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.
Over at The Philosopher’s Magazine, Alex Byrne (a professor at MIT who works in part on gender and sex), has written a tale of rejection that’s both amusing (in how it’s written) and depressing (in what it says).
Alex was invited to write a book review for Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews, an online site that publishes only reviews of philosophy books. Because reviews are invited (sometimes after a prospective reviewer offers to write one), they are rarely if ever rejected.
But not so with Byrne. Because he wrote a critical but not nasty review of a book on gender by a trans-identified male, Alex’s contribution was rejected—without the site even giving him an explanation.
Click the screenshot below to read Alex’s sad tale. Actually, it’s not really sad because his review will be published elsewhere, and this rejection does him no profesional damage. But the way he was treated reflects yet another academic taboo like the one I discussed in the last post. In this case, the taboo involves saying anything critical about gender science or, in this case, philosophy, particularly about a book written by a trans person.
Some excerpts:
last October, I saw that Rach Cosker-Rowland’s Gender Identity: What It Is and Why It Matters had just come out with Oxford University Press. “Philosophically powerful,” “excellent, important, and timely,” and “fascinating, well-argued,” according to blurbs from well-known philosophers who work in this area. Timely, for sure. I thought reviewing Cosker-Rowland’s effort myself would be worthwhile, since I’ve written extensively on gender identity, in my 2023 bookTrouble with Gender and other places.
Many readers will be aware that the topic of sex and gender has not showcased philosophers on their best behavior. It is almost ten years since Rebecca Tuvel was dogpiled by colleagues for writing about transracialism, and—incredibly—things went downhill from there. Dissenters from mainstream thought in feminist philosophy have been subjected to name-calling, no-platforming and other extraordinarily unprofessional tactics. As a minor player in this drama, I have had OUP renege on a contracted book and an invited OUP handbook chapter on pronouns rejected. My recent involvement in the Health and Human Services review of treatment for pediatric gender dysphoria has done little for my popularity among some philosophers.
I was not hopeful, then, that an invitation to review Cosker-Rowland’s book would spontaneously arrive. But NDPR welcomes “proposals for reviews from suitably qualified reviewers” (see above), and I had reviewed three times for them before. So, I emailed the managing editor in October. I was pleasantly surprised when Kirsten Anderson wrote back to me in December, “Good news! After consulting with the board about it, we’ve decided to move forward with your review.” OUP and NDPR were keen to get the book to me—I received a hard copy from both, and OUP also sent a digital version.
By mid-January I had finished, and sent the review to Anderson with the following note:
Review attached. It’s a big and complicated book but mindful of your guidelines I tried to keep the main text as short as I could—it’s a little over 2200 words. However, the review is very critical, and (again mindful of your guidelines) I need to give reasons for the negative evaluation, so I put a lot of the supporting evidence in the lengthy endnotes.
To which she replied:
Thanks for the review and the extra explanation! Your review will now go through the standard process, starting with being vetted by a board member covering the relevant area. If the length is a problem, I’ll let the board member weigh in along with any other revision requests that may arise. Otherwise, it’ll go straight to copyediting. After that, it’ll be published.
As I said, Alex’s review was not nasty but it was critical (there’s a link below), and he found a number of simple errors that Cosker-Rowland made. Here’s one:
I kept it clean and the overall tone was well within the Overton window for philosophy book reviews, which (as noted at the beginning) is wide. Terrible arguments in philosophy are common; more remarkable was Gender Identity’s slapdash scholarship and glaring factual mistakes. Here’s one example (from the review’s lengthy endnotes):
Gender Identity would have greatly benefited from fact checking. One particularly egregious error is the allegation that “in March 2023 there was a rally outside the Victorian Parliament in Melbourne at which neo-Nazis and gender critical feminists campaigned against trans rights and held up banners proclaiming that trans women are perverts and paedophiles” (158). The two groups did not campaign together and the feminists held up no such banners. The feminists’ rally, including banners and placards, can be seen in one of Cosker-Rowland’s own citations, Keen 2023. Cosker-Rowland even manages to misdescribe the neo-Nazis: their sole banner read “Destroy Paedo Freaks” (Deeming v Pesutto 2024: para. 100); although hardly well-disposed towards transgender people, whether the neo-Nazis meant to accuse them of pedophilia is not clear (para. 114).
I documented some other obvious errors and scholarly lapses in the review—by no means all the ones I noticed. “OUP should note,” I wrote, “that quality control in this area of philosophy is not working.”
Let’s reflect on Cosker-Rowland’s claim about the Melbourne rally for a moment. As a footnote in Gender Identity confirms, she knows that the gender-critical philosopher Holly Lawford-Smith was at the event. Cosker-Rowland believes, then, that Lawford-Smith, a philosophy professor employed by Melbourne University and an OUP author, is happy to attend—indeed, speak at—a rally at which fellow-feminists joined forces with neo-Nazis, both holding grotesque banners about trans women and pedophilia. Perhaps Lawford-Smith waved one of these banners herself! No one with a minimal hold on reality would find this remotely credible. Even more astounding is how this managed to get by the OUP editor and multiple referees—it’s not buried in a footnote, but is in the main text.
He found other errors that he didn’t mention in the review but gives in this piece (you can see his entire review here, in Philosophy & Public Affairs). Here’s Byrne’s summing up given in the last two sentences of his review:
Back in the day, we knew what it was to be transsexual. Transsexuality’s contemporary descendant, being transgender, is decidedly more nebulous and deserves an explanation. Gender identity as Cosker-Rowland conceives of it is of no help, and neither is obstetrical paperwork.
Some weeks after submitting the review to Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews, Byrne got a rejection that said only that the journal site was “not moving forward” with publication. No reasons were given. Alex wrote back to the editor asking if they would be so kind as to answer two questions:
1. Who was the board member who initially vetted my review? This is not blind reviewing, I take it. The board member knew who wrote the review. Seems only fair that I should know the identity of the board member. If the board member had reasonable concerns, then there should be no objection to making everything transparent.
2. What, exactly, was the reason why you have decided not to publish the review?
Well, reviewers aren’t always entitled to the names of those who vetted a review, but certainly reasons should be given for a rejection. None were, except that one board member declined to vet Alex’s piece and the other “recommended strongly that it be rejected outright.” That was the only feedback he got. Byrne isn’t moaning about this, but his essay does have a serious point about the infection of the publication process in his field by ideology:
The philosophy profession has shown itself to be an institution of fragile integrity when put to the test. One can only hope spines will eventually stiffen, and academic law and order is restored. Meantime, we cannot solely rely on the fortitude of Philosophy & Public Affairs. I suggest that the Journal of Controversial Ideas starts publishing book reviews.
My friend the Belgian philosopher Maarten Boudry is writing about what he calls, correctly, “the most dangerous idea in academia”—an idea that can get you banned or even fired if you even suggest it. It is, of course, the notion that different “races” differ on average in IQ or intelligence. It’s such a hot potato that many people think that research looking for any differences should be banned or strongly discouraged. (This, of course, is because any potential outcome save exact equality among groups is said to inevitably cause racism and bigotry.)
