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.
Yep, here I go again pointing out the decline in the quality of rock and pop music. But this time I’m joined by the music maven Rick Beato, who has always had the same opinion. In this video he compares music from 1984 vs. 2026, juxtaposing the Grammy nominees for Song of the Year from both years. Save for one song, he finds the 2026 nominees lame, so there’s no contest. Music, he argues implictly, has gone downhill in the past four decades.
I’ll list the nominees and make some comments below. The winner for both years is is at the top. My own comments are flush left.
Had I voted, there would be no hesitation in my dubbing “Billie Jean” as Song of the Year, but all of these songs, as Beato agrees, are good and memorable. They will last, and will still be popular years from now (they’re still listened to 42 years later!).
Beato finds “Wildflower” the best for this year; it is, he says, a “great song”. (This is Eilish’s tenth Grammy.) While I don’t think it’s great, it is very good, and miles above all the other nominees. And it won. I’ll put it below. He simply dismisses the other seven songs, though a few have some merit, like being “well produced.”
The reasons Beato finds this year’s songs worse are that they are in general lame, derivative, often include many songwriters (too many writers spoil the song), and sometimes include sampling from older songs.
In contrast, only one of the 1984 songs has more than one writer, and all include the singer as a composer. (Note that one is by Bad Bunny, and Beato can’t understand the words!) Beato’s takeaway is that nobody will remember songs written by so many people, and nobody will remember these latest songs more than three years from now.
Beato:
Here is “Wildflower,” live with Billie Eilish (the official release is here, and the lyrics are here). The only accompaniments are a guitar, bass, two sets of drums, and three backup singers.
There’s an potpourri of Darwin-related material at the Friends of DarwinNewsletter website, especially extensive because today is Darwin Day. Click below to read it; it discusses pollination (Athayde’s favorite topic), recommends two new books, and has a bunch of evolution-related links. I’ll put those below the screenshot. Today’s newsletter was written by Richard Carter.
The “missing links” (indents are quotes from article)
Some Darwin-related articles you might find of interest:
The importance of Charles Darwin’s documentary archive has been recognised by its inclusion on the UNESCO International Memory of the World Register. The Darwin Archive comprises documents held at Cambridge University Library, the Natural History Museum in London, the Linnean Society of London, Darwin’s former home at Down House in Kent, the Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew, and the National Library of Scotland.
Podcast episode: The History of Revolutionary Ideas: Darwin.
David Runciman talks to geneticist and science writer Adam Rutherford about the book that fundamentally altered our understanding of just about everything: Darwin’s On The Origin of Species.
Darwin Online has published Charles Darwin’s address book. Here’s their introduction, and here’s the address book.
The University of Edinburgh recently completed a five-year programme to catalogue, preserve, and enhance access to the Charles Lyell Collection. Geologist Lyell was a close friend of Darwin, and major influence on his work. Here’s the collection’s snazzy new website.
Leonard Jenyns on the variation of species and Charles Darwin on the origin of species 1844–1860
At the 1856 meeting of the British Association for the Advancement of Science, Rev. Leonard Jenyns (1800−1893) delivered one of the most significant statements on the nature and the origin of species in the years immediately preceding Charles Darwin’s On the Origin of Species. Jenyns was a long-standing friend of Darwin and had turned down the place aboard HMS Beagle subsequently taken by Darwin.
The November 2025 issue of the journal Paleobiology contained a collection of papers exploring Niles Eldredge and Stephen Jay Gould’s 1972 paper on punctuated equilibria, in which they argued that species don’t always evolve through slow, steady change. Instead, the fossil record shows long periods in which species remain remarkably stable, interrupted by relatively brief bursts of evolutionary innovation linked to the origin of new species. The Paleobiology papers include a retrospective review of the importance of the idea of punctuated equilibria, and Niles Eldredge’s personal reflections.
Thumbs and brains are all well and good, but paleoanthropologist John Hawks explores another human characteristic that remains an enduring evolutionary enigma: what the heck are chins for?
I haven’t looked at them all, but I did look at two related to my own field—speciation. I like article #10, called “In praise of subspecies,” which explains what subspecies are (they’re called “races” of plants and animals by many biologists), and tells us how recognizing them will reduce the number of species. (This won’t satisfy all biologists, for many disagree with me that modern humans and Neanderthals are subspecies, not distinct species.) But I disagree with the author, Richard Smyth, who thinks that all subspecies should be units of conservation. That is, genetically and morphologically different populations of a species should all be conserved if they are considered “endangered”. One should do that when possible, of course, but I feel the unit of conservation—the thing that must be saved, is the biological species. But Smyth gives a good summary of what subspecies are.
Biologists have long thought (and Allen Orr and I have a chapter on this in our book Speciation) that sexual selection promotes speciation by driving isolated populations in different directions, eventually leading to some of them becoming reproductively incompatible, through either unwillingness to mate or creating problems in hybrids. The experiments described in #11 are interesting, and show more divergence in populations of beetles that are subject to sexual selection than in those constrained to be monogamous, but they don’t show the advent of reproductive barriers between populations. They do, however, show more divergence in the sexually-selected population, which is posited to be the first step in speciation.
Remember, Darwin’s greatest book was called On the Origin of Species (a shortened title). Yet he didn’t help us understand species very much, as he had no concept of species being groups separated by reproductive barriers. It wasn’t until the 1930s that biologists began to understand how new species originated when they realized that the key to understanding the “lumpiness” of nature—distinct species in one area—was figuring out how those groups could coexist, and that meant understanding how reproductive barriers arise. Darwin’s book would have been more appropriately titled On the Origin of Adaptations.
