Hammer Mill Days

Open the door, Hal. What seems to be the problem? I said open the pod bay door. Hal? It's cold out here, Hal. God damn it! Yes, that's right - instead of sitting in my comfortable chamber deep within the abandoned Cheney Hammer Mill, tapping this post out on my computer, I'm standing in a damp and clammy courtyard, pounding on the front door in vain. No, this is not eviction. This is not home invasion or civil forfeiture. And this is not some tawdry war between rival squatters (believe me, we've had it up to here with that shit). No, friends ... this is the dreaded Internet of Things. Whose idea was it to have a mad scientist in residence? Mine? Oh, right. Well ... it seemed like a good idea at the time. And he did get us to Aldebaran in one piece. (Albeit a very small piece.) Nevertheless, whoever asked him to join our entourage, he has truly gone off the deep end. They say mad scientists live off the deep end, but I think that's just the kind of bragging th

The Trump administration has been pushing the sale of nuclear reactors to Saudi Arabia, according to a report from the House Government Oversight Committee, now functional once again since the Democratic takeover of that body. Some pretty good reporting on this from ProPublica suggests, predictably, that Trump's family would benefit materially from such an arrangement, in the form of lucrative Saudi contracts for the now bankrupt nuclear plant designer Westinghouse, which has garnered Trump friend Tom Barrack as a major investor. ( I believe the consortium is eyeing Jared Kushner's 666 building for office space.) Barrack wants to be part of a crackpot "Marshall Plan" for the Middle East that will involve building dozens of nuclear reactors in Saudi. What could possibly go wrong? Well, the same things that have gone wrong on previous occasions when we have moved in this direction. Oh, yes ... we have been here before, though perhaps without the craven self-dealing