Tuesday: Hili dialogue

March 17, 2026 • 6:45 am

Welcome to the Cruelest Day: Tuesday, March 17, 2026, and it’s St. Patrick’s Day, honoring the patron saint of Ireland. The parades in Chicago were on the weekend and went on despite rain. As usual, the Chicago River was dyed emerald green by spraying nontoxic dye from boats. Here’s what it looked like when they dyed it during on the weekend.

It’s also Corned Beef and Cabbage Day (the traditional Irish meal), and Submarine Day, explained this way (it’s connected with St. Patrick’s Day):

On March 17, 1898, St. Patrick’s Day, Irish-born engineer John Philip Holland demonstrated a submarine he designed, the Holland VI, for the U.S. Navy Department, off the coast of Staten Island. During the demonstration, the vessel was submerged for 1 hour and 40 minutes. Holland launched the submarine the year before, on May 17, 1897, after it was built at the Crescent Shipyard in Elizabeth, New Jersey. The submarine was noteworthy for having features that would become the standard for submarines in future years. It and other of Holland’s submarines are also noteworthy for being the first to run on electric batteries when submerged, but on internal combustion engines when on the water’s surface. We celebrate the Holland and all other submarines on March 17 each year.

Readers are welcome to mark notable events, births, or deaths on this day by consulting the March 17 Wikipedia page.

Da Nooz:

*The NYT’s war news summary.  Bombing continues from both sides. And our allies aren’t keen to join in at keeping the Strait of Hormuz open. Israel says it has killed the head of the Basij (Iran’s plainclothes police division) in a targeted strike.

American allies around the world have responded coolly to — or outright rebuffed — President Trump’s call to send warships to escort merchant vessels in and out of the Persian Gulf, illustrating the consequences of his dismissive approach to global alliances.

“You mean for 40 years we’re protecting you and you don’t want to get involved in something that’s very minor?” Mr. Trump said at a White House appearance, noting that Europe, Japan and others depend on oil from the Persian Gulf far more than the United States does.

He said that “numerous countries have told me that they’re on the way,” but when asked to name them, said, “I’d rather not say yet, but we’ll be announcing them.” And he expressed frustration that some nations have demurred on requests for military assistance, adding that he has long believed that, “if we ever needed help, they won’t be there for us.”

“We don’t need anybody; we’re the strongest nation in the world,” Mr. Trump insisted. He suggested his current request for assistance amounted to a test for allies: “I’m almost doing it in some cases not because we need them but because I want to find out how they react.”

The sharpest refusal to his belated effort to build an international coalition against Iran came Monday from Germany, whose defense minister, Boris Pistorius, said, “This is not our war; we did not start it.” Top officials of Japan, Italy and Australia said Monday that their countries would not participate in efforts to reopen the Strait of Hormuz. Others were noncommittal, including France, South Korea and Britain, whose prime minister, Keir Starmer, said his country would not be “drawn into wider war.”

Well, we are responsible to some extent for stemming the flow of oil by getting into a fight with Iran, so I suppose you can justify the U.S. being responsible for opening up the Straits.  I am not mad at our allies who don’t want to help out. Apparently some of them are helping but haven’t been named.  And on the continued fighting:

  • Israel strikes Iran: The Israeli military said on Monday it had launched a “broad wave” of attacks across Iran. Earlier, airstrikes again targeted the Mehrabad airport in Tehran, and a thick plume of smoke was rising from the airport, according to several residents of Tehran.

  • Iranian response: Iran’s foreign minister, Abbas Araghchi, told CBS News on Sunday that the country was “ready to defend ourselves as long as it takes” and denied Mr. Trump’s claim a day earlier that Iran wanted to make a deal. “We never asked for a cease-fire, and we have never asked even for negotiation,” he said.

The NYT also reports that in the arguments over who would be Iran’s next Supreme Leader, there was a squabble (the NYT calls it a “full-on war of succession”) between the moderates and the Revolutionary Guards. Since Mojtaba Khamenei was chosen, the Guard clearly won.

*At the Free Press, Michael B. Oren, former Israeli Ambassador to the U.S., tells us “How this war ends.”

 . . . barring an irrepressible popular revolt or a coup within the Iranian regime, neither of which currently seems probable, there is only one way that this war can successfully end. Decisively defeating Iran requires an initial application of massive military power followed by a long-term strategy of total containment. The model must not be the “forever wars” in Iraq and Afghanistan, but rather the generational struggle against Soviet Communism—the Cold War that the United States ultimately won.

. . .Should the war end now, much of the Middle East would once again fall into Tehran’s sphere of influence. Confident that future American presidents will not renew major operations against it, the regime can resume its manufacture of ballistic missiles and reconstruct its nuclear facilities. The Strait of Hormuz will become an exclusively Iranian-controlled channel while terrorist attacks multiply across the Western world. The Gulf States, already afraid to alienate Iran by retaliating for its rocket and drone attacks against them, will rush to pay homage to the Islamic Republic. The people of Iran will be subject to unending and increasingly violent oppression. The international balance of power will also be skewed, with Russia and China reaching dangerous conclusions about America’s staying power.

To avoid that catastrophic scenario, the United States and Israel must deny Iran a victory by any definition. They must continue their intense bombing campaign to destroy Iran’s ability to produce, store, and launch missiles and drones. They must clear the Strait of Hormuz of Iranian mines, so that oil freighters can be safely escorted through its waters. Once defanged, Iran can be sealed by a hermetic naval blockade that will prevent the export of a single drop of oil and the entry of all but essential foodstuffs and medicines. Every effort should be made to ease the suffering of the civilian population while facilitating their ability to resist—and perhaps overthrow—the regime. It may take several years, but the Islamic Republic will fall. The Soviet Union eventually collapsed because outside pressure forced it to collapse in on itself. The same can be true of Iran.

None of this will require a single boot on the ground, nor certainly a prolonged military occupation. Unlike Iraq and Afghanistan, Iran is a long-established nation that America need not intervene in to rebuild. But like the Soviet Bloc, Iran represents an idea that must be defeated. And once that is accomplished, energy supplies can be safeguarded and Russia and China deterred. The U.S. can broker previously unthinkable peace treaties in the Middle East and help forge a strategic alliance stretching from the Mediterranean to the Ganges. Iran can rejoin the community of nations and rekindle its people’s hope for freedom. That, in answer to the interviewers’ most frequently asked question, is how the war must end.

Note that Oren says that this is how the war must end, not how it will end. His last paragraph is optimistic, but I still wonder how regime change, which is assumed, will be effected.  Will Iran, after a long period of being besieged, voluntarily adopt democracy? That’s what Oren assumes, but also says it will probably take several years to accomplish. What happens if we get a Democratic President before that?

