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.
Right now I’m reading Steve Stewart-Williams’s new book: A Billion Years of Sex Differences: How Evolution Shaped the Minds of Men and Women. It is neither a pure blank-slate social-constructivist book nor a hereditarian, genetic-deterministic book, but takes an evidence-based middle ground, asking to what extent behaviors and mindset are molded by evolution and to what extent social conditioning plays a role. I won’t give a take on the book as I’m not yet finished, but it does make many arguments I’m familiar with. One of these is the familiar and well-documented claim that, based on different degrees of parental investment, men concentrate more than women on beauty when looking for a mate, while women are less interested in appearance than are men but more interested in paternal behavior, status, and wealth of a prospective mate. These are not absolute differences, of course: many men want women who will invest a lot in their offspring (we are, after all, generally monogamous), and many women want men who are pleasing to the eye. This is a difference in average preferences, not absolute ones characterizing all individuals.
Although some of this average sex difference in behavior may reflect social conditioning, its evolutionary background is likely based in part on the differential investment between the sexes in offspring: although many societies are polyandrous and monogamous, on average males still have a potentially larger number of offspring than do females. This appears to be true in many societies, as well as in our closest relatives, the apes and in most species of animals. Women, who by virtue of their reproduction (as well as by both the evolutionary and social impetus to do most of the childcare) need fathers who will do their share of parental duties and provide for the offspring. And of course men do share some of those duties, but are also more interested in casual sex and adultery—a way to spread more of their genes when they don’t invest as much in offspring.
If you want the evidence for this, read Stewart-Williams’s book or the references he cites.
Why am I pondering this? Because when I went to the library the other day, I caught a glimpse of myself in the entry door and thought, “Geez, look at that ugly old man!” Whatever attractive physical features I once had—and I was never close to being a Robert Redford—have vanished, carried away by time’s wingéd chariot. Women, too, worry about ageing, and are even more concerned about it because of a key difference between men and women: as women get older and become unable to reproduce, they become less desirable faster than do men. A man can have offspring even in his eighties, while in their early fifties most women hit menopause, which means no more kids. Since men have largely evolved to be physically attracted to women who can give them children, women try harder than do men to retain the signs of youth: hair color, plastic surgery, botox, and the like. On average, they try harder to retain physical attractiveness because it is that rather than status that is a dominant way of attracting partners—and most people want a partner.
Which brings up a tangential point: what about gay men and women? I don’t know their preferences but it would be interesting to study (and I’m sure people have) whether men attracted to other men for lasting partnerships are less concerned with looks than are women attracted to other women for partnerships.
Back to the point, which is this. It is my theory, which is mine (and likely many other people’s) that there is really no objective difference in physical attractiveness with age, in either men or women. Old men and women look different from their younger selves (I now refrain from looking in mirrors), but the beauty associated with youth and the loss in attractiveness associated with age are not anything objective (beauty never is, of course). We are simply evolved to think that those features associated with having more offspring on us are more “beautiful”, as those mindsets are the ones promoted by natural selection. This explains why women are more concerned with the physical ravages of time then are men, for their physical attractiveness to the other sex wanes faster with time. I’ve often heard older actresses say that by the time they hit forty, Hollywood no longer wants them, while that doesn’t happen so much with male actors. Why is this difference retained past the age of reproduction in women? I suppose it’s because it’s largely innate and most women didn’t live past menopause during most of our evolution.
Thus beauty is in the eye of the beholder: it is subjective, like all standards of beauty, but the subjectivity is molded in certain directions by natural selection.
I am not, of course, saying that this is good—only that much of it is natural. I do not want to commit the naturalistic fallacy here, but simply consider what aspects of our minds and behaviors might be based on genes, to what extent, and whether those evolutionary bits have been molded by natural selection.
This parallels a point I’ve made before: other aspects of our senses, like tastes, are clearly molded by natural selection. I have said, for example, that to a vulture rotten meat tastes as good as an ice-cream sundae does to us. Animals have evolved to search for food that tastes good because, over time, our senses evolve to find the food we need to grow and reproduce to be tasty. In other words, natural selextion has molded our taste buds and our brains so we prefer what is nutritious and fosters reproduction. This can be hijacked: we now eat too many fats and sweets because those substances were desirable to our ancestors as they were rare but promoted reproduction. Now they no longer do so because of the surfeit of “bad” food on tap. But our taste buds haven’t yet caught up to our health.
