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.
Once again I present the last photos I have in the queue. If you got ’em, and they’re good, please send them in.
Today’s wildlife pictures come from reader Jan Malik, and concentrate on one act of predation. Jan’s captions are indented, and you can enlarge the pictures by clicking on them.
In early April, I visited the Edwin B. Forsythe National Wildlife Refuge in New Jersey, which encompasses both brackish coastal marshes and lowland mixed forest. The refuge, previously known by the more graceful name Brigantine, features a wildlife drive where a car serves as the ultimate “blind,” allowing for the close observation of birds.In one section, a group of herons assembled, intently staring at a culvert outlet—a sort of fast-food restaurant for wading birds. The Great Blue Heron (GBH, Ardea herodias) in the center has already caught a small fish, though this is not a meal an adult heron finds satisfying:
The same was true for this Great Egret (Ardea alba) with a small fry. All the birds were patiently waiting for a main course:
Finally, one heron caught a fish worthy of the hunting effort. Visible in this picture are the nuptial plumes of this GBH—wispy feathers on the lower neck, similar plumes on the wing coverts, and a long, elegant black plume on the head. These grow only during the breeding season:
The fish, likely a White Perch (Morone americana)—a predator of mollusks, arthropods, and small fish—displays a defense reflex here. It has two dorsal fins: the posterior fin is soft, while the spiny anterior fin is raised when the fish is in danger. This reflex is intended to make the fish harder for a predator to swallow:
The heron has speared the fish through its posterior region, but the prey is still alive, writhing to get free. The heron, now knee-deep in water, must finish the fish off and reposition it to be swallowed head-first:
To do that, the bird first walks to shallower water where it can momentarily drop the fish without risk of escape. Additionally, moving away from the group decreases the chances of the catch being stolen by a competitor:
Catch and release (but not for long): In the shallow, muddy water, the GBH releases the fish; it cannot swim away and is visible as a dark blob below the bird. Whether this GBH is male or female cannot be determined from these pictures, as the sexes are monomorphic. This suggests that both sexes are “choosy” in mate selection, as both provide significant parental care and investment:
The GBH delivers the coup de grâce—the perch is now speared through the head. For me, looking at these pictures raises the question: how many bird species are sexually dimorphic versus monomorphic and why? Some are strongly dimorphic—ducks, songbirds, turkeys, and grouse—while others, like herons, gulls, parrots, corvids, and raptors, are not. Others fall somewhere in between, like the American Robin. While males have darker heads and more vibrant breasts, they do not incubate the eggs, though they do guard the nest and feed the chicks. Are these differences exclusively the result of parental care roles? Or is it an adaptation to the environment? For instance, a GBH cannot be too flashy, or the fish would easily spot its silhouette against the grey sky:
In one smooth move, the heron tosses the fish into the air and catches it head-first. The fish is now incapacitated, no longer resisting, and bleeding heavily. With its defensive fins down, it can finally be swallowed:
Only once have I seen a GBH unable to swallow a large eel—mostly due to its length rather than its girth. Otherwise, once prey is caught—be it a fish, a duck, or a rodent—it is swallowed whole, sometimes after a brief struggle:
The fish is now in the esophagus; the heron’s flexible neck tissue expands to accommodate the meal until it can be digested:
Here is a picture of a Great Egret also in breeding plumage, sporting its long, wispy feathers (aigrettes). These will be lost through molting or wear shortly after the breeding season ends:
A Great Egret in flight, with its head retracted—a trait that makes them easy to distinguish from cranes. While they occupy similar ecological niches to the Great Blue Heron, they are not identical.Egrets often hunt “on the move,” flying or hopping, while GBHs prefer ambush hunting or slow, deliberate wading. Egrets typically target smaller prey, while GBHs:
Welcome to sabbath for goyische cats: It’s Sunday, April 12, 2026, and National Grilled Cheese Sandwich Day, celebrating the perfect accompaniment to a bowl of good tomato soup. Wikipedia even has a page on this sandwich, showing the combo in this photo:
Vice President JD Vance said on Sunday that 21 hours of peace talks between the United States and Iran had failed to produce an agreement to end the war, leaving the fate of a fragile two-week cease-fire, and whether President Trump will resume major combat operations, uncertain.
