Why Evolution is True is a blog written by Jerry Coyne, centered on evolution and biology but also dealing with diverse topics like politics, culture, and cats.
Yes, the news is thin today, and I will let other people rail about Trump, as I’ve done my share in the last week or so. Instead, how about a happier topic: books? I have just finished two books and, as I’ve said, I’m reading another. I am glad to say I can recommend them all for your consdieration.
The first one was Walter Isaacson’s 2004 biography of Benjamin Franklin, which you can find on Amazon, with the long (586 pp.) paperback now only $6.66 (Satan’s number). Click cover to go to the site:
I don’t know how Isaacson manages to pump out these long biographies, which are packed with research and scholarship (though written very well), so quickly. But he does. I’ve read two of his before: his biographies of Steve Jobs (2011) and of Leonardo da Vinci (2018). Both were good, but the biography of Leonardo I think is a world-class piece of writing. If you must read one of these, start with that. Isaacson clearly has a penchant for very smart men, preferably polymaths like Franklin and Leonardo. But I note that he’s also written a biography of Albert Einstein (2008); I haven’t read that one because I’ve read about three other biographies of the man.
You can get all four as a set of “The Genius Biographies” for $51, and that’s over 2000 pages of enjoyment and education.
Like Leonardo, Franklin was also a polymath: he “discovered” and worked out the properties of electricity, helped write both the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence, invented bifocals, set up the American postal system, and founded the University of Pennsylvania. As a superb diplomat, he helped bring an end to the Revolutionary War on favorable term for America, and also served as what then constituted the governorship of Pennsylvania. Moving back and forth between the U.S. and France, as well as throughout America, his travels equipped him well to contribute to founding documents that all our colonies were able to sign.
Further, Franklin was a humble man, dressed in ordinary garb, not foisting himself on others, largely free from arrogance, and trying to live by his famous 13 “necessary virtues” he compiled when young. He largely succeeded in living up to those standards, though he was a bit wobbly on “temperance”, winding up with gout as well as kidney stones. Yet despite his ill health in later life, he was the prime mover in the Treaty of Paris (1783), requiring delicate skills at negotiating simultaneously with France, the nascent U.S., and Britain. The only palpable flaw that I could detect in him was his gross neglect of his wife, whom he left for 14 of the last 17 years of his life, and was not there when she died. Franklin himself had a long life, expiring at 84.
I’d recommend this highly, especially if you know little of Franklin. You’ll be impressed at his scientific skills: though he wasn’t a theoretician, he was great at thinking up hypothesis and good at testing them. Its length makes it a good book to take on a trip, but if you haven’t read his biography of Leonardo, start with that one.
*********************
I’ve read quite a few books on the Holocaust, but this one, byJózsef Debreczeni, may be the best, outstripping even the famous books of Primo Levi and Elie Wiesel (Night and If This Is a Man) . Up until recently, however, it was obscure, and, though written in 1950, it was available only in Hungarian, and wasn’t translated into other languages, including English, until 2023. I believe a reader suggested it in an earlier “books” post on this site. Click below to find it at Amazon:
What makes this book different from those of Wiesel and Levi is, curiously, its lack of analysis and of philosophizing. Night is also semi-fictional, so you can’t tell which episodes were made up, though it’s largely true. In contrast, Cold Crematorium merely describes what happened to Debreczeni in the Lager: what life was like as inmate in three different concentration camps, including Auschwitz. He was in the camps for only about a year, but that was nearly enough to do him in. From Wikipedia:
The winter of 1944–1945 was harsh, with heavy snows and extreme temperatures. [Dobreczeni] contracted diarrhea, and by January 20 he weighed 35 kg (77 lb). Thanks to a friend who brought him extra food, he survived. He subsequently contracted typhus but survived with the help of a camp doctor. Soviet forces liberated the camp in May 1945, and he recovered at a Soviet hospital.
I cannot begin to describe how grim the life in the camps was, especially at Auschwitz, but he doesn’t spare the reader the gory details. One of them: everyone constantly had diarrhea because of the diet of soup made with polluted water and almost no contents, and because the “toilet man” with the bucket didn’t come around fast enough, everything was covered with shit, which eventually piled up on the floor above the ankles. The intricate way prisoners developed a black market in food and tobacco to survive is amazing.
I like this book because, more than the other books, it’s just a graphic and un-fictional presentation of day-to-day life in a concentration camp. This shows you how horrible the Holocaust really was, and how inhumane were the people who engineered and implemented it. It doesn’t discuss whether all of us have the potential to become Nazis, and doesn’t go into depth about how the Holocaust affected the author after he was liberated. The book simply ends with the liberation. One trigger warning: it is very graphic and disturbing, but also the only book I know that makes you see what it was like to be an inmate.
*********************
Finally, I am 110 pages into the book below, which I mentioned a few days ago (click cover to go to Amazon site). I recommend it, at least what I’ve read of it so far. It’s an analysis of cancel culture by two employees of FIRE (Schlott is also a journalist). As I said the other day,
This extremism and demonization is in fact the subject of a good book I’m reading now: Greg Lukianoff and Rikki Schlott’s The Canceling of the American Mind, which takes up Great Untruth #3 of Haidt and Lukianoff’s earlier bestseller The Coddling of the American Mind (2018). Let me remind you of all three of those Untruths whose embrace by the young is, Haidt and Lukianoff argued, responsible for a lot of turmoil, divisiveness, and rancor on and off campus:
1.) What doesn’t kill you make you weaker
2.) Always trust your feelings
3.) Life is a battle between good people and evil people.
It’s a lot like Lukianoff’s talk that I heard in Los Angeles a couple of months ago, recounting horrific tales of cancellation coming from both the Right and the Left. Right now I’m reading about those instances, and haven’t yet encountered the authors’ solutions, which come at the end of the book. We all recognize divisive nature of politics (and life!) in America, as well as the fact that for many, the validity of social/political arguments now seems to rest largely on whether the person who makes them is on your side (“good”) or not (“bad”). I’ll give an overall assessment when I’m done.
Now it’s your turn to tell us what you’re reading or what you’ve read lately, preferably dwelling on books you’d recommend. I’ve found many good books by following readers’ suggestions, and so I hope to make this a regular feature. Put your readings in the comments!