*Trump is now going after radio stations, threatening to revoke their licenses if they don’t cover the war patriotically, but instead propagate “fake news.”

President Donald Trump on Sunday endorsed Federal Communications Commission Chairman Brendan Carr’s threat to revoke broadcast licenses over news coverage of the U.S.-Israeli war in Iran, calling media organizations “Corrupt and Highly Unpatriotic” in a Truth Social post.

“They get Billions of Dollars of FREE American Airwaves, and use it to perpetuate LIES, both in News and almost all of their Shows, including the Late Night Morons, who get gigantic Salaries for horrible Ratings,” Trump wrote.

“As I used to say in The Apprentice, ‘FIRED,’” he added.

Carr, in his Saturday post on X, warned he would deny or revoke government-issued licenses if broadcasters run what the agency deems “fake news.” The warning was the latest salvo from the official who since becoming FCC chairman at the outset of Trump’s second term has relished the role of media enforcer.

“Broadcasters that are running hoaxes and news distortions — also known as the fake news — have a chance now to correct course before their license renewals come up,” Carr wrote on X. “The law is clear. Broadcasters must operate in the public interest, and they will lose their licenses if they do not.”

Here’s Carr’s tweet:

If it smells like censorship and walks like censorship, it is censorship.  This is an arrant threat to shut down broadcasters if they don’t toe the political line, and will surely bring on big-time lawsuits if it’s enforced. It is an unconscionable violation of freedom of speech.

*One way to severely impede Iran’s nuclear program is to seize the uranium the regime has already enriched. That would require boots on the ground, but could be done. The WSJ discusses the pros and cons.

President Trump has said preventing Iran from ever developing nuclear weapons is a central aim of the war he is waging. In the absence of regime change—or at least a deal to hand over its enriched uranium by Tehran’s leaders—that could mean seizing the country’s fissile material.

Accomplishing that in the face of resistance from Iranian forces would be a complex military operation that could require the deployment of hundreds of troops at one or more sites for days, former U.S. military officers and experts said.

The U.S. military has elite teams specially trained to remove radioactive material from a conflict zone. But locating and seizing the hundreds of kilograms of highly enriched uranium that Iran possesses would require an intricate choreography and could be fraught with risk.

President Trump has said he wouldn’t rule out sending ground troops into Iran if necessary. But on Friday, he signaled an operation to seize the country’s enriched uranium wasn’t imminent.

. . .Before Israel and the U.S. conducted a series of airstrikes on Iran in June last year, the country was believed to have more than 400 kilograms of 60% highly enriched uranium, and nearly 200 kilograms of 20% fissile material, which is easily converted into 90%-weapons-grade uranium.

President Trump has signaled that an operation to seize Iran’s enriched uranium isn’t imminent. Nathan Howard/Getty Images

International Atomic Energy Agency Director General Rafael Grossi has said he thinks the uranium is mainly at two of the three sites that the U.S. and Israel attacked in June: an underground tunnel at the nuclear complex in Isfahan and a cache at Natanz. Around half the 60% material was in the Isfahan tunnels, Grossi said recently.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio has acknowledged that Iran isn’t currently enriching uranium. Grossi’s agency hasn’t seen any signs that the Iranians have sought to move that material. Iran’s leaders insist publicly that they don’t want a bomb.

But if those caches remain in the hands of an Iranian government looking to ensure its survival, they could be used to pursue a bomb. The Iranians have centrifuges to enrich uranium and the capability to set up a new underground enrichment site, experts said.

. . .The White House could decide to leave the stockpile in Iran’s hands, with a warning that any attempt to remove it or to resume enrichment would trigger further U.S. military strikes. Given Israel’s penetration of Iran’s nuclear program and U.S. satellite reconnaissance, there is a good chance Tehran’s work would be caught.

If Trump decides to try to grab the uranium, retired Adm. James Stavridis, who served as the North Atlantic Treaty Organization commander and the former head of Southern Command, said it could require “potentially the largest special forces operation in history.”

The article adds that it could take 1,000 personnel on the ground to deal with the material from just one site. For all the sites it seems an impossible task. This is something to worry about later, though we can be sure that the U.S. is already planning it now.  We surely cannot leave a theocratic Iran, bent on terror, with a stockpile of highly enriched uranium.

*And from the UPI’s odd news, a snack was auctioned off for a very high price (I love the phrase I’ve bolded):

Guinness World Records said the auction of Cheetozard — a Flamin’ Hot Cheeto shaped liked the Pokémon Charizard — resulted in a new record.

The record-keeping organization said Goldin Auctions’ March 2025 sale of Cheetozard ended in a final price of $87,840, earning the highly-specific record for the highest price paid for a video game likeness corn snack.

The 3-inch-long Cheeto is affixed to a custom “Cheetozard” Pokémon card and encased in a transparent box.

“Goldin specializes in rare and one-of-a-kind collectibles, and the Cheetozard is exactly this,” Goldin Auctions Head of Consignment Dave Amermanat told NBC’s Today. “Part of what makes this item so fun and unique is that it bridges two fandoms — Pokémon and Cheetos.”

The Cheeto was originally purchased on eBay for $350 by Paul Bartlett, owner of sports memorabilia company 1st & Goal Collectibles, sometime between 2018 and 2022. Images of the snack went viral on social media in 2024.

Here’s the highly valuable corn snack from Instagram (click to go to site):

 

I dare not reproduce the Charizard for fear of being sued for violating copyright, but you can see it here. I guess they sort of resemble each other.  I can see a hoax forming, when an employee of Cheetos deliberately makes one Cheeto that looks like another Pokemon character and then, for a secret cut, gives it to someone else to auction off for big bucks.

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Andrzej is reassuring a worried Hili:

Hili: This garden once gave a feeling of safety.
Andrzej: Little by little, everything will return to normal.

In Polish:

Hili: Kiedyś ten ogród dawał poczucie bezpieczeństwa.
Ja: Powoli wszystko wróci do normy.

*******************

From Cats that Have Had enough of Your Shit:

From the Unitarian Universalist Hysterical Society:

From Now That’s Wild:

From Masih. Judge for yourself. For once the Netherlands was less woke than Germany. Sound up:

From Luana. Is the caption true?

From Barack Obama. This Center is very close to where I live, but I don’t think people will be able to make out the words that are high up:

Two from my feed. The first one is cute, but they won’t be lining up at the slaughterhouse. . . .

