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.
Today we have photos from Ephraim Heller continuing his series on a recent trip to Namibia. Ephraim’s captions and IDs are indented, and you can enlarge his photos by clicking on them.
I continue my series on a May-June 2026 visit to Namibia. I’m organizing the posts by habitat, in the order of our visits, so that you get a sense of the ecosystems. Today’s post features the south-western black rhinoceros (Diceros bicornis bicornis) and southern white rhinos (Ceratotherium simum simum) of Etosha National Park and the adjacent, private Ongava Game Reserve. This is one of the most important rhino populations in Africa. In other African national parks I was happy to see one or two rhinos. On this trip I was surprised and pleased to view dozens of individuals.
[Note to readers: I have a lot of difficulty distinguishing the two species. I would appreciate corrections from experts if I have made an identification mistake.]
White rhino in morning light:
My previous posts documented Namibia’s desert coastline. Etosha National Park lies inland. The region is semi-arid with mean annual precipitation of 300-430 mm (12-17 in) and hot summers with typical temperatures around 40 °C (104°F).
Proclaimed as a reserve in 1907 by the German colonial administration and later reduced by the South Africa administration to just a quarter of its original size due to political and agricultural pressure, the park today encompasses over 22,000 km² (8,500 mi²). It is Namibia’s flagship conservation area. The park is dominated by the Etosha Pan, a ~5,000 km² (1,930 mi²) saline depression that is the remnant of an ancient inland lake.
White rhino at night. You can see the impressive scarring along its torso:
On the southern boundary of Etosha National Park lies Ongava Game Reserve, a private conservation area whose name means “rhino” in the Herero language. Starting in 1991 with the purchase of ~30,000 hectares of former cattle farmland, the Reserve’s ecology has slowly recovered. While the Park is closed to visitors at night, the Reserve caters to photographers with lodges and photo blinds overlooking illuminated waterholes.
White rhino baby nursing at the waterhole at night:
I wondered whether the two rhino species compete with each other. I learned that despite being closely related, they occupy distinct ecological niches. The mopane and mixed woodlands provide critical browse for black rhinos, and the grasslands support white rhinos.
This young male white rhino came too close to a baby. The baby’s mother inflicted this wound as a helpful reminder to respect her baby:
The southern white rhino is the larger of the two species, with adult bulls commonly exceeding 2,000 kg and occasionally approaching 3,500 kg. Despite the name, both African rhinos are grey and no one knows why are they called “white” and “black.” White rhinos are obligate grazers that crop grasses. Their large head is held low and supported by a pronounced hump at the neck.
White rhino with an impressive horn. Note the hump at the neck:
Socially they are more gregarious than black rhinos, often forming small groups of cows and calves, with territorial bulls maintaining more solitary ranges. Southern white rhinos recovered from a severe population bottleneck in the late 19th and early 20th centuries and are currently listed as Near Threatened. They disappeared from Etosha and were reintroduced in the 1990s from South Africa.
White rhino in the grass:
White rhino in dawn light. I love the ear tufts:
Black rhinos are smaller and more compact, typically weighing 800–1,400 kg. Allegedly, their most distinctive feature is the prehensile, hooked upper lip used for browsing leaves, twigs, and shoots from bushes and trees (I can’t distinguish the difference in their mouths). The head is held higher than in white rhinos, and the back shows a saddle-like dip. They are generally more solitary and can be more aggressive.
Rhinos on the way to the waterhole at dusk. I’m told that these are black rhinos, but those sure are big humps:
In the mid-20th century, remaining black rhinos from elsewhere in Namibia were relocated into Etosha. With improved protection and habitat, the population recovered strongly to over 500 black rhinos. Namibia has the south-western subspecies. Etosha is a global stronghold for this population. The species as a whole remains Critically Endangered following catastrophic declines in the 20th century.
Black rhino baby at the waterhole at night:
Poaching remains the primary threat to African rhinos. The news here is mixed. Etosha National Park has not fared well due to its large size and public management, with dozens of rhinos poached annually in recent years. On the other hand, and to their great credit, Ongava has had zero poaching incidents in recent history due to its private ownership, smaller size, and intensive security (dedicated, armed, anti-poaching teams conducting foot patrols; trained canine units; aerial support; and continuous high-tech monitoring). Tourism revenue helps fund security. Dehorning is used selectively in some high-risk areas as an additional deterrent.
This black rhino appears to be a veteran of many battles:
Welcome to CaturSaturday, shabbos for cats of the Tribe and July 18, 2026, as well as Nelson Mandela International Day, celebrating his birthday (he was born on July 18, 1918, and died at in 2013 at 95). Mandela is one of my heroes, and when I was in South Africa two years ago I visited the prison on Robben Island where he was confined for 18 years (it’s now a World Heritage Site). Here’s the sparsely furnished cell that I photographed, with only a table, a pad and blanket for sleeping on the floor and a slop bucket. I didn’t see any pillows. And, as I recall, the lights were left on 24 hours a day.
And here from Wikipeida is a photo of “Mandela casting his vote in the 1994 election”, the country’s first election in which citizens of all races could vote. That resulted in a big victory for the African National Congress and the appointment of Mandela as the country’s first black President.
Paul Weinberg, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons
Readers are welcome to mark notable events, births, or deaths on this day by consulting the July 18 Wikipedia page.
Da Nooz:
*Footy news. First, if you’re a soccer tan, I urge you to read this post from 2012, in which I interviewed soccer broadcaster and journalist Seamus Malin about the greatest performance, players, and teams in the game. There are videos, too. Seamus, who’s seen all the greats of modern soccer live, considers Lionel Messi the best player in the history of the sport.
At 39, Messi, one of the oldest players in the tournament, sprints less often than he once did and covers less ground. On Sunday, he will play what is almost certainly his final World Cup match. In past tournaments, Argentina has doubted his genius, blamed him for every failure. But he has, without doubt, transformed soccer; he changed not only what a player could do with the ball but also what a player could see before the ball arrived. He made patience an attacking act.
A match contains more than one clock. There’s the official one, bright and remorseless, and there’s the quieter time in which a defender tires, a midfielder loses half a yard, a passing lane remains open one second longer than it should. Messi moves slowly enough to watch that second clock: who follows him, who stops following, where the next space will be. The running belongs to the match everyone can see. Messi waits for the one concealed inside it.
Messi walks not because he’s left the game.
He walks in order to enter it.
He walked like that at 29. He walked like that at 19, too.
The mythology of young Messi was his speed: his low center of gravity, the ball so close to his feet that it appeared less controlled than persuaded, the sudden passage through spaces that didn’t seem to exist until he entered them. But even then his deeper skill wasn’t simply that he moved faster than the game. It was that he saw the game sooner than anyone else.
. . .From 2014 to 2016, Argentina lost three finals in three summers. Germany scored late in the World Cup final. Chile defeated Argentina on penalties in each of the next two Copa América finals. Messi converted his kick in the first shootout and missed in the second; teammates missed, too. But the cameras kept returning to him.
By that third defeat, Messi was no longer merely the greatest player on the losing side. He had become the explanation for why Argentina lost. His genius had become Argentina’s emergency service: Whatever the team failed to solve, he was expected to solve alone. Afterward, he said he was finished with the national team.
