Why Evolution is True is a blog written by Jerry Coyne, centered on evolution and biology but also dealing with diverse topics like politics, culture, and cats.
Today’s Jesus and Mo post, called “Cern2,” is a repost from 14 years ago, for the artist is on hols.
At Botany Pond yesterday, I met a woman who, after she found out I taught evolution, told me that evolution was a fiction because it couldn’t explain where everything came from in the first place. Then she asked me if I’d studied the Bible. I told her I actuall read the Bible (how many atheist scientists have done that?), and she said, “No, I mean really studied it.” I told her to read my book Faith Versus Fact and politely made my farewells.
But I digress; here the boys attempt (but fail) to reconcile science and religion.
You’ll know Peter Singer as an Australian moral philosopher who does practical philosophy: stuff that helps us figour out how to lead better lives in the real world. One of his well-known books is Animal Liberation (1975), which argued for animal rights from a utilitarian perspective. Though that perspective has been criticized, there are other philosophical arguments for animal rights.
Singer describes himself as a “flexible vegan” who occasionally eats dairy products. But he wears no animal products, i.e., stuff made of leather. He’s also against many forms of animal experimentation. Even if you think it’s okay to cage and make animals suffer to test drugs/vaccines intended for humans, I think most of us would find it unconscionable to test things like cosmetics on animals. And indeed, animal-free cosmetic testing has burgeoned in the last few decades, due largely, I think, to Singer’s book.
Which brings us to an article Singer wrote on his Substack “Bold Reasoning“, a site to which you can subscribe, even for free. Reader Keith brought the article below to my attention, and it’s heartbreaking (to me at least), but will surely make you think.
Although I’m not a vegetarian, I don’t eat much meat and am trying to eat less. I am a pretty staunch opponent of zoos and aquariums because they often restrict animals to the point where they become neurotic. They are not needed for science (most zoos and aquaria don’t do or publish any science), and as for conservation, well, you can watch a video made in the wild if you want to teach people to conserve animals. The sarcastic H. L. Mencken had a pretty good take on this stuff in his short essay “The Zoo” from 1918.
Singer’s piece begins with the story of a chimp taught some American Sign Language, who signed “Key Out” several times, meaning that the chimp knew that the key would let him out of his cage. Maybe that was not the chimp’s intent, but it well could have been. Singer then moves to a recently-settled court case involving seven chimps held captive in Michigan—and not for research purposes—who were the subject of an unsuccessful lawsuit. I quote Singer (his words are indented):
Bruno’s [the signing chimp] story is key to understanding the case that recently came before the Michigan Supreme Court.
The case concerns seven chimpanzees held at the roadside zoo called the DeYoung Family Zoo in Wallace, Michigan. The Nonhuman Rights Project, which brought the legal action on their behalf, calls them the DeYoung Prisoners.
The seven DeYoung Prisoners cannot make that request in American Sign Language. Nor can they walk into a courtroom and ask a judge to hear them. The Nonhuman Rights Project is asking the law to consider their claim to the fundamental right that all persons have, not to be deprived of their bodily liberty without sufficient cause.
Only one of the seven is publicly identified by name. Louie was brought to the DeYoung zoo in 2010, when he was six weeks old. He was used for at least the first two years of his life as a prop in paid photo opportunities. Photographs and videos show him restrained on a fixed leash and made to interact with children and other zoo visitors.
The evidence submitted in the case indicates that Louie later spent many years without the companionship of another chimpanzee.
The other six chimpanzees are identified in the complaint as Prisoners B through G. Five were previously held at the Missouri Primate Foundation, a chimpanzee breeding facility that supplied animals to the exotic-animal trade and entertainment industry. Another was born at the DeYoung zoo and was removed from her mother while still an infant.
Chimpanzees are profoundly social beings. Martha Nussbaum, who submitted an amicus brief supporting the case, noted that they naturally live in communities that may include between 20 and 200 individuals, moving among different social subgroups and forming complex relationships. The DeYoung Prisoners, by contrast, are limited to their small group of seven—when they have access even to one another.
In December 2023, The Nonhuman Rights Project filed a habeas corpus complaint on their behalf.
Habeas corpus is the legal procedure through which a court examines whether an individual is being lawfully confined. The Nonhuman Rights Project asked the court to require the roadside zoo to justify the chimpanzees’ confinement and, ultimately, to order their transfer to a chimpanzee sanctuary accredited by the Global Federation of Animal Sanctuaries.
The case does not claim that chimpanzees are human beings. Nor does it ask that chimpanzees receive every legal right possessed by humans.
It asks a narrower but fundamental question:
Can these chimpanzees be recognized as legal “persons” for purposes of habeas corpus—that is, are they entitled to ask a court to examine whether their confinement is lawful?
Recognizing them as persons for this limited purpose would give them the opportunity to have the legality of their confinement considered.
Note that these chimps, highly sentient and social beings, were confined purely for breeding with the ultimate aim of entertaining others or going to zoos. (In my view, no chimp belongs in a zoo.) There were no medical or research benefits to be gained. Yet a week ago the Michigan Supreme Court ruled against the “person” suit by refusing to take up the appeal after the “personhood” claim had been denied by a lower court. And this even though Singer himself and Martha Nussbaum filed amicus brie and Jane Goodall testified for the plaintiffs.
. . .The lower court reasoned that legal rights belong only to beings capable of taking on legal duties—for example, by understanding society’s laws and agreeing to follow them. Because chimpanzees cannot do that, the court concluded that they cannot be legal persons entitled to seek habeas corpus.
Justice Elizabeth Welch dissented from the Michigan Supreme Court’s decision not to hear the case. She argued that the law should not be frozen by centuries-old ideas about animals as property, especially when modern science has revealed so much about chimpanzees’ minds and emotional lives.