And a wickedly smart (and self-aggrandizing) crow:

One I reposted from The Auschwitz Memorial:

And two from Dr. Cobb. First, a nice cuppa tea. Be sure to listen until the end. The “WVS” is the Women’s Voluntary Service and they’re talking about WWII.

So, BlueSky, one of my passions is the study of tea in WW2. I need you to watch this oral history from three ex-tea ladies from the Bermondsey WVS.Because you could guess for ONE THOUSAND YEARS and you would not guess where it is going… #skystorians #history #tea

— John Bull (@garius.bsky.social) 2026-03-15T20:06:47.614Z

And a historical irony (click on tweet to go there):

Bill Maher’s New Rule: Oscars so wrong

March 16, 2026 • 11:00 am

Well, the Oscars have been awarded, and you can see the winners here. In this latest news-and-comedy bit from “Real Time,” Bill Maher argues that the Oscars have finally succeeded, through both social pressure, appeals to reason, and changes in Academy rules, in making their awards so diverse that one can no longer argue that Oscars are biased towards white people. The Awards last night make that pretty clear, but dissents are welcome in the comments.

Maher’s point is not just the attainment of equity, but also that historically the Oscars have messed up in who or what gets awards. For example, he lists historical cases in which great films have lost to “much more forgettable, trifling sentimental stuff” (an example he gives: “Citizen Kane” lost to “How Green was my Valley”). He also lists directors who never won a directing Oscar, including Bergman, Fellini, Hitchcock, Kubrick, Terantino, Rob Reiner, and Kurosawa.  In his diatribe about “wrong” Oscars, Maher also gives examples of actors who were overlooked in great movies and then awarded a “consolation” Oscar for a forgettable movie (example: Al Pacino).  Finally, he singles out aspects of movies that bias choices, like characters with handicaps, actors who gain or lose weight, actors who make themselves ugly, actors who play admirable characters (“Gandhi”), and actors who may die before they get another chance (e.g., John Wayne in “True Grit”).

The guests include Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro, investor Anthony Scaramucci, and banker Lloyd Blankfein.

Another journal drinks the Kool-Aid: Ecology Letters publishes a misguided article that “There is no consensus on biological sex”

March 16, 2026 • 9:45 am

Ecology Letters, which I thought was a reasonably respectable journal, has now accepted a “viewpoint” article arguing that there is no consensus on biological sex, and that a definition based on gamete size—a consensus if ever there was one—is just viable as “multivariate” definition that incorporates a combination of chromosomes, genetics, and morphology.

They’re wrong and misguided in many ways, but, as Colin Wright notes in a tweet at bottom, there are so many mistakes and misconceptions in this paper that it would take a full reply to the journal to correct them.  I’ll just tender a few comments here, but you can read the paper for free by clicking the title below, or download the pdf at this site.

The authors give three definitions of sex: the classical one based on gamete size (males have small, mobile gametes, females large and immobile ones); a “multivariate” one, popular in some nescient quarters, that defines sex base on some combination of morphology, chromosomes, and “genetics,” and, finally something called “sex eliminativism,” which “eliminates the concept of sex altogether.” They graciously admit that they won’t discuss the last one because “rigorous research on sex-based variation remains vital.” True enough.

But they add that the “rigorous research” they propose be done “also challenges simplistic and harmful ideologies of the sex binary”.  This is a red flag that their criticism of the sex binary is partly (if not wholly) based not on biology but on ideology, for the “sex binary” is described as “ideological” and “harmful”. (They are talking, of course, about how a binary may harm people who don’t see themselves as fitting into it.) They later add that there are “ethical and political implications of defining sex.”  Only if they care to draw them; most real biologists don’t.

But sex was defined by gamete type long before the “gender” ideology began questioning the view that there are two sexes. And definition has been widely adopted, as I’ve said, not on ideology but on universality and utility. (See this discussion by Richard Dawkins.) All animals and vascular plants have only two sexes corresponding to gamete size, so the gametic definition holds across the animal kingdom. That leads to research questions about why this is so: why do animals, for instance, have only two sexes (some rare parthenogenetic species have only one sex: egg-producing females), but not three or more sexes. There are many papers discussing this question, and the answer seems to be that isogamous species evolve by natural selection to be anisogamous ones (two types of gametes), with that state now seen to be an evolutionarily stable to invasion by more sexes. This already shows that defining sex based on gametes is universal among animals and plants and, because it leads to research questions, also utilitarian. It becomes even more utilitarian when we see that the gametic sex dimorphism helps us understand many facts about biology, most notably the morphological and behavioral differences between males and females explained by sexual selection—an approach first suggested by Darwin in 1871.

What are the problems with a biological sex definition? The authors claim that in most cases biologists don’t look at gametes when discussing or enumerating sexes, and that is usually true.  When I divided fruit flies into piles of males vs. females, I looked not at their gametes, but their genitals. This is not a problem because in virtually all species there are proxies for gametes: traits like chromosomes or morphology that are closely correlated with sex. They are not 100% correlated, but pretty close to it.

But that’s not a problem, for the authors don’t seem to realize that there’s a difference between defining sex and recognizing sex.  The binary gamete-based definition is universal (and of course useful), while a definitions based on chromosomes, appearance, or genetics is not universal. (Many species have sex determined not by chromosome type or genetics but by rearing temperature, social milieu, haploidy, so on.) Still no matter how sex is determined, if you look at gamete types you always find two sexes.  Further, the authors don’t tell us how one is to combine the other traits in a multivariate way to define sex in any species. Would they care to give us a multivariate definition of sex for humans (or any other animal)? They refrain—and for good reason: it would be a futile task.

Their other criticisms of gametic sex are that it doesn’t deal with those species like algae or fungi that don’t have morphologically distinct gametes but are isogamous, with gametes looking the same. These species can have dozens of “mating types” based on genes, each of which can fuse only with gametes of a different type. These have long been called “mating types” and not “sexes” by biologists, and are not a problem for most species we’re interested in—including, of course, humans. As Colin notes below:

But anisogamy (reproduction via the fusion of gametes of different sizes) isn’t meant to apply to isogamous organisms (organisms that reproduce via the fusion of same-sized gametes). Anisogamy and the sexes—male and female—are fully intertwined and inseparable. Isogamous organisms don’t have sexes; they have “mating types.” They’re different from sexes, and that’s why biologists aren’t “inclusive” of isogamous organisms when talking about males and females.

