Hammer Mill Days

Aw, c'mon Mitch! You've got at least three electron microscopes to your name. Can't we just use one of them for our experiment? One little one? Damn these scientists and their ethical codes of conduct! Yes, that's right — I did indeed make reference to ethics and Mitch Macaphee in the same sentence. Far be it from me to ever suggest that our resident mad doctor (or as you say, " daktari ") has constrained himself to purely ethical behavior through the course of his long and spotted career. No, no — I'm referring to this annoying internal code that scientists maintain between one another. It's kind of like a secret handshake. In fact, with respect to Mitch and Trevor James Constable (another member of the scientific contingent here at the Cheney Hammer Mill), it is a secret handshake. (Honest — they really will not let us watch them shake hands . It's kind of... unnatural...) Why do we want to play with the shiny, pretty, candy-like electron micros...

In their efforts to paper over a catastrophe, the Bush administration (and Iraq war supporters in general) are beginning to look like Saddam's old press spokesman, "Comical" Ali, who steadfastly denied the advance of U.S. troops to Baghdad in 2003 when his audience could easily see American tanks in the street behind him. There's a P.R. hero for you. Bush really needs that guy! All he's got is his lame cousin Tony Snow, his even lamer "uncle" Dick Cheney, and the ever faithful bride of Frankenstein, Laura, who opined to Larry King recently that things are going not too badly in Iraq except for that one bombing that discourages everyone. I think she may have meant to use another word that begins with "dis", like "dismembers". In any case, all this minimizing does have some effect. Some recent polling shows that large numbers of Americans have no even semi-realistic notion of how many Iraqis have been killed since we unilaterally decide...