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.
If anybody is still accusing Bill Maher of being pro-Trump, have a gander at this nine-minute clip from “Real Time” two weeks ago (I missed this one). It’s a scathing indictment of people who criticize Democrats but neglect the news showing that MAGA and Trump are far more odious. (He begins by calling out ICE for what happened to Renée Good.) The money quote: “Trump isn’t draining the swamp—he’s bottling it.”
At 5:30, however, he can’t resist giving a lick to Democrats for ignoring the rants Cea Weaver, Zohran Mamdani’s apointee to protect tenants, has emitted on social media. They include “If you don’t believe in the government’s sacred right to seize private property, it’s over,” “Private property, especially home ownership, is a weapon of white supremacy,” “Impoverish the white middle class,” and “Elect more communists.” Maher then reads between the lines and calls Mamdani a “straight-up communist.” That may be hyperbolic, but I think he’s more extreme than most voters realized, and I’m amazed at the degree of enthusiasm for him.
Maher’s point is that people need to absorb the news that’s inimical to their own ideology, painful though that may be. It’s not the best of his bits, but it’s okay.
Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s newly instated radical-left tenant advocate, Cea Weaver, broke down Wednesday as she dodged questions from reporters about her gentrification hypocrisy.
The 37-year-old, who has faced backlash for blasting homeownership as a “weapon of white supremacy” in the past, teared up when she emerged briefly from her apartment building in Crown Heights, Brooklyn, at about 9 a.m.
Weaver, who was tapped by Mamdani to be his new director of the city Office to Protect Tenants, quickly ran back inside after she was asked about the $1.6 million home her mother owns in Nashville, Tennessee.
Mamdani has a bright future in the Democratic Party so long as it leans wokeish.
An excerpt from the National Secular Society‘s report:
An Islamic charity issued regulatory “advice and guidance” after it promoted misogyny has since streamed a sermon saying men can ‘physically discipline’ wives who are ‘rebellious’.
Last month, Birmingham mosque Green Lane Masjid and Community Centre (GLMCC) live streamed a sermon in which Aqeel Mahmood [see video below[ said “discipline in the case of rebellion” is one of the “rights of the husband over the wife”.
He said: “The husband is a leader. He has his responsibilities. Physical discipline is a last resort on the condition that it doesn’t cause pain, injury, fear or humiliation”.
. . . Mahmood also said a husband has a “right” to “intimacy” with his wife and a wife must not leave the house without her husband’s permission. Mahmood is understood to be an imam at the centre.
Yes, a “last resort” to be used on “rebellious” women. Some “faith of peace”!
Here’s a short clip showing Mahmood’s interpretation of Islamic law:
Yes, the much-feared situation has occurred: I have run out of reader’ wildlife photos. Perhaps readers have lost interest in either sending them in or seeing them, but it’s a sad day when there are no animals and plants to look at and learn about. If you have photos (and good ones), please send them along.
In the meantime, I’ll shortly post a new Jesus and Mo, which will have to do you for today.
Here is Parks is being fingerprinted on February 22, 1956 for being one of the leaders of the Montgomery bus boycott. Her famous refusal to sit in the back of the bus occurred on December 1, 1955, and could be seen as the start of the Civil Rights movement of the late Fifties and Sixties:
Gene Herrick for the Associated Press; restored by Adam Cuerden
Readers are welcome to mark notable events, births, or deaths on this day by consulting the February 4 Wikipedia page.
Senior U.S. and Iranian officials are expected to meet in Istanbul on Friday for talks aimed at de-escalating the crisis between their countries, according to three current regional officials and a former one who were familiar with the planning.
The talks, they said, aim to bring together Steve Witkoff, President Trump’s Middle East envoy; Jared Kushner, Mr. Trump’s son-in-law; and Abbas Araghchi, the Iranian foreign minister, the officials said. Also expected to attend are senior officials from Turkey, Qatar and Egypt.
The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak to journalists. They included an Arab official, a regional official, a senior Iranian official and a former Iranian diplomat.
White House officials did not immediately respond to a request for comment. The plans for the negotiations could change.
If the talks happen, they will mark a rare face-to-face encounter between U.S. and Iranian officials at a time when military threats by Mr. Trump, and the refusal of Iran’s leaders to accept his demands, have brought the two countries to the precipice of war, spreading fear across the region.
In recent weeks, Mr. Trump has threatened to bomb Iran if its embattled leaders, who last month crushed mass protests with lethal force, did not yield to his demands. Those include Iran’s ending its nuclear program, accepting limits on its ballistic missiles and halting its support for proxy militias around the Arab world.
Iran and the United States will resume nuclear talks on Friday in Turkey, Iranian and US officials told Reuters on Monday, and US President Donald Trump warned that with US warships heading to Iran, “bad things” would probably happen if a deal could not be reached.
And this, which is an aggressive act on Iran’s part:
The US military shoots down an Iranian drone that approached the Abraham Lincoln aircraft carrier in the Arabian Sea, a US official tells Reuters on Tuesday.
