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.
It must be strike season at American universities. Spring seems to be the time when well-paid, privileged, and entitled graduate students look to their unions—unions like the United Auto Workers—to demand even higher wages, other privileges, and, as I posted yesterday, political statements by some universities.
As I reported yesterday, there’s an impending graduate-student strike at Columbia, with the union demanding not only big salary increases for the students, but also that the University do all manner of anti-Israel things, like divesting from Israel and withdrawing from opening a program in Tel Aviv. That seems to me a violation of institutional neutrality, and I trust that Columbia won’t en
Now Harvard is follow suit, threatening a strike about wages, though fortunately there are no demands there about Israel. (It’s unlikely that any union demands related to Israel would be accepted by either university, as they’ve both been subject to lawsuits for ongoing antisemitism.)
As the article in the Harvard Crimson reports, both teaching fellow and research assistants (two ways that grad students can get paid while getting advanced degrees) want raises, with teaching fellows demanding a huge increase in pay.
Harvard is not biting, so a strike may be impending.
Click the link to read the Crimson article:
This is a bit complex; see what you make of it. First, the demands (Crimson quotes indented):
Harvard rejected graduate student workers’ demands for sweeping wage increases at a Tuesday bargaining session, countering with more modest raises and declining to equalize pay between teaching fellows and research assistants.
The proposals come as contract negotiations between Harvard and Harvard Graduate Student Union-United Auto Workers stretch past a year and union members vote in an ongoing strike authorization vote launched last Tuesday.
Last month, HGSU-UAW proposed a plan to close the wage gap between teaching fellows and research assistants, which would raise TF pay by roughly 74 percent — bringing it in line with the equivalent of a 10-month RA salary. The proposal also included a 12 percent increase to base salaries and annual raises of five percent.
Harvard instead offered a 10 percent raise over four years and a nearly 3 percent raise in the first year, amounting to annual raises of roughly 2.5 percent, according to a Harvard spokesperson.
It declined to match TF and RA monthly pay, according to HGSU-UAW president Sara V. Speller.
It appears, though that TF and RA pay is the same for the first four years of graduate fellowships:
Under Harvard’s current pay structure, graduate students earn roughly $50,000 annually during the first four years of their program, typically comprising two years of fellowship funding and two years of teaching fellowships supplemented with salary top ups and summer funding.
But those supplements expire after four semesters and summer funding ends after four years. During the remainder of their time at Harvard, many graduate students rely solely on teaching fellowships — which pay roughly $6,500 per section.
Now $50,000 is certainly enough to live, even in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Notice that this is appears to be a minimum salary, as there is summary salary and diverse “top ups”. After four years, you can either teach or be an RA, and that seems to be when the differential kicks in. I know that in the biological sciences there’s no substantial disparity even after four years, as they somehow find money to adequately support all students, but perhaps it’s in the humanities where they are demanding salary increases. And I’m unable to find out much about the humanities given the time constraints of time for writing posts.
Given that no student has to pay tuition, and the salary is what the university gives them on top of tuition remission, I was told that in biology the students are sitting pretty throughout their entire graduate career, even if they have to teach after four years. They are not making $6500 per year. In fact, they’re getting paid well on top of a free education at Harvard, so one may argue that these kinds of union demands are excessive. One of those who feel that way is reader Bat, who who called my attention to the Crimson article and commented,
Much like scholarship uni athletics and the obscenities of NIL pay [universities now paying student athletes] and free agency portals for colleges, I just think none of this [graduate-student unions] has a place in higher education.
Throw the rascals out. Plenty of hungry and bright applicants in the sea (as you informed Harvard when turning them down for grad school years ago if I recall correctly).
Sometimes we geezers are right. You kids get off my lawn!
Hooray! Two more groups of photos came in this morning and so we’re good through Friday (I have one in reserve and can cobble together a few others).
The regulars are pulling their weight, and here we have an informative text-and-photo educational post by regular Athayde Tonhasca Júnior. The subject is one of his favorites: bee behavior. You can enlarge Athayde’s photos by clicking on them, and his text is indented.
Witty impostors
On its release in 1956, Invasion of the Body Snatchers did not impress the critics. A spiel about alien plant spores growing into sociopathic duplicates of human beings was considered too outlandish. While the intelligentsia trashed the film, the producers laughed all the way to the bank because it was a commercial hit: the public loved it. One of the reasons for the film’s success was its ‘aliens among us’ theme. The idea of ill-intentioned beings circulating freely and unsuspectedly in the mist of our society is disturbing and gripping – especially during the McCarthy era, when Americans were inspecting their closets for hidden communists. ‘Enemies within’ inspired and inspires countless tales about spies, infiltrated assassins, covert extra-terrestrials, psycho cyborgs and zombified humans.
Despite what assorted internet sages tell us, tales of aliens’ secret forays into world domination are entertaining fibs. But the natural world provides many real body snatching thrills such as parasitic flies that zombify their victims or induce them to dig their own graves, or wasps that make their hosts work for them. These cases involve species we may already suspect to be mischievous. That some bumble bees could play similar tricks may surprise many.