“They have chosen not to accept our terms,” Mr. Vance said at a brief news conference in Islamabad, Pakistan, although he left open the possibility that terms could still be reached.
“We leave here with a very simple proposal: a method of understanding that is our final and best offer,” he added. “We’ll see if the Iranians accept it.”
Mr. Vance did not provide specifics, but said the United States needed an “affirmative commitment” that Iran would not seek a nuclear weapon or the tools with which to achieve one.
By early Sunday, reopening the Strait of Hormuz remained one of three main sticking points, according to two Iranian officials familiar with the talks. The United States had demanded that Iran immediately reopen the strait to all maritime traffic. But Iran refused to give up its leverage over the critical choke point for oil tankers, saying it would do so only after a final peace deal, according to the officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive diplomatic negotiations.
The other two key issues were the fate of nearly 900 pounds of highly enriched uranium and Iran’s demand that about $27 billion in frozen revenues held abroad be released, the officials said.
Those are major sticking points! In other news, the U.S. claimed that two American warships went into the Strait and began clearing mines. Iran, however, denied that U.S. Navy ships were in the Strait. And Israel continued bombing Lebanon, in the south this time. Right now, it looks like the war will go on.
Earlier, President Trump played down the importance of the peace talks, which took place against the backdrop of a fragile cease-fire. “Whether we make a deal or not makes no difference to me,” Trump said. “And the reason is because we’ve won.”
We did?
*Obituaries second: Jim Whittaker, the first American to summit Mount Everest (in 1963), and latter the CEO of REI, died on April 7. He was 97 years old.
Handpicked for the role from a roster of nearly 20 expert climbers and scientists, Jim Whittaker pressed through blizzard-force winds and minus-30-degree air to become the first American to summit Mount Everest. Mr. Whittaker, an REI manager and veteran climber from Seattle, hammered a U.S. flag into the pinnacle of the planet for the first time on May 1, 1963, stoking a national interest in mountaineering that fed the expanding retailer he would later lead as CEO.
Mr. Whittaker, who died April 7 at 97, vaulted from a little-known mountain guide to a national celebrity, a symbol of American achievement at a time of roiling Cold War anxieties. As a literal flag-bearer, he became a role model who helped popularize climbing and crystallized American pride less than nine months after the Cuban missile crisis, said Broughton Coburn, author of “The Vast Unknown,” a book about the U.S. expedition to Everest.
Charley Shimanski, executive director of the American Alpine Club, later called Mr. Whittaker’s accomplishment “a defining moment in American mountaineering,” saying it signaled U.S. climbers were of the same caliber as the Europeans.
Mr. Whittaker, who was nicknamed “Big Jim” for his rangy 6-foot-5, 200-pound frame, was taller than others on the expedition. He stretched head and shoulders above his climbing partner, Tibetan-born Sherpa Nawang Gombu, with whom he stepped side-by-side onto the top of the world.
Before Gombu and Mr. Whittaker, the people who stood on the globe’s apex were recorded only in the single digits. New Zealand climber Edmund Hillary and Sherpa mountaineer Tenzing Norgay were the first to reach the summit, in 1953.
, , , Mr. Whittaker spent 24 years with the outdoor equipment retailer REI, starting in 1955 as the co-op’s first full-time employee. By the time he retired as CEO in 1979, he had helped build it into a $46 million business with more than 700 employees and 900,000 members. He initiated REI’s signature annual sale to clear out inventory, created a product testing department, added goods such as parkas and sleeping bags, funded conservation groups, and led the expansion to its first stores outside Seattle.
Jim had an identical twin brother, Lou, who died in 2024. Lou was also a mountaineer. Here’s a video about Whittaker’s legacy, including the famous photo of him atop Mount Everest, snapped by Gombu. You can see more photos of Whittaker on the 1963 Everest expedition on his website, And don’t forget that two other Americans, Tom Hornbein and Willi Unsoeld, also reached the summit, but took a far more adventurous (and dangerous) route.
