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.
Praise Ceiling Cat, fleas be upon him: we have received a couple of submissions to tide us over. Today biologist and artistLou Jost, who works at Ecuador’s Ecominga Foundation, has contributed some lovely hummingbird videos. Lou’s captions are indented, and you know how to enlarge YouTube videos:
The Americas are currently the only continents that have hummingbirds, though the oldest hummingbird-like fossils are actually from Europe. In today’s world the centers of hummingbird diversity are the mountains of Costa Rica and Panama, and the northern Andes of Colombia, Ecuador, and Peru. Ecuador alone has 137 species of hummingbirds, compared to only 15-17 hummingbird species regularly found in the US. I recently visited an Ecuadorian birding lodge (Sachatamia) in northwest Ecuador, with many hummingbird feeders. The chaotic swarm of hummingbirds surrounding these feeders gives a good impression of this diversity. Here are some phone videos I took over the course of a few minutes.
Left to right: three Andean Emeralds, (Uranomitra franciae; white throats, light blue crown iridescence), the aptly named White-necked Jacobin (Florisuga mellivora), another Andean Emerald (head down) and a Rufous-tailed Hummingbird (Amazilia tzacatl, pink beak and iridescent green throat), also initially head down). Then more Rufous-tailed Hummingbirds and a brief Brown Violetear (Colibri delphinae):
Purple-bibbed Whitetip (Urosticte benjamini, white spot behind eye and in tail, iridescent purple throat), Booted Raquet-tail, second Purple-bibbed White tip. Then something else obscured by feeder:
Female Empress Brilliant (Heliodoxa imperatrix)?, female Violet-crowned Woodnymph (Thalurania colombica, blue shoulders), displaced by male Green-crowned Woodnymph (iridescent green throat and purple body) in turn displaced by Empress Brilliant, photobombed at end by tiny beelike woodstar species:
Green-crowned Woodnymph front, Fawn-breasted Brilliant (Heliodoxa rubinoides, fawn breast, pink chest/throat patch) at rear, displaced by male Empress Brilliant, cameos by White-necked Jacobin, Andean Emerald, and others.
Welcome to Thursaday, February 19, 2026, and Iwo Jima Day, marking the American invasion of that Japanese-held Pacific Island on this day in 1945. Four days later, five marines climbed Mt. Surabachi (the island’s high point) and planted the American flag on top. You all know the classic photo by Joe Rosenthal, which won the Pulitzer Prize for that year and was made into an iconic statue that sits in Virginia across the Potomac from Washington D.C. Several of the soldiers shown below did not survive the battle:
Photo by Joe Rosenthal, public domain
But did you know there was a movie filmed by Sergeant Bill Genaust at the same time that Rosenthal was snapping his photo? Here it is. (I find it amazing that this iconic moment was captured by two people.) The crucial moment is about 29 seconds in.
There’s a Google Doodle for women’s figure skating at the Olympics today. U.S. women haven’t won a medal in that event since 2006, but the news says there are several candidates this year. Click to see where this goes:
*You could see this coming! Probably unable to pass his “wealth tax” on NYC residents, as that would drive the wealthy out of the city, Islamist Mayor Zohran Mamdani is now threatening to impose a 9.5% property tax on many residents, and not just the rich.
Mayor Zohran Mamdani on Tuesday proposed to raise property tax rates in New York City by nearly 10 percent, a measure he is preparing as a “last resort” to be deployed if he cannot persuade Gov. Kathy Hochul to raise income taxes on the wealthy.
The suggested 9.5 percent increase would affect more than three million single-family homes, co-ops and condos and over 100,000 commercial buildings, Mr. Mamdani said as he delivered his preliminary spending plan.
The mayor acknowledged that his proposal would not merely force the wealthy to pay more taxes, but would also be a “tax on working- and middle-class New Yorkers,” and stressed that this was not his first choice.
But he noted that New York City mayors had little authority to raise taxes without the governor’s and Legislature’s acquiescence, and said that a city property tax increase — combined with raiding the city’s reserve funds — was the only way to address a looming budget deficit projected to reach $5.4 billion over two years.
“If we cannot follow this first path,” he said, referring to his proposed income tax hike on wealthier New Yorkers, “we will be forced onto a much more damaging path of last resort — one where we have to use the only tools at the city’s disposal: raising property taxes and raiding our reserves.”
“The second path is painful,” he added. “We will continue to work with Albany to avoid it.”
If other options surface, Mr. Mamdani may yet water down or abandon the proposed tax increase as the June 30 city budget deadline draws closer — a possibility that Ms. Hochul alluded to on Tuesday, as she played down the likelihood of city property taxes rising.
“That’s their prerogative to look at that as an option,” she said, suggesting that cost-cutting measures and updated accounting might make such an increase unnecessary. “He’s required to put options on the table; that does not mean that’s the final resolution.”
Is this a surprise? Of course not! The budget was in trouble before Mamdani took office. What is new is that Governor Hochul now seems less willing to levy a new tax on the rich. In the face of this budget crunch, Mamdani’s promises, which got him elected, may well come to nought.
Over the past decade, pediatric “gender-affirming care” has been adopted widely in clinical settings despite a remarkably weak evidence base. Systematic reviews from several countries have consistently found that the research supporting puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones, and related interventions in minors is of low quality, lacking reliable long-term data on physical or psychological outcomes. Meanwhile, the severe and often irreversible side effects of these treatments are well documented. Chief among them is the loss of fertility.