Superficially, cuckoo bumble bees, Bombus species of the subgenus Psithyrus, look like any of their social (non-parasitic) relatives. But a close inspection of a female’s hind leg shows no pollen basket (corbicula), which is a shallow cavity surrounded by a fringe of long hairs, a structure used to store pollen to be carried away.
She has no corbiculae because she gathers no pollen; cuckoo bumble bees do not found their own nests nor produce a worker caste: there are only male and female reproductive forms. Instead, a female invades the nest of a social bumble bee, lays her own eggs, which are cared for by her unsuspecting hosts. Raising the young at another species’ expenses is known as brood parasitism, a behaviour displayed by some cuckoo birds (order Cuculiformes) – hence Psithyrus bees’ common name.
Cuckoo bumble bees go beyond brood parasitism; they don’t just lay their eggs in a host’s nest and leave them to themselves like cuckoo birds do. These bees take over the victim’s colony, a form of exploitation known as social parasitism. Among insects, this strategy is employed mostly by bees, wasps and ants – of which slave-making ants are notorious – but also by other taxa such as the large blue butterfly (Phengaris arion). Once inside the host’s nest, the female cuckoo and her young live off pollen and nectar pilfered from their hosts, so they are also kleptoparasites – animals that steal food or prey from another animal.
We should pause to appreciate the challenges a cuckoo bumble bee faces. First, she has to locate the nest of a suitable host. She must then get in through a narrow entrance protected by a mob armed with poisonous stings and sharp mandibles. Once these defences have been overwhelmed, she must be able to usurp the colony from the host queen, lay her own eggs and induce the host workers to feed her and her developing brood. A tall order for any brood, social and klepto- parasite.
Finding a nest is reasonably straightforward: like most social insects, cuckoo bumble bees rely on chemical signals from cuticular hydrocarbons to recognise nestmates, co-specific competitors and potential hosts. But locating a nest is just the start. It must be of suitable size: if too big, the defenders are likely to overwhelm and kill the trespasser; if too small, there will not be enough workers to care for her larvae. As an example, there’s a 100% survival for vestal cuckoo bumble bees invading buff-tailed bumble bee nests with five workers; survival drops to nil for colonies with fifty workers (Sramkova & Ayasse, 2009). To avoid disaster, the female cuckoo bumble bee assesses the size of the host colony possibly by their chemical signals and workers’ traffic (Lhomme & Hines, 2018).
After picking an appropriate target, the female cuckoo bumble bee must confront the residents, who understandably are not obliging. But the nest defenders face a formidable enemy: a cuckoo bumble bee is sturdier and better armed than her social counterparts. She has larger and stronger mandibles, more powerful sting muscles, an enlarged venom gland, and her ventral underside, a particularly vulnerable spot, is protected by thicker exoskeleton plates (sternites) (Richards, 1928). So, some cuckoo species use brute force: they bite, push and sting their way in.
But violence is not always necessary. Some species are let in because they mimic their host’s chemical signs. Others have no chemical signatures and display no aggressive behaviours; the host bees are not aware an enemy has sneaked in. The cuckoo will hide in a corner of the nest for a few days, long enough to acquire the scents of her host and blend in (Dronnet et al., 2005).
Once inside, our intruder has to deal with the queen, the only egg-laying member of the colony and thus the mother of all other bees, whose activities are controlled by their mum’s pheromones. Most cuckoo bumble bees don’t beat about the bush; they kill the queen and eat her eggs. Some species spare the deposed monarch, who loses control of her colony for reasons not completely understood: probably the usurper’s pheromones and physical aggression assure her dominance over the queen.
After sorting out the queen problem, the cuckoo bumble bee is free to lay her own eggs and induce the host workers to feed her and her developing young, although how this is done is largely unknown. The resulting male and female cuckoo bees will leave the nest by late summer and look for mating partners. Like most other bees, the male dies soon after intercourse, while the female will search for a safe spot underground to overwinter, just like her hosts. She will emerge from her slumber late, giving sufficient time for her hosts to establish their nests. The female cuckoo bee spends some time hopping from flower to flower, sipping nectar while her ovaries mature, so that she will be ready to find and conquer a bumble bee nest.
Of the 250 or so Bombus species, roughly 30 have evolved into parasitism. We have a poor grasp of cuckoo species’ biology and ecology, partly because they fly about for a relatively short time and their numbers are naturally low, since they don’t have a worker caste. Thus they are difficult to find and study. But the lack of information comes largely from prejudice. Parasites in general are not viewed sympathetically, especially those that target ‘cute and lovable’ victims such as bumble bees. As a result, cuckoo bumble bees are often absent from local species lists and conservation plans. But that’s a misguided view. Parasites and predators are integral components of ecosystems, preventing over-dominance of some species in favour of rarer ones (Frainer et al., 2018). Cuckoo species should be admired and valued for their physiological, morphological and behavioural adaptations that allow them to overcome the defences of highly organised colonies. These bees of ill-repute are in fact evolutionary marvels.