Why do feces and vomit repel us, smelling foul? It’s very likely that these substances were evolutionarily associated with the spread of disease, and so we evolved smell-detectors that find them repugnant. After all, dung beetles love the odor of feces!
I’ll draw one more parallel here. Anybody who thinks about it seriously must admit that male orgasms, intricate and immensely pleasurable physiological mechanisms associated with ejaculation, have evolved as a way of promoting reproduction (the evolutionary basis of female orgasms is more speculative, but there is no shortage of adaptive hypotheses). Orgasms are a way of getting men to produce offspring, just as sweetness is a way of getting us to eat sugar. And, like eating too many sweets, orgasms can be hijacked—severed from their reproductive function by condoms, chemicals, or medication. Organizations like the Catholic Church have tried mightily to try to reconnect sex and reproduction, but it is largely in vain.
I have undoubtedly written this too fast, as I just had some thoughts and wanted to get them down on paper before I forget them. I’ve considered that I’m trying to dispel my idea that I’m unattractive, and in so doing thought about physical attraction in general. And yes, I’m also reading Stewart-Williams’s book, which considers in detail this and other aspects of human (and animal) mentation and behavior.
Once you get an evolutionary mindset, all sorts of behaviors now become more interesting. That doesn’t mean we should make up adaptive stories and consider those stories to be true, but neither should we ignore possible evolutionary explanations. To explain the evolutionary basis of human behaviors and minds will be hard, as most of them evolved in the unrecoverable distant past—in our ancestors. But some of the explanations are testable, and here I must stop.
Today we have some plant photo sent in by Rik Gern of Austin, Texas. Rik’s captions are indented, and you can click on his photos to enlarge them. I have left the numbering of the photos to identify them since there is only one species.
I recently transplanted some Common onions (Allium cepa), and was thrilled to see them starting to bloom, but soon learned that a blooming (or bolting) onion has stopped growing the bulb and has put it’s energy into seed production. I guess that makes these onions food for the eyes rather than the stomach.
Prior to blooming, the stem (1) develops a bulge, and as the bulge gets larger it becomes translucent and you can see the umbel, or flower cluster starting to show thru (2). This made me think of the old Jiffy Pop popcorn pans!. Sometimes the flowers emerge with the petals closed (3 &4) and sometimes they seem to emerge in full bloom (5).
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Photo 2:
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Photo 5:
I don’t know what the deal is with this little yellow flower (6), but I thought it looked pretty. Here is a flower prior to blooming (7), and another that is a little further along (8). The blooming flower reveals the fruit capsule (9).
Photo 6:
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Photo 8:
Photo 9:
No sooner do the stamens emerge to attract pollinators than spiders lay out their silk in order to trap and feast upon the unsuspecting pollinators (10). Here is the inflorescence in full glory (11).
Photo 10:’
Photo 11:
These plants have a deep emotional significance for me, since they are transplanted from the garden of a dear friend who passed away recently. I’ve never gardened before, but I started this garden in his honor and as a way to continue the spirit of his friendship. I hope you will indulge me in a tribute to my friend.
Ron Akin was a one of a kind human being (Homo sapiens) who was a free spirited cosmic cowboy, Texas hippie, and an old fashioned Southern gentleman. He dropped out of the naval academy in Annapolis to spend years hitchhiking around the country, picking fruit, performing odd jobs and starting Just For Fun parades in various locations. The parade he started in San Marcos, TX just celebrated its 49th year, and was held in his honor. He also played bass with garage band par excellence, The Callous Taoboys. I met Ron at The Dell ‘Arte School of Mime and Comedy in Blue Lake, California in 1982, and after that we spent five freewheeling summers performing as clowns at the Schlitterbahn water park in New Braunfels, TX. We remained friends for the rest of his life, and I used to visit him at his home in the country where he had a garden full of onions, garlic, and all sorts of peppers. We’d spend days smoking the harvest from his garden on his grill, as well as all sorts of meats, and sit on the porch until late at night stuffing our faces and enjoying life. I never met a more free spirited, true-to-himself human being.
Here is Ron as The FreeDumb Fairy (alter ego of the lowly janitor Freiheit Gazoontite) at Schlitterbahn, participating in the Just for Fun parade, and down home on the porch. You can also see his prodigious onion harvest!:
Ron:
I call my new garden a friendship garden, though I have to admit that it feels a little lonely right now. Hopefully the onions will be the bridge to new friendship.