But he returned.
In 2018, Lionel Scaloni took over as coach and stopped asking Messi to be the beginning, middle and end of every attack. He assembled midfielders who could win the ball and carry it forward, forwards who could run beyond Messi and pull defenders away, defenders willing to step toward danger rather than retreat from it. Their work created choices. Messi’s genius remained exceptional; it was no longer the entire plan.
Scaloni also surrounded him with younger players who had grown up watching him. They ran for him, argued for him, sang with him. They didn’t ask him to prove his love of Argentina. They played for him, and for one another, as if it were already known.
The transformation became visible in the 2021 Copa América final against Brazil. That victory gave Argentina its first major trophy in 28 years and Messi his first with the senior national team. At the final whistle, he disappeared beneath his teammates’ bodies. He had carried Argentina through the tournament. Now they carried him.
Messi hadn’t outrun England. Argentina had organized the night so that he could outlast it.
The final will have its official clock, bright and remorseless. Messi will be watching the other one.
Well, that’s what a poet sees in Messi’s story. I can’t disagree as a don’t follow Messi that much. But I am rooting for Argentina to win the whole hog. The final, Argentina vs. Spain, will be tomorrow at 2 pm Chicago time, 3 pm Eastern time. Today France battles England for the third-place slot; that game is at 5 p.m. Eastern time (4 p.m. Chicago time), and will be played in Miami.
Here are 20 great goals by Messi. There’s a great bicycle kick for goal #7.
Andy Burnham has declared himself ready to “beat Britain’s new right” with a fresh, united approach as he becomes the leader of the Labour party before taking over as British prime minister on Monday.
The former mayor of Greater Manchester won the overwhelming support of MPs, trade unions and party branches, making him the only choice to take over from Keir Starmer.
At a special party conference at TUC headquarters in London on Friday, Burnham was declared leader by Shabana Mahmood, the frontrunner to be his chancellor, who is also chair of the party’s ruling executive.
Addressing a room of senior Labour politicians and supporters, Burnham said the country was “crying out for a new politics”. But he also warned that it was Labour’s “last chance to change” and the party must do so together, as a united movement.
“This is a proud moment you have given me and my family, and an emotional one,” he said. “It is one for which I am ready – ready to lead and to build on the foundation laid by one person more than any other. Under Keir Starmer’s leadership we went from our worst defeat to one of the best victories in history.”
He said Labour was now united, “and we put the power that comes from that unity at the service of people and places who have been waiting too long for politics to bring them hope again”.
Despite praising Starmer, Burnham sought to draw a line under the past by asking whether Labour has “been good enough”, and pledging to “do better”.
“First, I will work relentlessly to build a culture of one Labour team, because change starts with us,” he said. “We won’t beat Britain’s new right if we are consumed by infighting and pulling in different directions. That is an indulgence.”
I asked Matthew Cobb, who lives in Manchester, if he could give me a quote for publication, and he said this:
“He’s from in between Liverpool and Manchester (supports Everton) but has been mayor of Manchester for the last decade.
“He is a good communicator (unlike Starmer) and doesn’t take himself too seriously. Not clear yet what his government will actually do, although he has made clear his intention to devolve power – his speech correctly identified the 1980s as the source of all Bad Things: neoliberalism, deindustrialisation, denationalisation and loss of local power. (Strikingly and disappointingly he did not mention climate change.)
He took responsibility in the name of his generation of politiicians for letting down people’s hopes and contributing to the current state of public opinion (pessimistic), and said that this was their last chance. Which again seems accurate.”
A liberal Brit has spoken! I need say no more.
*Conor Friedersdorf writes in TheAtlantic about the pathetic defense of Carolyn Rouse (President of the American Anthropological Association) against accusations that her discipline (as well as much of the humanities) has been captured by “progressive” ideology (see my recent post here). Friedersdorf’s article, “Explaining sex to an anthropologist“, is good and also free to access. (Paul Boghossian also has a clearly-written summary of his committee’s report in The Philosopher’s Magazine.)
Rouse, who is also a tenured professor at Princeton, addressed the question during a lengthy interview with The Chronicle of Higher Education. “The idea that there are two sexes is just factually incorrect,” she stated, arguing that “all you need to do is literally type into Google” to see that we know “there are different types of ‘sexes’ and ‘genders.’” In a curious aside, she added, “You may not like it. I don’t know, maybe you want to kill babies that aren’t just XX presenting XX or XY presenting XY, but that’s what we have in this world.” In Rouse’s telling, scholars who believe that biological sex is a useful analytic category are not only wrong but engaging in “nonsensical” speech that is no more fit for consideration in their field than astrology is fit for astronomers. “I still don’t know what people mean” when they assert that sex is binary, she said, or “why that matters to people so much.” She called the belief “very strange.”
Rouse’s comments reveal that she does not even understand the position that she is dismissing. Anthropology is the study of humanity, and scholars in the field are charged with understanding our species, past and present, in all of its diversity. Their ambit includes our belief systems. And a belief in two sexes is one of the most common in human history. That a belief is common does not make it correct, but it is jarring for a leader representing anthropologists to talk about a position held by billions of humans in wildly different times and places as if it is both “very strange” and beyond comprehension.
Scholars are well within their rights to reject the notion that sex is binary—many anthropologists share this view, including Princeton’s Agustín Fuentes, who explains his logic in Sex Is a Spectrum. But instead of a fair-minded appraisal of the matter, Rouse showed conspicuous incuriosity about other scholars’ work. It is striking how little she seems to know about the particular reasons that many fellow scholars believe that biological sex is binary. Just as striking is how she responds to not knowing. She could apply her scholarly tool kit to understand what others think and why. Instead, she treated their view as unworthy of debate and said that academics might be right to keep it out of conferences. She doesn’t “know what people mean”––yet she is certain that their wrongness is settled.
Her interviewer, Stephanie M. Lee, reacted by pointing out that in 2022, in a survey of forensic anthropologists, 42.4 percent of respondents expressed the belief that sex is binary, implying that the question simply isn’t settled in the field. Lee said, “I was wondering how you explain that.” Rouse responded, “I don’t believe in opinion research,” then added, “Not to disparage them, but a lot of forensic people, they’re coroners, they’re doing it in a practicing level, where they’re actually asked on forms to determine whether this body is male or female, oftentimes they haven’t had advanced schooling.” In fact, the journal Forensic Anthropologypublished data on the respondents: 57.9 percent had a doctorate, and another 25.7 percent had received a master’s degree; the most common degree concentrations among respondents were forensic anthropology and biological or physical anthropology. Just 20.5 percent worked in a coroner’s office. And flimsy claims aside, these attacks on survey respondents’ credentials evaded the substance of the matter.
All of this seems contrary to the spirit of anthropology. If the goal of the field is to understand humans, what kind of scholar professes ignorance of a common viewpoint andwhy its adherents value it, and rejects surveys, panels, and debates that clarify what others believe?