Dronnet, S. et al. 2005. Bumblebee inquilinism in Bombus (Fernaldaepsithyrus) sylvestris (Hymenoptera, Apidae): behavioural and chemical analyses of host-parasite interactions. Apidologie 36: 59–70.
Frainer, A. et al. 2018. Parasitism and the biodiversity-functioning relationship. Trends in Ecology and Evolution 33: 260–268.
Lhomme, P. & Hines, H. 2018. Ecology and evolution of cuckoo bumble bees. Annals of the Entomological Society of America 112: 122–140.
Richards, O.W. 1928. A revision of the European bees allied to Psithyrus quadricolor Lepeletier (Hymenoptera, Bombidae). Transactions of the Entomological Society of London 76: 345–365.
Sramkova, A. & Ayasse, M. 2009. Chemical ecology involved in invasion success of the cuckoo bumblebee Psithyrus vestalis and in survival of workers of its host Bombus terrestris. Chemoecology 19: 55–62.
Welcome to a “hump day” (“Дзень горба” in Belarusian); it’s Wednesday, March 11, 2026 and Debunking Day. Here’s one: You don’t have free will, even if you feel like it. As biochemist Anthony Cashmore said in the PNAS paper that turned me into a hard determinist:
Here I argue that the way we use the concept of free will is nonsensical. The beauty of the mind of man has nothing to do with free will or any unique hold that biology has on select laws of physics or chemistry. This beauty lies in the complexity of the chemistry and cell biology of the brain, which enables a select few of us to compose like Mozart and Verdi, and the rest of us to appreciate listening to these compositions. The reality is, not only do we have no more free will than a fly or a bacterium, in actuality we have no more free will than a bowl of sugar. The laws of nature are uniform throughout, and these laws do not accommodate the concept of free will.
And don’t listen to those compatibilists who make up new definitions of free will so we can have it despite the fact that we can never do other than what we did. Compatibilists are worried that if people accept determinism (which happens to be true), we’ll all become nihilists and never get out of bed—and society will fall apart. (This is the identical argument made by those promoting religious belief.) They’re wrong. People do just fine without religion (Scandinavia) and “free will” (determinists like Sapolsky and I are neither nihilists nor criminals).
President Trump said he was eyeing a quick end to the war in Iran, as some of his advisers privately urged him to look for an exit plan amid spiking oil prices and concerns that a lengthy conflict could spark political backlash.
Speaking to reporters in Florida on Monday, Trump characterized the military mission as mostly having achieved its goals. “We’re way ahead of schedule,” he said, adding he thought it would be over “very soon.”
He didn’t provide a clear timeline for ending the Iran operation. When asked about helping the Iranian people who have risen up against the regime, Trump sounded ready for a quick conclusion rather than to continue to push for leadership change.
“We want a system that can lead to many years of peace, and if we can’t have that, we might as well get it over with right now,” Trump said. He said he was disappointed in the appointment of Mojtaba Khamenei, son of the slain Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, as Iran’s new supreme leader, a move that signals that Tehran won’t back down.
From the NYT:
In the days after President Trump launched U.S. forces in an attack against Iran, support for the strikes is far lower than what it has been at the beginnings of previous foreign conflicts.
So far, polls have found that most Americans oppose the Iran attacks. Support ranges from 27 percent in a Reuters/Ipsos poll to 50 percent in a Fox News poll. The wide variation suggests that public opinion is still taking shape as more Americans learn details of the attacks and the aftermath.
But even the highest level of public support for this conflict falls far lower than that at the start of most other conflicts, including World War II, the Korean War and the Iraq War.
Here’s a graph from the NYT article showing how little support this war has compared to others (in the initial days):
With Americans that opposed to our striking Iran, this will constitute strong pressure on Trump to get the conflict over with. It’s a bit disturbing that he’s not talking any more about regime change, and the nuclear issue seems to have disappeared. Without resolution of those issues, what will a quick “exit” accomplish, then? But see the next item!
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said Iran is “badly losing” in the war and that Tuesday’s airstrikes would be the most intense yet of the campaign against the regime.
“We will not relent until the enemy is totally and decisively defeated, but we do so on our time line and at our choosing,” Hegseth told a joint press conference with Gen. Dan Caine, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs.
Earlier, Iran’s foreign minister said negotiations with the U.S. were off the table, after President Trump said the war will be over “very soon” but that the U.S. military campaign still has further to go.
And from the previous link:
The defense secretary set out three objectives for the U.S. campaign against Iran.