And here is my heartthrob Gal Gadot on Jimmy Fallon’s sho trying a Reese’s for the first time w. She likes it! (I’m told that the Trader Joe’s own version with dark chocolate is even better.
The World Health Organization declared the Ebola disease outbreak caused by a rare virus in Congo and neighboring Uganda a public health emergency of international concern on Sunday, after more than 300 suspected cases and 88 deaths.
The WHO said the outbreak does not meet the criteria of a pandemic emergency like COVID-19, and advised against the closure of international borders.
The WHO said on X that a laboratory-confirmed case has also been reported in Congo’s capital, Kinshasa, which is about 1,000 kilometers (620 miles) from the outbreak’s epicenter in the eastern province of Ituri, suggesting a possible wider spread. It said the patient had visited Ituri and that other suspected cases have also been reported in North Kivu province, which is one of Congo’s most populous and borders Ituri.
Ebola is highly contagious and can be contracted via bodily fluids such as vomit, blood or semen. The disease it causes is rare, but severe and often fatal.
The WHO’s emergency declaration is meant to spur donor agencies and countries into action. By the WHO’s standards, it shows the event is serious, there is a risk of international spread and it requires a coordinated international response.
. . .Health authorities say the current outbreak, first confirmed on Friday, is caused by the Bundibugyo virus, a rare variant of the Ebola disease that has no approved therapeutics or vaccines. Although more than 20 Ebola outbreaks have taken place in Congo and Uganda, this is only the third time the Bundibugyo virus has been detected.
Congo accounts for all except two of the cases, both of which were reported in Uganda, the WHO said.
The Bundibugyo virus was first detected in Uganda’s Bundibugyo district during a 2007-2008 outbreak that infected 149 people and killed 37. The second time was in 2012, in an outbreak in Isiro, Congo, where 57 cases and 29 deaths were reported.
. . .The Ebola virus is highly contagious and can be transmitted to people from wild animals. It then spreads in the human population through contact with bodily fluids such as vomit, blood or semen, and with surfaces and materials such as bedding and clothing contaminated with these fluids.The disease it causes is a rare but severe and often fatal illness in people. Symptoms include fever, vomiting, diarrhea, muscle pain and at times internal and external bleeding.
The virus was first discovered in 1976, near the Ebola River in what is now Congo. The first outbreaks occurred in remote villages in Central Africa, near tropical rainforests.
You can read about Ebola at Wikipedia, but it ain’t pretty. It’s thought to have been transmitted to humans by bats. Here’s a photo of the virion, the complete infective RNA virus particle, which does its damage by glomming onto and entering cells:
Cynthia Goldsmith,. CDC. This colorized transmission electron micrograph (TEM) revealed some of the ultrastructural morphology displayed by an Ebola virus virion. See PHIL 1832 for a black and white version of this image. Public domain via Wikimedia commons.
It’s Sunday, May 17, and despite decades of crippling international sanctions, a collapsing domestic economy, and an ongoing blockade, the Iranian regime continues to function. The secret to its endurance, according to Jerusalem Center for Security and Foreign Affairs researcher Ella Rosenberg, lies in a fundamental disconnect between the Iranian state and the ruling regime itself. While ordinary citizens face skyrocketing prices, severe infrastructural decay, and a genuine possibility of starvation, the regime relies entirely on a robust shadow economy to survive and bypass formal global banking systems.
To maintain this hold on power, the regime sustains itself through a sophisticated web of gray banking and illicit oil sales. Funds are systematically laundered through exchange houses and shell companies situated in free-trade zones in the UAE and Turkey before seamlessly reaching European markets. The problem is that a vessel or shell company can operate cleanly for months, passing basic sanctions screening, only to be officially designated by the Treasury Department long after the illicit funds have been moved and new shells have opened to replace them.
A critical vulnerability in the West’s current approach, Rosenberg argues, is weak enforcement. “Sanctions are like schoolyard bullying,” she explains. “If there is no real enforcement, it’s like a bully who cannot throw a punch. He loses effectiveness.” But things appear to be changing: The UAE has recently taken preliminary steps to close its secrecy banking loopholes, threatening to freeze billions of dollars in Iranian assets flowing through Dubai.