Because of this risk, clinical guidelines recommend that adolescents be counseled about infertility and offered fertility preservation before beginning medical transition. In theory, this gives them the choice to protect their ability to have biological children in the future. In practice, however, only a vanishingly small number of “transgender and gender-diverse” (TGD) adolescents actually pursue fertility preservation, even when counseling is provided.
This creates an odd set of seemingly contradictory facts. Survey-based studies show that while few adolescents choose to preserve their fertility, a significant number hope to become parents later in life. Follow-up studies of adults who began medical transition as teenagers confirm that the desire for children often increases with age, leaving many to deeply regret not preserving their fertility when they had the chance.
. . .A new retrospective cross-sectional study published in the Journal of Pediatric and Adolescent Gynecology helps clarify this issue by tracking patients from their first counseling visit through referral, specialist consultation, and—if it occurred—completion of a fertility preservation procedure.
The study followed 311 “transgender and gender-diverse” patients between the ages of 10 and 24 who presented for initial gender-related medical evaluations at a pediatric gender clinic between 2020 and 2023. During the intake process, patients were asked about their “fertility goals” and how important biological children might be to them in the future.
The attrition rate was steep. Of the 311 patients, 25 (8 percent) agreed to a referral to a reproductive endocrinology and infertility (REI) specialist. Nineteen of these 25 actually attended the REI consultation, and only eight ultimately completed fertility preservation. In total, this is roughly 2.5 percent of the entire group.
But the most revealing detail is who those eight patients were. All were biologically male, opting for sperm cryopreservation. Not a single female patient underwent egg or embryo preservation. As the authors note, this disparity “likely reflects the relative simplicity and lower cost of sperm cryopreservation compared with oocyte preservation.”
. . . . The literature on fertility preservation exposes a central flaw of the pediatric “gender-affirming” model. Interventions are aggressively promoted despite low-quality evidence, highly uncertain long-term benefits, and increasingly well-documented harms. The model also operates on the pseudoscientific premise biological sex is mutable, can meaningfully conflict with a person’s “brain sex,” and can be medically altered to resolve that conflict. The difficulty adolescents face in preserving fertility is not an incidental side effect of this model but a predictable consequence of it.
Puberty blockers cause sterility while they’re being administered, but often that effect is reversible if blockers are stopped without further treatment. But if blockers lead to cross-sex hormone treatment, as they often do in “affirmative care”, sterility cannot be reversed. This is one more reason why gender transitioning should be delayed until the transitioner is of age to consent and fully apprehend the consequences. This article shows that patients often don’t grasp those consequences.
*The White House has rejected the latest proposal from Democrats to put limits on ICE agents, and, in the absence of an agreement, the partial government shutdown continues (ICE itself won’t shut down, as it has billions of dollars), but imporant aspects of the government will not be funded until the Democrats and Republicans forge a compromise on ICE:
The White House on Tuesday rejected the latest offer from Democratic lawmakers on proposed new constraints on federal immigration officers, the latest sign that there would not be a quick resolution of the stalemate that has left the Department of Homeland Security without funding since Saturday.
A White House official who provided a statement on the condition of anonymity to describe private negotiations said the two parties were still far apart, adding that President Trump’s team remained interested in continuing good-faith talks to resolve the impasse.
In response, aides for the Democratic leaders in Congress said that Republicans had largely ignored the guardrails the public was demanding, and urged them to start negotiating in good faith as they said their side had been doing.
Both White House officials and Democrats on Capitol Hill have kept largely confidential the specifics of their offers to end the standoff that allowed funding for the agency to lapse as of 12:01 a.m. Saturday.
The outlines of the Democratic demands, however, are well known: limits on masked police, an end to random sweeps, new requirements for judicial warrants, putting “sensitive locations” such as churches, schools, hospitals and polling places off limits to Immigration and Customs Enforcement among them. The offer was given to the White House Monday evening but brushed aside by the White House less than 24 hours later.
“These are common sense,” Senator Chuck Schumer, Democrat of New York and the minority leader, said Sunday on CNN about the Democratic proposals. “Police departments across America use them. We have a rogue agency. Why don’t we rein them in? That’s what the American people are asking Republicans.”
It seems to me that there is room for compromise here, as several of the Democratic demands make sense for any law enforcement (e.g., no masks, strict requirement for warrants), while the Democrats could compromise on, say, areas where ICE agents aren’t allowed. So long as both sides dig in their heels, though, there will be no compromise and no funding for TSA, the Coast Guard, or FEMA. This has apparently become a hill to die on for both sides, but the people who will suffer are us—the average Americans.
Two men have been jailed for life after attempting to stage one of the UK’s deadliest terrorist attacks before it was thwarted by an undercover operative.
Walid Saadaoui, 38, and Amar Hussein, 52, who had sworn allegiance to Islamic State (IS), planned a marauding firearms attack targeting Greater Manchester’s Jewish community.
On Friday, the pair were sentenced at Preston crown court after being found guilty of preparing acts of terrorism between December 2023 and May 2024.
The prime mover in the plot, Tunisian-born Saadaoui, of Abram, Wigan, was ordered to serve a minimum of 37 years.
Hussein, of no fixed address, was ordered to serve at least 26 years.
Saadaoui’s younger brother, Bilel Saadaoui, 37, of Hindley, Wigan, was sentenced to six years in prison for failing to disclose information about the plan.