1. Destroy their missiles and their ability to make them.
2. Destroy their navy.
3. Permanently deny Iran nuclear weapons forever.
I don’t see how #3 can be accomplished without regime change. It would require a binding agreement by Iran, along with repeated and unannounced inspections of Iran’s uranium-enrichment facilities. But even that is not enough, as we know from previous experience. And how do we permanently destroy their ability to make missiles? Finally, they can always rebuild their navy. I fail to understand how these objectives can be achieved unless the government falls and is replaces by a democratic and friendlier one.
Nearly 48 hours since being appointed as the third supreme leader of the Islamic Republic in Iran’s history, Mojtaba Khamenei is nowhere to be seen.
No video message has been put out from him addressing the crowds of supporters that have gone onto the streets across Iran to pledge their allegiance to him, nor has a written statement been issued by him or his office. State media has relied on archive footage to introduce him to the audience, and state propaganda networks have heavily relied on AI video and stills to create an image of an all-wise leader who rightly inherits the mantle of leadership.
. . . One clue in the new leader’s absence may come from state media reports that he too has been injured in what’s being dubbed the “Ramadan War.” Perhaps his reported injuries have prevented him from appearing on video, though that wouldn’t explain the lack of a written statement. Another factor could be the disappointment expressed by US President Donald Trump in Mojtaba Khamenei’s appointment following his father’s assassination. Asked Monday if the new supreme leader has a target on his back, Trump responded that he didn’t want to say.
But even as the leader remains hidden from sight, it seems the wider body politic is still functioning with little suggestion of a change in the war posture; more public statements of allegiance have emerged from across the spectrum, with the likes of reformist former President Mohammad Khatami releasing a statement on Tuesday. Perhaps the mere thought that the position no longer remains vacant is enough to keep the war momentum going.
Or he could be scared of being killed. If any man in the world should be fearing for his life right now—save those on death row—it would be Khomenei, Jr. The last two sentences make little sense to me.
*Over at Quillette, Brian Stewart tells us that, despite its many good programs, “The United Nations is going broke.” But, adds Stewart, it has only itself to blame.
Yet the United Nations endures, not because its critics are wrong about its shortcomings, but because it’s better than nothing. This is faint praise, I realise. Still, it’s sobering to consider that, for all its flaws, the UN remains the only permanent standing forum where representatives of every nation can speak to their international counterparts—and, occasionally, even find ways to co-operate productively.
To give one example, it was in large part thanks to the World Health Organization, a specialised agency of the United Nations, that smallpox was eradicated in the 1970s. Other agencies and related organisations include the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, International Atomic Energy Agency, International Court of Justice, International Monetary Fund, United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, and the World Bank. All of these multilateral entities have fairly earned their own critics. However, it’s hard to argue that the world would be a safer, healthier, or more culturally enriched place if they did not exist.
But the United Nations now faces a crisis that threatens to impair its global work. On 30 January, UN Secretary-General António Guterres warned that the body is on the brink of “imminent financial collapse,” citing record-high unpaid dues totalling nearly $1.6 billion (all figures US) and outdated budget rules. He cautioned that the UN could run out of cash by mid-2026, and urged member states to pay their assessed contributions in full and on time, or agree to fundamental financial reforms.
The U.S. has been responsible for a lot of the UN’s financial woes. Some of our refusal to pay is good (UNRWA), but other victims of withholding, like cuts to WHO contributions, don’t seem to deserve it.
The United States has long been the single biggest contributor to the UN’s regular budget and peacekeeping operations. That role has granted Washington outsized influence within international circles, but has also fuelled persistent domestic resentment among critics who ask why American taxpayers should underwrite an institution that often seems hostile to western interests.
As one might expect, Donald Trump is sympathetic to this constituency, and his administration (both during its first and second terms) has imposed sweeping cuts on payments to UN bodies, including the World Health Organization and the Human Rights Council. It also permanently halted funding to the UN agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA), which has been accused of serving the interests of Hamas. Last year, the Trump administration announced its withdrawal from the UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), on the basis that the agency promotes “woke” and “divisive” cultural postures. This is actually the second time that Trump has ordered this move: He withdrew from UNESCO in 2019, but the United States rejoined in 2023 under Joe Biden’s watch.
Stewart also lauds the UN’s peacekeeping operations, with eleven underway. UNIFIL, the one in Lebanon, is however a huge waste of money, as UNIFIL does nothing to carry out its mission. Here’s a map of the rest of them:
(from article): A map of all UN field missions. Special Political Missions are indicated in purple. Peacekeeping operations are indicated in blue.
In the end, Stewart argues that the UN’s “political theater” has acted to scupper its mission and reduce the dosh the organization rakes in:
It’s a pity that all of this substantive work often gets overshadowed by the performative political theatre that grabs headlines. But to some extent, UN officials only have themselves to blame. The UN chief recently congratulated Iran’s mullahs on the anniversary of the 1979 Islamic Revolution—which, in case anyone needs reminding, ushered in the ruthless theocracy that just slaughtered tens of thousands of protesters.
This kind of misjudgment contaminates the whole UN brand, not just the organisation’s top administrator. And it isn’t surprising that politicians in many parts of the world are getting tired of paying his invoices.
