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.
Yes, I can hear you thinking, “Here goes Professor Ceiling Cat again arguing that popular music reached its apogee in his youth and has gone downhill ever since.”
Well, you’re right. I do think that, but I think the same thing for all the arts save photography, literature and film. The decline of the arts, in my view, holds for painting, classical music, and poetry.
Here I’ll maintain that the Broadway musical is an example of this decline. Let me be explicit about what I’m saying: although musicals may have gotten more sophisticated with time (viz., “Hamilton”), the songs in musicals have gotten worse in recent days, having reached their peak between the early 1940s and the early 1960s. So I’m talking about the songs in plays, not the quality of the stories in or intricacies of those songs.
I realized this when I came across the song below, which I see as one of only three great Broadway-musical songs in the last fifty years. It is, of course, “Don’t Cry for Me Argentina,” from the musical “Evita,” written Andrew Lloyd Webber (tune) and Tim Rice (lyrics; the musical is completely sung). The song had a somewhat bumpy genesis, but, as Wikipedia reports,
Rice and Lloyd Webber’s research showed that Eva had not in reality delivered any major oration on the day of her husband Juan Perón’s inauguration ceremony, but not long after becoming Argentina’s new First Lady, she started making highly emotional speeches, the intensity of which they wanted to capture with “Don’t Cry for Me Argentina”. The song was composed to appear at the opening and near the end of the show, initially as the spirit of the dead Eva exhorting the people of Argentina not to mourn her, and finally during Eva’s speech from the balcony of Casa Rosada.
The original was sung by Julie Covington on a “concept album” issued in 1976 (her version here), by Patti LuPone in the 1979 Broadway play (her version here) and by Madonna in the 1996 film version (her rendition here). None of these versions comes close to that of Karen Carpenter, which was suggested for me by YouTube. Covington’s version is too high and too light, and LuPone’s lacks lyrical force (LuPone was a belter, which is why she snagged so many Broadway roles). Madonna’s is the best of the so-so lot, but in my view lacks emotion.
This version by Karen Carpenter, who along with Barbra Streisand is one of the two great female singers of our time, is virtually unknown. I’m a huge Karen Carpenter fan, but I’d never heard this until the YouTube bot spat it out:
The song is beautiful, with several parts, including a speech, and, as far as I know, is something that Evita herself would have though, as it accurately reflects her life and her goals. I highly recommend the biography Evita: The Real Life of Eva Perón, by Nicholas Fraser and Marysa Navarro, It’s easy to become mesmerized by Eva’s short life—she died at 33 of cervical cancer—regardless of whether you think she was beneficial or injurious for Argentina (I hold the former view). But don’t get me started on Eva; all I can say is that I know of no other political figure save Margaret Thatcher who was so polarizing, but the attachment or dislike of Eva continues strongly, while most people have forgotten Thatcher. To see why, read Evita’s biography.
Here’s Evita’s final speech in 1951 from the Casa Rosada; she was already dying when she gave it:
And that’s it for recent times. I can’t think of another Broadway song that combines words and (especially) music in ways like the three songs above. And believe me, I’ve listened to “popular” Broadway songs of recent days, and have been disappointed. Have a listen, for example, to the much-touted song “My Shot” from “Hamilton” (here). It is heavily influenced by rap: good words and a good story but set to a totally lame tune. Overall, it’s dreck: it doesn’t work as a song. Have you heard anybody humming or singing it lately?
But I’ll stop here about recent musicals; if you know of fantastic songs from Broadway musicals appearing after 1980, by all means describe and defend them below.
Now I get to tout my favorites: the earlier musicals that have memorable songs. I give them in no particular order save when they came to mind. I’ll link to the musicals and list some of my favorite songs from them, linking to the best. I claim that no modern musical comes close to these in musical quality:
Brigadoon, by Lerner and Loewe (1947). This great musical is all but forgotten. The original cast album is far superior to the 1954 film that starred Gene Kelly. Great songs (i’ve highlighted YouTube versions from the original cast):
I’ll Go Home with Bonnie Jean
Come to Me, Bend to Me There But For You Go I From this Day On (After time travel, the lovers part, apparently to be separated forever. Such a beautiful song.)
Oklahoma!by Rodgers and Hammerstein (1943) Great songs:
West Side Story by Leonard Bernstein and Stephen Sondheim (1957)
Maria Tonight
Gee, Officer Krupke
I Feel Pretty Somewhere (I’ve put up Barbra Streisand’s live version as there’s nothing comparable to it. The preliminary music starts about 16 seconds in).
Show Boatby Jerome Kern and Oscar Hammerstein (1927)
Ol’ Man River
Can’t Help Lovin’ Dat Man
And I may have forgotten one or two, as I’m working from memory here.
Now some of these musicals came out when I was too young for them to have been part of my life, except that my parents had most of them on albums and I listened to them. Since none of my contemporaries listened to them, I will argue that I like them because of their quality, not because they were in the air when was I was growing up. I will further argue that I love jazz (up to and including Coltrane) despite not having heard a lick of it until I was in my forties. I love jazz because much of the stuff up to Coltrane was great, not because it was part of my youth.
I’ll end with two great songs that came out more recently than those above, as well as an earlier song recycled into a movie. Both are renditions by Barbra Streisand, for who else could do them justice?
First, “Send in the clowns” from “A Little Night Music” by Stephen Sondheim (1973):
Second “All I ask of you” (by Andrew Lloyd Webber, Charles Hart and Richard Stilgoe, from the 1986 play “The Phantom of the Opera”. This song gives me the shivers.
The song below, “My Man,” didn’t originate in a Broadway musical, but as a 1920 French song, “Mon Homme”, by Maurice Yvain, Jacques-Charles and Albert Willemetz. Comedian, actor, and singer Fanny Brice (1891-1951) popularized the English version; which became one of her hallmark numbers. Brice’s version came out in 1921, and later appeared in the eponymous 1928 talkie (that version is here).
