Hammer Mill Days

Next week? That's kind of short notice, isn't it? Usually we have a few weeks to arrange for interstellar transport, provisions, sound company, etc. But five days? Sheesh! Let me 'splain. A newly discovered planet 39 light years from here (and when I say newly discovered, I don't mean it was discovered by Anthony Newley, because he's dead and not an astrophysicist) named GJ 1132b has been described as Earth-like. And since we are natives of the planet Earth, we take that as an open invitation to go visit this strange new world, seek out its new life and new civilizations, and boldly try to book a gig there ... where no one has gigged before. Tall order? Perhaps. But frankly, we've been a little short on tall orders just lately here in Big Green land. This, of course, means scrambling. (For Mitch Macaphee, it means poaching - he HATES scrambled eggs before a rocket launch, HATES them.) We're having to pull a major interstellar journey out of our collecti...

It's happening again. A terrorist attack occurs somewhere in the developed societies and right-wingers are falling over themselves to prove that terrorism works. They start railing against Islam writ large, slamming the door shut on refugees from the Arab world, calling for bloody vengeance, and so on. The level of hysteria is almost shocking, given the fact that the attacks they're obsessing about happened in France, not America. (They don't seem perturbed by the Beirut bombing, as it was targeted on Hezbollah, which they hate worse than ISIS.) MSNBC's Morning Joe has become a bullhorn for invading Syria. I can only imagine what Fox News is like these days. Facebook has blown up with people defending (I kid you not) the crusades. This thing plainly goes up to eleven. It's hard for me to see how these calls for military action and pulling up the drawbridge aren't simply appeals to cowardice. Seriously - the vast majority of the loudest hawks and anti-immigran...