The Iranian Shahed-139 drone was flying toward the carrier and was shot down by a F-35 US fighter jet.
Will the U.S. (presumably along with Israel, which Iran has also threatened if there’s an attack) attack Iran? I still think so, though talks raise the probability that there will be a diplomatic outcome. However, the only bargaining chip Iran seems willing to offer is “we will stop making nukes,” and they’ve lied about that for decades—with every U.S. President buying that nonsense. I don’t think Trump will, so I still think we’ll mount an attack. (Remember, Trump still wants that Nobel Peace Prize, and how better to get it than to bring down the Iranian regime.)
President Donald Trump said Monday that Republican lawmakers should nationalize voting — claiming a power explicitly granted to states in the U.S. Constitution.
Speaking to right-wing podcaster Dan Bongino, who recently stepped down from his role as the FBI’s deputy director, Trump again falsely alleged that the 2020 election was stolen from him, and he urged Republicans to “take over” elections and nationalize the process.
“We should take over the voting, the voting, in at least 15 places,” Trump told Bongino. “The Republicans ought to nationalize the voting.”
Under the Constitution, the “Times, Places and Manner” of holding elections are determined by each state, not the federal government. Congress has the power to set election rules, but the Constitution does not give the president any role on that subject. Republicans in recent decades have often argued in favor of states’ rights and against a powerful federal government.
Trump’s demand comes less than a week after the FBI executed a search warrant at a warehouse in Fulton County, Georgia, which is at the heart of right-wing conspiracy theories about the 2020 election. The unusual warrant authorized agents to seize all physical ballots from the 2020 election, voting machine tabulator tapes, images produced during the ballot count and voter rolls from that year. Days before the search, Trump claimed in a speech at the Davos World Economic Forum that the 2020 election was rigged.
UPDATE: Today’s NYT says that the White House walked this stupid idea back:
But Karoline Leavitt, the White House press secretary, said on Tuesday that Mr. Trump had actually been referring to legislation that would require people to prove that they are U.S. citizens when they register to vote.
“What the president was referring to is the SAVE Act, which is a huge, common-sense piece of legislation that Republicans have supported, that President Trump is committed to signing into law during his term,” Ms. Leavitt said.
“I don’t think any rational person who is being honest with themselves would disagree with the idea of requiring citizens of this country to present an ID before casting a ballot in a federal election, or, frankly, in any election, and that’s something the president wants to see happen.”
Like birthright citizenship for children born in the U.S., the rights of states to control their elections is specified in the Constitution, so the feds trying to control voting will not stand up in court. It’s just another bluff by Trump, but it’s not beyond him to start the process by filing a lawsuit, or issuing some bogus executive order.
After all, [Newsome has] had quite a year. While other Democratic politicians have struggled to adapt to the chaos of the second Trump term, Newsom has responded with a blitz of activity that has dramatically raised his profile. At this time last year, he was polling in the single digits for the 2028 primary, stuck in a scrum with other possible candidates and trailing Kamala Harris by a wide margin. Today Newsom tops all three major poll averages—enough to make him the undeniable front-runner.
Newsom’s strength is also showing in the betting markets. On PredictIt, he is far and away the betting favorite for the Democratic nomination, way ahead of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Harris, the second and third most popular choices. He trails only J.D. Vance in the betting for the 2028 general election.
AOC? Harris? Please, shoot me now. But of course I don’t want Vance as President, since he has apparently learned his behaviors from Trump. More:
What accounts for this remarkable surge? How did a liberal California Democrat win so much support a year after Democrats got walloped when their candidate was . . . another liberal California Democrat?
The answer lies in Newsom’s ability to be everything to—well, not quite everybody, but every Democrat. Think of him not as an ordinary politician but as a message delivery system, and a very effective one. All politicians fit that description to some degree, but Newsom lets absolutely nothing stand in the way—not principles, not beliefs, not prior positions. He reliably presents whatever message he deems most politically effective at any given time to any given audience. That has enabled him to appeal to nearly every Democratic faction.
. . . In essence, Newsom appointed himself chairman of the anti-Trump resistance and then backed up the move with words and actions. The Democratic base is loving it, just as he intends.
But many other Democrats worry that in order to win, the party will need to moderate some of its more unpopular positions, rather than simply criticize Trump. Naturally, Newsom has something for that crowd too.
He started a podcast, This Is Gavin Newsom, where his guests have included the late Charlie Kirk, Steve Bannon, Ben Shapiro, and other conservative luminaries. This has given him an opportunity to flash a few cautious signals that he is more moderate than the average Democrat. In his episode with Kirk, he agreed that letting trans-identifying biological males play in girls’ and women’s sports seemed “deeply unfair” to him. And in his recent episode with Shapiro, he agreed that calling ICE activities “state-sponsored terrorism” was not justified, and that it was probably not a good idea to abolish ICE.