I’ll leave aside here the idea of what “races” are, for Luana and I explained our take in our Skeptical Inquirer paper “The Ideological Subversion of Biology.” We can use instead either the notion of “self-defined races” (the boxes one ticks on a form) or, as Luana and I wrote, human populations:
Before we handle this hot potato, we emphasize that we prefer the words ethnicity or even geographic populations to race, because the last term, due to its historical association with racism, has simply become too polarizing. Further, old racial designations such as white, black, and Asian came with the erroneous view that races are easily distinguished by a few traits, are geographically delimited, and have substantial genetic differences. In fact, the human species today comprises geographically continuous groups that have only small to modest differences in the frequencies of genetic variants, and there are groups within groups: potentially an unlimited number of “races.” Still, human populations do show genetic differences from place to place, and those small differences, summed over thousands of genes, add up to substantial and often diagnostic differences between populations.
We discuss some differences between populations and self-diagnosed “races” that are known. There are also known differences in IQ, but the taboo question is whether any of those difference reside in the genes. On this subject I, like Maarten, am agnostic, as I simply don’t know the literature well enough (and am not sufficiently interested in it) to form an opinion.
Click on the screenshot below to read Maarten’s take:
Maarten was impelled to write the piece because one of his colleagues at Ghent University, Nathan Cofnas, is in big trouble because he’s promoted the most inflammatory version of The Forbidden Question: that a substantial portion of the differences in IQ between American blacks and whites (a phenotypic difference of about 15 points) is genetic:
My guest Han van der Maas, a renowned intelligence researcher at the University of Amsterdam, explained that individual IQ differences are highly heritable, but that he does not believe in differences between ethnic groups. His statistical and methodological arguments (e.g. Simpson’s paradox) convinced me at the time. Still, he hedged his bets: future evidence might yet reveal such differences, and we should not try to cancel researchers who claim such differences are real.
Forty-five colleagues from my former philosophy department (and hundreds more in a letter to the rector) clearly think otherwise. They are urging the rector to fire Nathan Cofnas because he claims that the IQ gap between racial groups such as whites and blacks in the US—differences that are themselves well documented—have largely genetic causes, rather than environmental ones like socio-economic disadvantage or discrimination. He makes the same claim about the higher scores of East Asians and Jews (which exceed those of white Europeans, by the way). They dismiss all of this as “pseudoscience and racism.”
The question is whether Cofnas should be fired for his claim, and whether the research supposedly supporting it should be banned. I would argue that the answer to both questions is “no”, but researchers have to be very careful and sensitive in pursuing it. Maarten quotes the paper by Luana and me about this (his words indented, ours doubly indented):
Now, I perfectly understand why many people are shocked by Cofnas’s claims, and I agree that such hypotheses should be treated with utmost caution. As my friend Jerry Coyne wrote with Luana Maroja in their influential article The Ideological Subversion of Biology:
In light of the checkered history of this work, it behooves any researcher to tread lightly, for virtually any outcome save worldwide identity of populations could be used to buttress bias and bigotry.
Still, this clearly falls within the scope of academic freedom. If you are not prepared to extend academic freedom to ideas you fiercely disagree with, you do not really believe in academic freedom.
In light of calls for Cofnas’s firing, a number of people have signed an open letter defending Cofnas’s right to study this topic (or any reasonable topic); the letter is at the link below:
A statement in support of Nathan Cofnas’s Right to Academic Freedom of Expression
Two separate statements have recently been issued by members of Ghent University, in Belgium, calling on the university to rescind the appointment of Nathan Cofnas as a postdoctoral researcher. One claims that his views “violate the university’s code of ethics and are morally beneath contempt”.
We oppose this attack on academic freedom. While we are not endorsing any specific claims Cofnas has made, we believe that academics must be able to put forward controversial or provocative claims without fear of losing their employment. Of course, other academics should be free to criticise or repudiate those claims.
The statements mentioned above do not even attempt to engage with Cofnas’s empirical claims. Disagreements, whether about empirical claims, ethical principles, or the interpretation of the ethical code of a university, should be settled through free inquiry and open, civil discussion.
We commend Petra De Sutter, Rector of Ghent University, for her statement to the Belgian newspaper De Morgen, that “As a university, we have a responsibility to create space for debate, but also to ensure an environment where people feel heard and respected.”
We agree that creating space for debate is an essential element of a university, and that space for debate should not be closed unless this is a last resort to prevent a clear threat of lasting substantial harm.
Note that the letter takes no position on the data itself; it’s a letter about whether Cofnas should be granted academic freedom to do his work. As Maarten himself says, “As most of the signatories, I do not endorse Nathan Cofnas’s claims and remain agnostic on the issue.” Luana and I, along with 145 other academics, signed this letter, with some signers named above.
It’s a sign of the ideologically-infused and chilling atmosphere in biology that one has to think for even a second before agreeing with the letter. Now you might think that finding genetically-based IQ differences betwen populations might cause “a clear threat of lasting substantial harm,” but for reasons outlined in our paper, Luana and I don’t agree. There are potential upsides in such data, just as there are potential upsides in looking at interpopulation data on medical conditions (the goal is to help individuals, not to demonize one group or another). After all, we don’t even know how the data will come out.
And it’s not at all clear whether finding out that an interpopulation difference has genetic causes will lead to increased bigotry. Since genetic contributions to being gay have been found, prejudice against gays has decreased, not increased. If you reject free will and accept determinism due to genes, physics, and one’s environment, one might see genetically-based differences as “forgiving,” for you cannot be blamed for the genes you get from your parents and that reflect long evolutionary histories.
Maarten goes on to show the difference in long-distance running abilities between Ethiopians and Kenyans on one hand and the rest of the world on the other (these are population differences rather than differences between the classically-defined “races”. Though I don’t know whether there have been tests to show that these differences are genetic (potential studies could include adoption at birth, rearing in different environments, and so on), I would be willing to bet that they are. But, as Maarten says, “measuring intelligence is far more complicated than crossing a finish line.”
Boudry adds that Cofnas has sometimes been brusque in his public pronouncements about his work, but this is not uncommon among academics:
Finally, what about Nathan Cofnas’s vigorous activism alongside his academic work? It is true that Cofnas is far less measured in his Substack posts than in his academic publications on IQ. For instance, his flippant way of expressing a statistical point about the racial IQ gap in academic achievement (similar to the point above about long-distance running) seems almost deliberately incendiary:
Under a colorblind system that judged applicants only by academic qualifications, blacks would make up 0.7% of Harvard students. […] In a meritocracy, Harvard faculty would be recruited from the best of the best students, which means the number of black professors would approach 0%.
Cofnas is also very combative in his attacks on “woke ideology”, and he genuinely believes only a “hereditarian revolution” can truly dismantle it—otherwise, we’ll be stuck fighting symptoms rather than root causes:
Until we defeat the taboo on hereditarianism, our victories will always be temporary. Every time we cut off a tentacle of the DEI monster, it will grow back.
I’m not convinced, but it’s a clever argument, and I’d encourage you to check it out with an open mind.
Finally, Maarten points out one harmful side effect of demonizing people for the kind of work they do in academia:
Calling for the dismissal of anyone who even touches the third rail of ethnic differences in IQ is also strategically unwise. Such attempts often fuel the phenomenon of “red-pilling.” When academics appear determined to suppress a dangerous idea at all costs, people naturally become suspicious: What are they trying to hide? The result is a further erosion of trust in academia.
