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.
Welcome to CaturSaturday, March 14, 2026. Our ducks are still here, and it’s shabbos for those two Jewish ducks, Armon and Vashti, who arrived on Purim and for all Jewish cats. It’s also National Potato Chip Day, a snack that everyone loves (I like the rippled sour-cream-and-onion version). Here’s how they’re made at the Lays factory:
Readers are welcome to mark notable events, births, or deaths on this day by consulting the March 14 Wikipedia page.
Da Nooz:
*More war news. First, “Secretary of War” has announced the the new leader of Iran, Mojtabi Khamenei, is in hiding, likely wounded and probably disfigured. Here’s his strong statement on the issue. From the BBC:
Hegseth says Iran’s new Supreme Leader, Mojtaba Khamenei, is “wounded” and “likely disfigured” (as our international editor wrote earlier, we do not have proof this is the case).
Referring a written statement from Mojtaba read aloud on Iranian state TV yesterday, Hegseth questions why there was no footage or audio of him.
“I think you know why,” he adds.
The defence secretary says Motjaba is “scared” and “injured”, claiming he is “on the run” and “lacks legitimacy”.
The announcement:
And a U.S. refueling tanker crashed in Iraq, apparently after colliding with another such plane. Four people died in one plane, while the other landed safely.
All six service members aboard a U.S. Air Force refueling aircraft that crashed in Iraq while supporting operations in Iran are dead, military officials said Friday.
The KC-135 refueling aircraft was lost while flying over friendly airspace Thursday in western Iraq, U.S. Central Command said, in an apparent midair accident with another aircraft.
Centcom’s announcement brought the death toll of the crash from four to six, after earlier saying that rescue efforts were underway for the last two crew members. “The circumstances of the incident are under investigation,” the Centcom statement said, adding that the identities of the deceased personnel would be withheld for 24 hours while next of kin were notified.
Hegseth acknowledged the loss of life approximately 10 minutes into his opening statement, after making disparaging remarks about the news media. “War is hell,” he said. “War is chaos. And as we saw yesterday with the tragic crash of our KC-135 tanker, bad things can happen.” Hegseth called the tanker crew “American heroes.”
Centcom disclosed the incident in a brief statement on Thursday, saying the second aircraft landed safely. Three officials, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss the sensitive situation, said the second aircraft was also a KC-135.
The KC-135 Stratotanker carries a minimum crew of three — a pilot, co-pilot and boom operator, the person responsible for overseeing the aircraft refueling other planes. It can also carry a navigator or other additional crew members, depending on the mission.
It sounds as if two refueling planes crashed into each other. Refueling is a complicated and difficult operation at best, but someone wasn’t looking around, or the radar wasn’t working, if there was a midair collision.
The United States vowed to thwart Iran’s attempts to block the Strait of Hormuz on Friday, as the Trump administration worked to ease an energy crisis stemming from the Middle East war.
A day earlier, two oil tankers were attacked and left burning off the Iraqi coast, and Iraq and Oman shut down oil terminals.
Iran has taken responsibility for several of the strikes on merchant ships in the Persian Gulf and Strait of Hormuz, through which one-fifth of the world’s oil output normally flows. Tehran has said that it would not allow oil shipments that benefit the United States and its allies to pass through the strait.
Oil prices have surged to trade around $100 per barrel, forcing dozens of countries to release emergency reserves to stabilize their economies. Experts say the crisis is the biggest disruption to oil supplies in history.
The strikes on shipping have given Iran a strategic success, putting economic pressure on the United States and its allies even as Iran is under heavy attack. Tehran’s actions have also raised questions about whether the United States planned for a lengthy shutdown of the strait.
“The lever of blocking the Strait of Hormuz must continue to be used,” said Mojtaba Khamenei, Iran’s new supreme leader, on Thursday.
Here’s a satellite image of the Strait from Wikipedia, with the caption below:
The rugged, barren mountains of the Musandam Peninsula jut into the Strait of Hormuz, the narrow throughway between Iran (north) and Oman and the United Arab Emirates (south) where the waters from the Gulf of Oman enter the Persian Gulf. Khasab, Oman, the main city sitting on the tip of the Musandam Peninsula, sits only 65 km (40 mi) from the Iranian city of Bandar Abbas. The rocky limestone mountains of the peninsula rise as high as 6,500 feet (2,000 meters) above sea level and create fjord-like inlets along the coast. Musandam is an exclave of Oman, separated from the rest of the country by the United Arab Emirates. Fishing, agriculture and ship building are the primary industries in this part of Oman. The Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on board NASA’s Terra satellite acquired a stunning true-color image of the Strait of Hormuz and the Musandam Peninsula on December 6, 2018.
Wikipedia notes that the Strait has never been closed for an extended time during any Middle East conflicts. That is now changing.
MODIS Land Rapid Response Team, NASA GSFC, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
At least 16 oil tankers, cargo and other commercial ships have been attacked in the Persian Gulf since the U.S.-Israeli war against Iran began nearly two weeks ago, a New York Times analysis shows.
Iran has claimed responsibility for several of the attacks. On Thursday, two Iraqi tankers were ablaze at sea, some of the latest visible examples of how attacks have increasingly focused on oil and energy infrastructure as the war has sprawled.
. . .Amid growing concerns about international trade, projectiles hit three vessels on Wednesday in or near the strait. Hours later, the two Iraqi tankers were struck off the country’s coast. Iraq and Oman closed oil terminals in the wake of the attacks.
The reports of the attacks, and their locations, were compiled from company releases, announcements by official country agencies, shipping industry data companies and satellite tracking firms.
At least eight people have been killed, and one remains missing, following the attacks on these vessels, which included a tug boat that came to help one of the struck container ships, according to the International Maritime Organization.
From the NYT article, captioned, “The paths of ships struck in and near the Persian Gulf.”
Iran is of course being clever in its strategy, but in the short-to-middle run it will simply peeve all the countries trying to get oil–or other stuff–between the Persian Gulf and the open sea. I don’t think Iran has mined the Strait yet, but I have no doubt they’ll try. It’s a nice try, but it won’t work, as the U.S. and other countries will strike Iran even harder and there are ways of getting rid of any mines.
*Elliott Abrams has a long career in foreign policy serving under Republican Presidents. He also was “the U.S. Special Representative for Venezuela from 2019 to 2021 and as the U.S. Special Representative for Iran from 2020 to 2021.” He thus has the chops to call for democracy in Venezuela, which he does in the Washington Post’s op-ed, “The game is up, Delcy Rodriguez.”
Ten weeks after the capture of Venezuelan strongman Nicolás Maduro, the Trump administration is moving forward with its plans to rebuild that country’s economy and link it to our own. Almost invisible so far is any progress toward a democratic transition.
President Donald Trump has dispatched to Caracas Energy Secretary Chris Wright to talk oil, Interior Secretary Doug Burgum to talk minerals and U.S. Southern Command’s Gen. Francis L. Donovan for reasons that are less clear. More Venezuelan oil is landing at Gulf ports, under new Treasury Department licenses and new contracts with the state-owned Petróleos de Venezuela.
With the Strait of Hormuz in effect closed, additional oil on the world market would be salutary. But increased production from Venezuela will take time. Chevron estimates that increasing its current 250,000 barrels a day to 375,000 may take two years. There’s no bonanza around the corner. Still, revenue from increased production and from oil sales without discounts, an end to U.S. sanctions and the beginnings of new investment will help the Venezuelan economy. There’s also money to be made by U.S. investors, including some who lobbied the administration to allow them to do business there.
But what about the promise of a political transition? Trump doesn’t seem much interested. In January he called Delcy Rodríguez “a terrific person.” This week he added that she’s “very respected” and doing a “great job” as the “president” of Venezuela. According to whom?
. . . Rodríguez, Maduro’s vice president, cannot legitimately be president any more than Maduro could. He stole the 2024 election, and her status derives solely from his. The “great job” she is doing involves hardly any political opening. Venezuela’s Foro Penal human-rights group says more than 500 political prisoners remain jailed more than two months after Maduro’s fall, when the number should by now be zero. At least one poll shows that far from being “very respected,” Rodríguez would lose a free election to Nobel Peace Prize winner María Corina Machado, 67 percent to 25 percent.
. . .Referring to the regime’s “interim authorities” is a good sign. So are the terms “political reconciliation” and “democratically elected government.” But if there have been any moves toward these goals in the past two months, they’ve not dented the regime’s complete control of Venezuela. Meantime, diplomatic relations will lend increased legitimacy to Maduro’s heirs. Those representatives will take over the Venezuelan Embassy in Washington, allowing them to work in the capital, lobbying Congress, NGOs, business groups, the media and the administration for less pressure and more time.
What should be demanded of Caracas to make a transition possible? As of today, no exiled political leaders have been allowed to return home. When Machado — Venezuela’s most popular politician — met with Trump on March 6, the message was apparently “patience.”
A more just course would require that all political prisoners be released immediately and that the return of exiled leaders start now. Other steps: Demand that Venezuela’s democratic political parties be permitted to elect their own leaders, replacing those illegally appointed by the Maduro regime. Establish an independent national electoral commission to run elections freely and fairly. Start the planning and mechanisms that will permit the millions of Venezuelans who fled during the Maduro years to vote in the countries where they now live. Agree on a plan for transitional justice that will make people account for their crimes during the last two decades but give whatever degree of amnesty is needed.
I find it offensive that Trump is treating Rodriguez as if she’s the legitimate head of government in Venezuela. Abrams’s recommendations in the last paragraph, designed to create a democratic and non-oppressive regimes, are absolutely on the mark. And remember, Abrams served Republican Presidents before, and now he’s criticizing one.
*As always, I’ll steal a few items from Nellie Bowles’s news-and-snark column at the Free Press, called this week “TGIF: Smoking jars of metal.”
→ Grand Theft Auto presidency: The White House is making pro-war propaganda using clips from the video game Grand Theft Auto spliced with video of Iranian targets exploding. Boys at Eton used to memorize great war poems so that they knew how to speak to their nation. Today we have memes of video game characters going Ah shit, here we go again cut with real war footage of something going BOOM, then Ah shit, here we go again, ANOTHER BOOM. Once ruled by boarding school boys, now by summer school boys.
Here’s the tweet—from The White House!
OPERATION EPIC FURY
• Destroy Iran’s missile arsenal.
• Destroy their navy.
• Ensure they NEVER get a nuclear weapon.
→ Antisemitism in America updates: Well, one of America’s most popular podcasters (yes, Candace Owens) now regularly writes things like this: “It was not a mistake. Israel is required to mass murder children because they worship Baal. Trump does as he is instructed to by Jared Kushner and Bibi Netanyahu.” It’s weird that she’s accusing the original monotheists of being pagans? I don’t even know this kind of antisemitism. Control of Hollywood. . . I’m not with you but I can understand where you’re coming from, you know? Jewish people didn’t invent money, no, but I see how you got there.
But Baal worship? Who is Baal? You’ve lost me, Candy. Also this week, she says of Ben Shapiro: “This right here is the behavior of a maggot rotting on a corpse. . . . How do you guys sleep at night allowing this tapeworm to feast off Charlie’s legacy.”
Oh, and a man drove a truck into a Michigan synagogue—one of the largest Reform synagogues in America—where a preschool was in session. Thankfully, security acted fast and no children were killed. Don’t worry, TV talking heads are already justifying it: “This situation, it was an Israeli temple. It was aligned with Israel.” The armed attacker was found dead inside his vehicle. Not to get too personal, but our preschool fundraiser was entirely to raise money for more (you guessed it) security. The colored markers are all dry, the blocks are from the ’90s, but there are so many men standing at attention outside ready to throw their bodies on IEDs. And for that, we are grateful.
→ Teachers want to retire at 55 again: New York public employee unions are pushing Governor Kathy Hochul to roll back pension reforms by lowering the retirement age from 63 to 55 and eliminating employee contributions, a move that policy analyst Ken Girardin estimates could cost taxpayers over $100 billion. Public school teachers unions are incredible. They want to be able to retire at 55 years old with full pensions, the whole thing. And they frame any skepticism of this as “devaluing” the work of hardworking teachers, the backbone of society, the most underappreciated group of people in history. Listen, I agree teachers have it rough, but can’t we make things better for them without treating them to an all-inclusive Sandals Jamaica lifestyle? Here’s the flyer they’re sending around:
→ The answer is yes:
I don’t know what’s wrong with me, but I was a little flattered by this one. First, he called me a writer. Second, my name is in the headline, which means I’ve still got it. Third, I’m on a list of American Writers, and potentially at the top! Being the worst at anything is a feat. It’s not as easy as it looks to be the best at being bad at something.
I love Nellie! She manages to make a joke of a nasty headline. She’s chill.
Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili’s worried about the lodger’s d*g:
Hili: Tell me when this dog matures to the point of normal social contact. Andrzej: Patience, it might take a lot of time.
In Polish:
Hili: Poinformuj mnie jak ten pies dojrzeje do normalnych kontaktów społecznych.
Ja: Cierpliwości, to może zabrać sporo czasu.
