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.
Well, the Oscars have been awarded, and you can see the winners here. In this latest news-and-comedy bit from “Real Time,” Bill Maher argues that the Oscars have finally succeeded, through both social pressure, appeals to reason, and changes in Academy rules, in making their awards so diverse that one can no longer argue that Oscars are biased towards white people. The Awards last night make that pretty clear, but dissents are welcome in the comments.
Maher’s point is not just the attainment of equity, but also that historically the Oscars have messed up in who or what gets awards. For example, he lists historical cases in which great films have lost to “much more forgettable, trifling sentimental stuff” (an example he gives: “Citizen Kane” lost to “How Green was my Valley”). He also lists directors who never won a directing Oscar, including Bergman, Fellini, Hitchcock, Kubrick, Terantino, Rob Reiner, and Kurosawa. In his diatribe about “wrong” Oscars, Maher also gives examples of actors who were overlooked in great movies and then awarded a “consolation” Oscar for a forgettable movie (example: Al Pacino). Finally, he singles out aspects of movies that bias choices, like characters with handicaps, actors who gain or lose weight, actors who make themselves ugly, actors who play admirable characters (“Gandhi”), and actors who may die before they get another chance (e.g., John Wayne in “True Grit”).
Ecology Letters, which I thought was a reasonably respectable journal, has now accepted a “viewpoint” article arguing that there is no consensus on biological sex, and that a definition based on gamete size—a consensus if ever there was one—is just viable as “multivariate” definition that incorporates a combination of chromosomes, genetics, and morphology.
They’re wrong and misguided in many ways, but, as Colin Wright notes in a tweet at bottom, there are so many mistakes and misconceptions in this paper that it would take a full reply to the journal to correct them. I’ll just tender a few comments here, but you can read the paper for free by clicking the title below, or download the pdf at this site.
The authors give three definitions of sex: the classical one based on gamete size (males have small, mobile gametes, females large and immobile ones); a “multivariate” one, popular in some nescient quarters, that defines sex base on some combination of morphology, chromosomes, and “genetics,” and, finally something called “sex eliminativism,” which “eliminates the concept of sex altogether.” They graciously admit that they won’t discuss the last one because “rigorous research on sex-based variation remains vital.” True enough.
But they add that the “rigorous research” they propose be done “also challenges simplistic and harmful ideologies of the sex binary”. This is a red flag that their criticism of the sex binary is partly (if not wholly) based not on biology but on ideology, for the “sex binary” is described as “ideological” and “harmful”. (They are talking, of course, about how a binary may harm people who don’t see themselves as fitting into it.) They later add that there are “ethical and political implications of defining sex.” Only if they care to draw them; most real biologists don’t.
But sex was defined by gamete type long before the “gender” ideology began questioning the view that there are two sexes. And definition has been widely adopted, as I’ve said, not on ideology but on universality and utility. (See this discussion by Richard Dawkins.) All animals and vascular plants have only two sexes corresponding to gamete size, so the gametic definition holds across the animal kingdom. That leads to research questions about why this is so: why do animals, for instance, have only two sexes (some rare parthenogenetic species have only one sex: egg-producing females), but not three or more sexes. There are many papers discussing this question, and the answer seems to be that isogamous species evolve by natural selection to be anisogamous ones (two types of gametes), with that state now seen to be an evolutionarily stable to invasion by more sexes. This already shows that defining sex based on gametes is universal among animals and plants and, because it leads to research questions, also utilitarian. It becomes even more utilitarian when we see that the gametic sex dimorphism helps us understand many facts about biology, most notably the morphological and behavioral differences between males and females explained by sexual selection—an approach first suggested by Darwin in 1871.
What are the problems with a biological sex definition? The authors claim that in most cases biologists don’t look at gametes when discussing or enumerating sexes, and that is usually true. When I divided fruit flies into piles of males vs. females, I looked not at their gametes, but their genitals. This is not a problem because in virtually all species there are proxies for gametes: traits like chromosomes or morphology that are closely correlated with sex. They are not 100% correlated, but pretty close to it.
But that’s not a problem, for the authors don’t seem to realize that there’s a difference between defining sex and recognizing sex. The binary gamete-based definition is universal (and of course useful), while a definitions based on chromosomes, appearance, or genetics is not universal. (Many species have sex determined not by chromosome type or genetics but by rearing temperature, social milieu, haploidy, so on.) Still no matter how sex is determined, if you look at gamete types you always find two sexes. Further, the authors don’t tell us how one is to combine the other traits in a multivariate way to define sex in any species. Would they care to give us a multivariate definition of sex for humans (or any other animal)? They refrain—and for good reason: it would be a futile task.
Their other criticisms of gametic sex are that it doesn’t deal with those species like algae or fungi that don’t have morphologically distinct gametes but are isogamous, with gametes looking the same. These species can have dozens of “mating types” based on genes, each of which can fuse only with gametes of a different type. These have long been called “mating types” and not “sexes” by biologists, and are not a problem for most species we’re interested in—including, of course, humans. As Colin notes below:
But anisogamy (reproduction via the fusion of gametes of different sizes) isn’t meant to apply to isogamous organisms (organisms that reproduce via the fusion of same-sized gametes). Anisogamy and the sexes—male and female—are fully intertwined and inseparable. Isogamous organisms don’t have sexes; they have “mating types.” They’re different from sexes, and that’s why biologists aren’t “inclusive” of isogamous organisms when talking about males and females.
The other criticism of gametic sex are just dumb: we can’t tell the sex of an individual before it produces gametes (like young men [in humans, newborn girls already have eggs!]) or after reproduction has stopped and gametes are no longer produced. From the paper:
. . . this narrow [gametic] definition is not inclusive of reproductive approaches beyond anisogamy (e.g., isogamy) and does not classify organisms before sexual maturity or after reproductive cessation as having a sex.
According to these authors, then, newborn boys do not have a sex (newborn girls do) nor do postmenopausal women or some old men who don’t produce sperm. That is crazy because the gametic definition of sex involves having the biological apparatus to produce large or small gametes; it does not have to be operational. To quote Colin again:
And the notion that a gamete-based definition doesn’t apply to sexually immature individuals or individuals who have ceased producing gametes ignores that the sexes are defined by having the biological FUNCTION to produce small or large gametes—and things still have a function even when it’s not being currently realized.
