Hammer Mill Days

Frankly, sFshzenKlyrn , I never knew there was any such thing as reverse gravity. Had I known that, I might not have agreed to play this gig. (Said the man floating helplessly in space.) Oh, yeah - someone's reading this. Hi, Earth friends. Another dispatch from the road with news of Big Green 's 2014 Interstellar Tour in support of our album Cowboy Scat: Songs in the Key of Rick . I have to pause here to put in a brief plug for our tour sponsors, SPAPOOP petroleum snacks, a division of Koch Industries. SPAPOOP: So good, you'll forget it's not edible! Get some today! No, really ... today! Right now! Okay, in all honesty, we had to do the promo to ensure that we have enough fuel to get to our next engagement. That's the way it works out here on the interstellar club circuit (particularly with these plain clothes gigs). Most of the time, there's not cover or drink minimum - people just pass the space helmet around. Sometimes it comes back full of SPAPOOP. It...

This year is starting out very much like the last one ended. Here are a few of the ways I'm thinking of. Conflict in Syria. Juan Cole reports that 2013 may have been the bloodiest year thus far in Syria, with an estimated 73,000 killed in the ongoing civil war, and more than 130,000 since the conflict started. This ongoing disaster is, in many ways, a regional conflict with a Syrian focus, as one representative of the International Crisis Committee put it recently. The only solution, it seems, is for the warring parties to say "enough", to agree to some means of saving what's left of their country, even if it means Assad remains in power. That would be a hard pill for many to swallow, but what is the alternative? As Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and the United States put their ample resources into fighting a proxy war with Iran, the Syrian people are caught in the middle. Six million refugees and no end in sight. Time to push the extremists aside and sue for peace. Energy...