A critical node in this underground economy is the maritime “shadow fleet”—a covert armada of vessels systematically evading global maritime law. To smuggle oil undetected, the regime routinely executes ship-to-ship cargo transfers in open-ocean hotspots like the Gulf of Oman and the coast of Malaysia. Recently, monitoring agencies tracked a sudden, coordinated reappearance of these ships on Automatic Identification System (AIS) radars, only for them to vanish into the shadows mere hours later. This phantom-like behavior is part of a broader, highly sophisticated doctrine of maritime deception: to obscure the movement of sanctioned cargoes, the regime clones tracking numbers, simulates fake port calls, and even deploys “zombie tankers” using the stolen identities of scrapped ships.
Meanwhile, the regime is attempting to project an illusion of macroeconomic stability. After a three-month suspension, Iran will reopen its stock market on Tuesday. “The suspension of stock market activities from the start of the war was aimed at protecting shareholders’ assets, preventing panic-driven trading, and allowing for more transparent pricing conditions,” says Hamid Yari, deputy supervisor at the Securities and Exchange Organization. “Now, with the reopening of the stock market, we will see the full resumption of all capital market sectors.” Beneath this bureaucratic optimism, however, the market threatens to collapse the moment trading floors open. Key industries like petrochemicals and steel—already struggling before the war—have seen their facilities reduced to rubble.
Domestically, the regime has largely abandoned its populace. Decades of zero investment in civil projects have left the country facing severe, preventable water shortages—an ecological crisis the state absurdly blames on Israel using “atmospheric modifier weapons” to make Iranian clouds barren and steal the country’s snow.
While domestic anger is palpable across all demographics, Rosenberg cautions against expecting an imminent revolution. After enduring brutal, militarized crackdowns, Iranian citizens are unlikely to risk their lives again without guaranteed, active backing from the West. Ultimately, the West must understand that the Iranian state isn’t functioning normally; it is merely surviving, and the regime is singularly focused on protecting itself at the expense of its people.
Yep, the Jews are causing a drought, probably using their spaces lasers. Joshing aside, this isn’t good news unless the U.S. understands it. But since Trump seems to have abandoned the Iranian people, he doesn’t care that they’re suffering. We can hope only that his insistence that Iran not have nuclear weapons still holds. Leaving China, he told a reporter that he’d be satisfied if a 20-year prohibition was agreed on. All that means is that the death of Israel and nuclear turmoil in the Middle East will be delayed for a few decades.
*Sadly, Timmy the humpback whale didn’t make it. After being stranded in Germany and towed in a water-filled barge to the North Sea to be released, they found his carcass was found on Friday (h/t Jay). The Guardian reports:
Denmark’s Environmental Protection Agency said a whale had been found dead on Friday near the small island of Anholt in the Kattegat, a broad strait between Denmark and Sweden, and confirmed it was Timmy on Saturday.
Jane Hansen, division head at the Danish Environmental Protection Agency, said in a statement: “It can now be confirmed that the stranded humpback whale near Anholt is the same whale that was previously stranded in Germany and was the subject of rescue attempts.”
She added that conditions on Saturday made it possible for a Danish Nature Agency employee to locate and retrieve a tracking device that was fastened to the whale’s back, and “the position and appearance of the device confirm that this is the same whale that had previously been observed and handled in German waters”.
The 10-metre-long calf became a global sensation after it was spotted stranded on Timmendorfer beach, a sandbank in shallow waters off the coast of Germany, nearly two months ago.
As its health deteriorated, German officials gave up trying to rescue the mammal, saying they believed it could not be freed.
But after a national outcry, two millionaires in Germany said they were prepared to pay “whatever it costs” to release the creature.
The rescue attempt – which is believed to have cost about €1.5m (£1.3m) – involved floating Timmy away from the sandbanks and into a water-filled barge, which was pulled by a tugboat from Wismar Bay near the German city of Lübeck to deeper waters off the coast of Denmark.
It was criticised as “inadvisable” by the International Whaling Commission because the male juvenile, nicknamed Timmy after the beach where he was stranded, appeared to be “severely compromised” and was unlikely to survive after its release.
Well, the rescue may have been ‘inadvisable,” but I can’t impugn the two millionaires who funded the rescue. After all, Timmy might have lived.
*Theo Baker, a senior at Stanford University, explains how AI is destroying his well known school in a NYT op-ed called, “What A.I. did to my college class” (article archived here under another title).