Below is a table from the paper comparing the gametic versus “multivariate” definitions of sex (the latter broken down into chromosomes, genetics, and morphology), seeing how useful each of the types is in defining sex in nine species (click to enlarge). Note that only one species, the New Mexico whiptail lizard (Aspidoscelis neomexicanus) is said to defy definition by gametes. Yet it is called, in the footnoes, a “female only species”. It is parthenogenetic, formed by the hybridization of two regular species having two gametic sexes, and the hybrids cannot produce males but produce females from unfertilized eggs that are diploid and genetic clones of the mother. So if it’s hard to define organisms in this species as male or female, why do the authors call it a “FEMALE ONLY SPECIES.” Because it produces eggs, Jake! It does not defy the binary at all, and you can put a “yes” in the first column where there’s a “no”.
Note that no other form of classification has “yes” all the way down: not chromosomal definitions, not genetic definitions, not morphological definitions (they again make the ludicrous claim that immature individuals don’t have sexes). And when you combine each of the three univariate non-gametic definitions in some multivariate way, you get a mess. Only the first column, the operational definition using gametes, holds in all organisms. But we already knew that.
There’s another table that’s even more ludicrous. This one points out (as they do in the text, so the table is superfluous) that in some species of hummingbirds, some (not all) females have male-like coloration, even though they have large gametes. There is thus a disparity between the gametic definition of sex and a morphological one. But note that the morphology is used as a species-recognition trait here, not as a way to define sexes. This is one case where a proxy trait for sex doesn’t jibe with the gametes.
Are the females with male-like coloration really males? No biologist would say that, and if you look at the references for the table, you see papers like this (my bolding):
Bleiweiss, R.1992. “Widespread Polychromatism in Female Sunangel Hummingbirds (Heliangelus: Trochilidae).” Biological Journal of the Linnean Society of London45: 291–314.
Diamant, E. S., J. J. Falk, and D. R. Rubenstein. 2021. “Male-Like Female Morphs in Hummingbirds: The Evolution of a Widespread Sex-Limited Plumage Polymorphism.” Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences288: 20203004.
Falk, J. J., D. R. Rubenstein, A. Rico-Guevara, and M. S. Webster. 2022. “Intersexual Social Dominance Mimicry Drives Female Hummingbird Polymorphism.” Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences289: 20220332.
Falk, J. J., M. S. Webster, and D. R. Rubenstein. 2021. “Male-Like Ornamentation in Female Hummingbirds Results From Social Harassment Rather Than Sexual Selection.” Current Biology31: 4381–4387.e6.
These all say that the male-appearing hummers are females that have evolved a male-like coloration (they apparently have done to avoid harassment and get more food). These are cases of polymorphism: some of the females look like males, while others look like regular females. The important question is this: why do all the authors call these male-looking birds “females”? It’s not hard to see: they produce large gametes and lay eggs (the authors used other traits associated with female-ness, like body shape in non-mimetic females, to suss out the male-like females). The females that look like males also show territorial behavior characteristic of males, and that’s because biological males have to acquire territories to attract females. Why do only the males do this? Because of the disparity in gamete size—the male mating strategy is to mate with as many females as they can, while females are more selective. (This is a classic behavioral difference due to sexual selection.)
In sum. the authors only buttress the gamete-based definition of sex in their tables. They do show argue that, in cases where you can be deceived about gametes by other traits, biologists like ones studying hummingbirds should describe the criteria they use for assessing sex. That seems okay to me and in fact that’s what’s done in the paper. But sure enough, the authors use color as a proxy for gamete size, not the other way around! Gamete size is fundamental. This is one case, where, as Colin says:
. . . every non-gametic view of sex is logically incoherent and self-refuting because they all rely on gametes as the conceptual anchor.
Here the color serves as a clue to what the conceptual anchor is and, sure enough, it’s gamete size.
In the end, this paper is deeply misguided and, I suspect, driven by ideology rather than biology. What else but ideology would cause four biologists to make such incoherent and misleading arguments? I could think of other reasons, but ideology is the most parsimonious (and the most au courant) given that the authors call the sex binary a “simplistic and harmful ideology” (it’s not an ideology, but an observation) as well as claiming that the definition of sex has ethical and political implications. No, it doesn’t—unless you are an ideologue.
Colin says in his tweet below, “I have reached out to the editors of Ecology Letters asking if they would consider publishing a counter-Viewpoint.” I hope they do. If they don’t, then they are suppressing valid scientific dissent in the name of maintaining a “progressive” ideology. I would like to think that Ecology Letters would do that. Stay tuned.
Here’s Colin’s tweet, which should be expanded to see his take:
🚨ALERT: Top-ranking ecology journal Ecology Letters has published a “Viewpoint” paper titled “There is No Consensus on Biological Sex.”
The authors call the “sex binary” a “simplistic and harmful ideolog[y].”
Welcome to another damn week: Monday, March 16, 2026, and National Panda Day, celebrating what is arguably the world’s cutest animal. If they didn’t exist, you couldn’t imagine them. Enjoy these six minutes of adorable herbivorous bears, They seem too clumsy to survive!
It’s also Curlew Day (so named because “it is on today’s date [or around today’s date] when long-billed curlews arrive at the Umatilla National Wildlife Refuge in Oregon to begin courting and nesting)”, National Artichoke Heart Day, and St. Urho’s Day, a confected holiday:
The day was created by Richard Mattson, a worker at Ketola’s Department Store in Virginia, Minnesota, in the spring of 1956. The name “Urho” was possibly used because Urho Kekkonen had just become President of Finland the same year. The legend originally said that St. Urho expelled frogs from ancient Finland, in order to save the grape crops, and thus the jobs of vineyard workers. Later the legend was changed—possibly by Sulo Havumaki, a psychology professor of Bemidji, Minnesota— to say that Urho had expelled grasshoppers, not frogs.
Readers are welcome to mark notable events, births, or deaths on this day by consulting the March 16 Wikipedia page.
Da Nooz:
*War news, including a bunch of Israeli strikes on Iran and more kerfuffle about the Strait of Hormuz, with Trump threatening to bomb the oil facilities on Karg Island,
Fears about the global economic fallout from the war in Iran grew on Sunday as the U.S. energy secretary acknowledged in a televised interview that there were “no guarantees” that oil prices would fall in the coming weeks. A day after President Trump called on other countries to send warships to the region to end the de facto Iranian blockade of the economically vital Strait of Hormuz, foreign governments responded with caution — if at all.
Israel launched a new wave of airstrikes on Iran, while Iranian forces said they were firing at U.S. and Israeli targets as the war continued in its third week, with no end to the fighting in sight.
The energy secretary, Chris Wright, told ABC’s “This Week” that he believed the conflict would end in the “next few weeks,” while Iran’s foreign minister, Abbas Araghchi, told CBS News that the country had not sought to negotiate with the United States and was “ready to defend ourselves as long as it takes.”
Mr. Araghchi said on Telegram that the strait — through which about a fifth of the world’s oil passes — “is open to everyone, except American ships and those of its allies.” In practice, however, the oil shipped through the passage comes from either Iran or American allies such as Saudi Arabia and Kuwait.