I want to remind readers again to avoid over-commenting on threads for reasons I’ve discussed before. The Roolz on this issue (see here) are often blatantly ignored. Now I don’t enforce them strictly, but I see some folkz commenting over and over again on the same thread, and often making the same point.
If you haven’t yet read the posting guidelines, please do so here or on the left sidebar. (“Da Roolz”). At issue:
Welcome to CaturSaturday, April 26, 2025: shabbos for Jewish cats and International Lime Day. The best are key limes, which can be used to make one of the world’s best pies. Below: ZESTING A LIME! (It’s probably the normal, or “Persian” lime.
Villy Fink Isaksen, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons
F.B.I. agents arrested a county judge in Milwaukee on Friday on charges of obstructing immigration agents by steering an undocumented immigrant through a side door in her courtroom while the agents waited in a public hallway to apprehend him.
The arrest of a sitting state court judge is a major escalation in the Trump administration’s battle with local authorities over deportations. The administration has demanded, under threat of investigation or prosecution, that local officials assist federal efforts to deport millions of undocumented immigrants.
Charging documents describe a confrontation last Friday at Judge Dugan’s courthouse, in which federal agents say she was “visibly upset and had a confrontational, angry demeanor” when a group of immigration, D.E.A. and F.B.I. agents came to arrest Eduardo Flores-Ruiz, a citizen of Mexico who was in her courtroom to face misdemeanor criminal charges.
According to the criminal complaint, the judge confronted the agents and told them to go talk to the chief judge of the courthouse. She then returned to her courtroom.
“Despite having been advised of the administrative warrant for the arrest of Flores-Ruiz, Judge Dugan then escorted Flores-Ruiz and his counsel out of the courtroom through the ‘jury door,’ which leads to a nonpublic area of the courthouse,” said the complaint, which was written by an F.B.I. agent.
The judge was charged with obstructing a proceeding of a federal agency and concealing an individual to prevent his discovery and arrest.
After a brief appearance as a defendant in federal court in Milwaukee, about a mile from her own courthouse, the judge was released on her own recognizance.
Here’s the complaint against the judge (h/t Matthew); I’m not sure if they should have used a grand jury. These are both felonies, but I don’t know the rules about grand juries.
I don’t know what is going to happen now; are they going to convict a judge? Would any jury find her guilty? If so, could she go to jail? Would she lose her judgeship? If she did violate the law, and they can prove that, then yes, she should be convicted. But there’s always jury nullification, and if any “crime” is ripe for that, it’s this one. We’ll just have to wait and see.
*The big news is that Nellie Bowles is back writing her weekly news & snark summary at The Free Press (I was going to unsubscribe if she stopped). But there’s a piece today, “TGIF: Vladimir, STOP!“, and I’ll steal three bits from it. Welcome back, Nellie!
→ About that approval rating: It’s not going well.
And Trump, who has been quite confident he can fix this Ukraine situation, was caught flat-footed after Russia bombed several districts in Kyiv, killing at least 12 people. The president posted a Truth Social missive, writing: “Vladimir, STOP!” We finally have a president who leads with strength. A president who calls it like he sees it. “Vladimir, STOP!” he posts on a niche social media site called Truth Social. That’ll do it. Now Vladimir Putin will know to fear American greatness. Otherwise, it’s time-out for him, possibly no dessert.
→ Everything America has ever done is fake and gay: Candace Owens this week took aim at NASA and the moon landing, which, according to her, did not happen. Here’s Candace: “You must come to terms with the fact that NASA and space missions have always been this fake and gay. You just weren’t alive for the original ones, and you need to learn the history of NASA, of the Apollo programs, which were occult and satanic. It was literally meant to be an Antichrist movement to make people believe in man. It’s a fact.” She concluded, “Space has always been exceedingly fake and gay.” Candace is a lot like Luigi Mangione fangirl Taylor Lorenz. Even when they are directly criticizing me (Candace once called me a “hysterical lesbian”), even when they are saying things I know are insane (Brigitte Macron, please), I just can’t stop watching. I want more. Yell at me, Candace! I won’t fight back!
I’ve put the “fake and gay” video in the tweets below so you can see the loon for yourselves. One more from Nellie:
→ Ivy update: Students at Yale University briefly set up a new pro-Hamas encampment, where they chanted a call-and-response: We will honor all our martyrs / Mothers, fathers, sons, and daughters. And no, they are not talking about their parents and siblings who sacrificed so much to get them to Yale (I’m guessing they screen calls from their actual mothers). They said the quiet part out loud by wearing Hamas headbands, the hottest new campus accessory. So again, to reiterate, they are wearing Hamas headbands and chanting to honor their martyrs. If anyone buys the line that these are just anti-war protesters, or that they’re protesting some specific Israeli policy, you’re deluding yourself. They are Hamas supporters, plain and simple.
The Hamasniks also did pretty aggro things like throwing water at Jewish students exiting an event with Itamar Ben-Gvir, an Israeli politician. As I say to my daughter when she does that: Not funny.
Elsewhere, hip-looking protesters in London chanted One struggle, one fight / Palestine, trans rights. Which really is very curious. And at Coachella last Friday, the Irish hip-hop group Kneecap projected “Fuck Israel / Free Palestine” on the screen behind them as their show ended, with the crowd breaking out into a “Free Palestine” chant.
My sense is that the great majority of my colleagues don’t care for campus political activism. As an out-of-the-closet conservative, I often find myself playing the confidant to my liberal colleagues. They sidle up and say, sotto voce, “Please don’t tell anyone I said this,” then proceed to unload their disgust with the latest activist outrages. They might have identified as leftists in their college years, but a frequent refrain I hear from them now is “this is not what the left used to stand for.”
Faculty at Harvard for the most part are serious scholars and scientists who just want to get on with their work. They have books to write and papers to publish. They want to pass on what they have learned to the next generation. They resent it when activists create turbulence at department meetings and waste everyone’s time.
The biggest time-waster at the moment is dealing with the budget cuts and hiring freezes set off by the Trump administration’s withdrawal of federal funding. Many of my colleagues can see clearly enough that this crisis has been triggered by progressive activists, who are predominantly graduate students or members of the university’s vast diversity bureaucracy. Many faculty wish that the fanatics would just shut up and take the target off Harvard’s back.