She wrote that the evidence shows chimpanzees can “think, feel, love, grieve, and yearn.” She also referred to my book The Expanding Circle, which examines how moral progress has often required us to extend our concern beyond boundaries that earlier generations took for granted.
Justice Welch’s dissent does not free the DeYoung Prisoners. But it recognizes that calling an intelligent, self-aware, emotionally complex being “property” does not answer the question of whether that being has an interest in freedom.
Whether or not you can take on legal duties, which in the construal above surely does not apply to severely mentally ill or autistic people, cannot be a consideration for whether you can cage people, so why is it even a consideration for other animals, especially ones capable of humanlike suffering? One can of course do experiments to see what kind of habitat/life animals prefer, simply by giving them a choice, and such experiments have been done, showing things like chickens prefer more natural habitat than battery cages (see here). Singer continues:
. . . . The seven DeYoung Prisoners remain confined.
Justice Welch’s dissent deserves to be widely read as it gives serious legal and moral consideration to a claim that American courts have so far rejected.
The court’s website may be inaccessible in some countries, so I am also reproducing Justice Welch’s dissent in full below. [JAC: you can also read the dissent at the link.]
It’s a very good dissent, and includes these words:
Plaintiff, its expert witnesses, and supporting amici present considerable and seemingly undisputed scientific evidence that chimpanzees possess autonomy, self determination, and numerous advanced cognitive abilities.1 The evidence demonstrates that chimpanzees are remarkably intelligent, that they are self-aware, that they plan for the future, that they exhibit empathy and compassion toward other living beings, and that they grieve the loss of loved ones. Based on the evidence presented, chimpanzees appear unsuited for confinement.
Confinement for entertainment is doubly wrong, for there is no utilitarian benefit for “entertainment” that can plausibly outweigh the suffering of confined chimps. And the “conservation” excuse holds no water for me.
Singer notes that you can sign a petition to transfer these chimps to a sanctuary, and the link is below. I have signed it.
Louie and the six other chimpanzees remain confined at the DeYoung Family Zoo. The Nonhuman Rights Project is calling for them to be transferred to an accredited sanctuary, where they could live in an environment suited to their social, physical, and psychological needs.
The way we treat animals is one of the things that in the future will likely be seen as immoral (another is our refusal to let suffering and terminally ill patients get medical assistance in dying). We are by no means sitting on an ethical “adaptive peak” in which movement in any direction leads to a decline in morality. Steve Pinker has documented the general increase in morality over time in several of his books.
We have another short video from Tara Tanaka in Florida, whose property is a wetlands and also a wildlife sanctuary. Tara’s notes are indented below:
There is a large church property directly across the truck route from our wildlife sanctuary, and a developer is about to meet with the county to discuss building a 108-single family subdivision on part of the property. According to the neighbor who is working to inform those affected by the proposed development: “Any development of that size would have devastating impacts on the character of our surrounding neighborhoods. The traffic impacts would further clog our roads, making traffic even worse than it already is. The light pollution coming from a site with 108 new homes would disrupt our tranquil way of life. Water runoff from the site will only worsen the flooding we see after rain events, especially to our neighbors in Riverwood Acres. And no one really knows of the impacts a new development would have on the wildlife we currently enjoy year-round.”
Some in the neighborhood are meeting with a reporter from a local TV station to make people aware of what is happening, and I was asked to provide video footage of some of the wildlife that nest, spend time in, and pass through the sanctuary, and I wanted to share it here as well.
Welcome to the end of another week, for it’s Friday, July 24, 2026. All four ducklings are still here and thriving. It is also National Amelia Earhart Day, her birthday. As Wikipedia notes:
Amelia Mary Earhart (/ˈɛərhɑːrt/AIR-hart; born July 24, 1897; disappeared July 2, 1937; declared dead January 5, 1939) was an American aviator and aviation pioneer who became one of the most celebrated figures of early flight.
In 1928, she was the first female passenger to cross the Atlantic by airplane. In 1932, she became the first woman to make a nonstop solo transatlantic flight, and was awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross for her achievement. She was one of the first aviators to promote commercial air travel, wrote best-selling books about her flying experiences, and helped found the Ninety-Nines, an organization for female pilots.
On July 2, 1937, she disappeared over the Pacific Ocean while attempting to become the first female pilot to circumnavigate the world. Since her disappearance, Earhart has become a global cultural figure and numerous films, documentaries, and books have recounted her life.
Here’s a short video biography of Earhart:
And here’s a photo of Earhart from Wikipedia with the caption, “Amelia Earhart standing in front of the Lockheed Electra in which she disappeared in July 1937.”
Smithsonian Institution, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
Every couple of years I hear news that Earhart’s plane or crash site has finally been found, but it always comes to nothing. I no longer pay attention to those stories. When they come up with the wreckage of her plane, I’ll pay attention.
The United States and Iran traded more attacks across the Middle East after Tehran was said to have rejected a U.S. cease-fire proposal delivered by the leader of Iraq.
American forces targeted Iranian military assets and facilities, including drone storage sites, to reduce the threat to commercial shipping in the Strait of Hormuz, U.S. Central Command said. The attacks began at 2:15 a.m. local time and ended just over two hours later, according to the command, which oversees operations in the Middle East.
The Iranian military said it had launched drone attacks on Friday morning against U.S. military targets at bases in Bahrain, Jordan and Kuwait. There were no immediate reports of damage or casualties.
Iranian and Iraqi officials said on Thursday that Iran had rejected a cease-fire proposal from President Trump that was presented by Prime Minister Ali al-Zaidi of Iraq. Iran’s top negotiator, Brig. Gen. Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, told local news outlets that there was no need for another mediator and that “the problem is America’s outlook.”