. . .In popular discourse, one can doubtless find many weak and flawed arguments for why sex is binary. What hope does anthropology have for understanding those beliefs––which its scholars should try to do, given their overall mission of understanding people––if the field can’t even give a fair shake to scholars with the steelman version? These academics have presented a coherent, internally consistent, scientifically grounded case for sex as binary that many scholars share.
Anthropologists would do their discipline’s reputation some good if they collectively signaled that they have no confidence in leaders who behave this way. To understand humans, anthropologists must be able to understand the humans with whom they disagree.
Well, there may be “many weak and flawed arguments for why sex is binary,” but those are made by ignorarmuses. It remains that if you recognize biological sex among organisms as having to do solely with gamete type, then although some arguments may be poorly made, biological sex is as close to binary as you can come, with the number of exceptions to the concept (not really a “definition”) being roughly between 1 in 20,000 and 1 in 5000. That’s as binary as it gets, and the “exceptions” do not produce a third type of gamete.
*As always, I’ll steal a few items from Nellie Bowles’s weekly news-and-snark column at The Free Press, called this week “TGIF: The high-T Department of War” (she’s referring to Pete Hegseth’s plan to measure the testosterone in U.S. military men, and offer replacement therapy for those with low titers).
→ Joe Biden’s memoir: Joe Biden this week announced his new memoir coming out in November, called Promise Me, America. I keep repeating the title out loud to sort of understand the tone. I guess it’s supposed to be like, promise me you’ll do good. Like a “keep your head up, kid, I’ll be watching from the sky.” But it reads more like, “America was promised to me on my Christmas list.” Anyway, he released a video announcing the book, and it’s very sad to watch. Biden has declined further, as happens in life. The camera cuts every two seconds. His voice is slurred and hushed. Some of his longer words are barely intelligible. After 80, why even be on camera? Who is the one saying “we need him to be doing more on-camera stuff”? And why do I feel like Dr. Jill is gearing up to get him onto Dancing with the Stars?
I don’t say this to be mean. The brutal hands of time come for all of us, if we’re lucky. I say this because the mainstream American media tried to convince us that Biden was completely capable of serving a second term, and that it was conspiratorial and ageist to question it. Does anyone else remember Robert Hur’s report and how brutally he was dragged for it?
Please, Bidens, let this man retire from public life. He’s earned his cantaloupe, and to eat it in peace.
→ Gender-affirming care for all: Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth has announced that the government is now going to provide testosterone replacement therapy to troops. He’s calling it “The High-T Department of War.”
“I’m authorizing a new screening program for testosterone deficiency for our service members.” And: “This initiative, it’s not about artificial enhancement. It’s about restoring and optimizing your natural capabilities.” Injecting yourself with testosterone cypionate or enanthate is not artificial enhancement. It’s just rediscovering your natural self, says our chief war man. Also: Breast implants are not artificial, they are a repair; they are the large, perky tits you were supposed to have at age 50 but modern life and evil feminists took from you. We’re simply going back to the natural order of things—and restoring your natural capabilities. Botox is required now too, since you can’t be expected to wage drone warfare with crow’s feet.
Honestly, I support this. I’m pro-optimizing! Give ’em the drugs. Boost up, baby. I’m too lazy and beautiful for plastic surgery, personally, but when I see someone nipped and tucked I salute them. I think to myself: That’s another valiant soldier fighting certain death. We have one life to live—why not risk it all for an extra whistle or two at a construction site? I’m serious. God be with you, I think, when I see a 60-something woman with pillowy, billowy lips. Mine are two pieces of linguini, soon spaghetti, eventually angel hair. In our new, optimized future, people like me will look like Día de los Muertos costumes here for a haunting.
→ DO NOT WATCH THIS MOVIE: Netflix is very upset aboutGone with the Wind. How would we describe the movie? Evil. You want a plot summary? Racism. This is, honest to god, how Netflix summarizes the classic (until people noticed and made fun of it this week and so Netflix deleted it).
I mean, fair enough. I forget the racist parts but I’m sure it’s a racist epic. It was made in 1939. I’m sure it’s also homophobic, if you asked it, and also skeptical of women’s suffrage. We cannot simply light every piece of art on fire because it does not conform to our 2026 morals, I’m sorry, I say, as I flip though my beloved Leni Riefenstahl photography collection, but this is just the way of the world.
My favorite part is that Netflix still describes the movie as “romantic.” Not even “known for its racism” can dim the flame of a steamy romance.
→ Welcome to the DSA: An activist attending Denver’s biggest DSA general meeting to date posted a pic from inside.
“Packed house, line out the door. Big things are happening!” said the caption. Nothing says “I am easily manipulated” like wearing a mask fiveyears past when it is necessary. It’s perfect. Welcome to the DSA! We’re here to make your windows tiny and your breathing difficult.
*The NYT has given a rave review to Christopher Nolan’s new film “The Odyssey,” based of course on Homer’s poem. The movie is nearly 3 hours long, and since it’s the first movie ever filmed in IMAX 70mm format, you’ll have to find a theater with a screen that can handle it properly.
Nolan’s love of movies and commitment to them — to what they can do, what they can be, what they should be — runs like an electric current through his filmography, lighting it, and oftentimes you, up. That passion is in every frame of his monumental adaptation of “The Odyssey,” one of the most Nolan of Nolan spectacles in its thematic concerns, formal playfulness, kinetic thrills and unabashed showmanship. Few directors close the divide between the art film and the blockbuster like Nolan does; fewer still give the audience something to not simply look forward to but also be excited by. Even as he has continued to refine his filmmaking, notably in his narrative experimentation, he always aims to please.
. . .It seems inevitable that Nolan would eventually take on “The Odyssey,” one of the foundations of Western literature. And why not? The story is a trippy, far-out blast, and has the kind of sinuous, complex layering that has become one of his signatures. Credited to Homer, the original poem consists of 12,109 lines of nonlinear, nonstop talk and action featuring gods, mortals, monsters, weird doings, hospitality rituals and oceans of blood, tears and wine. Whatever the adaptation, the tale is so ingrained in our cultural DNA that even those who haven’t read the original — or Joseph Campbell on the hero’s journey — will be familiar with it, having seen a movie or two. It’s Luke Skywalker’s path and WALL-E’s, too.
The most striking thing about this film, other than its being the first feature shot entirely in IMAX, is that it exists. It is an anomalous big-studio entertainment that Nolan has filled with stars — Matt Damon is Odysseus! Zendaya is Athena!— and polished to a high gleam, turning a 3,000-year-old poem into a smart, thoughtful film with Old Hollywood allure. It’s a throwback and of its moment, including in how it adjudicates the costs of war. (Who benefits, and who suffers?) Its hero is, to a degree, the cunning, complicated Odysseus who leaps off the page, but he’s been sweetened and made more psychologically legible for contemporary sensibilities. He’s also played by an appealing actor who excels at elevated everymen.
. . . . The performances are uniformly good, though Damon’s Odysseus is tamped down and notably devoid of charisma, as if he were as hollow as the wood decoy. In action-adventure terms it’s a counterintuitive choice even if it serves Nolan’s tricky, more non-triumphalist ends. One upshot, though, is that few of the actors, Damon included, manage to hold you with the same emotional force that Nolan’s filmmaking does. Both Holland and especially Hathaway have bracingly strong moments, but his character has too little presence and hers remains shrouded in mystery, which Nolan expresses by filming her behind a latticed screen or the threads on her loom. Mother and son are sympathetic; they’re also routinely upstaged by Pattinson’s wildly enjoyable flop-sweating suitor whose demise you hunger for.