. . . . Iran faced another wave of strikes on Sunday that the Israeli military said had hit bases of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps and the Basij militia in the western part of the country. Israel has conducted more than 7,000 attacks on the country since the war began, military officials said.
The Revolutionary Guards force said it was continuing to target Israel and U.S. assets in the region. Iranian missiles repeatedly set off air raid sirens in Israel andSaudi Arabia said it had intercepted drones near the capital and in an eastern province, without saying where they came from.
This is going to last a while, and I can’t see the value of a ceasefire now, but of course with a very careful attention to not striking civilians. It’s impossible to ensure that none are killed or hurt, but striking the girls school was apparently based on outdated information, which should be checked before each strike.
*Apropos, the WSJ tells us what it would actually take to secure the Strait of Hormuz (article archived here):
President Trump has vowed to reopen the Strait of Hormuz, the vital artery for the world’s energy supply that has been closed off by Iran. It won’t be easy.
Trump and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth have repeatedly pledged that naval vessels will escort oil tankers and other ships through the strait. On Thursday, Trump said escort operations would begin “very soon.” In a pair of social-media posts Saturday, the president called on other nations to help.
The U.S. is holding off on sending warships into the narrow strait—just 21 miles wide at its narrowest point—with Navy officers saying Iranian drones and antiship missiles could turn the area into a “kill box” for American sailors.
One option to clear the way for escorts would be a more-intense use of air power to hunt and destroy Iranian missiles and drones before they could be fired at ships in the strait. Another would be to use ground troops to seize the territory around the waterway.
The administration has said it is keeping all options on the table, including the use of ground troops. On Friday, Trump ordered a Marine expeditionary unit, which typically has warships with thousands of sailors, attack jets and 2,200 Marines, to the Middle East.
In an escort operation, U.S. warships, maybe in conjunction with allied navies, would travel through the strait alongside oil tankers to clear mines and fend off Iranian attacks from the air as well as from Iran’s “mosquito fleet” of small, fast-attack boats.
Experts estimate it could take two ships per tanker, or a dozen ships to guard convoys of five to 10 tankers, to have the necessary air defenses. The short distances involved make shooting down missiles and drones much more difficult.
Despite weeks of American and Israeli attacks that have decimated Iran’s navy and military capabilities, its commanders are still demonstrating the ability to attack.
Bryan Clark, a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute and a veteran naval officer, estimates that, alongside warships, it would require at least a dozen MQ-9 Reaper drones patrolling the skies and striking Iranian missile and drone launchers when they pop up on the coast.
The article weighs other options, including sending in troops to guard the Strait, but those have obvious downsides. I am curious how, if Iran lays mines in the Strait (it probably already has), how US naval vessels can find and disarm (or avoid) all the mines. There are underwater mines these days, as well as submarine drones. Do any readers know how the “escort” ships would cleear mines?
*The New York Times has an article by Kyle Buchanan, a reporter who covers Oscars, predicting who will win in the Big Four categories. By the time you read this, the Oscars will have been awarded, but you can at least see how accurate Buchanan is (the article is archived here). This morning I’m adding the winners;
Do you really want to know? Kyle Buchanan, a reporter who covers the awards season beat for The Times, makes predictions every year, and he’s really good at it. Last year, he nailed seven of the eight big awards. His picks for this year are here; given his track record, consider it a possible spoiler alert.
Best picture
Anderson’s “One Battle After Another” has taken the top prize at nearly every show this season, including the Golden Globes, BAFTAs, and the directors and producers guild ceremonies. The latter group is an especially strong predictor of best-picture success, since the Producers Guild uses the same preferential ballot as the Oscars and shares significant member overlap with the academy.
Still, you can’t rule out a late surge from “Sinners,” Ryan Coogler’s vampire drama. It has earned fresh momentum since breaking the record for the most Oscar nominations, and it performed strongly at the Actor Awards, winning the ensemble prize and best actor for Michael B. Jordan. The energy was so electric that it recalled the night “Parasite” won the same ensemble award on its way to toppling the Producers Guild winner “1917” at the Oscars.
But those upsets tend to occur when the season-long front-runner is respected rather than loved. I don’t think that’s the case with “One Battle After Another”: Many voters adore this movie and that should be enough to safeguard its big win.
WINNER: “One Battle after Another”
Call me misguided, but I didn’t like “One Battle After Another”. The premise was good, but, like many movies these days, it turned into a series of long chase scenes.
Best director
If you’re voting for “One Battle” in picture, you’re definitely voting for Anderson in director. What has surprised me is that a sizable chunk of “Sinners” voters I spoke to are opting for Anderson in the directing category, too. Maybe it’s just his moment.
WINNER: Paul Thomas Anderson, “One Battle after Another”
Best actor
At the beginning of the season, I speculated that this Oscar was Chalamet’s to lose. Has he? The 30-year-old was recently defeated at the BAFTAs and the Actor Awards, revealing some resistance from industry voters. Still, I wonder if the academy’s longtime bias against handsome young A-listers in this category will also hinder the 39-year-old Jordan, who won with the friendlier Screen Actors Guild. If voters would rather reward a veteran, there are almost too many options: Do they choose DiCaprio, who led the likely best-picture winner? What about Hawke or Moura, who are well-liked and seemingly everywhere? Any of these five men can win, though I’m betting on Jordan, who is peaking at the right time.
WINNER: Michael B. Jordan in “Sinners”
I haven’t seen “Marty Supreme”. Jordan was good in “Sinners”, a movie I liked–at least the first half–but I make no predictions.
Best actress:
With so many acting races giving me agita, thank goodness for Buckley [in “Hamnet], who has thoroughly swept this season. (Not even a late-arriving bomb in “The Bride!” could slow her momentum.)
WINNER: Jessie Buckley “Hamnet”. I TOLD YOU SHE’D WIN! Go see the movie.
I did see “Hamnet” and thought Buckley’s performance was fantastic, fabulous, out of the park. I can’t imagine she won’t win.
As for supporting roles, Buchanan’s prediction for Best Supporting Actress is Amy Madigan in “Weapons”, and for Best Supporting Actor is Sean Penn ib “One Battle After Another.” There are predictions for many other categories, too, but you can see them at the links. WINNERS: Amy Madigan in “Weapons” and Sean Penn in “One Battle after Another”
Buchanan got these all correct! This morning you can see NYT op-ed writers discuss the winners and losers (article archived here). They were not keen on “One Battle After Another” compared to “Sinners’, nor were they as enthusiastic as I about Jessie Buckley’s performance in “Hamnet.”