And that is not just a made-up reason. When the public perceives scientists to be espousing a political or ideological cause in their research, their view of science is eroded. Have a look at this paper showing that when the journal Nature, in a first, endorsed a political candidate (Joe Biden) for U.S. President in 2020, it reduced the public trust not just in the journal, but in scientists themselves.
Do weigh in below, and because the issue is a sensitive one, you might want to answer this poll.
Welcome to Friday, March 20, 2026, and Spring begins at 9:46 a.m. Chicago time. And it’s World Frog Day: here’s my eponymous frog, Atelopus coynei, photographed by Jordy Salazar in Ecuador. Isn’t it a beaut? But it’s critically endangered! You can help hsave it by making a donation to Fundación Ecominga.
Readers are welcome to mark notable events, births, or deaths on this day by consulting the March 20 Wikipedia page.
Da Nooz:
*Over at the Free Press, Michael Doran (director of the Hudson Institute’s Middle East Institute) offers irresistible clickbait: “Trump can deliver a lasting victory in Iran. Here’s how.” (Don’t you hate these patronizing titles?) But here’s his solution:
. . . . Iran’s conventional navy and air force were never the real threat. Those forces were outdated, limited, and secondary to the Revolutionary Guards’ asymmetric arsenal: missile arrays, drone swarms, coastal batteries, and an advancing nuclear program. The route to decisive victory runs through its destruction.
The U.S. and Israeli strategy of decapitation has brought to a head a deeper transformation that has been underway for two decades: the steady conversion of the Islamic Republic into a system dominated by the Revolutionary Guards. The question that once defined the regime—who guards the guardians—has now been answered in practice. The Guards guard themselves.
. . .The succession of Mojtaba Khamenei only reinforced the point. Lacking the clerical stature or governing record traditionally expected of a supreme leader, he emerged as the candidate of the security apparatus. Credible reports indicated that the selection process was shaped, if not effectively controlled, by the Guards. What began as a revolutionary state is hardening into a military dictatorship, and the war has speeded up the process.
One major obstacle therefore persists: The IRGC’s missile and drone teams remain active and effective. They conduct target acquisition, threaten neighbors, and—most critically—hold the Strait of Hormuz at risk. China and India can still obtain Tehran’s assurances of safe passage for their tankers; nations Iran deems hostile cannot, and no shipping firm will take the risk. The drone and missile teams have not only survived; they remain embedded in a larger, resilient system that continues to hold global energy supplies hostage.
. . .Iran foresaw this war and built its strategy around a single ace in the hole: the ability to disrupt global energy flows. It dispersed capabilities, decentralized command, and built redundancy into every layer of the system. The route to decisive victory runs through the destruction of that system.
The first step is to break the back of the missile and drone teams. Yet this remains extraordinarily difficult. High-profile leaders can be tracked—through communications, intelligence penetration, or fixed locations—and eliminated. These teams are different.They are elusive by design.
. . . Until those teams are defeated, the United States cannot take Kharg Island. Seizing the island and controlling Iran’s export infrastructure would be the most elegant end to the war. It would sever Iran’s role as an energy supplier to China and, more importantly, starve the regime of revenue. If Donald Trump arrived in Beijing with Kharg Island in American hands, he would not be negotiating at gunpoint—but he would be close.
But Marines cannot conduct an amphibious landing on Kharg unless the missile and drone threat is suppressed. Otherwise, they would be exposed to sustained attack from shore-based systems and mobile launch teams. The United States would also have to push back Iranian forces along the coast opposite the island and along the Strait of Hormuz, creating a buffer zone deep enough to prevent interdiction.
. . . The United States and Israel will be marching toward decisive victory only when they break the back of the IRGC’s system—its missile and drone teams. Anything short of that will fail to impress Xi Jinping. The Chinese leader will see that, in a future war over Taiwan, he can still rely on Iran and its proxies to close the Strait of Hormuz to Western shipping while securing safe passage for China’s tankers. Until then, Trump steps off Air Force One with a strong hand only if that system lies shattered, not merely bloodied.
And that’s it: easier said than done. I believe Bret Stephens also said that seizing Kharg Island was an important step in ending the war. To do that, we need ground troops, and that means American military killed—in a war that’s already unpopular. But anything short of that is a loss. Curiously, China has not done much during the conflict, but I suspect it’s just sitting back and observing, trying to suss out what the U.S. will do when its inevitable invasion of Taiwan occurs.
*But “War Secretary” Pete Hegseth just said that there is no time limit for the war with Iran, and that we’re fightint to the finish, and Trump vowed not to put boots on the ground:
President Trump said he wouldn’t “put troops anywhere” when asked about moving forces toward Iran. Trump added that he told Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu not to attack oil and gas fields in Iran, a day after Israel struck facilities linked to Iran’s South Pars gas field.
Trump’s comments came as Iranian retaliatory attacks on Middle Eastern energy infrastructure have sent oil prices sharply higher. Qatar said missiles caused extensive damage at a major hub for liquefied natural gas, while Saudi and Kuwaiti refineries were also hit. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said the war in Iran is different from previous U.S. operations in the Middle East and that Tehran couldn’t be trusted to abandon its nuclear program on its own terms, adding, “We will finish this.”
Eaerlier [sic] Thursday, Hegseth added that no time has been set on ending the conflict and confirmed the Pentagon would ask Congress for more money. Asked if the funding request would be $200 billion, he said, “I think that number could move.” Such a request is sure to meet stiff resistance on Capitol Hill since the Trump administration largely bypassed Congress in attacking Iran.
This is a strategy for a U.S. loss. We won’t get regime change with our present strategy; we’ll only make the Iranian people more nervous. If the Revolutionary Guard or the wounded Khamenei Jr. stays in power, and we stop attacking, Iran will rebuild itself, including continuing to enrich uranium. That leaves only Israel to deal with Iran.
*Cesar Chavez, a hero in my youth for his work in improving conditions for farmworkers, has been revealed to be the Jeffrey Epstein of Grapes, a diehard sexual predator as well as a tireless worker for the rights of agricultural laborers. He founded the union that eventually became the United Farm Workers, and, for several years, people who admired his efforts, including me, boycotted grapes in solidarity with the five-year Delano Grape Strike. Now, however, we learn he had a very dark side thanks to a thorough investigation by the New York Times (article archived here).
Ana Murguia remembers the day the man she had regarded as a hero called her house and summoned her to see him. She walked along a dirt trail, entered the rundown building, passed his secretary and stepped into his office.
He locked the door, as he always did when he called her, and told her how lonely he had been. He brought her onto the yoga mat that he often used in his office for meditation, kissed her and pulled her pants down. “Don’t tell anyone,” he told her afterward. “They’d get jealous.”
The man, Cesar Chavez, one of the most revered figures in the Latino civil rights movement, was 45. She was 13. Ms. Murguia said she was summoned for sexual encounters with him dozens of times over the next four years.
. . . Ms. Murguia and another woman, Debra Rojas, say that Mr. Chavez sexually abused them for years when they were girls, from around 1972 to 1977. He was in his 40s and had become a powerful, charismatic figure who captured global attention as a champion of farmworker rights.
The two women have not shared their stories publicly before, and an investigation by The New York Times has uncovered extensive evidence to support their accusations and those raised by several other women against Mr. Chavez, the United Farm Workers co-founder who died in 1993 at the age of 66.
Ms. Murguia and Ms. Rojas, both of whom are now 66, were the daughters of longtime organizers who had marched in rallies alongside Mr. Chavez. He used the privacy of his California office to frequently molest Ms. Murguia, she said. He had known her since she was 8 years old. She became so traumatized that she attempted to end her life multiple times by the age of 15.
. . .The abuse allegations appear to be part of a larger pattern of sexual misconduct by Mr. Chavez, much of which has never been publicly revealed. The Times investigation found that Mr. Chavez also used many of the women who worked and volunteered in his movement for his own sexual gratification. His most prominent female ally in the movement, Dolores Huerta, said in an interview that he sexually assaulted her, a disclosure she has never before made publicly.
Many of the women stayed silent for decades, both out of shame and for fear of tarnishing the image of a man who has become the face of the Latino civil rights movement, his image on school murals and his birthday a state holiday in California.
The findings are based on interviews with more than 60 people, including his top aides at the time, his relatives and former members of the U.F.W., which he co-founded with Ms. Huerta and Gilbert Padilla. The Times reviewed hundreds of pages of union records, confidential emails and photographs, as well as hours of audio recordings from U.F.W. board meetings.
The account is heartbreaking: go to the article, for example, and read the letters to Chavez from Debra Rojas when she was 13, ending “Do you think of me?. . . I don’t know what to tell you, but you know I still love you. . p.s. Write me. Love, Debbie Rojas.” This is a case of a guy who, unlike Epstein, did enormous good but, like Epstein also had a dark side that was very, very bad. And remember that dozens and dozens of streets, schools, and institutions have been named after Chavez. Those will all have to be changed, and heretofore you’ll never see his name or deeds mentioned without adding that he was a predator.
Here’s Chavez in 1979 (he died in 1993):
Trikosko, Marion S., photographer, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
*The WaPo has an editorial board op-ed about how problems in France have led to increasing victories for far-right extremist political parties.
The momentum is with the radicals in France, and that dynamic risks repeating itself in America if politicians keep pandering to the extremes.
Parties once considered outside the mainstream gained ground over the weekend, as the country held its final major elections before next year’s presidential. All 35,000 of France’s towns and cities held municipal elections, and runoffs will be held Sunday in the 4 percent of them where no one earned a majority.
The hard-right National Rally — which advocates for more economic protectionism and heavy crackdowns on immigration — won in around 60 municipalities, up from 11 in 2020. Louis Aliot, the second most senior figure for the party, was reelected as mayor of Perpignan in the first round of voting, while National Rally candidate Franck Allisio forced the left-wing incumbent mayor of Marseille into a runoff.
. . .Many French find this radicalism appealing because they believe their low-growth, high-unemployment reality is a failure of free markets. President Emmanuel Macron won a convincing victory nearly a decade ago promising to open the sclerotic French economy. Attempts to reform the French state and put public finances on sustainable footing have been met with massive resistance, including large-scale protests after he increased the retirement age in 2023 from 62 to 64. Macron’s modernization agenda was largely defeated by opposition forces by an unstable left-right coalition.
France has suffered from economic stagnation during most of Macron’s tenure, averaging under 2 percent annual GDP growth. The pandemic didn’t help. Unable to deliver on the benefits of full-scale reform, a growing number of voters are now willing to experiment with extremism.
Both the far left and far right are proposing tried-and-failed economic strategies that will push France down the path of further decline. The lesson is that it’s not good enough to make the case for freer markets and a more open economy. Politicians need to make the case and deliver better results.
It’s curious that the op-ed dwells almore entirely on economics rather than immigration, and it’s unrestrained immigration, with the failure of many immigrants to assimilate, that’s moving much of Europe to the right. And yes, economic well-being ranks above immigration in the minds of Americans. But the Democrats have basically taken immigration off the table, and for all one can guess they seem to be in favor of open borders. That impression has to vanish if Democrats are going to take back the Presidency and the Congress.
*The UPI’s reliable “Odd news” recounts how a Florida cat was sent to a shelter to be euthanized for intestinal blockage, but it was a no-kill shelter and they operated instead. What they found was amazing:
A Florida animal rescue said a 6-year-old cat underwent surgery for an intestinal blockage, and veterinarians ended up removing 26 hair ties.
The HALO No-Kill Rescue Shelter in Sebastian said on social media that staff learned of a 6-year-old cat signed over for euthanasia due to a blockage, and decided to take custody of the feline.
The cat, named Midnite, underwent surgery and veterinarians were shocked to discover the cause of the blockage was 26 hair ties.
“Ever wondered where all your hair ties disappear to? Sometimes they end up in places you would never imagine. Like your pet’s stomach,” the post said. “It likely wasn’t intentional, but this is an important reminder that small objects around the house can be incredibly dangerous for pets. Hair ties, rubber bands, strings and other tiny items can quickly become life-threatening.”
The post said Midnite is now recovering from her surgery and is once again showing a healthy appetite.
A Facebook post from the HALO Shelter showing what was removed from the cat during the operation, and the recovering cat. And because she was named “Mighnight”, of course you know her color. The lesson is to keep your hair ties away from cat predation.
Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili is getting quite thoughtful—and sassy.
Hili: I imagine the relief Sisyphus felt watching the stone fall to the foot of the mountain.
Andrzej: I don’t understand.
Hili: What don’t you understand? He could now calmly, whistling, go down, eat something, rest, talk with friends, and then return to work by the decree of the gods.
In Polish:
Hili: Wyobrażam sobie ulgę jaka Syzyf odczuwał patrząc jak kamień spada do podnóża góry.|
Ja: Nie rozumiem.
Hili: Czego nie rozumiesz? Mógł teraz spokojnie, pogwizdując, zejść na dół, coś zjeść, odpocząć, pogadać z przyjaciółmi, a potem wrócić do pracy z wyroku bogów.
And two from Herr Doktor Professor Cobb. First, Hegseth violates the First Amendment. He even touts the Christian God.
Hegseth: "May almighty God continue to bless our troops in this fight. To the American people, please pray for them every day on bended knee with your family, in your schools, in your churches, in the name of Jesus Christ."
Banksy is a pseudonym for a street artist who became a famous and high-priced “establishment’ artist, all the while remaining completely unknown—until now. (Actually, the Daily Mail had correctly guessed his identity in 2008). Banksy started drawing graffiti in Bristol, England, and then began using stencils, which were quicker to put up—making him less likely to get caught. But he did get caught in 2000 for vandalizing a billboard in New York, and for that he had to disclose his real name. A spiffy piece of detective work published in Reuters two days ago, shows that the Mail was correct, and that Banksy is in fact a 50-53-year old white man named Robin Gunningham. He remains a multimillionaire.
His most famous work can be seen here: “Girl with Balloon,” showing a girl trying to catch the string of a heart-shaped balloon. It’s been sold in several versions, including one on paper that was deliberately shredded by a machine inside its frame while it was being auctioned off at Sotheby’s. Here’s the event, and the video—showing the preparation—was clearly made by Banksy. It was another of his pranks, but one that was viewed (and priced as) Banksy art itself.
And the explanation (note what the shredded artwork went for!):
On 5 October 2018, a 2006 framed copy of the artwork was auctioned at Sotheby’s selling for £1,042,000 – a record high for the artist. Moments after the closing bid, the artwork began to self-destruct by means of a hidden mechanical paper shredder that Banksy had built into the frame bottom. Only the lower half shredded. Banksy released an image of the shredding on Instagram with the words “Going, going gone..”. Sotheby’s said, “We have not experienced this situation in the past where a painting spontaneously shredded”, leading some market watchers to speculate the remains of the painting will be worth even more. Banksy released a video of the shredding and how the shredder was installed into the frame in case the picture ever went up for auction.
The woman who won the bidding at the auction decided to go through with the purchase. The partially shredded work has been given a new title, Love Is in the Bin, and was authenticated by Banksy’s authentication body Pest Control. Sotheby’s released a statement that called it “the first artwork in history to have been created live during an auction.” Love Is in the Bin was itself sold at Sotheby’s for £18 million in October 2021.
Note that the price shot up after the drawing was shredded! It is considered an “art intervention“!
Bansky is both political (and pro-Palestinian) as well as mischievous. And filthy rich. If you’re into art, or want to see how the mystery of his identity was solved for good, click on the Reuter’s screenshot below or see the article archived for free here. There’s also a short take at Entertainment Weekly.
It’s a long but fascinating investigation, and if you’ve been following Banksy over the years, you’ll want to read it. But I’ve taken excerpts from condensed summary from EW:
One of the art world’s biggest modern mysteries may have just been solved.
A new report claims to have once-and-for-all unmasked the elusive graffiti artist Banksy, who has been operating under complete anonymity since the early 1990s.
The investigation, published Friday by Reuters, combs through and eventually sets aside some of the buzzier theories as to the “Girl with Balloon” artist’s true identity. Is he the Massive Attack frontman Robert Del Naja? Or the street artist Thierry Guetta, also known as Mr. Brainwash, who was the subject of the Oscar-nominated documentary Exit Through the Gift Shop, which Banksy directed and — completely disguised, of course — also featured in?
After nearly three decades of speculation, journalists Simon Gardner, James Pearson, and Blake Morrison claim “beyond dispute” that Banksy is a man named Robin Gunningham.
. . . The final identification started with a clue from Banksy Captured, a 2019 memoir from Steve Lazarides, who managed the artist from the late 1990s through 2008. The year that book was published, Lazarides posted a photo from 2000 of an “aborted Banksy work” to his Instagram — a defaced Marc Jacobs billboard in New York City that was left incomplete after authorities allegedly arrested the artist.
. . .Police documents and a court file relating to the arrest that Reuters unearthed repeatedly make reference to Gunningham — who signed his own name at the bottom of a written confession.
Though police sought to charge Gunningham with a felony, he was released and the charges were reduced to a misdemeanor after posting $1,500 bail, temporarily turning over his passport, and completing five days of community service.
. . .This isn’t the first time Gunningham has been suspected as the real hand behind the mysterious graffiti artist. The Daily Mail pointed the finger at Gunningham in 2008, the same year he legally changed his name to David Jones. But suspicions persisted around figures like Del Naja, Guetta, and British politician Billy Gannon.
Banksy started out as a guerrilla artist whose quickly rendered, stencil-like illustrations with an often highly political charge garnered him instant notoriety. He has made work in innocuous corners of major metropolitan cities like London and New York City, but has also become known for provocative illustrations left in conflict zones like Ukraine and the Palestinian West Bank.
And, from the Reuters exposé, here’s how he was caught and identified:
In September 2000, Banksy was shifting from painting freehand to using stencils, a method suited for repetition and speed. But when he climbed up on [Gallerist Ivy] Brown’s roof to have at the billboard, he painted freehand.
The half-finished image resembled a billboard Banksy saw in Steven Spielberg’s “Jaws.” In his 2023 “Cut & Run” exhibition in Glasgow, the artist said the movie scene inspired him to get into graffiti. In “Jaws,” someone doctored a tourism billboard depicting a woman on an inflatable raft in the sea. The vandal added a shark fin and gave the woman bulging eyes and a speech bubble: “HELP!!! SHARK.” [JAC: The Reuters site has a photo of the doctored billboard.]
In a painting spree, Lazarides wrote, Banksy “doctored the Marc Jacobs Men billboard so that the model had goofy teeth” and drew a “giant speech bubble” that was strangely empty.
That’s because New York police caught Banksy before he could finish.
. . . . . at 4:20 a.m. on September 18, 2000, authorities found a man defacing a billboard on the roof of 675 Hudson Street. Because damages exceeded $1,500, police sought to charge him with a felony. Among the documents is the man’s handwritten confession.
Within hours of his arrest, documents show, the man was assigned a public defender. That afternoon, he was released after agreeing to temporarily turn over his passport.
The court file shows he would later post $1,500 bail in exchange for his passport. The felony charges were reduced to a misdemeanor charge of disorderly conduct. He paid a fine and fees totaling $310, and by early 2001, he completed his sentence of five days of community service, the records show. On the bail form, he gave his address as 160 E. 25th Street in New York, the location of one of Manhattan’s most eccentric hotels.
. . . When Banksy was busted in 2000, he wasn’t on the New York Police Department’s radar, said Steve Mona, the now-retired lieutenant who ran the 75-member vandal squad back then. The police had no idea they had nabbed “Banksy” because the artist had only recently begun employing the style and pseudonym that would make him famous.
Given Banksy’s celebrity, the name of the culprit now takes on significance. It wasn’t Del Naja who defaced the billboard atop 675 Hudson Street. The man who confessed was Robin Gunningham.
In addition to his signature, Gunningham is repeatedly named in court and police documents related to the arrest.
The Reuters piece photos of his signed confession, with “Robin Gunningham” appearing at the bottom, barely legible. The rest of the excerpts are from Reuters:
The Mail on Sunday had been right in 2008 in making the case that Gunningham was Banksy. In hindsight, Gunningham’s effort to hide his identity began falling apart with his September 2000 arrest in New York. Records of the bust existed and they contained his real name. The books by former manager Lazarides wouldn’t be published until 2019. But the photos and the details Lazarides included about the arrest enabled us to pinpoint where Banksy was apprehended and the ad he defaced.
There’s one more bit of evidence that is telling. In 2022, Bansky did seven famous murals in Ukraine (you can see them here) but there was no record that a “Robin Gunningham” ever entered Ukraine (remember, he had a passport). Reuters reveals that Bansky had since adopted the name of “David Jones.” This was verified by several documents, but Reuters isn’t making them public out of the desire to preserve some of Gunningham’s information, including his address. (The documents are, however, apparently available publicly.)
At any rate, Bansky did enter Ukraine at the same time as his painting partner, Robert Del Naja, and the crucial evidence was found:
On October 28, 2022, the day Duley and Del Naja entered Ukraine, a “David Jones” also crossed the border at the same location, according to a source familiar with immigration procedures. The source also told us the date of birth listed on Jones’ passport. It was the same as Robin Gunningham’s birthday.
According to the source, records also indicate Jones left Ukraine on November 2, 2022, the same day Del Naja departed.
I don’t know what will happen now: will Gunningham still use the name “Bansky,” turn out art under his birth name, Robin Gunningham, or use his changed name, David Jones? My guess is that whatever name he uses, he’ll still make art, and perhaps mysteriously, but now that he’s known, perhaps the work won’t be worth as much as it was when Banksy was a ghost.
Today we have part 2 of Ephraim Heller’s photos of arachnids taken on a recent trip to Trinidad and Tobago (part 1 is here). Ephraim’s captions and IDs are indented, and you can enlarge the photos by clicking on them.
Spiny orb-weavers (genus Micrathena) include over 119 species. What immediately distinguishes micrathena from other orb weavers is the bizarre armature of the female’s abdomen: an array of hardened spines and conical tubercles that give these small spiders an alien appearance. These spines have evolved independently at least eight times within the genus and likely function as anti-predator defenses, making the spider difficult or unpleasant to swallow.
The tropical orb weaver (Eriophora ravilla) is a large, nocturnal species. What makes eriophora ravilla distinctive among orb weavers is its strictly nocturnal web-building behavior. Each evening after dark, the spider constructs an enormous orb web with a main support thread that can stretch over 18 feet, then tears down the entire interior webbing before dawn. During the day, the spider hides in a rolled leaf bound with silk, invisible to casual observers. I was attracted by the shape and coloration of these spiders:
The genus Meri belongs to the family Sparassidae, the huntsman spiders. Huntsman spiders are characterized by their laterally extending, crab-like legs, rapid movement, and hunting lifestyle. They do not build webs. Instead, they actively pursue and overpower prey, relying on speed and ambush tactics. Sparassids are among the fastest-running spiders. Though their venom can cause local swelling, pain, or nausea in humans, huntsman bites are rarely medically significant. This handsome individual is perhaps Meri trinitatis:
Switching from spiders to their distant arachnid cousins, the harvestmen (order Opliones), the key differences are:
– Body plan. Spiders have two distinct body segments: a cephalothorax (prosoma) and an abdomen (opisthosoma), joined by a narrow waist called the pedicel. Harvestmen have a fused body in which the cephalothorax and abdomen are broadly joined, giving them a single, compact oval shape.
– Eyes. Most spiders possess six to eight eyes arranged in species-specific patterns. Harvestmen typically have just two eyes, often mounted on a raised turret (ocularium) atop the body.
– Venom and fangs. Spiders possess venom glands connected to their cheliceral fangs, which they use to subdue prey. Harvestmen lack venom glands entirely: they are completely harmless to humans.
– Silk. All spiders produce silk from spinnerets, whether they build webs or not. Harvestmen cannot produce silk at all.
– Respiration. Spiders breathe through book lungs and/or tracheae. Harvestmen breathe exclusively through tracheae, with spiracles located near the base of the fourth pair of legs.
– Reproduction. Male spiders transfer sperm indirectly via modified pedipalps. Male harvestmen possess a true penis and transfer sperm directly, a rarity among arachnids.
– Defense. When threatened, many harvestmen secrete noxious chemicals from specialized scent glands (ozopores) on the prosoma, producing a distinctive acrid odor. Spiders rely on venom, retreat, or urticating hairs (in tarantulas) for defense.
The harvestmen I photographed belong to the genus Phareicranaus in the family Cranaidae. Cranaids are stout, heavily armored harvestmen, very different in appearance from the daddy longlegs familiar to North Americans. I believe these are Phareicranaus calcariferus:
What makes this species notable for a harvestman is its parental care behavior. Field observations in Trinidad documented both maternal and possibly biparental care of young, a rare finding. Adult females were observed guarding clusters of nymphs, and in some cases, both a female and a male were present with young. This kind of prolonged parental investment is unusual among arachnids and speaks to the selective pressures – particularly predation by ants and fungal infection of eggs – that have driven the evolution of parental care in Neotropical harvestmen.
Finally, an unidentified harvestman:
Note: all of these photos were taken using a Nikon Z8 or Z9 camera, a NIKKOR Z MC 105mm ƒ2.8 VR S macro lens, and a Nikon SB-5000 Speedlight flash.
Welcome to Thursday, March 19, 2026, and it’s National Poultry Day, and you know what “poultry” includes:
Today we celebrate poultry: domesticated birds that are raised for their meat and eggs, and sometimes also for their feathers. Besides referring to the bird itself, the name may also refer specifically to the meat of the bird. Birds such as chickens, turkeys, ducks, and geese are considered to be poultry, while birds such as parrots and songbirds are not. Other birds considered poultry include quail, pheasants, and guineafowl. Birds that are hunted, known as game birds, are usually not included in the definition. The word “poultry” goes back to the Latin word pullus, which means “small animal.”
And so I’ll declare it National Duck Day, a celebration of wild ducks—ducks not raised for meat or eggs. And here again is the photo of the World’s Finest Mallard, Honey, celebrated in three Chicago Tribune columns by Mary Schmich. Honey had a big brood but also, in 2020, ducknapped the entire brood of another hen, Dorothy—and raised them all (17 ducklings) to fledging! (Dorothy, initially bereft, went on to nest again and raise her own brood of seven.) Here’s Honey and her 17 babies resting on the cement circle that used to be in the middle of Botany Pond:
Ali Larijani, Iran’s top security official, strolled confidently in dark sunglasses and a black coat Friday through a rally of regime loyalists in central Tehran. It was his first public appearance in a war in which he was a known target. “Brave people. Brave officials. Brave leaders. This combination cannot be defeated,” he wrote later on X.
Four days later, he was dead. Early Tuesday morning, Israel’s intelligence services found Larijani gathered with other officials at a hideout on the outskirts of Tehran and killed him with a missile strike.
That same night, Israel got a tip from ordinary Iranians that the leader of the feared Basij militia, Gholamreza Soleimani, was holing up with his deputies in a tent in a wooded area in Tehran. It was the sort of payoff Israel had been hoping for after blowing up Basij headquarters and command posts for more than two weeks, forcing its members to gather out in the open. Soleimani, too, was struck and killed.
Israeli and American leaders said at the outset that the war with Iran would create the conditions for Iranians to topple their regime. The killings early Tuesday——followed by the Israeli announcement a day later that Iranian Intelligence Minister Esmail Khatib had also been killed—were milestones in that campaign made possible by the fast-accumulating damage from airstrikes and a growing harvest of intelligence about possible targets.
With thousands of regime members killed—from top leaders to street-level grunts—Iranians are reporting that a sense of disorder is starting to take hold. Security forces are under stress and on the run as they threaten protesters to stay off the streets and direct strikes at the U.S., Israel and Arab neighbors across the Persian Gulf.
But where there’s good news, there’s also bad news:
So far Israel says it has dropped 10,000 munitions on thousands of different targets, including more than 2,200 related to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, Basij and other internal security forces. It believes thousands have been killed or wounded.
The advanced technology deployed by Israel and the penetration of Iranian society by its agents are combining to create the greatest threat yet to a deeply entrenched regime.
But decades of military experience show it is difficult if not impossible to dislodge a government from the air. And if the Iranian regime survives, it could emerge emboldened and more dangerous. “It will be a clear victory for the regime with both predictable and unforeseen circumstances,” said Farzin Nadimi, an Iran-focused senior fellow with the Washington Institute, a U.S.-based think tank.