. . . .After watching “The Odyssey” again, I flashed on something that Martin Scorsese once said about another film: “The emotion is the emulsion.” Nolan’s gifts are excessively obvious, and even when his characters don’t stir you, his filmmaking does. Among other qualities, he doesn’t know how to make an ugly image and this one is filled with rapturous beauty. Nolan employs beauty strategically, using it to seduce viewers into stories that can seem needlessly byzantine to some — especially by impoverished mainstream industry standards — more the province of the art house than the multiplex. Nolan asks us to dream bigger. His “Odyssey” is a classic in every sense, a transporting affirmation of the art and a work of pure cinema.
Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Andrzej got a gift. He said it was from his “book’s editor used to restore stained glass windows, and she brought this flower for me as a gift. ”
Hili: I know who you got that weird little flower from. Andrzej: So do I.
In Polish:
Hili: Wiem od kogo dostałeś ten dziwny kwiatek.
Ja: Ja też wiem.
From Masih; an Iranian woman talks back to the Morality Police, and then sends the video to Masih:
Now in the middle of the war the Islamic Republic’s intelligence service warns that anyone who sends me videos to Masih Alinejad could face up to 5 years in prison.
Watch it yourself ! This is how Iranian women responded when you criminalized this simple act of civil… pic.twitter.com/ygP1U9NtO3
— Daniel Di Martino (@DanielDiMartino) July 16, 2026
From reader joolz, who says this:
Amnesty UK is in serious trouble. JKR set up a fund a while ago to cover legal fees for women being persecuted by trans activists. She is now offering support for most of the other 117 groups libelled by Amnesty UK….
Also, the Scottish Express reports that the Charity Commission is conducting an investigation of Amnesty International after Rowling lodged a complaint:
Amnesty UK was already smearing feminists as ‘anti-rights’ back in May, according to @thetimes. It appears that, far from being an accidental slip up or an editorial error, the latest defamatory report accurately represents Amnesty UK’s deep-seated hostility to all organisations… https://t.co/U6ldT0134Q
The Young Turks with Cenk and Ana have become Antisemitism Central. Instead of Ana today, let’s look at Cenk, who’s taken to calling all Congressmen who vote to support Israel “Israelis”:
Cenk is upset that the US Congress does not want more Jews to die. So much so that he reverts to labelling (literally) ALL those who disagree with him as “Israeli”, when in fact these members of US Congress are elected, exclusively, by the American public — which he knows.
One from my feed. This is amazing, and I wondered how they got up on those stilts:
A traditional technique used by young shepherds of Ethiopia’s Banna tribe. They use stilts to watch over their livestock in tall grass, move through wetland areas, and avoid snakes and predators like lions and leopards. It requires strength, balance, and training from a young… pic.twitter.com/ef6Rw1T26Z
This Belgian Jewish boy was gassed as soon as he arrived in Auschwitz. He was seven years old, and woul dhave been ninety today had he lived. https://t.co/QRXm3JPGTl
And one from Dr. Cobb: a fabulous fossil—bird tracks!
For #FossilFriday, abundant Eocene (~50 mya) shorebird tracks from the Green River Formation, WY; seen last week in the Tellus Museum of Science, Cartersville GA. 🧪🪨⚒️🐾🐦
Today we have a Friday Flashback fist published 20 years ago (!) The artist notes, “Bad pun. Sorry!”
The theological conundrum here is real, but of course theologians have weaseled their way to an answer (see here, for example). Mo tacitly admits, though, that there’s something to determinism.
Today we have photos and videos of the California intertidal taken by math professor Abby Thompson of UC Davis. Her captions and IDs are indented, and you can enlarge the photos by clicking on them.
Just a few more great low tides for the summer. By August the kelp is so lush, it becomes harder to find interesting creatures, so I’m enjoying June and July. These photos were taken during the full moon at the end of June.
Amblyosyllis anae(marine worm- it seems to be a summer of worms). This genus is relatively rare (or at least hard to find) here. I had picked up a piece of sponge to look at under a microscope, and this guy crawled out, so I was lucky. It was about ¼” long, and lively, as you can see in the video which follows.
Class Hydrozoa; this is the medusa (baby jellyfish) form of a hydroid, possibly of the Eudendrium in the previous picture (they were in the same dish). I don’t know what the yellow blob it’s attached to is; in the video following you can see it trying to detach itself:
Hydrozoa video:
Family Phoronidae– yet another type of marine worm, a “horseshoe worm”:
Genus Haliclona (sponge) – it takes an expert and/or a microscope to determine species for sponges. This type is very widespread, and a great color:
Dendraster excentricus (Sand dollar) This is the “test” (internal skeleton) of a kind of flattened sea urchin. The live urchins stay below the low tide line, and they live in big clusters, sometimes propped up perpendicular to the sand. Sort-of like the drawing of the oysters in Lewis Carroll’s “The Walrus and the Carpenter”, but underwater, and without the little shoes.
Mussel tracks- not tracks, of course, but for some reason mussels release droplets (presumably seawater?) when they’re exposed at low tide:
Welcome to the end of another week, and a sad one given the duckling situation. (I have now been apprised of yeat ANOTHER nesting hen hearby.) It’s Friday, July 17, 2026 and National Tattoo Day. For some reason many soccer players are tattooed, including Lionel Messi, who didn’t have this tattoo a while back but showed up with a heavily tattooed left arm. The caption below: “Messi celebrating after scoring against Egypt in the 2026 FIFA World Cup round of 16.”
[Today] commemorates the day in 1938 when Douglas Corrigan made a transatlantic flight. He had recently purchased a 1929 Curtiss Robin plane and rebuilt and modified it. In July of 1938, he flew it from California to New York. He then applied for permission to make a transatlantic flight but was denied. On July 17, 1938, he flew out of Floyd Bennett Field in Brooklyn, New York, with the supposed intention of flying back to California. He instead started heading east and flew all the way to Dublin, Ireland. As he disembarked from the plane he said, “Just got in from New York. Where am I?” He claimed his flight had been an accident and he had gotten lost after his compass failed to work. His pilot’s license was suspended but was soon reinstated. He became a celebrity and gained the name Wrong Way Corrigan. Until his death in 1995, he maintained that his transatlantic flight had been done on accident. In 1987, in Long Island, he was honored on the 49th anniversary of his flight. Beginning in 1992, his hometown of Galveston, Texas, began celebrating Wrong Way Corrigan Day. Corrigan has since been celebrated across the country on Wrong Way Corrigan Day.
Corrigan never admitted thet he planned this wrong way journey. Here’s the New York Post‘s famous backwards headline announcing the flight:
No copyright known
Yesterday the smoke from Canadian wildfires finally hit Chicago, causing a dense smog that limits vision as well as a yellowish tinge to the air, a smell of woodsmoke, and dangerous air conditions. Here’s the view from my crib; normally you can clearly see the skyscrapers of downtown, six miles away. Yesterday you could barely see a block. This is not fog: the sky was clear except for the woodsmoke:
Readers are welcome to mark notable events, births, or deaths on this day by consulting the July 17 Wikipedia page.
