Hammer Mill Days

Interstellar Tour Log: March 18, 2014 Planet #74 in NASA list. Near Aldebaran. Yes, Big Green is still out here, on our massive Interstellar Tour in support of Cowboy Scat: Songs in the Key of Rick , still picking our way through the dross of NASA's list of 715 planets yet to be explored, blah blah blah. Not the best time to leave your mad science adviser back on Earth. I sure hope Mitch Macaphee is enjoying his time on the beaches of Madagascar or wherever that mad science conference is being held. Frankly, we could use his help. The fact that most of these strange worlds have been featured in American movies and television shows from the 1950s and 60s is little help when you're trying to determine the precise composition (and toxicity level) of a greenish atmosphere. Sure, you can have that kind of trouble back home, in South Carolina or West Virginia ... but at least down there you have your pick of mad scientists. Up here, we've got Marvin (my personal robot assist...

When I watch news reports about the Ukraine crisis, I'm reminded of that Dave Mason song from back in the seventies, that went something like this: So let's leave it alone Because we can't see eye to eye There ain't no good guys There ain't no bad guys There's only you and me and We just disagree Right, well ... I was never a big fan of Dave's, but you get the idea. Part of the problem with our once-over-lightly media culture is that there is an extraordinarily rapid resort to black-and-white, wrong vs. right narratives that are easy to report, easy to digest, easy to repeat again and again. In all that, we lose the sense that it's possible to have two assholes in a fight - adversaries who are divided by conflicting claims, not by a contrast between absolute good and absolute evil. I guess what particularly galls me about the current state of play is that when you draw attention to this fact, you are accused of being an apologist for the Putin ...