The steady escalation of the conflict over the past two weeks provided the backdrop for a vote in the House of Representatives on Thursday that for a second time asked Mr. Trump to seek Congress’ authorization to keep U.S. troops engaged in the war. Mr. Trump effectively ignored a similar rebuke last month, and later on Thursday Republicans in the Senate blocked the measure from passing.
Neither the United States nor Iran has signaled much appetite for a return to negotiations. In recent days, Iranian and American officials have promised to respond to each other’s attacks with fresh ones of their own, with each trying to outlast the other.
U.S. Central Command, which coordinates military operations in the Middle East, said it had launched a wave of strikes overnight to degrade Iran’s ability to threaten commercial shipping, targeting Iranian drone and missile storage sites and air defenses.
That language, which the U.S. military has employed on a daily basis, does not explicitly acknowledge U.S. strikes on infrastructure that can be used for civilian purposes, like roads and ports. Such attacks could be considered war crimes under international law.
Mr. Trump has threatened to attack a bridge or power plant “any time the Islamic republic of Iran shoots at a ship in the Strait of Hormuz.”
Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps said overnight that it had launched attacks on U.S. military targets in Jordan and Kuwait, including a communications tower, accusing U.S. forces of attacking equivalent infrastructure in Iran.
As for the Senate vote:
Senators voted against taking up another war powers resolution seeking to challenge the president’s authority to continue the conflict in Iran. Senators voted 49 to 47 to block the measure from coming to the floor for a final vote, with one Republican, Senator Susan Collins of Maine, voting in favor, and one Democrat, Senator John Fetterman of Pennsylvania, voting against.
Senator Bill Cassidy, Republican of Louisiana, who had supported past resolutions, changed his vote, saying he had received adequate information from senior administration officials to oppose the measure. Senators Rand Paul of Kentucky and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, two Republicans who had backed similar efforts, did not vote.
Just for once I’d like to read a story in the MSM about the war that doesn’t begin by mentioning the price of oil (this one did, too, but I left that out). Yes, it is a consideration, but to many not the consideration. What about the 30,000+ people killed by the theocracy, its oppression of women, its never-ending attempt to make nuclear weapons, and its sponsorship of terrorism throughout the Middle East—and elsewhere (viz., Alinejad, Maish).
*Yesterday we learned that Trump decided to help Saudi Arabia get nuclear weapons, and Amit Segal opined that this was largely due to Trump’s trying to get business for American defense companies. Well, that may be true (I was doubtful), but the Washington Post says there’s a big condition for that nuclear aid: the Saudis must join the 2020 Abraham Accords, designed to normalize relations between Israel and Arab countries.
Saudi Arabia would need to normalize relations with Israel to receive the U.S. nuclear technology it has long sought, President Donald Trump said Thursday, adding a new condition to an agreement signed a day earlier and throwing the future of that deal into confusion.
The nuclear deal is “totally subject” to Saudi Arabia’s joining the Abraham Accords, Trump said in a social media post, referring to the effort from his first term to normalize relations between Israel and Muslim-majority countries from which it had long been estranged. The Saudis have thus far refused to join the accord.
The deal to allow the Saudis to build nuclear power plants using U.S. technology, creating a pathway to a Saudi nuclear enrichment program, has set off debate in Congress. Many lawmakers fear that allowing more countries to develop enrichment programs could eventually lead to more possessing nuclear weapons.
Israel hotly opposes Saudi Arabia’s developing a nuclear enrichment program, fearful it could lead to a regional arms race. Israeli leaders welcomed Trump’s new statement.
The Saudis have long sought to build nuclear power plants on their territory — and Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, the de facto ruler of the country, has declared that they would work to develop nuclear weapons if Iran develops its own.
The Biden administration also explored a nuclear deal with Saudi Arabia, but it ultimately foundered because normalizing relations with Israel was the main condition the United States placed on the agreement. The deal the Trump administration signed Wednesday would have imposed no such requirement.
Trump’s new condition on Thursday would appear to attach a major string to the deal. Saudi leaders were nearing a normalization agreement with Israel in 2023, just before the Hamas attack on Israel on Oct. 7 of that year. Since then, however, talks have been paused. Saudi leaders have said they would want guarantees of an eventual Palestinian state, and Saudi public opinion has soured toward Israel because of its handling of Gaza. Any nuclear deal tied to Saudi-Israel diplomatic breakthroughs has seemed remote.
This is somewhat of a mess because Trump, trying to normalize relations between Israel and the Saudis, is asking for Israel to accept something they violently oppose: a nuclear-armed Saudi Arabia. Saudi Arabia might accept it (that’s doubtful), but Israel never would. At least the motive for the nuke deal is better than simply enriching the American military-industrial complex.
Sometimes you wonder why a person went into politics. Other times, you know exactly why they did. For Zohran Mamdani, yesterday was a case of the latter.
On Tuesday evening he released a two-minute video of himself, seated behind a desk, flanked by the flags of the United States and New York. He had arranged this posture—for posture it was—to announce a development in the case of Zohran Mamdani vs. Benjamin Netanyahu, otherwise known as Mamdani vs. the State of Israel. Attacks on Israel have been central to Mamdani’s political rise. He has spent his life marinating in postcolonial politics, Third Worldism, and anti-Zionism, and brings agitation, certainty, and ignorance to debates about the Middle East.
On the campaign trail, Mamdani repeatedly promised that if he were elected mayor, he would have Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu arrested if he ever set foot in the city.
Several things were obvious to any casual observer. The first is that the United Nations General Assembly occurs each September in New York. Therefore, there was always going to be an opportunity for a showdown. The second is that the mayor of New York does not have any right to run U.S. foreign policy out of Gracie Mansion.