The other criticism of gametic sex are just dumb: we can’t tell the sex of an individual before it produces gametes (like young men [in humans, newborn girls already have eggs!]) or after reproduction has stopped and gametes are no longer produced. From the paper:

 . . . this narrow [gametic] definition is not inclusive of reproductive approaches beyond anisogamy (e.g., isogamy) and does not classify organisms before sexual maturity or after reproductive cessation as having a sex.

According to these authors, then, newborn boys do not have a sex (newborn girls do) nor do postmenopausal women or some old men who don’t produce sperm.  That is crazy because the gametic definition of sex involves having the biological apparatus to produce large or small gametes; it does not have to be operational. To quote Colin again:

And the notion that a gamete-based definition doesn’t apply to sexually immature individuals or individuals who have ceased producing gametes ignores that the sexes are defined by having the biological FUNCTION to produce small or large gametes—and things still have a function even when it’s not being currently realized.

Below is a table from the paper comparing the gametic versus “multivariate” definitions of sex (the latter broken down into chromosomes, genetics, and morphology), seeing how useful each of the types is in defining sex in nine species (click to enlarge). Note that only one species, the New Mexico whiptail lizard (Aspidoscelis neomexicanus) is said to defy definition by gametes.  Yet it is called, in the footnoes, a “female only species”.  It is parthenogenetic, formed by the hybridization of two regular species having two gametic sexes, and the hybrids cannot produce males but produce females from unfertilized eggs that are diploid and genetic clones of the mother.  So if it’s hard to define organisms in this species as male or female, why do the authors call it a “FEMALE ONLY SPECIES.”  Because it produces eggs, Jake! It does not defy the binary at all, and you can put a “yes” in the first column where there’s a “no”.

Note that no other form of classification has “yes” all the way down: not chromosomal definitions, not genetic definitions, not morphological definitions (they again make the ludicrous claim that immature individuals don’t have sexes). And when you combine each of the three univariate non-gametic definitions in some multivariate way, you get a mess.  Only the first column, the operational definition using gametes, holds in all organisms. But we already knew that.

There’s another table that’s even more ludicrous. This one points out (as they do in the text, so the table is superfluous) that in some species of hummingbirds, some (not all) females have male-like coloration, even though they have large gametes. There is thus a disparity between the gametic definition of sex and a morphological one. But note that the morphology is used as a species-recognition trait here, not as a way to define sexes. This is one case where a proxy trait for sex doesn’t jibe with the gametes.

Are the females with male-like coloration really males? No biologist would say that, and if you look at the references for the table, you see papers like this (my bolding):

Bleiweiss, R. 1992. “Widespread Polychromatism in Female Sunangel Hummingbirds (Heliangelus: Trochilidae).” Biological Journal of the Linnean Society of London 45: 291–314.

Diamant, E. S., J. J. Falk, and D. R. Rubenstein. 2021. “Male-Like Female Morphs in Hummingbirds: The Evolution of a Widespread Sex-Limited Plumage Polymorphism.” Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences 288: 20203004.

Falk, J. J., D. R. Rubenstein, A. Rico-Guevara, and M. S. Webster. 2022. “Intersexual Social Dominance Mimicry Drives Female Hummingbird Polymorphism.” Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences 289: 20220332.

Falk, J. J., M. S. Webster, and D. R. Rubenstein. 2021. “Male-Like Ornamentation in Female Hummingbirds Results From Social Harassment Rather Than Sexual Selection.” Current Biology 31: 4381–4387.e6.

These all say that the male-appearing hummers are females that have evolved a male-like coloration (they apparently have done to avoid harassment and get more food). These are cases of polymorphism: some of the females look like males, while others look like regular females. The important question is this: why do all the authors call these male-looking birds “females”? It’s not hard to see: they produce large gametes and lay eggs (the authors used other traits associated with female-ness, like body shape in non-mimetic females, to suss out the male-like females).  The females that look like males also show territorial behavior characteristic of males, and that’s because biological males have to acquire territories to attract females. Why do only the males do this? Because of the disparity in gamete size—the male mating strategy is to mate with as many females as they can, while females are more selective. (This is a classic behavioral difference due to sexual selection.)

In sum. the authors only buttress the gamete-based definition of sex in their tables.  They do show argue that, in cases where you can be deceived about gametes by other traits, biologists like ones studying hummingbirds should describe the criteria they use for assessing sex. That seems okay to me and in fact that’s what’s done in the paper. But sure enough, the authors use color as a proxy for gamete size, not the other way around! Gamete size is fundamental. This is one case, where, as Colin says:

. . . every non-gametic view of sex is logically incoherent and self-refuting because they all rely on gametes as the conceptual anchor.

Here the color serves as a clue to what the conceptual anchor is and, sure enough, it’s gamete size.

In the end, this paper is deeply misguided and, I suspect, driven by ideology rather than biology. What else but ideology would cause four biologists to make such incoherent and misleading arguments? I could think of other reasons, but ideology is the most parsimonious (and the most au courant) given that the authors call the sex binary a “simplistic and harmful ideology” (it’s not an ideology, but an observation) as well as claiming that the definition of sex has ethical and political implications.  No, it doesn’t—unless you are an ideologue.

Colin says in his tweet below, “I have reached out to the editors of Ecology Letters asking if they would consider publishing a counter-Viewpoint.” I hope they do. If they don’t, then they are suppressing valid scientific dissent in the name of maintaining a “progressive” ideology. I would like to think that Ecology Letters would do that. Stay tuned.

Here’s Colin’s tweet, which should be expanded to see his take:

🚨ALERT: Top-ranking ecology journal Ecology Letters has published a “Viewpoint” paper titled “There is No Consensus on Biological Sex.”

h/t: Michael

Monday: Hili dialogue

March 16, 2026 • 6:45 am

Welcome to another damn week: Monday, March 16, 2026, and National Panda Day, celebrating what is arguably the world’s cutest animal. If they didn’t exist, you couldn’t imagine them. Enjoy these six minutes of adorable herbivorous bears,  They seem too clumsy to survive!

It’s also Curlew Day (so named because “it is on today’s date [or around today’s date] when long-billed curlews arrive at the Umatilla National Wildlife Refuge in Oregon to begin courting and nesting)”, National Artichoke Heart Day, and St. Urho’s Day, a confected holiday:

The day was created by Richard Mattson, a worker at Ketola’s Department Store in Virginia, Minnesota, in the spring of 1956. The name “Urho” was possibly used because Urho Kekkonen had just become President of Finland the same year. The legend originally said that St. Urho expelled frogs from ancient Finland, in order to save the grape crops, and thus the jobs of vineyard workers. Later the legend was changed—possibly by Sulo Havumaki, a psychology professor of Bemidji, Minnesota— to say that Urho had expelled grasshoppers, not frogs.