Stanford already had a shaky reputation for integrity when I arrived in 2022. It was the origin place of the Theranos fraudster Elizabeth Holmes (now serving a 10-year prison sentence), the crypto fraudster Do Kwon (now serving a 15-year prison sentence) and the founders of Juul (which was forced to pay billions for getting kids hooked on vapes). All of these scandals were in the news when freshman year began. Many of my classmates arrived idealistic and hopeful, but among the strivers seeking a path to fortune, hustle culture was the accepted way of life. Now A.I. has made deception easier and more remunerative than ever before.
Cheating has become omnipresent. I don’t know a single person who hasn’t used A.I. to get through some assignment in college, yet the school was at first slow to realize how widespread this would become. As freshman year went on, some professors suggested that the “nuclear option” might be called for: allowing faculty to proctor in-person exams, a practice banned at the university for over a century to demonstrate “confidence in the honor” of students.
In our tech-enabled, newly A.I.-powered world, students were increasingly fudging just about everything. They would embezzle dorm funds to spend on their friends and lie about having Covid to get the UberEats credits that the school offered to those in quarantine. Some kids I knew published a paper that claimed a groundbreaking new A.I. advancement. Online sleuths quickly pointed out that it appeared to be just a stolen Chinese model, to which the two Stanford co-authors responded by blaming the plagiarism on the third author.
In junior year, 49 percent of the 849 computer science majors who responded to an annual campus survey said they would rather cheat on an exam than fail. A friend of mine captured the school’s ethos while we were discussing the tech hardware and other items our student club neglected to return to corporate sponsors. It was all, I recall her saying, “just a little bit of fraud.”
About halfway through freshman year, some coding classes started requiring students to sign a declaration — “I did not utilize ChatGPT” — to submit each assignment. During the first term these attestations began to appear, I watched a freshman I knew sign the declaration that he’d done his homework without A.I. as ChatGPT was still open in the next window — while on the deck of a yacht party financed by venture capitalists. The incentive structures were not aligned toward honesty. One could get ahead, quickly, by cutting corners, by focusing on self-presentation.
The money is a big part of it. A.I. has merely accelerated a trend that was already underway at Stanford and has been reflected by many of the country’s most corporatized universities: Education itself can be seen as a secondary goal to enabling future success, frequently defined as a future windfall.
I like to think that AI can be licked with proctoring in-class exams, but as for term papers or take-home exams, fuhgedaboutit. And remember, the future leaders of American are not only fine with big-time cheating, but won’t learn to write or think. Oy!
Roughly 200 protesters organized by PAL-Awda surrounded Young Israel of Midwood in Brooklyn on Monday—the same group that targeted Park East Synagogue in Manhattan last week—chanting “Death to the IDF” and “Globalize the intifada,” and waving a Hezbollah flag through the heavily Jewish neighborhood. Police arrested four people after clashes. Department of Justice civil rights division chief Harmeet Dhillon said federal officials were “working with colleagues in NYC to collect evidence and analyze potential charges.”
Pennsylvania Supreme Court Justice David Wecht, who is Jewish and previously served as the state Democratic Party’s vice chair, announced Monday he was registering as an independent, saying “acquiescence to Jew-hatred is now disturbingly common among activists, leaders, and even many elected officials in the Democratic Party.”
Kentucky PAC Ad Targets Jewish Donor with Rainbow Star of David
A political action committee supporting Representative Thomas Massie’s Kentucky primary campaign aired an ad depicting Jewish Republican donor Paul Singer—overlaid with a Star of David colored in rainbow Pride flag colors—claiming he would bring “trans madness to Kentucky.”
Rand Paul’s Son Goes on Antisemitic Tirade at D.C. Bar
William Paul, son of Senator Rand Paul, accosted New York representative Mike Lawler at a Washington bar Tuesday night, telling him that if Representative Massie loses his Kentucky primary, it will be because of “your people”—then launched into what Lawler described as a “roughly 10-minute diatribe about Israel, about Jews.” Lawler clarified he wasn’t Jewish, to which Paul apologized—“I’m so sorry for calling you a Jew.” Paul issued an apology the next day, attributing the remarks to a drinking problem.
New Jersey Man Pleads Guilty to Ramming Chabad Headquarters
Dan Sohail pleaded guilty Wednesday to ramming his vehicle into Chabad’s world headquarters in Crown Heights, Brooklyn. U.S. Attorney Joseph Nocella Jr. called it an intentional attack on “a globally significant Jewish religious institution,” citing the case as part of increasing violence aimed at Jewish institutions. Sohail faces up to three years in prison.