The third obvious fact was that Mamdani was going to justify his call for the arrest of Netanyahu on the basis of the existing warrant against the Israeli leader from the International Criminal Court (ICC). Of course, the U.S. is not a signatory to the ICC, nor in any way bound to its decisions. In fact, consecutive Democratic and Republican administrations refused to sign the Rome Statute on which the ICC is based because it would give foreign powers a say over American law and let them stand in judgment over American soldiers and statesmen.
. . .Mamdani’s statement was a tightly packed set of casuistry and lies. He started by saying: “Benjamin Netanyahu is a war criminal. The architect of a horrific genocide against the Palestinian people. He is responsible for the killing of more than 73,000 people. For the maiming of tens of thousands of children, as those who survive undergo amputation without anesthesia. For the targeting of neonatal hospitals and maternity care centers, denying newborns even the chance to live. For the countless people he starved as he blocked food and humanitarian aid from reaching them. For the gunning down of hundreds of aid workers and journalists.”
There are many things to note here. But the first is the opening line, that Netanyahu is a war criminal. Mamdani did not say that Netanyahu has been accused of war crimes. He did not say that a prosecutor at the ICC, Karim Khan, issued a hastily written arrest warrant for Netanyahu and others in November 2024, which was quite possibly meant to deflect from his own imminent exposure for his alleged sexual harassment of a colleague at the court. Rather, Mamdani said that Netanyahu is a war criminal. That does not make it sound as though the mayor is willing to let justice play its course.
Mamdani presents his claims as fact, which they are very far from being. He cites the famous number of 73,000 deaths in Gaza, which was produced by Hamas. Even if this figure is accurate, who are these casualties? Are any of them Hamas fighters? Did Israel manage to kill any Hamas soldiers during the conflict, or must every death be regarded as a civilian death?
. .Mamdani is very clearly unbothered by facts. What he wants is the ability to make an accusation. So it is with the accusation of “genocide.” There is nothing more preposterous than the idea that what the Israel Defense Forces have done since October 7 has been a “genocide” of the Palestinians. If Netanyahu had wanted to eradicate every Palestinian from Gaza he could have done so on October 8. But obviously he didn’t. If the IDF had sought to kill as many Palestinians as possible, they would have not gone to such extraordinary lengths—lengths I have seen with my own eyes—to separate civilians from combatants, even when the line between the two has been deliberately blurred by Hamas.
Mamdani knows what he is doing here. He is not a stupid man. He is not an ignorant man. He is simply a highly ideological man who is pursuing a political and sectarian campaign against the world’s only Jewish state. Aside from personal advancement it is obvious what his real motivation is. Like other democratic socialists, Mamdani would like to shift the Overton window on Israel policy and vet candidates for future primaries over whether or not they condemn the “genocide” in Gaza. By presenting as fact the farcical claim that there has been such a thing, Mamdani and co. can then make anyone who refuses to condemn it look like an utter monster. After all, who can’t bring himself to condemn a genocide?
The push to arrest Netanyahu in New York was always going to fail. Its only purpose was to be another stepping stone in Mamdani’s and his fellow travelers’ efforts to destroy the moral legitimacy of the world’s one Jewish state, in the hope of eventually destroying the ability of that state to exist. Why they wish so fervently to achieve this goal is, of course, impossible to comprehend.
I repeat that Mamdani’s election baffles me, particularly because many of those who voted for him were Jews. Murray, who is not Jewish, sees what NYC’s Jews (or Democrats) don’t see, or do see and don’t want to admit: Mamdani is both an antisemite and a liar. Good luck, New York, New York!
*Portland’s Reed College, also known as Che Guevara University (no kidding: I have a Reed College tee-shirt with the college logo surrounded by the words “atheism,” “communism”, and “free love”), has settled a federal complaint about pervasive antisemitism on campus. (You can read the formal agreement here.)
Reed College has agreed to a host of far-reaching institutional changes, including asserting that targeting Jewish Zionists will be considered discriminatory, in order to settle multiple US federal antisemitism investigations, parties to the complaint announced Wednesday.
The settlement was announced by the Anti-Defamation League and the Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law, which jointly filed the complaint, under Title VI of the Civil Rights Act, which prohibits discrimination at any institution receiving federal funds. It comes as campuses across the country, facing threats of losing federal funding under the Trump administration, have demonstrated willingness to negotiate new antisemitism protections.
As part of the agreement, the private Portland, Oregon, liberal arts school says it will insert language into its discrimination policy asserting that “for many Jewish people, Zionism is integral to their religious, ancestral and/or ethnic Jewish identity,” and that “targeting Jews on the basis of their Zionist identity” will be considered discriminatory.
The school will also contract a third-party consultant to monitor and report on its effectiveness in adhering to antisemitism protections, role that is unusual in similar Title VI agreements. The agreement says Reed will “consider” the International Holocaust Remembrance Association’s working definition of antisemitism, which includes some criticisms of Israel, and implement antisemitism training for faculty and staff.
. . . The resolution stems from two anonymous Title VI antisemitism complaints from Jewish former Reed students, both filed in 2024 under the Biden administration. One of those cases related to a student whose dorm-room mezuzah was vandalized, and who herself was later pelted with rocks, during a pro-Palestinian demonstration in spring 2024. The student later left the school out of concern for her safety.
On November 9, 2023, protesters on the Reed campus marched behind a banner that said “INTIFADA EVERYWHERE” and chanted an anti-Israel slogan. The protest was led by Reed’s chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) and occurred on the anniversary of Kristallnacht, the 1938 pogrom against Jews by the Nazi regime. The SJP chapter claimed that it did not schedule the protest to coincide with the anniversary, according to The Reed College Quest, Reed’s student newspaper. Four students were arrested after the protest spread to downtown Portland.