In just six weeks, the Iran War has shattered a system of global trade that has enriched people and nations for more than a century: the freedom to sail the open seas.
The Strait of Hormuz long functioned as an artery for the world’s maritime economy. But that 30-mile-wide waterway is now a monument to a new global disorder. As some 20,000 sailors effectively held hostage at sea digested President Trump’s cease-fire announcement this week—contingent on the complete opening of the strait—Iranian officials stressed they would determine which ships could leave and at what price.
The “Tehran toll booth” was taking effect, as the U.S. Navy watched on, an admission that, at least here and now in the world’s oil corridor, America no longer rules the waves.
Captains, owners and managers of the more than 700 vessels stuck near Iran, carrying tens of billions of dollars in cargo, were messaging one another to try to make sense of Tehran’s shifting rules. After days of drones and missiles flying overhead, Iran’s navy broadcast a radio message clarifying their position: “If any vessel tries to transit without permission, [it] will be destroyed.”
. . .The Strait of Hormuz, sailors said, risks becoming a graveyard for a trading system so integral to the modern economy that most consumers, accustomed to cheap imports and three-day shipping, take it for granted. The price stands to be shouldered by consumers across the world, in inflation, scrambled delivery schedules and the snarls of a new arrangement in which Tehran can choose which countries access Middle Eastern oil.
If Iran continues to charge tankers for safe passage, the added cost will hardwire a higher price for a gallon of gasoline, economists said. Or its Revolutionary Guard Corps could choke the flow entirely, wreaking havoc on energy markets. Either way, shipowners, their insurers and crew remain wary of sailing back into a once-bustling strait that could spring like a trap on the slightest misunderstanding between an aggrieved Iranian regime and an American president who threatened to wipe out its entire civilization in a single night.
Whatever happens next, the precedent of a toll booth in open waters will reverberate across a world order the U.S. helped build. America’s allies worry other players could try to replicate Iran’s example, like empires of the 17th century, when China’s Qing dynasty, the Ottomans and Portuguese taxed passing vessels. Trump has floated his own wish for an American toll on the Persian Gulf, and his expenditure of naval power in the Middle East has given Beijing and its navy—the world’s largest—freer rein to expand control over the South China Sea.
. . . American thinking evolved after World War I to advocate free navigation for all countries, an idea that only came into widespread practice when the U.S. Navy became the global maritime police force after World War II.
I’m trying to think of what other areas of strategically important open ocean don’t already charge for sea transit but could be ripe for tolls. The only one I can think of is the Taiwan Strait, between China and Taiwan, which is 160 km wide at its narrowest point. Taiwan wouldn’t charge to traverse it, but I bet China would. And the Beagle Channel through which Darwin (and I) traveled, could be controlled (it’s 5 km wide at its narrowest point), but it’s free and international (Chile and Argentina), and not of strategic importance.
Iran has been unable to open the Strait of Hormuz to more shipping traffic because it cannot locate all of the mines it laid in the waterway and lacks the capability to remove them, according to U.S. officials.
The development is one reason Iran has not been able to quickly comply with the Trump administration’s admonitions to let more traffic pass through the strait. It is also potentially a complicating factor as Iranian negotiators and a U.S. delegation led by Vice President JD Vance meet in Pakistan this weekend for peace talks.
Iran used small boats to mine the strait last month, soon after the United States and Israel began their war against the country. The mines, plus the threat of Iranian drone and missile attacks, slowed the number of oil tankers and other vessels passing through the strait to a trickle, driving up energy prices and providing Iran with its best leverage in the war.
Iran left a path through the strait open, allowing ships that pay a toll to pass through.
Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps has issued warnings that ships could collide with sea mines, and semiofficial news organizations have published charts showing safe routes.
Those routes are limited in large part because Iran mined the strait haphazardly, U.S. officials said. It is not clear that Iran recorded where it put every mine. And even when the location was recorded, some mines were placed in a way that allowed them to drift or move, according to the officials.