It’s a pity that the people who run the UN or its agencies are so often hamhanded. If they’d chosen some good people unlike António Guterres and Francesca Albanese, the positive effect would ramify throughout the organization. The UN needs a complete restructuring and an ethical leadership.
*You’ll remember that the Iranian women’s soccer team, before playing a match in Australia, refused to sing their country’s national anthem. It was reported that on the team bus they were making the “SOS” sign, for they’d surely face punishment when they went home. Now I see this with a link to the story that five of them have defected (click photo for link to Jerusalem Post story). Also, Trump offered to take all 26 members of the team into the U.S. if they wanted to come.
Five members of the Iranian women’s soccer team, who visited Australia to play in the Women’s Asian Cup, were granted permission to stay in the country on Tuesday after international concern broke out over their safety.
An inside source told CNN that two additional people, a player and a member of staff, had also decided to stay in Australia, though officials have yet to confirm.
Last Monday, the players were recorded standing in silence during their national anthem, an action taken by hardliners in Iran as treason.
The women were reportedly forced to sing the anthem during their following two matches, and perform the military salute, but were filmed signing “Help” as they were driven away after their 2-0 loss to the Philippines last week.
Australian Home Affairs Minister Tony Burke, who has agreed to provide the women with visas, told reporters that the other team members were also welcome to stay in Australia, noting that the initial five players wanted to stay.
Australian officials identified the players as Zahra Sarbali Alishah, Mona Hamoudi, Zahra Ghanbari, Fatemeh Pasandideh, and Atefeh Ramezanizadeh. They were staying at an undisclosed location under police protection, officials said.
Simon Leske, the co-founder and director of Kindra Migration Lawyers, told The Jerusalem Post that Burke had used his unique powers to grant the women visas and that the players had likely received the subclass 449 temporary humanitarian visa.
“I believe, based on my experience, that it’s likely to be the subclass 449, humanitarian stay, temporary visa, which is a visa that can be used by the minister in very exceptional circumstances where there’s a need for a very quick grant to allow an individual to stay, and would then allow, subsequently, for the minister to grant a permanent visa, and that might take a little bit longer,” Leske explained.
While not able to comment on the diplomatic implications of the move, Leske shared that many Australians campaigned tirelessly for the women, including members of Australia’s own Iranian diaspora community.
“The fact that the minister actually traveled to Brisbane to meet with the players is quite an exceptional situation. I believe that’s probably due to the pressure within the community to show support,” he explained.
This is very heartening. The players surely knew that they would face retribution from Iran, and I’m wondering whether the other 21 players are actually going back to Iran. They will be regarded as traitors, and I wouldn’t bet on them surviving. Of course those who stay in Australia or the U.S. face the horrible possibility that their relatives will be punished, so it wasn’t an easy decision. But they decided not to sing the national anthem, and surely they knew what that would lead to. I applaud them. And see the two tweets from Masih below.
Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili’s again wondering, “Where’s the kibble?” But unlike Godot, the kibble always appears.
Hili: Life is a constant waiting.
Andrzej: For what?
Hili: For the next meal.
In Polish:
Hili: Życie jest ciągłym czekaniem.
Ja: Na co?
Hili: Na kolejny posiłek.
Two tweets from Masih today, both about the Iranian women footballers who refused to go back to Iran. Sound up:
“Stay here. Stay here.”
“ Help our girls, Help our girls”
When I heard the desperate cry of this Iranian man in Australia, begging for protection for the women football players who were threatened simply for refusing to sing the Islamic Republic’s anthem, I couldn’t hold back my… pic.twitter.com/WAxRLeyYBW
This is what “No to Hijab Day” actually looks like.
Same Iranian women.
Same players.
The only difference is freedom.
I hope FIFA and the Olympic Committee look carefully at this photo and understand how the Islamic Republic uses sports to normalize an apartheid regime.#Iranpic.twitter.com/eYX7oYYs39
From UBC political scientist Sally Sharif via Luana. LLMs are “Large language modules,” a form of AI. AI is going to be the death of universities, or so Luana maintains. (I am agnostic right now.)
I just gave a closed-book, pen-and-paper midterm exam in my 300-level course at UBC with 100 students. All exams were graded by an experienced graduate-level TA according to a rubric.
A French feminist gig chanting “Death, death to the IDF”. It astounds me how young western women do propaganda for Hamas who would murder every single one of them. pic.twitter.com/PXDj3ZD405
From reader Bryan, who says, “I used a straightedge on my phone screen, and also looked without glasses – this illusion is amazing.” Yep, the lines are straight.