And that is my pronouncement for Darwin Day. I do recommend reading the first chapter of Speciation, but if you’re not an evolutionary biologist you can forget about the rest, which becomes technical at times.
In conjunction with its new sponsor, The Free Press, CBS News is launching a series of debates and town hall presentations. One of them is a debate about God featuring Steve Pinker and Ross Douthat, which should be a barn-burner. I am informed that that debate will take place on February 26, and will be broadcast live.
Douthat, as you know, has been flogging his new pro-Christianity book Believe: Why Everyone Should be Religious, and I’ve discussed excerpts published by Douthat here. It appears to be the usual guff, arguing that stuff about the Universe that we don’t understand, like consciousness and the “fine-tuning” of the laws of physics, comprise evidence for a creator God. Assessing all gods, Douthat (a pious Catholic) finds that the Christian one appears to be the “right” god. Are you surprised?
Pinker is an atheist, and has written about nonbelief from time to time in his books, but has not written an entire book on it. I look forward to this debate, which will be broadcast live on THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 26, so mark your calendars. Pinker will surely be ready to answer Douthat’s shopworn “evidence,” so it should be fun.
Click below to access the general announcement.
Below: the series’ rationale and its upcoming debates and interviews. No dates and times have been announced save my finding out that Pinker vs. Douthat is on February 26.
This is, of course, the result of Bari Weiss becoming Editor of CBS News, and I’m not sure how I feel about this endeavor. Note that it’s sponsored by the Bank of America.
We live in a divided country. A country where many cannot talk to those with whom they disagree. Where people can’t speak across the political divide – or even sometimes across the kitchen table.
THINGS THAT MATTER aims to change that.
Sponsored by Bank of America, THINGS THAT MATTER is a series of town halls and debates that will feature the people in politics and culture who are shaping American life. The events will be held across the country, in front of audiences who have a stake in the topics under discussion.
This launch comes on the heels of CBS News’ successful town hall with Erika Kirk, which drove double-digit ratings increases in its time slot and generated 192 million views across TikTok, Instagram, Facebook and X – making it CBS News’ most-watched interview ever on social media.
JAC: Note that the town hall with Erika Kirk was NOT a success; it was lame and uninformative. There’s a link to the video below. Back to the blurb:
The events take Americans into the most important issues that directly affect their lives – immigration, capitalism, public health, criminal justice, foreign policy, artificial intelligence and the state of politics. The debates echo the country’s 250th anniversary, showing how the power of America’s earliest principles – civil, substantive discussion, free of rancor – have immense value today.
“We believe that the vast majority of Americans crave honest conversation and civil, passionate debate,” said Bari Weiss, editor-in-chief of CBS News. “This series is for them. In a moment in which people believe that truth is whatever they are served on their social media feed, we can think of nothing more important than insisting that the only way to get to the truth is by speaking to one another.”
Bank of America has joined THINGS THAT MATTER as its title sponsor. Tracing its lineage to 1784, Bank of America is sponsoring the series in support of dialogue and debate during the country’s 250th anniversary year.
THINGS THAT MATTERwill kick off in the new year. An early look includes:
Town Halls:
Vice President JD Vance on the state of the country and the future of the Republican Party.
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman on artificial intelligence.
Maryland Governor Wes Moore on the state of the country and the future of the Democratic Party.
In case you missed it: Turning Point USA CEO Erika Kirk on political violence, faith and grief – watch it here.
Debates:
Gen Z and the American Dream: Isabel Brown and Harry Sisson. Should Gen Z Believe in the American Dream?
God and Meaning: Ross Douthat and Steven Pinker. Does America Need God?
The Sexual Revolution: Liz Plank and Allie Beth Stuckey. Has Feminism Failed Women?
Readers are welcome to weigh in below on the topics and format of this forum.
Today we have a Darwin-themed text-and-photo contribution by Athayde Tonhasca Júnior, and on his favorite topic: pollination (and my favorite topic, speciation). Athayde’s IDs and narrative are indented, and you can enlarge his photos by clicking on them.
Parting ways
As superlatives go, it would be difficult to beat the South African Platland Baobab [Adansonia digitata]. Its 10.6-m diameter trunk was large enough to accommodate a bar inside its hollow trunk. The massive tree, now deceased, was also old – it had been on this Earth for about a millennia.
Leaving aside its connection to thirsty pilgrims, the Platland Baobab was not exceptional: other specimens belonging to the same African baobab (Adansonia digitata) species are similarly big and old. The African baobab’s size, age and the somewhat bizarre shape (the ‘upside-down tree’) inspired many legends and superstitions. Beyond the mythical, baobabs have practical uses to some rural communities in parts of Africa: fruits and leaves are rich in vitamin C, the bark can be used for making rope, and tree hollows serve as water reservoirs. Wildlife also feed on baobab’s parts, sometimes in excess: elephants eat baobab bark during the dry season, resulting in significant tree mortality when elephant numbers are high.
Like the vast majority of flowering plants, the African baobab is a hermaphrodite: its flowers have male and female reproductive organs. And like most hermaphrodite plants, baobab flowers are self-incompatible; they can’t fertilise themselves. Therefore, pollinators have to come to their reproductive aid. That’s particularly important for African baobabs, which often grow in isolation, with an average of 2 trees/ha.