As with land mines, removing nautical mines is far more difficult than placing them. The U.S. military lacks robust mine removal capabilities, relying on littoral combat ships equipped with mine sweeping capabilities. Iran also does not have the capability of quickly removing mines, even the ones it planted.
I can see that this would be problematic for any peace agreement!
*John Bolton, Trump’s former National Security Advisor and U.S. ambassador to the UN, asserts in the Free Press that it was “a big mistake to have the ceasefire.” This is an interview conducted by Nicholas Clairmont:
Nicholas Clairmont: I’m just going to start by asking, what is going on with Iran and with the ceasefire? Have we lost? Have we won? And what do you predict is about to happen?
John Bolton: Well, I think it was a big mistake to have the ceasefire. I don’t think the Iranians have any intention of doing any of the things that Trump wants in terms of opening the Strait of Hormuz. I think they needed relief from the pounding they’ve been taking. We’ve been through this in various iterations with them before, and it’s very unclear to me what happens next. Because having basically backed down on the effort at regime change, if there ever was one, by acknowledging now that we can kind of negotiate our way out of the Strait of Hormuz closure, Trump is conceding the key, central point of leverage that we have. And I’m just very concerned that we’re going to be faced with a choice of which concessions we’re going to make that we don’t want to make. And the regime will skate free, basically.
It’s suffered enormous damage. But, from the regime’s point of view, if they survive that amounts to victory for them. And they will rebuild the nuclear program, rebuild the ballistic missile program, rebuild the terrorism program, and reconstitute in full their capacity to close the Strait of Hormuz. So this is what you get for mowing the lawn, as the Israelis call it. You can do a lot of damage, but you don’t resolve the underlying problem.
NC: So what would it take to resolve the underlying problem? What should we be doing differently?
JB: I think there are a lot of things that should have been done differently well before the military attack. Like, for example, coordinating and assisting the opposition. If you take Trump at his word that he wasn’t going to put boots on the ground—and I don’t see he has any inclination to do that, except for limited specific missions—then the role of the opposition internally becomes critical. Because the pounding that the regime has taken on their principal instruments of state power I do think has caused fractures in the top of the regime. Certainly, we’ve caused a lot of fractures by eliminating the top 400 or 500 people. This is how regimes like this can begin to come apart.
“Trump is conceding the key, central point of leverage that we have,” said Bolton.
And I think that’s happening. I think it’s a mistake to say the regime has survived. Pieces of it have survived, but we don’t know that there’s any central authority or that its capacity has very much longer to survive if it does. The Times of London reported on Monday that the Supreme Leader is in a coma being treated for severe wounds in the ayatollah’s city of Qom. If that’s true, and it’s purportedly based on intelligence that they’ve seen, it means that the Revolutionary Guard, the ayatollahs and whomever, are ruling through some kind of council mechanism, and they haven’t picked a new Supreme Leader. We can’t say for certain, but I think they have begun the process of seeing the regime disintegrate. So every time they get a break, which is what the ceasefire is, that’s time that they can come out from wherever they’re hiding and see if they can’t get their act back together.
. . . the logic is pretty straightforward: Unless you’re willing to live under a nuclear terrorist threat, and now a threat to the global economy, if you can’t change the regime behavior, changing the regime is the only alternative.
Bolton thinks the regime is actually beginning to fall apart, but given that whoever’s in charge has the weapons, and the civilian population doesn’t want to get shot during peaceful protests, how do we get regime change? Some have suggested arming civilians, but they are not an organized force, nor can the Kurds topple the regime itself. Bolton sees regime change this way: “I think ultimately in Iran, you’ll get a military government that can restore order after the ayatollahs are overthrown. Hopefully it’ll have the sense to provide some kind of consultative mechanism so the Iranian people can pick whatever kind of government they want to come next. And then, basically, it’s up to them.” But he thinks that Trump simply wants out, and sent Vance to Pakistan to do that.
