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If you want to get a feel for the parts of the US which support Trump while reading an amusing story about travel, this is a great read. It's not a political tome, it's about Tim Moore's attempts to drive a Ford Model T across the States. He deliberately picks a route which winds through Trump's strongholds. I found it entertaining yet poignant and insightful. Please note that while, at the outset, Tim struggles to understand the appeal of Trump - hence the choice of route - he doesn't poke fun at Trump's followers, he is respectful and keeps an open mind.
Like most of his travel books, it weaves in some history too, in this case, the story of Henry Ford.
Admittedly not a scientific analysis, but I went to one of the finest traditional hay meadows in the UK recently, Bernwood Meadows, near Bicester. The wildflower meadows there are incredible, so incredible that the planned route of the M40 was altered to spare them. There were quite a lot of butterflies evident but I barely saw any bees.
Talking of wildflower meadows, it's great to see how popular they are becoming with councils and gardeners but it's important to use native species if you really want to help our pollinators. This is because native plants have a far greater number of associated insects. An example: - Garden cosmos (non-native): Associated insect species - 1 - Common bird's-foot trefoil (native): Associated insect species - 132.
Glad to see that the Telegraph mentions pesticides and that neonicotinoids harm bees. We can help bees and other insects by choosing organic products - I'll admit there is often an affordability issue there - and by not using pesticides containing Glyphosate or neonicotinoids in our gardens. Roundup contains Glyphosate and in fact, some studies have linked it to a major health risk for humans, specifically through increasing a person's risk of contracting non-Hodgkin lymphoma. A jury in California awarded a groundskeeper a massive judgement against the manufacturer of Glyphosate for this reason.
In his fascinating book about buying and managing a rundown French farm for wildlife, "A buzz in the Meadow," Dave Goulson says of the problems facing bees: "I must add one final note of caution. I am not claiming for one second that neonics are the only problem that bees or other wildlife face in the modern world. Bee declines are undoubtedly due to a mixture of factors, probably including diseases, Varroa mites (in the case of honeybees), lack of flowers, a monotonous diet and exposure to multiple pesticides, all providing a potent cocktail of stressors. It is very likely that these factors interact; bees that are mildly poisoned will be more susceptible to disease, less able to cope with starvation, and so on. We can't easily solve all of the problems affecting bees, but we can stop poisoning them".
One other thing he mentions in the book, but not in that quote above, is that falling genetic diversity is also affecting insects. This problem is due to insect populations becoming fragmented. Small populations become inbred and weak.
Re. Pete Namlook, you probably already know about them, but he worked with Klaus Schulze on eleven albums under the moniker Dark Side of the Moog. I have all of them on CD, bar number 11.
To be honest, although there are a few fabulous tracks in there, they are pretty patchy. There are a lot of pleasant but unremarkable pseudo-classical pieces which pad out the albums, with the second album in the series being particularly uninspiring.
I should give it a go too, I love ambient music, especially The Black Dog.
You probably know of Global Communications but these two albums are corkers. The second is actually an ambient reworking of an album by the indie band Chapterhouse.
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