Readers are welcome to mark notable events, births, or deaths on this day by consulting the March 16 Wikipedia page.

Da Nooz:

*War news, including a bunch of Israeli strikes on Iran and more kerfuffle about the Strait of Hormuz, with Trump threatening to bomb the oil facilities on Karg Island,

Fears about the global economic fallout from the war in Iran grew on Sunday as the U.S. energy secretary acknowledged in a televised interview that there were “no guarantees” that oil prices would fall in the coming weeks. A day after President Trump called on other countries to send warships to the region to end the de facto Iranian blockade of the economically vital Strait of Hormuz, foreign governments responded with caution — if at all.

Israel launched a new wave of airstrikes on Iran, while Iranian forces said they were firing at U.S. and Israeli targets as the war continued in its third week, with no end to the fighting in sight.

The energy secretary, Chris Wright, told ABC’s “This Week” that he believed the conflict would end in the “next few weeks,” while Iran’s foreign minister, Abbas Araghchi, told CBS News that the country had not sought to negotiate with the United States and was “ready to defend ourselves as long as it takes.”

Mr. Araghchi said on Telegram that the strait — through which about a fifth of the world’s oil passes — “is open to everyone, except American ships and those of its allies.” In practice, however, the oil shipped through the passage comes from either Iran or American allies such as Saudi Arabia and Kuwait.

. . . . Iran faced another wave of strikes on Sunday that the Israeli military said had hit bases of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps and the Basij militia in the western part of the country. Israel has conducted more than 7,000 attacks on the country since the war began, military officials said.

The Revolutionary Guards force said it was continuing to target Israel and U.S. assets in the region. Iranian missiles repeatedly set off air raid sirens in Israel andSaudi Arabia said it had intercepted drones near the capital and in an eastern province, without saying where they came from.

This is going to last a while, and I can’t see the value of a ceasefire now, but of course with a very careful attention to not striking civilians. It’s impossible to ensure that none are killed or hurt, but striking the girls school was apparently based on outdated information, which should be checked before each strike.

*Apropos, the WSJ tells us what it would actually take to secure the Strait of Hormuz (article archived here):

President Trump has vowed to reopen the Strait of Hormuz, the vital artery for the world’s energy supply that has been closed off by Iran. It won’t be easy.

Trump and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth have repeatedly pledged that naval vessels will escort oil tankers and other ships through the strait. On Thursday, Trump said escort operations would begin “very soon.” In a pair of social-media posts Saturday, the president called on other nations to help.

The U.S. is holding off on sending warships into the narrow strait—just 21 miles wide at its narrowest point—with Navy officers saying Iranian drones and antiship missiles could turn the area into a “kill box” for American sailors.

One option to clear the way for escorts would be a more-intense use of air power to hunt and destroy Iranian missiles and drones before they could be fired at ships in the strait. Another would be to use ground troops to seize the territory around the waterway.

The administration has said it is keeping all options on the table, including the use of ground troops. On Friday, Trump ordered a Marine expeditionary unit, which typically has warships with thousands of sailors, attack jets and 2,200 Marines, to the Middle East.

In an escort operation, U.S. warships, maybe in conjunction with allied navies, would travel through the strait alongside oil tankers to clear mines and fend off Iranian attacks from the air as well as from Iran’s “mosquito fleet” of small, fast-attack boats.

Experts estimate it could take two ships per tanker, or a dozen ships to guard convoys of five to 10 tankers, to have the necessary air defenses. The short distances involved make shooting down missiles and drones much more difficult.

Despite weeks of American and Israeli attacks that have decimated Iran’s navy and military capabilities, its commanders are still demonstrating the ability to attack.

Bryan Clark, a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute and a veteran naval officer, estimates that, alongside warships, it would require at least a dozen MQ-9 Reaper drones patrolling the skies and striking Iranian missile and drone launchers when they pop up on the coast.

The article weighs other options, including sending in troops to guard the Strait, but those have obvious downsides. I am curious how, if Iran lays mines in the Strait (it probably already has), how US naval vessels can find and disarm (or avoid) all the mines. There are underwater mines these days, as well as submarine drones. Do any readers know how the “escort” ships would clear mines?

*The New York Times has an article by Kyle Buchanan, a reporter who covers Oscars, predicting who will win in the Big Four categories. By the time you read this, the Oscars will have been awarded, but you can at least see how accurate Buchanan is (the article is archived here). This morning I’m adding the winners;

Do you really want to know? Kyle Buchanan, a reporter who covers the awards season beat for The Times, makes predictions every year, and he’s really good at it. Last year, he nailed seven of the eight big awards. His picks for this year are here; given his track record, consider it a possible spoiler alert.

Best picture

Anderson’s “One Battle After Another” has taken the top prize at nearly every show this season, including the Golden Globes, BAFTAs, and the directors and producers guild ceremonies. The latter group is an especially strong predictor of best-picture success, since the Producers Guild uses the same preferential ballot as the Oscars and shares significant member overlap with the academy.

Still, you can’t rule out a late surge from “Sinners,” Ryan Coogler’s vampire drama. It has earned fresh momentum since breaking the record for the most Oscar nominations, and it performed strongly at the Actor Awards, winning the ensemble prize and best actor for Michael B. Jordan. The energy was so electric that it recalled the night “Parasite” won the same ensemble award on its way to toppling the Producers Guild winner “1917” at the Oscars.

But those upsets tend to occur when the season-long front-runner is respected rather than loved. I don’t think that’s the case with “One Battle After Another”: Many voters adore this movie and that should be enough to safeguard its big win.

WINNER: “One Battle after Another”

Call me misguided, but I didn’t like “One Battle After Another”. The premise was good, but, like many movies these days, it turned into a series of long chase scenes.

Best director

If you’re voting for “One Battle” in picture, you’re definitely voting for Anderson in director. What has surprised me is that a sizable chunk of “Sinners” voters I spoke to are opting for Anderson in the directing category, too. Maybe it’s just his moment.

WINNER: Paul Thomas Anderson, “One Battle after Another”

Best actor

At the beginning of the season, I speculated that this Oscar was Chalamet’s to lose. Has he? The 30-year-old was recently defeated at the BAFTAs and the Actor Awards, revealing some resistance from industry voters. Still, I wonder if the academy’s longtime bias against handsome young A-listers in this category will also hinder the 39-year-old Jordan, who won with the friendlier Screen Actors Guild. If voters would rather reward a veteran, there are almost too many options: Do they choose DiCaprio, who led the likely best-picture winner? What about Hawke or Moura, who are well-liked and seemingly everywhere? Any of these five men can win, though I’m betting on Jordan, who is peaking at the right time.

