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 ...

Interstellar Tour Log: March 11, 2014 Planet #253 in NASA list. Out Rigel way. Next stop on our random interplanetary tour - or if you prefer, interstellar tour 2014, sans itinerary - is planet #253 on the list NASA generated off of their recent survey. (Now, I'm not an astrophysicist, but I do have some experience with market research, so I'm guessing that this was a phone survey, and that our old friend Waleed Abdulati, NASA's head scientist, simply hired a phone bank and had them dial distant star systems at random and ask, "How many in your solar system?" "Do you have a companion star or dark matter object?" "Is s/he working?") Turns out, much more is known about these unknown worlds than NASA is letting on. We are slowly coming to the realization that all of the science fiction movies and T.V. shows of our youth were not fictional at all ... they were fairly accurate depictions of OUTER SPAAAAACE. Old number 253 is a good example of t...

If anything, the crisis in Ukraine grew hotter this week, and it's getting kind of scary. Through it all, though, there has been a persistent tendency in the media to support the maximalist position of the U.S. government and our European allies - namely, that the Ukrainian opposition is fully legitimate and essentially beyond any critical scrutiny, that the Russians are engaging in bald aggression of a kind not witnessed in decades (!), and that the violators of human rights in Ukraine are all on the pro-Russian side. Okay, well ... a few points that probably need addressing: Coup or no coup. Russia calls what happened in Kiev a few weeks ago a coup; Washington does not. In the United States, labeling something a coup triggers legislation designed to impede the delivery of U.S. aid to coup regimes. Our administrations of both parties typically do an end-run around this by simply avoiding the word when it's inconvenient. We've done this with Egypt and with Honduras. Whe...

Interstellar Tour Log: March 3, 2014 Planet #47 in NASA list, just south of Aldebaran Okay, that was the planet of the dinosaurs. Check. Marvin? Be sure to put that one on the "do not visit" list. We should have known that from John Carradine's experience back in the 1970s, but oh well. Right, if you're just joining us, Big Green is furiously working its way through the list of 715 new planets NASA recently put out, looking for halfway decent venues. We're not picky, you know. It's not like we need a proper dressing room with a row of lightbulbs arrayed above a long mirror and chilled Champagne in a bucket. Hell, we'll settle for an unlocked fire door on one side of the stage. (I can just about hear some indie musician out there saying, "Big Green needs stages to perform on? What a bunch of prima donnas!") The first couple of planets on the list have been kind of a bust. Turns out, all NASA managed to do was catalog all of the seemingly ...

As I write this post, the parliament in Crimea has just voted to secede from Ukraine and rejoin Russia, to which it belonged until the mid 1950s. The Russian parliament, in turn, is considering legislation to enable it to accept new provinces, an ominous turn to be sure. There is a referendum on Crimean secession scheduled for later this month, and the new Ukrainian government is crying foul. So ... are we on the brink of a new Crimean War? Charge of the Light Brigade, anyone? The "Putin is Crazy" narrative is dominating the news cycle here in the United States. I can hear it right now, on the evening news. Even supposed activist liberal shows like Rachel Maddow are playing this as a crisis for which Russia is solely responsible, and strong evidence of Putin's departure from reality. He's living in another world, the German premier suggests, and that claim is being hammered home, day after day, on every network, every news channel, every media outlet. One would thin...

Interstellar Tour Log: February 25, 2014 Between Neptune and Pluto, or thereabouts "Steve Lawrence", Matt says. My reply: " Jennifer Lawrence." Lincoln's turn: "Jennifer Hudson ." Everyone looks at anti-Lincoln, who scratches his temple thoughtfully. "You lost two points on that one, Abe," he says with a smirk. Right, well ... you have to occupy your time somehow in deep space, and rather than doing something productive, we're playing Name-Chain. Yeah, it's really fun. You name a famous person, and the player to your right has to name another one with the same first or last name, and around it goes. Lincoln got penalized because if you name someone of the same sex, you lose two points. Then you all multiply your score by the square root of corn meal and, well ... it gets complicated after that. Did we play on Jupiter last week? Well, the less said about that the better. Not sure what happened, but whatever it was it left a b...