So why isn’t that good? Because he has no firm positions, and apparently no guiding principles:
On the other hand, he has not been shy about reassuring progressives and “woke” Democrats that he is still one of them. For example, after his podcast statement on trans-identifying boys in girls’ sports, he almost immediately denied any implication that he would support a policy to change that situation in California or any other place. In his interview with Klein, he was quick to defend the provision of subsidized healthcare for undocumented immigrants as part of his overall commitment to universal healthcare.
On the other hand, he has not been shy about reassuring progressives and “woke” Democrats that he is still one of them. For example, after his podcast statement on trans-identifying boys in girls’ sports, he almost immediately denied any implication that he would support a policy to change that situation in California or any other place. In his interview with Klein, he was quick to defend the provision of subsidized healthcare for undocumented immigrants as part of his overall commitment to universal healthcare.
Newsom also refused to support Proposition 36, a ballot measure backed by many prosecutors to classify more crimes as felonies and increase penalties. (It passed overwhelmingly anyway).
. . . Gavin Newsom: friend of the resistance, friend of moderates, friend of progressives, friend of populists, friend of labor, friend of abundance-istas, special chum of Big Tech, and hard man for the Democratic Party. He’s got it all, twinned with a preternatural ability to deliver a perfectly calibrated message to each of these audiences when called upon to do so.
Newsom’s gift (if you can call it that) of appealing to all the factions within his own base works well for individual candidates in blue states but terribly for the party as a whole and its presidential candidates. It encourages candidates to think their basic positions don’t have to change much and that their progressive record, commitments, and statements over the years won’t turn off voters.
This is egregiously wrong, as the Deciding to Win report shows definitively, and as common sense would suggest. Candidates’ records and past positions matter a lot once they have to speak to a general electorate that doesn’t share the basic assumptions of partisan Democrats. Just ask Kamala Harris.
Could the Democrats make the same mistake with Gavin Newsom? Absolutely, because he knows just how to talk to them. That’s too bad because what they really need is a Bill Clinton and, well, Gavin Newsom is no Bill Clinton.
As I said, I’d vote for him over any Republican, but I wouldn’t be happy about it as I wouldn’t know whom I’m voting for. In the end, I think Newsom’s wokeness would dominate. And if he waffles that much, it’s good fodder for Republicans, whether in ads or in a debate.
*When Trump was blackmailing Harvard earlier over its antisemitism, he demanded that the University pay the government $200 million. He’s now dropped that demand. Instead, the Prez wants Harvard to cough up a billion dollars.
President Trump said he is seeking $1 billion in damages from Harvard University, the latest escalation in his administration’s fight with the institution over alleged antisemitism.
“Strongly Antisemitic Harvard University has been feeding a lot of ‘nonsense’ to The Failing New York Times,” Trump wrote on his Truth Social platform overnight. “This case will continue until justice is served,” he added. “We are now seeking One Billion Dollars in damages, and want nothing further to do, into the future, with Harvard University.”
Trump didn’t specify how or when he might seek the $1 billion. Harvard didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment.
The Ivy League school has been locked in a battle with the Trump administration for months over allegations of antisemitism and concerns about diversity practices. Last year, the government pulled billions of dollars in federal research funds, threatened the school’s tax-exempt status and attacked its ability to enroll international students.
The Times reported Monday that Harvard had rejected the idea of the $200 million payment because it was wary of backlash from liberal students and faculty. Hours later, Trump criticized the newspaper and Harvard in two Truth Social posts.
Before the president’s latest remarks, the administration had been in discussions with Harvard to settle their dispute.
*From the UPI’s Odd News, we have a video of the latest weird stuff that happened, including a Chinese toy horse that turned sad when its muzzle was sewn on upside down (it became a popular hit), and kangaroo of unknown origin was loose in Texas. The ‘roo has been captured, but nobody knows who should get it back.
Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili is sick to death of winter, as she always is during the season:
Hili: Weeks go by, and these frosts just will not end.
Andrzej: Do not complain, you have it warm at home.
In Polish:
Hili: Mijają tygodnie, a te mrozy nie chcą się skończyć.
Andrzej: Nie narzekaj, masz ciepło w domu.
From Masih, Iranian students protesting at their university. And yes, it’s true that the regime is arresting doctors and nurses who treat wounded protestors.
Have executions in Iran really stopped? No.
This is the voice of brave students who have gathered at their university, protesting and demanding an end to the executions of their colleagues and doctors.
The regime is arresting doctors and nurses for treating the wounded, and… pic.twitter.com/1DsvnUAYyp
From Luana; a tweet by Colin Wright arguing that there should be no topic that’s off limits in research, a question I ponder constantly.
I’m not particularly interested in questions about race and cognitive ability, but I don’t believe such questions should be off-limits.