But the hallmark version, and a comsummate piece of both acting and singing is (again) Barbra Streisand’s version in the 1958 film “Funny Girl” (“My Man” did not appear in the earlier stage verssions). In the movie, Streisand sings it when she has to go onstage immediately after having broken up with the gambler Nicky Arnstein in her dressing room. That accounts for the slow and tearful beginning you’ll see below. Eventually it segues into a fantastic ending, which is why I’m posting it here.
So be it; those are my views and have at me, maties. I just realized that everybody mentioned in this video, including all the songwriters, Fanny Brice, and Barbra Streisand, were Jewish. The sole exception is Karen Carpenter and a few people like Andrew Lloyd Webber. So there: you just wouldn’t have classic Broadway without the Jews. It must have been a conspiracy to indoctrinate people and infect them with earworms. Joking aside, it’s amazing that, given their low percentage in the American population, the predominance of great musicals were written by Jews. I have no idea why.
Welcome to the Sabbath made for goyische cats: it’s Sunday, August 16, 2026, and it’s National Tell a Joke Day. Here’s a grammatical joke, and it may even be true:
France’s greatest lexicographer, Émile Littré, was once found by his wife, in flagrante delicto, and in the conjugal bedroom at that, with their housemaid.
“Emile,” cried Mrs Littré, “I am surprised!”
“No, my dear,” replied the adulterous lexicographer calmly. “You are astonished. It is WE who are surprised.”
Here’s another joke (it can stand alone without the photo):
Senior Trump administration officials have doubled down on economic pressure in the fight with Iran, making lower oil prices a top war aim and vowing unprecedented financial sanctions that would force Tehran to reopen the Strait of Hormuz.
Iran late Thursday attacked two United Arab Emirates ships in the strait, Emirati officials said.
With those strikes, Iran is signaling that it is impervious to more economic sanctions and is willing to take the military initiative even when President Trump appears reluctant to return to a shooting war. With Trump relying more on the Navy’s blockade of Iranian ports as financial pressure on Tehran, Iran’s leaders are trying to show they won’t relent and will keep the strait closed until energy prices force the U.S. to back off, analysts said.
“Tehran has drawn a simple lesson from every game of chicken with Washington: Hold your nerve long enough, and America swerves first,” said Ali Vaez, the International Crisis Group’s deputy program director for the Middle East and North Africa. “For a system that believes it is fighting for survival…existential threats tend to harden resolve, not impose a price ceiling on resistance.”
Washington this week indicated it would slap new restrictions on Iran’s economy in the coming days. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said it would be a “one-two punch” along with the U.S. naval blockade of Iranian ports.
The efforts by both sides to inflict economic damage on each other put them further from the diplomatic off-ramp they appeared to reach with the deal in June. That agreement set out financial rewards for Tehran if it reopened the strait and entered serious negotiations on its nuclear program.
There’s one more thing:
While Iran is suffering mounting economic pain, it is shifting into a survival economy designed to endure it. Tehran, which has endured years of sanctions, is pushing more of the burden onto households by rationing fuel and electricity, restricting scarce foreign currency and cutting investment while preserving essential imports and state resources.
Unless Trump takes some military action and stops with the sanction stuff, he is going to lose this war. Iran will neither allow the Strait of Hormuz to go back to the way it was before the war, nor promise (and take action) to stop trying to make nuclear weapons.
*In light of the U.S. aircraft carrier Abraham Lincoln leaving the Middle East after reports of poor maintenance, food, and facilities, now Trump has stuck his nose into the design of new U.S. aircraft carriers, and it’s a nose-sticking that will be expensive and perhaps injurious to carriers themselves:
The U.S. Navy is considering a major redesign of its new aircraft carriers to better match President Donald Trump’s preferred aesthetic for the warships, according to seven current and former U.S. officials familiar with the matter.
The service isevaluating the feasibility of moving the multistory tower that acts as the carrier’s command center farther forward, toward the middle of the ship, to resemble older vessels, the officials said. The review, which has not been previously reported, is in response to Trump’s concerns about the “look” of the new Ford-class ships, where the tower is near the rear, these people said.
The timing and extent of the Navy’s evaluation is unclear, with current and former officials cautioning that the service was concerned that such a change would require significant time and money. Like others, they spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss a sensitive situation.
. . .The U.S. Navy is considering a major redesign of its new aircraft carriers to better match President Donald Trump’s preferred aesthetic for the warships, according to seven current and former U.S. officials familiar with the matter.
The service isevaluating the feasibility of moving the multistory tower that acts as the carrier’s command center farther forward, toward the middle of the ship, to resemble older vessels, the officials said. The review, which has not been previously reported, is in response to Trump’s concerns about the “look” of the new Ford-class ships, where the tower is near the rear, these people said.
The timing and extent of the Navy’s evaluation is unclear, with current and former officials cautioning that the service was concerned that such a change would require significant time and money. Like others, they spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss a sensitive situation.
. . .Relocating the island would be “a major redesign,” said Bryan Clark, a former Navy officer who studies the service at the Hudson Institute, a right-leaning think tank in Washington. Such an alteration to the carrier’s layout, he said, would affect the ship’s buoyancy and weight and come at a significant cost.
“You could change it,” he added, “but it’s very disruptive.”
Here we have the man who’s destroyed a wing of the White House to build a ballroom, who’s designing a triumphal arch that will ruin the entry to Wsshington from Virginia, and who renamed the Kennedy center (or rather forced others to do so). Now he wants to aircraft carriers to be redesigned to look like ones in World War II. That will not only cost a gazillion sollars, but will, as the officer above says, affect the ship’s weight and buoyancy. It seems to be infinitely preferable to let the ship designers design the ships.