All three had denied the offences in a trial lasting almost three months last year, in which jurors were told they were Islamist extremists with a “visceral dislike” of Jewish people.
Walid Saadaoui, a former Italian restaurant owner and hotel entertainer, arranged for the purchase and delivery of semi-automatic rifles, conducted reconnaissance and identified targets, but the man supplying them with the weapons was an undercover operative.
The operative, known to them as Farouk, had infiltrated jihadist social media networks and convinced Saadaoui that he was a fellow extremist.
Saadaoui was arrested in a counter-terror strike involving more than 200 officers as he attempted to take possession of two assault rifles, a semi-automatic pistol and almost 200 rounds of ammunition in the car park of the Last Drop hotel in Bolton on 8 May 2024. The weapons had been deactivated.
The court heard that Saadaoui hero-worshipped the IS terrorist Abdelhamid Abaaoud, who orchestrated the 2015 Paris terror attacks in which 130 people were killed and hundreds more injured in gun attacks.
Saadaoui and Hussein planned to disguise themselves as Jews and attack an antisemitism march in Manchester city centre before heading to suburbs north of Manchester city centre that are home to one of Europe’s largest Jewish communities.
These plotters are truly evil, and thank Ceiling Cat that their plot was stopped in its tracks. And kudos for “Farouk”, a brave man who risked his life to pose as an extremist—and probably saved the life of many Jews. He must have been a convincing terrorist, and it’s very lucky that the plotters didn’t get hold of some real extemists with fully activated weapons. But, for a Jew, it’s tiresome to see this kind of stuff day after day. It’s not like Jews all over the world are plotting to slaughter Muslims, you know. And it’s clear that the target wassn’t Zionists, but Jews. As one of my friends said, “‘Globalize the intifada’ is here.”
*And from the WaPo news summary:
For the past two nights: Colbert has roasted his own network, saying that lawyers stopped him from airing an interview with Texas state Rep. James Talarico [a Democrat]—watch here.
The disagreement: Colbert said the segment was blocked because of FCC rules requiring broadcasters to provide equal opportunity to candidates. CBS has disputed his account.
The first mention:
CBS late-night host Stephen Colbert rebuked his own network Monday night, claiming that lawyers for parent company Paramount Skydance prohibited him from airing an interview with Texas state Rep. James Talarico (D), a U.S. Senate candidate, over concerns it would violate the Federal Communications Commission’s equal-time rule.
“You know who is not one of my guests tonight?” Colbert asked his audience. “That’s Texas state representative James Talarico. He was supposed to be here, but we were told in no uncertain terms by our network’s lawyers, who called us directly, that we could not have him on the broadcast.”
In response, the studio audience booed.
“Then I was told, in some uncertain terms, that not only could I not have him on, I could not mention me not having him on,” Colbert continued. “And because my network clearly does not want us to talk about this, let’s talk about this.”
Colbert launched into a segment about the FCC’s equal-time rule, which requires broadcasters to provide equal opportunity to political candidates. News and talk show interviews have traditionally been exempt from the mandate. But in January, the FCC issued a public notice saying that daytime and nighttime talk shows would have to apply for exemptions to the equal-time rule for each of their programs.
. . . and the second:
Late-night host Stephen Colbert laid into executives at CBS and its parent company for the second night running Tuesday, rebuking his bosses for their handling of his interview with a Texas Democrat.
In an on-air segment, Colbert suggested the network was caving to pressure by trying to apply the Federal Communications Commission’s equal-time rule, which requires broadcasters to provide equal opportunity to political candidates but has traditionally not applied to news and talk show interviews.
CBS pushed back against that account in a statement Tuesday, suggesting its executives hadn’t prohibited the interview but instead had informed Colbert of legal guidance that it could trigger the FCC equal-time rule.
. . . and the video:
That is one strong video; kudos to Colbert. I doubt that he would have delivered such a monologue had he not already planned to leave the network. Why did this happen? Possibly because the network, CBS, has named Bari Weiss as the Editor-in-Chief of the news, and she is enforcing a strict doctrine of “equal time.” (She didn’t do that when Charlie Kirk’s wife appeared.) But, as Colbert notes, that policy not apply to late-night talk shows. But Colbert was even prohibited from mentioning the name of guests that weren’t allowed to be invited! That seems to be crossing the line into network censorship.
Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Andrzej has worked himself too hard, but he says it’s a mild flu.
Hili: Better cook enough for a few days.
Andrzej: Why?
Hili: The flu is catching up with you.
In Polish:
Hili: Lepiej zrób obiad na kilka dni.
Ja: Dlaczego:
Hili: Zaczyna ci się grypa.
From Hillel Neuer, head of UN Watch, showing Masih giving a powerful speech. But do note the “Community Note”:
This meeting in Geneva was held by UN Watch, a private group not affiliated with the UN. Its name and setting often mislead audiences. The board’s claim here is deliberately false—these remarks were not read at the UN and carry no official legitimacy.
The speech (NOT at the UN); I’m not clear why Hillel Neuer would say that. Still, Masih’s words are stirring:
Rare Moment of Truth at UN: Iranian women’s rights activist @AlinejadMasih takes the floor at United Nations @GenevaSummit to blast European politicians who for years failed to call out the regime’s terrorism and gender apartheid, points to victims in the room shot by the regime. pic.twitter.com/zvgdS2J8Ld
From Bryan, 3D photos (here’s a video on how to view them without special glasses):
Beautiful Northern Ireland (in 3D for those with viewers or who can free fuse) – Stereo photos of castles, coastlines, greenery, and Giant’s Causeway. https://t.co/R1HO9n043wpic.twitter.com/OeB0jsfBIL
A nurse with a 30-year unblemished record didn’t want to get undressed in front of a man – and she told him so.