What you’ll find in this new NYT article isn’t a scientific takedown of so-called “race science,” but rather an attempt to poison the well… pic.twitter.com/cRQEJ0pzdg
Retweeted by J. K. Rowling. The Taliban previously banned girls from secondary education, but the Guardian article says that they’re now banned from University education, too. Even the UN is objecting to this one. Half the population can’t get an education! The Taliban had promised earlier that there would be no ban on school for females.
As the Taliban continue their war on women and girls, it is clear that appeasement has failedhttps://t.co/3JJL1XM89l
One I reposted from The Auschwitz Memorial: a survivor whose birthday is today (she’s 101):
Moved to Auschwitz at 19, and then to two other camps, this French Jewish woman survived, and turns 101 today. Happy birthday, Ginette! https://t.co/aKx5FPph1d
Two posts from Dr. Cobb. First, the Sun’s large-scale granularity:
The seething visible surface of the Sun.Each of these cell-like structures is about the size of Texas. They’re granules where hot plasma rises and cooler material sinks back down. Details as small as 30km are visible.Credit: NSO/NSF/AURA#astronomy
The only television show I watch regularly is the NBC Evening News: I watch the whole thing from 5:30-6, completely ignoring phone calls and other disturbances. Last night the lead story was about the disappearance of Nancy Guthrie, the mother of Savannah Guthrie, a well-liked NBC news journalist and co-anchor of the network’s Today show. Mother and daughter were close, with Nancy often appearing on Savannah’s show.
Nancy Guthrie was 84, and simply disappeared from her home in Tucson, Arizona on Sunday. She has limited mobility, and when she didn’t show up for church a friend called the police, who discovered her disappearance. Nancy Guthrie relies on medication that she must take every 24 hours or she might die. An interview with the local sheriff revealed that there were signs of violence, and that Nancy was probably abducted. It’s now Tuesday, so she might already be dead.
The NBC news, both national and local, gave the disappearance not only the lead story, but also lots of air time because Savannah’s a member of the network family. The first paragraph of the NBC national news story is this:
“TODAY” co-anchor Savannah Guthrie is asking for prayers for her mother’s safe return as Arizona authorities continue to investigate her possible abduction.
Savannah also related, on the evening news, that the greatest gift she got from her mother was a deep belief in God, as you see in the plea for prayers above. On the local NBC news, anchor Alison Rosati ended her report on the disappearance by saying that she and other NBCers were also praying for Nancy Guthrie.
This is a tragedy for the Guthrie family, especially because Savannah and her mom were so close, and I won’t be dismissive of the call for prayers by nearly all the reporters. It did, however, get me thinking about people’s views about what prayers are supposed to accomplish, how they’re received by the God people imagine, and how educated people (Savannah has a J.D. from Georgetown Law) come to think that prayers are useful.
It’s clear that all the calls for prayer by newspeople reflect the still-pervasive religiosity of America, though I’m not sure whether, for some, the call for prayer is just a pro forma expression of sympathy. But surely for many prayers are supposed to work: God is supposed to hear them and do something—in this case intercede to help bring Nancy Guthrie back alive. And that got me thinking about how people connect prayer with the listener: God. Religious Jews are, by the way, among the most fervent pray-ers, with prayer serving as a constant connection with God. And, like prayers in other religions. Jews sometimes use prayer to ask for personal benefits or simply to propitiate God.
The train of thought continued. What kind of God is more likely to effect changes requested in prayer? If God is omniscient, omnipotent, and good, wouldn’t He know that people want things, like Nancy Guthrie’s return, and not need their prayers to find out? (He presumably can read people’s minds.) A god who requires prayers to effect change would be dictatorial and mean-spirited, demanding that obsequious people supplicate and propitiate him. But surely that’s not the kind of God most Christians imagine. (My feeling is that Jews envision a somewhat angrier God—the one in the Old Testament.)
Nevertheless, despite quasi-scientific studies showing that intercessory prayers don’t work, people ignore that data, as of course they would; it’s tantamount to admitting that there’s no personal God who has a relationship with you. Sam Harris has suggested that these studies are weak, and Wikipedia quotes him this way:
Harris also criticized existing empirical studies for limiting themselves to prayers for relatively unmiraculous events, such as recovery from heart surgery. He suggested a simple experiment to settle the issue:[32]
Get a billion Christians to pray for a single amputee. Get them to pray that God regrow that missing limb. This happens to salamanders every day, presumably without prayer; this is within the capacity of God. I find it interesting that people of faith only tend to pray for conditions that are self-limiting.
He has a point of course, and that experiment would never work. But it’s intercessory prayer. Perhaps God answers only prayers coming from the afflicted themselves. But that implies that the “thoughts and prayers” of other people, as in the Guthrie case, are useless. In the end, the very idea of petitionary and intercessory prayer being effective implies that God is, as Christopher Hitchens said, like a Celestial Dictator presiding over a divine North Korea, requiring constant propitiation by obsequious believers. How could it be otherwise?
One response by liberal religionists is that one prays not for help, but simply as a form of meditation or rumination. In other words, perhaps putting things into words—even words that nobody is hearing—helps you as a form of therapy, or in sorting out your thoughts and problems. That’s fine, though it’s unclear why rumination alone wouldn’t suffice.