I’ve been watching the signs that Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez may be considering a bid for president for over a year. She spoke about foreign policy at the Munich Security Conference in February. A few months later, she brandished her organizer street cred with a visit to a rural Georgia community fighting a data center. She is among the astonishingly few big-name Democrats embracing data center resistance, a rare point of bipartisan agreement in a divided electorate.
This week she all but soft-launched the presidential bid so many of us have been expecting, with a video series about freezing her eggs. The rollout — personal, confessional and intimate — had all the social media savvy that made her a political star. It also gets ahead of the inevitable questions about how, or if, she will have children. In short, Ocasio-Cortez has crafted a political message in which the form andcontent suggest that she will run as a woman but unlike how every woman before her was forced to run.
To be a viable potential presidential candidate is no small feat for any woman, much less a young, attractive woman without a political dynasty. Were she to formally declare a presidential bid, she would be one of the youngest and most progressive people to do it. She can run. But can she win?
To say women haven’t had an easy path to presidential power would be an understatement.
. . . Hillary Clinton was both too unfathomable (a first lady who wanted more) and too well known (saddled with her husband’s scandals and positions). Kamala Harris was, alternately, too novel (a mixed-race Black woman) and too much like the same old (a capitalist hawk). They each werecondemned as too uncharismatic to overcomea culture that is supremely suspicious of women who want, pursue and hold power. The ambition that brought them within reach of the of the presidency was a trap that ensured they couldn’t win it.
But these are different times. Ocasio-Cortez is a different woman, and Americans love to turn to women when the house is burning down. Social scientists call it the glass cliff — the phenomenon in which women are recruited to lead failing companies. President Trump’s businessman brand of governance has many Americans feeling this nation is failing. I suppose the dumpster fire of climate denialism, political corruption and general scamminess of, well, everything would be dire enough circumstances to make a female president possible.
In particular, Democrats — whom you might expect to be wary of placing another female candidate before the American public — are facinga political disaster of their own making. Americans are primed for an anti-incumbent electoral wave. They want an alternative to Trump’s MAGA-dominated Republican Party, but a lot of them indicate they would have to hold their nose to vote for mainstream Democrats.
Well, there are many of us who would have to hold our noses to vote for progressives like AOC. She has done almost nothing in terms of getting bills passed in the House (she’s originated some, but they didn’t pass, and has co-sponsored some more bipartisan bills that became law), seems to spend most of her time either flubbing speeches and interviews or promoting herself on social media, and is unable to answer even very simple questions if she has to extemporize rather than stick to a script. As a progressive, she is a Democratic Socialist, and many of their policies don’t resonate with either me or the public (AOC will, of course, disavow the bad ones before she runs). She has no executive experience or foreign-policy expertise. Like all “progressives,” she detests Israel. What she has is big ambition, and it shows. As for electability, her progressivist views will energize Republicans, something we don’t need. And this seems batty to me:
This is why Ocasio-Cortez’s choice to lead her campaign intentions with a very public discussion of reproductive choices is so important. She is performing the preservation of her status as a mother for the public, creating the possibility that she would be a mother for the nation, even if she is not yet a mother..
Whaaaat? Where did that crazy idea come from? Who cares if a woman President has kids or not? Certainly not I. Nor am I opposed to a woman President; in fact, it’s time we had one, though she has to be qualified. That’s why I wrote in Gretchen Whitmer in the last election, and I’d be delighted if she were to run. But no, not Kamala Harris, who brings me no joy.
*A bit more on the death (likely suicide) of Jason Arday, which I reported yesterday. Although the police, as is the case in the UK, didn’t release his name, they noted that the deceased was 41—Arday’s age. And his family did issue a death notice. From the NYT:
Jason Arday, the former Cambridge University scholar whose remarkable rise to stardom was followed by a rapid fall from grace in recent weeks, has died, his family said on Friday.
“Jason was subjected to a campaign of sustained abuse” in the years since he accepted a role at Cambridge, his family wrote in a statement. “The campaign of misinformation was too much for Jason, who was a gentle man and who always wanted to see the best in everyone.”
The Metropolitan Police of London said that an ambulance was called on Friday afternoon to a South London residence connected to Mr. Arday after a report that a man there had been found unresponsive. The man was pronounced dead at the scene, the police said, without confirming his identity, in keeping with British police practice.
The death was being “treated as unexpected” but was not believed to be suspicious, the police said.
“We are desperately saddened to hear this tragic news,” Professor Deborah Prentice, the Cambridge vice-chancellor, said in a statement. “Our heartfelt sympathies go to Jason Arday’s family and friends at this incredibly difficult time.”
“Jason was subjected to a campaign of sustained abuse for more than three years since he accepted the role of professor at Cambridge University by those who would leave no stone unturned in their quest to undermine him.
“The campaign of misinformation was too much for Jason, who was a gentle man and who always wanted to see the best in everyone.
“We are in shock to have lost this amazing father, partner, brother, uncle and son.
“We won’t comment further at this point beyond asking the press to leave us alone now, and to stop the campaign of harassment which has been waged against Jason and his family for too long.”
The family is going along with Arday’s claim that he was abused and subject to a “campaign of misinformation” and “harassment.” While some people might have been motivated by bigotry in going after Arday, the fact is that what was uncovered were very disturbing allegations, and an autobiography that was at best exaggerated and at worst an arrant litany of lies.
But of curse the man had a family who loved him, and that is why his death saddens me. I cannot bear those who say he “had it coming” because of what he did. He was either mentally ill or a grifter, but either way he had a bad comeuppance, and that is a tragedy which triggered his suicide—another tragedy. He needed help and didn’t get it, but we can’t blame those who didn’t intercede. He is no longer at Cambridge; he resigned before killing himself. It is all ineffably sad.
*Finally, from the UPI’s “odd news” site, we hear about a hula-hoop record, all derived from a doctor’s diagnosis of obesity:
A Chinese man managed to spin 33 hula hoops around his body while suspended upside down to break a Guinness World Record.
