Hammer Mill Days

Are you all right? You sure? Good, good. Yeah, we're okay. Head above water, you know. Always a good thing. Oh, sorry. I was just on the phone with Mitch Macaphee, our mad science adviser, who wisely chose this week to travel to Madagascar for a conference on ... I don't know, monster-making best practices, something like that. Good time to leave, what with the hurricane and all that. Up here at the Cheney Hammer Mill, we implemented our disaster preparedness plan. Basically that involves closing the windows, drawing the curtains, and blocking our ears. Occasionally someone lights a candle. (When it comes to disasters, we're not good.) Fortunately, the gods of rock and water were smiling down upon us this past Monday-Tuesday. That monster storm took an extreme left hook and missed us clean, somehow. Not that you could tell that was the case by looking at this Hammer Mill. It appears as though it's been through hurricanes, earthquakes, tornadoes and pestilence. (Some...

Back before the start of the financial crisis in 2008, the guiding principle of Wall Street bankers was i.b.g./y.b.g. - when the whole thing comes crashing down, "I'll be gone and you'll be gone." We will get away with it. That was prescient, to say the least. They pretty much did get away from it, except a handful of bad actors that hurt the wealthy as well as the ordinary. (Bernie Madoff is one of those.) As we stand at the cusp of another presidential election, witnessing the terrifying aftermath of Hurricane Sandy, it's clear that for the "conservative" (i.e. statist reactionary) side of the political equation, i.b.g./y.b.g. appears to apply to the climate crisis as well. Presidential hopeful Mitt Romney has adopted his party's Luddite stance on global warming, advocating massive expansion of fossil fuel extraction, processing, and use and joining the crackpot consensus on the right that sees extreme weather as a series of unfortunate (and whol...