WINNER: Michael B. Jordan in “Sinners”

I haven’t seen “Marty Supreme”. Jordan was good in “Sinners”, a movie I liked–at least the first half–but I make no predictions.

Best actress:

With so many acting races giving me agita, thank goodness for Buckley [in “Hamnet], who has thoroughly swept this season. (Not even a late-arriving bomb in “The Bride!” could slow her momentum.)

WINNER: Jessie Buckley “Hamnet”.  I TOLD YOU SHE’D WIN!  Go see the movie.

I did see “Hamnet” and thought Buckley’s performance was fantastic, fabulous, out of the park. I can’t imagine she won’t win.

As for supporting roles, Buchanan’s prediction for Best Supporting Actress is Amy Madigan in “Weapons”, and for Best Supporting Actor is Sean Penn ib “One Battle After Another.” There are predictions for many other categories, too, but you can see them at the links. WINNERS: Amy Madigan in “Weapons” and Sean Penn in “One Battle after Another” 

Buchanan got these all correct!  This morning you can see NYT op-ed writers discuss the winners and losers (article archived here). They were not keen on “One Battle After Another” compared to “Sinners’, nor were they as enthusiastic as I about Jessie Buckley’s performance in “Hamnet.”

*Being a geezer, I had to click on the WaPo article “Dying is costly: here’s how you can prepare.” (Article is archived here.) Even if you’re not concerned, click on the unarchived page (if you subscribe) to see the animation (!) that accompanies. it.

The average cost of dying in America is $195,501. Here’s the breakdown:

Elderly care:

Elderly care takes many forms. The costliest is paid long-term care: living at a nursing home or hiring a caretaker at your residencewhen family members need help. Medicare generally does not cover long-term care. Though Medicaid covers nursing home costs for most people, whether you qualify depends on your location and income level.

According to federal data, about 7 in 10 Americans over 65 today will need long-term care, and most of them will need it for about three years.

Funeral costs:

The cost of dying compounds when including expenses for a funeral, a cemetery plot and legal matters. When death occurs, emotional stress can make decisions difficult, and people could spend more than necessary. An industry survey of more than 1,000 respondents in 2024 put the total costs at about $12,616. Almost half of the money went to funeral planning.

That matches data from Funeralocity, an online platform for comparing funeral prices. The platform estimates that the average price of a burial is about $8,590, and cremation is about $6,250 around the country as of March. More than 6 in 10 Americans choose cremation today. When taking that breakdown between cremation and burial into account, Americans can expect to need about $7,726 for funeral costs on average.

But crikey: why does it cost $6,250 to incerate somebody? Should I donate my body to science?

When a death occurs, some parts of the estate may be taxed. Most Americans don’t reach the threshold for estate taxes. A smaller share of the population, however, might want to choose carefully where they retire to maximize tax benefits.

There are two types of death taxes: estate taxes and inheritance taxes. There’s no federal inheritance tax, and the taxable threshold for federal estate taxes starts at $15 million per individual in 2026 — a concern for less than 1 percent of the U.S. population. However, a bigger share of Americans would be taxed on the state level.

Twelve states and D.C. charge an estate tax. State estate taxes start to kick in if the estate is larger than $1 million in Oregon — the lowest among all states — or larger than $13.99 million in Connecticut, the highest.

Five states charge an inheritance tax, though certain family members, such as the surviving spouse, are exempt.The state where the death occurred collects the money regardless of where the heir lives.

If you’re old, make sure you’ve got the dosh!

*From the UPI’s Odd News; the screenshot from FB tells the tale, but the article doesn’t say what happened to the badger except that it was “removed.” I hope they didn’t euthanize it unless it was very ill. Badgers are underappreciated.

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili apparently read my Quillette article!!

Hili: Beauty uncovers the truth about our tendency to be filled with awe.
Andrzej: I see that you read Jerry’s article.

In Polish:

Hili: Piękno odkrywa prawdę o naszej skłonności do zachwytu.
Ja: Widzę, że czytałaś artykuł Jerrego.

*******************

From Stacy:

From Dad Jokes, a sign warning you DO NOT SEASON THE PIGEONS:

From Now That’s Wild:

From Masih, two brave Iranian women (I’m not sure about the Mamdami tweet since it may be calling for violation of freedom of speech):

Via Luana. I disagree with the “mass deportation” call, but it’s horrible that people in America are supporting terrorist organizations so openly (note also the call, “USA, go to hell” and “close the Strait, burn the bases.” The whole thing is horrific.  And yes, they want to either destroy or take over the West:

Hypocrisy in the UK. Give them the damn visas!

From Cate. At first I thought this was an AI-generated cat, but it might be real (it’s a Silver Savannah cat):

One from my feed. How does she do that? Translation from the German: “Belly dance by Valeria Veremeenko.  Turn the sound on. She’s fantastic!” (More belly dances here.)

One I reposted from The Auschwitz Memorial:

Two from Dr. Cobb. First, a salacious one he tweeted (and retweeted):

Deeply buried massive statue of Batman with an erection.

— Matthew Cobb (@matthewcobb.bsky.social) 2026-03-15T08:05:22.633Z

Did this dg place a bet? Matthew’s comment, “Dg but a hoot”. Indeed!

🪄🤣 Spreading JOY 🪄🤭🤣This laugh worth the wait 🤣

— 💙 Keep Rising 💙 (@keeprising.bsky.social) 2026-03-14T10:34:44.235Z

Atlantic: What atheism (supposedly) can’t explain

March 15, 2026 • 11:30 am

Christopher Beha‘s new book, Why I am Not an Atheist, appears to have gotten a lot of attention (including a guest essay in the NYT and a long essay in the New Yorker)—more attention than it deserves, I think—for several reasons. First, there’s a resurgence of books dissing “new atheism”, mainly because it doesn’t give us meaning, doesn’t fill the “God-shaped” hole that supposedly afflicts all of us. Second, the book makes the familiar argument that science itself (connected with atheism, it’s argued) is impotent at explaining consciousness, and the religious public loves to hear that science is stymied by such a problem (in the case of consciousness, it isn’t; the problem is just hard).  Finally, Beha has name recognition because he was editor-in-chief of Harper’s Magazine for four years.

I haven’t read the whole book, but I’ve read both of his articles above as well as other reviews, and I’m not impressed, as there’s really nothing new here. Still, I suppose that just as the arguments of atheism must be made repeatedly to enlighten each new generation, so the arguments against atheism must also be made again and again by believers. (I wonder, though, why, if New Atheism was such a dud, as many say, there are so many books going after it.)

