Hammer Mill Days

Let's see. Step three hundred seventeen. Plug lead E7 into jack B47. Check. Step three hundred eighteen. Remove cap from light-pipe cable and insert into port F1. Check. Oh, my goodness. Didn't know you were reading this. Bet your eyes are glazing over. I'm just working through the instructions for this do-it-yourself project studio. It came in a big, flat box, some assembly required. In fact, quite a bit of assembly required. That explains the bargain-basement price. That fellow in Bangalore seemed very anxious to unload this little gem. At least he was an engineer - I am, at best, technically challenged, and at worst, a danger to public safety. Have you ever manually wound a transformer before? I know I haven't. Typically I would leave such menial tasks to Marvin (my personal robot assistant), but as you may have noticed from the last few postings, he has been making himself quite scarce. Last week he took a trip to Cincinnati to visit the National Museum of Robot...

I've heard a lot over the past few days about how the Republicans were able to do so well in Tuesday's election. What is uncontroversial is that the Congress of the last two years has been an unmitigated failure, with fewer bills passed by the House than in any session in living memory. They put forward draconian bills that they know will never go anywhere. They work a week and take two weeks off. They demonize their opponents and make compromise a four-letter word. Where did they go right? Not sure, but the mid-term electorate has spoken, and they have rewarded failure with two more years of power and Republican leadership in the Senate. That can only serve as an endorsement of the GOP's strategy of doing absolutely nothing and letting nothing be done by anyone else. Here we are, at a time when interest rates are at historic lows, letting our national infrastructure rust away when we could be rebuilding it under very favorable terms, putting people to work, and investing...