Yan Yanjia was suspended upside down from playground equipment in Guilin, Guangxi, and two friends then helped pull the hula hoops over his head and down to his hips.
Yanjia was able to keep the hoops spinning for the time required by Guinness World Records, earning him the title for the most hula hoops spun while suspended upside down. He beat the previous record by 10 hoops.
Yanjia said he started hula hooping eight years ago as a means of losing weight.
“In 2018, I was diagnosed with fatty liver due to obesity, and my doctor advised me to lose weight. At that time, I bought a 2-kilogram [4.4-pound] hula hoop for exercise, and in a month, I went from 80 kg [175 pounds] to 63 kg [132 pounds],” he told Guinness World Records. “Of course, the main factor in successful fat loss is gradual control of diet.”
Yanjia said the next record his has his eye on involves spinning hula hoops while doing pullups.
“This exercise consumes many times more force than dozens of hula hoops upside down, requiring much greater core stability,” he said.
Of course you’ll want to see it, so here is Mr. Yanjia:
Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili puts things in their proper perspective:
Hili: We talk about everything while leaving out the most important thing. Andrzej: And what’s the most important thing?
Hili: Buying beef.
In Polish:
Hili: Rozmawiamy o wszystkim pomijając to, co najważniejsze. Ja: A co jest najważniejsze?
Hili: Kupno wołowiny.
*******************
From Stacy, original posted by the National Park Service:
From Masih, detailing two women who were killed for defending themselves against rape; she notes the insuperable obstacles, under Muslim law, of even mounting an accusation of rape:
Under Sharia law in Iran, to prove rape, a woman must produce four male witnesses to the act itself. Four. Male. Witnesses. If she cannot, her accusation becomes a confession. She is no longer the victim. She is the criminal, facing flogging, prison, or death.
To those who asked why Iranian women Marzieh and Reyhaneh didn’t report rape in court before defending themselves.
Marzieh Nayeri was forced to marry a man at 17. Child marriage is legal under Sharia law in Iran.
From Richard Dawkins via Luana: an infuriating exposé about how Cambridge University (yes, the school that hired Arday) is promoting creationism. This time it’s in the education faculty, and the anti-science, pro-creationist view is promoted, don’t you know, by “the Islamic Educator Learning Community (IELC), [which] is led by Cambridge’s assistant research professor of education, Farah Ahmed, a former activist in the since banned terror group Hizb ut-Tahrir.. It’s being done to placate Islamic sentiments, which don’t countenance evolution. Read the whole tweet:
Extracts from a further Spectator article (Aug 15) by Andrew Gilligan:
An academic project hosted by Cambridge University platforms creationism, the belief that the world was created by God in seven days. It promotes an academic paper demanding that schoolchildren be taught to…
From Jeff Maurer, who retweeted this saying, “Somebody should fix this.” The “fix” involved putting up a waning sign:
Someone made the really, really poor decision to situate the chair in nonstop direct sunlight, and the bronze doesn’t just get hot. It becomes literally SCALDING. Like today, a breezy 80°, you can’t put your hand on it for more than a second before >actually< burning yourself. pic.twitter.com/N1NI7lF8Oc
And two from Dr. Cobb. First, a whole show about the Beatles in one post:
The prologue is superb, and just how I recall shows like this in the 60s. Sitting up with my parents / elder sister watching some music prog like this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_TDL…
I wanted to remind readers of the “Roolz” (the commenting rules) for two reasons. First, there are some new commenters who should read them, as some people violate them from the get-go (e.g., calling other readers names or being generally uncivil).
Second, even long-time readers who know the rules should be reminded about the frequency-of-posting recommendation. Here’s rule number 9 (wasn’t that a Beatles song?)
9. Try not to dominate threads, particularly in a one-on-one argument. I’ve found that those are rarely informative, and the participants never reach agreement. A good guideline is that if your comments constitute over 10% of the comments on a thread, you’re posting too much.
The ten percent guideline is there to prevent people from commenting over and over again, as some try to do. Although I vary in how hard I enforce it, I don’t like to see someone posting, say, three comments out of the first ten that appear. Of course, as comments accumulate, the rule becomes less and less relevant, but be aware that if you make comments, they should generally constitute about 10% of what’s there at the time you comment. One way to avoid violating the guideline is to wait a while until comments accumulate, and then have your say.
Although I tolerate and sometimes like one-on-one discussions, they should generally be limited to four comments total (two each). Persistence in the face of fact can be construed as obtuseness, which is frowned on.
Oh, one more thing: please don’t leave comments consisting only of a link. At least add a few words about what the link refers to, or what it says.
I haven’t been able to post duck photos or videos for a while as I changed computers (orders of the University, which is a bit authoritarian about such things). Anyway, a crack IT guy helped me restore things, and I have some pictures and photos to post. More will be coming as I get up to speed. But today I want to show you how much my ducklings—or rather, Miss Duck’s ducklings—have grown. Today is their “monthiversary”, as it was four weeks ago today, on Saturday, July 18, that they hatched, and they first entered Botany Pond the next day.
Miss Duck laid five eggs in her nest on the ground, situated in a niche of the Student Union. I learned of her nest from a student, who reported it to me two days before hatching. It was bloody hot then, and I left a pan of cold water by her for two days. I hadn’t seen Miss Duck for the entire month she was nesting, and if she came to the pond for food or water, I didn’t see it. She must have had a rough 28 days of incubation, which is one reason I now spoil her and her brood.
Miss Duck laid five eggs, and four of them hatched. I took the unhatched one and put it under a heat lamp for several days, but no dice. The egg must have been infertile. But she led four healthy babies all the way around an adjacent building and into Botany Pond, where I first saw them early Sunday morning, July 19. By then the drakes had gone, and I had great hopes that this brood would stay until fledging. And—knock on wood—so it will be.