I won’t deny anybody their belief in God, but I don’t want people forcing their beliefs on me, which is what occurs when newspeople ask for my prayers. I have none to give, though I wish people in trouble well, and hope that Nancy Guthrie returns.
These thoughts may sound cold-hearted, but they’re similar to what Dan Dennett wrote in his wonderful essay, “Thank Goodness“, describing who should really have been thanked for saving his life after a near-fatal aortic dissection:
What, though, do I say to those of my religious friends (and yes, I have quite a few religious friends) who have had the courage and honesty to tell me that they have been praying for me? I have gladly forgiven them, for there are few circumstances more frustrating than not being able to help a loved one in any more direct way. I confess to regretting that I could not pray (sincerely) for my friends and family in time of need, so I appreciate the urge, however clearly I recognize its futility. I translate my religious friends’ remarks readily enough into one version or another of what my fellow brights have been telling me: “I’ve been thinking about you, and wishing with all my heart [another ineffective but irresistible self-indulgence] that you come through this OK.” The fact that these dear friends have been thinking of me in this way, and have taken an effort to let me know, is in itself, without any need for a supernatural supplement, a wonderful tonic. These messages from my family and from friends around the world have been literally heart-warming in my case, and I am grateful for the boost in morale (to truly manic heights, I fear!) that it has produced in me. But I am not joking when I say that I have had to forgive my friends who said that they were praying for me. I have resisted the temptation to respond “Thanks, I appreciate it, but did you also sacrifice a goat?” I feel about this the same way I would feel if one of them said “I just paid a voodoo doctor to cast a spell for your health.” What a gullible waste of money that could have been spent on more important projects! Don’t expect me to be grateful, or even indifferent. I do appreciate the affection and generosity of spirit that motivated you, but wish you had found a more reasonable way of expressing it.
In other words, “thoughts” are fine; “prayers,” not so much.
I’m writing this simply to work out my own thoughts about prayer and its ubiquity, but I would appreciate hearing from readers about this issue. What do you think when you hear others asking for prayers. Is prayer a good thing, and what does it presume about God? Any thoughts (but no prayers) are welcome, and put them below.
This is my last batch of photos, so please help us (i.e., me) out and send your good wildlife photos.
Today’s photos of sunflowers come from Pratyaydipta Rudra, a statistics professor at Oklahoma State University. Pratyay’s captions and IDs are indented, and you can enlarge the photos by clicking on them. Pratyay and his wife Sreemala have a big bird-and-butterfly website called Wingmates.
I have shared some stories about our Maximilian Sunflowers before. This batch is a set of images of the sunflowers in bloom from the fall. They bloom for a relatively shorter time (a couple of weeks), but it creates a wonderful sunny vibe at that time and the pollinators, especially the migrating ones, definitely appreciate the buffet. Here are some insect photos on or near the sunflowers.
The Maximilian Sunflower (Helianthus maximiliani) plants bordering our property. They are not just low maintenance (no water required even during hot Oklahoma summers), but also kind of hard to kill if one wants that! We had them accidentally mowed down to the ground by a neighbor during the first year, and they grew back up just fine:
A leafcutter bee (Megachile, not sure about the exact species) flying over:
Painted lady (Vanessa cardui) butterfly taking off:
The bloom coincides with Monarch (Danaus plexippus) migration as we see plenty of Monarchs stopping by:
I called this image “The flame and the bee”. It’s the same leafcutter bee from the other image:
A close view of the bee nectaring on the sunflower:
A Spotted Cucumber Beetle (Diabrotica undecimpunctata). These are considered pests, but we see a good number of them every fall and they had never caused any trouble in our vegetable garden:
I think these are Goldenrod Soldier Beetles (Chauliognathus pensylvanicus), or something closely related to them:
Some kind of Meadow Katydid (Orchelimum). I love these with long antennae. They keep us entertained all fall and the garden suddenly sounds so quiet after the frost sets in:
Another Painted Lady. Note how it does not have the typical white spot of the American Ladies (Vanessa virginiensis) on the orange patch. The smaller one is likely a Fiery Skipper (Hylephila phyleus):
The skippers are often overlooked but they have a lot of character! I can spend hours watching them interact with each other. I find them quite hard to properly identify sometimes even with a field guide. This one is probably a Sachem (Atalopedes campestris):
The skippers are fast, but they can still fall prey to these efficient hunters: Goldenrod Crab Spider (Misumena vatia). These spiders can change their color (during molts) to match their surroundings. It’s not a surprise that this one was yellow, efficiently camouflaged among the sunflowers:
I like playing with the backlight through the leaves of these plants. I was happy to capture this little Eastern Amberwing (Perithemis tenera) dragonfly coming back to its favorite perch:
Another backlit image of a sunflower plant with some nice bokeh of out-of-focus mosquitoes/gnats:
Welcome to The Cruelest Day: Tuesday, February 3, 2026, and National Carrot Cake Day, one of my favorite cakes even though it’s made with a vegetable. It must, however, have cream-cheese frosting, like this beauty I consumed in a Chicago restaurant on June, 2024. Note the generous size, the carrot curls on top, and the largesse of cream-cheese frosting:
The painting is based on a surgery witnessed by Eakins, in which Gross treated a young man for osteomyelitis of the femur. Gross is pictured here performing a conservative operation, as opposed to the amputation normally carried out.
