic intelligence gathering.

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Oh, I really want to go here.  The New York Times, despite its other journalistic failings, has a reliably excellent travel section (I particularly like their 36 Hours in ____ feature).  How could they make it better?  Well, I might find a way to make myself available for an assignment or four . . .

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I love the Gmap Pedometer.   The link is to my ride this afternoon.  It was, because of the trip (and feeling really awful after it), the first ride of the year.  Final road bike mileage for last year was 1,961 miles, which was a fair bit less than what I’d hoped.  I started to kick myself for not heading out for a long ride before the trip so I could at least claim at 2k, but then I decided I could count my mountain biking mileage towards the total (I don’t know what it is, but it’s certainly more than 39 miles . . .).   Goal for this year?  At least 6,500km.  I’d originally written – “At least 4,000 miles.”, but then, inspired by this thread at Slashdot, I’ve decided to at least try to get a better feel for a kilometer.  So now the Flight Deck is set to kilometers, instead of miles.