— Wholesome Side of 𝕏 (@itsme_urstruly) March 9, 2026
One I reposted from The Auschwitz Memorial. Imagine hearing this speech as soon as you arrived at Auschwitz (and survived the “selection”:
PODCAST | The first moments at the Auschwitz camp
„You have arrived not at a sanatorium but at a German concentration camp in which the only way out is through the chimney. If someone doesn’t like this, he may at once go to the wires. If there are any Jews in this transport,… pic.twitter.com/vbKswlLHAc
One from Dr. Cobb. Mother Earwig (sounds like a Beatrix Potter book):
Female Common Earwigs Forficula auricularia are very good mothers. After spending the winter guarding her batch of eggs she cares for the nymphs for several weeks and regurgitates food for them. The nymphs will disperse when they are large enough to fend for themselves. Dartmoor, Devon
This law, which is mine, is derived solely from watching the NBC Evening News, which is interrupted by a lot of ads for drugs aimed at older people (for COPD, cancer, dry eyes, heart problems, etc.). That alone tells you who the target demographic is, and also that young people don’t watch the t.v. news (they get it, of course, from social media). Here’s my rule:
It’s coming now. . . .
Here it is:
At least half of new medicines advertised on t.v. have the letters “x”, “y”, or “z” in them.
Here’s a table from Cornell University of the frequency of letters in the English language, based on a sample of 40,000 words. The total frequency with which x, y, or z appear among letters is 1.35%. Calculating the frequency of, say, random six-letter names that don’t contain such a letter would be about (0.987) to the sixth power, or about 0.95, or 95%. But of course that is an underestimate, as a drug name is unlikely to have two or more of those three letters, and it has to have a vowel. I don’t know how to do the proper math, which is impossible given that the names are made up, but I have to conclude that drug manufacturers think their wares will sell better if they have one of the Three Letters.
(There may be some miscalculations here, or other sites may give slightly different )
Graduate student unions are relatively new: they weren’t around when I was in graduate school in the Pleistocene. They are officially part of larger labor unions (the University of Chicago grad student union, for example, is part of the United Electrical, Radio, and Machine Workers of America (GSU-UE, Local 1103). Today’s piece is about the Columbia University grad-student union, affiliated with the United Auto Workers.
The rationale for students joining unions is that they consider themselves employees rather than just students, and that comes from requirements that students often have to teach to get their degree (they can be paid by the university if they’re on fellowship, as I was at Harvard, and taught for a year as part of the degree requirements). Teaching and even the requirement to do research is considered “employment” in the same way that making cars is considered employment, though many grad students disagree, considering their activities involved in getting a graduate degree—including learning to teach—to be education, not employment. The resolution of these differences involves grad students voting: if enough of them want a union, they get a union. Whether or not they must join a union or pay dues to a one depends on the university. Neither Chicago nor Columbia requires membership, for example, but the benefits all students get are those agreed on via bargaining between the university and the union. Chicago grad students have to pay someone, however. As Grok tells me:
University of Chicago graduate students are not required to join the union (GSU-UE) as members. However, those in covered teaching or research positions must pay union dues or an equivalent agency fee as a condition of employment, per the collective bargaining agreement effective April 2024.
I’m not sure who gets the “equivalent agency fee.”
The two articles below, the first from the Free Press (FP) and the second from the Columbia Spectator (CS; the student paper) describe a potential upcoming strike by Columbia graduate students. Click on either headline to go to the article. I’ll identify where quotes come from, and all quotes are indented.
The CS describes how grad-student unions bargains with the university; this holds, I think, for all universities:
Under the National Labor Relations Act, the union’s legally mandated role involves bargaining with the University over wages, hours, and working conditions, which are ‘mandatory’ subjects of collective bargaining; the employer and the union are legally required to bargain over these subjects if one of the parties raises concerns. Other topics which may be brought for bargaining include any condition outside of wages, hours, and working conditions. Neither party may insist on bargaining for permissive demands, but they may discuss them.
One of the problems with requesting big increases in student salaries, as Columbia’s union is doing, is that it ultimately leads to the admission of fewer grad students, for the funds for grad students are limited. (This shrinking has happened, I’m told, at the University of California.) Another problem, highlighted in the FP but not the CS article, is that student unions, which have historically taken political stands (including endorsing candidates), can and have made demands for the university itself to take political stands. In the case of Columbia, this often involves anti-Israel stands, and you can see that many students—especially Jewish ones—don’t want to be part of a union that is explicitly and blatantly anti-Israel.
The FP article (not archived):
And the CS:
Columbia students went on strike for 10 weeks in 2021, and that of course degraded classes in which grad students teach, and also research (nobody is supposed to teach or do research during a strike). Now they’re threatening to strike again, and the union’s demands are big. From the CS:
The Student Workers of Columbia-United Auto Workers [SWC] opened a strike authorization vote Friday to “ramp up the pressure” for the University to meet its demands amid seven months of stalled contract negotiations.
The vote follows continued disagreement between the union and the University over the scope of issues subject to collective bargaining and is open to all union members through March 8. If affirmed, the vote would authorize union leadership to hold a later vote to decide whether and when to initiate a strike. SWC-UAW last went on strike in 2021 for 10 weeks during its first contract negotiation before signing a contract with the University.