From Masih: she was on CNN with Jake Tapper, discussing the “wounded regime” without an obvious leader. This is about 7 minutes:
Yesterday on CNN; new Khameni must be removed!
Iran now has a new “supreme leader.” What a joke, how supreme can you be if you don’t even show up? The whole nation has basically been introduced to a cardboard cutout. @jaketapper asked me about the heartbreaking killing of… pic.twitter.com/eIxF9imaJT
An attacker is dead after plowing his vehicle into a synagogue on Thursday outside Detroit and then exchanging gunfire with security guards in what the authorities described as a “targeted act of violence against the Jewish community.”
Federal officials said the attack was carried out by 41-year-old Ayman Mohamad Ghazali. Officials were still searching for a motive.
I am so tired of this arrant ignorance, throwing around “apartheid” and “genocide” without knowing what they mean.
Yoseph Haddad, an Arab Israeli who was a commander in the IDF, came to the University of Michigan to debate anti-Israel students on whether Israel is an apartheid state.
George Stubbs painted Godolphin the Arabian stallion, with Grimalkin the stable cat, whom he loved very much, maybe in the 1740s. When the cat died, Godolphin was inconsolable (this was remarked in the Stud-Book). Godolphin died in 1753 abd was buried within the stable block at Wandlebury.
Just a reminder that Sal Mercogliano is doing daily video updates, about 15-20 minutes long, on his “What’s Going on with Shipping” channel. He provides analysis from the commercial shipping and merchant mariner viewpoint. Last night’s update should be at url
To your relief no doubt, I’ll be brief (puppy business today).
“Vivid’s” reel of ignorant students about “Pawethtine” doesn’t surprise me at all. In person (for two articles I was writing), in society (no shortage of paltards in Manhattan high society I can assure you), and online (twitter/X) a commonality, almost uniform trait, is a startling ignorance about actual facts about the M.E.
I’ve never met a bunch of more righteous, morally sure fools who know LESS about their actual pet subject. A Pal flag in a bio is a hazard light flashing “I don’t learn good”.
Teachers’ unions in NYC. (sigh).I note even Woody Allen was making a joke about NY teachers unions in a movie in the mid 1970s!
Musandam in Oman – that enclave of Oman (there are a few) at the “top” of the Emirates peninsula, is a spectacularly beautiful place. UAE geography is complicated.
Roman Helmet Guy on eXtwitter observes “active voice” in articles which agree ideological bend of the writer, “passive voice” when the ideology disagrees – here :
“Passive voice politics: When a political ally does something good, you use the active voice. When they do something bad, you use the passive voice. Reverse it for a political adversary. Once you’re aware of this, you’ll see it everywhere.”
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Just a reminder that Sal Mercogliano is doing daily video updates, about 15-20 minutes long, on his “What’s Going on with Shipping” channel. He provides analysis from the commercial shipping and merchant mariner viewpoint. Last night’s update should be at url
To your relief no doubt, I’ll be brief (puppy business today).
“Vivid’s” reel of ignorant students about “Pawethtine” doesn’t surprise me at all. In person (for two articles I was writing), in society (no shortage of paltards in Manhattan high society I can assure you), and online (twitter/X) a commonality, almost uniform trait, is a startling ignorance about actual facts about the M.E.
I’ve never met a bunch of more righteous, morally sure fools who know LESS about their actual pet subject. A Pal flag in a bio is a hazard light flashing “I don’t learn good”.
Teachers’ unions in NYC. (sigh).I note even Woody Allen was making a joke about NY teachers unions in a movie in the mid 1970s!
Musandam in Oman – that enclave of Oman (there are a few) at the “top” of the Emirates peninsula, is a spectacularly beautiful place. UAE geography is complicated.
D.A.
NYC
In order from serious to amusement :
Roman Helmet Guy on eXtwitter observes “active voice” in articles which agree ideological bend of the writer, “passive voice” when the ideology disagrees – here :
“Passive voice politics: When a political ally does something good, you use the active voice. When they do something bad, you use the passive voice. Reverse it for a political adversary. Once you’re aware of this, you’ll see it everywhere.”
https://x.com/romanhelmetguy/status/2032478086281760852?s=46
Godolphin … fascinating name, wonder if Tolkien was thinking of that with the name Gandalf …
Sooo close… nothing online connecting them …
Gonna start saying “thank you” when toilets flush from now on… but maybe just not too loud so anyone hears me over the WHOOSH 😆…