Click below to read an archived version.

I’ve written on this website two critiques of excerpts and arguments from Beha’s book  (here and here), and I just saw another negative review by Ronald Lindsay in Free Inquiry. Lindsay pretty much sums up the problems with the book in these paragraphs:

Building on his skepticism about science, Beha further argues that science cannot explain consciousness, which, for him, is a limitation that “proved fatal.” He states that science deals with material things, and because consciousness “is not material … not subject to the kind of observation that scientific materialism takes as the hallmark of knowledge,” then “[b]y the standards of the materialist world view, it simply doesn’t exist.”

Wow, that’s several misstatements in the space of a few sentences. To begin, consciousness is not a “thing.” It’s a processing of information based on inputs from indisputably material things. And there are few, if any, scientists who claim consciousness is not real. Finally, there is overwhelming evidence that the processing of information that is consciousness is dependent on the existence of and proper functioning of our material brains, which science does study with increasing understanding. No, we do not yet have a complete explanation of how consciousness arises, but that is no justification for inferring there is some immaterial, spiritual reality beyond the reach of science.

Frankly, these arguments are so poor they seem like makeweights for Beha’s real beef with atheism: it doesn’t direct him how to live. Beha’s disenchantment with atheism began when he realized atheism didn’t answer the question “How should I be?” Atheism did not tell him “what is good.” As Beha states, most atheists hold that people decide for themselves how to live.

Here is the crux of the quarrel that many theists have with atheism. They believe atheism leaves them rudderless, thrown back on their own resources in forging a life with meaning and value. By contrast, they believe that God provides them with an objective grounding, with clear direction. They no longer have to decide for themselves.

No, atheism doesn’t tell us how to live. It’s simply a claim that there is no convincing evidence for divine beings, ergo we shouldn’t accept them, much less make them the centerpiece of our lives.  If as a you want to find a way to live, you must go beyond that.  Some people like Beha find it easy to slip into an existing religion, which comes ready-made with meaning.  (But how do you know you’ve chosen the right or “true” religion?)  Others do the harder work of thinking for themselves, with many atheists accepting secular humanism as a guideline, but interpeting it in their own way.  Beha is apparently afflicted with doubt (he used to be an atheist), but has settled on Catholicism.

Parrales and the Atlantic are surprisingly appreciative of Beha’s glomming onto his youthful Catholicism. The last paragraph of the review is this:

Is it possible to understand Christianity as a bulwark against social change and still hold on to faith sincerely? I think so—Ali and Vance have elsewhere also reflected more personally on their conversions, for example. But describing one’s religion primarily as a tool to harken back to the past, or as a way to defeat your enemies, risks overlooking the humanizing power of belief. This is what makes Beha’s book so worthwhile, for showing how religion at its best offers more than a theory of cultural renewal. As his there-and-back-again story conveys, faith can foster humility, of the mind and of the heart, and a desire to see others with the love that they believe God sees in people.

Yes, religion gives us ready-made morality, comforting fictions, and, of course, a community of fellow believers. That’s about all the “meaning” it offers. As for its “humanizing” power, how does believing in fiction “humanize” you? Sure, you can cite the Golden Rule, but secularists have made the same argument. And there’s nothing in humanism that promotes misogyny, hatred of non-humanists, or the like—the ubiquitous downsides of religion.  Was Parrales thinking of all religions when he wrote that, including Islam, Hinduism, fundamentalist Christianity, and so on? Are those “humanizing” faiths?

But Parrales emphasizes in his piece that Beha’s falling in love with a woman (curiously, an atheist who remains a nonbeliever!) is what brought him back to Jesus.  We hear the usual arguments that stuff like “love” cannot be explained or understood by scientists, something that’s completely irrelevant to the evidence for gods. Perrales:

For Beha, though, falling in love was more than merely analogous to having faith; it was a catalyst. More than a decade after first reading Russell, he began seeing someone. It went poorly at first—he acted “wooden and self-conscious” and rambled about his literary ambitions while she nodded politely. (“She was not the kind of person who judged other people on what they did for a living,” Beha writes.) But once he changed course and tried to make her laugh instead, she taught him two things: that he could, and that he was “still capable” of both being happy and making another person so. Within a year, they were engaged.

That wasn’t the only change. He quit drinking. His depression receded. The thought of having kids, something he had previously written off as a futile act, now appealed to him. As he tells the story, atheism became untenable not primarily through an argument, but because of its inability to explain how his future wife had changed him. “My life was filled with love,” he writes, “but there was something in this love that demanded I make sense of it.”

The various forms of atheism espoused by the thinkers he’d read seemed unable to provide an explanation. The scientific bent exemplified by atheists such as Richard Dawkins and Daniel Dennett offered, in his view, a reductive account of his love, flattening it to “a physical sensation, a neurochemical process in the brain,” a handshake between dopamine and oxytocin. Romantic idealism—Beha’s term for the belief of atheists such as Friedrich Nietzsche that each individual must fashion meaning in a meaningless universe—could not contend with the fact that Beha hadn’t brought about his newfound sense of meaning on his own. It was external, at the mercy of someone else.

To Beha’s surprise, the Catholic faith that he thought he had left behind provided the meaning he was seeking. Inspired by medieval-Christian mysticism—a tradition that emphasizes contemplation and a “willingness to live with perplexity”—and the New Testament’s claim that God is not just loving but love itself, he started attending Mass once again.

Surprise! Beha found that Catholicism was a perfect fit, like a jigsaw puzzle with only one piece left. How convenient!  Contemplation, of course, is not the purview of just Catholicism (many humanists meditate), and of course a scientific frame of mind (or rationality itself) mandates being a diehard skeptic. There are no bigger skeptics and doubters than scientists, for it’s a professional virtue.

There’s more, but I’ll add just one more bit. Perrales describes others, notably Ayaan Hirsi Ali and J. D. Vance, of also finding solace in religion, not because of its truth claims but because it’s a remedy for a “lack of meaning”

Take the writer and activist Ayaan Hirsi Ali. In 2023, after many years as a committed atheist, she described her conversion to Christianity as being motivated by a desire to “fight off” the “formidable forces” of authoritarianism, Islam, and “woke ideology.” She made no mention of Christ, or of love. At a 2021 conference, J. D. Vance described his conversion to Catholicism by saying, “I really like that the Catholic Church was just really old. I felt like the modern world was constantly in flux. The things that you believed 10 years ago were no longer even acceptable to believe 10 years later.” The British rapper Zuby posted on X a few years ago that “the West is absolutely screwed if it loses Christianity.” (The post received nearly 2 million views and earned a reply from Elon Musk, who said, “I think you’re probably right.”)

Parrales hasn’t done his homework, for, as I recall, Hirsi Ali did admit she accepted the tenets of Christianity. At first I couldn’t find the proof, but Grok gave me the evidence:

In a live debate with Richard Dawkins at the Dissident Dialogues Festival in New York on June 3, 2024 (hosted by UnHerd), Hirsi Ali explicitly addressed her acceptance of key tenets. When Dawkins pressed her on whether she believes in the virgin birth and Resurrection, she responded affirmatively to the latter, stating, “I choose to believe that Jesus rose from the dead.”

She framed this as a deliberate choice rooted in her personal spiritual experience, including answered prayers during a time of crisis, which led her to embrace the “story of Jesus Christ” as a symbol of redemption and rebirth.

Here’s the video, so check for yourself, (start 7 minutes in). Hirsi Ali is reluctant to admit her specific beliefs, perhaps because it’s embarrassing.  I don’t get the “I choose to believe” claim. Because you “choose” to believe what you find consoling doesn’t make it true!
As I recall, the audience in this debate was firmly on Ayaan’s side, but I haven’t listened to this debate for several years.

At any rate, I was sad to see The Atlantic boosting faith, and boosting it as a medicine that can give meaning to our otherwise meaningless lives.

Readers’ wildlife photos

March 15, 2026 • 8:30 am

Mark Sturtevant has returned with some excellent arthropod photos. Mark’s caption and IDs are indented, and you can enlarge his photos by clicking on them. Note that his stacking method is time-consuming; the third picture, he says, took “weeks,” and he’s still not finished.

Here is another set of local insect pictures, all manual focus stacks from either a staged setting from where I live in eastern Michigan, or at a local park.

The first was a visitor at the porch light. This beetle is a female stag beetle (Dorcus parallelus), and I was surprised about the ID because it was barely an inch long. Males of this species have mandibles only slightly larger than those in females:

The next picture is a Longhorn Beetle, Astyleiopus variegatus:

Next is a scene of symbiotic interactions between aphids and ants, where the aphids bribe the ants into protecting them by producing sugary secretions. The ants appear to be New York Carpenter Ants (Camponotus novaeboracensis), and I don’t know why they are called that since the species has a very wide range in the U.S. They are here tending aphids of an unknown species on a thistle plant. This picture is in a way impossible since an extreme macro picture like this cannot have much depth of focus, and it is also impossible to extend focus by conventional focus stacking since ants never sit still. So I’ve been spending weeks extending the depth of this picture from bits and pieces of several pictures. I am still not done doing this, but Mark needs a break so out it goes, into the public:

Dragonflies are next. These too are quick manual focus stacks but with a telephoto lens. Probably my favorite field for photographing dragons is a two hour drive away, but it is worth it because there is a field that is swarming with many species, including species that I don’t see elsewhere.

The first of these is a Common Green Darner Anax junius, which is a common species but what was exciting for me was that this is a male. Females land. Females are so easy to photograph that I usually don’t even bother. But males? No. Males fly pretty much all day, and I seldom get a chance with them:

But the best reason to visit the “dragonfly field” are its Clubtail dragonflies (Family Gomphidae). The main flight season for Clubtails is June, so that is when I make a point to visit the dragonfly field where there are ten documented species from this family. I have photographed all but two from there. Clubtail dragonflies tend to be marked in yellow and black, and they have a thickened end on their abdomen. But not all species have this color scheme, and some are more ‘club-tailed’ than others. A couple things to like about them as a group are the many species, and their reliability for perching on or near the ground. This is in stark contrast to certain other dragonflies (i.e., male Green Darners!)

The first of these are some of the ‘big-club’ Clubtails, and we start with a Midland Clubtail (Gomphurus fraternus):

The next is the impressively clubbed Cobra Clubtail (Gomphurus vastus):

And here is another one, the Skillet Clubtail (Gomphurus ventricosus), which is perched on Poison Ivy. Just to make things interesting, much of the ground cover in the dragonfly field is Poison Ivy. You should not even touch this stuff:

Do you see the differences in the above three species? Me neither! But upon close comparison, there are small differences in their markings that can be discerned. Most of the time when I am out there, I don’t know what big club species I am photographing.

Not all Gomphids are like the above. Here is a Lancet Clubtail (Phanogomphus exilis), which is probably the most common Gomphid in this park:

And here is an example of a very different dragonfly in the clubtail family, the Rusty Snaketail (Ophiogomphus rupinsulensis). There is another species of snaketail in the field, but it is rare and I have yet to see it. Just another reason to make the drive every June:

Now all of the above species of dragonflies are under 2” in length, so considerably shorter than your little finger. But dragonfly field hosts the largest Clubtail in the U.S. called the Dragonhunter (Hagenius brevistylus), which is about 3.5” long — the length of your index finger.

Does that still seem small? I promise if you see one you will stop and stare. Everyone does, because in the field they look big. The Dragonhunter is not even the largest of our dragonflies but they are probably the heaviest. Dragonhunters get their common name from their habit of eating other dragonflies. Admittedly, most dragonflies do that, but Dragonhunters seem to have a reputation for it. Even though I have seen many dozens by now, they always get my undivided attention when one goes cruising by:

Bob Trivers died

March 15, 2026 • 7:42 am

. . . at least according to this post from Quillette and response from Steve Stewart-Williams. And, as I wrote this short post, his Wikipedia bio was updated to show that he died on March 12 at 83.

I knew the guy, though not well, and he was a complex individual, capable of making great advances in evolutionary theory (early in his career) but also to self-sabotage.  I have stories about him, but I can’t really recount them here.  I’ll just put up the first two paragraphs of his Wikipedia bio in lieu of an obituary. Unfortunately, it shows he was in the Epstein files (but so was I):

Robert Ludlow “Bob” Trivers  born February 19, 1943) is an American evolutionary biologist and sociobiologist. Trivers proposed the theories of reciprocal altruism (1971), parental investment (1972), facultative sex ratio determination (1973), and parent–offspring conflict (1974). He has also contributed by explaining self-deception as an adaptive evolutionary strategy (first described in 1976) and discussing intragenomic conflict.

Some of Trivers’ work was funded by Jeffrey Epstein, and Trivers later defended the convicted criminal’s reputation.[3] In 2015 he was suspended from Rutgers University after he refused to teach an assigned course.