A University spokesperson characterized the strike authorization vote as “disappointing” in a statement to Spectator because it comes “after only six bargaining sessions and without even putting forward all theproposals they have said they want to discuss with the University.”
“During negotiations for SWC’s first contract in 2021, Columbia met with the union 73 times before they decided to strike,” the spokesperson wrote.
Here’s what Columbia students get now and what they’re asking in terms of benefits (from the FP):
Now that the union has gotten around to its economic demands, they are far beyond what graduate students at comparable academic institutions are typically offered. On top of a full tuition remission valued at over $55,000 per academic year, SWC has demanded an annual minimum salary of over $76,000 for PhD students who are teaching or conducting research, even though they are expected to work only about 20 hours per week.
The union also is seeking a childcare subsidy of up to $50,000 per child per year. For so-called casual employees, including undergraduate student workers, the union is demanding minimum pay of $36.50 per hour, up from $22.50 per hour, and more than twice New York City’s minimum wage of $17 per hour.
SWC also plans to bargain for union shop status, which would force student workers to join and pay dues to remain employed, or for agency shop status, in which nonunion members must pay a fee to cover bargaining costs.
Some Googling indicates that grad students now make up to about $50,000 per year, so they’re asking for about a 50% increase in salary. And depending on whether a member has kids, the demands could total as much as $200,000 per year. Further, the “union shop status” they’re requesting means that all students must join the union, and since the union is demanding political stands, that can be problematic. From the FP:
The battle isn’t primarily about wages or working conditions. Instead, it is focused on the demands of anti-Israel activists on Columbia’s campus. Some student workers say this activism means that they feel uncomfortable about seeking help with basic functions like workplace conditions or health insurance.
“They’ve singularly focused on pursuing policies that are meant to disenfranchise Jews and Israelis, as opposed to pursuing and negotiating on policies for the betterment of all student workers,” one Columbia grad student told me. An engineering graduate student added, “If you look at what the union is doing now, you can see there’s no sane people left.”
SWC’s president, Grant Miner, isn’t even allowed on campus. He was one of the 22 students arrested following the occupation of Hamilton Hall in 2024, was expelled, and therefore is no longer employed by the university. Yet Miner is paid over $46,000 a year by the union, according to a contract reviewed by The Free Press. Miner did not respond to a request for comment.
Some of the Columbia union’s demands (from the FP):
The union has demanded that Columbia public safety officers not “use force against Columbia affiliates or non-Columbia affiliates under any circumstances,” carry weapons, or require anyone to show their university identification. SWC also wants Columbia to dismantle its security cameras, halt Columbia’s dual degree program with Tel Aviv University, block the opening of a new facility in Tel Aviv, and divest Columbia from Israel.
. . .Olya Skulovich, who is Jewish and Israeli, said SWC deserves credit for improvements in health insurance and other areas. “There was not even coverage for spouses” when she started, said Skulovich, who arrived at Columbia in 2018 and earned a PhD in earth and environmental engineering.
But she was shocked when the union quickly veered away from economic priorities after Hamas attacked Israel on October 7, 2023. SWC described Israel as “genocidal” and called on Columbia to divest from the “Israeli war machine.” The statement was approved by just 100 of the eligible union members.
“I lived a big part of my life in Belarus, and I know what antisemitism is firsthand,” Skulovich said. Brian Frost, a union steward for the engineering school, resigned from his SWC post over the post–October 7 statement. “The lists of demands are not labor demands,” he wrote in an email to other PhDs in his department. The statement was “uncharacteristically heartless for a labor organization,” said Frost.
Once the union had taken an official side on the war in Gaza, it began to support student protesters. SWC voted to join the Columbia University Apartheid Divest (CUAD) coalition, the main anti-Israel campus group that includes Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) and Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP). The three groups are not recognized by Columbia and were therefore ineligible to organize protests, but union leaders believed that SWC could veil their activities as labor actions.
“We were putting up rallies for the student organizations who weren’t allowed to protest on campus,” union steward Ioanna Kourkoulou told other UAW branch organizations. She bragged that SWC was “allowed to picket whenever the fuck we want.”
I have never been involved in any of these negotiations or votes, as I was a faculty member when the union began at my school, and I can’t even tell you what deal was made between the union here and the university, though I doubt it forces the University of Chicago to take political stands, which is prohibited by our Kalven principles.
I thus can’t say how many grad student positions here have been lost here because of bargaining, but if the Columbia union gets its demands of a $76,000 annual salary and childcare subsidies (on top of the $55,000 tuition remission), I expect there will be substantially fewer grad students. That is for the talks to decide.
What I most object to is the union’s anti-Israel demands, which include university divesting from Israel, blocking the Tel Aviv facility, and joining three anti-Israel groups (and sponsoring their rallies)—at least two of them (SJP and JVP) that I see as antisemitic. This would force Columbia to take ideological and political stands, which would violate its existing policy of institutional neutrality and chill the speech of Jewish or pro-Israel students. It is the political positions of grad-student unions that, I think, make them different from “normal” labor unions and inappropriate for universities. Whatever Columbia decides to do about grad-student funding, it must not agree to adopt these ideological positions.