*Both the NYT and the Washington Post are touting (with glee, I bet), the supposed increase in Catholicism in America. But their data is misleading, as the number of pious Catholics, as well as their church attendance, is declining. It’s just that young ‘uns are converting to Catholicism more often than before. As the WaPo notes, the rate of deconversion far outstripping conversions. From the NYT:
People are joining the Roman Catholic Church in surprising numbers.
This Easter the Archdiocese of Detroit will receive 1,428 new Catholics into the church, its highest number in 21 years. The Archdiocese of Galveston-Houston will have its most in 15 years. In the Diocese of Des Moines, the count is jumping 51 percent from last year, from 265 people to 400.
The first year after the election of Pope Leo XIV, the first pontiff from the United States, many Catholic churches across America are welcoming their highest numbers of new Catholics in recent years. The newcomers are set to officially be received into the church during the Easter Vigil Mass, the night before Easter Sunday on April 5.
Bishops are buzzing about the surge, and confounded by what is behind it.
“Of course we think the Holy Spirit is,” Cardinal Robert McElroy of Washington said. “But we are kind of stymied.”
From the WaPo:
In many places, the converts are disproportionately young. These reports have encouraged talk of a religious revival in Generation Z and generated controversy on social media. Discussion has centered around the sudden prominence of a few “hot” churches, such as St. Joseph’s in New York’s West Village and St. Patrick’s Old Cathedral in Nolita. At these spots, young professionals mingle at post-Mass wine receptions. Meanwhile, Catholic social media influencers have helped make an ancient faith seem trendy.
Is Catholicism undergoing a revival? Not in broad numerical terms. A Pew survey suggests that for every young adult who joins the Catholic Church, a dozen leave it. This year’s conversion wave doesn’t come close to offsetting the decades-long decline in Church membership, or solving the problem of ever fewer infant baptisms. Indeed, the recent wave of converts is best understood as a response to religious decline. In a secularizing world, becoming Catholic has a rebellious cachet.
Of course the papers don’t really concentrated on the data showing the extreme decline of religiosity in America. For example, the Pew survey reported in 2012 that the number of Catholics who consider themselves “strong” Catholics is at an all-time low, and church attendance is dropping rapidly, having fallen nearly 50% cince 1974. Here are the facts, ma’am (note that the rate of Protestants claiming “strong religious identity” has gone up by about 11%.)
Why is the MSM so eager to report the rise in religion in America when it’s actually on the way out? Does the media have a God-shaped hole?
Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili had a good idea:
Andrzej: I don’t enjoy the taste of anything.
Hili: Eat from my bowl, and I’ll eat from your plate. You’ll see everything will taste different.
In Polish:
Ja: Nic mi nie smakuje.
Hili: Jedz z mojej miseczki, a ja mogę jeść z twojego talerza. Zobaczysz, że wszystko będzie ci smakowało inaczej.
This week, three Iranian nationals with ties to the Iranian regime were arrested by federal agents following Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s termination of their lawful permanent resident (LPR) statuses.
Seyed Eissa Hashemi, Maryam Tahmasebi, and their son are now in the custody of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement pending their removal from the United States.
Eissa Hashemi is the son of Masoumeh Ebtekar, also known as “Screaming Mary,” the infamous spokeswoman for the Islamist militants who stormed the U.S. Embassy in Tehran in 1979 and held 52 Americans hostage for 444 days.
Ebtekar was notorious for her role as the leading propagandist for the violent Islamists who perpetrated the Iran hostage crisis.
. . . Last week, Secretary Rubio terminated the legal status of the niece and grandniece of deceased Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps Major General Qasem Soleimani. Hamideh Afshar Soleimani and her daughter are now in the custody of Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
Masih, of course, is all for this.
Behind me is the luxury home belonging to the son of Islamic Republic Vice President @ebtekarm in Los Angeles.
The same Ebtekar who took American diplomats hostage in 1979. Children of top officials in Iran prefer to live in the US away from the hell their parents have created. pic.twitter.com/l8BftjNAkw
No other species on Earth has a teamwork system quite like ants.