. . .The message is clear and bold: The current Harvard administration wants to be a leader in restoring the historic principles of higher education in America. But the Trump administration’s actions have weakened internal support for reform at Harvard and hardened its resolve to resist White House pressure. On Monday, Harvard announced that it was escalating the conflict by suing the government for violation of its civil rights. Right now, most of the university is hoping that the courts will stop the Trump administration’s threatened funding cuts, until such time as Harvard can reattach its umbilical cord to a federal government under Democratic control.
That, in my view, would be a mistake. Even if the courts do succeed in restoring Harvard’s federal funding, which is by no means certain, the university should think carefully about the hazards of accepting federal funding in an age of populism. My progressive colleagues were fine with federal influence on Harvard so long as it furthered what they saw as just causes, such as diversity and equity. Now that their research budgets are being held hostage to the demands of an unfriendly White House, left-leaning faculty are starting to appreciate anew the value of freedom from government mandates.
In the short term, unwinding the university’s dependence on federal funding risks creating a substantial deficit. But that funding itself comes at a steep price, not all of which can be measured in dollars and cents. It changes how the university operates and how power is distributed within it. Federal funding tends to increase the number and power of administrators, to turn faculty into their supplicants and to insulate the university from alumni opinion.
Given the need for somebody to support at least scientific research, that that has been the federal government (NIH, NSF, and DEA), and “strings” for that money have been merit and not much political, AND that university research is the lifeblood of scientific progress, I’m not sure what alternative Hankins proposes. Could he be unfamiliar with the generally good system of federally funding at least scientific research? His substitute, given below, seems inadequate: “The alumni will fund that research.” I seriously doubt it.
. . . . There are very good reasons for Harvard (and other universities) to reduce our financial dependence on the federal government. Instead, we should strengthen ties with loyal alumni who know and love Harvard. Alumni are loyal in part because they remember with gratitude the teaching they received as undergraduates. That makes them more closely aligned with the university’s real mission: to teach and to produce high-quality, unpoliticized research. Empowering alumni would carry its own risks, no doubt, but in my experience, they have a much sounder sense than politicians and government bureaucrats of what Harvard should be doing to help the country and itself.
*Luigi Mangione, accused of killing United Healthcare CEO Brian Thompson, has pleaded “not guilty.” As far as I can see, the evidence points to guilt beyond a reasonable doubt, but of course I’m not on the jury. And what else could he do? If he’s convicted, whether he pleaded “guilty” or “not guilty” won’t affect the “plea tax”: the idea that by pleading guilty you may get a lighter sentence. Not in his case!:
Mangione, 26, walked into court just before 1pm. He was wearing tan jail garb with a white long-sleeved undershirt. He chatted with his lawyers, who sat alongside him, and at one point appeared to smile; he could be seen flipping through papers on the table.
Mangione could face the death penalty in a case that shocked America for the killing of a top business executive on New York’s streets but also triggered an outpouring of anger against America’s for-profit healthcare industry.
As with prior proceedings, throngs of supporters of Mangione queued up outside to secure a much-coveted seat in court. Many sported medical masks or sunglasses, or both, and were reticent about speaking to media but did attack the healthcare system.
“I am a chronically ill person. I live in chronic pain,” one woman told the Guardian in explaining why she was at court. She said that she had never been in “that much medical debt” compared to others, but “when I say not that much I mean like $30,000.”
Even if it were proved that Mangione killed Thompson, she said, she believes his guilt embodies an ethical grey area. The healthcare industry kills thousands and Mangione was one man, she said. “One life [versus] like a thousand lives, that moral dilemma,” she said.
Ah, there’s the rub. Many people actually thought it was great that Mangione assassinated Thompson, even though Thompson didn’t make any of those healthcare decisions. Never mind–he was the boss. But it’s never right to kill someone unless it’s in self-defense. But of course this goes for the state, too, or so I think. If he’s guilty, life without parole, but no executions.
*And from the AP’s “oddities” section, an unusual National Anthem before a hockey game:
The Los Angeles Kings have brought back the harmonica-playing senior citizens whose rendition of the U.S. national anthem caused a sensation before their playoff opener.
The Kings welcomed back the Harmonica Class from the Koreatown Senior and Community Center for a second performance of “The Star-Spangled Banner” before Game 2 of their first-round Stanley Cup playoff series against the Edmonton Oilers on Wednesday night.
The harmonica players became a viral sensation two days earlier when they played the anthem before Game 1. Fans in the Kings’ downtown arena loved the surprising performance and loudly sang along to the plaintive harmonica rendition, which was viewed millions of times on social media.
After wearing traditional Korean garb for Game 1, the harmonica players sported black Kings jerseys for Game 2. They received huge cheers before and after their performance.
Here you go. It’s funny and touching at the same time.
Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili is guilt-tripping Andrzej into handing out noms:
Hili: Don’t you have any conscience?
A: You are my conscience.
Hili: So I say to you: it’s time to eat something.
In Polish:
Hili: Czy ty sumienia nie masz?
Ja: Ty jesteś moim sumieniem.
Hili: Więc mówię ci, że pora coś zjeść.
And a photo of the affectionate Szaron:
*******************
Masih’s back, and she found a bit of stupidity: Iranians saying that she’s PAYING Iranian women to remove their hijabs. Note that the English subtitles move towards the very bottom of the screen as the video proceeds.
The regime in Iran claims that the reason more and more women are removing their hijab in the streets is because I’m secretly paying their fines in Bitcoin.
Watch the video. This isn’t just my response, it’s the response of Iranian women risking everything to say: This is how we… pic.twitter.com/qgLLXVQffr
From the insane Candace Owens, who says that all the Moon landings were “fake and gay”. Why does anybody listen to her?
Candace Owens calls out Matt Walsh
“You must come to terms with the fact that NASA and ‘space’ missions have always been this fake and gay and you need do learn the history of NASA and the Apollo program which were occult and satanic.
— ▄︻デʀօɮօȶ քօʟɨֆɦɛʀ═══━一 (@RobotPolisher) April 17, 2025
From Luana. There were TEN ethnically- or vocationally-themed graduations at Harvard last year:
Last year, Harvard’s DEI office cynically added inaugural affinity group graduation celebrations for Jewish students and veterans, bringing the total number to ten.