Here, surgeons crowd around the anesthetized patient in their frock coats—this is just prior to the adoption by American surgeons of a hygienic surgical environment (asepsis) which was becoming standard in Europe. Dr. Gross, in fact, regarded antiseptic surgery, or Listerism, as quackery until the end of his life.The Gross Clinic is thus often contrasted with Eakins’s later painting The Agnew Clinic (1889), which depicts a cleaner, brighter, surgical theater, with the participants in “white coats”. In comparing the two, the advance in understanding of the prevention of infection is seen. Another noteworthy difference in the later painting is the presence of a professional nurse, Mary Clymer, in the operating theater.
Readers are welcome to mark notable events, births, or deaths on this day by consulting the February 3 Wikipedia page.
The sole border crossing between Gaza and Egypt reopened on Monday after being largely closed for 20 months, a step forward in Israel’s cease-fire with Hamas.
The reopening of the crossing, in the Rafah area of southern Gaza, will for the first time allow some Gazans who fled during the two-year war to return, but only in limited numbers for now. It is also expected to expedite the exit of thousands of sick and wounded people waiting for medical treatment abroad.
The hope is that the reopening of the Rafah crossing will be a move toward gradually improving conditions for Palestinians in Gaza.
The first groups of Palestinians started passing through the crossing on Monday morning in both directions, according to Israeli officials, who said that they would have final numbers of how many crossed by the end of the day.
At a Palestinian Red Crescent Society hospital in Khan Younis, a city in southern Gaza, a minibus departed for the Rafah crossing shortly after 1 p.m. with five patients, each accompanied by two caregivers.
Mohammed Mahdi, 25, was escorting his father, Akram Mahdi, 61, a mechanical engineer. The elder Mr. Mahdi was wounded in April 2024 in an Israeli airstrike near their home, in a refugee camp in central Gaza, according to his son. Shrapnel tore into his face, blinding him in his right eye and damaging his left one. Doctors in Gaza could do little more than stabilize him, his son said.
“Finally, we can get advanced treatment abroad,” Mohammed Mahdi said before boarding the minibus.
It was unclear by midday how many Palestinians had actually crossed the border in either direction. No returnees appeared to have arrived in Gaza as of early afternoon.
Israel and Egypt disagreed for months over the terms of the reopening, which is part of President Trump’s plan for ending the Gaza war. A shaky cease-fire took effect in October, but Israel kept the crossing closed as leverage until the last of the hostages seized in the Hamas-led attack of Oct. 7, 2023, were returned to Israel, alive or dead.
A week ago, the Israeli military said it had retrieved the remains of the last remaining captive, Master Sgt. Ran Gvili, a police officer who was shot during the Oct. 7 attack, which set off the war.
. . . .Now that it has been opened again, the crossing will be strictly supervised and operated in a limited capacity, with dozens of people allowed at first to enter or exit each day, according to officials.
This of course is a good thing, though it would be even better if Egypt let Gazans migrate to Egypt for good. Those leaving are getting medical care, and will likely have to return. And although this opening is one of the provisions of the cease-fire, the really important one—the surrender, disbanding, and disarming of Hamas—shows no signs of occurring, as everyone knows. Israel attacked Hamas targets on Sunday, and that will continue until there is no more Hamas. Those who think that an interim government involving the Palestinian Authority will finally bring peace (and the “two-state solution”) are deluded: Gazans and Hamas hate the PA and if there are ever elections in Gaza, Hamas, if it ran, would win.
*One or two of the photos released in the latest batch of Epsteiniana showed Britain’s Price Andrew kneeling over the supine body of a woman or girl, whose face was redacted. That’s somewhat incriminating, though it’s not clear if the woman was underaged. At least it attests to the Prince’s randiness. He was asked to testify before Congress but didn’t respond; but in light of the new photos, he may have to show up in the U.S. and give sworn testimony. Britain’s former ambassador to the U.S., also implicated in the scandal, may also have to testify:
British Prime Minister Keir Starmer is pressuring the U.K.’s former Ambassador to the U.S. Peter Mandelson to provide evidence to American authorities over Jeffrey Epstein, after a cache of emails appeared to show that Mandelson leaked confidential British government correspondence to the disgraced financier.
The emails also show that Mandelson, long an influential figure on the British left, had received $75,000 in wire transfers from Epstein years earlier.