California Judge Removes Jewish DA from Case for Fighting Antisemitism
A Santa Clara County judge disqualified District Attorney Jeff Rosen—who is Jewish—and his entire office from retrying five pro-Palestinian protesters charged with vandalism and conspiracy for occupying the office of Stanford University’s president, ruling that Rosen had created a conflict of interest by calling the case an act of antisemitism on a campaign website. “This case is not a hate crime,” Judge Kelley Paul said. “The characterization of the prosecution as a fight against antisemitism runs afoul of case law.” The Jewish Community Relations Council Bay Area said the ruling “uniquely targets minority prosecutors.” The case now passes to California’s attorney general.
Swastika Flag Raised Above NYU Building During Graduation Week
As hundreds of students and families gathered for NYU’s annual Grad Alley block party Wednesday evening, a flag bearing two swastikas, a Star of David, and “NYU” was raised above the Steinhardt School of Culture, Education, and Human Development—named for Jewish philanthropists Michael and Judy Steinhardt. Michael is the co-founder of the organization Taglit Birthright Israel. Campus Safety removed the flag after about 15 minutes, and the NYPD has announced its Hate Crime Task Force is investigating the incident.
There are more from Europe, but you get the point.
Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili is rebuking Andrzej and protecting the garden:
Hili: Don’t do it.
Andrzej: Why?
Hili: You take flowers for the vase first, and then you get upset with yourself for having done it.
In Polish:
Hili: Nie rób tego.
Ja: Dlaczego?
Hili: Najpierw bierzesz kwiaty do wazonu, a potem się złościsz, żeś to zrobił.
From Masih: two Iranian women shot in the eyes for protesting; one is completely blind. The caption is heartbreaking:
These two Iranian women were both shot in the eyes by the Islamic Republic for one simple “crime”: demanding freedom in the streets and refusing to hide their beautiful hair.
With the help of some German organization, we managed to help smuggle them out of Iran. Now they live in… pic.twitter.com/GihPReEzz4
From Luana, the Haidt saga continues as he’s booed during an NYU commencement speech. You can see some of the booing here, along with an analysis by Jonathan Turley.
Booing Jonathan Haidt is a “shame and a disgrace,” as my grandmother would say. pic.twitter.com/JXlxspp2GI
— cats with powerful impression 🐾 (@catshealdeprsn) May 15, 2026
From Keith, a cute, fluffy butterfly. You can see a video of it walking here.
From Luana; the gross exaggeration of indigenous children’s death in Kamloops, British Columbia. It’s driven some Canadians into a frenzy, but there are no more deaths than expected in the cohort: 11 total. (It’s a thread.)
Kamloops Residential School
Death of Pupils 1935-1945
And two from Dr. Cobb. First, the rarely observed larval stage of a fish:
This is the first ever video footage of the larval stage of an extremely rare Groenveld’s Stingfish (Minous groeneveldi).Shot on scuba, over very deep water, far offshore, while drifting with the plankton, at night. #groenveldsstingfish #blackwaterdiving #larvalfish #tulamben #stonefish
We hope this post about orphaned negatives makes you gruntled.An ‘orphaned negative’ is a word that SHOULD feel like it has a related word, but doesn’t.‘Nonchalant’ is an orphaned negative because there is no ‘chalant.’
Here are some more unpaired words with the ‘word’ that one would think would be related.disgusting / gustingincognito / cognitoinnocent / nocentnonplussed / plussedoff-putting / puttingrepeat / peat
I did one of my favorite shopping expeditions today, stocking up on groceries in Chinatown. A giant supermarket opened there in the last couple of years, and it has everything one would want for Chinese food, including the hoisin sauce, sesame oil, soy sauce, and Botan Calrose short-grained rice that I favor. But there are many, many aisles of things that aren’t even labeled in English, and tons of goodies like the first two shown below. I love wandering the aisles (usually I’m the only white guy there, and certainly the only Jew), so it takes me much longer to shop than I usually do. They also have Chinese pastries, including various buns and cakes that are perfect for a weekend breakfast. Also congee and crullers.