Here are the four on July 20, only one day after they came to Botany Pond. They were adorable. I treasure this as one of the best duckling photos ever. (Click all photos to enlarge them.)
They are still adorable but now, four weeks later, they are going through what we call their “awkward teenage phase”as they shed their duckling down and start growing feathers, In another month they should be about ready to fly.
They are all healthy and vigorous, and Miss Duck (named because we ran out of monickers) has proved to be one of the best duck mothers I’ve seen—right up there with Honey the Duck.
Here is a photo taken yesterday, with mom and brood sacked out on the edge of the pond after lunch. Miss Duck is keeping guard nearby, but is also catching a few winks (she doesn’t sleep for more than a minute or so before waking up to check on everything). You can see the mixture of feathers and down on the babies: they’re starting to look like miniature ducks.
I often wonder, when I see Miss Duck and her brood, if she feels a kind of happiness or satisfaction, or if she’s just acting according to her genetic dictates, and feels no emotion. We’ll never know, but I like to think that if her brood were removed or disappeared, she’d feel bereft. That itself indicates a kind of satisfaction with taking care of her babies.
Here’s a full and tired duckling. Note the stretched leg and the tiny feathers on breast and wing:
Head shot of the baby above:
And the lovely Miss Duck. She’s proudly displaying her conspicuous speculum (the blue bar on the wing feathers). Miss Duck is distinguishable by her long neck, her grayish color, and her dark black bill with an orange tip. I hope she returns next year. Her brood is very late (they usually appear at the beginning of May), suggesting that she re-nested after some unfortunate circumstance. She is not one of the hens who nested and came to grief earlier in the season.
I love to hang out at the pond after I feed them all (three times per day); it’s very meditative to watch the ducks, even when they’re sleeping. So many people walk by, see them, and pull out their phone for a quick shot, but I would like to tell them to hang around a while and actually watch the animals. There’s a lot to learn, and I’m often there to explain things. In fact, I get so many questions from visitors that I’ve though of preparing a FAQ sheet to give to people.
People have been generally well behaved around the ducks and do not bother them, so they’ve gotten pretty used to people. I worry a bit about that if they migrate, for it may marginally affect their chances of getting shot, but they’re sufficiently wary that my worry is not large.
Since I have no kids, my genetic legacy resides in the DNA of these mallards, and nearly a hundred others that I’ve helped raise over the years.
Welcome to CaturSaturday, August 15, 2026: shabbos for Jewish cats and I Love Cowboys and Cowgirls Day. Here for the Sabbath is a photo of a Jewish cowboy that I post periodically. As I said when I last posted it, “A rare Jewish cowboy, photo in the Eastern California Museum in Independence. The last time I went the photo was gone and nobody knew about it or even remembered it. I’d kill to have it”.
He looks like he belongs in a yeshiva, not on a horse!:
Sadly, there will be no Caturday felids this week, but I haven’t given up on the feature; I just haven’t had time to prepare a good one and, as you know, comments are few. The cat items will, I hope, return in a week in full force.
I also urge readers to send me in some photos for the readers’ wildlife feature, which is already critically endangered. Don’t make me guilt-trip you by pointing out all the work I do for your enjoyment, and note that there is little reciprocity!
Readers are welcome to mark notable events, births, or deaths on this day by consulting the August 15 Wikipedia page.
Here’s what we know about Mr. Mangione’s legal cases, and how his lawyers are handling them.
What charges is Mr. Mangione facing?
In his federal case, Mr. Mangione faced two stalking charges resulting in death. If he had not pleaded guilty on Friday, that trial most likely would have begun in January.
In state court, Mr. Mangione is charged with several counts, including second-degree murder, which could lead to a possible sentence of 25 years to life. That trial is scheduled to start next month.
Why are there two cases, and is that unusual?
The law does allow for someone to face state and federal charges stemming from the same alleged crime.
The federal charges were brought during the Biden administration, when the U.S. attorney’s office for the Southern District of New York said the state prosecution would happen first. But shortly after President Trump returned to office, his attorney general said she would seek the death penalty for Mr. Mangione, signaling that her prosecutors were moving quickly to trial. (A judge later dismissed two federal charges, including one that carried a potential death penalty if Mr. Mangione was convicted.)
From the moment Mr. Mangione was charged by state and federal prosecutors, his legal team had argued that being tried in both jurisdictions violated his rights.
“One plus one is two,” Mr. Mangione declared in February as he was led out of a Manhattan courtroom in handcuffs. “Double jeopardy by any common-sense definition.”
Legal experts, though, say that double jeopardy protections are not always clear-cut.
Now that he has pleaded guilty in federal court, his lawyers are expected to argue that under New York’s double jeopardy law, state prosecutors cannot try him for murder because the state charges stem from the same criminal act as the federal case.
However, the Manhattan district attorney, Alvin L. Bragg, could counter that the state murder case addresses a different harm than the federal stalking case, and that it should therefore be allowed to proceed to trial.
And that’s what I think the state prosecutor will argue; one case is “stalking with death” and the other is second-degree murder. These seem superficially like the same charges, but the prosecution says “they are different harms.” That may be a distinction without a difference, but the legal system will sort it out. For sure Mangione should spend a long, long time behind bars, and it would be a crime itself if he gets only a short sentence for “stalking with death” and the state case therefore can’t go to trial. It may be that higher courts—even the Supremes—may have to sort this out, as New York has special laws dealing with double jeopardy. Although Mangione is assumed to be innocent, if he strikes a plea deal he’ll have to tell the judge that he did the killing.
Luigi Mangione admitted on Friday that he shot and killed a health care executive, Brian Thompson, outside a hotel in Midtown Manhattan in 2024, as he pleaded guilty to two federal charges of stalking resulting in death.
“I shot Mr. Thompson in Manhattan,” Mr. Mangione told the judge. “I understood that my actions would place him in fear of death or bodily injury. I knew what I was doing was illegal.” Federal prosecutors said they would seek the maximum sentence of life in prison when Mr. Mangione is sentenced in December.