Starmer ordered an urgent investigation into Mandelson on Monday after a trove of emails released by the Justice Department in recent days provided fresh details about the long-standing relationship between Epstein and the British politician, a relationship that continued well after Epstein was first charged with sex offenses.
Mandelson was removed as ambassador last year after earlier details of his dealings with Epstein came to light, and the latest revelations will add pressure on the politician. Starmer on Monday also demanded that Mandelson resign from the House of Lords, the U.K.’s upper chamber in Parliament.
Mandelson said in a statement on Sunday that he had no recollection or record of receiving the funds and that the payments “need investigating by me.” Mandelson quit the ruling Labour Party on Monday but he remains a member of the House of Lords. On Sunday, he said he wanted to repeat “my apology to the women and girls whose voices should have been heard long before now.” He didn’t immediately respond to an email requesting further comment on Monday.
And Prince Andrew:
The latest batch of emails released by the Department of Justice include other high profile members of the British establishment, notably Andrew Mountbatten Windsor, the former prince and brother to King Charles, who has already had his titles removed and is being forced out of his mansion on Windsor estate.
The latest emails, which all date after Epstein pled guilty to procuring minors for prostitution in 2008, show Andrew invited Epstein for tea at Buckingham Palace in 2010. Photos also released by the Justice Department show Andrew photographed kneeling over an unidentified woman.
Andrew, who didn’t reply to an email requesting comment, last year said he continued to “vigorously deny” allegations that he abused an American teen introduced to him by Epstein.
Epstein wrote to Andrew in August 2010, “I have a friend who i think you might enjoy having dinner with, her name is irina she will be london 20-24.” “I am in Geneva until the morning of 22nd but would be delighted to see her. Will she be bringing a message from you?” Andrew replied.
A U.K. government spokesman said that the former Prince Andrew should also provide evidence to the U.S. authorities regarding Epstein.
Andrew has been more or less demoted to being a rich commoner since the scandal, and the BBC further reports two allegations that Epstein sent to women to the UK to have sex with Prince Andrew. Fortunately for Sarah Ferguson, who used to be married to Randy Andy, she won’t have to deal with this. I originally thought that nobody beyond Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell would face consequences from involvement in the scandal, but Andrew may be guilty of sex trafficking, which would be a first for the Royal Family.
President Donald Trump said Sunday that he plans to close the Kennedy Center for roughly two years for the facilityto undergo construction. The proposal comes amid a series of cancellations and internal upheaval since he took over the arts institution and presidential memorial nearly a year ago and remade it in his name and image.
“I have determined that The Trump Kennedy Center, if temporarily closed for Construction, Revitalization, and Complete Rebuilding, can be, without question, the finest Performing Arts Facility of its kind, anywhere in the World,” Trump wrote in a post on Truth Social. “In other words, if we don’t close, the quality of Construction will not be nearly as good, and the time to completion, because of interruptions with Audiences from the many Events using the Facility, will be much longer.”
Under Trump’s proposal, which he said is subject to board approval, the Kennedy Center could close on July 4, coinciding with America’s 250th anniversary, with construction beginning immediately.
“Financing is completed, and fully in place!,” Trump wrote. “This important decision, based on input from many Highly Respected Experts, will take a tired, broken, and dilapidated Center … and turn it into a World Class Bastion of Arts, Music, and Entertainment, far better than it has ever been before.”
Kennedy Center President Richard Grenell confirmed the plans in a Sunday evening email to staff obtained by The Washington Post. “We will have more information about staffing and operational changes in the coming days,” he wrote.
In a post on X, Grenell cited the $257 million designated “for capital repair, restoration, maintenance backlog, and security structures” through the One Big Beautiful Bill last year.
Grenell confirmed the necessity of repairs, but also issued a groveling tweet. You can bet that Trump will be over seeing the design and construction, and that there will be more Trumpiana included in the new building.
I am grateful for President Trump’s visionary leadership. I am also grateful to Congress for appropriating an historic $257M to finally address decades of deferred maintenance and repairs at the Trump Kennedy Center.
Our goal has always been to not only save and permanently…
*How long are you going to live? Well, you could get hit by a truck tomorrow, as they say, but barring that you can get an estimate of when you’ll die from various programs (go here, for example to estimate your longevity; mine was 96!). They do ask about your family history, and a new article in the NYT says, to my joy, that genes may be more important than environment or behavior in determining your longevity (remember that the propensity to9 smoke and drink are also partly coded by your genes).
Your potential life span is written in your genes, according to a new study. You can lengthen it a bit with a healthy lifestyle. But if your genetic potential is to live to be 80, for example, it is unlikely that anything you do will push your age at death up to 100.
That, at least, is the conclusion of a paper published Thursday in Science.
Uri Alon of the Weizmann Institute of Science in Israel and other researchers drew the data for the study from three sets of data from pairs of Swedish twins, including one set of twins that was reared apart. To test how generalizable the results are, the group also examined data from a study of 2,092 siblings of 444 Americans who lived to be over 100. Their goal was to identify outside factors that can affect how long someone lives, like infections or accidents, separate from the intrinsic factor of genetics.