About the title above: no, this, it isn’t food for cats, but cat-shaped food for humans, plus a “veggie cat” nail salon downstairs. The Chinese do love their cats, and it shows in the many products emblazoned with moggies. The “good luck cat” (maneki-neko in Japanese), raising its hand to wish you prosperity, is ubiquitous, and is on this first group of cat pastries:
I have a reclining maneki-neko in my office that is solar powered, so it waves its paw when the sun is out. No good luck on overcast days!
I’d never seen this one before: cat-shaped butter-and-cheese cookies in a great package. Now I’m sorry I didn’t buy them:
And this was downstairs, but closed on Sunday. What on earth is a “veggie cat,” and what does it have to do with fingernails?
Bill Maher continues his defense of Israel on the country’s birthday by pointing out the pervasive Israel-dissing of the mainstream media, adding that there is one thing that the American Left and Right agree on: Israel is the “monster country of all time” (he includes the NYT in this category). He also calls out Democrats, professors, influencers and young people for hating on the Jewish state. Some of the quotes Maher gives will curl the soles of your shoes. As he says, “Jew hatred isn’t just acceptable, now; it’s cool. Celebrities love it and make it trendy; it’s the new Che Guevara tee shirt.”
The guests on view are Dan Jones, a historian and author of Castles: A Fortified History, and David French, New York Times columnist and co-host of the podcast Advisory Opinions. I wonder what French thought of Maher’s slap at the NYT at 1:44.
This is more serious and less funny than his usual bits, but it’s a good one.
British physicist and science popularizer Phil Halper emailed me about two new surveys he and others had conducted with 1675 physicists, asking their views about fundamental questions in the field. This is not, of course, a guide to the truth, but simply a snapshot of where physicists stand on things like quantum gravity, black holes, and the Big Bang. The links to the surveys are in the text below, sent by Phil. I’ll highlight a few of their stands on interesting (to me) issues. Phil’s words are indented:
My co-authors and I just released the largest survey of physicists ever done. In conjunction with the American Physical Society we got more than 1600 replies to our Big Mysteries Survey.
What’s relevant for debates between believers and non believers is that we only got a large consensus on one topic and that is the Big Bang should be understood only as a theory that says the universe evolved from a hot dense state that says nothing at all about a beginning of time . Interestingly, we got 68% in both this large survey of a broad cross section of physicists and for a smaller scale survey we did of leading physicists in Copenhagen with the Niels Bohr Institute. This seriously undermines William Lane Craig’s Kalam cosmological argument which is defended by claiming that physicists agree that the Big Bang has shown that the universe had a beginning, we now have strong empirical evidence that physicists think no such thing.
On the fine tuning argument the most popular answer was that constants are brute facts that need no explanation. This was found in both of our survey and in the Phil papers survey of philosophers.
JAC: The Copenhagen Survey involved views of 151 physicists attending a conference on black holes in 2024.
And there is a video with Sean Caroll, Niayesh Afshordi, and Ghazal Geshnizjani discussing the results here. [JAC: I’ve put the video below.]
You might also enjoy the recent debate I did on science, cosmology and faith with Stephen Meyer here.
I haven’t yet watched the videos, but I did look at the big survey; you can access the pdf for free by clicking on the screenshot below:
First, a bit of methodology from the paper:
In the summer of 2024, a survey was conducted at the Black Hole Inside Out Conference in Copenhagen to assess physicists’ views on a range of ongoing controversies [1]. Eighty-five scientists responded. One year later, the authors collaborated with the American Physical Society’s Physics Magazine on a substantially larger follow-up survey, which polled 1,675 participants from the magazine’s readership and the members of the American Physical Society. The Physics Magazine survey therefore provides a broader view of attitudes within the physics community and allows comparisons with the more focused conference-based Copenhagen sample.
Taken together, the two surveys make it possible to compare views expressed in a specialist conference setting with those expressed by a much larger and more heterogeneous respondent pool. On some topics, the results are remarkably similar; on others, the differences are substantial. This paper presents the Big Mysteries Survey results, offers commentary on their interpretation, and highlights points of agreement and divergence relative to the Copenhagen survey
Here are a few bar charts from the paper. First, what the Big Bang implies (Sean Carroll explains this at the beginning of the video below). A big majority of physicists think that the Big Bang says nothing about whether it marked the ‘beginning of time”:
Of course tyros like me have no idea why the Big Bang doesn’t imply the beginning of time, but so be it: all of this is above my pay grade but I’m happy to see where physicists stand on these issues now.