Two tweets from Dr. Cobb. First, some very rare footage of a wild Pallas’s cat hunting:
It's #InternationalPallasCatDay! Finding wild Pallas's cat was one of the most amazing experiences of the last year. It was hunting voles on a Himalayan plain, wriggling its tail – the only part of its body that isn't camouflaged – presumably to distract the voles. #MammalWatching #WildIndia #Ladakh
A list of the rudest “rude words” used in the UK. I had never heard the third one being used, and neither had Matthew:
Which swear words do Britons find the most offensive?C*nt: 82% say very or fairly offensiveMotherf*cker: 70%Fatherf*cker: 62%B*tch: 55%F*ck: 53%W*nker: 53%B*stard: 45%P*ssy: 44%Pr*ck: 42%Tw*t: 40%A*sehole: 39%D*ckhead: 39%Son of b*tch: 36%C*ck: 34%Full list in the chart 👇
Today’s Jesus and Mo strip, called “apostates,” shows Mo instantiating the hatred inherent in some Islamists. The accompanying caption: “It’s complicated.”
From Wikipedia’s article “Apostasy in Islam“, showing that it is indeed complicated (but not for Mo):
Apostasy in Islam (Arabic: ردة, romanized: ridda or ارتداد, irtidād) is commonly defined as the abandonment of Islam by a Muslim, in thought, word, or through deed. It includes not only explicit renunciations of the Islamic faith by converting to another religion or abandoning religion, but also blasphemy or heresy by those who consider themselves Muslims, through any action or utterance which implies unbelief, including those who deny a “fundamental tenet or creed” of Islam. An apostate from Islam is known as a murtadd (مرتدّ).
While Islamic jurisprudence calls for the death penalty of those who refuse to repent of apostasy from Islam, what statements or acts qualify as apostasy and whether and how they should be punished, are disputed among Islamic scholars, with liberal Islam rejecting physical punishment for apostasy. The penalty of killing of apostates is in conflict with international human rights norms which provide for the freedom of religions, as demonstrated in human rights instruments such as the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, and the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights provide for the freedom of religion.
Jay Tanzman sent me a note after he’d read several posts excoriating antiwoke writers who agree with views similar to ours. And it’s true: these days online denigration often takes the form of finding an association between someone you want to demonize and somebody who’s already demonized. Once you do that, there’s no need to deal with actual issues. Here’s Jay’s Law, which is his.
Welcome to a hump day (“dita e gungës” in Albanian ): Wednesday, April 16, 2025, and National Banana Day. Here is how organic, fair-trade bananas are grown and harvested in the Dominican Republic:
And I can’t resist putting up this terrific live version of Harry Belafonte singing about a worker who loads bananas on boats. Have a listen!
A beautiful bunch of ripe banana
Hide the deadly black tarantula!
Readers are welcome to mark notable events, births, or deaths on this day by consulting the April 16 Wikipedia page.
Da Nooz:
*Here’s an article to put spring in your step, and it’s by the NYT’s conservative op-ed columnist Ross Douthat: “Trump is on a path to failure.”
. . . when [Trump] returned to office, I vowed to avoid premature declarations of catastrophe. I would criticize, but I wouldn’t act as though everything was irrecoverable for at least the first year.
This week has sorely tested that resolve. None of Trump’s first-term policies carried the comprehensive risks involved in his great trade war — the threat of recession at the very least, the potential threat to America’s global position and basic solvency as well. Even with the suspension of the country-by-country tariffs, the scale of the China trade war and the general uncertainty created by the Trump whipsaw portend economic pain without a clear path to a rebound.
That’s a very bad place to be for a president who has always depended on good economic vibes, and it’s happening against a backdrop of other wrong turns and disappointments. I wrote in December about the need for a fruitful balance between Trumpism’s populist and techno-libertarian factions, between the spirit of JD Vance and the spirit of Elon Musk. I was imagining, say, pro-family tax policy jointed to abundance-oriented deregulation — but instead, the balance so far consists of reckless trade war on the populist side and Musk’s crusade to reduce government head count without apparent regard to government capacity. It’s a synthesis of sorts, but not a happy one.
Meanwhile everything the administration does, it does with a dose of tough-guy excess, as though determined to alienate any part of its coalition that isn’t fully committed to the MAGA cause. It’s not enough to pursue deportations; we need to deport people to a prison in El Salvador without convicting them of any crime. It’s not enough to ask our NATO allies to bear more burdens; the ask has to come with a snarl, a trade war and a fixation on Greenland. It’s not enough to purge D.E.I. programs; we have to hack away at scientific research and humanitarian aid as well.
This all makes for a very bad trajectory, and the fact that Trump survived bad trajectories before doesn’t mean that this one is destined to reverse. Maybe this time he’s too cocooned and unrestrained, too surrounded by flatterers, too confident in his place among history’s decisive figures (someone should tell him about their often unhappy endgames) to steer toward stability and popularity.
Douthat thinks that a course correction is still possible, and maybe he’s right, but I’m hoping he’s not.
He can have tariffs; he just can’t have the tariffs of “Liberation Day,” with their scale and cackhanded design. He can have deportations; he just has to accept the limits imposed by moral decency and the Supreme Court. He can have a version of the Department of Government Efficiency, just refocused on deregulation, where it should have been focused from the start. He can have yes-men and flatterers; he just needs some people in his cabinet to say, “Sir, maybe not.”
He can even pine for Greenland and woo its denizens. He just can’t threaten to go seize it.
Throughout his time as the dominant force in our politics, Trump has showed a capacity for what you might call temporary discipline, linked to a crude survival instinct and a sense of the prevailing winds.
If those instincts are still with him, this is the time to listen to them — and to remember that while fortune has her favorites, nemesis always waits.
I’m rooting for NEMESIS!
*The US and Iran are still doing a dance around Iran’s nuclear program, though I think it’s a stupid dance that won’t achieve the US aims. As the Times of Israel reports US Envoy to the Mideast Steve Witkoff (he’s incompetent) announces that the US is trying to slow down rather than dismantle Iran’s desire to create nuclear weapons.
US special envoy to the Mideast Steve Witkoff appeared to use a key component of the 2015 Iran nuclear deal signed during the Obama administration as a reference point for the ongoing talks with Tehran, in comments that seemed to indicate the US is looking to limit rather than dismantle Tehran’s nuclear program.
The deal, which US President Donald Trump abandoned in 2018 and has long criticized, barred Iran from enriching its uranium beyond 3.67 percent as part of a framework intended to prevent the Islamic Republic from obtaining a weapon.
But then they add this:
“The president means what he says, which is: Iran cannot have a bomb,” Witkoff told Fox News in a Monday interview, elaborating that the ongoing “conversation” with Iran would be about enrichment and weaponization, with the imperative to verify any agreed commitments.
“Iran “do[es] not need to enrich past 3.67%. In some circumstances, they’re at 60%, in other circumstances 20%. That cannot be,” he said. “You do not need to run — as they claim — a civil nuclear program where you’re enriching past 3.67%.”
Enriching uranium from 60% to the 90% needed for a weapon is a relatively short technical step.
The comments indicated that the US is looking to limit Iran’s uranium enrichment rather than dismantle its nuclear program altogether, as demanded by Israel, which sees a nuclear-armed Iran as an existential threat.
Israel is right here, and Iran has evaded every limitation ever put on it. Witkoff seems to me just about as oblivious as Blinken when it comes to the Middle East.
Right after Trump expressed his frustration that the mullahs may be stringing out the talks, he said: “Iran has to get rid of the concept of a nuclear weapon. They cannot have a nuclear weapon.”
This may sound counterintuitive upon first read. Isn’t the whole point of Witkoff’s diplomacy to guarantee Iran will not build a nuclear weapon?
But a weapon is only the final phase of Iran’s vast nuclear-industrial complex. Specifically, weaponization refers to the construction of a deliverable warhead. In this respect, the fact that Trump did not say that Iran cannot have a nuclear program,which is what he insisted on when he scuttled Obama’s nuclear deal with Iran, is a red flag.
On Monday evening Witkoff told Fox News that the aim of his negations was “to do something about enrichment.” He said: “They do not need to enrich past 3.67 percent.” Witkoff also said ultimately he wanted to reach a deal on verification that Iran’s enrichment was not for a nuclear weapon. “That includes missiles, the type of missiles they have stockpiled there, and it includes the trigger for a bomb.”
Yikes. Leaving aside the imprudence of announcing your real red lines at the start of negotiations, this appears to be a recipe for accepting a nuclear deal that is at best as weak as Obama’s in 2015. At least, that is the opinion of several hawks in Washington and inside the Trump administration. The problem is that in Trump’s second term so far, the “restrainer” wing has been ascendant. So while some administration officials, such as National Security Adviser Mike Waltz and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, have called for the dismantling of Iran’s nuclear program, it’s Witkoff and his team who are actually negotiating with the Iranians.
. . . . Why offer Iran an opportunity to keep its centrifuges and ballistic missiles? Far better to press the advantage now and make Iran a Godfather offer. The mullahs can dismantle their nuclear program now in exchange for concessions—or America and Israel can do it for them.
We need to make Iran an offer it can’t refuse. If you think they are amenable to dismantling their nuclear program, you’re wrong, and that’s why the proper deal won’t be made.
The question of whether this problem should be addressed through additional Federal legislation or executive action has been raised in multiple situations in recent years. In 2017, I testified before the U.S. Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions, chaired by Senator Lamar Alexander. Senator Alexander asked me at that time whether I thought Congress should address free expression on campus through federal legislation. I replied unequivocally that I was opposed to any such federal legislation. The question of federal intervention in this arena arises again today, not with Congress, but with the Executive Branch. As was my position with respect to Congress, I believe that any action by the Executive Branch that interferes with the ability of higher education institutions to address this problem themselves is misguided and in fact sets a very problematic precedent.
There are two related features of potential Federal engagement on this issue that would threaten the mission of institutions of higher education. They would do so by creating the specter of less rather than more free expression, and by deeply chilling the environment for discourse and intellectual challenge. The first feature is the precedent of the Federal government establishing its own standing to interfere in the issue of speech on campuses. This opens the door to any number of troubling policies over time that the Federal government, whatever the political party involved, might adopt on such matters. It makes the government, with all its power and authority, a party to defining the very nature of discussion on campus. The second feature is the inevitable establishment of a bureaucracy to enforce any governmental position. A committee in Washington passing judgment on the speech policies and activities of educational institutions, judgments that may change according to who is in power and what policies they wish to promulgate, would be a profound threat to open discourse on campus. In fact, it would reproduce in Washington exactly the type of on-campus “speech committee” that would be a natural and dangerous consequence of the position taken by many advocating for the limitation of discourse on campuses.
Therefore, rather than improving the situation, further legislative or executive Federal action has the potential to reinforce and expand the difficulties regarding education and free expression that we are confronting now. It would be a grave error for the short and the long run.
QED. I sure miss Zimmer (so do the ducks!), and it’s a crying shame that he died. I’m sure he’d be saying the same thing now, except more forcefully!
*I can’t resist posting this snarky article because I thought the “Katy Perry Space Shot” was a ludicrous bit of hype and not “historic,” as the news described it. The piece is called “Lauren Sánchez’s Cosmic Bachelorette Party.” (Article is archived here.)
If you don’t know what a bachelorette party is like, let me tell you: It’s like being vacuum sealed in a tin can with a bunch of girls you don’t know that well but with whom you have to pretend to have a life-changing experience, for the sake of the bride, who invited everyone and who has a vision.
In other words, it’s exactly what happened on this morning’s historic American spaceflight.
Just after 9:00 a.m., in West Texas, an all-female space crew lifted off and flew to the Kármán line, which is considered the beginning of outer space, thanks to Jeff Bezos’s private spacefaring company Blue Origin. Ten minutes and 21 seconds after they left the ground, and after a brief hang in zero gravity, the capsule carrying the six women landed back on Earth.
The newly minted astronauts include Bezos’s fiancée Lauren Sánchez, pop star Katy Perry, CBS journalist Gayle King, civil rights activist Amanda Nguyen, former rocket scientist Aisha Bowe, and film producer Kerianne Flynn. (While Perry was invited to take part in the experience gratis, according to Blue Origin at least some of the seats on the flight were paid for.) The tagline of the trip was “Taking Up Space” (their crew name was The Six Taking Up Space), and the whole thing smelled of a hen party down to the custom flight patch and matching outfits. The women all wore figure-hugging, blue bell-bottomed flight suits, custom-made by the brand Monse, and delivering on Perry’s promise that the six-lady crew would put the “ass” in astronaut.
A few days ago, Perry told the AP that she was doing this to “inspire” the next generation—but watching all the coverage (I couldn’t wait for this trip), it seems like this flight was more like the most publicized, and most expensive, bachelorette party ever rather than a generational watershed.’
It sounds like a big hype-fest as well as a bachelorette party, with a lot of self-promotion:
When the group got up to space and started floating—everyone’s perfectly coiffed hair flying everywhere—the group huddled to chant “take up space” and then, like when you pregame too hard before hitting a bar, they all split up to do their own thing. Katy Perry held a daisy (her daughter is named Daisy) up for the camera and teared up. She also revealed the setlist for her upcoming Lifetimes tour on a cardboard butterfly before letting it float away. Elsewhere in the pod, Lauren Sánchez held up a plushie of “Flynn”—the dyslexic fly character from her children’s book The Fly Who Flew to Space—and, like a drunk person, kissed it and said, “Proud of you, Flynn.”
A video:
Katy Perry used a misplaced apostrophe in her obligatory Instagram post below, which shows the “crew” in their designer space suits. The entire mission from launch to touchdown took eleven minutes.
Weiss’s piece is good, but I’d like to see what Nellie writes about this on Friday.
Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili is enigmatic, but Malgorzata explains: “So many humans go around with broken moral compasses. Why should ladybirds be spared from this epidemic?”
Masih is still quiet, so I’ll have to give a tweet from someone equally demonized:
Man continues to insist that women must redefine their own sex class to include his fellow men, and sincerely believes this makes him a progressive hero. pic.twitter.com/5dd7eypIB1
Another happy ending. It reminds me of a book I just finished: Cold Crematorium, one of the best (and most distressing) books about the Holocaust I’ve ever read.
Holocaust survivor Susan Pollack OBE still vividly remembers her moment of liberation, when 80 years ago at Bergen-Belsen Concentration Camp, a British soldier found her and picked her up. pic.twitter.com/257PtJLDO3
NGC 1514 is a nebula, the gas and dust ejected from a dying star. But hoo boy, is it *weird*. When you observe it with JWST, it looks like, well…… a transparent tuna fish can with bright glowing rims. Why?Good question. We don't know.badastronomy.beehiiv.com/p/incredible…🔭🧪
If any post is viral, this one is. Matthew’s take is “Insert metaphor here.”:
WATCH: Elephants at the San Diego Zoo Safari Park react to Monday's 5.2 magnitude earthquake that shook San Diego County. The elephants formed an "alert circle" meant to protect the young and the entire herd from any threats, according to the San Diego Zoo Wildlife Alliance.
Welcome to CaturSaturday, April 12, 2025, and shabbos for Jewish cats. It’s also the beginning of Passover, which commences at sunset tonight and ends a week later on Sunday. The meal is dire, but the holiday conforms to the description of all Jewish holidays:
“They tried to kill us;
We won;
Let’s eat!”
The seder meal (shown below). It’s not a gourmet treat but a collection of metaphorical foodstuffs:
Maror: Bitter herbs, which Gamaliel says symbolize the bitterness and harshness of the slavery which the Jews endured in Ancient Egypt. For maror, many people use freshly grated horseradish or whole horseradish root.
Chazeret is typically romaine lettuce, whose roots are bitter-tasting. In addition to horseradish and romaine lettuce, other forms of bitter lettuce, such as endive, may be eaten in fulfillment of the mitzvah, as well as green onions, dandelion greens, celery leaves, or curly parsley (but parsley and celery are more commonly used as the karpas or vegetable element). Much depends upon whether one’s tradition is Ashkenazic, Sephardic, Mizrahi, Persian, or one of the many other Jewish ethno-cultural traditions.
Charoset: A sweet, brown, pebbly paste of fruits and nuts, possibly representing the mortar used by the Jewish slaves to build the storehouses of Egypt. The actual recipe depends partly on ethno-cultural tradition and partly on locally available ingredients. Ashkenazi Jews, for example, traditionally make apple-raisin based charoset while Sephardic Jews often make date-based recipes that might feature orange or/and lemon, or even banana. Other Talmudic traditions claim the Charoset “recalls the apple”, apparently referencing a tradition that Jewish women snuck out to apple orchards to conceive in Egypt, and that it is not obligatory but serves to nullify the poison of the maror.
Karpas: A vegetable other than bitter herbs, sometimes parsley or celery or cooked potato, which is dipped into salt water (Ashkenazi custom), vinegar (Sephardi custom), or charoset (Yemenite Jews) at the beginning of the Seder.
Zeroa: A roasted lamb or goat bone, symbolizing the korban Pesach (Pesach sacrifice), which was a lamb offered in the Temple in Jerusalem and was then roasted and eaten as part of the meal on Seder night.
Beitzah: A roast egg – usually a hard-boiled egg that has been roasted in a baking pan with a little oil, or with a lamb shank – symbolizing the korban chagigah (festival sacrifice) that was offered in the Temple in Jerusalem and was then eaten as part of the meal on Seder night.
You call this a meal (photo below)? But there will also be Matzos available, which are good if thickly slathered with butter, although butter won’t be on the table. . .
Readers are welcome to mark notable events, births, or deaths on this day by consulting the April 12 Wikipedia page.
Da Nooz:
*One of Trump’s executive orders (or a general order) was finally overturned by the Supreme Court: the blatantly illegal deportation of a man who was guilty of nothing. Even the administration admitted it made a mistake, but wouldn’t bring the guy back. Now he has to, or violates a Supreme Court decision.
The Supreme Court on Thursday backed a lower-court order requiring the Trump administration to “facilitate” the release from custody of a Maryland man who was mistakenly deported to a mega-prison in El Salvador last month.
A district court judge had ordered the administration to bring Kilmar Abrego García back to the United States by Monday night, but Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. issued a brief pause hours before the deadline, allowing the justices time to weigh a government motion to block the order.
In its brief order Thursday evening, the high court said the judge “properly requires the Government to ‘facilitate’ Abrego Garcia’s release from custody in El Salvador and to ensure that his case is handled as it would have been had he not been improperly sent to El Salvador.”