This tiny creature pulls off missions far bigger than its size could ever suggest. pic.twitter.com/GVP799bGry
And two from Dr. Cobb. Look at this deep-sea siphonophore! It was identified as Stephanomia amphytridis, which can apparently grow more than 10 meters long:
Bargmannia? I hope they see a bunch of siphonophores on the next SOI expedition b/c Dhugal is finally going to be on the ship for that one! I've been waiting years for this. This 1 is from @schmidtocean.bsky.social dive 642 #sepacificseamounts #MarineLife
In my view, “Blackbird,” a Beatles song written by Paul McCartney and released on the Beatles’ “White Album” in November, 1968, is one of his finest works. Here we see him rehearsing it in the the EMI’s Abbey Road Studios on the very day it was recorded: June 11, 1968. (The released version is here.)
A few notes on the song from Wikipedia:
McCartney explained on Chaos and Creation at Abbey Road that the guitar accompaniment for “Blackbird” was inspired by Johann Sebastian Bach’s Bourrée in E minor, a well-known lute piece, often played on the classical guitar. As teenagers, he and George Harrison tried to learn Bourrée as a “show off” piece. The Bourrée is distinguished by melody and bass notes played simultaneously on the upper and lower strings. McCartney said that he adapted a segment of the Bourrée (reharmonised into the original’s relative major key of G) as the opening of “Blackbird”, and carried the musical idea throughout the song. The first three notes of the song, which then transitioned into the opening guitar riff, were inspired from Bach.
The first night his future wife Linda Eastman stayed at his home, McCartney played “Blackbird” for the fans camped outside his house.
. . . Since composing “Blackbird” in 1968, McCartney has given various statements regarding both his inspiration for the song and its meaning. He has said that he was inspired by hearing the call of a blackbird one morning when the Beatles were studying Transcendental Meditation in Rishikesh, India, and also writing it in Scotland as a response to the Little Rock Nine incident and the overall civil rights movement, wanting to write a song dedicated to people who had been affected by discrimination.
You can listen to Bach’s Bourréhere, but for the life of me I can’t hear the germ of “Blackbird” in it.
The sound is off at the beginning but starts 16 seconds in. There are a few other breaks in the sound.
It’s clear that the song was tweaked right up to the end, including the tempo, the pause, and the raising of the voice on the word “life” halfway into the song.
The guy speaking to John and Paul is of course George Martin, who contributed so much to the greatness of the group’s songs. Notice that Paul breaks into other songs from time to time, including Helter Skelter and Mother Nature’s Son, both also on the White Album. At about 6:15, Lennon tunes his guitar to McCartney’s, as if wanting to accompany him on Blackbird. But no accompaniment was needed.
Check out Macca’s shoes! The woman sitting in the corner and then next to McCartney is identified by a commenter:
Francie Schwartz is the lady appearing in the video alongside Paul. She was Paul McCartney’s girlfriend during the summer of 1968, which coincides exactly with the White Album recording sessions. She wrote about her time at Abbey Road in her memoir Body Count (1972), giving a firsthand account of those legendary sessions.
This is McCartney at the apogee of his powers. The song is a work of genius. In all my life I will never figure out where the ability to produce songs like this comes from. All I can guess is that there’s a kind of neuronal wiring in such people that can turn thoughts into wonderful music.
Larry the Cat recently turne 19 (and celebrated his 15th year at 10 Downing Street), but the Senior Cat is still going strong. For example, he recently caught his third mouse, though that was nominally his job as Chief Mouser to the Cabinet Office. All Brits love him now (save for the miscreants), and he’s still getting into trouble, as this recent YouTube video shows:
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Quite a few readers called my attention to this Canadian cat, named Louis Vuitton (!), who lives in a town that straddles the border with the U.S. Despite new restrictions on immigration, Louis, as the CBC article below shows, repeatedly enters the U.S. illegally and then slips back to Canada. Click on the headline to read:
An excerpt:
On Zero Avenue in South Surrey, B.C. lives a cat without a care in the world, and a supercilious name to match.
Louis Vuitton has become a local legend for doing with ease what most humans wouldn’t dare.
