Hammer Mill Days

Interstellar Tour Log: March 11, 2014 Planet #253 in NASA list. Out Rigel way. Next stop on our random interplanetary tour - or if you prefer, interstellar tour 2014, sans itinerary - is planet #253 on the list NASA generated off of their recent survey. (Now, I'm not an astrophysicist, but I do have some experience with market research, so I'm guessing that this was a phone survey, and that our old friend Waleed Abdulati, NASA's head scientist, simply hired a phone bank and had them dial distant star systems at random and ask, "How many in your solar system?" "Do you have a companion star or dark matter object?" "Is s/he working?") Turns out, much more is known about these unknown worlds than NASA is letting on. We are slowly coming to the realization that all of the science fiction movies and T.V. shows of our youth were not fictional at all ... they were fairly accurate depictions of OUTER SPAAAAACE. Old number 253 is a good example of t

If anything, the crisis in Ukraine grew hotter this week, and it's getting kind of scary. Through it all, though, there has been a persistent tendency in the media to support the maximalist position of the U.S. government and our European allies - namely, that the Ukrainian opposition is fully legitimate and essentially beyond any critical scrutiny, that the Russians are engaging in bald aggression of a kind not witnessed in decades (!), and that the violators of human rights in Ukraine are all on the pro-Russian side. Okay, well ... a few points that probably need addressing: Coup or no coup. Russia calls what happened in Kiev a few weeks ago a coup; Washington does not. In the United States, labeling something a coup triggers legislation designed to impede the delivery of U.S. aid to coup regimes. Our administrations of both parties typically do an end-run around this by simply avoiding the word when it's inconvenient. We've done this with Egypt and with Honduras. Whe