The preconditions are present in the U.S. today. If Congress is quiescent and the public listless, Donald Trump can set the country down a path toward illiberalism, institutional subversion, and endemic graft. Full Text can be found here: https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2017/03/how-to-build-an-autocracy/513872/

How to Build an Autocracy - David Frum - The Atlantic March 2017

Big Data has revolutionized everything from sports to politics to education. It could revolutionize therapy, too—if only therapists would stop ignoring it.
Read the text version here: https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2017/04/what-your-therapist-doesnt-know/517797/

What Your Therapist Doesn't Know - The Atlantic - Feature Tony Rousmaniere

The condition has long been considered untreatable. Experts can spot it in a child as young as 3 or 4. But a new clinical approach offers hope.

Read text version here: https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2017/06/when-your-child-is-a-psychopath/524502/

When Your Child Is A Psychopath - The Atlantic - Barbara Bradley Hagerty

A Warning From Europe - The Atlantic - Anne Applebaum

A boisterous new age of global children’s entertainment has arrived —and it’s not at all what we adults were expecting.

Raised by Youtube -- The Atlantic -- Alexis Madrigal

We start this week's episode by interviewing Dr. Alasdair Munro, a pediatrics infectious disease expert, on the risk of spread of COVID-19 in children and through schools. We end with an interview with Dr. Stefan Baral, a field epidemiologist studying COVID-19, on the nature of public health during a global pandemic. 

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October 2020

3.15 COVID-19 in Children with Dr. Alasdair Munro & Pandemic Public Health with Dr. Stefan Baral

Night Bar Lounge Jazz

Tulips

Jazz & Bar 50

Green

Unforgettable Kiss

What a strange, odd, mixed-up year it has been.  The yellow spanner of Covid-19 really wrecked a lot of plans. I was all booked to travel to Estonia to record, but it had to be cancelled.   Very noticeable was the sunlight, perhaps it was because there was few jet trails, but when the day was cloudless the sunlight could be absolutely dazzling, it had the strange effect of making it feel like we were living in paradise.     Because of the restrictions I am so glad the woods is only within a moderate cycle distance from my home.  I am very fortunate that I have two fairly good places to record relatively close by.  I even found a wild sand dune area not even five kilometers away,  I hope to record more there in the future.   Disc 1 track 2 is from a much longer recording, it is probably one of the best recordings made during the 2020 season, I had made a few recordings, near the stream, then a bit less close, then a bit further away and another even further away, as I wanted a sound where the stream was a suggestion rather than really dominating the sound picture.  The Blue Tits nested in a cavity block in the wall of my home, there is an vent on the inside of the block, so I only needed to place the microphone up to that to get a fantastic close perspective recording.  
I include two recordings of the Blue tits as they sounded so different when I recorded them a week later.  Sometimes I would get great results by leaving the old Marantz recorder hidden in a bushy place while I go not too far away to record with the new recorder, I love how I had no idea of what it has captured for me, only later when the track loaded on the computer did I get to see if it captured anything worthwhile.  This was the case with Blackbird - alarm calls (Track 3 on disc 2).  I think the peaks came in at about minus six db.  This year was my first time to use Contact microphones and a Hydrophone.    
At the beginning of April my dad Desmond died, he was 89, a great age.  Apart from Covid, we could see he wasn’t going to live much longer, he had been deteriorating noticeably for months up to that.  Why then are the covers for the two discs so strange ?  
A birdsong production should have birds on it !   My dad was big into sun power and indeed wind power even long before it became popular.  Over by my workshop he had placed a few sun power panels on the wall, these were wired into a small room to a panel on the wall with six switches.  I thought it a good way to remember him by including a picture of part of his panel for disc one front cover.  I was going to include the six switches in the picture, but my heart of hearts said no, it didn’t look good, too much scruffy brown, but I include it in the zipped folder (If you are buying it on Bandcamp)so you can see what I am talking about.  I had almost chosen it, as it occurred to me one morning that the six switches are like the levels of lockdown (I hate that term, but I have to use it here) thankfully we didn’t have a level six, maybe that is like in a movie I saw where the authorities came and boarded up a house with the people still inside.  In the end I used the part of the photo with the meter.   
The butterflies . . . Dessie we call him, was always interested in butterflies, that is where I got my interest in nature, as a child he used to bring us for walks up along the canal to see the wild flowers and butterflies.  The picture comes from one drawer of his small collection of Irish butterflies he put together maybe around the late 1940’s or 1950’s ??  Very few of them are even in one piece now, this drawer just looked the part, it was all mixed up and spoiled like the year had been, the summer we never really had, at least not the way we wanted or had planned it.

How to Build an Autocracy - David Frum - The Atlantic March 2017

TheAtlantic