What about cosmic inflation? A bit more than half of physicists think that cosmic inflation (the expanding universe) explains “an unexpected uniformity” of the universe.
Dark matter: does it explain anomalies in the rate of rotation of galaxies? No consensus:
Also no consensus on whether dark energy explains the accelerating expansion of the Universe:
There’s no consensus on why the universe’s physical constants appear to be “fine-tuned” for the existence of worlds that can produce life. (This is a favorite theological argument for God.) The “brute facts” explanation brings a stop to searching for explanations, but only 26% of physicists hold it. 20%—and I think this includes Carroll—think it’s explained by a multiverse.
There are more graphs, but I’ll show just one more. What kind of picture of the Universe is provided by quantum mechanics? The Copenhagen explanatoin, which people like me can’t reconcile with physical reality, is the favored explanation. I believe it was Feynman who said that if you think you understand quantum mechanics, you don’t. I’m still baffled by the issue of quantum entanglement, and don’t even understand the experiments buttressing it.
And here’s the video with Sean Caroll, Niayesh Afshordi, and Ghazal Geshnizjani. Carroll, as usual, gives some very succinct and lucid explanations. The other physicists are good as well.
Have a look at the paper for more opinions, including about what black holes mean and what they do.
Send in your wildlife photos! I am almost out. Thank you in advance.
Today we have miscellaneous photos from the Catskills taken by reader Jan Malik. Jan’s captions and IDs are indented, and you can enlarge them by clicking on them.
Here is another batch of pictures from my hikes in the Central Catskills this April and May. They are not too artistic, given the fast pace that a weekend backpacking hike demands, but they give a sample of what common animals a casual hiker can see in these “mountains” (the Catskills are an eroded plateau and, despite being steep in places, they are too low to have an alpine zone).
White‑tailed deer (Odocoileus virginianus), right in the parking lot at a cloudy sunrise. It was slurping water from a muddy puddle despite a clear stream flowing nearby, so it must have been leftover salt that attracted this ungulate. Woodstock residents like their roads well salted. One has to drive carefully at dusk around Woodstock, as there are many deer browsing on lawns and gardens.
In the woodland, I found the first of many red efts of the Eastern newt (Notophthalmus viridescens). This is an intermediate land stage of development between the aquatic larva and adult forms. Red efts have lungs, but air exchange through the skin is also important, supplying 30–40% of their oxygen demand. They travel through the forest litter when it is humid enough—after rain or in the early morning:
This is probably a blue‑headed vireo (Vireo solitarius), collecting nesting materials. If my identification is correct, then it is not possible to tell a male from a female, as they are sexually monomorphic and share rearing duties almost equally. Interestingly, however, a female may desert the nest just before fledging to mate with another available male:
Possibly an Eastern comma (Polygonia comma), found at higher elevation:
Black‑and‑white warbler (Mniotilta varia). I think this is a male. If so, he may be led by a female into the territory of another male to provoke a fight and allow her to judge his fitness. These birds occupy a similar niche to nuthatches and brown creepers; they climb and circle tree trunks to find arthropods:
Eastern towhee (Pipilo erythrophthalmus), male. These colorful sparrows hang around the edges of forest clearings:
Eastern American toad (Anaxyrus americanus americanus), hiding in a ramps patch. I wonder whether they would prey on red efts or if the efts’ foul taste would be a deterrent:
While passing through oak woods rich with acorns, I heard many alarm chirps from Eastern chipmunks (Tamias striatus). Most made themselves scarce as I approached, but one remained on guard duty:
Not a good picture, but here is a dark‑eyed junco (Junco hyemalis). These are hardy birds, staying year‑round in the forest. In winter they form close‑knit flocks with a few dominant individuals and a strict pecking order:
Chipping sparrow (Spizella passerina) on the side of a quiet road. These migrate to more southern states in winter and in summer nest closer to human settlements:
Mourning cloak (Nymphalis antiopa). There were a couple of them in the area, continuously jousting in the air for control of the territory. I see them every spring in that exact spot, but this year they were too engaged in battling each other to stay still, so this is a picture taken a few years back:
Brown creeper(Certhia americana), shown here just a moment after eating a couple of mayflies. They are common enough, but I rarely see them due to their near‑perfect camouflage. Without directly comparing the bill length it is difficult to tell a female from a male:
