Why Evolution is True is a blog written by Jerry Coyne, centered on evolution and biology but also dealing with diverse topics like politics, culture, and cats.
It appears that the bonded pair of mallards at Botany Pond are here for the long term. Every morning they are waiting at the same spot for their breakfast, and in the afternoon they snooze on the rocks but swim to me for their late lunch when I whistle. Further, I saw two of our five red-eared slider turtles yesterday, swimming and sunning in the warmer weather. Here are a few photos and a video at bottom.
It seems that the ducks are residents now, and so it’s time to name them. As with last year, they appeared on the Jewish holiday of Purim and thus needed Jewish, Purim-related names. My friend Peggy Mason, co-duck-tender, scoured the Purim literature to give the ducks names (we don’t name them until we’re sure they’re going to hang around). The hen (not Esther, as I ascertained from photos published previously), is now called Vashti, named after a character in the Purim story:
Vashti (Hebrew: וַשְׁתִּי, romanized: Vaštī; Koine Greek: Ἀστίν, romanized: Astín; Modern Persian: وشتی, romanized: Vâšti) was a queen of Persia and the first wife of Persian king Ahasuerus in the Book of Esther, a book included within the Tanakh and the Old Testament which is read on the Jewish holiday of Purim. She was either executed or banished for her refusal to appear at the king’s banquet to show her beauty as Ahasuerus wished, and was succeeded as queen by Esther, a Jew. That refusal might be better understood via the Jewish tradition that she was ordered to appear naked. In the Midrash, Vashti is described as beautiful but wicked and vain; she is viewed as an independent-minded heroine in feminist theological interpretations of the Purim story.
That seems fairly appropriate given that there’s no other woman in the story save the heroine Esther, who saved the Jews.
A name for the drake was tougher, as the only other notable male in the Purim story is the wicked Haman, who tried to get the King to exterminate the Jews (Esther foiled that plot). And we can’t have a drake named after a genocidal maniac. Scouring the story and remembering her Hebrew, Peggy suggested the name Armon, which means “palace” or “fortress” in Hebrew. That’s where the whole Purim story took place. Fortunately, it’s also a Jewish man’s name, and short.
Ergo the hen and drake are now Vashti and Armon, respectively. I’ll have to do some explaining when visitors ask me the ducks’ names and how they got them. But it is cool that last year’s and this year’s ducks both arrived on Purim, though the holidays are two weeks displaced from 2025 to 2026.
Click the pictures below if you want to enlarge them.
Aaaaaand. . . here’s the pair together. I think they make quite the handsome couple:
The lovely Vashti, hopefully destined to produce this year’s brood of ducklings. Here she’s preening, sunning, and sleeping in the warm sun of Sunday:
And the regal Armon, swimming and napping:
We put five large red-eared slider turtles (Trachemys scripta elegans) into the pond last fall, and hoped they’d hibernate in custom turtle houses put on the pebble-y bottom. Apparently they did, as we’ve seen no bodies floating on the water. (These were five turtles saved and put in a southern Illinois pond when Botany Pond was renovated several years ago. I believe five more evacuees will come home again this Spring.)
It’s been too cold for them to show up, but yesterday I found a big one blithely sunning himself on a rock, stretching out his limbs to get the sun. (Turtles’ heads and legs are their solar panels, used to warm up the body.) Later I saw another one’s head above the water surface as it was swimming around. So we know we have at least two. Here’s the sunbather:
This is near the northern limit of the species’ distribution, as the eggs can’t survive very cold winters.
So we have our turtles and ducks: all is in place for a lovely Spring and Summer.
And a lousy movie of Armon and Vashti preening themselves after having lunch:
More good news: I’m told the duck camera, which has been re-installed, will be activated this week. Stay tuned for the link!
I have a few batches now, so I’m complacent (never happy!). Today’s photos of Costa Rica come from reader Rachel Sperling. Her captions and IDs are indented, and you can enlarge the photos by clicking on them.
In January I took my first (of many, I hope) trip to Costa Rica. We spent about a week in Manuel Antonio, on the Pacific Ocean side. We took a couple of nature walks in and around Manuel Antonio National Park, and we saw plenty of wildlife. One of these days I’m going to treat myself to a really good camera, but these were all taken with either my mirrorless Olympus or my iPhone camera, which are light and easy to stash in a backpack. I did see a couple of sloths – both three-toed (Bradypus variegatus) and Hoffman’s two-toed (Choloepus hoffmanni), but they were high up in the trees, so I wasn’t able to get a good photo of them. These are the photos I was able to capture:
On the drive from San Jose to Manuel Antonio, we stopped at a creek to view some American crocodiles (Crocodylus acutus):
Then there were these little beasts: the Costa Rican mafia, aka the Panamanian/Central American White-faced capuchin (Cebus imitator). According to our guide, these monkeys can be pretty vicious with animals their own size, and they’ll just riffle through your backpack if you’re not watchful. Someone had to be on guard whenever we went to the beach.
We went on a nature walk in the rainforest at night (with a guide), which gave us the opportunity to see a lot of nocturnal animals. Among them was the Red-eyed tree frog (Agalychnis callidryas):
Black iguana (Ctenosaura similis), at the beach at Manuel Antonio:
We also saw a coati (Nasua narica), which Wikipedia tells me are diurnal, but it was definitely after sunset and that is definitely a coati. They’re relatives of the raccoon, and our guide told us that a mature one can hold its own against a jaguar. This one wasn’t afraid of us, anyhow:
Back at our b&b, this Black-hooded antshrike (Thamnophilus bridgesi) came to visit me as I read on the veranda a few times. I think it’s a female, though the sexual dimorphism of this species doesn’t seem terribly dramatic. I did see her building a nest:
On my last day in Costa Rica, I heard a tremendous ruckus in the trees outside my hotel in San Jose. I looked and discovered that the trees (American oil palms —Elaeis oleifera —I think) were full of Crimson-fronted parakeets (Psittacara finschi). They were LOUD and they were going to town on those trees. There were too many to count. Fortunately, they quieted down after sunset:
Manuel Antonio National Park from the water. These little islands are bird sanctuaries that tourists are not allowed to visit:
Sunset over the Pacific, near Manuel Antonio National Park:
Finally, I thought you’d like these because they’re jaguar-inspired. We spent an afternoon at a village belonging to the Boruca, an indigenous tribe. They cooked us a delicious lunch, and showed us how they made dyes from local plants, and carved and painted balsa wood masks. The masks were first used to frighten the Conquistadores. Now you can buy them just about everywhere:
Welcome to another damn week: it’s Monday, March 8, 2026, and the ducks are still here. In honor of their Purim arrival, we have named them Vashti (the hen) and Armon (the drake). They are happy and well fed. It’s also National Meatball Day, so perhaps I’ll make a batch of bucatini with red sauce and turkey meatballs. I bet you’re wondering what the world’s largest meatball was. Here’s the answer, and it was big:
It was the biggest meatball anyone, anywhere, had ever seen—a massive sphere that tipped the scales at more than 1,700 pounds. Volunteers from the Italian-American Club on Hilton Head Island [South Carolina] had babysat the big boy around the clock for five days as it cooked away in its custom-made oven.
The aroma wafted through the air at Shelter Cove Community Park and prompted more than one passerby to seek out its source. A group of women trying to concentrate on a morning yoga routine jokingly suggested that it was challenging their resolve to live a healthy lifestyle.
But, no one was pretending that this huge meatball was in any way a testament to low cholesterol and a trim waistline. The whole purpose of its creation was to secure a coveted place in Guinness World Records. To do so, they would have to best the admirable efforts of an Italian-American Club in Ohio that had waddled into history in 2011 when it cooked a meatball that weighed in at 1,100 pounds.
And, now, a representative—an adjudicator—from Guinness World Records was on hand to determine if the Ohio record would fall.
Chef Joe Sullivan of Mulberry Street Trattoria in Bluffton provided his recipe, multiplied it 520 times and helped secure the staggering amount of ingredients needed: more than 1,800 pounds of beef and pork, 700 eggs, 250 pounds of breadcrumbs, 25 pounds of oregano, 56 pounds of salt and an equal amount of pepper. There was some Parmesan cheese in there, too, and some milk to keep everything nice and moist.
Here it is! (Watch from 2:16 to 8:53 and then from 11:00 to 11:52.) It weighed almost a ton!
It’s also Amerigo Vespucci Day, marking the birth of the Italian explorer in 1454, Barbie Day (celebrating her debut at the International Toy Fair in 1959), Commonwealth Day in the UK, and National Crabmeat Day (you’ll see some later today; we had one dish at the Next restaurant).
Readers are welcome to mark notable events, births, or deaths on this day by consulting the March 2 Wikipedia page.
Da Nooz:
*Obituaries first. The rock stars of my generation are dying off. The Reaper’s latest victim is Country Joe McDonald, who died on Saturday at 84 from Parkinson’s disease. McDonald wasn’t really a star but a one-hit wonder, but that hit became an anthem of the anti-Vietnam-war generation, “I-Feel-Like-I’m-Fixin’-to-Die Rag“, released in 1965 by Country Joe and his band, The Fish. It was a bouncy but biting song, and all of us knew the words, including the chorus:
And it’s one, two, three, what are we fighting for?
Don’t ask me I don’t give a damn
Next stop is Vietnam.
And it’s five, six, seven, open up the pearly gates,
Well there ain’t no time to wonder why,
Whoopie! We’re all gonna die
Here’s the song from Woodstock in 1969, starting with the “Fish Cheer,” replaced by another F-word:
*War news: the U.S. and Israel ramp up attacks, and Iran says it’s close to naming a new Supreme Leader. As I predicted (anybody could), it’s Mojtaba Khamenei, the son of the late theocrtic dictator. He now has a target on his back, and the oppression, terrorism, and theocracy will continue.
Fuel depots near Iran’s capital, Tehran, were engulfed in flames early Sunday after U.S. and Israeli forces expanded their attacks, while Iran tried to project stability by announcing that top clerics were finalizing their selection of a new supreme leader.
More than a week into the war, there was no sign of an offramp for the fighting. Both sides appeared to be intensifying attacks on critical infrastructure, potentially affecting millions of people across the Middle East.
The United States Central Command on Sunday urged Iranian civilians to stay at home, suggesting that the U.S. could strike densely populated areas as the Iranian forces often use urban areas to launch drone strikes and ballistic missiles. Iran earlier rejected President Trump’s demand for unconditional surrender, with a top leader vowing to avenge Ayatollah Ali Khamenei’s death.
Iranian state television announced on Sunday that the country’s top clerics were close to naming a successor to Ayatollah Khamenei, the ruler killed in the opening blow of the U.S.-Israeli war with Iran last weekend. The channel did not say who the new leader might be, but officials who spoke to The New York Times previously said Mojtaba Khamenei, the ayatollah’s son, was the front-runner.
Mr. Trump warned in an interview with ABC News on Sunday that whoever is selected “is not going to last long” without the approval of the United States.
I am betting the next Supreme Leader will be Ali Khamenei’s son, Mojtaba Khamenei, but I would be scared to death if I became Iran’s next leader. Look what the Mossad did to his father! Anyway, yes, this is going to last a while as I can’t see the regime giving up power unless Qatar gives the leaders sanctuary and the Revolutionary Guard surrenders (and gets amnesty). That doesn’t look to be in the cards.
American intelligence agencies have determined that Iran or potentially another group could retrieve Iran’s primary store of highly enriched uranium even though it was entombed under the country’s nuclear site at Isfahan by U.S. strikes last year, according to multiple officials familiar with the classified reports.
Officials familiar with the intelligence said that Iran can now get to the uranium through a very narrow access point. It is unclear how quickly Iran could move the uranium, which is in gas form and stored in canisters.
U.S. officials have said that American spy agencies have constant surveillance of the Isfahan site and have a high degree of confidence they could detect — and react — to any attempt by the Iranian government or other groups to move it.
That stockpile of uranium would be a key building block if Iran decided to move toward making a nuclear weapon.
With Iran in chaos from the ongoing strikes by the United States and Israel, the fate of the uranium and the options for securing it have become critical issues for the Trump administration.
On Saturday, President Trump was asked by reporters on Air Force One if he would consider sending in ground forces to secure the highly enriched uranium.
“Right now we’re just decimating them, but we haven’t gone after it,” he said. “But something we could do later on. We wouldn’t do it now.”
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel said on Saturday that the decision to go to war with Iran was motivated, in part, by the Iranian government’s decision to move its nuclear and missile projects so far underground that they would be “immune to any assault.”
The United States chose not to try to retrieve the uranium last year after the 12-day war in which Iran’s nuclear sites came under intense bombardment. Mr. Trump determined that doing so at that time would be too dangerous.
Any insertion of ground forces — presumably Special Operations commandos — would be highly risky. U.S. officials said that the air campaign against Iran would need to continue for days to further weaken Iranian defenses before any final decision on the viability of that type of raid.
You just know that this is from the NYT, which loves to point out problems for the U.S. while ignoring its successes in Iran. Yes, this is interesting news, but given the monitoring of the site by the U.S. and Israel, I find it inconceivable that Iran could get its hands back on that uranium. In fact, I doubt it still has the facilities to enrich it to bomb-grade uranium (over 90% pure), and I cannot imagine Trump striking any kind of deal that lets the enrichment continue—especially since preventing Iran from so doing was a major goal of Israel the U.S. in beginning the hostilities.
*If you want regime change in Iran, you can have your views bolstered by this WSJ column by a historian who heads an Institute of Iranian studies. He’s optimistic.
Everywhere you look, there’s another expert to tell you what won’t happen—what can’t happen—in Iran. Regime change is impossible. Never mind the mass protests of January; the regime has the guns and is willing to use them. Never mind the airstrikes on leaders and thugs; you can’t topple a regime from the air. Trust the political science.
Ali M. Ansari has a different view. “I’m a firm believer in what Hannah Arendt says: Revolutions are impossible before they happen and inevitable after they happen.” Prof. Ansari, 58, is a historian at Scotland’s University of St. Andrews, where he directs the Institute for Iranian Studies. His 2024 book, “Iran,” is the best primer available on the nation’s modern history. He worries that social scientists and international-relations types “have become so wedded to their templates that they can’t see” what has happened inside Iran.
“The vast majority of people are struggling. The political system is hated. The economic system isn’t delivering,” he says in a video interview. Salaries “no longer meet the basic needs of life. There’s an environmental crisis—they’ve drained the water table. And now, they have an international crisis.” That’s putting it mildly.
“Every crisis you can think of, the Islamic Republic is facing,” Mr. Ansari says. “People tell me, ‘Oh, but it’s strong and stable.’ Well, it can’t be that strong and stable because people are rebelling every few years, and on a scale the regime deems existential.” Regime supporters, whom Mr. Ansari pegs at 10% to 20% of the population, “are convinced they are going to defeat the U.S. in this war.” He pauses: “They are not going to do it.”
. . . This gets at the main problem Mr. Ansari sees with Western analysis: “We fail to give the Iranians agency in what they do.” When Iran’s economy is in shambles, the reflex is to blame U.S. sanctions. “That doesn’t explain why the Iranians have mismanaged their water. It doesn’t tell you why, well before the real sanctions arrived in 2011-12, they were never able to get any foreign direct investment into the country. Now, why is that?” he asks. “It’s internal. It’s the corruption, the kleptocracy, the short-termism, the opaqueness, the lack of accountability, the uncertainty.” Sanctions didn’t make life easier, he says, but they didn’t befall Iran. They were a consequence of the regime’s behavior.
. . .The regime insisted throughout on a “right to enrich uranium”—which “would have more credibility if they respected any other rights as well,” Mr. Ansari cracks. “We often think of the Iranians as very strategic thinkers, playing the long game. No, no. It’s different. They’re ditherers,” he says. “We ascribe to them too much competence. I do not consider what’s happening now to be the result of great strategic thinking.” He points to a “dogmatic ideology and a grievance culture, whereby they’ve taken a hit for their nuclear program and can’t back down.” In his assessment, by sheer stubbornness, the regime “basically decided to declare war on the U.S.”
The failure to see that, and so much else, can be attributed to the prevailing “Washington-centered analysis,” Mr. Ansari says. “We always see Iran as almost marginal to the problem, which is Washington.” If only Mr. Trump hadn’t done this or that, the commentators rage. But if there is now an opening for regime change, it is because U.S. policymakers for once were able to turn from the mirror and see what the Iranian people know well: The problem is in Iran.
Many of us will be very disappointed if the New Boss is the same as the Old Boss, if Iran continues its nuclear program, and if they don’t give the people freedom of speech, of dress, of education, and so on. What happened to Venezuela should not happen to Iran.
*Oy, a fourth bit of war news: Iran has attacked a desalination plant in Bahrain, a place where fresh water is essential. Iran continues to make more enemies in the Middle East! But Iran claimed they did this because the U.S. did it to them, but the U.S. denies it.
An Iranian drone attack damaged a desalination plant in Bahrain, bringing the war to the oil-rich Persian Gulf’s most strategic resource: drinking water.
The attack did material damage, the Gulf state’s Interior Ministry said Sunday. Iran hadn’t addressed the attack, but a day earlier Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi said the U.S. had attacked an Iranian desalination plant on the Gulf island of Qeshm. “The U.S. set this precedent, not Iran,” Araghchi said on social media.
A spokesman for the U.S. Central Command, which is responsible for the Middle East, denied that the military hit a desalination plant in Iran.
With desalination plants, the set of infrastructure targets being struck in the war has expanded, marking a new and dangerous escalation in a region where many countries have limited onshore sources of fresh water.
The Middle East’s abundant desalination plants, which remove salt from the Persian Gulf’s seawater, are the key source of drinking water for millions of residents in the arid region.
“It’s really going for the jugular, and in a major way,” said Hussein Ibish, a senior resident scholar at the Arab Gulf States Institute, a Washington think tank. “These desalination plants, even more than the energy infrastructure of the Gulf monarchies, are their Achilles’ heel.”
The Middle East accounts for more than 40% of the world’s desalination capacity, with around 5,000 plants feeding its water systems.
Bahrain, where the drone strike occurred, is almost completely dependent on its plants for drinking water for its population of 1.6 million. Israel depends on the plants for about 80% of its drinkable water. About 90% of Kuwait’s water needs are met by desalination.
The only country that can persist with deslination in the Middle East is Saudi Arabia. Bahrain does have an Army, Navy, and Air Force, but it’s not going to use up its military assets when the U.S. and Israel is doing the job. Attacking its water supply is probably a war crime given that Bahrain has not attacked Iran and cutting of water to the population is an attack on the civilian population. And why is Iran going after Bahrain, anyway?
Barbara Saffir clipped a camouflage vest around her chest, hung her heavy, long-lens camera and binoculars around her neck, and stepped in her knee-high, red galoshes through wet leaves and mud under a dense early morningfog on the edge of the Potomac River.
Her quest: to catch a sighting of a red-flanked bluetail, abird that’s rarely seen in the United States.
Native to Asia, the tiny brown-colored bird with orange sides and a short, high-pitched whistle has been spotted east of the Rockies only once before. Its surprise landing in Northern Virginia recently has rocked the world of birding and made it an internet sensation.
Since a birder named Phil Kenny first discovered a female red-flanked bluetail in a tree just off the Capital Beltway on New Year’s Day, crowds of visitors have flocked to Great Falls Park — where the bird has been living for the past three months — to try to catch a glimpse. Locals young and old, plus bird nerds from as far away as Minnesota, Nevada, Texas, Michigan and Florida have all showed up with binoculars in tow.
“It’s a true rarity of it even being on this continent,” Andrew Farnsworth, an ornithologist, said in a phone interview from his officeat Cornell University. “It lives in Asia, and seeing it in North America is really rare. This is only the second time the species has been seen in the Eastern U.S.”
. . .“It’s bobbing its little tail like it’s waving to people and saying, ‘Here I am. Here I am,’” Saffir said. “It’s come thousands of miles just to visit us in Virginia. For birders, seeing it is like a mini lottery win.”
How this bluetail traveled thousands of miles and ended up on Virginia’s shoreline is a bit of a mystery.
Known by their scientific name, Tarsiger cyanurus, bluetails are classified as “Old World flycatchers,” meaning they mainly eat insects and are commonly found in Europe, Asia and Africa. Typically, their breeding range stretches from theRussian province ofSiberia to northeastern China and west to Russia, and even into parts of Scandinavia. In colder months they usually winter in warmer, forested areas of southern China, Taiwan and Thailand, where food is more plentiful during that period.
In the past few years, however, the bluetails have expanded their breeding range farther east and west.
There have been sightings of the species in Alaska, British Columbia, Mexico and California. Three years ago, a bluetail was spotted in New Jersey — the first time the bird species had been seen east of the Rockies.
SomeD.C.-area birders theorize it is the same bird as the one seen in New Jersey. It is possible, given that birds show “strong fidelity to places they breed and spend the winters,” Farnsworth of Cornell said, but there’s another theory.
If there is a population, I hope it’s a breeding one and that this cute little female is not the only one. She “wants” to breed and should be able to; otherwise she’ll die out without issue. It’s amazing that Phil Kenny the birder recognized it as an Asian species, but I guess he knows a lot about birds!
Here’s a female and the species’ native range:
Materialscientist at English Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons
IUCN Red List of Threatened Species, species assessors and the authors of the spatial data., CC BY-SA 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons
Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili has an encounter of the AI kind:
Hili: Today I spoke with artificial intelligence.
Andrzej: And?
Hili: It agreed with me about everything, not realizing that my opinion was different.
In Polish:
Hili: Rozmawiałam dziś z sztuczną inteligencją.
Ja: I co?
Hili: Zgadzała się ze mną we wszystkim, nie zauważając, że mam inne zdanie.
From Things With Faces, my only contribution ever to one of these groups:
Jango, preschool dropout (photo and caption by Divy):
Masih reposted this; I wasn’t aware of this assassination plot but the BBC verifies it:
At trial, Merchant admitted that the IRGC sent him to the US to arrange for political assassinations and that his IRGC handler directed him to kill Trump, former US president Joe Biden and Trump cabinet official Nikki Haley, according to the BBC’s US partner, CBS News.
In 2024, the FBI came to my front door to tell me the Iranian regime had put a hit on my life — anytime, anywhere.
This week, the man who accepted those orders, on American soil, was sentenced to life in prison in a New York court.
This compilation shows seven male peacock spiders, each from a different species, performing their courtship dances. In the genus Maratus, males raise and fan out their colorful abdominal flaps while waving their legs to attract females pic.twitter.com/xfUq8nduZu
A long time ago, in a galaxy… well…very very close to you.Earth had a ring (probably).For about 40 million years in the Ordovician (466 MYA), any trilobites that looked skyward would have seen the faint shimmer of the Earth's ring.Let's look at the evidence for this conclusion.
This is absolutely true, and I verify it with a reply:
Reminded by a mail from @nccomfort.bsky.social that in UK English “quite” is a negative modifier unless applied to a superlative. So quite good, quite smart, quite tasty etc imply something less than good, smart, tasty. Quite excellent, quite brilliant, quite scrumptious are all better. But why?
I am not usually fond of restaurants that serve many small “nouvelle” courses that are lovely and exquisitely curated, as they don’t usually get me full—my prime requirement for a good restaurant. But last night we went to one of these multicourse places and had one of the best meals of my life—and it left me sated. This is the story of that meal.
AT 5:30 I met up with my friend, the engineer and origami master Robert Lang, visiting Chicago to teach a two-day class in origami at a meeting. And, as I mentioned yesterday, he invited me to a well-known Chicago restaurant for a slap-up dinner, which lasted a full three hours. It turns out that his niece manages the place, and so we were able to obtain hard-to-get reservations. From Robert:
As I may have mentioned before, my niece Kate is the general manager at Next Restaurant, and she’ll get us in. (You may recall I tried this with you several years ago during a Chicago trip, but the airlines conspired to ruin my arrival. This time, I’m flying in the day before, so there’s more buffer.)
Next is in the family of restaurants owned by the famous chef Grant Achatz, the most famous of which is Alinea. Here’s a Wikipedia photo of Achatz at Alinea, preparing a dish tableside:
star5112, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons
There’s a University of Chicago connection with Achatz, and I well remember his diagnosis of, ironically, mouth cancer. I did not expect him to survive, but he did:
On July 23, 2007, Achatz announced that he had been diagnosed with stage 4 squamous cell carcinoma of the mouth, which spread to his lymph nodes. Initially, Achatz was told that radical surgery was necessary, which would remove part of his mandibular anatomy, including part of his tongue and large swaths of neck tissue. Later, University of Chicago physicians prescribed an alternative course of chemotherapy and radiation treatments. This led to full remission, albeit with some side effects including a transitory loss of his sense of taste, which eventually returned. On December 18, 2007, Achatz announced that he was cancer-free. He credited the aggressive protocol of chemotherapy and radiation administered at the University of Chicago Medical Center for driving his cancer into full remission. The treatment regimen, administered under the direction of Drs. Everett E. Vokes, Blair and Haraf at University of Chicago, did not require radical invasive surgery on Achatz’s tongue.
Yay! It’s been nearly twenty years now and he remains cancer-free. Achatz cooks at Alinea, but owns some of Next and, I presume, visits and gives feedback.
Every four months or so, the appropriately named Next changes its themes—themes that are quite eclectic. You can see the history of the changing themes since 2011 at its Wikipedia page, as well as reading about the difficulty of getting reservations. We were lucky to get in, but Robert began the request several months ago, and of course has a genetic connection to the restaurant.
The theme until the end of April is Japan.
From Next’s website:
Robert sent me this photo the menu, so I knew we were in for a treat: There’s a more complete menu below. as we got a few extra dishes:
Below is Achatz from a FB video. To prepare for the meal, as he says, much of the Next team went to Japan and spent their time eating at a variety of humble and fancy restaurants. They then, said his niece, came back and spent a few months developing a menu that was inspired by what they tasted. I think the slurring of Achatz’s speech is due to his treatments for mouth cancer.
There is only one menu, and you can get it with or without a wine pairing (this one includes sake) or with non-alcoholic beverages. We got it with booze, of course, and the wines and sakes chosen matched the dishes remarkably well. They were fancy, tasty, and pricey wines. This place is a class act with some good palates working behind the scenes.
This is our menu; we were comped a few dishes because of Robert’s relationship to his niece, and so we wound up with eleven dishes, six wines, and two sakes (I love sake, and these were good ones, not obtainable, I was told, in local stores):
The food menu (this is what we were actually served including the gratis dishes; they apparently made up a custom menu post facto for us as a souvenir):
The wine-and-sake menu (while waiting for me, Robert was given a glass of champagne):
And now for the dishes (all photos by me except Robert’s, which are labeled “RJL”).
First, a glass of bottle-fermented sparkling sake, a real treat. It was served poured to overflowing in a glass inside a cedar box. After you take a few sips from the glass, you pour the rest of the glass into the cedar box and drink it from there, a traditional practice that gives the liquid a slight woody flavor:
The sake, one of several made by Masumi. It looks to cost about $60 a bottle retail: they did not stint on the wines but that was not near the most expensive libation we were served:
Me, excited before dinner; photo by RJL:
First course: chawanmushi (a savory egg custard), made with sweet corn, umeshu (a Japanese plum liqueur), and black truffle. Like nearly all the dishes, I had never tasted anything like it before. It was fantastic. Note the dried cornhusk garnishing the plate. It’s eaten with the wooden spoon:
The next dish arrived at the table as a gift: osetra caviar (the second best in the world after beluga) served with bluefin tuna, wasabi, and crème fraîche. It came with four sheets of seaweed (to the right next to the wasabi), and two already-formed seaweed rolls (left) with unidentifiable goodies inside. You are supposed to roll the caviar, crème, wasabi, and salmon into a sheet of seaweed and eat it as if it were a luxurious Japanese burrito.
The only caviar I’d ever had before was pressed caviar made from irregular eggs, and sevruga caviar (the third rarest). It was hard for me to resist leaving the caviar out of the burrito and just eating it plain with the mother of pearl spoon (the traditional utensil), so I did eat some plain (fantastic) and also put some into two “burritos” (also fantastic). The two rolls to the left were eaten separately. Note the two “fruits”, actually pickled vegetables) at the top and bottom of the plate. I believe they are a pickled radish and a pickled cucumber, both decorated with nasturtium blossoms. Those, too, were amazing, full of complex flavors. The “pickle” was like the most delicious pickle you could imagine, and of course you can’t buy them as they’re made in house.
Photo by RJL. Note the lovely setting with chopsticks (and fancy chopstick rests) and spoons:
The wine: Vermintino, an Italian white wine made by Laura Ascero, light, crisp, slightly saline, and dry, a perfect accompaniment to the creamy burritos with caviar. These people know their wines:
Two cute little “ramen eggs” in a spoon with ginger and togarashi (the red spice on top), made to resemble the flavor of Japanese ramen (there’s no ramen in there, and I can’t remember what is). Two cute and savory bites.
A fancy dish: gyoza (a dumpling filled with shrimp and sweet potato), accompanied by a froth made from carrot ponzu. You can see the dumpling at 10 o’clock next to a savory crunchy thing. AI describes “ponzu” as “a tangy, citrus-based Japanese sauce made from soy sauce, vinegar, and citrus juice (like yuzu or sudachi), often with added mirin, dashi, and bonito flakes for a complex salty, sour, and umami flavor.” Again, it was like nothing I’d ever tasted.
We continued with a fancy dish comprising three items: king crab to the left, a fancy rice in the middle, and a broth (I can’t remember what kind) to the right, with the broth poured from the traditional Japanese metal teapot. Above on the tray is also a pot with sprigs of fresh rosemary, with coals below them to create a herb-scented smoke while you had this dish. You could eat a bit of the incredibly sweet king crab with some rice, and then wash it down with the broth.
The seventh dish was kare pan (Japanese curry bread), filled with grilled cabbage and heritage pork belly. This was very complex, and look at the decorations! I didn’t photograph the inside but yes, it was excellent. There was no dish in the whole meal that I found less than inventive and tasty.
I couldn’t remember why they called it “Cemetery Vineyard” (they told us), but AI had the answer:
The “Cemetery Vineyard” (specifically the noted Rockpile Ridge site) is named for a distinct outcropping of rocks at the base of the vineyard that looks like giant, old-fashioned headstones. This specific block has been referred to by this name for over 140 years, long before the wine was commercialized
And then some fish: a luscious piece of grilled cod with a brown butter and miso sauce, accompanied by seaweed and golden mustard seed. I’m not much of a fish-eater but I loved this:
And for that dish of course we needed sake, and were poured a whiskey tumbler (with ice) of 2024 Tamagawa “Ice Breaker” sake. We were told it was unfiltered, and it was a stronger, slightly sweet, and luscious rice wine. And there was a penguin on the label! The website says this:
Tamagawa’s Ice Breaker is a cask-strength, fresh-pressed junmai ginjo that is undiluted, unpasteurized and unfiltered. This is a seasonal release always listed with the brewery year (BY).
Pairing Notes: The Ice Breaker sake is designed to be drunk over ice as a refresher in the humid Japanese rainy season. Try it with edamame, mackerel, skipjack tuna and eggplant with zesty grated daikon.
I believe the white stuff with the cod above is grated daikon (white radish), but I’m not sure.
When the cod was served, they also put a mysterious bowl of seaweed containing very hot rocks atop a seaweed packet. We asked what it was, and were told was part of the next course being steamed by the rocks while we ate the fish. See below. (Photo by RJL).
Where’s the beef? It was next in a “wagyu au poivre”, and yes, it was real wagyu beef from Japan, the first I’ve had. It was of course rare, and then the seaweed packet was opened to reveal the cooked accompaniments: pear and trumpet mushrooms, along with kombu (edible kelp). Photo by RJL:
Yummers! The beef was so tender and tasty that although the slice was not large, I ate it in very small bites so I could prolong the flavor. It was great with the meaty trumpet mushroom and the fruitiness of the pear:
Of course with that you need a gutsier red wine, which came as a Cabernet Franc (often found in Bordeaux) from Podere Forte, an Italian winemaker. The designation was “Guardiavigna Orienello” with some age: 8 years. It’s a biodynamic wine, tasting much like a Bordeaux; the website describes it this way:
Guardiavigna is a version of perfectly and slowly ripened Cabernet Franc. An intense, deep and vast bouquet. Full bodied, with a very refined tannic structure. A very elegant and endless wine.
It goes for $150-$180 per bottle.
Photo by RJL:
With two courses left, we had dined for about 2½ hours, eating leisurely and catching up. Robert’s house is nearly rebuilt after the Altadena fire and should be done by June. His studio will take a bit longer.
We were then treated to “Tokyo toast”, with sake lees (I guess the rice at the bottom of the fermenting tank), sakura (cherry blossom), and kumquat. You see that the dishes are inspired by the flavors the team encountered in Japan, but the dish itself is sui generis. It was a very elegant version of a Rice Krispy treat:
And the eleventh and last course: musk melon with saffron, pine nuts, and spaghetti squash. An inspired combination; you have to have a good palate to even think of putting these things together. They melded well. Again, the presentation was carefully thought out, with matching fancy plates, trays, and appropriate cutlery:
Sauternes, my favorite sweet wine, goes with very few things. I eat it either on its own or with a ripe peach or mango. It does not go with chocolate (Thomas Keller hasn’t learned that lesson.) But it did go with the musk melon, which is not too sweet, and the spaghetti squash, barely sweet. And so we were served a 2019 Château Fontebride 2019. That wine also counted as dessert. If you haven’t tried a Sauternes, which gets better and more golden as it ages, you might spring for one. (I brought Robert a half bottle of another Sauternes as a gift; it wasn’t clear whether it would make it back to California since Robert is staying with his brother in Chicago.)
And so we wound up at 8:30, having started at 5:30. I was replete, filled with great food and fancy wine, amazed at what we had eaten, impressed by the thought and care that went into the food and service, and, of course, slightly buzzed. Next is an amazing restaurant and I’d gladly go again—if I was willing to spring for the meal (I have no idea what it cost) and could get a reservation (the website says there are 10,000 people on the Next waiting list!).
When you have a long, sumptuous, and fancy meal like this, you leave the restaurant with a bracing sense of well being. (A Parisian chef once told me that you know a meal is good if the birds sing more sweetly when you leave.) I had that feeling, and of course it was helped along by the slight buzz from wine and sake.
Many thanks to Robert for inviting me, to his niece Kate, the manager, for greeting us and stopping by to chat during the meal (and of course running things), and the staff who organized, cooked and served.
Oh, two dark pictures of the place, the first of the kitchen by Robert and the second of the main room by me. It’s not a large restaurant. Note the Japanese lanterns.
I know that I’m going to get criticized for putting this up, excoriated for eating fancy food and “privilege.” To those who would say that, take a hike. This was a rare treat, and all I can say is that there have been Japanese emperors who haven’t eaten this well.
Welcome to Sunday, March 8, 2026: the Sabbath for goyische cats. It’s also Daylight Savings Time, so make sure you’ve reset your clocks an hour forward (those with iPhones get it automatically, but don’t forget the microwave clock and other antiquated timepieces). Stanford University finds that these time changes, by disrupting our circadian rhythms, can be harmful to our health. Watch this: time changes make us fat and have strokes! Seriously, we need a system where the time never changes:
There’s a new Google Doodle today, and, well, I’ll let you figure it out, and then click on it to see where it goes:
Readers are welcome to mark notable events, births, or deaths on this day by consulting the March 2 Wikipedia page.
Da Nooz:
*War update from the NYT: Trump is vowing to hit Iran even harder, as the Islamic Republic apologized to its neighboring states (save Israel, of course) for firing missiles and drones at them.
President Trump vowed in a Saturday morning social media post that Iran would soon be “hit very hard” and that the week-old Israeli-American aerial onslaught would expand to target new “areas and groups of people.”
Earlier, the Iranian president, Masoud Pezeshkian, said in a televised address that Mr. Trump’s demand for unconditional surrender was “a dream that our enemies will take to the grave.” Shortly after Mr. Pezeshkian’s speech, air-raid sirens rang out in Bahrain and Qatar, a sign Iran’s retaliatory attacks were still continuing.
Mr. Pezeshkian, apparently seeking to blunt anger at Iran in the Arab world, also apologized to Persian Gulf nations for launching strikes into their territories. That comment appeared to prompt Mr. Trump to claim Iran had “surrendered to its Middle East neighbors.”
But the Iranian president said later on social media that Iran would keep trying to damage American bases in the Gulf. “We have not attacked our friendly and neighboring countries,” he said. “Rather, we have targeted U.S. military bases, facilities, and installations in the region.”
The details of American attacks on Iran on Saturday remained unclear. Senior U.S. officials last briefed the public on the fighting two days ago. On Friday, the U.S. military released a statement saying that U.S. forces had struck at least 3,000 targets since the war began last weekend, up sharply from 2,000 strikes earlier this week, but provided few details.
Israeli attacks hit Mehrabad Airport in Tehran overnight, the military said, setting it ablaze. The targets were planes affiliated with Iran’s Revolutionary Guards, the military said. Tehran residents described massive balls of fire and smoke billowing into the air.
In an interview with NBC News two nights ago, Iran’s foreign minister denied a lot of allegations, including that Iran has created an internet blackout, which it clearly has. The Islamic Republic is digging in, and this means, given Trump’s demands for “unconditional surrender” (which he may not mean), the war is going to drag on. Meanwhile, more and more people on the Left are demonstrating and crying, “Hands off Iran.” If you subscribe to the NYT, look at the front page this morning; it’s all about how bad this war is and so on. They make no pretense now about not being biased: they are criticizing and not reporting (I’m talking about the news itself; the op-eds are even more slanted).
*Speaking of the war, Andrew Sullivan continues to get my dander up with his continued demonizing of Israel. His latest Weekly Dish column is called, “The war he’s always wanted,” with the subtitle, “A moment of triumph for Benjamin Netanyahu; and of democratic collapse in the US.” What he means is that the Constitution mandates that only Congress can declare war, but Trump is flouting that. (So did earlier Presidents, including Clinton and Obama). Some excerpts:
We had a functioning liberal democracy then, a constitutional system that was imperfectly but actually followed, a responsible president, and international law on our side.
Today, we have precisely none of the above.
We’ve had no debate; we’ve had no search for international support or allies; we’ve ignored the UN entirely; the Congress didn’t debate, let alone vote, in advance; and the American people were told about the war after it had already begun. All of this renders this war illegal and unconstitutional and outrageous, and the fact that most people have just accepted it is proof, if we still needed it, that the extinction-level event I predicted in 2016 is now well in the rearview mirror.
In plain English, this is what is in front of our nose: a corrupt, deranged monarch pursuing an illegal and immoral war primarily to benefit a foreign country. This war makes us a textbook case of how democracies stagger into tyranny and endless war.
And how they rot from within. I watched this week as the secretary of defense did his Rumsfeld-On-Meth routine. But Rumsfeld would never express the following indecency:
This was never meant to be a fair fight, and it is not a fair fight. We are punching them while they’re down, which is exactly how it should be.
That’s how fascists describe war, not Americans. It’s the mark of barbarians, not Christians. . .
. . . .How then did this almost incredible thing, the one thing we swore we’d never do again — another regime-change war in the Middle East — happen before most Americans had even heard of it, let alone debated it? It’s stupefying that so many have already moved on from this foundational question.
One answer is that liberal democracy was deliberately crippled — because if we’d actually followed the Constitution, we wouldn’t be at war right now. The public is opposed by a big margin; the House vote on whether to suspend support just narrowly failed 212-219. (If all the Dems had voted for it, it would have won.) A real debate — with Gaza fresh in the minds of Dems and with MAGA deeply divided — and this war would never have started. If it was to happen, it had to be sprung on us.
The other answer, provided by the administration, is that Israel bounced us into it. They did so by deciding to assassinate the entire Iranian leadership (an act that violates all international law and sets a truly terrifying precedent for leaders of all countries, including our own). That Israeli decision instantly guaranteed America’s entry into the war, regardless of the will of the American people
Sullivan really doesn’t like Israel, and this column is, to me, over the top. If we conduct a secret strike, we don’t debate it before Congress, as leaks are almost certain. And Israel has been in an existential crisis with respect to Iran for years and years. Sullivan doesn’t think that: he thinks that Israel is just fine and Jewish Americans are just doing their thing when they lobby the Administration. Perhaps if Sullivan lived in Israel he’d have a different take. Yes, he may be right about the futility of this war, like the futility of other Middle Eastern conflicts, but even our European allies wish for the death of the Iranian theocracy. I’m getting tired of his rants.
U.S. military investigators think American forces likely were responsible for a strike that killed dozens of children at a girls elementary school in Iran, a U.S. official said. The investigation hasn’t reached a final conclusion, the official said.
Shajarah Tayyebeh Girls’ School, in the town of Minab near the Strait of Hormuz, was hit Saturday on the first day of the U.S.-Israeli air campaign in what appears to be the deadliest strike of the war. Iran said more than 160 people were killed, including many children, a figure that couldn’t be independently verified.
The school is located on the edge of a compound linked to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, an elite branch of Iran’s armed forces, according to an analysis of images by The Wall Street Journal. There are indications the school building had previously been used as an IRGC headquarters, the official said.
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said this week that the U.S. is investigating the strike. The U.S. official cautioned that the investigation was in its early stages. A U.S. Central Command spokesperson declined to comment on the incident.
Reuters first reported that U.S. officials believed the U.S. military was likely responsible for the incident at the school.
The U.S. hasn’t publicly acknowledged that its forces struck the compound. Gen. Dan Caine, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said Wednesday that the U.S. carried out strikes along the southern coast of Iran to degrade its naval and missile capabilities before bringing its offensive further inland.
Iran has blamed both the U.S. and Israel for the strike. While the U.S. and Israel are coordinating their actions in Iran, they are largely operating in different geographical areas. An Israeli military official said the military was looking into the school incident but wasn’t aware of an Israeli strike in that area.
It’s not certain yet who did this, and if Israel or the U.S. did, it’s a black mark on the American attacks. Granted, the school abutted a military target, and so this could be considered “collateral damage”, but think of the lives of all those girls, and of the grief of their parents. So far both Israel and the U.S. seem to have been careful to take out only military targets, and this is a sad error (no Western country would try to destroy a school for girls). But it’s not a reason to end military action in Iran.
*We have freedom of speech in the U.S., so you can say whatever you want so long as it doesn’t fall under the exceptions to the First Amendment. You can, for example, applaud Hamas’s attack on Israel on October 7, 2023. ‘And that in fact is what the wife of Zohran Mamdani, the mayor of NYC did. The NYT has the story (frankly, I’m surprised the Israel-hating NYT printed it!).
Mayor Zohran Mamdani on Friday sought to create a wall between his leadership of New York City and the private views of his wife, Rama Duwaji, after being asked about her social media activity surrounding the Hamas-led attacks on Israel on Oct. 7, 2023.
Ms. Duwaji liked posts on Instagram that were supportive of the Palestinian cause immediately after the attacks, in which roughly 1,200 people were killed and 251 were taken hostage, according to the Israeli authorities. Israeli military forces responded with military action in Gaza that has killed more than 70,000 Palestinians, according to Gaza’s health ministry.
The mayor said his wife’s views should not be subject to broad public scrutiny. They were not married when she liked the posts; the couple wed in early 2025, and he did not enter the Democratic primary for mayor until October 2024.
“My wife is the love of my life and she’s also a private person who has held no formal position on my campaign or in my City Hall,” Mr. Mamdani said during an unrelated news conference Friday morning. “I, however, was elected to represent all eight and a half million people in this city, and I believe that it’s my responsibility, because of that role, to answer any questions about my thoughts and my policies and my decisions.”
Mr. Mamdani was responding to a Jewish Insider article that highlighted a handful of instances in which Ms. Duwaji had liked Instagram posts supportive of the Palestinian cause immediately after the Oct. 7 attacks.
One post, shared by an account called The Slow Factory, a social justice nonprofit, on the day of the Hamas attack, showed a bulldozer that appeared to breach the barrier between Israel and Gaza. The caption read, “Breaking the walls of apartheid and military occupation” with the date of the attack beneath.
Ms. Duwaji, who is Syrian-American, liked the post. She did not comment for the Jewish Insider article. A City Hall spokeswoman on Friday told The New York Times that Ms. Duwaji had no comment.
In another example, she liked an Instagram post that showed people celebrating atop what appeared to be an Israeli military vehicle with the words “Free Palestine” beneath it. The article also included posts she liked that described resistance as an act of “self-defense” and a “human right” for people under occupation.
Mr. Mamdani, New York City’s first Muslim mayor and a democratic socialist, has long criticized Israel and defended Palestinians — an issue that inspired him to get into politics. He has described the war in Gaza as genocide and has said he does not believe Israel should be a Jewish state.
Here’s a tweet about the NYT’s hypocrisy on the issue (h/t Luana):
— Jews Fight Back 🇺🇸🇮🇱 (@JewsFightBack) March 7, 2026
And the NYT has changed its headline from the original (h/t Orli). Here’s the latest headline:
and here’s (at bottom) is the original headline. I’m not sure why they made the change, but I don’t agree that his wife’s views are “no one’s business.” Of course she can have and promulgate such views if she wants, but she can also be detested for them. And knowing Mamdani, I would bet that he actually shares her views but keeps quiet about it. After all, if she really “likes” the October 7 attacks, how can he eat dinner with, or get into bed with, someone who approved of this butchery? I see Mamdani as an Islamist and antisemite, but others of course disagree. What puzzles me is why so many Jewish people voted for him.
An independent researcher claimed on Wednesday that a marble bust of Christ in a Roman church is by Michelangelo, the latest purported attribution to the Renaissance genius who is one of the most imitated artists in the world.
The unverified claims by Valentina Salerno has unsettled Renaissance scholars, especially since a recent sketch of a foot that was attributed to Michelangelo, but disputed by some as a copy, recently fetched $27.2 million at a Christie’s auction.
Given the stakes — and Salerno’s suggestion that several other works can now be attributed to Michelangelo based on her documentary research — many leading experts have declined to comment.
Salerno has published her theory on the commercial website academia.edu, a non-peer reviewed social networking site academics use, and announced the first “rediscovery” at a news conference Wednesday.
Michelangelo Buonarroti, who lived from 1475-1564, created some of the most spectacular works of the Renaissance: the imposing statue of David in Florence and the delicate Pieta in St. Peter’s Basilica, the Sistine Chapel ceiling and “The Last Judgment” fresco behind the chapel’s altar. Salerno now says she has located another — a bust of Christ in the Basilica of Sant’Agnese Fuori le Mura, listed by Italy’s Culture Ministry as anonymous from the Roman school of the 16th century.
She is not the first to claim it. In 1996, Michelangelo expert William Wallace wrote an article in ArtNews about the well-documented history of wrongly attributing works to Michelangelo. It quoted the 19th century French author Stendhal as writing that at the Sant’Agnese church, “we noticed a head of the savior which I should swear is by Michelangelo.”
. . . Salerno suggests that several documents in the first few hundred years after Michelangelo’s death correctly attribute the work to the artist but that in 1984 a scholar debunked it, erroneously in her view, and it has remained wrongly attributed ever since.
Here’s a video that shows you what the bust looks like. It’s certainly beautiful and of Michelangelo’s style and quality, but stay tuned. You don’t need to understand the Italian.
Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili is asking Big Questions again:
Hili: What is eternity?
Andrzej: Difficult to explain, a sort of self-renewing present, with no beginning and no end.
In Polish:
Hili: Co to jest wieczność?
Ja: Trudno wyjaśnić, rodzaj samoodnawialnej teraźniejszości, bez początku i końca.
Masih’s pinned tweet in which she talks to Bill Maher about how Amercans ignore the plight of Iranians:
Where is the left now?
Where are the “pro-Palestinian” and “anti war” activists when the Islamic Republic is killing innocent Iranians?
At least 20 people got killed in 10 days protests including 4 children….
Same story, my friends, the same story I once told @billmaher. pic.twitter.com/pwKEdZAKEc
Meanwhile, flatty women are quietly smug about barely needing a sports bra, while the be-boobed are wondering how on earth to get a barbell over them without putting your back out.
I studied for my PhD alongside an engineer (male) of sports bras. They are not fashion. This is… https://t.co/zg6GA1znXh
And two from Dr. Cobb. The first one’s from The New Republic, and the guy is horrible!:
Conservative MAGA ideologue Matt Schlapp has attempted to justify the killing of more than 100 young girls at an elementary school in southern Iran, by claiming they were saved from religious extremism.
I was at London Zoo years ago and the vicuna made a noise at me. Feeling clever, I repeated it back; it said the same thing, so I said again. Then it spat me right in the eyes.* It was saying “You lookin’ at me?” and I was unwittingly saying that back. * An unnoticed sign said “this animal spits”.
Bill Maher’s latest news-and-comedy shtick on “Real Time” deals once again with the flak he got for having dinner with President Trump. Remember? Despite Maher constantly criticizing the President’s policies durin gthe dinner, he also reported that he found Trump affable and friendly.
That was enough for liberals to come down on Maher like a ton of bricks, despite the fact that he simply gave his reaction. Trump’s policies were reprehensible, Maher averred, but he was a good host. In today’s world that will do you in. Larry David, for instance, wrote a satire of Maher’s reaction in a NYT op-ed called “Larry David imagines a private dinner with Hitler” (archived here), and I imagine that pissed off Maher.
Apparently Trump posted about his dinner with Maher on Truth Social (on Valentine’s Day), and Trump’s post was full of lies (surprise!). Here Maher corrects the record, and gets a few shots back at Trump for lying, while calling out people with true “Trump Derangement Syndrome.” (“Get a life: stop making him your whole personality”.) But he adds that Trump bears some responsibility for promoting TDS because his racism, misogyny, anti-democratic acts, and corruption “make people crazy.” Maher further also ticks off a few good things that Trump did, including asserting that “penises don’t belong in women’s prisons,” which will simply anger “progressives” more. Maher argues that he may be “the last person from the Lunatic Left that is still an honest broker when it comes to Trump.”
Maher winds up addressing Trump directly, calling him out for his many detestable acts—after he’s given the President plaudits for some things. Yes, Maher seems defensive here, but he’s honest and I still like the guy. I don’t have much truck with people who say that Trump never did anything good, and, in fact, it’s impossible for that to happen.
As I mentioned yesterday, Robert Lang invited me to dinner last night at a famous Chicago restaurant called Next, whose metier is mulitcourse menus with a theme. And they completely change the theme every four months, so they’re always working on and testing the dishes to come (see the history of the themes at the Wikipedia link given in the first sentence). The theme of our meal was “Japan,” inspired by the restaurant chef, manager, and some staff having taken a trip to Japan to absorb the food and culture. They they returned to the U.S. and worked for a few months to develop dishes that were not explicitly Japanese, but inspired by the food they tried in Japan.
While preparing the account of our meal for a post, I realized that it is going to take some time, what with 12 dishes and 8 wines (including 2 sakes), as well photos of the menu and the restaurant. I will say now that it was one of the best meals I’ve had in America—even better than the vaunted French Laundry in California, where years ago I paid a lot for a disappointing meal.
We managed to get into this restaurant, which has a huge waiting list, because Robert’s niece is the general manager; and because of that we got a few gratis dishes.
The meal was terrific, with a largesse of small, lovely, and wonderful dishes and thoughtful and appropriate pairings with wines and sakes. The meal did not fail where many of small-dish places do: making you leave when you haven’t had enough to eat. This was not the case at Next: I left dazzled, sated, and a bit buzzed.
I will ask your indulgence because it will take me a few hours to crop the photos, insert them in a post in the proper order, and try to describe the dishes from a memory clouded by sake. The post will be up tomorrow morning.
To wet your whistle, here’s a photo taken by Robert, showing the introductory tipple, a glass of sake poured to overflowing inside a cedar box. This is traditional: you sip the full glass until it can be poured into the box, and then drink the rest from the box, which lightly flavors the sake with cedar. This was also a rare form of sake for me: a sparkling one.
All will be revealed tomorrow. Right now I am recovering.