I didn’t realize that ordinary Iranians could tip off Israel with the whereabouts of high state officials. How do they do that? Or are there Iranians spying for Israel? It is true that everybody with any power in the regime has a target on his back—they’re all men, of course—but it’s also true that regime change simply by bombing would be very hard. How would the people take control of their government. They’d need both organization and a leader, and they have neither, save for the son of the late Shah who is not in Iran.
*For those like me feeling down about the war with Iran, it’s heartening to read Bret Stephen’s op-eds at the NYT. Today’s is called, “For once, with fight with an equal ally.” That ally, of course, is Israel, and I’ve noticed an increasing number of claims that Israel manipulated Trump into this war, something I don’t believe. Stephens:
For most of the postwar era, the United States has gone to war with partners whose military contributions ranged from moderately helpful to mainly symbolic. Britain in Afghanistan and Iraq comes to mind in the first case. Germany in the 1999 Kosovo war comes to mind in the second.
The war against Iran is different. As of Monday, Central Command reports that the United States had struck over 7,000 targets inside Iran. Israel, for its part, had carried out some 7,600 strikes, according to a representative of the Israeli military. This may be the first time since the Second World War that Washington has had an equal partner with which to share the burdens of war.
That’s a good starting point from which to consider the claim that the U.S. war with Iran is really a war for Israel. Past administrations have, in fact, gone to war for other countries. In the early 1990s, we went to war in the Persian Gulf for the sake of freeing Kuwait and defending Saudi Arabia — two countries that couldn’t defend themselves — from Iraq. Later that decade, we went to war in the Balkans after Europe proved shamefully unable to police its own neighborhood.
In both cases, American presidents believed they were serving the national interest. But the military helplessness of our allies was a major factor in the decision to intervene.
As for Israel, the charge that the United States has gone to war for it isn’t new. . .
. . .Those charges always sat awkwardly with the facts. Israel stayed out of the gulf war under heavy U.S. pressure, despite being hit by Iraqi missiles. As for Iraq, Ariel Sharon, then the Israeli prime minister, told the journalist Nadav Eyal that George W. Bush was fighting “the wrong war.” Sharon thought Iran was the more dangerous enemy in what was then called the war on terror.
In the case of Iran, the idea that crippling its capacity to threaten its neighbors is some sort of purely Israeli interest is belied by every Iranian missile or drone that falls on Dubai, Doha, Manama or Riyadh, not to mention U.S. and NATO military bases in the region. In October 2024, Kamala Harris called Iran our “greatest adversary,” adding that one of her “highest priorities” as president would be to ensure that Iran never became a nuclear power. Was she, also, just another of Benjamin Netanyahu’s little stooges — a manipulated American politician with no mind of her own?
That charge is now being leveled at Donald Trump, never mind that the president first expressed a desire to thwack the Iranian regime in 1980, during the hostage crisis at the U.S. Embassy in Tehran, and repeated the point over decades. Whatever one thinks about the wisdom or the timing of Trump’s decision to go to war, it was, plainly, his decision — one for which he needed little convincing from Netanyahu, or, for that matter, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman of Saudi Arabia, who, The Times reports, is urging Trump to “keep hitting the Iranians hard.”
. . . What is true is that the United States is going to war with Israel, not for it. That’s something many Americans, MAGA-type conservatives most of all, often claim to want: an ally that pulls its weight, shares the risk and contributes meaningfully to victory.
. . .But the central point is that Israel, population 10 million, is behaving as an equal partner to America, population 342 million, in a war that the elected leadership of both countries believe is in their respective national interests. Whatever else that is, it isn’t the tail wagging the dog.
The killing of Larijani may help dispel the odd gloom that’s descended on a war that is persistently dismantling Iran’s ability to put up a meaningful fight, beyond the desperate play of seeking to shut the Strait of Hormuz. That, too, won’t last long, thanks to the United States achieving what’s known among war planners as “escalation dominance.” Good thing that, in this war, the United States for once had a bold and competent ally to help us achieve it.
The accusation that Israel manipulated Trump into going to war smells of antisemitism—the view of Jews as puppeteers who control Hollywood, the press—indeed, all of America. And the accusation doesn’t jibe with the facts. As far as the “odd gloom” goes, well, it’s because it looks like we’re in a war that is going to last a lot longer than we though, and against a regime that, like Hamas, is unwilling to surrender. Stephens does a good job here of dispelling the myth of Israel as a puppeteer, but, given the situation, I find his column oddly optimistic.
*More war news, but pessimistic. Israeli historian Benny Morris, whose takes on the war seem accurate and sensible, if not optimistic, has his latest take in Quillette: “War in straitened circumstances,” with the subtitle, “After nineteen days of war, Israel and America face a grinding conflict with Iran and Hezbollah, and there is no clear end in sight.” The long but well-worth-reading article is also archived here, so I don’t have to give extensive quotes. Some short excerpts (the piece is pessimistic):
After a fortnight of war-making against Iran and its Lebanese proxy, Hezbollah, the rocketing of Israel by the Islamists has come to seem almost routine. Here in the Jewish state, people have been growing increasingly pessimistic. Some are despondent. The widespread jubilation that characterised the first days of the war—which saw the surprise Israeli–American decapitation of the Iranian military leadership, including the assassination of Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ali Khamenei, on 28 February and the subsequent devastation of the Islamic Republic’s air defences and ballistic missile capabilities—has given way to a realisation that neither Iran nor Hezbollah will be easily brought to heel. We have reached Day 19 of the conflict and both adversaries are still proclaiming that they will continue the fight until Israel and America are defeated. Meanwhile, people in Israel’s populous centre around Tel Aviv and in the frontier villages and towns bordering Lebanon continue to live under periodic, albeit small, barrages of ballistic missiles and short-range rockets and drones, which continue to disrupt the economy and education system, and render normal life impossible.
Yesterday (17 March), Israelis had a moment of uplift when Defence Minister Israel Katz announced the assassination in Tehran of Iran’s strongman, Ali Larijani, head of the Supreme National Security Council, and the almost simultaneous killing of Gholamreza Soleimani, the commander of the Basij militia, which was prominent in January’s brutal repression of the Iranian opposition demonstrations. But such killings are unlikely to have any effect on the emerging strategic big picture.
At the start of the war, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu declared that the joint Israeli–American assault on Iran would pave the way for an uprising of the Iranian masses and the fall of Tehran’s internally tyrannical and externally aggressive Islamist regime. And should Hezbollah join the fray, he added, Israel would demolish or at least disarm the Lebanese fundamentalists once and for all. But the brutal suppression of the mass anti-government demonstrations by the Islamic Republic’s police, Basij militia, and Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) in early January, which claimed many thousands of lives, left would-be protesters afraid to return to the streets, while Hezbollah began rocketing Israel on Day 3, in revenge, they declared, for Khamenei’s assassination. On 9 March, the Islamic Republic named Ali Khamenei’s son, Mojtaba Khamenei, the new Supreme Leader—but Mojtaba has yet to be seen in public and is believed to have been seriously wounded on 28 February. In effect, Larijani managed the war. Meanwhile, despite massive Israeli and American bombardments, neither the Ayatollahs nor Hezbollah have even hinted that they might eventually concede defeat.