Of all the gender ideology stories I’ve covered, the witch hunt of Sandie Peggie is the most insane and enraging.
I met her for @thetimeshttps://t.co/NZU75EDXm4
There are many courses in universities that seem not to be exercises in objective teaching and learning, but rather courses designed to foist certain political ideologies or points of view on students. One of them at this university was called to my attention by several in our community; it seems to be a course on how it’s justifiable to use violence to resist oppression. It was and is still taught by Alireza Doostdar, director of our Center for Middle Eastern Studies and Associate Professor of Islamic Studies and the Anthropology of Religion. I’ll just cover what must be one of Doostdar’s biggest areas of interest: the settler-colonialist, genocidal, and apartheid state of Israel. Does that justify the violence of Hamas? You’d have to take the course to see, but from the syllabus it looks like terrorism against Israel is not demonized in the course.
Doostdar is one of the handful of professors here who have taken an active and visible role in pro-Palestinian demonstrations, and was, I believe, one of the 28 faculty and students arrested for trespassing at the admissions office in 2023 (disruption #3 described here; the city later dropped charges). His brother, Ahmadreza Mohammadi Doostdar, was arrested in 2018 for spying for Iran, and was sentenced to 38 months in prison, 36 months of supervised release, and given a fine of $14,153.
Over the past couple of years Alireza Doostdar has issued a number of tweets showing his animus towards Israel, but then took them down, which is either an act of cowardice, contrition (which I doubt) or ambition (getting rid of stuff that makes you look bad). Here are three of them. First, plaudits for Iranian missiles:
The thought that Iranians will rise up against their government doesn’t seem so insane now, does it?
It is clear that the man has no love for Israel, promoting as he does the false narratives of Israeli “apartheid” and “genocide.” There is, of course, no opprobrium for Hamas or other terrorist organizations.
Look at that image of the buff Palestinian man wielding a sling à la David and waving the Palestinian flag! Here’s a description of the course (bolding is mine):
From 18th century slave rebellions in the Americas to 20th and 21st century anticolonial revolutions, oppressed peoples’ struggles for liberation have often incorporated violent tactics, even against noncombatants. This course examines anticolonial violence in light of the work of the Martiniquan revolutionary Frantz Fanon and some of his interlocutors. We study specific freedom movements: the Haitian and Algerian revolutions against French colonialism, Nat Turner’s slave rebellion and John Brown’s raid on Harper’s Ferry, Russian and American anarchism, Malcolm X and the Black Panthers’ mobilization against white supremacy and police violence, and the ongoing Palestinian struggle against Zionist settler colonialism, ethnic cleansing, and apartheid. Throughout, we will pay attention to how revolutionaries evaluated the place of violence in their own movements, including criteria for justifiable and unjustifiable use of force.
Here are the readings for the section on Palestine. I haven’t looked all of them up, but looked at about a dozen, and all the ones I saw damned the apartheid, genocidal, settler-colonialist state of Israel.
None of the sources I examined condemned Hamas (the course, after all, is about justifiable violence), and all I saw were resolutely anti-Israel.
What is my conclusion? Well, first, Doostdar surely has a right to teach this course; to prohibit it because it may peddle hatred and lies (“apartheid”, “genocide,” etc.) would violate academic freedom. All I can do is say, that as a fellow faculty member, I think the course is biased and promotes misunderstanding and hatred. Is this an academic or a polemic course?
I would add that if any Jews want to take the course (and some of course should—to see what other side is arguing), they will not emerge having learned that there’s anything good about Israel, or that the IDFs war in Gaza was justifiable. It’s ironic since Israel’s response to the attack on October 7 could also be seen as “liberatory violence” in response to yearslong Palestinian attacks on Israel, though either missiles or acts of terror.
My inspection of the syllabus and perusal of the reading suggest that this is an example of the “one-sided” syllabi that I discussed in a post last year. The authors of the study I described looked at 27 million syllabi. I summarized their results thus:
The upshot is what you might expect: “anti-progressive” (or “conservative”) works were assigned with progressive ones far less often than were works that buttressed the progressive point of view. Conclusion: liberal academia is not exposing students to credible alternative points of view (and yes, the authors took care to examine cite only works that academically credible).
Classic “progressive” works used in their analysis include the following; you won’t know the critical views so much but you can see them in the paper. I’d recommend reading the big unpublished paper if you have time as it has a lot more data.
The classic progressive views of racism in the criminal-justice system: Michelle Alexander’s book The New Jim Crow and Ta-Nehisi Coates’s book Between the World and Me
The classic progressive view of the Israel/Palestine conflict (and oppression of Arabs in general): Edward Said’s book Orientalism
The classic progressive “pro-choice” paper: Judith Jarvis Thomson’s paper “A Defense of Abortion“
In short, “progressive” courses did not assign views counter to the course’s own ideology nearly as often as they assigned papers buttressing that ideology. This seems to be the case in Doostdar’s course. Make of it what you will, but it looks like an example of “myside bias.“
The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences finally published an obituary of J. D. Watson, who died in November of last year. (Nathanial Comfort has written a biography of Watson that will be a good complement to Matthew’s biography of Crick; Comfort’s book will be out at the end of this year or the beginning of 2027.) You can access the PNAS obituary for free by clicking on the screenshot below, which is a good summary of Watson’s accomplishments (and missteps) if you don’t want a book-length treatment.
