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Let’s Change the Subject and Talk About… Killer Bees

Sunday afternoons, various members of the Ford and Fitzgerald clans gather at the Swamp House (K’s term for our cottage at Paradise Palms) for coffee and conversation. We do our best to avoid politics because… well, I don’t have to explain how that can go these days.

The usual topics range from updates on siblings and cousins to books and movies, sports, and what’s new in the gardens. What was new in the gardens this week was Uncle R’s campaign against a recent influx of bees.

Apparently, the two owl houses R and I had put high up in a copse of melaleuca trees several years ago had been taken over by the bees when, for whatever reason, the owls decided to relocate. There were, according to R, thousands of them. But they are not sweet little honeybees.

They are a dangerously aggressive species called Africanized honeybees – or, as some prefer to refer to them, “killer bees.”

Africanized Honeybee (Apis mellifera scutellata)

Killer bees! Finally, the whole family had something we could fear together! A threat that was frightening to all of us equally, regardless of what we thought of Trump or Biden or DeSantis!

And, oh, what a marvelous conversation it was, all of us united against a common enemy!

Here’s a sampling of some of what I learned from that conversation (most of it from R), fact-checked on Wikipedia for your edification:

* The killer bee is a hybrid species. It is the result of a 1956 effort in Brazil to mate bees from southern Africa with Brazilian bees to increase honey production.

* Apparently (and this is documented, although it sounds like the plot of a bad movie), a handful of those hybrid bees escaped quarantine, then quickly spread throughout Central and South America and then to Mexico and the US.

* Killer bees are meaner than “regular” bees. Much meaner. Melittologists (scientists specializing in the study of bees) don’t like using terms like “mean.” They point out that all the little fellers are doing is protecting their turf. So they prefer to describe them as “highly defensive.”

R explained what that means in practice. He told us that when he had an exterminator take down their nest, a band of several hundred escaped. Somehow aware that he was behind the attack on their headquarters, they set up an encampment in the eaves of a nearby barn and proceeded to launch vicious attacks against him whenever he came within twenty yards of their bivouac.

Sounds farfetched. And, indeed, R, an Irishman like yours truly, is not entirely loath to dressing up a story now and then. But when I fact-checked him, I discovered that it was probably true. Killer bees have even been known to chase people they consider to be their enemies for more than a quarter of a mile. And according to one source, they have killed “more than 1,000 humans and an unknown number of horses and other animals over the years.”

If you want to enjoy a surprisingly good movie about killer bees, I can recommend The Swarm (French, with subtitles).

Watch the trailer here.

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Trump’s Impending Arrest

Is That a Good Thing?

Many of my friends and relatives are overjoyed by the prospect of seeing Trump arrested in New York. This is reminiscent of how they felt, early in Trump’s presidency, when they were confident that he would be impeached and even convicted of “colluding” with Russia.” Nothing, besides thousands of man hours and tens of millions of dollars in fruitless research and wasted Congressional attention, came of that charge. Based on what I’ve read about Alvin Bragg, the Manhattan DA that is going after Trump, and the statutes he is claiming Trump violated, I don’t believe anything will come of this case either. It may not even get to trial.

What Trump’s foes hoped would come from it was a derailment of his presidential campaign. Given the strength of Trump’s ego and the passion of his fans, that doesn’t seem likely. The case might, as some have suggested, even boost his chances of winning by turning off centrist voters that see Bragg’s effort as an obvious and tawdry political ploy.

My bet is that this is going to blow over. But if Bragg is able to get an indictment and actually bring Trump to trial, it will set a precedent that will likely hurt Democrats in the future.

Just as the Republican majority in Congress is investigating the Hunter Biden/ Russia & Chinese collusion story in retaliation for the Trump/Russia collusion story, our political culture could easily mutate into one in which partisan DAs will routinely charge ex-presidents with who-knows-what to boost their own public profile.

Former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, a Democrat, seems to have the same concern. In a recent radio interview, he called the lawsuit “politically motivated” and a “cancer in our body politic.” Click here.

 

Woke Report: “Oh. Gosh. I Guess That Didn’t Work!” 

 A transwoman, granted permission to serve her time in a female prison, has just been transferred to a male prison after getting two inmates pregnant!

Click here.

 

Institutional Creep in Public Schools 

The original idea of public schools was that they would operate “in loco parentis.” But now they seem to be acting “in loco status.”

Click here.

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Wanna Make a Ton of Money Creatively? 

If I said it once, I said it a hundred times. If you want to succeed at the highest possible level in life, you must master at least two out of three fundamental skills. You must learn to think analytically. You must learn to speak authoritatively. And you must learn to write persuasively.

