Hammer Mill Days

I'm sorry - that's as soft as a piano will go. The very word "piano" means soft, for chrissake. (Sure, piano is short for pianoforte , which means "soft - loud/strong", implying dynamics, but that's beside the point!) Just get some freaking earplugs already! Neighbors. I guess you have to have them, even when you're living in an abandoned hammer mill. I like to think that we make every effort to be good neighbors. I like to think it because, well, it isn't true, and thinking things that aren't true is something of a hobby of mine. Actually, we are crappy neighbors - up until all hours of the night, banging on noisy instruments, tooting on sousaphones, launching rockets, creating energy dampening fields that affect entire continents (note: those last two are down to our mad science adviser, Mitch Macaphee). Our neighbor to the north, a guy named Wilson, has been leaving subtle hints that we are making too much noise. Today, for instance, ...

We're watching as the richest country in Europe (a.k.a. Germany) is pressuring one of the poorest countries in Europe (a.k.a. Greece) to accept an even deeper regime of austerity than what they have endured up to now, with massive unemployment, economic contraction, and increasing (not decreasing) debt. This is a political effort, not an economic one. Economically it makes no sense; crushing the Greek economy will only harm the Eurozone. The German chancellor is playing to a domestic constituency convinced that Greeks deserve more punishment because they are bad, lazy, corrupt, etc. That's a deeply nationalist attitude, and I don't know about you, but German nationalism makes me a little nervous. The irony, of course, is astounding. When it faced crisis in the early 1950s, Germany's creditors - including Greece - agreed to write off 50% of its debt and postpone the other half, allowing Germany to pay it back on a 30-year schedule. Pretty decent terms, considering how...