Most laypeople, if they know Watson’s name, probably know just two things. First, he and Crick co-discovered the structure of DNA, one of the great findings of biology. Second, Watson was demonized, and fired as director of the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratories, for making racist comments. Both are true. Yes, Watson was a racist, as I discovered from talking to him for an hour and a half (see below), but he was also a brilliant scientist who did far more than just the DNA-structure stuff. The article describes some of his other accomplishments and I quote:
DNA was not the only structure that Watson solved at Cambridge. Using X-ray crystallography, Watson determined that the coat protein subunits of Tobacco Mosaic virus (TMV) were arranged helically around the viral RNA, although he could not detect the RNA (5). Two years later, Rosalind Franklin, now at Birkbeck College with J. D. Bernal, published the definitive study on the structure of TMV (6).
Watson left Cambridge in 1953 to take up a fellowship with Delbrück at the California Institute of Technology. He joined forces with Alex Rich in Pauling’s laboratory to work on the structure of RNA, but RNA gave fuzzy X-ray diffraction patterns and provided no clues as to what an RNA molecule might look like. Watson was not happy in Pasadena and, with the help of Paul Doty, was appointed an assistant professor in the Department of Biology at Harvard. However, he first spent a year in Cambridge, United Kingdom, before moving to Cambridge, Massachusetts.
Watson and Crick teamed up again to study the structure of small viruses and proposed that as a general principle, the outer protein coat of these viruses was built up of identical subunits. Franklin was also studying small viruses, and she and Watson exchanged letters, and she asked Watson and Crick to review drafts of her manuscripts.
At Harvard, Watson, his colleagues, and students made many important findings on ribosomes and protein synthesis, including demonstrating, concurrently with the team of Sydney Brenner, Francois Jacob, and Matt Meselson, the existence of messenger RNA. Watson’s contributions are not reflected in many of the publications from his Harvard laboratory. He did not add his name to papers unless he had made substantial contributions to them, thus ensuring that the credit went to those who had done the work. These papers included the discovery of the bacterial transcription protein, sigma factor, by Watson’s then graduate student Richard Burgess, along with Harvard Junior Fellow Richard Losick. At Harvard, Watson also promoted the careers of women, notably providing support for Nancy Hopkins, Joan Steitz, and Susan Gerbi. He also contributed to the split in the Department of Zoology due to his contempt for those working in the Department who were antireductionists.
In his last scientific paper (7), published in 1972, Watson returned to DNA. In considering the replication of linear DNA of T7 phage, he pointed out that the very ends of a linear DNA molecule cannot be replicated, the “end replication problem” which is solved in eukaryotes by telomeres. (Watson’s work was predated by Alexey Olovnikov who had published the same observation in 1971 in a Russian journal.)
Note the contributions Watson made, along with collaborators, at Harvard, and note as well that he did not put his name on publications unless he made “substantial contributions to them.” I did that, too, and I inherited that practice from my Ph.D. advisor Dick Lewontin, who inherited it from his Ph.D. advisor Theodosius Dobzhansky, who inherited it from his research supervisor at Columbia and Cal Tech, the Nobel Laureate T. H. Morgan. This is a good practice, and I never suffered from keeping my name off papers, for the granting agencies care only about which and how many papers come from an investigator’s funded lab, not how many his or her name is on. I’ll digress here to say that this practice has almost died out, as people now slap their name on paper for paltry reasons, like they contributed organisms or other material. The reason is the fierce competition for funding and credit.
Watson went on to write influential textbooks, trade books (notably The Double Helix) and headed up the Human Genome Project, from which he ultimately resigned. Finally, he ran the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, which he did very well until the racism scandal broke, rendering him ineffective.
Witkowski and Stillman don’t neglect the dark side of Watson:
In the late 1990s, Watson gave seminars, notably at the University of California Berkeley, where he expanded on research on the hormone POMC and related peptides and made inappropriate and incorrect observations about women. In October 2007, he made racist remarks about the intelligence of people of African descent, and, damagingly for his fellow employees at CSHL, stated that while he hoped that everyone was equal, “people who have to deal with black employees find this not true.” The CSHL Board of Trustees dissociated the institute from Watson’s comments, and he was forced to step down from his administrative position as Chancellor. The matter resurfaced in January 2019 when Watson was asked if his views on race and intelligence had changed. His answer was unequivocal: “No, not at all.” The Laboratory’s response was immediate, relieving him of all his emeritus titles. Watson and his family, however, continued to live on the CSHL campus.
They conclude this way:
Jim’s remarkable contributions to science and society will long endure—for the scientists using the human genome sequence, for students using Molecular Biology of the Gene and for readers of The Double Helix, and for reviving Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory. He was a most amazing man.
Here’s a photo of Watson and me when he visited Chicago in 2013 to introduce the Watson Lectures that he endowed for our department. Do read the cool story about how those lectures came about in my post “Encounters with J. D. Watson“.
The latest Jesus and Mo strip, called two, is an apparent update:
This one is updated and re-named, because the world population has increased by more than 2 billion since it was published.