Mastering the last one, learning to write persuasively, is like acquiring an invisible ATM that spews out thousand-dollar bills. It’s a way to earn that money by doing something that is both intellectually and emotionally satisfying, while having lots of personal autonomy.

If this sounds remotely interesting, I urge you to click here to read about a very rare opportunity from Mike Palmer, a former protégé of mine.

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Hunt, Gather, Parent 

By Michaeleen Doucleff

352 pages

Published March 2, 2021

K heard Doucleff speaking about this book and thought it might make a nice gift for the parents of our grandchildren. But she wanted to read it first to make sure it wouldn’t be suggesting things she wasn’t comfortable endorsing.

As the title suggests, the author takes an anthropological approach to discovering what sort of parenting practices produce which sort of responses in children. I’m a sucker for that kind of thinking – and so, I’m reading it now.

I was a tad disappointed with how it opens: Doucleff, an NPR science reporter, announces that she has just “hit rock bottom as a mom.” The problem? Her three-year-old daughter Rosy, though “whip smart” and “wildly courageous,” has frequent tantrums in which she slaps, bites, and overturns furniture.

Doucleff assumes that this is normal behavior for a child of her age. But then she remembers her time researching stories for NPR in Mexico, and how the Mayan children all seemed to be extremely well behaved and helpful around the house.

“What was going on there?” Doucleff wanted to know. Did the Mayan moms know something she didn’t know? Could they be doing something that all the parenting books she had read had not covered?

“This sounds like an idea for a new book,” she must have thought. And so she set about to write that book by traveling to rural villages in Mexico, Canada, and Tanzania, observing the child-rearing practices there, and then trying out those that look like they work on her daughter.

In Mexico, she discovers that Mayan parents – mothers and grandmothers, mostly – put their kids to working around the house as soon as they can pick up a spoon. The caregivers keep watch, but provide little in the way of correction or praise. Helping out isn’t considered a chore, but an opportunity to be a contributing member of the family. (They call it acomedido.) According to Doucleff, the kids eventually develop useful household skills. More importantly, “they pitch in naturally, because they feel like part of the family enterprise.”

The research continues in a freezing Arctic village. Inuit parents view kids as “illogical, newbie citizens trying to figure out the proper behavior,” says Doucleff. So when their children misbehave, they don’t take it personally. They certainly don’t shout, she says, since that would just teach kids to shout, too. Instead, they remain placid. They either go silent and simply observe the behavior, or walk away.

Okay, fine. This is not scientific research per se. Nor is it even proper anthropology. But it’s interesting. And if, as I continue to read on, Doucleff continues to draw conclusions about parenting that I agree with, I will readily recommend her book to our kids.

Watch an interview with Michaeleen Doucleff here.

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The COVID Response. What We Got Wrong.

In the News This Week 

* Protection From the New COVID-19 Vaccines Is Weak and Short-Lived 

More evidence for this keeps coming in: The new bivalent vaccines are much less effective than advertised. When introduced, there were comments about their ability to protect against serious illness and hospitalization for a year or more. As it turns out, they offer only moderate protection. In the most recent study, the new vaccines initially increased protection against hospitalization by 52%, but that quickly dropped to 36% in 60 days.

Despite the bad results, US authorities are preparing to replace all the original Pfizer and Moderna vaccines with the bivalent, taking the position that some protection is better than none.

* From Meryl Nass’s COVID Newsletter… 

On March 14, the FDA authorized a 4th booster for babies – while data from the UK and Germany suggest you cause 22 serious injuries with the shot in order to prevent a single child’s hospitalization. Click here.

* Walking Back the Lie 

Click here for a montage of the CDC’s changing vaccine story over time.

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Yayoi Kusama at the Hirschhorn

When I was living in DC, I spent a fair amount of my weekend time at the Hirschhorn Museum and Sculpture Gallery. It always had something worth looking at. Currently, they’re featuring Yayoi Kusama, a Japanese artist whose work I’ve seen several times. Her work is diverse, but it’s always something I find entertaining. (See example, above.) And she’s very productive, which is impressive at her age. (She was born in 1929!) If I can get myself to DC, I’m going to check out this exhibit.

This is what she looks like:

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From PT:

“In the March 17 issue, you said you were a fan of Sam Brintin. Were you serious?”

 

From RO: 

“In your July 22, 2022 post, you talked about the idea of ‘cultural appropriation’ – how normal, and constructive, it is for people to try things they see people from other cultures doing. I was recently reminded of that post when I saw a couple of videos on YouTube that talked about this same idea. I think you might enjoy watching them.

“Click here and here and here.”

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"Were it not for hypocrisy I’d have no advice to give."
"Were it not for sciolism I’d have no ideas to share."
"Were it not for arrogance, I’d have no ambition."
"Were it not for forgetfulness, I would have no new ideas to write about."