Round Up

A few items gleaned from the newspaper:

Front page article about the vulnerability of the electrical grid in the Wall Street Journal a couple of weeks ago. More on the grid's susceptibility to both physical and cyber attacks and lack of government action. It seems there have been a few more attacks beyond the big one in California a few years ago. However, the train tracks that run past the edge of my property are there primarily to feed coal to a power generating station. I just happened to catch the local a few days before the article in the paper came out and it had one of the big drop deck cars in the consist. It was empty and heading away from the power plant, so it might have dropped off a big transformer. I know the power companies have been working on getting some spares. I'd like to know the story on what went by here just to satisfy my own curiosity.

There was also an article on people buying "survival" food to eat as part of their regular meals. I've eaten a few freeze dried meals when camping and on my bike trips but never considered eating it as a matter of course. It's usually pretty high in sodium for my taste and blood pressure but it's quick and easy to prepare, that's for sure, and there's a huge variety of things available now.

There also was an article about the coup attempt in Turkey and how the government there was rounding up a bunch of educators in the aftermath. These were mostly at the college level but they were putting the snatch on a bunch of them. Interesting as well as scary.

Not from the paper but interesting none the less, I checked my stats for the blog the other day and the number of hits were about ten times what they normally are. The next day the same thing. I checked the audience and most of the increase in traffic was from Russia. About the only thing I I've ever posted that had anything to do with Russia was a quicky post on Alexander Rodchenko. Regardless of the reason, I hope they enjoyed the blog.

Officially on vacation for three weeks now. Planning on finishing up a few things and maybe taking a few days off for a couple of short trips. I'm going to need to stick close to home due to my needing some therapy on my foot. Seems I've developed a case of Morton's Neuroma. Nothing serious, just irritating. First, that I have to deal with it, and second, that I've got to waste a bunch of time going to therapy twice a week and doing some additional exercises at home. Hasn't kept me off the bicycle, however. Should be good to go for the race but if I do poorly I'll have a pretty handy excuse.