When researchers started investigating baobab reproduction in West and East Africa in the 1930s and 40s, bats were soon singled out as their likely pollinating agents. It made sense: the white, large (up to 200 mm in diameter) pendulous flowers open at night and release a musty smell, all signs of chiropterophily, or pollination by bats. But things are a bit more complex. Flowers in west and east Africa are mostly visited by the straw-coloured fruit batEidolon helvum (Eidolon helvum) and the smaller Egyptian fruit bat (Rousettus aegyptiacus), respectively. However in southern Africa, baobab flowers have no appeal to bats, but do attract hawk-moths. These regional differences are linked to floral features such as shape, scent and nectar volume. In west Africa, flowers are larger, have longer peduncles, longer styles and more nectar than flowers in east and southern Africa. East African flowers are smaller and sturdier, with less nectar but enough to encourage visits by the Egyptian fruit bat. Flowers in southern Africa are smaller still and produce nectar in volumes just enough for moths (Venter et al., 2025). And while baobabs flowers from the three regions release bat-attracting sulphur compounds, southern African flowers also produce β-caryophyllene, a chemical known to lure moths (Karimi et al., 2021).
The African baobab is by no means unique; many other species comprise populations of diversified floral traits that suit particular pollinators and local environmental conditions. Ecologists refer to each of these populations as pollination ecotypes, species complexes, geographical races or ecological races. Pollination ecotypes have one possible outcome of exceptional importance: given enough time, they may drift further apart in their morphological and physiological traits to the point of becoming reproductively incompatible with each other.
It’s worth emphasising the meaning of such an outcome. Different forms – or morphs – in each ecotype associated with their own pollinators will eventually become different species, a process that has become widely acknowledged (Johnson, 2025). Speciation via ecotypes supports Darwin’s view that species and infraspecies taxa (varieties, subspecies, forms, morphs, etc.) represent a continuum: In short, we shall have to treat species in the same manner as those naturalists treat genera, who admit that genera are merely artificial combinations made for convenience. This may not be a cheering prospect; but we shall at least be freed from the vain search for the undiscovered and undiscoverable essence of the term species (Darwin, 1859). Such a continuum implies that speciation is much more common and frequent than one may expect (Mallet, 2008).
The roles of insect pollinators as safeguards of biodiversity, crop production and human health are well known and celebrated. But the tale of African baobab pollination ecotypes reminds us of another fundamental aspect: pollinators greatly contribute to the radiation and diversification of angiosperms, the largest and most diverse group in the plant kingdom and largely responsible for the functioning of all terrestrial ecosystems. It’s a hefty responsibility upon tiny shoulders.
Darwin, C.R. 1859. On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection. John Murray.
Johnson, S.D. 2025. Pollination ecotypes and the origin of plant species. Proceedings of the Royal Society B 292: 20242787.
Karimi, N. et al. 2021. Evidence for hawkmoth pollination in the chiropterophilous African baobab (Adansonia digitata). Biotropica 54: 10.1111/btp.13033.
Mallet, J. 2008. Hybridization, ecological races and the nature of species: Empirical evidence for the ease of speciation. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London B 363: 2971-2986.
Peris, D. & Condamine, F.L. 2024. The angiosperm radiation played a dual role in the diversification of insects and insect pollinators. Nature Communications 15: 552.
Venter, S.M. et al. 2025. Regional flower visitor assemblages and divergence of floral traits of the baobab Adansonia digitata (Malvaceae) across Africa. Botanical Journal of the Linnean Society boaf085.
Welcome to Thursday, February 12, 2026, and it is, of course INTERNATIONAL DARWIN DAY, the day Charles Darwin was born in 1809 (he lived to be 73). It was Daniel Dennett who said that natural selection was “the single best idea anyone ever had” in Dennett’s book Darwin’s Dangerous Idea), and surely it is at least among the best. Below is a famous photo of 59-year-old Darwin in 1868 taken by Julia Margaret Cameron, and below that are three photos of one of our readers aping (excuse the pun) Charles Darwin.
If you want to see the complete set of known pictures of Darwin, John van Wyhe has the collection at Darwin online. (Note that the oft-used photo of Darwin whispering with his finger over his mouth is a fake.
Below the Darwin photo I’ve added an audio/video presentation by John showing various photos of the Great Man.
Here’s a 9½-minute audio/video made by John van Whye about Darwin photos; lots of them here:
Reader Norm Gilinsky used to dress up as Darwin and give public lectures on evolution as the man. Here are three photos Norm sent, saying, “One of the pictures shows what I looked like at the time before the artist added makeup, and another shows what I looked like as makeup was being applied. The others show me all made up. I gave a lecture in Darwin’s character annually between 1983 and about 1990. I was about 30 years old at the time.
Not bad, eh?:
It’s also Lincoln’s Birthday (he and Darwin were born on the same day in 1809!), Fat Thursday (before Ash Wednesday, the beginning of Lent), Hug Day, Plum Pudding Day, NAACP Day, and Paul Bunyan Day (the mythological lumberjack is said to have been born on this day in 1834, and I like to say that there’s as much evidence for a historical Jesus as there is for Paul Bunyan).
The new Google Olympic Doodle celebrates slopestyle, a new event. Click on the screenshot below to read about it (via a bot!):
Readers are welcome to mark notable events, births, or deaths on this day by consulting the February 2 Wikipedia page.