*Being a geezer, I had to click on the WaPo article “Dying is costly: here’s how you can prepare.” (Article is archived here.) Even if you’re not concerned, click on the unarchived page (if you subscribe) to see the animation (!) that accompanies. it.
The average cost of dying in America is $195,501. Here’s the breakdown:
Elderly care:
Elderly care takes many forms. The costliest is paid long-term care: living at a nursing home or hiring a caretaker at your residencewhen family members need help. Medicare generally does not cover long-term care. Though Medicaid covers nursing home costs for most people, whether you qualify depends on your location and income level.
According to federal data, about 7 in 10 Americans over 65 today will need long-term care, and most of them will need it for about three years.
Funeral costs:
The cost of dying compounds when including expenses for afuneral, a cemetery plot and legal matters. When death occurs, emotional stress can make decisions difficult, and people could spend more than necessary. An industry survey of more than 1,000 respondents in 2024 put the total costs at about $12,616. Almost half of the money went to funeral planning.
That matches data from Funeralocity, an online platform for comparing funeral prices. The platform estimates that the average price of a burial is about $8,590, and cremation is about $6,250 around the country as of March. More than 6 in 10 Americans choose cremation today. When taking that breakdown between cremation and burial into account, Americans can expect to need about $7,726 for funeral costson average.
But crikey: why does it cost $6,250 to incerate somebody? Should I donate my body to science?
When a death occurs, some parts of the estate may be taxed. Most Americans don’t reach the threshold for estate taxes. A smaller share of the population, however, might want to choose carefully where they retire to maximize tax benefits.
There are two types of death taxes: estate taxes and inheritance taxes. There’s no federal inheritance tax, and the taxable threshold for federal estate taxes starts at $15 million per individual in 2026 — a concern for less than 1 percent of the U.S. population. However, a bigger share of Americans would be taxed on the state level.
Twelve states and D.C. charge an estate tax. State estate taxes start to kick in if the estate is larger than $1 million in Oregon — the lowest among all states — or larger than $13.99 million in Connecticut, the highest.
Five states charge an inheritance tax, though certain family members, such as the surviving spouse, are exempt.The state where the death occurred collects the money regardless of where the heir lives.
If you’re old, make sure you’ve got the dosh!
*From the UPI’s Odd News; the screenshot from FB tells the tale, but the article doesn’t say what happened to the badger except that it was “removed.” I hope they didn’t euthanize it unless it was very ill. Badgers are underappreciated.
From Masih, two brave Iranian women (I’m not sure about the Mamdami tweet since it may be calling for violation of freedom of speech):
I invite you anti-war activists in the West and I also invite the international media to speak with these Iranian women the regime shot in the eyes for protesting.
Look into our eyes. We carry the wounds of a war the Islamic Republic imposed on us.
Via Luana. I disagree with the “mass deportation” call, but it’s horrible that people in America are supporting terrorist organizations so openly (note also the call, “USA, go to hell” and “close the Strait, burn the bases.” The whole thing is horrific. And yes, they want to either destroy or take over the West:
NYC: “We Support Hezbollah here, we support Hamas here”
One from my feed. How does she do that? Translation from the German: “Belly dance by Valeria Veremeenko. Turn the sound on. She’s fantastic!” (More belly dances here.)
Christopher Beha‘s new book, Why I am Not an Atheist, appears to have gotten a lot of attention (including a guest essay in the NYT and a long essay in the New Yorker)—more attention than it deserves, I think—for several reasons. First, there’s a resurgence of books dissing “new atheism”, mainly because it doesn’t give us meaning, doesn’t fill the “God-shaped” hole that supposedly afflicts all of us. Second, the book makes the familiar argument that science itself (connected with atheism, it’s argued) is impotent at explaining consciousness, and the religious public loves to hear that science is stymied by such a problem (in the case of consciousness, it isn’t; the problem is just hard). Finally, Beha has name recognition because he was editor-in-chief of Harper’s Magazine for four years.
I haven’t read the whole book, but I’ve read both of his articles above as well as other reviews, and I’m not impressed, as there’s really nothing new here. Still, I suppose that just as the arguments of atheism must be made repeatedly to enlighten each new generation, so the arguments against atheism must also be made again and again by believers. (I wonder, though, why, if New Atheism was such a dud, as many say, there are so many books going after it.)
Click below to read an archived verrsion.
I’ve written on this website two critiques of excerpts and arguments from Beha’s book (here and here), and I just saw another negative review by Ronald Lindsay in Free Inquiry. Lindsay pretty much sums up the problems with the book in these paragraphs:
Building on his skepticism about science, Beha further argues that science cannot explain consciousness, which, for him, is a limitation that “proved fatal.” He states that science deals with material things, and because consciousness “is not material … not subject to the kind of observation that scientific materialism takes as the hallmark of knowledge,” then “[b]y the standards of the materialist world view, it simply doesn’t exist.”
Wow, that’s several misstatements in the space of a few sentences. To begin, consciousness is not a “thing.” It’s a processing of information based on inputs from indisputably material things. And there are few, if any, scientists who claim consciousness is not real. Finally, there is overwhelming evidence that the processing of information that is consciousness is dependent on the existence of and proper functioning of our material brains, which science does study with increasing understanding. No, we do not yet have a complete explanation of how consciousness arises, but that is no justification for inferring there is some immaterial, spiritual reality beyond the reach of science.
Frankly, these arguments are so poor they seem like makeweights for Beha’s real beef with atheism: it doesn’t direct him how to live. Beha’s disenchantment with atheism began when he realized atheism didn’t answer the question “How should I be?” Atheism did not tell him “what is good.” As Beha states, most atheists hold that people decide for themselves how to live.
Here is the crux of the quarrel that many theists have with atheism. They believe atheism leaves them rudderless, thrown back on their own resources in forging a life with meaning and value. By contrast, they believe that God provides them with an objective grounding, with clear direction. They no longer have to decide for themselves.
No, atheism doesn’t tell us how to live. It’s simply a claim that there is no convincing evidence for divine beings, ergo we shouldn’t accept them, much less make them the centerpiece of our lives. If as a you want to find a way to live, you must go beyond that. Some people like Beha find it easy to slip into an existing religion, which comes ready-made with meaning. (But how do you know you’ve chosen the right or “true” religion?) Others do the harder work of thinking for themselves, with many atheists accepting secular humanism as a guideline, but interpeting it in their own way. Beha is apparently afflicted with doubt (he used to be an atheist), but has settled on Catholicism.