There were no noted dissents.
After the high court’s ruling, U.S. District Court Judge Paula Xinis ordered the government “to take all available steps to facilitate the return of Abrego Garcia to the United States as soon as possible.” She also told the Trump administration to provide an update on its efforts by Friday morning. Xinis scheduled a hearing for Friday afternoon.
Note that the Supreme Court decision was unanimous. It is this route that will get Trump’s orders overturned. Even he, I think, doesn’t have the chutzpah to buck the Supremes. And the lower-court judge, peeved, “ordered the government to submit daily updates in the case of the man, Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia.”
Iran was pondering a response to President Trump’s letter seeking nuclear negotiations. So the country’s president, as well as the heads of the judiciary and Parliament huddled with Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, last month, according to two senior Iranian officials familiar with the meeting.
Mr. Khamenei had publicly and repeatedly banned engaging with Washington, calling it unwise and idiotic. The senior officials, in an unusual coordinated effort, urged him to change course, said the two officials, who asked not to be named to discuss sensitive issues.
The message to Mr. Khamenei was blunt: Allow Tehran to negotiate with Washington, even directly if necessary, because otherwise the Islamic Republic’s rule could be toppled.
The country was already dealing with an economy in shambles, a currency plunging against the dollar and shortages of gas, electricity and water. The threat of war with the United States and Israel was extremely serious, the officials warned. If Iran refused talks or if the negotiations failed, the officials told Mr. Khamenei, military strikes on Iran’s two main nuclear sites, Natanz and Fordow, would be inevitable.
Iran would then be forced to retaliate, risking a wider war, a scenario that could further damage the economy and spark domestic unrest, including protests and strikes, the officials said. Fighting on two fronts posed an existential threat to the regime, they added.
At the end of the hourslong meeting, Mr. Khamenei relented. He granted his permission for talks, first indirect, through an intermediary, and then, if things proceeded well, for direct talks between U.S. and Iranian negotiators, the two officials said.
My guess is that Israel would help with the fighting, if only to supply information to the U.S. I was under the impression that Iran’s nuke facilities were buried so far under mountains that bombing attacks would be useless. But, given that Iran relented, that doesn’t appear to be the case. I still think that country is hell-bent on getting the bomb so it could destroy Israel, and am dubious about these talks with Trump, but we shall see. . .
You might have seen the various data points suggesting that Americans are losing their ability to reason.
The trend starts with the young. The percentage of fourth graders who score below basic in reading skills on the National Assessment of Educational Progress tests is the highest it has been in 20 years. The percentage of eighth graders below basic was the highest in the exam’s three-decade history. A fourth grader who is below basic cannot grasp the sequence of events in a story. An eighth grader can’t grasp the main idea of an essay or identify the different sides of a debate.
Tests by the Program for the International Assessment of Adult Competencies tell a similar story, only for older folks. Adult numeracy and literacy skills across the globe have been declining since 2017. Tests from the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development show that test scores in adult literacy have been declining over the past decade.
Andreas Schleicher, the head of education and skills at the O.E.C.D., told The Financial Times, “Thirty percent of Americans read at a level that you would expect from a 10-year-old child.” He continued, “It is actually hard to imagine — that every third person you meet on the street has difficulties reading even simple things.”
Of course Brooks being Brooks, he has to impart a lesson:
There are some obvious contributing factors for this general decline. Covid hurt test scores. America abandoned No Child Left Behind, which put a lot of emphasis on testing and reducing the achievement gap. But these declines started earlier, around 2012, so the main cause is probably screen time. And not just any screen time. Actively initiating a search for information on the web may not weaken your reasoning skills. But passively scrolling TikTok or X weakens everything from your ability to process verbal information to your working memory to your ability to focus. You might as well take a sledgehammer to your skull.
My biggest worry is that behavioral change is leading to cultural change. As we spend time on our screens, we’re abandoning a value that used to be pretty central to our culture — the idea that you should work hard to improve your capacity for wisdom and judgment all the days of your life. That education, including lifelong out-of-school learning, is really valuable.
. . .Producing something this stupid is not the work of a day; it is the achievement of a lifetime — relying on decades of incuriosity, decades of not cracking a book, decades of being impervious to evidence.
Back in Homer’s day, people lived within an oral culture, then humans slowly developed a literate culture. Now we seem to be moving to a screen culture. Civilization was fun while it lasted.
Screen time is as good an explanation as any, and, aside from schools starting to ban cellphones, I can’t see it declining. Fortunately I’ll be dead before the time that all Americans are constantly walking around looking at their screens (I know a few who do it already).
*As usual, I am going to steal a few choice items from Nellie Bowles’s weekly news summary at the Free Press, called this week, “TGIF: Yippy and afraid.”
I’m not sure she’s completely joshing here:
→ Good showers again: Trump this week signed an executive order repealing Biden’s water-flow limits on showerheads. “I like to take a nice shower to take care of my beautiful hair,” Trump explained at the signing ceremony, gracing us all with a look into the Swiss clock that is his mental policy framework. With Biden-showers: “I have to stand under the shower for 15 minutes till it gets wet. It comes out drip, drip, drip. It’s ridiculous.” This is the MAGA I want. This is the MAGA we need. Focused on the things that don’t technically matter at all but make my life better anyway. Focused on repealing the Biden-Harris nanny state. Focused on letting me be a little wild, a little wasteful, a little fun. Letting me buy a diesel-powered leaf blower and then using it every Saturday at 6:00 a.m. while I sip my coffee out of a plastic straw. Letting me buy incandescent light bulbs and then smashing them just because I can. California makes showerheads so low-flow that our showers are actually, legally speaking, steam rooms. The idea is you get in and sweat enough that eventually the water rolls off your body. We don’t use soaps or shampoos, so that’s not relevant. Just a lukewarm steam and off you go, ready for a weekend with your polycule.