The abrupt closure of El Paso’s airspace late Tuesday was precipitated when Customs and Border Protection officials deployed an anti-drone laser on loan from the Department of Defense without giving aviation officials enough time to assess the risks to commercial aircraft, according to multiple people briefed on the situation.
The episode led the Federal Aviation Administration to abruptly declare that the nearby airspace would be shut down for 10 days, an extraordinary pause that was quickly lifted Wednesday morning at the direction of the White House.
Top administration officials quickly claimed that the closure was in response to a sudden incursion of drones from Mexican drug cartels that required a military response, with Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy declaring in a social media post that “the threat has been neutralized.”
But that assertion was undercut by multiple people familiar with the situation, who said that the F.A.A.’s extreme move came after immigration officials earlier this week used an anti-drone laser shared by the Pentagon without coordination with the F.A.A. The people spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly.
C.B.P. officials thought they were firing on a cartel drone, the people said, but it turned out to be a party balloon. Defense Department officials were present during the incident, one person said.
The Defense Department and the Department of Homeland Security did not immediately respond to requests for comment. The F.A.A. declined to comment.
The military has been developing high-energy laser technology to intercept and destroy drones, which the Trump administration has said are being used by Mexican cartels to track Border Patrol agents and smuggle drugs into the United States.
The airspace closure provoked a significant backlash from local officials and sharp questions by lawmakers on Capitol Hill, including some Republicans, who expressed skepticism about the administration’s version of the events.
Who’s running this railroad? It seems that a main problem of this Administration is failure to coordinate between various agencies. In this case the fault appears to lie with Customs and Border Protection, who shot down a damn party baloon with a laser a few days ago.
*In a Washington Post op-ed, Adam Omary, identied as “a psychologist and research fellow at the Cato Institute’s Center for Global Liberty and Prosperity,” asserts that “The autism epidemic is a myth.”, with the subtitle, “Most new cases reflect mild or no significant impairment. Moderate and severe cases have declined” (article archived here).
For years, public health debate has often fixated on a supposed rise in the prevalence of autism. Various culprits have been named, including the well-investigated but unsubstantiated claim that vaccines cause autism. More recently, additional risk factors have been proposed — many by Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. — including maternal Tylenol use, food dyes and additives, chemical manufacturing agents and other possible stressors affecting perinatal development. Concerns about autism have been spotlighted within the larger Make America Healthy Again movement, motivated by a well-founded alarm over the nation’s devastatingly high burden of chronic disease and psychiatric illness. But there is a bigger problem with the autism epidemic: It doesn’t exist.
Autism diagnoses have indeed risen dramatically in recent decades. However, diagnostic criteria can change even when the underlying health phenomenon remains unchanged. The most recently released Centers for Disease Control and Prevention report on autism, published last April, revealed a five-fold increase in the prevalence of autism between 2000 and 2022, from 67 to 322 cases per 10,000 children. But a large-scale study published in December, drawing on CDC data from 24,669 8-year-olds across the country, found that this dramatic rise may be entirely driven by children with mild or no significant functional impairment.Between 2000 and 2016, there was a 464 percent increase in diagnoses among children with no significant functional impairment whatsoever. In fact, during the same time period, there was a 20 percent decrease in the prevalence of moderate or severe autism,from 15 to 12 cases per 10,000 children.
There is often a lag of several years before such epidemiological datasets are released, and years more for researchers to perform statistical analyses, publish the findings and enter public policy discussions. We do not yet have data more recent than 2016 breaking down symptoms by severity level while controlling for other psychological factors such as intellectual disability. However, it is likely that the 74 percent increase in cases reported between 2016 and 2022 will reflect a continuation of the previous problem of overrepresentation of children withmild symptoms and no significant functional impairment.
Despite that, some advocates support the narrative that autism is on the rise, because an ever-expanding “spectrum” that produces more diagnoses draws more attention and research funding — even if children’s underlying psychology remains unchanged.
Some of the CDC’s data documenting the supposed rise in the characteristics ofautism, meanwhile, comes not from gold-standard in-person psychiatric assessments but from parent-reported surveys such as the Social Responsiveness Scale. The SRS includes statements such as “Would rather be alone than with others,” “Has difficulty making friends,” and “Is regarded by other children as odd or weird,” which parents rate from “Not true” to “Almost always true.” In my own doctoral research on adolescent mental health, I included the SRS to account for the extent to which other psychological outcomes were explained by social difficulties. However, I was always careful to use hedging language — these are behavioral traits known to be associated with autism, not diagnostic markers. Unfortunately, many studies use high scores on the SRS as a substitute for clinical assessment of autism — accounting, for example, for at least 12 percentof “suspected cases” in the 2022 CDC data.
. . . We should be concerned about the rising number of quirky children “on the spectrum,” but not because they are being exposed to neurotoxins that older generations were insulated from, nor because a growing number of children face clinically–significant social impairment. Rather, as Abigail Shrier argues in her 2024 book “Bad Therapy,” the more pressing concern may be a cultural and institutional drift toward overdiagnosis across child psychiatry. Like the rise in attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder, anxiety and depression diagnoses among young people, the surge in autism labels may reflect shifting norms, looser diagnostic criteria and excess therapeutic attention directed toward ordinary struggles. If autism were truly increasing because of a new environmental insult, we would expect to see increases across all levels of severity. But that is not the case.