Reed president Audrey Bilger and other senior administrators had vowed that the college would “not tolerate” antisemitism or anti-Muslim sentiment and would stay in close contact with law enforcement about potential threats. But the complaints accused Reed of failing to intervene after being notified about antisemitic incidents. The failure allegedly allowed the harassment to worsen.
For example, the Jewish student who was struck in the head in May 2024 said she was also the target of an attempted break-in at her dorm room less than 48 hours earlier. The incidents were part of a monthslong campaign of harassment tied to her Jewish identity, according to a complaint filed with the Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights (OCR) in September 2024. The day after the rock-throwing attack, Reed emailed the campus, thanking the pro-Palestinian student group for the “peaceful nature” of its protests that week, according to the complaint. The second complaint was filed in May 2024 by a graduate student who was pursuing a master of arts degree in liberal studies.
I don’t favor governmental threats to withhold grant money if schools don’t adhere to civil rights laws, but they can be punished if they fail to adhere. Given that Reed asserts that it doesn’t tolerate antisemitism, that’s a bit unbelievable given that they thanked the SJP for a peaceful demonstration after a student was attacked (perhaps they didn’t know, but no group I know of here has been thanked for being peaceful—it’s expected. Violence is contrary to any school’s rules.
*Finally, in conservation news, Japan has released eight individuals of a species previously extinct in that country and endangered everywhere, the crested ibis (Nipponia nippon; extinct countrywide since 2003). First, Wikipedia says this:
In the 1980s, the birds were decimated by overhunting, the use of pesticides, ongoing habitat loss, their already small population size, their limited range, winter starvation and persecution, which together brought the endangered species to the brink of extinction. The crested ibis has been listed in Appendix I of the conservation treaty CITES.
Eight crested ibises were released into the wild in a north-central Japanese town, decades after the birds went extinct in the country.
The endangered birds took off from each of their wooden cages at a ceremony Sunday in Hakui city in the Noto region, where they were last seen in the wild.
Residents cheered when the birds soared into the sky the moment Crown Prince Akishino, his wife Kiko and other officials cut a ribbon around the cages.
The eight birds have been raised at a conservation center on Sado Island in the neighboring prefecture of Niigata following a successful captive-breeding program. Ten more birds are waiting to be released.
The white birds, called Toki in Japan, are native to East Asia and admired for their orange-pink hues under their wings and bright red marks around their eyes.
The birds went extinct on the Honshu main island in the 1970s, threatened by overhunting and environmental degradation. The last remaining Japanese native ibis died in 2003 on Sado Island.
But the birds came back to life thanks to China’s support for breeding. In 1999, artificial breeding by a pair donated from China successfully led to the first Japanese crested ibis chick born in captivity, according to the Environment Ministry.
The breeding and conservation efforts have since helped the recovery of the birds’ population. In 2008, 10 of the birds raised at the Sado conservation center were released into the wild on the island, where their population has increased to around 500, the ministry says.
Here’s a video of the release; this being Japan, it was ceremonial in nature. I’m glad they celebrated what they were doing, though perhaps it would have been better to release them more gently, and in a more wild area.
Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Andrzej clarifies matters for Hili.
Hili: I read that God is mathematics. Andrzej: It’s an elegant expression, but it doesn’t tell us anything.
In Polish:
Hili: Czytałam, że Bóg jest matematyką.
Ja: Zgrabne powiedzenie, z którego nic nie wynika.
From Kitty Litterposting; this is a real woman named Sara Jane Ibister, and, indeed, a petty criminal, but I don’t find the “crimes” below described in the Irish Sun article describing the “mugshot beauty”.
From Masih, making common cause for both Right and Left. English translation of tweet:
This is my response to Trump’s extremist fans.
Unfortunately, both Trump is a red line for some Iranians abroad, where he can never be criticized, and Mamdani, the mayor of New York!
The moment I make the slightest criticism—whether of Trump or Mamdani—I come under attack from extremist Iranians close to two completely opposing camps.
We are here to fight for the people of Iran, to negotiate and demand accountability, not to become cheerleaders and fans of right-wing and left-wing currents, especially in their most extreme forms.
این پاسخ من به طرفداران افراطی ترامپ
متاسفانه هم ترامپ خط قرمز برای برخی از ایرانیان خارج کشور محسوب میشود و هرگز نمیشود به او نقد کرد و هم ممدانی شهردار نیویورک!
به محض آنکه کوچکترین نقدی چه به ترامپ و چه به ممدانی میکنم از سوی ایرانیان افراطی نزدیک به دو طیف کاملا متضاد مورد… pic.twitter.com/nlsEPJwwOp
From Luana; a longish list of tweets giving examples of professors fired for having conservative views:
I was recently challenged to produce examples of profs who faced significant punishment for having views (or were perceived to have views) critics associated with conservatism. The implication was that these examples don’t exist.
They were looking at a hole on the Schmidt dive and it reminded me of this moment from years ago during a #OkeanosExplorer dive when a fish ambushed prey from a hole in the seafloor youtu.be/faeLyGD7A2M?…
I am pleased to report that the Gang of Four (now five days old) have made it with flying colors through another day at Botany Pond. Today they are five days old. They are vigorous, healthy, and have a hearty appetite, as does Miss Duck, their watchful mother. She’s proving to be an excellent mom, and I like to think that they’re all content, if not happy. I have high hopes that they’ll all make it to fledging (mid-September at the earliest).
Here’s a video of the ducklings eating. The big pellets are for Miss Duck, the little ones for the babies. Everyone gets crushed-up mealworms.
More lunching with the family. People love to come by at feeding time. It’s at 1:30 pm today (the last of three feedings), and if you’re one of the women from the Regenstein Library or the Dean of Students’ office, be prompt!