Judge Margaret M. Garnett accepted the plea and informed Mr. Mangione that he should expect to serve at least 85 percent of whatever sentence she gave him. Mr. Mangione showed virtually no emotion during the proceeding but answered questions clearly.
Mr. Mangione, 28, was not charged with murder in the federal case, which accused him only of stalking Mr. Thompson, who was the chief executive of UnitedHealthcare. He still faces a murder charge in state court, where he is scheduled to go on trial next month, but his lawyers said they had filed a motion to dismiss the state indictment because it violated his legal protection against double jeopardy, which generally prevents a person from being tried twice for the same crime.
The Taliban regained control of Afghanistan five years ago this week, returning to power after two decades and restoring an Islamic government that had severely restricted women’s rights.
In those few years, women and girls have been systematically erased from most public life, experts say. And, some add, the limitations imposed on half the population could hobble Afghanistan far into the future.
The harsh restrictions on women and girls are a return to conditions that prevailed the previous time the Taliban controlled Afghanistan, in the late 1990s. More than 160 decrees have been issued targeting women and girls, barring them from secondary and higher education and restricting their employment, movement, dress, speech and decision-making.
“No other country in modern times has dismantled the rights of half its population through law, policy and practice to the same extent,” the United Nations agency on women said on Wednesday. “At the same time, overlapping humanitarian and economic crises and deepening poverty are also having a disproportionate impact on women and girls.”
The official restrictions have reinforced social pressures, and many women say their communities increasingly press them to conform, a new U.N. Women report found, based on recent surveys. “Half a decade of escalating restrictions has narrowed where Afghan women can go, what they can do and how they can live,” it said. “The results are alarming.”
. . .Many Afghans surveyed expressed disappointment with the course of their lives in recent years. Still, women reported levels of isolation and distress that suggest a growing mental health crisis, the U.N. report said.
More than half of men surveyed — about 55 percent — said their lives were worse than they had expected they would be before August 2021, compared with 65 percent of women who reported a similar sentiment. But their reasoning was starkly different.
Male respondents reported frustration with a lack of economic opportunities, while many women also blamed reduced access to education, for themselves or their children, and rules restricting women’s jobs and lives.
. . . The report highlights the isolation many Afghan women now experience as a result of the restrictions. A vast majority of the women surveyed — 90 percent — said they must have a male family member’s permission to leave the house. And more than half said they went out only once or twice a month. Among male survey respondents, more than 95 percent reported leaving their homes daily.
The Taliban promised that women’s education would not be harmed when they took over, and I saw that as an arrant lie. And so it proved to be. Women can’t even get secondary education, and are.largely confined to their homes. There are two quotes I will add from the piece. First, “Afghanistan is the only country in the world to formally prohibit access to education for girls and women beyond the primary level.” The only country in the world! Second, ““The greatest danger facing Afghanistan today is not only that 20 million women and girls are being systematically erased from public life,” Ms. Ahmadi wrote. “It is that the world is slowly learning to live with it.” Indeed.
That is the saddest part. We must not forget the women of Afghanistan, and yet I don’t know what we can do about it except keep it before people’s eyes. Do look at the photos accompanying the article. Every woman is in a burqa. This cloth sack symbolizes the way women have been sequenstered and forgotten under the Taliban. And this is, of course, because of religion.
This autumn, when the student-athletes who compose the University of Michigan’s football team are girding their loins in preparation for Armageddon, a.k.a. the Ohio State game, suppose some freshman players make mistakes in practice. They miss blocking assignments, fumble handoffs, run the wrong pass routes.
Do we think Michigan’s coaches will respond therapeutically? If they emulate the university’s administration, the coaches will soothe their freshmen by saying:
Golly, to err is human, to forgive is to “curb the mental health crisis unfolding among college-aged individuals.” It is unfolding even among individuals who will not line up across the line of scrimmage from Ohio State’s stress-inducing student-athletes. As your coaches, our priority is to allow you freshmen to “acclimate to the demands of college and allow intrinsic motivations to guide personally meaningful academic journeys.” So, we will not respond to your mistakes with extrinsic motivations — e.g., criticism. We coaches are here to help you transition to academia. Thrashing OSU would be fun, but first and foremost we are “investing in students’ well-being and growth by fostering a culture of connection and collaboration — rather than competition.”
Granted, the quoted words do not sound like coach-speak from those responsible for filling the Big House, the nation’s largest stadium (capacity 109,901). The words sound like what they are, an emanation of today’s academic mind.
They are from the official explanation of why, beginning in autumn 2027, classes in Michigan’s College of Literature, Science, and the Arts will be pass/fail for first-semester freshmen, who will be spared the stress of final letter grades. The grades will be given but hidden. They will not appear on transcripts. And they will not be factored into grade point averages. The least surprising news from Ann Arbor, the self-described “Athens of the Midwest,” is that students like the new policy.
. . .The Chronicle quotes one expert who thinks Michigan’s change could relieve undergraduates of “undue” pressure. But how much, if any, pressure is proper if competition is regrettable, and collaboration and cooperation are aspirations?
And if the spirits of today’s presumptively fragile freshmen can be crushed by grading their work, will they mature out of this “formative” period by second semester? Or by senior year?
Other universities have or have had variations of Michigan’s new policy. Johns Hopkins University abandoned its policy when, the administration said, it delayed “development of study skills and adaptation to college-level work.” But delay is obviously Michigan’s spirit-protecting intention.
. . .Is it not possible that Michigan’s postulated “mental health crisis unfolding among college-aged individuals” is a self-fulfilling diagnosis? Tell young people that their professors presume them to be crisis-afflicted, and young people might conform to authority figures’ expectations.