. . . For the moment, it is unclear whether and how Trump intends to continue his war-making. Given his mercurial personality, he could well order a halt tomorrow or the day after and claim victory. If the Americans called things off, Israel would almost certainly have to do so, too—though it would probably continue its counter-offensive against Hezbollah. But if, as appears likely, Trump is resolved to continue the war for weeks or even months, he could deploy Marines to occupy the coastal area of Iran bordering the strait to enable its re-opening or to attempt to conquer Kharg. Marine battalions are already on their way to the Middle East. But any such operation would run counter to Trump’s traditional opposition to any war involving boots on the ground.
. . . according to reports, the Israelis are suffering from munitions shortages, especially of long-range Arrow Two and Arrow Three anti-ballistic missile interceptors. Israel’s anti-missile defences are bolstered by one or two American THAAD anti-missile interceptor batteries. But America reputedly also has only a relatively small stockpile of THAADs. This may turn out to be a major factor in determining the length of the war, alongside the international and internal American pressures bearing down on Trump. Over the past few days, both Trump and Netanyahu have spoken of “two or three more weeks” of warfare. But at the moment it is unclear whether Iran will accede to such a timetable.
Morris is clear-headed and experienced, and a good historian of the Middle East. When he’s pessimistic, I’m pessimistic. But it’s in the nature of Jews to be pessimistic. Jewish pessimist: “Oy, things couldn’t get any worse!” Jewish optimist: “Sure they could!”
*We will have a vacant Senate Seat in Illinois (Democrat Dick Durbin is retiring), and there was a bitter Democratic primary for it, for whoever wins the primary will likely, given that Illinois is a diehard Democratic state, wind up in the Senate. Yesterday Juliana Stratton, the sitting Lieutenant Governor, won that primary. (I didn’t vote for her as she’s a progressive, but I did vote for a good left-centrist.)
Lt. Gov. Juliana Stratton won the Democratic primary race for Senate in Illinois on Tuesday, according to The Associated Press, riding the power of political and financial help from her chief patron, Gov. JB Pritzker, to prevail in a bitter three-way contest.
Ms. Stratton defeated two veteran members of Congress, Representatives Raja Krishnamoorthi and Robin Kelly, in a race marked by efforts from Mr. Krishnamoorthi’s allies and Mr. Pritzker’s detractors to split Black voters and hand the nomination to Mr. Krishnamoorthi.
I watched a lot of ads and read the stands of the candidates, but I didn’t see anything that looked remotely like an attempt to split black voters (Stratton is black). What I did see were completely negative campaign ads, with every one of them mentioning the promoted candidates’ opposition to both Trump and ICE I guess it’s more effective to attack someone than to promote the positive things in your platform. (I think psychology has shown that.) And here’s what I saw:
Ms. Stratton, 60, will be heavily favored to win the general election in deep-blue Illinois, where no Republican has won a statewide election since 2014. She would be just the sixth Black woman to serve in the Senate, and her potential arrival could mean that three Black women serve together in the chamber for the first time in U.S. history.
She has spent most of her political career inside Mr. Pritzker’s orbit, having won election to a single term in the Illinois State House before he chose her to be his running mate in the 2018 election.
The primary in Illinois to fill the seat being vacated by Senator Richard J. Durbin, who is retiring after five terms, was defined early by personal animosity among the candidates and Mr. Pritzker.
And in the closing weeks, groups backing Mr. Krishnamoorthi and Ms. Stratton unleashed large amounts of spending on ads — with some Krishnamoorthi allies trying to elevate Ms. Kelly in an effort to tank Ms. Stratton.
The three candidates had no major policy differences, only degrees of separation. Mr. Krishnamoorthi pledged to “abolish Trump’s ICE,” Ms. Stratton said she would eliminate U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement entirely and Ms. Kelly introduced legislation to impeach Kristi Noem, the homeland security secretary who was later fired by Mr. Trump.
It must be nice to be a shoo-in for the Senate, for I’d bet big bucks that Stratton beats whoever runs on the Republican side. Well, she’s not an AOC type of progressive, and for sure I’ll vote for her over whatever hapless Republican is chosen to lose.
A meteor exploded Tuesday morning north of Cleveland over Lake Erie.
The American Meteor Society received hundreds reports of a visible meteor from the Eastern Shore of Maryland to Kentucky; it was widely visible across Pennsylvania, Illinois, Ohio, Michigan and western New York state, too.
Though the meteor occurred during the daylight hours, it was bright enough to be seen for about 5½ seconds. Tens of thousands of people across northern Ohio heard a loud boom, and some people even felt the ground shake. That may have been the meteor’s sonic boom orthe sound of it actually exploding. A seismometer, or earthquake-measuring instrument, detected subtle shaking of the ground at 8:56 a.m. in Lorain County, Ohio.
. . .It’s too early to know the approximate size or trajectory of the meteor, or whether any fragments reached the ground.
This does happen from time to time, however. On Jan. 16, 2018, a meteor exploded over Michigan, producing shaking equivalent to that of a 1.8-magnitude earthquake. Fragments were found after the fact, and debris could even be seen on weather radars.
And here’s a news report showing several videos of the meteor:
Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili looks as if she doesn’t want Andrzej to be too skeptical. But look at that cute cat!
Hili: Careful, you’re losing your sense of proportion. Andrzej: In what?
Hili: In how suspiciously you examine reality.
In Polish:
Hili: Uważaj tracisz miarę.
Ja: W czym?
Hili: W podejrzliwym przyglądaniu się rzeczywistości.
Before some analysts in the West rush to rebrand him as a “moderate” or a “pragmatist,” it is important to establish who Esmail Khatib actually was.
I speak not as an observer, but as someone who has been arrested and interrogated by Iran’s Ministry of Intelligence and who has… pic.twitter.com/ZvKoEXt1jd
Luana found this from the world’s wokest physicist. What does “non-trinary” mean for neutrinas. And who ever said the binary is “inherently natural” in the laws of the universe? The biological sex binary is an observation, not a law, but it happens to be true.
Taking a stand against nonbinary erasure, astrophysicist Chanda Prescod-Weinstein asserts: “Also, particles have non-binary features! Neutrinos are non-trinary! The binary is not somehow inherently natural to the laws of the universe!”
Two from my feed. First, the care taken with Israeli strikes:
Israel’s intelligence is next-level:
4 IRGC commanders in Lebanon tried to hide. They booked 15 hotel rooms under false names, and used only 1 room. They disabled all hotel security cameras.
All 4 were killed today with a single missile to their room. No hotel guest was harmed. pic.twitter.com/eD30rfEzng
That cat intentionally dives into a pile of puppies because it enjoys the attention; every living being wants to feel loved. 🐾pic.twitter.com/bkMaL3SLut
This French Jewish girl was gassed to death as soon as she arrived in Auschwitz (89% of her transport met the same fate). Arlette was three years old, and would be 87 today had she lived. https://t.co/I0ygwZfRNi
An an adorable wasp larvae. It even has a cute little face!
Meet the king of the Weird Little Guys, the Butternut Woollyworm (Eriocampa juglandis), native to North America.They're the larval form for a wasp-like sawfly & they secrete tufts of wooly substance from epidermal glands to aid in camouflage.All hail the king!(📷: Robert Gromotka)
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