Hammer Mill Days

Interstellar Tour Log: March 3, 2014 Planet #47 in NASA list, just south of Aldebaran Okay, that was the planet of the dinosaurs. Check. Marvin? Be sure to put that one on the "do not visit" list. We should have known that from John Carradine's experience back in the 1970s, but oh well. Right, if you're just joining us, Big Green is furiously working its way through the list of 715 new planets NASA recently put out, looking for halfway decent venues. We're not picky, you know. It's not like we need a proper dressing room with a row of lightbulbs arrayed above a long mirror and chilled Champagne in a bucket. Hell, we'll settle for an unlocked fire door on one side of the stage. (I can just about hear some indie musician out there saying, "Big Green needs stages to perform on? What a bunch of prima donnas!") The first couple of planets on the list have been kind of a bust. Turns out, all NASA managed to do was catalog all of the seemingly ...

As I write this post, the parliament in Crimea has just voted to secede from Ukraine and rejoin Russia, to which it belonged until the mid 1950s. The Russian parliament, in turn, is considering legislation to enable it to accept new provinces, an ominous turn to be sure. There is a referendum on Crimean secession scheduled for later this month, and the new Ukrainian government is crying foul. So ... are we on the brink of a new Crimean War? Charge of the Light Brigade, anyone? The "Putin is Crazy" narrative is dominating the news cycle here in the United States. I can hear it right now, on the evening news. Even supposed activist liberal shows like Rachel Maddow are playing this as a crisis for which Russia is solely responsible, and strong evidence of Putin's departure from reality. He's living in another world, the German premier suggests, and that claim is being hammered home, day after day, on every network, every news channel, every media outlet. One would thin...