Each day, he leaps back and forth across a narrow ditch that sits smack dab on the Canada-U.S. border.
“He hasn’t always been such a rebel, but he is extremely friendly,” Deb Tate, Louis’ owner, told As It Happens host Nil Koksal.
He just loves people, says Tate, and he doesn’t care what side of the border they’re on.
“He will walk up, greet people, get his pats and belly rubs and then continue on when he’s done.”
On one side of the ditch is a row of charming homes, including his own, on Canadian soil. On the other are the green fields of Peace Arch Historical State Park in the United States.
There aren’t any fences, just a street in between and a shallow divide. According to Tate, there are plenty of cameras and hawk-eyed border guards patrolling nearby, ready to pounce on illegal crossers.
But none of that seems to concern Louis, who trapezes across whenever he wants, with the air of someone who knows the rules, and chooses to ignore them.
Louis, who turns six on Canada Day,has been lapping up all the attention from locals since he caught the eye of Instagram user @pnwdaily360, who posted a now viral video about “the border-hopping kitty.”
There’s a cat that doesn’t really give a f–k about borders,” says the user in the video. “And he comes over and hunts in the ditch. There he is. What’s up buddy?”
The video has since garnered over 220,000 likes and three million views on Instagram.
Tate says Louis even has a habit of smuggling things across the border, dropping it ever so thoughtfully on her doorstep.
“He’s been known to bring home a treat or two from his adventures,” said Tate. “We’ve received everything from snakes and mice and squirrels, much to my chagrin.”
As for his name, Tate says it wasn’t given to him because he has a penchant for luxury goods at duty-free prices.
“He’s a rescue kitty, and we decided that coming from humble beginnings, he deserved a designer name,” said Tate. “We just named him Louis and … he has just grown in to fill the personality, and more.”
Click the video below to see a two-minute video of Louis in action. I wonder if ICE will go after him. After all, he not only enters the U.S. illegally, but commits crimes (murder!) in our country, bringing mice, snakes, and even squirrels back to Canada.
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Finally, from 1000 Libraries Magazine we hear about a cat who got an honorary doctorate from a university in Vermont, so he is now known as “Dr. Max Dow.” Click the screenshot below to get the details:
An excerpt:
That’s Dr. Max Dow, to you. Max Dow, a once feral kitten, has been granted an honorary PhD from Vermont State University Castleton. After making a name for himself around campus for the last five years, Max has become a staple on the grounds and a famously friendly mascot for the school. He is beloved by students and faculty alike — so much so, the university bestowed an honorary doctorate of ‘litter-ature’ to him at this year’s commencement ceremonies.
Much like many other great scholars, Max’s life started with humble beginnings. He was living on the streets of a neighboring city in Vermont as a feral kitten before being adopted by his loving family and owner, Ashley Dow. Dow and her family live in a neighborhood shared with Vermont State University Castleton, and about a year after moving into their new home, Max began to explore the campus for the first time.
In an interview with USA Today, Ashley Dow shares the first memories of Max making his way to campus. She and her family were worried when he hadn’t returned home. They went searching for Max and quickly found that he was exploring the university and was familiarizing himself with curious students and staff.
Max is well taken care of by students, much to the relief of his owner. Students have been responsible for looking out for Max’s well-being and regularly check in with his owners about his health and safety. Many residents on campus have Dow’s number and will send her update texts when Max is seen or is being cared for by a student or faculty member. After a run with some not-so-friendly stray cats in the neighborhood, Max was injured.
In response, Dow asked the school’s faculty and students to be vigilant about returning Max home by 5:00 PM so his family could keep an eye on him during the night. She shared that everyone has complied with her request on numerous occasions and goes out of their way to make sure he is looked out for when he’s around campus.
. . . Max has benefited from the many perks of being a ‘student’ on campus. According to Vermont State University, Max can be seen hitching rides across school grounds in students’ backpacks and has even been the artistic muse and subject of many photography major projects.
. . . After five years of dedication to Vermont State University and its students, the school decided it was time for Max to earn his degree. During the Spring 2024 commencement, Max was celebrated and met with applause when he earned his doctorate in “Litter-ature” alongside over 1,000 other students.