Well, the barmaid is an atheist, so she’d surely lose the argumentum ad populum! On the other hand, I have to laugh when I see people claim that a religion is “true” because it has so many adherents.
I am sad to say that, due to a lack of contributions from readers, there will be no readers’ wildlife today. This is sad because we’ve kept it going for years with nary a break. I have begged and pleaded, to no avail. Either readers are out of photos or are unwilling to send them. My only leverage is to say this: I work hard to post here several times a day, and is it too much to ask for people who have good wildlife photos to sent them in? What happened to reciprocal altruism?
There: I’ve fired my last shot.
But here are three other shots, but not from readers but from the Proprietor (PCC[E]). They were taken last July in Svalbard. They show a pile of about 50 walruses (Odobenus rosmarus) with our ship in the background.
Walrus are very social. They hang out in large tightly packed herds usually separated by sex. A group of walrus can generate so much heat that sometimes a cloud of fog will form above them!
Walrus tusks are in fact canine teeth that never stop growing. They use them to keep breathing holes open in the ice, to fight other walrus, and to help haul themselves out of the water and onto sea ice.
Welcome to a Hump Day (“Ziua Cocoașei” in Romanian): Wednesday, February 18, 2026 and Pluto Day (the planet, or whatever you call it) was first spotted on this day in 1930. Here are the photographs, taken a few weeks before the discovery, on which Clyde Tombaugh detected the planet (note positions of arrow):
Lowell Observatory Archives, Clyde Tombaugh, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
A federal judge on Monday ordered the Trump administration to temporarily restore displays about George Washington’s ownership of enslaved people at a monument on the site of his former house in Philadelphia. The judge said the government’s claim to have the power to erase and alter historical accounts at the country’s monuments echoed George Orwell’s dystopian novel “1984.”
In a 40-page opinion, Judge Cynthia M. Rufe granted a preliminary injunction to the City of Philadelphia, which had sued the Interior Department and the National Park Service over their decision to remove the displays. The order means the government must put the materials back up while the underlying lawsuit proceeds in court.
Last month, National Park Service workers arrived unannounced at the President’s House Site, a monument on the spot of a home used by Washington and President John Adams in the early days of the nation, and took down panels, displays and video exhibits describing the local history of slavery and commemorating the nine enslaved people Washington kept there while he was president.
The Park Service has said that the displays were taken down to ensure “accuracy, honesty and alignment with shared national values.” The move was part of a far-reaching effort by the Trump administration to rewrite American history along ideological lines at national monuments and parks across the country.
“As if the Ministry of Truth in George Orwell’s ‘1984’ now existed, with its motto ‘Ignorance Is Strength,’ this court is now asked to determine whether the federal government has the power it claims — to dissemble and disassemble historical truths when it has some domain over historical facts,” Judge Rufe wrote. “It does not.”
I’d call that an appropriate (and informed) rebuke! It’s one thing to claim, as the NYT and Nikole Hannah-Jones did, that the real founding of America coincided with the first arrival of the slaves in 1619, but another thing entirely to try to sanitize American history by effacing the ubiquity and effects of slavery. Unlike Britain, the U.S. didn’t get rid of slavery until after the Civil War: a war that was fought because of divisions caused by slavery. If people don’t realize that, and know about the sentiments and actions of both North and South, then they don’t know American history.
U.S. and Iranian officials said that Tuesday’s nuclear talks in Geneva made progress, after Tehran indicated it was willing to compromise around the edges of its nuclear program, including moving its nuclear material offshore.
As the negotiations resumed, the regime sent a veiled threat, carrying out military exercises in the strategic Strait of Hormuz. News agencies affiliated with the country’s security agencies showed footage of cruise missiles being launched from trucks and boats Monday, as a tanker could be seen sailing in the background.
The question remains whether the proposals and threats will move President Trump, who has repeatedly said he wants a deal that ensures Iran won’t get a nuclear weapon and is assembling a massive force just off the country’s coast in case an agreement can’t be reached.
“I don’t think they want the consequences of not making a deal,” Trump told reporters late Monday, saying he would remain indirectly involved in Tuesday’s talks, which ended after 3½ hours of discussion. “They want to make a deal.”
Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei warned in a speech Tuesday ahead of the talks that Iran was prepared to retaliate against an American strike. “More dangerous than the American warship is the weapon that can send it to the bottom of the sea,” he said. The U.S. “may be struck so hard that it cannot get back up.”
Until Tuesday, much of the diplomacy had focused on talking about the scope of negotiations. Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi said that Tuesday’s talks were more substantive and that both sides in Geneva presented ideas aimed at crafting an agreement. He said Iran and the U.S. agreed to exchange texts to create the framework for a deal before a date for new negotiations is decided.
“This does not mean that we can quickly reach an agreement, but at least the path has started,” Araghchi said after the talks with U.S. chief negotiator Steve Witkoff and Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner.
Let’s face it, “moving the nuclear material offshore” accomplishes nothing. Iran is determined to get nukes, and if Trump thinks he can bargain them out of that, he’s dead wrong. This is not rocket science (well, in a way it is); Iran is determined to have nuclear weapons to not only defend itself but to have them handy should the Islamic Republic wish (as it does) to destroy Israel. Anybody who believes the lies that Iran is enriching uranium for nuclear reactors doesn’t realize that uranium for nuclear power plants need be enriched to a much lower level that uranium destined for bombs, which must be highly enriched. That is all ye need to know.
Sarah Ferguson is one, though it’s not clear what she did wrong save mantain contact with Epstein after his first conviction (and presumably not after his second arrest). But she lost her charity, which doesn’t seem a humane outcome of her connection to Epstein.
Sarah’s Trust, the charity founded by Sarah Ferguson, a former duchess of York, shut down for the “foreseeable future” following the latest document release.
“Our chair Sarah Ferguson and the board of trustees have agreed that with regret the charity will shortly close for the foreseeable future,’’ the trust said in a statement. “This has been under discussion and in train for some months.’’ Other charities also dropped Ferguson as a patron.
Emails released by the Justice Department revealed that Ferguson maintained contact with Epstein long after his 2008 conviction. Ferguson is the ex-wife of Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor, who also had ties to Epstein.
Casey Wasserman again seems guilty of nothing but having a tenuous connection to Epstein:
Wasserman is selling his talent agency after the emergence of flirtatious correspondence between himself and Ghislaine Maxwell in the latest batch of files, according to a memo from Wasserman to his agency’s staff obtained by the Associated Press.
The document drop includes an email in which Wasserman expressed a desire to see Maxwell in a “tight leather outfit.” In late 2021, Maxwell was convicted in federal court for her role in trafficking girls and is serving a 20-year prison sentence. The emails do not directly link Wasserman to Epstein himself and were sent in 2003.
The decision from Wasserman, who wrote to staff in the memo that he felt he had become a distraction, came after several entertainers announced their departures from the agency over his appearance in the files.
Peter Attia is more problematic:
Attia, a physician and longevity expert, faced scrutiny after the latest release of documents revealed his friendly and sometimes crude correspondence with Epstein. In one 2016 message, Attia wrote Epstein, “P—y is, indeed, low-carb. Still awaiting results on gluten content, though.”
In June 2015, Attia wrote to Epstein: “You [know] the biggest problem with becoming friends with you? The life you lead is so outrageous, and yet I can’t tell a soul …”
After the emails became public, Attia stepped down from his role as chief science officer of a protein bar brand, David Protein, according to the company’s co-founder. The powdered supplement company AG1 said in a statement that “Dr. Attia is no longer an advisor to the company.”
And Sultan Ahmed bin Sulayem also looks a bit guilty, though again we don’t know whether the Sultan committed any crimes:
Bin Sulayem, an Emirati businessman, resigned from his role as chairman of DP World, one of the world’s largest logistics companies. In a Feb. 13 statement, the company said the resignation was effective immediately.
Bin Sulayem appears in wide-ranging exchanges with Epstein, with Epstein telling the sultan in one 2013 email, “You are one of my most trusted friends in [the] very sense of the word, you have never let me down.”
Bin Sulayem replied, “Thank you my friend I am off the sample a fresh 100% female Russian at my yacht.”
In April 2024, Moderna submitted a proposal to the FDA for testing its new mRNA influenza vaccine. The plan was to divide 40,000 subjects in 11 countries into two groups: one group would receive the mRNA flu vaccine and the other a standard-dose flu vaccine. At the time, the FDA reasonably pointed out that for people over 65, Moderna should compare its mRNA flu vaccine to high-dose, not standard dose, flu vaccine, as recommended by the CDC. However, if the company still planned to compare the mRNA vaccine with standard dose flu vaccine for those over 65, the CDC might choose not to recommend it for that age group. Because the clinical trial of the mRNA flu vaccine was performed in Europe, where high-dose influenza vaccine wasn’t readily available, the company moved forward recognizing that it might not get a CDC recommendation for older subjects, but that the FDA would still review the company’s submission. This was a written understanding.
In September 2024, Moderna launched its vaccine trial with 40,700 subjects, half of whom received the mRNA flu vaccine and the other half standard-dose vaccine. The mRNA vaccine was 27% more effective at preventing symptomatic cases of flu and 49% more effective against hospitalization than the standard-dose flu vaccine. In August 2025, the FDA agreed with the trial design and encouraged the company to apply for licensure based on the results, especially since Moderna had now performed an additional study in 2,200 people over 65 showing that the mRNA flu vaccine induced higher levels of protective antibodies than the high-dose flu vaccine.
In other words, Moderna did not only do a study comparing the new mRNA vaccine with standard-dose vaccines (presumably in adults), but also did the experiment that the FDA asked for. Both studies showed the superiority of the new vaccine. Nevertheless:
On February 3, 2026, despite a previous written understanding, the FDA refused to review Moderna’s application for licensure of its mRNA influenza vaccine. The decision was made by Vinay Prasad, who now heads the FDA’s Center for Evaluation and Research (CBER). Moderna wrote that the failure to review the application was “inconsistent with previous written communications from CBER to Moderna.” Agency officials later revealed that Prasad had overruled his FDA staff. Indeed, David Kaslow, the head of the vaccine office, wrote a detailed memo explaining why the FDA should review Moderna’s application.
Offit concludes that the FDA made an “arbitrary, unsupportable decision”:
Moderna’s mRNA influenza vaccine appears to be an improvement on both the standard-dose vaccine given to people less than 65 and the high-dose flu vaccine given to people over 65. Nonetheless, because of RFK Jr.’s pick to head an important division in the FDA, Americans might be deprived of an influenza vaccine that appears to be better than the ones we have. On February 11, 2026, a Wall Street Journal (WSJ) headline read: “Vinay Prasad’s Vaccine Kill Shot: Does the White House Know the Harm He’s Doing to Public Health?” “This is arbitrary government at its worst.”
