Buzz Sting Bite

 I read Buzz Sting Bite which was written by Anne Sverdrup-Thygeson. She is an entomologist living in Norway. She references Norway many times but she also references the United States. To me it felt like she aimed this book at readers from the United States. Her daughter did the chapter illustrations. The book gives an enormous amount of facts but they are written in an entertaining manner. She writes about insects that have ears on their knees, eyes on their penises, and tongues under their feet. I probably won't remember most of what I read but I enjoyed reading it.

 

 

Nosireebob

The snow in Winona is nearly gone except for on the north side of buildings or walls. The sun is warm enough to melt the ice from the concrete. Yet it's still cold enough to keep a shelf of ice above the concrete. One of my all time favorite things to do is to step on that ice shelf and listen to it crack. The sound is SO SATISFYING!

But now I am elderly. I can't afford to fall on concrete. I try to avoid ice. Does that stop me from cracking the ice on the sidewalk? Nosireebob!

 

How Democracies Die

 I have been attending a class every other week at the university on war and peace. I didn't sign up nor pay for the class but I got an email saying the general public was welcome. Initially I wanted to go in order to help myself process the immigrant crisis in our state. Even in Winona three Hmong employees were hauled away. Last week we discussed the situation in Iran and Gaza. One of the people in the group was a professor of physics. He clearly explained how Uranium 235 can be enriched to Uranium 238. The United States enriched Uranium with long underground tunnels in Tennessee. The Uranium is propelled through the pipe slowly and the enriched Uranium gets distilled by going through the long tunnels many times and floating to the top of the pipe. The other way to enrich Uranium is through specially made centrifuges which are hard to come by. Another person in the class said that anytime a country sends that many aircraft carriers and battle ships to an area war is surely to follow. He was right. Earlier in the class a person recommended the book written by Steven Livitsky and Daniel Ziblatt called How Democracies Die: What History Reveals About Our Future. My audio book was 8.5 hours long. These two authors have spent several decades studying the governments around the world and doing research on authoritarianism. They have studied Peru, Venezuela, Ecuador, Chile, Hungary, Turkey and Russia.  Years ago democracies died with a military coup. This is not the case in modern times. Democracies die a slow death. Law and the constitution is attacked. Voting rights are attacked. Legitimacy of elections are attacked. Legitimacy of political opponents are attacked. Violence is tolerated or encouraged. Civil liberties are attacked. In the years before and after the Civil War, mutual toleration was gone. Mutual toleration is the belief that although you disagree with your political opponents are decent, patriotic, and law-abiding citizens. These days it feels like some of us have lost mutual toleration. The arguments made in this book are convincing and depressing. It was published in January, 2018.