After lunch yesterday, the ducklings, who are quite vigorous, jumped up on a big rock abutting the north end of the Pond. I didn’t think they could make it, but they all did. Miss Duck overlooked them from the pond ledge. Below is a passel of photos as well as two more videos:
Mom stretches a wing and raises a leg:
Babies perching and jockeying for position on the rock.
More:
Babies napping:
Now everybody takes a nap. It lasted nearly an hour before the ducklings decided they’d had enough and jumped into the pond. Miss Duck, of course, had to follow.
When Miss Duck preens, the babies do, too. I was doubtful whether babies imitate the mother, but now I have no doubt that they do.
Welcome to Thursday, July 23, 2026 and National Refreshment Day. Honoring that, I give you below the best beer I ever had, procured by a friend in Amsterdam—with difficulty (see below). It’s a Belgian beer made by actual monks in an actual monastery (Westvleteren), and you have to go there in person to get your pre-reserved and limited supply. Wikipedia says this about the brewery and the beer:
As with other Trappist breweries, beer is brewed and sold to financially support the monastery and other philanthropic causes. Whilst the brewery is a business by definition (its purpose is to make money), it does not exist for pure profit motives and they do not advertise. The monks have repeatedly stated enough beer is brewed to run the monastery, and production volumes will not be increased to meet market demand. During World War II, the brewery stopped supplying wholesalers, and since then they only sell to individual buyers at the brewery and visitors’ centre cafe. On the opening of the new brewery, the Father Abbott said “We are not brewers. We are monks. We brew beer to be able to afford being monks.”
There is no label; the cap tells you what it is:
I drank the beer in 2019, and oy, was it good! Thick, chewy, and somewhat sweet, as all these beers are. It is not a swilling beer, but a beer to enjoy at leisure with good conversation. It is more like a meal than a drink. From Wikipedia:
Westvleteren 12 (yellow cap) (formerly Abt), a quadrupel, 10.2% ABV, introduced in 1940. , , , , In June 2005, when Westvleteren 12 was ranked as “Best Beer in the World” on Ratebeer.com, news organizations followed this up and articles appeared in the international press, highlighting the beer ranking and the unusual business policies. In 2014 it was again rated best beer in the world by Ratebeer.com for the fourth year in a row
Buyers were originally limited to ten 24-bottle crates of the beer per car, but as the beer increased in popularity, this was first reduced to five, then to three and now to two or one crates. For the Westvleteren 12 in 2009, it was limited to one case. When making an order now, the type and quantity of beer available for sale are revealed. Sales are limited to one order every 30 days per person per license plate and phone number. The beer must be reserved online through the abbey’s website, with registration weeks before the planned pick up date. The online system has replaced the “beerphone” in 2019. The monks do not sell beer to individuals who drive up to the abbey hoping to purchase beer. The reason for this is to eliminate commercial reselling, and hence give all visitors a chance to purchase the product.
The current production is 475 kilolitres (60,000 cases) per year, and has remained the same since 1946.
President Trump threatened on Wednesday to strike bridges and power plants in Iran if it targeted any more ships in the Strait of Hormuz, as the prospect of a prolonged conflict pushed the price of oil to its highest level in over a month.
“Any time the Islamic Republic of Iran shoots at a ship” in the strait, Mr. Trump said on social media, U.S. forces would hit the sites, including in or near the capital, Tehran. Deliberate strikes on civilian infrastructure could be considered a war crime under international law.
Mr. Trump has escalated his threats through weeks of rising bluster and deadly military exchanges, in which the United States has failed to either stop Iranian attacks or force the country’s hard-line leaders, who want to prolong the war, back to the negotiating table.
The threats also reflected how much the focus of the war has narrowed into a fight over the strait, a critical passage for global oil and gas, even as Mr. Trump maintains that his wider objective is preventing Iran from building a nuclear weapon. The strait was open and free to transit before the war began, but Iran has proved it can effectively control traffic with threats of strikes and, in doing so, gained powerful leverage over global markets.
The latest escalation came as Iranian officials had already reported recent strikes on bridges, and as Secretary of State Marco Rubio said that the United States would keep waging war as long as Iran tried to control the strait. Iran’s attacks on vessels there have brought ship traffic there to a near-total halt.
While Mr. Rubio left the door open for diplomacy after another night of U.S. and Iranian strikes across the Persian Gulf, he told reporters in Manila that Iran at this point was “not serious about talks,” arguing that Tehran had violated a preliminary agreement that says it should allow ships to transit the strait.
What strikes me about the article, besides the prospect of a longer war, is how much criticism there is of the U.S. conduct here. Each of the first four paragraphs contains a subtle critique. Well, that’s the NYT’s right, but let’s not pretend they are just reporting objectively.
It’s Wednesday, July 22, and rattled by Operation Rising Lion and Midnight Hammer last June, Saudi Arabia went looking for a deterrent. Pakistan, still bruised from its May 2025 confrontation with India, was looking for the same thing. The arrangement was mutually beneficial: Islamabad acquired a wealthy patron, Riyadh signaled it could diversify away from Washington, and Pakistan’s defense minister declared that his country’s nuclear program would be made available to the kingdom if needed.
Then came February 2026, and Iranian missiles and drones began landing throughout the kingdom. Riyadh invoked the pact. Islamabad sent a foreign minister to deliver a stern warning to Tehran and flew a squadron of fighters to a Saudi air base. The lesson was not subtle. Pakistan would not be the new guarantor, and a nuclear guarantee secured by diplomacy is a considerably weaker deterrent than one whose button sits under your own finger.
That is the context for today’s Wall Street Journal report that Trump has approved a 30-year agreement providing Saudi Arabia with a civilian nuclear program and potentially opening the door to uranium enrichment on Saudi soil.