I recommend Abigail Shrier’s book, which is even better than her first one. It will convince you that children are being inundated, to their detriment, with a “neurodivergence” narrative, so that the normal problems of childhood have now become genuine psychological difficulties that need professional treatment.
*Mass shootings are largely an American phenomenon, but a bad one occurred in British Columbia, Canada on Tuesday: At first the shooter, who apparently committed suicide, was identified as a female, but Luana guessed that it would likely be a trans-identified man—based on the extreme rarity of female mass shootings (I can’t think of single one, though there may have been a couple). It turns out Luana was right, but of course that doesn’t mitigate the tragedy. The perp has now been identified (see Torygraph article below.)
At least nine people have been killed and more than two dozen injured in shootings at a school and home in British Columbia, Canadian authorities said. Nina Krieger, minister of public safety for the province, described the shooting at Tumbler Ridge Secondary School as “one of the worst mass shootings in our province’s and country’s history.”
Police received a report of an active shooter at the school about 1:20 p.m. on Tuesday, Royal Canadian Mounted Police said in a statement.
Upon entering the school, police found six peopledead inside. A seventh died while being transported to a hospital. A person believed to be the shooter was also found dead with what appeared to be a self-inflicted gunshot wound, authorities said.
Two additional victims were found dead in a home in an incident that is believed to be connected, police said.
. . .Details about the victims and suspected shooter have not been disclosed, and authorities have asked for patience while they carry out the early stages of the investigation. Emergency responders, major crime units and victim services teams have been deployed to support the investigation, the RCMP said.
“We are not in a place now to be able to understand why, and what may have motivated this tragedy,” North District RCMP superintendent Ken Floyd told reporters. He said the shooter was the person described in an alert sent out to the community earlier in the day. The alert described the suspect as a “female in a dress with brown hair,” according to media reports.
In a news conference, British Columbia Premier David Eby called the event an “unimaginable tragedy.” He said that some injuries from the school shooting were “profoundly serious” and some “more minor.” Two people were airlifted with life-threatening injuries, and about 25 others are being treated for non-life-threatening injuries, police said.
. . . Mass shootings are rare in Canada, and the nation’s deadliest, in April 2020, prompted the government to restrict access to weapons. In that incident, Gabriel Wortman killed 22 people in a 13-hour rampage in Nova Scotia before being shot dead by police. Two weeks later, then-Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced a ban on more than 1,500 “military-style assault weapons,” making it illegal to fire, transport, sell, import or bequeath the weapons.
(Updated): Canadian police confirmed ten deaths and at least 35 injuries following a mass shooting at Tumbler Ridge Secondary School in British Columbia. The shooter, who also killed himself, was identified by a close family member as Jesse Strang, a transgender person identifying with ‘she/her’ pronouns.
A school shooter who killed eight people during a rampage in a remote part of Canada has been identified as a transgender teenager.
Jesse Van Rootselaar, who was born male but identified as female, shot and killed his mother and brother at home on Tuesday before killing five students and one teacher at Tumbler Ridge Secondary School in British Columbia.
Van Rootselaar opened fire on police when they arrived and “rounds were fired in their direction”, said Dwayne McDonald, deputy commissioner of the British Columbia Royal Canadian Mounted Police.
Van Rootselaar, who police had earlier described as a “gunperson” wearing a dress, died at the school. He was not a student at the time of the shooting.
The vaccine maker Moderna said on Tuesday that the Food and Drug Administration had notified the company that the agency would not review its mRNA flu vaccine, the latest sign of federal health policy that has become hostile to vaccine development.
Dr. Vinay Prasad, the agency’s top vaccine regulator, rejected the company’s application for approval over a concern that Moderna’s clinical trial had compared its experimental vaccine against a product the agency did not consider the best on the market. People in the comparison group received Fluarix Quadrivalent, a flu vaccine sold by GSK.
Moderna had spent years and hundreds of millions of dollars testing its flu vaccine, enrolling 41,000 people and aimed at a market of adults ages 50 and older. The company concluded that its shot was superior to GSK’s product.
Dr. Stephen Hoge, the company’s president, said in an interview on Tuesday that the new flu vaccine was designed to be better tailored for a single nation than the ones that tended to be used by an entire hemisphere. He also said the F.D.A. had earlier indicated support for the company’s study plan.
“This refusal to start a review is all confusing, to say the least,” Dr. Hoge said, adding: “It is surprising, and we’re trying to understand what has changed.”
A spokesman for the Department of Health and Human Services, which oversees the F.D.A., said the agency did not comment on communications with individual applicants for drug approval.
Moderna said it had received what is known as a “refuse to file” letter from the agency, meaning that the company tried to submit an application for approval, but was dismissed. Such cursory rejections are unusual; the agency tends to complete a thorough review before denying approval.
. . .This latest move by the F.D.A. reflects expansion of a new policy under Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who has repeatedly criticized the mRNA technology used most successfully against Covid and made by both Moderna and Pfizer. Recognized with a Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 2023, the technology instructs the body to produce a fragment of a virus that then sets off the body’s immune response.
But Mr. Kennedy has scuttled the use of mRNA in vaccines and canceled hundreds of millions of dollars in funding for research using the technology, claiming it is not safe or effective. During his first year as health secretary, he has quashed several projects involving the technology, including an effort by Moderna to develop a shot against bird flu.