We have no more batches in the tank, so if you have photos, send them along. Thanks.
Today’s final tranche comes from reader Ephraim Heller, which will be in two parts. Ephraim’s captions and IDs are indented, and you can enlarge his photos by clicking on them:
Q: Why do chickens (Gallus gallus domesticus) in Trinidad & Tobago cross the roads?
A: To eat the tarantulas.
During my recent visit to Trinidad and Tobago, a local birding guide explained that one of the reasons people commonly keep free-range chickens in their yards is to eat the tarantulas. This gave me a new respect for these domestic fowl, as I witnessed venomous tarantulas larger than my XXL-size hands, such as this female Trinidad chevron tarantula (Psalmopoeus cambridgei):
Trinidad harbors a diversity of arachnids that rivals anywhere in the Neotropics. On my night walks with my new macro lens I observed spiders (order Araneae) and harvestmen, also known as daddy long legs (order Opiliones). Both arachnids are eight-legged members of the class Arachnida, but they belong to entirely separate orders and are not closely related within that class.
Returning to the Trinidad Chevron tarantula: it constructs silken tube retreats in tree crevices, behind bark, and among epiphytic plants. It also readily adapts to human structures (e.g., tin roofs, metal pipes, and abandoned buildings) making it something of a synanthrope:
Females are large and fast-growing, reaching 18 cm (7 inches) in leg span, with striking chevron-shaped dark markings on the abdomen and green-brown coloration accented by red or orange flashes on the legs. Males are smaller, with a more uniform grey-brown appearance, and can mature in as little as one year. The species is notable for its broad diet: bats, frogs, lizards, grasshoppers, mice, and other insects have all been documented as prey.
Pharmacologically, the Trinidad chevron tarantula is of medical interest. Its venom is the source of psalmotoxin and vanillotoxin – inhibitor cystine knot (ICK) peptides that may have therapeutic applications in stroke treatment.
The pinktoe tarantula (Avicularia avicularia), is the most commonly encountered tarantula in Trinidad and Tobago. This arboreal species is named for the distinctive pink coloration on the tips of its legs in adults:
Adults reach about six inches in leg span. They are ambush predators that construct silken retreats and trip lines in tree canopies, using webbing as both trap and sensor. Unlike most tarantulas, pinktoes can jump short distances (3-4 cm), and their defensive repertoire includes propelling feces at threats, a behavior that, while unglamorous, is effective. Their venom is mild, even by New World tarantula standards. Here’s a closeup from the previous photo focused on the body:
The Giant Fishing Spider (Ancylometes bogotensis) is a semi-aquatic giant. Females reach roughly 26 mm in body length with an impressive leg span, while males are somewhat smaller at about 21 mm. These spiders walk on water using air-trapping hydrophobic hairs on their leg tips, much like water striders. When disturbed, they can dive below the surface and remain submerged for over 20 minutes by breathing air trapped in the hairs surrounding their book lungs. Their diet ranges from aquatic insects to small fish, frogs, lizards, and geckos:
Ancylometes bogotensis is sometimes confused with the infamous Brazilian wandering spider (genus Phoneutria, photo below): both are large, ground-active, nocturnal hunters with similar body plans. The name Phoneutria translates from Greek as “murderer,” and the genus has appeared in the Guinness World Records as containing the world’s most venomous spider. There are eight described species, found primarily in tropical South America with one extending into Central America.
Phoneutria species are best known for their potent neurotoxic venom, their characteristic threat display (raising the first two pairs of legs high to reveal banded leg patterns) and their wandering, non-web-building habits. They famously hide in banana bunches, boots, clothing, and dark shelters, which brings them into frequent contact with humans. Their venom contains a cocktail of neurotoxins, but fatalities are rare with modern medical treatment.
Though Ancylometes and Phoneutria were both historically placed in the family Ctenidae, Ancylometes was transferred to its own family (Ancylometidae) in 2025, reflecting the growing understanding that these semi-aquatic fishing spiders represent a distinct evolutionary lineage:
We now turn to a species of orb-weaver. The golden silk spider (Trichonephila clavipes) is one of the most conspicuous spiders in the Caribbean and Neotropical forests. Sexual dimorphism in this species is extreme: males are tiny (5-9 mm body length) and weigh roughly one-thousandth what a female does. Here is a female:
The silk itself is remarkable. It has a golden hue visible to the naked eye and is the strongest natural fiber known. Researchers have fully annotated the T. clavipes genome, identifying 28 unique silk protein genes. These spiders produce and utilize seven different types of silk. Their large, asymmetric orb webs can exceed a meter in diameter, and in the South Pacific, relatives of Trichonephila spin webs strong enough to be used as fishing nets by indigenous communities:
