Hammer Mill Days

Well, it's been a while since we've done this, but I think it's about time we open up the old mail bag and respond to some of the cards, letters, emails, messages in bottles, skywriting, notes tied to bricks thrown through windows, etc. we've received over the past, what, ten years? Full disclosure: Marvin (my personal robot assistant) was tasked some years back with screening our fan mail. I'm not sure he fully understood the parameters of that assignment. Our intention was for him to use the kind of screen that would allow some of the messages to pass through. I guess we should have been more explicit. He appears to have tossed most of them out. Robots! The thing is dusty as hell, but (cough!) here goes . First, here's a little message from someone with the code name "Ask" in the United Kingdom: Aw, this was a really nice post. Spending some time and actual effort to make a superb article… but what can I say… I hesitate a lot and don’t seem to ...

Senate Republicans tried-on their comedy shoes this week, "debating" something they were breezily referring to as the Green New Deal but which was actually just a straw horse resolution they whacked like a pinata to show how proudly retrograde they are. In the wake of the Typhoon in Mozambique and other recent climate-fueled disasters, this was a pretty remarkable exercise in ignorance and tone-deafness. No, I don't expect anything better from what Noam Chomsky has accurately described as the most dangerous organization in human history. The Republicans literally stand alone in the world as the only major party that rejects the science of climate change. Quite a distinction. Not that there isn't some value in such a spectacle. It certainly focuses the mind on how much work we have to do. My hope is that all of my leftist and progressive friends and colleagues fully understand just how difficult this climate fight will be. This is not just about developing and advoc...

Where's the list? Damned if I know. It's somewhere in the forge room, I think, under a mountain of iron filings. Well, you TOLD me to file it! Jesus. Yeah, looks like I blew it again. So what's new? We were compiling a list of Big Green songs we've written and at least cursorily recorded since our last CD release - Cowboy Scat: Songs in the Key of Rick - some six years ago. Lot of water gone under the bridge since then, and a lot of music along with it. It's almost like there was a little boat all loaded down with songs, and the water carried it under the bridge. Along with, well, a lot more water. Or something like that. Of course, this is a list of all of the songs we've written and recorded for the Ned Trek portion of our THIS IS BIG GREEN podcast . There are about 70 or 80 of them, all tolled. So if we decide to release another album, it will either (a) have 70 or 80 songs on it, or (b) be the product of a sane mind. Or maybe it's two or even three ...

Brazil's fraudulently elected president Jair Balsonaro visited with the marginally less detestable Donald Trump this past week - a reported love fest in which Trump not only announced Brazil's new status as a "non-NATO ally" (which means lots more weapons for Balsonaro to use against his own people) but breezily suggested elevating Brazil to full NATO membership .... which is a little strange, and may have taken Trump's advisors somewhat by surprise. The two pretenders also discussed the ongoing U.S. attack on Venezuela, which Balsonaro is happy to join in on. Of course, that would only make him like most of our political class here at home, which has openly supported the coup attempt by right-wing Venezuelan politician Juan Guaido ... as have much of our corporate media. Just to single out a particularly egregious recent example, NPR's insipid Morning Edition ran a piece by one-time journalist Phillip Reeves about the crisis in Venezuela . The framing of t...

Feeling a bit reflective this week. And no, it's not because I'm standing in front of a mirror. That's just narcissism - whole different category of crazy. Besides, all of my mirrors cracked years ago. Let me start from the beginning. This week I was trying to program Marvin (my personal robot assistant) to make guacamole, which is a challenge in as much as his programming consists of setting a combination of three-position switches in a certain configuration for a given task. Of course, Marvin was built by a mad scientist (Mitch Macaphee), so there's no guide for what configuration will deliver what outcome, which leaves only trial and error. I was getting close to guacamole (I had found the right combination for gazpacho), but strangely I ended up programming him to replay demo recordings from our earliest days. (Who would've thunk those two things would be one toggle-click away from one another?) Well, that got me thinking back to the days of yore (or days of...

There's been a lot of crowing about how great the economy is now, with low unemployment, marginally rising wages, etc. (Sure, only 20,000 jobs were gained last month, but what the hell ... rich people are making a lot of money, and that brings the average up.) Every administration takes any opportunity to exaggerate their accomplishments, but this claim of "full employment" is frankly laughable and doesn't hold up to even the slightest scrutiny. What lurks behind the seemingly strong job numbers is the fact that many, many of these "jobs" are not really jobs at all. I'm referring to the vaunted "Gig Economy", which currently employs about 36% of all American workers - a staggering statistic. This isn't a Trump-only thing - the gig phenomenon really got going under Obama, and they presented these "jobs" and part-time employment as evidence of their success, just as the current administration does (though with a bit less verve)...

No, I'm not interested. No, really ... not interested at all. And no, I'm not holding out for a better deal. I really just don't want any part of it, okay? So just drop it. I said NO. (Jesus!) Oh, hello out there. I was just having a little conversation with one of my esteemed colleagues. And he was getting a little uh-steamed, if you catch my meaning. Okay, full disclosure, it was our mad science advisor, Mitch Macaphee, inventor of Marvin (my personal robot assistant), veteran of many deep space excursions, and the man who broke the space warp. (It was just warped before he got a hold of it, and now the damn thing is busted, thanks to his carelessness.) What's all the commotion? Funny you should ask. Perhaps you have some mad scientists in your life as well, or maybe a conventional scientist - someone who works in chemistry or physics, for instance. Well, if so, you know that people of science are frequently tempted by large corporations to use their great skills ...