I admit to confusion about this. The “control” vaccine was not “tailored to a single nation” (the US?), so is the rejection by the FDA based on just a comparison of relative general effiacy, or is it really because RFK, Jr. doesn’t like mRNA vaccines? Stay tuned.
*Lordy be! Harvard has put a stringent cap on “A” grades at 20% per course, though not all faculty approve. From The Crimson:
Faculty voiced cautious support for a proposal that would cap undergraduate A grades at roughly 20 percent and introduce an internal ranking system, saying the policy would curb longstanding grade inflation at the College.
But the proposal has also prompted concerns among some professors, who warned that the cap could impose an unrealistic standard for distinction, threaten faculty autonomy, and foster unhealthy competition.
A faculty committee released the proposal last week as part of a broader effort to rein in grade inflation. The recommendations, which will come to a full faculty vote later this spring, would limit A grades to 20 percent per course, with flexibility for up to four additional As per class, and introduce a percentile-based ranking system to determine internal honors and awards.
In interviews and statements, more than a dozen faculty welcomed the attempt to impose a systematic check on grade inflation.
Although professors already dropped the share of A grades they awarded from 60.2 percent to 53.4 percent last fall, several said the new proposal would address a structure problem by shielding individual instructors from pressure, or backlash, for grading more stringently.
“Grading is a collective action problem. When some instructors raise their grades, that puts pressure on other instructors to raise their grades too, and the pressure for higher grades snowballs over time, making it hard for any course to hold the line,” Economics professor David I. Laibson ’88 wrote in a statement.
Some faculty initially worried that the cap could discourage students from enrolling in demanding courses.
Molecular and Cellular Biology professor Sean R. Eddy, who teaches an undergraduate course that averaged nearly 12 hours of work a week in 2024, said he feared the policy would deter students from taking classes like his.
After reviewing the committee’s report, however, Eddy said he was reassured by its framing of A grades as markers of “extraordinary distinction” rather than mastery alone.
. . . . Other professors cautioned that the proposal could pose a danger to faculty autonomy. Government professor Steven Levitsky said he disliked what he described as the inflexibility of the recommendations, arguing that they infringed on faculty authority in the classroom.
If everybody does this at once, as Harvard dictates, then there is no motivation for students to gravitate to “easy” courses, since of course every professor will give 20% As. This is a great move to curb grade inflation, and they could give the median grade for any course on the transcripts, though I don’t know if anybody does that.
But of course there is an op-ed in the Crimson by two Harvard undergrads objecting to the grade cap as making grades a “relative” distinction rather than an absolute one. That it does, but Harvard students are smart to begin with, and if everybody got As, as they almost do now, there is a needfor relative distinctions. Good for Mother Harvard! (I never got a grade there, as I vowed never to get a grade again after I left college, and I placed out of any required courses when I took the grad entrance exams at Harvard. But I still took 2-3 courses per semester for the first two years, doing all the required work but not getting a grad; I simply audited them with the teacher’s permission and they are not even on my record.)
Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Andrzej prognostates Armageddon:
Hili: Do you also see the end of the world coming? Andrzej: Yes, though I have more trouble than most choosing the precise date.
In Polish:
Hili: Czy też przewidujesz koniec świata?
Ja: Tak, tylko mam większe niż inni problemy z wyznaczeniem konkretnej daty.
A tweet from Carole Hooven after the shooting in Canada:
Most men (adult human males) are not violent, and the same goes for trans-identified ones. But the vast majority of those who are extremely violent are men. Journalists who lie about the sex of perpetrators of violent crime mislead the public, harm public safety (including for… https://t.co/XJhrxU3mDDpic.twitter.com/q3QFuHn7KW
From Luana, an unfair comparison. Chicago, for example, strives for viewpoint diversity as opposed to other kinds of diversity; and when you see the word you can usually place “racial” in front of it automatically:
Professor of history and co-president of the Stanford AAUP chapter:
The common kestrel is a member of the peregrine falcon family and is one of the world’s best hovering experts.
Its ability to skillfully use headwinds to hover perfectly in one spot in the air is truly a work of art. pic.twitter.com/hfw0iGg82o
A Dutch Jewish girl and her mother were both gassed as soon as they arrived in Auschwitz. The girl was nearly three years old, and would be 86 today had she lived.
I missed this Bill Maher “New Rules” clip from last October, but better late than never. In this segment called “Crazy in gov,” Maher assesses whether Democrats or Republicans are more deranged, Although he does point out some craziness on the part of “progressives,” but it is the Republicans who get the Most Deranged prize. So much for people who think Maher is right. He’s a classical liberal, for crying out loud!
I feel sorry for press secretary Karoline Leavitt, forced to mouth ardent defenses of Trump, but on the other hand maybe she actually believes the pablum she regurgitates.
Maher’s guests here are Michael Steele, co-host of MNBC Weeknight, and CNN political analyst Kate Bedingfield, who was former White House director of communications under Biden.
UPDATE: I couldn’t make out the lyrics, but Grok gave what he sang (h/t Luana), so it isn’t nearly as obscene as the entire lyrics linked here. But there are still obscene bits, not to mention suggestive ones. I suggest you use Google translate on this Spanish: “Si te lo meto no me llame'” And “if I put it in”? What does that mean?
So consider this a partial retraction. However, it’s still a pretty dirty song and there is also the crotch-grabbing and mock copulation.