→ How could you have presumed me female: Anderson Cooper, leading a town hall with Bernie Sanders, got chastised for using she/her pronouns for a completely normal-looking woman, with a completely normal-woman name of Grace. Called upon by Cooper, she snaps: “I use they/them pronouns actually, thank you,” clearly annoyed, clearly relishing the moment. Then she starts her question, which is about why men aren’t compelled by the Dems anymore, and no, I’m not kidding: “Polling and turnout data indicate that men of all racial demographics are turning away from the Democratic Party. . . ” Yes, it is a great mystery, Grace, they/them. I’m obsessed with Bernie’s face as this is unfolding:
Here is a video of the incident:
→ The majority of Americans are now anti-Israel: More than half of U.S. adults (53 percent) now hold an unfavorable view toward Israel, according to a Pew Research Center poll. Americans’ disfavor toward Israel has increased over 10 percent since 2022, before the October 7, 2023 attacks. And this was ultimately part of Hamas’s strategy with those attacks. This has been the long game for Iran and Qatar. Everyone knew Israel would defeat Hamas. The goal was to make the world hate Israel for doing it. The goal was to torment the Israelis just enough (taking an infant and a toddler hostage, for example) that instead of some little strikes on a few Hamas rocket launchers, they would go to war. And war is horrific. And Jews aren’t supposed to make war. They are inside cats. Anyway, it worked. Americans hate Israel now. Antisemitism is back.
On cue: A black Jewish woman went to a Staples on Wilshire in L.A. to get some postcards printed this week. One card was for her black Zionist group, and another was about “Jewish Joy.” The team at Staples refused to print the cards, with one employee saying Zionism is “racist,” and I guess Jewish Joy is just freaky. Zio-lite. The customer recorded the interaction, so we can all watch as a Staples employee explains that real Judaism doesn’t support Israel. Another guy at the store randomly yells at her too. And this is in Los Angeles, where there are lots of Jews! I converted just in time. I’ve always wanted to be discriminated against in some way. I was born too late for gayness to be a compelling thing to hate me for (Thanks a lot, Ellen). But finally, finally, I’ve got it. Good Shabbos, I say. You can find me at Staples printing my Lesbo-Zio-Merica-Number-One art, waiting to get yelled at.
There’s a new piece on Matt Johnson’s site that mirrors my increasing feeling that the Free Press is becoming more right wing, or, as the author says, “Rather, The Free Press has amassed a huge following by being a more artful and less shrill version of the anti-woke alarmism that permeates the right-wing media ecosystem.
*And a rare Denisovan fossil has been discovered in Taiwan, and identified, by of all things, protein sequences, not DNA sequences:
An ancient jawbone discovered in Taiwan belonged to an enigmatic group of early human ancestors called Denisovans, scientists reported Thursday.
Relatively little is known about Denisovans, an extinct group of human cousins that interacted with Neanderthals and our own species, Homo sapiens.
“ Denisovan fossils are very scarce,” with only a few confirmed finds in East Asia, said study co-author Takumi Tsutaya at the Graduate University for Advanced Studies in Japan.
So far, the only known Denisovan fossils include partial jawbones, a few teeth and part of a finger bone found in caves in Siberia and Tibet. Some scientists believe fossils found in a cave in Laos may also belong to Denisovans.
The probable identification of the jawbone from Taiwan as Denisovan expands the region where scientists know these ancient people once lived, said Tsutaya.
Based on the composition of marine invertebrates found attached to it, the fossil was dated to the Pleistocene era. But exactly which species of early human ancestor it belonged to remained a mystery.
The condition of the fossil made it impossible to study ancient DNA. But recently, scientists in Taiwan, Japan and Denmark were able to extract some protein sequences from the incomplete jawbone.
An analysis showed some protein sequences resembled those contained in the genome of a Denisovan fossil recovered in Siberia. The findings were published in the journal Science.
I haven’t yet read the paper, but click on the title page below and you can:
A map and photo of the mandible from the paper. How did they know it was a male mandible? Because one of the proteins produced resides on the Y chromosome, and others on the sex chromosomes had male-specific variants.
(from the paper): Fig. 1. Map showing the distribution of known, molecularly determined Denisovan fossils and photos of Penghu 1. Fossil sites are also shown. (Inset) Photos of Penghu 1 show the (top) superior and (bottom) right lateral views. [Photos by Y.K. and C.-H.C.]Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili is inspecting the garden again:
Hili: That peach from Elżbieta had a good stone.
A: I wonder whether the tree from that stone will have flowers this year.
In Polish:
Hili: Ta brzoskwinia od Elżbiety miała dobrą pestkę.
Ja: Ciekaw jestem, czy drzewo z tej pestki już w tym roku zakwitnie.
And a photo of Baby Kulka:
*******************
From somewhere on Facebook, I found the best satirical rebuttal of Colossal Biosciences, the de-extinction of the Dire Haggis:
No Masih today (I guess she’s taking a break), but here’s a recent tweet by Titania. Some people took her seriously, and so there’s a “Rate Community Notes” list under the tweet I have. (For some reason I’ve been chosen to evaluate these notes.) Many people still think Titania is serious and uber-woke.
From Luana, who says, “They guy is very annoying, but the professor is unhinged. What an embarrassment for Barnard College!”. The professor is identified in the thread as “Prof Jackie Orr. Used to teach at Syracuse and is now an adjunct faculty member at Barnard College.”
I asked an unhinged Barnard faculty member if she condemns the reported assault against a public safety officer on campus, who was hospitalized. Listen to her nonsensical word salad in support of these hateful and reckless anti-Israel protestors. How are these our faculty… pic.twitter.com/l593N15R6k
And Colossal tried to answer me using their cherry-picked definition of “de-extincted”. They didn’t quote the rest of the source, though. I swear, the more they defend themselves, the worse their scientific reputation gets. They are disingenuous:
Here’s how I answered this:
More examples of your attempt to pretend you haven’t implied otherwise. Here’s the part of the report that you don’t mention. I have to say that the more you guys try to defend yourself, the deeper in you get. https://t.co/mLsipxCRpEpic.twitter.com/srF5gTLnte
And two from Dr. Cobb. This first one is from a much relieved mathematician at University College London:
Our cat came home today! Thin as a rake but whole and purring and hasn't left laps all night.Not sure how she found her way home after four weeks but she did ❤️❤️❤️
🤗Your support means more than you know. When you shop at our small pet store, you’re not just buying treats or toys—you’re helping us care for pets, follow our passion, and stay part of this amazing community. Thank you for choosing small, choosing love, and choosing us. Shop local. Shop with heart.❤️ #fyp