. . .The obvious truth is that Saudi Arabia needs nuclear power like a drowning man needs water. But Mohammed bin Salman revealed the real game in 2018: If Tehran got a bomb, the kingdom would follow as soon as possible. Throughout its long campaign for nuclear power, Saudi Arabia conceded nothing to the industry’s “gold standard,” a binding commitment not to enrich uranium or reprocess spent nuclear fuel domestically.
The nuclear campaign is a symptom, not a cause. Riyadh concluded years ago that the American security guarantee is unreliable, regardless of who holds the White House. On September 14, 2019, cruise missiles and drones took roughly half of Saudi production offline in a single morning. Washington attributed the attack to Iran, moved some air defense assets into the kingdom, and did nothing further. Biden completed the lesson from the opposite direction. On February 4, 2021, in his first major foreign policy address, he ended American support for the coalition’s offensive operations in Yemen, including arms sales, and the following day the State Department moved to delist the Houthis.
. . . All that changed with Trump. He detached the nuclear file from normalization entirely, having already signed an executive order in May 2025 directing the State Department to promote nuclear exports. In November 2025, Washington and Riyadh signed a Joint Declaration on the Completion of Negotiations on Civil Nuclear Cooperation, alongside an F-35 package. Now they have an agreement for U.S. firms to construct a uranium enrichment facility in Saudi Arabia if a joint American-Saudi study concludes that such a project is justified.
. . .this deal may not represent [Trump’s] hedge on a nuclear Middle East. Trump is not reconciled to Iran getting the bomb. This is not the nuclear equivalent of his statements last month about it being “unfair” to deny Iran ballistic missiles if Saudi Arabia has them. He is simply doing a deal he thinks is good for the United States—American vendors, American reactors, Russian and Chinese competitors locked out of the market.
Nor is all hope lost for normalization. Israel still has much to offer Saudi Arabia, but taking one of the largest carrots off the table does make an agreement significantly more difficult. In the future, one would hope the dealmaker in chief remembers the value of leverage.
Yep, that big carrot just rolled off the table, and, according to Segal (I am not sure I agree), it’s to benefit the American military-industrial complex. Who can fathom Trump’s mind?
*Masih Alinejad’s brief is to keep calling attention to the Iranian theocracy’s detention and execution of protestors, and she does this in a new Free Press article, “Iran’s killing machine is operating in plain sight.”
Yesterday, I woke up to a message that broke my heart. Erfan Esfandiari had been hanged. He was 18 years old, and his parents’ only child. His crime, according to reports circulated by Iranian journalists and human rights activists, was opening a door. Specifically, he opened his door to let terrified protesters in as they ran from security forces during the January 2026 uprising against the Iranian regime.
That act of compassion was enough to send him to the gallows.
On that same Sunday morning, the regime hanged Gol-Mohammad Mohammadi, a 23-year-old Afghan refugee who had fled to Iran seeking safety. His crime, according to those same reports, was identical: He opened his door for protesters fleeing bullets. He was arrested, thrown into a show trial, and forced to endure three hearings, each lasting one hour. There was no independent lawyer.
Erfan and Gol-Mohammad were two of 59 men arrested together during the January uprising, in what has since become known as the Alikhani Square case. The two of them, alongside 10 others, were sentenced to death. Last week, all 12 were moved to quarantine. That is the signal: For the 10 still alive, execution is likely imminent.
. . .On Sunday, the chess champion Garry Kasparov posted a comment on X about the executions. “How tragic that these executions became the norm in Iran and accepted as such by the Free World,” he wrote.
He’s right. The world is not paying enough attention. While diplomats negotiate, bombs fall, and flimsy ceasefire agreements are signed, the Islamic Republic of Iran has been running a quiet, systematic execution campaign against the young people who dared to stand up for their freedom. And they are using the world’s distraction as cover.
During the war, President Donald Trump publicly urged the Islamic Republic’s leaders to stop executing protesters. He even said they promised they would. But we Iranians knew better. We knew that the regime was only buying time to turn mass arrests into mass executions. That is exactly what has happened.
I know that international pressure works. I have seen it. In April, Trump shared a photo of eight women who were about to be hanged, writing, “Please do them no harm!” The regime paused. On Monday, Trump shared my post about Esfandiari hanging on Truth Social, where it reached millions. But at that point, it was too late. And Esfandiari is not alone. Since the war began on February 28, according to CNN, at least 47 people have been put to death. Hundreds more remain under death sentences. We do not know the exact numbers, because the regime puts pressure on families to stay silent.
I certainly feel for Masih, and, after all, I’ve been putting up a tweet from her about civilian deaths every day for several years. But to get the regime to stop oppressing the Iranian people, we have to effect regime change, for the theocracy stays in power by exerting power: power through terrorizing the people, who don’t want to be executed. (Even given that, many Iranians still went out in the streets.) And the regime is succeeding by having executed 30,000 or more protestors. I don’t know if international pressure will do much to quash that mindset.
I don’t see how we can completely ignore this stuff when we’re at war with Iran. No, we’re not the world’s policemen, but we’re at war with Iran, Trump told the Iranian people to more or less take over their government, and this is, indeed, a laudable aim of the war.
Mayor Zohran Mamdani on Tuesday night challenged the federal government to execute an international arrest warrant against Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel, calling him a “war criminal” and “the architect of a horrific genocide against the Palestinian people” in a striking video statement.
The mayor said the city Law Department explored whether the New York Police Department could arrest the Israeli prime minister during his expected visit to the city in September but that the city did not have “independent legal authority” to do so.
On Tuesday, Mr. Mamdani said in the video that those conversations had led his administration to determine that it did “not have the independent legal authority to enforce this warrant.”