And if “intrinsic motivations” are sufficient for learning, and are, as Michigan implies, somehow superior to dictated motivations, such as grades, supplied by professors, the university itself seems almost superfluous. Other than as an excuse for the football team.
The more I think about this policy, the dumber it seems. It delays for a semester the regimen a student will face, and then throws them into the same maelstrom the second half of their junior year. It is coddling students when they should be pushed to grow up. But that should have started a lot earlier—in secondary school.
*As usual, I’ll steal a few items from Nellie Bowles’s weekly news-and-snark column at the Free Press, called this week, “TGIF: For now, we polka.” Sadly, Nellie’s taking a break this week, this week’s column is really by Will Rahn.
→ Speaking of Abdul: Or AES, as he’s come to be known. Unlike Hong, he enjoyed the full backing of Bernie and AOC, who campaigned with him. He built his campaign around Israel (duh) and Medicare for All, which is the idea that a country that is rapidly running out of money for the current Medicare system will somehow expand it to insure everyone in America. (And by everyone, needless to say, I also mean all the people who are here illegally.) Much like the notion that Israel will somehow be replaced by a People’s Republic of Palestine, it’s all pure fantasy, the kind of thing you have to have attended grad school to be stupid enough to believe.
Anyway, AES, a stocky little landlord with a patchy beard and a lot of money, first came to national attention when he decided to campaign with Hasan Piker, the communist millionaire and Hamas enthusiast who plays video games in a suit, praises Mao Zedong, and allegedly (he denies it)electrocuted his dog on camera. Democrats, do you really want Chairman Dogzap to be your kingmaker?
→ A stupid new New York Times word: I love New York Times trend pieces. The basic idea is this: Find three people and/or one celebrity doing a thing that people have always done, and you can call it a cool new trend. Here’s one from 2011 on people eating chicken pot pie. Here’s a 2015 banger about people wearing T-shirts in the fall. And, from long ago, the piece that popularized the then-ubiquitous early aughts term metrosexual.
Now we have a new addition to the lexicon: Hobbyamory, which is basically just when single people have hobbies. Let’s allow the paper of record to fill us in on this hot new phenomenon:
[Some guy] is among a growing number of singles emphasizing multiple hobbies over dating. Rather than spending hours swiping and messaging on apps, these singles are investing their time, energy, and disposable income in passions like rock climbing, cake decorating, and cyanotype printmaking. They say their social calendars are packed, their friend groups are expanding, and their lives feel rich, with or without a romantic partner.
Wow! Hobbies! What a concept! And single people pursuing them? Stop the presses! Listen, as a guy who used to play a lot of Warhammer 40,000, a tabletop war game played with little space marines you lovingly build and paint, I can attest that there are many hobbyists who have never dated anyone. It wasn’t a hobby for cool, sexy people in the traditional sense—unlike my current, middle-aged-dad avocation, which is collecting Casio watches. . .
→ Speaking of lesbians: I keep hearing that the WNBA is falling apart. But what I find odd about this is for the first time in my nearly twoscore years on this planet, people are actually talking about the WNBA. As Peter Thiel reminds us, the biggest leap is from zero to one, and now all of America can name at least one WNBA player: the Indiana Fever’s Caitlin Clark. And then there are Sophie Cunningham and Angel Reese. The league’s been around for 30 years and it’s never been more talked about or more watched. It’s having its best season by just about every metric.
The “WNBA in disarray” narrative stems from the idea that the league is beset with fraught racial dynamics and the ongoing battles over transwomen playing in women’s sports. But it seems a win that we’re talking about the WNBA at all. Besides, I think these “scandals” have more to do with the people who cover the WNBA, who seem a little cuckoo. A USA Today columnist invoked the lynching of Emmett Till in a piece criticizing Clark. And Cunningham’s breakout year has, of course, had something to do with her belief that while everyone deserves respect, she doesn’t think biological men should play women’s sports.
The belief that people born male should not be allowed to compete against people who were born female is not a controversial one. Or, rather, it is controversial only among a very vocal segment of the population, namely radical activists and the aforementioned sports columnists. “Sophie Cunningham Got a Bitter Taste of Karma After Drawing Flagrant Foul in Fever-Sky,” read a Sports Illustrated headline on Saturday after Cunningham was clotheslined and bloodied on Saturday. (The publication, which had Cunningham pose in its swimsuit issue this year, later toned down the headline.)
Thankfully, the WNBA has put together a “task force” to address the trans issue and, potentially, solve the long-standing mystery of what a woman is. An answer finally seemed at hand. And then, Wednesday evening, the task force statement landed:
Today’s meeting covered a wide range of topics, including ongoing discussions on transgender athletes and the continued hate and vitriol directed at players online. We will continue to engage all league stakeholders in the coming weeks and months. We will approach these important conversations thoughtfully and in alignment with the values of our league. There are no immediate eligibility matters affecting the WNBA and we strongly denounce the bad-faith efforts to use these topics to demean or marginalize others.
Okay! No answer yet on what a woman is. . . .
Yes, Rahn’s items are too long and nobody, no matter how hard they try, can imitate Nellie. Check back next week!
Less than a minute remained on the clock during the biggest chess match of Bodhana Sivanandan’s short career last weekend, but to her, it was practically an eternity.
As Sivanandan stared at the board, with Britain’s women’s chess championship on the line, it took her all of 12 seconds to calculate the decisive move: a knight sacrifice that would result in her capturing the queen. Understanding what was about to happen, her opponent had little choice but to extend her hand and resign.
The only thing more stunning than the move was the age of the person who made it. At 11 years old, Sivanandan had just been crowned as Britain’s youngest ever women’s chess champion.
“I didn’t have much time,” she says. “But I had enough to see that move and look for it and make sure it was good. So I didn’t doubt myself.”