[Parte II: Yo Perreo Sola + Safaera][Refrán: Nesi & Bad Bunny] Ante’ tú me pichaba’ (Tú me pichaba’) Ahora yo picheo (Mmm, nah) Antes tú no quería’ (No quería’) Ahora yo no quiero (Mmm, no) Ante’ tú me pichaba’ (-chaba’) ¡Las mujeres en el mundo entero! Ahora yo picheo Antes tú no quería’ Ahora yo no quiero ¡Perreando sin miedo!English Translation: Before, you ignored me (You ignored me) Now I ignore you (Mmm, nah) Before, you didn’t want to (Didn’t want to) Now I don’t want to (Mmm, no) Before, you ignored me (-ignored) Women all over the world! Now I ignore you Before, you didn’t want to Now I don’t want to Twerking without fear![Coro: Nesi & Bad Bunny, Ambos] No, tranqui, yo perreo sola (Mmm, ey) Ey, ey, ey, mueve, mueve, mueve Yo perreo sola (Perreo sola) Okey, ey, eyEnglish Translation: No, chill, I twerk alone (Mmm, ey) Ey, ey, ey, move, move, move I twerk alone (Twerk alone) Okay, ey, ey[Verso: Bad Bunny] Mi bi anda fuga’o y yo quiero que tú me lo esconda’ Agárralo como bonga Se mete una que la pone cachonda, ey Brinca en los Audi, no en los Honda, ey Si te lo meto no me llame’ Que esto no es pa’ que me ame’ Si tu novio no te— Pa’ eso que no—, ey, eyEnglish Translation: My thing is on the run and I want you to hide it for me Grab it like a bonga She takes one that makes her horny, ey She jumps in the Audis, not in the Hondas, ey If I put it in you, don’t call me ‘Cause this isn’t for you to love me If your boyfriend doesn’t— For that he doesn’t—, ey, ey[Puente: Bad Bunny] En el perreo no se quita Fuma y se pone bella, ey Me llama si me necesita, ey Pero por ahora está solita Ella perrea—English Translation: In the twerking she doesn’t stop She smokes and gets beautiful, ey She calls me if she needs me, ey But for now she’s alone She twerks—The medley transitioned into the next song after this bridge, cutting off before delving into additional explicit verses from the full studio version of “Safaera” (such as references to more graphic sexual acts or substances). This kept the performance energetic but toned down for the event.
I didn’t plan to watch the Superbowl or its halftime show, and I didn’t. But when I heard that Bad Bunny was the headliner of the halftime show, and reading that this was repeatedly described as “historic”, I figured his ethnicity was what made it “historic”, though I didn’t know his ethnic background. Looking him up, I saw that he’s a Puerto Rican rapper, producer, and singer, and occasionally a professional wrestler. Wikipedia describes him as being “widely credited with helping Spanish-language rap reach mainstream global popularity and is considered one of the greatest Latino rappers of all time.” The article below says
So I figured, okay, he’s the first Hispanic to perform at halftime after 59 previous Superbowls. But that seemed weird; surely there were others before him. Sure enough, Grok told me this:
Several Hispanic or Latino artists have performed at the Super Bowl halftime show prior to Bad Bunny’s appearance in 2020. Here’s a list of them, including the years they performed and brief notes on their heritage:
Gloria Estefan (Cuban-American): Performed in 1992 (Super Bowl XXVI, with Miami Sound Machine), 1995 (Super Bowl XXIX, with Miami Sound Machine), and 1999 (Super Bowl XXXIII).
Arturo Sandoval (Cuban): Performed in 1995 (Super Bowl XXIX).
Christina Aguilera (Ecuadorian descent): Performed in 2000 (Super Bowl XXXIV).
Enrique Iglesias (Spanish): Performed in 2000 (Super Bowl XXXIV).
Taboo (Jaime Luis Gomez of The Black Eyed Peas) (Mexican descent): Performed in 2011 (Super Bowl XLV).
Bruno Mars (Puerto Rican descent): Performed in 2014 (Super Bowl XLVIII) and 2016 (Super Bowl 50).
Gustavo Dudamel (Venezuelan): Conducted the orchestra in 2016 (Super Bowl 50).
So I didn’t know what was “historic” about Bad Bunny’s appearance, but I supposed that it was because he sang in Spanish. Well, that’s one thing, but probably the most salient reason for all the excitement and praise was that the show occurred at an opportune moment: a time when liberal Americans, in the face of ICE’s assaults, can show their colors by being pro-immigrant (though Bad Bunny is, like all Puerto Ricans, an American citizen by birth). As the article by David Volodzko in The Radicalist below begins (WARNING: graphic, sexual, and obscene language!):
The Apple Music Super Bowl LX halftime show opened in a sugar cane field with Bad Bunny singing in Spanish about girls sucking his dick, featuring guest appearances by Lady Gaga and Ricky Martin, some rapping about fucking girls with big tits in his car with his erect penis, then the dancers waved the flags of various Latin American countries with a sign that read, “Together, we are America,” and Bunny listed the countries of the Americas. At least it was entertaining. The political message was about as subtle as anything else Bad Bunny writes. We are all American. All Latinos are American. All the illegal immigrants coming to America from Mexico, Guatemala, and Honduras are American. Love defeats hate. Oppose ICE. Or something like that. The guy’s not exactly a philosopher.