Seated between the flags of the United States and New York City, Mr. Mamdani looked directly into the camera and solemnly told New Yorkers that Israel’s prime minister had no place visiting New York.
“Benjamin Netanyahu is not welcome in New York City, nor is any other war criminal at large,” Mr. Mamdani said. “While we cannot end the genocide on our own, we can decide whether our silence will become another weapon, and we can examine every tool we have to defend the humanity and dignity of all people.”
There appears to be no chance of federal law enforcement arresting Mr. Netanyahu in the near future. President Trump said on Monday that the Israeli leader, whose country is a longtime American ally, would not be arrested in the United States “in any way, shape, or form.”
I’m not fan of Netanyahu, but I wouldn’t arrest him on the verdict of the International Criminal Court, which didn’t deem him a war criminal but found “reasonable grounds” to have a trial (the U.S. does not abide by the ICC’s decisions, and if Mamdani arrested him in NYC there would have to be a trial here. No chance of that!) Are the people of NYC who voted for him stupid or what? And if they vote for him again, they’d be even stupider, for he’s shown his cards. Why would a mayor spend his time trying to arrest Netanyahu rather than running the city? You know the answer: he is doing performative actions to cater to his base, the “progressive” left, which is increasingly anti-Israel and antisemitic. He doesn’t want to piddle around running a city; he has his eye on the Big Stage. Thank Ceiling Cat that because he was born overseas of non-American parents, he could never be President.
Here’s Mamdani’s statement; a friend of mine commented that “Mamdani would expel the Jews from New York City if he could.” I think that’s true.
— Mayor Zohran Kwame Mamdani (@NYCMayor) July 22, 2026
*The NYT has a summary article about a new PNAS paper examining geometric similarities as judged by humans and monkeys (rhesus macaques and olive baboons). It turns out that the primates are as good as human preschoolers at recognizing shapes in different orientations, while adults are the best. From the NYT:
Just like people, monkeys seem to grasp the abstract qualities of geometric shapes, such as whether they are symmetrical, have parallel sides or contain right angles, according to a new study published on Monday in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. This ability allows the monkeys — and us — to understand when two shapes are the same, even when they’ve been rotated or resized.
This finding challenges a long-held notion that humans’ geometric abilities are part of what makes our brains one of a kind. “Our hypothesis was that humans are not that unique,” in possessing this mathematical understanding, said Jialin Li, a cognitive neuroscientist at Carnegie Mellon University and the lead author of the study.
In their experiment, Ms. Li and her colleagues decided to give monkeys (a total of eight rhesus macaques and olive baboons), preschoolers and adult humans with different education levels the same geometric task. That way, if humans truly had an innate advantage, it would show up when comparing the young children and the monkeys. And if the advantage was learned, it might show up when comparing the humans who had different levels of schooling.
It was a challenge to find a task simple enough that even preschool-aged children and monkeys could reasonably complete it, but the team eventually decided to have all the study participants do a matching task. All were shown a shape with a specific size and geometric form on a screen. Then they were asked to pick that same shape out of a group of others.
“By manipulating the similarity of the shapes, we were able to look at what kinds of rules they’re using,” said Jessica Cantlon, a cognitive neuroscientist at Carnegie Mellon University whose lab conducted the study.
. . .The researchers then analyzed the results alongside those from another lab’s recent experiment, in which monkeys, young children and adults had to identify a geometrically dissimilar shape in a group.
Through this analysis, researchers realized that their participants were all capable of making connections between shapes and their angles, ratios and patterns — monkeys included.
This shared foundation suggests that our geometric intuition evolved long before humans did, which isn’t a surprise to many researchers who study animal cognition.
“These are hardly the only animals on Earth that have to deal with geometry,” said Ed Wasserman, an experimental psychologist at the University of Iowa, who was not involved in the new study.
Here are two types of tests that were done: a “which shape is the one above?” test and a “which shape is the odd one out” test. These figures are from the PNAS paper:
I’m not in the least surprised. Except for stuff like playing chess, most human abilities have their evolutionary roots in our ancestors, and those can also be seen in our relatives. Darwin was the first to realize this in The Descent of Man (1871), and looks for similar parallels in behavior, facial expression, etc. Here’s a video about the shape experiment, its background, and its meaning:
Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, the two enemy cats have an encounter:
Hili: Are you pretending you don’t see me? Kulka: No, I’m thinking about social relationships.
In Polish:
Hili: Udajesz, że mnie nie widzisz?
Kulka: Nie, zastanawiam się nad relacjami społecznymi.
From Luana; the Canadian government and the indigenous people still haven’t dug up any bodies in the residential school grounds. Now the First Nations people don’t need no stinkin’ evidence because they can detect from the “power and energy” that there are dead bodies. It’s ridiculous. This joker says that it’s “disrespectful” to ask for evidence.
“I don’t think we should have to prove to anybody what happened to these [dead children at Kamloops] because they are there and they send us messages telling us they’re there…[@tkemlups] Chief Casimir and I went to visit the sacred site. You can tell they’re there, right?” pic.twitter.com/O7rZfoM84E
— Frances Widdowson (@FrancesWiddows1) July 18, 2026
In which Larry is held responsible for British politics:
My degree of anxiety about the new ducklings decreases asymptotically as they age. The first week I get nervous, for they are at their most vulnerable, but as they age over the next several weeks I relax (a bit!) and am never fully complacent until they can fly, which is about two months after they hatch. They appeared on Sunday morning, which means they hatched on Saturday, so today the four ducklings are four days old. My first task of the day is to count them.
And they’re doing well: they are plump, lively, and eating well. Their mother, aka Miss Duck, is still being the perfect mom, watching over them and warming them when they’re wet. (It’s a bit chilly today: about 68°F). Here are the quadruplets getting warmed.
