Hammer Mill Days

No, we're not having porridge this evening, cold or otherwise. That was Marvin (my personal robot) typing the title for me as he does most weeks. Explains a lot. What's happening around this place? Usual kind of stuff. We're preparing for the warm weather, which typically comes around this time in the northern hemisphere (for those of you browsing in from Madagascar). That's kind of an involved process. We have to put out the fire we started in the basement last November. No, we don't have a furnace - that's for bourgeois rock bands and... what do they call them? .... symphony orchestras. Hell, no - no furnace for Big Green. We just bust up a bunch of old furniture, baskets, hammer stocks (of which there are many lying around the abandoned Cheney Hammer Mill), and other combustibles, chuck 'em down the basement stairs, light 'em up, and keep it going until March. Okay, so... first step, put out the fire. Second, open a few windows. I don't know how m...

It's a little hard to boil down everything that has taken place this week into a single blog entry, so I won't even try. As has become my habit, I will take brief swings at a couple of topics and let the chips fall where they may. Japan Agonistes. Something like a triplet of biblical plagues have settled upon Japan, and all three share a grim history with that unfortunate nation. They are no strangers to severe earthquakes and tsunamis, the latter of which, by no accident, is known around the globe by its Japanese name. Nuclear disaster is, of course, something we first introduced them to at Hiroshima and Nagasaki. It bears reminding that the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant was built on a design mapped out by General Electric - one long thought to be vulnerable to this kind of disaster. What possessed otherwise smart people to build such a plant on the coast of Japan is beyond me, particularly given Japan's unique experience with the depredations of nuclear radiation...