Vinay Prasad’s failure to honor a previous agreement with Moderna appears to be an extension of RFK Jr.’s war against mRNA vaccines.
mRNA vaccines are one of the greatest improvements in medicine in recent years, as the cells themselves can now make harmless antigens that stimulate antibodies against the target virus. It does look as if RFK, Jr. is, as predicted, endangering people becuase of his anti-vax viewpoint.
Across the planes of Anahita’s* face, white dots shine like a constellation. Some gleam from inside the sockets of her eyes, others are scattered over the young woman’s chin, forehead, cheekbones. A few float over the dark expanse of her brain.
Each dot represents a metal sphere, about 2-5mm in size, fired from the barrel of a shotgun and revealed by the X-ray camera for a CT scan. Shot from a distance, the projectiles, known as “birdshot”, spray widely, losing some of their momentum. At close range, they can crack bone, blast through the soft tissue of the face, and easily pierce the eyeball’s delicate globe. Anahita, who is in her early 20s, has lost at least one eye, possibly both.
The image of Anahita’s head is one of more than 75 sets of medical images – primarily X-rays and CT scans – shared with the Guardian from one hospital in a major city in Iran, taken over the course of a single evening during the regime’s January crackdown on protesters. The plain, grayscale images tell their own story of the deadly violence inflicted on protesters and onlookers by Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC).
They provide further evidence of events described by doctors and protesters across Iran, where guards switched from more traditional ‘crowd control’ to opening fire with high-calibre assault rifles and shotguns. The records present a pattern of people being shot in the face, chest and genitals, a trend also seen in the 2022 “Women, life, freedom” protests. Collectively, they help to illustrate the scale of bloodshed, showing dozens of life-threatening injuries appearing at a single hospital in a midsize city within a few hours.
. . . A radiologist and trauma imaging expert who has reviewed the images says that the group of patients would constitute “absolutely a mass casualty situation. Even for our large hospitals [in the US] … that would be a mass casualty alert that would overwhelm hospital resources.”
. . . Iran is one of a small number of states where armed forces and police use metal birdshot. While an individual birdshot pellet does not cause as much damage as a bullet, they can still be catastrophic. At long range, when the pellets spray outward, they will hit a crowd indiscriminately. Even a single pellet can cause terrible damage. The X-rays show several cases where just one or two pellets are present in the skull (indicating the person was likely hit at longer range), but they appear to have pierced the eye and come to rest in the socket. At close range, a person may be pierced by hundreds of pellets, causing the destruction of all surrounding soft tissue.
There are a lot more pictures and a lot more patients described, but two X-rays are below showing the horrors of the regime. We mustn’t forget this even though there appears to have been a lull in the protesting—largely because of deaths as well as injuries like these (this one looks as if there are pellets in the brain):
(from the Guardian): One X-ray from a file of medical records for patients treated at a single hospital in Iran during the recent protests. Almost 30 patients had been shot in the face with metal ‘birdshot’. Photograph: supplied
Aiming at the crotch of a women seems to be a case of sexual sadism:
(From The Guardian): An X-ray of a woman shot in the crotch, with about 200 metal balls embedded in her upper thigh and pelvic area. Photograph: supplied
Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili is anxious (after all, she’s Jewish):
Hili: All our plans are slowly beginning to collapse.
Andrzej: You are too impatient, we must work harder at it.
In Polish:
Hili: Wszystkie nasze plany zaczynają się powoli rozpadać.
Ja: Jesteś zbyt niecierpliwa, musimy bardziej przyłożyć się do pracy.
From Masih: the authorities shoot peaceful and unarmed people at a memorial service (see here for a bit more information about the victim Alireza Seidi). Sound up.
Security forces opened fire on civilians in Iran, in the city of Abdanan, targeting people who had gathered for the 40th-day memorial of #AlirezaSeidi.
On Tuesday, February 17, 2026, unarmed mourners were met with live bullets simply for honoring their slain loved one.… pic.twitter.com/kzznjnpoxM
From Luana. You have to be really ignorant of genetics to believe Mack’s claim. No need to bother yourself with the calculations:
This claim is incorrect. In humans a parent is always more genetically similar to their child than to a random stranger of their own or another population. https://t.co/0MkDnDtAgZpic.twitter.com/aBm3HGMHgh
Larry’s 15th anniversary at 10 Downing Street was three days ago. Here he brags about his tenure:
15 years ago today I arrived on Downing Street in a cage.
I’ve seen off Cameron, May, Johnson, Truss and Sunak and I’m still going strong.
Only two Prime Ministers have ever done longer stints here: William Pitt the Younger and Sir Robert Walpole.
Bill and Bob – I’m coming for… pic.twitter.com/Mx52NJg93W
This Dutch Jewish girl was killed by cyanide gas within an hour or two of arriving at Auschwitz. She was three years old. Had she lived, she’d be 87 today. https://t.co/AXzasUhW5r
And two from Dr. Cobb. His daughter, who’s home, made raspberry pancakes yesterday, served with some crème fraîche. Yum! Here’s the British sense of humor on Pancake Day, with “St. Pancras” becoming “St. Pancake.”
Admit it makes me chuckle every year #PancakeDay #ShroveTuesday #BreakfastForDinner 🥞