Da Nooz:
*Footy news, from a NYT op-ed written by Matthew Rose, identified as “an Opinion editorial director and a long-suffering England soccer fan”: “England defeats itself. Again” (archived here). Remember that England last won the World Cup was 1966:
Little good comes when a country measures itself by looking backward: Misty nostalgia makes the real problems of the present harder to tackle. Ever since 1966, the English soccer team, like Britain itself, has been burdened by the dead weight of impossible expectations, yearning for past glories while failing to grasp why things, in general, are not glorious. In political terms, that helped usher in Brexit, economic stagnation and six prime ministers in 10 years, all of whom tried and failed to restore Britain to something like its former self.
The sporting equivalent comes every four years, when England somehow convinces itself, despite a pile of evidence to the contrary, that it ought to win the World Cup. And every four years, this ends badly.
It started with the 1982 cup, famous for Maradona’s two goals, one brilliant and one involving a handball and cheating.
Then 1990 was Germany on penalties in the semis. No one talks about 1994. Four years later was another tragic blowout against Argentina. And 2002 was grim. I’d moved to New York by then and watched the loss to Brazil in a sticky pub on Third Avenue surrounded by my gloomy, pale compatriots. On to 2006: quarterfinals, again; lost on penalties, again. And 2010 was a 4-1 drubbing by the old enemy, Germany. The less said about 2014 the better. In 2018, the team somehow ended up fourth. In Qatar four years ago, England lost to its other, older enemy, the French.
There is an undeniable pattern here, in addition to not winning. England is stuck in some kind of middle rank — not the best, not the worst, always flattering to deceive, usually grinding it out until the gravity of reality takes over. This isn’t the cheery optimism of the Brooklyn Dodgers’ “Wait ’til next year.” This is deeper — an aching sense that things just won’t work out.
. . .In the 1990s, The Sun, a spicy tabloidowned by Rupert Murdoch, superimposed the head of a particularly hapless England soccer manager onto a turnip. In 2000, the newspaper lobbied for a donkey called Jack Ass to take the job. And yet after England’s June win over Croatia, even it fell victim to the ancient habit. “Spooky omen is good news for England fans,” the paper intoned. What was this spooky omen? The final score, 4-2, was the same as the final score in ’66.
For a month, England clawed and grimaced its way to the semifinals, accompanied by fans chanting “IN-GER-LAND” to the tune of “The Stars and Stripes Forever.” The Sun, changing its tune, said the team was “one-dimensional.” The Guardian called it “turgid.” England edged the Democratic Republic of Congo, defeated Mexico in a match that resembled the siege of Leningrad, and somehow didn’t lose to Norway. Finally, the agony of hope was mercifully extinguished by Argentina (yet again).
Maybe by the 2030 World Cup, Britain will be back in the European Union, just one country among many. Maybe England’s undeniable stars will function as a team. Maybe the country will embrace its position as a midtable perennial, and be just fine with that. And perhaps then it might be able to win.
I don’t dare comment on this as I’m neither a Brit nor a footy expert, but the piece does use Brexist as a touchstone of why England can’t win at soccer. I will let the Brits comment.
Meanwhile, from the NYT daily newsletter:
What’s next? Argentina will play Spain on Sunday with a chance to become the first country in 64 years to win back-to-back men’s World Cups. It will be a something of a peculiar reunion for Argentina’s national hero, Lionel Messi, and Spain’s teenage sensation, Lamine Yamal. In 2007, when Messi was a rising star, he gave a bath to a 5-month-old Yamal for a charity calendar. Read the remarkable back story.
Democratic strategist James Carville recently said far-left Democrats are a “part of the problem” within the party, slamming candidates for critiquing it during their campaigns instead of uplifting the collective messaging.
“Is their solution to beat Republicans to run against Republicans? No,” Carville said in the Friday episode of his “Politics War Room” podcast.
“Their solution is to beat Democrats like they’re part of the problem. You are part of the problem because you’re a f—ing idiot,” he added.
He pointed to Abdul El-Sayed, a Democrat vying for the party nomination for Senate in Michigan, as an example of one far-left candidate bucking the party.
“He’s running for Senate … and he’s running against both parties. Oh, so it’s both parties’ fault. No, it’s not both parties’ fault,” he said during the podcast.
“One party expanded health insurance, all right? Another party destroyed it. One party balanced the budget and created economic prosperity. The other party destroyed it,” he continued.
The Democratic strategist said far-left candidates are pushing voters toward Republicans.
He said, “in this century, if it wouldn’t be for the Democratic left wing, we might not have even had a Republican president. We sure wouldn’t have had one in 2000. And we sure wouldn’t have had one in 2016.”
Carville said he was proud to brand himself as a “liberal” but noted the identity should be separated from being on the far left.
“I am a proud liberal. I am not a leftist. I don’t believe you ought to break the thing up. I think the role of government is to help people, to be a partner with people, to help them get educated, to help them have retirement security, to make them secure in this world, and make them secure in their homes,” he told listeners.
“And if you believe that, blame the left wing of the Democratic Party for the catastrophe that we’re facing right now, because as much as any group, it’s their fault.”
We’ll see. The Democrats seem impervious to any formerly Democratic principles, espousing the “progressive” views of the the DSA. The party seems to be catering to young voters, which means that candidates must diss Israel to be viable. The saddest thing I’ve seen lately (besides waterlogged ducklings) is the pandering of Rahm Emanuel and the silence of J. B. Pritzker and Josh Shapiro on Israel. See the next piece:
The House on Wednesday rejected a measure to eliminate U.S. aid to Israel, but almost half of Democrats supported the move, reflecting a rapid and dramatic shift within the party away from decades of unequivocal support for the Jewish state.
The measure, which sought to cut all $3.3 billion in military and humanitarian aid to Israel from a foreign affairs spending bill, failed by a vote of 104 to 314, with 10 voting “present,” and all but one Republican, Representative Thomas Massie of Kentucky, a sponsor, voting no.
But more Democrats supported it than opposed it, including many who said they voted in favor despite their opposition to the cuts to humanitarian aid. It was the latest and starkest evidence of a major divide over backing Israel within the Democratic Party, which is grappling with a groundswell of hostility in its ranks toward Israel and its conduct of the war in Gaza.
Supporters said the measure was their only way to register their opposition to the actions of the Israeli government in Gaza, the West Bank and Lebanon, and their desire for a fundamental change in course in the U.S. relationship with Israel.
“While I wish we could vote on an amendment targeted just to military aid, and of course support humanitarian programs, we do not have that option,” Representative Greg Casar, Democrat of Texas and the chairman of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, wrote in a letter to his members, in which he urged all 98 of them to follow his lead in backing the proposal. “The American people are crying out for an end to U.S. tax dollars subsidizing Israel’s military.”
The vote even split Democratic leaders.
Representatives Hakeem Jeffries of New York, the minority leader, and Pete Aguilar of California, the No. 3 Democrat, voted against the measure, while Representative Katherine Clark of Massachusetts, the minority whip, voted in favor.
. . . In the final tally, 103 Democrats voted to cut off aid while 98 opposed doing so, with another 10 voting “present,” declining to register a position. That amounts to more than half of the Democratic Caucus unwilling to reject a measure that would terminate U.S. assistance to Israel.
It took me a while to find the votes broken down by individual; I failed using Google but Grok took me to the site. You can see how your representative voted here. I guessed correctly that everyone in the “squad” voted “aye”—to cut off aid. The Democrats who voted that way probably want to cut off all ties with Israel, but certainly don’t want to support the only democracy in the Middle East. And they’d probably want a two-state solution—so long as the Palestinian State was right next to Israel and was controlled by either the Palestinian Authority or Hamas.
“The tide is changing,” Representative Thomas Massie declared last night after his attempt to zero out Israel aid failed 104-314. What made it a shift in tide wasn’t the outcome—a doomed show vote from the start—but the Democratic split: 103 Democrats voted yes, 98 voted no, and ten voted present. Massie was the sole Republican in favor.
The good news: that’s well short of the 150 some predicted—a figure inflated precisely because the measure was certain to fail, letting members vote against Israel at no policy cost. The bad news: it’s 66 more than two years ago, when the House faced a similar vote, and 99 more than 2016, when the chamber passed the memorandum of understanding 405-4. According to sources, another 60 Democrats might have joined the provision without leadership pressure holding the line.
More bad news: those 98 who voted no are not, by and large, Israel hawks. Congressman Hakeem Jeffries called the amendment “overly broad,” warning it would gut humanitarian aid, refugee resettlement, and the ability to confront Hamas and Hezbollah—then conceded that “there are more decisive ways to achieve the urgent change necessary when it comes to the far-right Netanyahu government,” and that “a meaningful change in direction is needed” ahead of the new memorandum of understanding. Congressman Sam Liccardo, who opposed the underlying funding through a separate vote, drew the line others left implicit: no to 3.3 billion dollars in offensive weapons, yes to defensive systems like Iron Dome, and a new memorandum of understanding treating Israel “as an important ally, not a supplicant.” The no column was against the vehicle, not the destination.
. . .Good news: there aren’t 103 Zohran Mamdanis in Congress. Representative Katherine Clark voted yes “not because I agree with the entirety of the amendment, or the GOP’s cynical motivations for its consideration, but because I believe we must change course”—the status quo, she said, “is not tenable.” Former Speaker Nancy Pelosi was blunter, calling the amendment “ill-conceived” and voting yes anyway “for the message that it sends.” Clark even swiped at the mechanism she was endorsing, dismissing it as “more stunts from Congressional Republicans who would rather score cheap political points than lead.”
Halie Soifer, executive director of the Jewish Democratic Council of America, captured the hedge: many yes-voters “haven’t turned their back on Israel, recognizing there’s a distinction between the people of Israel and the current Israeli government.”
The problem is how much longer that distinction holds; one suspects that the anti-Israel passion in the Democratic party is not simply directed against the current makeup of Israel’s governing coalition, no matter how much moderate Democrats wish it were.
I agree with the last sentence: blaming everything on Netanyahu is identifying a scapegoat for disliking all of Israel, and I suspect that any Prime Minister, be they right- or left-wing, could be substituted for Bibi. Democrats either changed their minds on Israel, are Jew-haters anti-Zionists like the Squad, or are pandering to the young electorate.
Scientists have identified a new species of monkey that has orange lips and makes unique roars and snorting sounds. The distinctive monkey lives in a remote region of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC).
It is only the fifth new monkey species to be identified in Africa in the past 75 years, and there might be more unknown monkey species in the region, scientists behind a new study suggested. Researchers named the newly identified species of monkey Colobus congoensis,after the region, and it is known by the common name “likweli” in the local Kilanga language.
“This is remarkable because it’s not very common these days to find a new, never-before-documented primate species, let alone a relatively large species of monkey,” said Joshua Linder, an anthropologist and president and co-founder of the The Forest Collective, a nonprofit that aims to conserve and restore tropical rainforests.
. . .In their searches between 2018 and 2022, the researchers recorded 114 sightings of the species across an estimated range of about 660 square miles (1,700 square kilometers) naturally isolated between the Lomami and Lualaba rivers. They reported their findings July 15 in the journal PLOS One.
The monkeys, seen hanging out in groups of between one and 20 individuals, are mainly glossy black, but they have a conspicuous orange patch around the mouth and nose. Bare gray skin on their cheekbones makes it look as if they’re wearing masks. They also have a patch of white fur around the anus.
DNA sequencing showed that this species is distinct from any primate known that could be a potential relative. Here’s a video of the creature making its strange calls:
Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Andrzej is cogitating:
Hili: You’re playing solitaire again.
Andrzej: Yeah, sometimes I need to sort out my thoughts.
In Polish:
Hili: Znów układasz pasjansa.
Ja: Tak, czasem muszę uporządkować myśli.
From Masih: Another peaceful protester executed in Iran:
In the middle of the war, the regime in Iran executed an innocent protester.
Aref Khoshkar today, joined #WomanLifeFreedom to protest the murder of Mahsa Amini and the hand of morality Police.
They tortured him for years. When that wasn’t enough, they arrested his younger… pic.twitter.com/K0DF8eE31T
From JKR via Luana: another objection to Amnesty International’s stand that a “woman counselors only” rape crisis center is a violation of “rights.”
Another letter to add to @AmnestyUK‘s overflowing mail box, this one from women-only rape support service, Beira’s Place. 1/3 pic.twitter.com/iVqyLfNjzZ
— Wholesome Side of 𝕏 (@itsme_urstruly) July 16, 2026
Otters like ice cubes?
At a Japanese aquarium, these baby otters have an end-of-day routine: clean up the toys with grandpa, then collect their well-earned ice cube reward. pic.twitter.com/7JneoxRrxI
— Antidepressant Content (@depressionlesss) July 15, 2026
And one I reposted from The Auschwitz Memorial:
This Hungarian Jewish girl was gassed to death as soon as she arrived in Auschwitz. Had she lived she would be 91 today. https://t.co/5x8bq8KezA
On June 8 I posted about the “Boghossian Report,” in which ten scholars argued that the humanities are becoming overly politicized—to the detriment of universities and their ideals. The politicization came, they said, mostly from the Left, and involved the promotion of “progressive” social justice rather than a search for truth. Click below to read it:
This was not a scientific survey but a warning based on a collection of observations and anecdotes. Nevertheless, the report has received considerable pushback from humanities professors who cannot accept that their discipline could possibly be politicized. One maintained that because the humanities were in disarray in the first place, it is that disarray that led to their politicization, not the other way around. At any rate, the report was particularly hard on anthropology, singling it out for special opprobrium:
In some fields (e.g., philosophy) the problems are largely confined to a single subfield focused on a charged topic. In others (e.g., history), while there are streams of scholarship in which standards have been politicized in problematic ways, they run alongside more dominant streams in which a wide range of views is tolerated, and appropriately scholarly standards are brought to bear. In the most extreme cases (e.g., anthropology), we see a widespread deterioration in scholarly standards grounded in a pervasive repudiation of ideals of objectivity together with a toxic intellectual climate in which reasonable dissent on politically charged topics is routinely suppressed and punished.
and:
In rare cases, individual scholars and groups of scholars explicitly repudiate the idea that scholarship aims at knowledge and understanding in favor of an overtly and exclusively political conception of the enterprise.