Since taking up the game six years ago, Sivanandan has emerged as one of the greatest prodigies chess has ever seen. She is already the highest-rated woman in England, and the sight of her toppling much older and more experienced men and women has become the norm. Last year, Sivanandan became the youngest girl to defeat a grandmaster in classical chess when she bested 60-year-old Peter Wells. She recently toppled France’s No. 3-rated player, grandmaster Marc’Andria Maurizzi.
“She’s an absolute rock star, regardless of the fact that she’s a young girl, and on pace to be one of the best players in the world, regardless of gender,” says Danny Rensch, Chess.com’s chief chess officer. “She has a presence of like, ‘I’m gonna kill you no matter what.’”
Sivanadan’s Wikipedia biography is here, and here’s a short interview with her. She is so young! And she’s so small she has to sit on a pad when she plays in so she can reach the board:
Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili seems to ask a silly question, but it isn’t so silly. Andrzej explains: “The flood that inundated the Sumerians was real, but it happened before biblical times, meaning before the ‘creation of the world’.”
Hili: I need to check something real quick. Andrzej: What is it?
Hili: Was that biblical flood before the creation of the world, or after?
In Polish:
Hili: Muszę szybko coś sprawdzić.
Ja: co takiego?
Hili: Czy ten biblijny potop był jeszcze przed stworzeniem świata, czy już po?
From Masih, another ridiculous persecution by the theocracy of Iran:
Authorities shut down a blogger’s Instagram page and opened a criminal case against her family for feeding stray dogs.
Their crime? A religious song was playing, a government chant used to fund religious pilgrimages to Iraq. They called it blasphemy. pic.twitter.com/tetqgkOsHu
What is “Woke 1”? Jeff Maurer discusses this, but I can’t see his full post on his Substack. Here’s what’s visible for “WHY was Woke 1?“:
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez recently tried to giggle away Francesca Hong’s old tweets by observing that “Woke 1 was crazyyyy!” People’s heads fucking exploded in response to that. And I get it: Woke 1 — which people called “The Great Woke” before Woke War 2 — was not a giggle-worthy event if you lost your job, were socially excommunicated, or worse. And now AOC — who was a four star general in Woke War 1 — is breezily laughing off the era like she’s looking at a picture of herself in low-rise jeans and a Mumford & Sons t-shirt. You bet your sweet bippy that’ll evoke a “fuck you”.
Many people have used this moment to ask: “What was Woke 1?” Matt Yglesias gave what I thought was a good definition, Idrees Kahloon, Dave Weigel, and Michael Bahareen offered long-form thoughts, and Tyler Austin Harper gave us the view from inside academia. Personally, I’d define Woke 1 as “An attempt to use social pressure to coerce people to endorse far-left views.” Or, if you’d prefer a more jokey definition: “A reign of extremely polite terror carried out by people with ‘Be Kind’ stickers on their laptops.”
But I’ll let other people hammer out the definition — I’d like to ask: Why did Woke 1 happen? This was far from the first time that people have used social pressure to try to compel behavior — in fact, you could argue that a series of relationships designed to compel behavior is the very definition of society. Everyone would love to brow-beat others into agreeing with them — Woke 1 is now a proper noun because people succeeded to an uncommon extent. Why did that happen?
From James Maurer a good ad. Ken Paxton, you may remember, is running as a Republican for a U.S. Senatorial seat this fall, while Talarico is the Democrat who will opppose him in a race that looks tight.
This is a good ad and I’m guessing that it will become the template for all four-figure-pen-theft incidents in politics going forward. https://t.co/PT71XY5ozI
— We don’t deserve cats 😺 (@catsareblessing) August 4, 2026
One from my feed. This was on the news last night. I hope the guy didn’t hurt the octopus; it looks as if it was okay:
A Filipino fisherman reeled in more than he bargained for, when an octopus attached itself to his face, leaving him battling to free himself of the tentacled troublemaker. pic.twitter.com/yohImNTOUi
This Dutch Jewish girl was gassed to death as soon as she arrived in Auschwitz. She was 9 years old and would be 91 had she lived. https://t.co/wIeZ3mrS6V
Two from Matthew. First, the search for Amelia Earhart continues:
TIL: This October, Purdue University is finally going to send its expedition to Nikumaroro (Kiribati) in an effort to definitively learn what happened to Amelia Earhart and her plane, which have gone missing since 1937.She departed Oakland in May 1937.www.usatoday.com/story/graphi…
Monkeys make interspecific friends; the article in Primates can be found here:
Monkeys make friends with other species, and that can tell us a lot about how keeping pets came about.Great article by @cyrilgrueter.bsky.social et al., reporting friendly primate interactions with a whopping 55 non-primate species!🧪🐒🐕link.springer.com/article/10.1…
This is the end of a sad story, and of a life. The BBC (click screenshot below) announced that former Cambridge sociology professor Jason Arday was found dead:
Jason Arday, the former University of Cambridge professor at the centre of a plagiarism row, has been found dead.
Emergency services said a man was found “unresponsive” at an address in Battersea, south London, on Friday afternoon.
Metropolitan Police officers were called by the London Ambulance Service. A 41-year-old man was pronounced dead at the scene and his next of kin have been informed, the force said.
Arday resigned as a Cambridge professor of sociology of education last week after allegations of plagiarism and questions about some of his achievements. He had denied the claims.
In a statement, the Met Police said: “At this time his death is being treated as unexpected, but is not believed to be suspicious.”
Cambridge University vice-chancellor Professor Deborah Prentice said: “We are desperately saddened to hear this tragic news”.
“Our heartfelt sympathies go to Jason Arday’s family and friends at this incredibly difficult time”, she said.
The rest you already know—the revelation of the unbelievable assertions he made about his life that led to his resignation from the University of Cambridge, with ongoing academic and journalistic investigations.
This is almost surely a suicide, with Arday deciding he no longer wanted to live in the face of humiliation now and more to come..
It is very sad, and I suspect that he could have cobbled together some kind of existence had he lived. But it is not for us to decide whose life is or is not worth living.