Parrales and the Atlantic are surprisingly appreciative of Beha’s glomming onto his youthful Catholicism. The last paragraph of the review is this:
Is it possible to understand Christianity as a bulwark against social change and still hold on to faith sincerely? I think so—Ali and Vance have elsewhere also reflected more personally on their conversions, for example. But describing one’s religion primarily as a tool to harken back to the past, or as a way to defeat your enemies, risks overlooking the humanizing power of belief. This is what makes Beha’s book so worthwhile, for showing how religion at its best offers more than a theory of cultural renewal. As his there-and-back-again story conveys, faith can foster humility, of the mind and of the heart, and a desire to see others with the love that they believe God sees in people.
Yes, religion gives us ready-made morality, comforting fictions, and, of course, a community of fellow believers. That’s about all the “meaning” it offers. As for its “humanizing” power, how does believing in fiction “humanize” you? Sure, you can cite the Golden Rule, but secularists have made the same argument. And there’s nothing in humanism that promotes misogyny, hatred of non-humanists, or the like—the ubiquitous downsides of religion. Was Parrales thinking of all religions when he wrote that, including Islam, Hinduism, fundamentalist Christianity, and so on? Are those “humanizing” faiths?
But Parrales emphasizes in his piece that Beha’s falling in love with a woman (curiously, an atheist who remains a nonbeliever!) is what brought him back to Jesus. We hear the usual arguments that stuff like “love” cannot be explained or understood by scientists, something that’s completely irrelevant to the evidence for gods. Perrales:
For Beha, though, falling in love was more than merely analogous to having faith; it was a catalyst. More than a decade after first reading Russell, he began seeing someone. It went poorly at first—he acted “wooden and self-conscious” and rambled about his literary ambitions while she nodded politely. (“She was not the kind of person who judged other people on what they did for a living,” Beha writes.) But once he changed course and tried to make her laugh instead, she taught him two things: that he could, and that he was “still capable” of both being happy and making another person so. Within a year, they were engaged.
That wasn’t the only change. He quit drinking. His depression receded. The thought of having kids, something he had previously written off as a futile act, now appealed to him. As he tells the story, atheism became untenable not primarily through an argument, but because of its inability to explain how his future wife had changed him. “My life was filled with love,” he writes, “but there was something in this love that demanded I make sense of it.”
The various forms of atheism espoused by the thinkers he’d read seemed unable to provide an explanation. The scientific bent exemplified by atheists such as Richard Dawkins and Daniel Dennett offered, in his view, a reductive account of his love, flattening it to “a physical sensation, a neurochemical process in the brain,” a handshake between dopamine and oxytocin. Romantic idealism—Beha’s term for the belief of atheists such as Friedrich Nietzsche that each individual must fashion meaning in a meaningless universe—could not contend with the fact that Beha hadn’t brought about his newfound sense of meaning on his own. It was external, at the mercy of someone else.
To Beha’s surprise, the Catholic faith that he thought he had left behind provided the meaning he was seeking. Inspired by medieval-Christian mysticism—a tradition that emphasizes contemplation and a “willingness to live with perplexity”—and the New Testament’s claim that God is not just loving but love itself, he started attending Mass once again.
Surprise! Beha found that Catholicism was a perfect fit, like a jigsaw puzzle with only one piece left. How convenient! Contemplation, of course, is not the purview of just Catholicism (many humanists meditate), and of course a scientific frame of mind (or rationality itself) mandates being a diehard skeptic. There are no bigger skeptics and doubters than scientists, for it’s a professional virtue.
There’s more, but I’ll add just one more bit. Perrales describes others, notably Ayaan Hirsi Ali and J. D. Vance, of also finding solace in religion, not because of its truth claims but because it’s a remedy for a “lack of meaning”
Take the writer and activist Ayaan Hirsi Ali. In 2023, after many years as a committed atheist, she described her conversion to Christianity as being motivated by a desire to “fight off” the “formidable forces” of authoritarianism, Islam, and “woke ideology.” She made no mention of Christ, or of love. At a 2021 conference, J. D. Vance described his conversion to Catholicism by saying, “I really like that the Catholic Church was just really old. I felt like the modern world was constantly in flux. The things that you believed 10 years ago were no longer even acceptable to believe 10 years later.” The British rapper Zuby posted on X a few years ago that “the West is absolutely screwed if it loses Christianity.” (The post received nearly 2 million views and earned a reply from Elon Musk, who said, “I think you’re probably right.”)
Parrales hasn’t done his homework, for, as I recall, Hirsi Ali did admit she accepted the tenets of Christianity. At first I couldn’t find the proof, but Grok gave me the evidence:
In a live debate with Richard Dawkins at the Dissident Dialogues Festival in New York on June 3, 2024 (hosted by UnHerd), Hirsi Ali explicitly addressed her acceptance of key tenets. When Dawkins pressed her on whether she believes in the virgin birth and Resurrection, she responded affirmatively to the latter, stating, “I choose to believe that Jesus rose from the dead.”
She framed this as a deliberate choice rooted in her personal spiritual experience, including answered prayers during a time of crisis, which led her to embrace the “story of Jesus Christ” as a symbol of redemption and rebirth.
Here’s the video, so check for yourself, (start 7 minutes in). Hirsi Ali is reluctant to admit her specific beliefs, perhaps because it’s embarrassing. I don’t get the “I choose to believe” claim. Because you “choose” to believe what you find consoling doesn’t make it true!
As I recall, the audience in this debate was firmly on Ayaan’s side, but I haven’t listened to this debate for several years.
At any rate, I was sad to see The Atlantic boosting faith, and boosting it as a medicine that can give meaning to our otherwise meaningless lives.
Mark Sturtevant has returned with some excellent arthropod photos. Mark’s caption and IDs are indented, and you can enlarge his photos by clicking on them. Note that his stacking method is time-consuming; the third picture, he says, took “weeks,” and he’s still not finished.
Here is another set of local insect pictures, all manual focus stacks from either a staged setting from where I live in eastern Michigan, or at a local park.
The first was a visitor at the porch light. This beetle is a female stag beetle (Dorcus parallelus), and I was surprised about the ID because it was barely an inch long. Males of this species have mandibles only slightly larger than those in females:
The next picture is a Longhorn Beetle, Astyleiopus variegatus:
Next is a scene of symbiotic interactions between aphids and ants, where the aphids bribe the ants into protecting them by producing sugary secretions. The ants appear to be New York Carpenter Ants (Camponotus novaeboracensis), and I don’t know why they are called that since the species has a very wide range in the U.S. They are here tending aphids of an unknown species on a thistle plant. This picture is in a way impossible since an extreme macro picture like this cannot have much depth of focus, and it is also impossible to extend focus by conventional focus stacking since ants never sit still. So I’ve been spending weeks extending the depth of this picture from bits and pieces of several pictures. I am still not done doing this, but Mark needs a break so out it goes, into the public:
Dragonflies are next. These too are quick manual focus stacks but with a telephoto lens. Probably my favorite field for photographing dragons is a two hour drive away, but it is worth it because there is a field that is swarming with many species, including species that I don’t see elsewhere.
The first of these is a Common Green DarnerAnax junius, which is a common species but what was exciting for me was that this is a male. Females land. Females are so easy to photograph that I usually don’t even bother. But males? No. Males fly pretty much all day, and I seldom get a chance with them:
But the best reason to visit the “dragonfly field” are its Clubtail dragonflies (Family Gomphidae). The main flight season for Clubtails is June, so that is when I make a point to visit the dragonfly field where there are ten documented species from this family. I have photographed all but two from there. Clubtail dragonflies tend to be marked in yellow and black, and they have a thickened end on their abdomen. But not all species have this color scheme, and some are more ‘club-tailed’ than others. A couple things to like about them as a group are the many species, and their reliability for perching on or near the ground. This is in stark contrast to certain other dragonflies (i.e., male Green Darners!)
The first of these are some of the ‘big-club’ Clubtails, and we start with a Midland Clubtail (Gomphurus fraternus):
The next is the impressively clubbed Cobra Clubtail (Gomphurus vastus):
And here is another one, the Skillet Clubtail (Gomphurus ventricosus), which is perched on Poison Ivy. Just to make things interesting, much of the ground cover in the dragonfly field is Poison Ivy. You should not even touch this stuff:
Do you see the differences in the above three species? Me neither! But upon close comparison, there are small differences in their markings that can be discerned. Most of the time when I am out there, I don’t know what big club species I am photographing.
Not all Gomphids are like the above. Here is a Lancet Clubtail (Phanogomphus exilis), which is probably the most common Gomphid in this park:
And here is an example of a very different dragonfly in the clubtail family, the Rusty Snaketail (Ophiogomphus rupinsulensis). There is another species of snaketail in the field, but it is rare and I have yet to see it. Just another reason to make the drive every June:
Now all of the above species of dragonflies are under 2” in length, so considerably shorter than your little finger. But dragonfly field hosts the largest Clubtail in the U.S. called the Dragonhunter (Hagenius brevistylus), which is about 3.5” long — the length of your index finger.
Does that still seem small? I promise if you see one you will stop and stare. Everyone does, because in the field they look big. The Dragonhunter is not even the largest of our dragonflies but they are probably the heaviest. Dragonhunters get their common name from their habit of eating other dragonflies. Admittedly, most dragonflies do that, but Dragonhunters seem to have a reputation for it. Even though I have seen many dozens by now, they always get my undivided attention when one goes cruising by:
. . . at least according to this post from Quillette and response from Steve Stewart-Williams. And, as I wrote this short post, his Wikipedia bio was updated to show that he died on March 12 at 83.
RIP Robert Trivers (1943–2026), one of the boldest and most influential thinkers in evolutionary biology.
I knew the guy, though not well, and he was a complex individual, capable of making great advances in evolutionary theory (early in his career) but also to self-sabotage. I have stories about him, but I can’t really recount them here. I’ll just put up the first two paragraphs of his Wikipedia bio in lieu of an obituary. Unfortunately, it shows he was in the Epstein files (but so was I):
Robert Ludlow “Bob” Trivers born February 19, 1943) is an American evolutionary biologist and sociobiologist. Trivers proposed the theories of reciprocal altruism (1971), parental investment (1972), facultative sex ratio determination (1973), and parent–offspring conflict (1974). He has also contributed by explaining self-deception as an adaptive evolutionary strategy (first described in 1976) and discussing intragenomic conflict.
Some of Trivers’ work was funded by Jeffrey Epstein, and Trivers later defended the convicted criminal’s reputation.[3] In 2015 he was suspended from Rutgers University after he refused to teach an assigned course.
Welcome to a gray Sunday, with snow in the offing tomorrow for Chicago. Oy!.
It’s Sunday, March 15, 2026, the dreaded Ides of March, the day on which Julius Caesar was assassinated in 44 BC. Here’s a painting of the aftermath, with the Wikipedia caption, “Aftermath of the attack with Caesar’s body abandoned in the foreground, La Mort de César by Jean-Léon Gérôme, c. 1859–1867”. Click to enlarge, and be careful out there!
Jean-Léon Gérôme, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
Comrade Foot from Taastrup, Greater Copenhagen Region, Denmark, Scandinavia., CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons
Oh, and yesterday (3/14) was Pi Day, and there was a Google Doodle. It takes you to an AI question! Click to see where it goes (hint: it has something to do with Archimedes)
Readers are welcome to mark notable events, births, or deaths on this day by consulting the March 15 Wikipedia page.
Da Nooz:
*Well, the U.S. finally attacked Iran’s Kharg Island in the Persian Gulf, the off-loading point for 90% of Iran’s oil. But only military targets were struck; apparently the pipelines and such weren’t touched.
President Trump said on social media that the U.S. military had conducted a large bombing raid on Friday on Kharg Island, a key port and Iran’s oil export hub. Mr. Trump said the raid had “totally obliterated” military forces on the island, but that he had directed the Pentagon not to damage its oil infrastructure, “for reasons of decency.”
The global price of oil has surged by 40 percent since the United States and Israel began the war with Iran last month.
The strikes on Kharg Island targeted all of the military infrastructure on the island, a military official said. U.S. Air Force bombers struck missile storage sites, as well as sites that housed Iranian mines, the official said. He said the United States did not target the economic infrastructure on the island.
A senior official from Iran’s Oil Ministry said the attacks on the island were enormous and destructive, and that employees of the oil refineries reported nearly two hours of nonstop explosions and airstrikes that shook the island like an earthquake.
The senior official, who asked not to be named because he was discussing sensitive issues, said that an attack on Kharg Island’s oil and gas infrastructure would immediately halt a major part of Iran’s oil exports, with severe economic and infrastructure consequences.
Kharg Island is one of Iran’s most strategic and critical energy outposts, situated deep into the Persian Gulf’s north, about 20 miles off the mainland’s coast. About 90 percent of Iran’s oil exports go through Kharg. The island has huge oil storage facilities, and pipelines from the island are connected by sea to some of Iran’s largest oil and gas fields.
Decency my tuchas! Trump doesn’t know the meaning of the word. If he destroyed the oil infrastructure on the island, gas prices would shoot up beyond reason, perhaps to $200 a barrel. Remember that Bret Stephens recommended that the U.S. seize the island:
What, then, should the Trump administration do? My prescription: Seize Kharg Island. Mine or blockade Iran’s remaining ports. Destroy as much Iranian military capability as possible over the next week or two, including a second Midnight Hammer operation to destroy what’s left of Iran’s nuclear capacity and know-how. And threaten the regime with further bombing if it massacres its own citizens, mounts terrorist attacks abroad or returns to nuclear work.