As TODAY says, “Bad Bunny celebrated the history, culture and pride of Puerto Rico with his historic Super Bowl 2026 halftime show.” (The link also gives all the songs he sampled in the show.) Also, note that Lady Gaga, Ricky Martin, Cardi B, and Karol G. made cameo appearances in the show.
Here: take 13 minutes and watch for yourself, and note that, as a few readers said yesterday, he grabs his crotch quite a bit. Watch it by clicking on the “Watch on YouTube below” icon or here.
Click to read.
The point of the article, besides Bad Bunny’s obscenity, is that “Americans” refer to people in the U.S., not generally Latinos. Well, that doesn’t bother me. But Volodzko points out not only that this was not at all the first Spanish artist headlining the Superbow, and that the show was overly woke (again, I couldn’t care less). The part I’m pointing out here is not only humorous but hypocritical: the nature of the show, with Bad Bunny grabbing his crotch and singing Spanish lyrics so obscene that I have to put them below the fold, would not be tolerated if the show was in English. Even Bad Bunny wouldn’t even get away with it if the lyrics were in English.
Remember when Justin Timberlake (accidentally) tore off Janet Jackson’s nipple cover at the Superbowl halftime show, exposing her nipple? That caused a huge scandal, which was called Nipplegate and has its own article on Wikipedia. Football is one of our national sports, and Americans want a good, clean halftime show. I have to say that Bad Bunny’s show was lively and enjoyable, but think again when you read the lyrics below.
Finally, Volodzko avers that trying to mainstream Hispanic culture is unnecessary as it’s already here:
You see, Bad Bunny’s halftime performance signals the mainstreaming of Latin culture in America at a time when Latinos make up 20% of the population. The problem is, this abrasive performance was also totally unnecessary. It comes off like a celebration of Latino diversity, as if America has finally reached a moment when Latinos can be themselves. We’re here — deal with it. Except Latinos don’t need any mainstreaming. Shakira and J. Lo already did the halftime. Despacito was the No. 1 song in the United States and everybody loved it. Coco is one of the biggest Disney movies of all time. Chipotle is everywhere. Americans love Latin culture. Bad Bunny is declaring victory in a war that no longer exists. That’s because the subtext here is Trump, ICE, and immigration. And I’m sorry, but if that’s the conversation we’re having, then we are not all Americans.
I love Latin america. I have lived in many parts, including Puerto Rico. I am married to a Latina and we have a Latina daughter. I speak Spanish, I cook Latin food, and I dance salsa. Latin culture is a permanent part of my everyday life. Saying that we are not all Americans is not in any way disrespectful to Latinos. It’s just a fact.
Again, this isn’t a big deal to me. But the part below is—not that I’m a prude, but that Bad Bunny’s lyrics wouldn’t be tolerated except by people who don’t understand Spanish. If he sang them in English, it would be a scandal worse than Nipplegate.
Writing for The Chicago Tribune, Christopher Borrelli described it as “close to art” and “a cultural moment, a paradigm shift.” Time characterized the show as “a fierce act of resistance” and “a sharp cultural and history lesson.” I could go on, but I’ll spare you. What I won’t spare you, however, are his lyrics. Yes, I’m exactly the kind of white-privileged male that Fienberg is taking about. One who looks things up. Here are some selected lyrics from the song “Safaera,” which Bad Bunny sang during the show:
GO BELOW THE FOLD TO SEE THESE LYRICS IN ENGLISH, which you can see in Spanish here, I had them checked by a friend of mine of Puerto Rican descent, and she said they were “adequate enough”. She was also said they were “disgusting.”
They are about as graphically obscene as yu can get. Would they appear in a halftime show in English? Of course not. They didn’t fly among many Hispanics, either. Here’s a contrast between assessments of Bad Bunny’s sbow by the Washington Post versus UHN Plus, a very popular Spanish-language online newspaper originating in Miami.
REPORT: Washington Post calls BAD BUNNY’S performance “wholesome” and full of “traditional family values” PROVING once again it is less trustworthy than a transgender priest. pic.twitter.com/MDnHxiSDoz
I asked Luana, who speaks Spanish as well as her native Portuguese, to translate the UHN bit in the tweet on the right, and it says this: “Critique of the halftime show: images that generate embarrassment and reproach on the part of the public.”
There you go. In the photo, of course, Bad Bunny is feigning copulation with a woman. I can’t see this as exactly a “wholesome” depiction of Hispanic culture. (It isn’t of course: it’s seen through the misogynistic lens of Bad Bunny.)
Anyway, if you don’t mind sexually graphic lyrics, go below the fold and read what Bad Bunny, who was very bad, sang during the show. Here’s the penultimate paragraph from Volodzko:
You can decide whether you think the Super Bowl should be family-friendly or whether that ship has sailed. But I don’t think the English equivalent of this song would be allowed. So then what’s going on here? That’s the part that bothers me most about this latest flashpoint in our culture wars. I couldn’t care less whether Bad Bunny performed. I don’t watch the Super Bowl. But it’s the attempt to bullshit me, to gaslight me, to get away with something as if I wouldn’t notice, that rubs the wrong way. For example, to sing about girls sucking you off in front of millions of Americans and then pretend that people are objecting simply because they don’t like the sound of Spanish. Oh, because xenophobia is the problem, is it? Or as if Americans have a serious anti-Latino issue that needs addressing.
Rumors that BB was fined $10 million for crotch-grabbing and obscenity are false, though he was guilty of both!
Click “continue reading” to see the lyrics in English:
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