They report that aging is mostly hereditary, a conclusion that flies in the face of much conventional medical wisdom regarding dieting, exercising and healthy habits. These habits are important for the quality of a person’s life, but they run into another form of conventional wisdom: You can’t make someone into a centenarian, unless that person also has a genetic inheritance of longevity.
“If you are trying to gauge your own chances of getting to 100, I would say look at the longevity in your family,” said Dr. Thomas Perls, a geriatrician and the director of the New England Centenarian Study at Boston University. His study’s published data on U.S. centenarians were used in the new analysis, although he was not associated with the study.
“This paper has a pretty powerful message,” said S. Jay Olshansky, an emeritus professor of epidemiology at the University of Illinois, Chicago, who was not involved in the study. “You don’t have as much control as you think.”
Here’s the paper; click to read:
Now a heritability of 50% really means that of the variation of longevity among people, about half of that variation is due to variation in people’s genes. That does show a sizable genetic component of longevity, and the rest is due to environment, gene-environment interaction, and other arcane factors (as the authors say, “(“This remaining variance likely stems from environmental influences (lifestyle, socioeconomic factors, health care access, intrinsic biological stochasticity , nonadditive genetic effects, and epigenetic modifications”).
The heritability is based on the correlation between twins, and remember that many behavioral factors that affect longevity, including drinking and smoking, are also affected by genetic variation. The estimated heritability of 50% is a lot higher than many previous estimates, which the authors argue is due to elimination of extrinsic factors like accidents, birth year, or infections that fuzz out the data and reduce heritability,
This does NOT give you a license to go hog-wild and start drinking, smoking, and having dangerous sex. Remember, half of the variance is due to factors that may not have a genetic component (not all drinking and smoking is based on the genes you have). But it does make me a bit happy as I want to live forever and my family, especially the women, live a long time. My grandmothers lived into their upper 90s, and although the men didn’t live as long, nearly all of them were heavy smokers. I know I’m not immortal, but, unless I get some debilitating condition, I want to live as long as I can, for I want to see what happens at the party.
Just weeks before the start of the Winter Olympics, a cheating scandal that is equal parts bizarre and brazen, rocking one of its foundational sports and becoming a cause for national shame in Norway, has taken its latest turn.
On Thursday, after 11 months of investigation and litigation, the International Ski and Snowboard Federation’s (FIS) ethics committee handed down a harsh 18-month suspension to two disgraced former coaches and the former equipment manager of Norway’s ski jumping team. The trio admitted conspiring to manipulate the suits of the team’s top jumpers to help them beat the competition at the Nordic World Ski Championships in Trondheim, Norway, last year after a whistleblower filmed them through a curtain.
“In the panel’s view it is the fact of the violations, the admission of which was compelled by the video evidence, that justifies the imposition of the sentence,” the decision stated.
At the world championships, Magnus Brevig, the head coach of the Norwegian national team, and Adrian Livelten, the team’s suit technician, were caught on a video posted anonymously to YouTube inserting illegal stitching into the crotch area of the suits of two star jumpers, reigning Olympic champion Marius Lindvik and Johann André Forfang, after the suits had already passed inspection. The stitches essentially served to make the suits more aerodynamic, allowing the jumpers to fly farther than the competition.
Here’s the damning video, though I can’t make heads nor tails of it. You be the judge; actually, the IOC will.
Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili made me genuinely LOL with this:
Andrzej: Hili, these are very important papers!
Hili: That’s exactly why I’m sitting on them.
In Polish:
Ja: Hili, to są bardzo ważne papiery!
Hili: Właśnie dlatego na nich siedzę.
From Masih: an Iranian hero who later died. Very sad.
Hollywood spends hundreds of millions creating heroes.
I dare you to look here. 👇
This is a real hero: an Iranian man carrying a wounded protester on his shoulders after the IRGC shot him. He saved multiple lives under live fire in Mashhad. His video went viral.
They later… pic.twitter.com/tQtNgy0Zy6
In the autumn of 1942, a slight, 32-year-old Polish social worker named Irena Sendler passed through the gates of the Warsaw Ghetto with a carpenter’s toolbox in her arms. Beneath the hammers and nails lay a drugged six-month-old infant, breathing softly, utterly silent. One cry… pic.twitter.com/8eOYemB6gf
Two from Matthew. The First is from a Guardian article (linked) about the woman who makes road signs keeping animals and drivers safe. Besides ducks, she made the cow signs.
I don’t remember this duck sign from when I learned the Highway Code but it was half a century ago and tbh it’s fairly clear what it means…
Divers fouled by amphipods (a type of crustacean)!
We did a scuba dive today to swap out an instrument on one of our offshore moorings. While clearing off the biofouling, we got biofouled, hood to flipper, by caprellid amphipods (aka headbangers). Here’s my leg after moderate scraping… 🦑🧪🌊