I don’t know if this will bring an end to the war acceptable to Trump (or America, which is much less keen on the war), but seizing Kharg Island means no more oil from Iran, and would have the same effect, though the flow could begin again soon. (But under what conditions?)
*We have a credible motive for the man who drive a firework-laden vehicle into a Detroit synagogue, and then died (via suicide) after a firefight with private guards. The man was born in Labeanon and lost family members in that country during an airstrike last week. Bolding is mine.
The man who rammed his truck into a Michigan synagogue on Thursday killed himself during a firefight with security guards, after his vehicle became lodged in a hallway during the attack, law enforcement officials said on Friday.
The vehicle was loaded with fireworks, and the engine apparently caught fire during the gunfight, Jennifer Runyan, the special agent in charge of the F.B.I. office in Detroit, said at a news conference on Friday evening.
The attacker, identified by federal officials as Ayman Mohamad Ghazali, a 41-year-old naturalized U.S. citizen born in Lebanon, lived in Dearborn Heights, Mich., which is home to a large Muslim community about 20 minutes from the synagogue in West Bloomfield Township. Both towns are suburbs of Detroit.
Mr. Ghazali lost four relatives in an airstrike in Lebanon last week, according to a Lebanese official, who said he knew the family. A Dearborn Heights mosque held a memorial for Mr. Ghazali’s slain family members on Sunday, according to its imam, Hassan Qazwini of the Islamic Institute of America.
The attacker had “no criminal history and no registered weapons,” and had never been the subject of an F.B.I. investigation, Ms. Runyan said, refusing to speculate about his possible motives. He sat in his vehicle that was parked outside of the synagogue, Temple Israel, for about two hours before driving into the building.
He was still in the vehicle when he exchanged gunfire with at least two security officers inside, she said. “At some point during the gunfight, Ghazali suffers a self-inflicted gunshot wound to the head,” she added. No one else was killed, and some 140 students and their teachers were evacuated from the building without injury.
Ms. Runyan is a blockhead. The motivation is almost certainly hatred of Jews and Israel prompted by the death of the attacker’s family. And note how the NYT gives almost equal sympathy for Jews and Muslims in its article:
The episode heightened fears among Jews in Michigan and across the United States. A wave of rising antisemitism in America has been exacerbated by the U.S.-Israeli war on Iran, which has extended into attacks by Israel on Lebanon in an attempt to root out the Iran-backed militant group Hezbollah.
It also prompted anxiety for members of the area’s large Arab community, who braced for extra scrutiny after they learned that the attacker was from Lebanon. “This tragedy comes at a time when communities everywhere are confronting rising hate and senseless violence,” said Mayor Mo Baydoun of Dearborn Heights, where the attacker worked at a popular Mediterranean restaurant.
Listen, NYT, extra scrutiny is not the same thing as shooting people. And so far there have been far, far more attacks on Jews than on Muslims, so yes, the FBI should be looking harder at the Muslim community than at Jews if they’re trying stave off terrorist attacks.
A jury delivered a mixed verdict Friday afternoon in connection with the shooting of a police officer at an Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility last summer, convicting most of the nine members of an alleged “antifa cell” for supporting terrorists and one of the group for attempted murder. The landmark verdict was seen as a win in the Trump administration’s efforts to crack down on left-wing protesters that it has branded as an organized network of “domestic terrorists.”
“These verdicts make clear that those who choose violence over lawful expression will face the full force of the American justice system,”said ICE Director Todd M. Lyons.“Those who target federal officers with intimidation, ambush tactics or political violence will be investigated, prosecuted and held accountable.”
Attorneys for the defendants cast the verdicts as defeats for free speech.
“I feel like the U.S. lost here with this verdict and what it means for future defendants,” said Christopher Weinbel, an assistant federal public defender. He added that he was especially dismayed by the verdict as a U.S. Army veteran who deployed six times. “I feel like it turned its back on justice with this.”
. . .The charges stemmed from what the defendants’ attorneys called a “noise demonstration” July 4 outside Prairieland Immigration and Customs Enforcement Detention Center in nearby Alvarado, Texas, that left a police officer shot and wounded.
The nine defendants, indicted by a grand jury collectively last fall, include alleged ringleader Benjamin Song, a former Marine reservist; Savanna Batten; Zachary Evetts; Autumn Hill; Meagan Morris; Maricela Rueda; and a couple, Elizabeth and Ines Soto. The accused included a middle school teacher, a college student, a mechanical engineer and a UPS worker.
They faced a combination of charges, including attempted murder, rioting, providing support to terrorists, conspiracy to use and carry explosives and conspiracy to corruptly conceal documents. One of the nine, Daniel Sanchez-Estrada, was not at the scene and was accused of later trying to hide a box of “anti-government propaganda.”
Eight of the defendants (except Sanchez-Estrada) were convicted of providing support for terrorists, riot and explosives charges (fireworks). Only Song was convicted of attempted murder for shooting the officer. Sanchez-Estrada was convicted of concealing documents and conspiracy to conceal documents (his wife, Rueda, was also convicted of the conspiracy charge). Hill, Evetts, Morris and Rueda were acquitted of attempted murder and discharging a firearm charges.
. . . All pleaded not guilty and did not testify at the two-week trial. Most faced potential life sentences. Sentencing has been scheduled for June 18. Prosecutors said Song now faces 20 years to life in prison; Batten, Evetts, Hill, Morris, Rueda, Elizabeth and Ines Soto each face 10 to 60 years; Sanchez Estrada faces up to 40 years in prison.
This was an antifa-like attack, if not by an antifa organization itself. In fact, one of the items the jury asked to see during its two-day deliberation was Antifa: The Anti-Fascist Handbook. And no, it isn’t freedom of speech if there was a conspiracy that led to immediate violence during the protest.
*Quillette has an interview with Dr. Schmeul Bar, a former Israeli intelligence officer who prognosticates about Iran’s future (article archived here). A bit of the long exchange:
Q: People are trying to figure out the potential scenarios at hand. Trump is determined to avoid a long war of attrition, while Netanyahu might insist on continuing until all stated goals are met. Is the primary aim of both parties to destroy Iran’s nuclear capabilities?
SB: First, Iran could develop a destructive capability against Israel even without nuclear weapons. Israel will not accept this. So Israel had to take advantage of Iran’s weakness to eliminate Iran’s conventional capabilities. Second, the Iranian economy is in hyperinflation, people in big cities like Tehran, Isfahan, and Mashhad have about two or three hours of water a day. When you buy bread, the shop can’t buy a new loaf because the price of tomorrow’s bread has already gone up by twenty percent. There simply isn’t the money so the stores are empty.
So what are Iranians going to do if they don’t go out on to the streets to protest the state of the economy? They are saying, “Look at what you’ve done to us, you are throwing your money into Hamas and nuclear missiles instead of feeding us.” You have a deteriorating economy caught in a downward spiral, and a situation where Israel has a vested interest in getting rid of your missiles. And the June 2025 war showed that Israel knows a thing or two about what’s going on in Iran, and how to take out its senior figures.
As for Trump, it is probably best to avoid newspaper-like analysis that asks what he is doing today or tomorrow. Trump is saying, “Iran is weak and the Iranian people want to get rid of the regime, so all I have to do is push.” Let’s not forget that the regime has been chanting “Death to America!” for 47 years, and that it has murdered Americans. So from Trump’s point of view, he is taking revenge for all that and getting rid of a regime that the Democrats before him failed to remove. The way he sees it is: “In the end, I will have destroyed the most anti-American regime and made the Arab countries beholden to me as a result.” That is a win-win for Trump.
. . . Q: What does the future hold for Iran?
SB: The regime will start to crumble as the people within the IRGC and the army start to ask themselves, “What exactly are we doing here?” These are historic times. We’re talking about the emergence of a new world order. We don’t always realise when we are in the middle of that sort of change, but such a change is happening right now. The new world order is spearheaded by a combination of things, including the terrible condition of the Iranian economy and the huge mistake of launching the 7 October massacre. In Saudi Arabia, meanwhile, Muhammad Bin Salman is looking to forge a more Western-oriented and less religious country.
Well, this is just one man’s opinion, but a man who was in IDF intelligence for many years and has a Ph.D. in Middle Eastern History as well as a ton of other credentials. Right now, in the middle of a war whose outcome is undertain, it’s worth listening to him, if for no other reason than to get an informed viewpoint.
*Over at The Weekly Dish, Andrew Sullivan shows us the darker (to me) side of James Talarico a devout Presbyterian who just became the Democratic nominee for the 2026 U.S. Senate election in Texas. Sullivan’s piece is called “The Christianism of the Left,” and is subtitled: “Meet James Talarico, the next generation’s religious crusader for woke liberalism.”
the fusion of Christianity and politics isn’t exclusively right-wing. You can invoke God to defend anything, after all. And a new left-Christianism has emerged in the 21st century that is a mirror image of the right’s. Left-Christians have come to adorn their churches with transqueer and BLM flags, treat NPR as the Holy Office, adopt language — “white supremacy,” “cis-heterosexism,” “patriarchy” — directly from critical theory, and interpret Scripture to mandate higher taxes, DEI, abortion on demand, and open borders. I find that Christianism just as toxic to faith and politics.
. . .Which brings me to James Talarico, the Christianist running for Senate in Texas. After defeating the race-baiting Jasmine Crockett, the MSM is framing him as a “moderate”. To be sure, I’d vote for Talarico in an instant if I were a Texan (restraining the mad king is vital this fall). He’s also a clear speaker, a man of real faith (Democrats need more like him), and a man rightly revolted by the indecency of Trump. He engages Trump voters, including Joe Rogan, and was one of very few Dems to call out Biden’s disastrous record on immigration. All awesome.
But he is also a defiantly woke Christianist: a man fusing the agenda of the far left with Christian theology. He was brought up in Saint Andrew’s Presbyterian Church, a woke congregation in deep-blue Austin, where the Gospel about Peter’s denial of Jesus last week was followed thus:
The preacher … spoke of her own experience living in denial, both in 12-step programs and — due to her internalized homophobia — as a lesbian in a cisgendered, patriarchal world. She then made a sudden switch to talking about Germany in the Thirties, and the parallels with modern America. She performed all the classics: Hitler, Trump, the patriarchy, Pastor Niemöller, the threat of Christian nationalism and, at the end, threw in a bit of “No Kings” for good measure.
This is not atypical in many liberal churches, where prayers for an end to “white supremacy” are routine. So it is no surprise to find that Talarico went to seminary “because I had a pretty big crisis of faith in our political system.” (My italics.) Nor is it surprising that when asked to offer an invocation as a pastor in the Texas legislature, he began:
“Holy mystery, you have so many names.” He cycled through the monikers for God in Judaism, Islam, Hinduism, and Buddhism before arriving at the New Testament’s declaration that God is love.
And in Talarico’s church of woke, Jesus’s teachings are identical to that of a left-wing Democrat of precisely March 2026:
Christ is the immigrant deported without due process. Christ is the senior deprived of their Social Security benefits. Christ is the protestor kidnapped in an unmarked vehicle by plain clothes officers.
It goes on, and I don’t like this Left-wing Christianism at all, for, like Right-wing Christianism uses religion to boost a political agenda. Yes, I’d vote for Talerico over his racist opponent, but he’s now being touted as a Presidential candidate, and I can’t stomach his arrant fusion of politics and Christianity. Please, dear Ceiling Cat, let Pete Buttigieg be the Democratic nominee in 2028!
Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili dumps on progressives:
Hili: I see a dangerous escalation of progress. Andrzej: In whom exactly?
Hili: In the progressives.
In Polish:
Hili: Zauważam niebezpieczną eskalację postępu.
Ja: U kogo?
Hili: U postępowców.
From Masih, who tells us that three of the six Iranian women soccer players/staff have withdrawn their request for asylum in Australia and will be heading home. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to understand why (this morning I see that there are now four):
From Emma Hilton; Malcolm Gladwell says that if men aren’t allowed to compete in women’s sports, then, in some bizarre act of repayment women should have to give up some other space they occupy to make things “right”. He’s also a blockhead.
Couple thoughts: sport as a “stage” for the TW issue is “effective” in the sense that M advantage is SO clear & obvious that a case for a clear boundary that excludes males is VERY strong. But…exactly the same principles support women’s rights to other spaces even more strongly https://t.co/bBNdEfeegR
Sarah Vaughan is one of those voices that reminds you how sophisticated jazz can be. pic.twitter.com/0aU8BGmYPi
— Melodies & Masterpieces (@SVG__Collection) March 14, 2026
One I retweeted from The Auschwitz Memorial:
This Dutch Jewish boy was gassed to death, along with his parents, as soon as he arrived in Auschwitz. He was six years old, and would be 88 today if he had lived. https://t.co/8eFjI7Lgop
A funky Pholcid from Mexico. I had no idea that there were Cellar spiders with weird heads. Weird heads are one of my favourite features a spider can have. Modisimus sp.#Pholcidae #CellarSpider #iNaturalist