For example, in a 2021 presidential address to the American Anthropological Association, Akhil Gupta writes that “anthropology is an outlier among the social sciences … because its political project is to challenge the culturally dominant commonsense of capitalist consumerism” (Gupta and Stoolman 2022, emphasis added). In a reply published in American Anthropologist, Fernando Villanea emphasizes the point that “the value of anthropology is not the pursuit of truth, because all truth is subjective,” but rather to “serve the interests” of people who have been harmed by anthropologists in the past (Villanea 2023). Two years later, in the same journal, José Santos argued that “all ethnographies” — the stock in trade of cultural anthropology — have as their goal “not voyeurism but advocacy” (Santos 2025), as if the goal of describing the social world and making sense of it was not only not on the menu, but that it was to be disparaged as a kind of perversion. Taken literally, such remarks call, not for scholarship in the service of a social goal, but for a rejection of the core idea that scholarship aims at understanding.
Note that one of the authors of the Boghossian et al. report is anthropologist Joseph Henrich at Harvard. More on him below.
Well, Carolyn Rouse, the president of the field’s biggest scholarly group—the American Anthropological Association—couldn’t let that rest, but has been firing back at the Boghossian report. Stephanie Lee interviewed Rouse for the Chronicle of Higher Education, and it wasn’t a puffball interview: Lee pressed Rouse hard, and it turns out that Rouse either ducked the questions, was ignorant about the author in her field, and how the Boghossian report was written, and even maintained that science showed there were not two biological sexes. In the end, all Rouse reveals is that the accusations about anthropology in the Boghossian report are substantiated by one who tries to refute them.
You can read the article by clicking below (the photo is of Rouse), or find it archived here:
All text from the article is indented:
From Lee’s introduction:
But one field was singled out as “the most extreme case” — anthropology. Compared to philosophy, sociology, history, literary studies, and music studies, the discipline showed “a pervasive repudiation of ideals of objectivity together with a toxic intellectual climate in which reasonable dissent on politically charged topics is routinely suppressed and punished.” The authors cited writings from several anthropologists, a speech by a recent president of the American Anthropological Association, and an AAA panel about biological sex that was canceled in 2023, among other things. The report described itself as a summary of reports, specific to each field. (Only one, on literary studies, has been released; it was posted after this interview was conducted.)
Six days after the report went online, the AAA fired back with a full-throated defense. “Anthropologists welcome rigorous critique of the discipline,” wrote its president, Carolyn M. Rouse. “What we cannot accept is a sweeping verdict about anthropology’s intellectual culture, scholarly practices, and professional norms built on selective evidence and issued without consultation.”
Rouse is an anthropology professor at Princeton University who researches race and inequality in religion, medicine, education, and economic development. In 2016 and 2017, she went viral for leading a walkout of a speech by the political scientist Charles Murray, and for delivering a lecture titled “F%*# Free Speech,” in which she argued that free-speech absolutism does not exist. Rouse was elected president-elect of the AAA in 2023, and assumed the role last year. The Chronicle asked her about her views on the Vanderbilt report and the questions it raises about her field. This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Lee’s questions are in bold, and Rouse’s answers in plain text.
First, Rouse says that the Boghossian report was written using AI (not just for research but “used an LLM to write this”. When pressed for evidence, she quotes an article in the Chronicle of Higher Education, with Rouse saying, “Anthony Appiah says that they used AI.” But in that article, improperly cited in this report, Appiah actually says this:
We did a fair amount of research, including research using new artificial-intelligence methods to survey large bodies of text and see what was in them, and to identify themes and so on. My report will come with six appendices of such material, not produced by me but produced by the researchers that we were able to hire with the money that was given to us by the chancellors.
This does not say that the authors of the Boghossian et al. report used AI to write the report; it implies that they used AI to survey the bodies of text. It’s completely unfair for Rouse to accuse the authors of writing the report with AI.
To see what really happened, I contacted someone connected with writing this report who characterized that this accusation was “completely bonkers” and that the piece was a “most bizarre interview.” This contact told me that while the report used various analytical tools (including LLMs) to get lists of syllabi, prizes, and so on, this was just the background research. The data were then debated heavily among the authors and the report was, as I expected, written entirely by humans. Rouse has come close to libel in her unfounded accusation.
Then Rouse ducks a question about an address given by Akhil Gupta, the previous AAA President:
Let’s talk about some of the specific critiques that were raised in the Vanderbilt report regarding anthropology, perhaps as a way of talking about these broader issues you have with its conclusion. So, in 2021, then-AAA President Akhil Gupta gave a presidential address where he said anthropology’s “political project is to challenge the culturally dominant commonsense of capitalist consumerism,” and the Vanderbilt report said that this kind of remark is an explicit rejection of “the idea that scholarship aims at knowledge and understanding.” Do you share Dr. Gupta’s conception of anthropology?
Anthropologists love to disagree with one another, so I’m not gonna say I agree or disagree with Akhil. Here’s the thing that I think they don’t understand: We are the instrument for data collection in the same way a Geiger counter detects radiation. We have to do a lot of refining of our instrument, our way of thinking, what we’re doing it for, how we’re seeing it, in order to collect data that we know is, of course, subjective, but uncover some truth. So that’s why we teach our students to be self-reflexive — why you’re doing this, what motivates you, what presumptions did you go into the field with, what do you think this information is going to do for the world?
That’s a non-response. Rouse says that the previous president was misquoted. Lee keeps on pressing Rouse, saying that she (Lee) saw Gupta’s published address and the quote is in there. Caught out, Rouse bobs and weaves:
This is from his presidential address, or the written version of it. Not to be repetitive, but the report highlights this remark and says this remark is a rejection of the idea that “scholarship aims at knowledge and understanding.”
I mean, I wasn’t in the audience for this speech, either, but he published a version of this address —
I’ve read it, I’ve quoted from it.
So that quote is in there, you know.
But just because something’s quoted, there’s a whole context. There’s so much more than that. This is the problem with absolutist free speech. We talk in contexts. Speech is never free. Speech is always connected to something else. . . .
There’s that “context” defense, saying that Gupta’s quote didn’t mean what we think it did. Also, everyone knows that free speech is never 100% free: even the First Amendment has its restrictions. Rouse’s example of speech being “connected to something else” is neither an example of the violation of the First Amendment nor does it have anything to do with Gupta’s claim. It’s evasion, pure and simple.
Here Rouse denies that the anthropologist on the report has any reputation:
Can I ask what you think about Joseph Henrich, the sole anthropologist on this commission? Had you heard of him? Were you aware of him having some kind of reputation or something prior to this?
There’s a lot more, but I want to get to the part where Rouse denies there’s two sexes.
In 2023, the AAA canceled an accepted panel at its annual conference, titled “Let’s Talk About Sex, Baby: Why Biological Sex Remains a Necessary Analytic Category in Anthropology.” The AAA said at the time that the panel would have harmed members’ “safety and dignity,” and that its premise contradicted “settled science.” The Vanderbilt report cited this incident to argue that when politically charged questions “are treated as settled by the scholarly community, the result is an illegitimate suppression of dissent.” You were elected president-elect of the AAA shortly after that incident. Do you regret today the fact that the AAA canceled that panel, or the justification that it gave for canceling it?
Rouse thinks that whether sex is binary is a non-issue: it’s settled that there are more than two sexes!
There’s a point in that Vanderbilt report where they talk about astronomy departments becoming astrology departments. All you need to do is literally type into Google and see that we know, factually, that there are different types of “sexes” and “genders.” You can have XY and you present as a woman, you can have XXY — they’re all variations, genetic variations. So the idea that there are two sexes is just factually incorrect, and to force biological anthropologists to teach that is the equivalent of turning an astronomy department into an astrology department. So I don’t know why we’re debating that. You may not like it. I don’t know, maybe you want to kill babies that aren’t just XX presenting XX or XY presenting XY, but that’s what we have in this world. And then we have people who identify with genders that don’t match to their chromosomes, and people like Anthony Appiah, who are gay, and so I don’t know what they want, why they want us to teach in that way — that’s the equivalent of turning an astronomy department into an astrology department.
The second question: It should never have been accepted. At this point, we are demanding that people do good peer review, because that’s what happened — they slacked on the peer review.
Here Rouse is defining sex by karyotype: the chromosomes that someone has. And since there are several chromosomal types (XXY, XO, etc.), sex surely can’t be binary. But sex is defined as whether the individual has a reproductive system designed to produce large vs small gametes, not an individua’s chromosome complement. (These two things, however, align nearly perfectly.) And even if you use chromosomes, 99.8% of people are born either XX or XY. Finally, what is this “maybe you want to kill babies that aren’t just XX presenting XX or XY presenting XY, but that’s what we have in this world”? Who wants to kill these babies? This is just pure confusion and ignorance mixed with performative assertions and accusations of eugenics.
But Lee, who’s done her homework, won’t let this assertion rest, either, and presses Rouse, who issues a lame response, dismissing a survey of the very organization she heads:
OK. So on the question of this particular idea being “settled science,” as the AAA said at the time, there was a survey in 2022, published in the journal Forensic Anthropology, that asked forensic anthropologists about this question, and 42 percent of them said they agree that sex is binary, and 56 percent disagreed that it’s binary. So that ratio would seem to indicate that, in the field, the question hadn’t actually been settled, and I was wondering how you explain that.
I don’t believe in opinion research. Not to disparage them, but a lot of forensic people, they’re coroners, they’re doing it in a practicing level, where they’re actually asked on forms to determine whether this body is male or female, oftentimes they haven’t had advanced schooling. Things are in the air. I just don’t trust opinion polling. That’s from just being an anthropologist and spending a lot of time with people in the field. People don’t know a lot.
Had enough? I won’t burden you further, but this is a sample of how Rouse refuses to give straight answers, lies about the use of AI in the Boghossian et al. report, and completely gets biological sex wrong. She is an ideologue who twists the truth to suit her ends, and that’s exactly what Boghossian et al. see about anthropology (another person Rouse praises is her Princeton colleague, sex-is-a-spectrum miscreant Agustín Fuentes, who’s appeared often on this site for his obtuseness about the sexes.
As you read yesterday, I was all happy and hopeful that the new brood from hen mother Margot would thrive and grow in Botany Pond. Well, once again it was not to be. Sometime in the morning, only a few hours after they entered the pond, they all disappeared. I had no idea what had happened, but kept watching the pond.
A few hours later, an undergraduate named Gabby, who loves the pond, emailed me that four ducklings were huddled together on a rock in the channel, and one was floundering in the thick algae in the channel. I ran down to the pond with my net and a “duck box”: a small box lined with old but clean teeshirts which I keep ready to harbor rescued ducklings.
Sure enough, I found five ducklings. Four were standing on the rocks in the channel, completely sodden. Another was nearby, trying to swim through a thick mat of algae and failing. Two others we later found dead on the rocks in the main pond.
What happened? I think the ducklings simply got mired in the thick algae floating on the pond surface, or dove and surfaced within it, coating themselves with algae and becoming wet (ducklings have no inherent oil in their feathers as they get it from being underneath mom). All the live ones were completely soaked, and I feared for their lives.
The next six photos are by Gabby, the undergrad who discovered the mishap and emailed me. The first is the duckling mired in algae, which I picked up and dunked underwater to free it from the stuff:
Four completely soaked ducklings:
It was pitiful:
They were so wet that their skin was visible:
These were only one-day-old babies, and I had to get them dry immediately. I put them in a “duck box” and took them to my office, where I had to dry them off. The box was put by a space heater underneath my desk, which keeps them warm and helps them dry off. This is before drying:
It took me an hour and a half to dry them off. I alternated among the ducklings so I didn’t handle each one for a long time. I used the lab equivalent of Kleenex—Kimwipes—to gently stroke them and blot them. Those who looked poorly I put in the rolled-up tee-shirt, making a pouch to keep them close to my body.
I then left them for an hour, giving them a little shallow dish of water into which I crumbled baby duck food. When I looked again, they were all pretty dry, fluffy, and also vigorous. None of them looked close to death. At 2 p.m., right before the World Cup Game, I drove them to Dorothy, the local representative of the Chicago Bird Collision Monitors, who would keep them until they go to the Willowbrook Wildlife Sanctuary, where they’ll be tended well. I was satisfied that none of them had been fatally soaked.
I saved five but two died before I could get to the Pond. That makes seven, and Margot had nine or ten. I don’t know what happened to the others; I did a sweep of the pond several times and they’d all disappeared.
I blame the algae for this one. Without it, I think the brood would have grown up fine and fledged in September. Nearly the entire bottom of the pond is covered with a thick mat of algae, and much of the surface is, too, which I’ve circled in this photo:
The reason there’s algae is that the sun beats heavily on the pond, facilitating the plant’s growth. If there were trees to shade it (several were removed) or water lilies to float on top (they planted a few in pots, but they are not going to spread as the bottom is gravel), we wouldn’t have this problem. Every two weeks, at great expense, the University has to pay for two guys to go into the pond and haul up great armfuls of algae, but it’s a losing battle. They can never remove more than a fraction of the growth.
One of the algae-removal guys told me that this was predictable and the University should have known this beforehand; and I think that’s true. Whoever decided to put a gravel bottom on the pond, and then plant a few measly containers of grass and water lilies thinking they’d spread, was completely out of their depth.
I don’t know if they can get rid of the algae and prevent its future growth, but this design error cost the lives of four or five ducklings yesterday, not to mention the separation of Margot from her brood and the great joy that a brood of ducklings brings to the University community. I am angry and very sad at the same time. The three previous broods were either saved and rehabbed (one brood) or walked out of the pond when Mom was harassed by drakes (two broods). That could not be helped, but the algae could have been. I am powerless to do anything about it, but yesterday marked the end of an annus horribilis for ducks. I’m not looking forward to next year.