. . . Vermont State University shared their feelings about Max in one quote saying, “We are incredibly proud of Max and deeply grateful for the role he plays within the culture of our University and for his part in elevating VTSU’s reputation for academic excellence and outstanding commitment to animal welfare.”
Here’s Max’x doctoral diploma from the site:
. . . and a short video about Max—I mean Doctor Max.
Today’s we have photos from Ephraim Heller of hummingbirds from Trinidad and Tobago. Ephraim’s captions and IDs are indented, and you can enlarge his photos by clicking on them.
On my February visit to Trinidad and Tobago I managed to photograph 13 of the 18 hummingbirds that are sometimes present on the islands. Previous posts were devoted to my new favorite bird, the tufted coquette (here) and to photos of six other species (here). This post covers the remaining six species. The species that I did not photograph either do not visit feeders or are only present seasonally in the country.
Black-throated mango (Anthracothorax nigricollis). Some individuals have been documented to migrate over 1,000 miles:
Brown violetear (Colibri delphinae). An aggressive species that zealously defends its nectar sources:
The copper-rumped hummingbird (Saucerottia tobaci) is the most common hummingbird on both islands. An individual amused me over several days as it vigorously defended three feeders from all species, regardless of the fact that food was plentiful:
When light hits the male ruby-topaz hummingbird (Chrysolampis mosquitus) just right it lights up like a neon sign. As in many other hummingbird species, the male’s crown and throat produce color not through pigment but through the physical structure of the feathers: stacked layers of melanin granules in the barbules:
Welcome to CaturSaturday, April 11, 2026, shabbos for Jewish cats and, in Canada, it’s National Poutine Day, the tastiest and unhealthiest of all comfort foods. Here are several orders of poutine waiting to be served at La Banquise, perhaps Montreal’s most famous poutine shack. The photo, taken in March of 2016, shows two orders with guac amd sour cream. One person has unaccountably ordered a salad:
Here are the Kingsmen lip-synching to the song. I can still remember the first time I heard it, and it was on a transistor radio.
Readers are welcome to mark notable events, births, or deaths on this day by consulting the April 11 Wikipedia page.
Da Nooz:
*Did you watch the Artemis re-entry and splashdown yesterday? Everything worked fine: it was, as they say, copacetic.
Floating in the Pacific Ocean on Friday, the four astronauts of NASA’s Artemis II mission had achieved more than just a historic return to human spaceflight around the moon.
“From the pages of Jules Verne to a modern-day mission to the moon, a new chapter of the exploration of our celestial neighbor is complete,” Rob Navias, who provided NASA commentary during the re-entry, said after splashdown.
The successful conclusion of Artemis II sets NASA on a path to extend the agency’s achievements in space exploration, and, for now at least, the United States is ahead of China in a 21st century space race.
Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover, Christina Koch of NASA and Jeremy Hansen of the Canadian Space Agency were the first people to leave low-Earth orbit since 1972. Their journey captivated space enthusiasts and may have created new ones.
I’ve put an 11-minute video below; the moment of splashdown is at 7:42.
I’m told that this mission is partly to prepare for creating a U.S. base on the Moon. I’m not sure, however, what that will accomplish? Will we claim the moon, in the same way that countries have made faux claims in Antarctica?
*In a post on It’s Noon in Israel,” author and journalist Amit Segal interviews Israeli Minister Aryeh Deri and also gives some exclusive statements from Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu. First I’ll give Segal’s bullet points and take on the war, and you can read the Q&A for yourself:
It’s Friday, April 10, and before we dive into today’s headlines, we have exclusive statements from Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. During our conversation last night, he highlighted three key points:
On Iran he asserted that without the two recent operations, Iran would have already acquired nuclear weapons by 2026.
On U.S. relations he argued that Israel’s standing in the United States is only an issue among those who have a problem with America itself. He stressed that this is not a new development, nor is it related to the current war.
On the northern front he claimed that Hezbollah has been begging for a ceasefire for a month, and teased that there will be further ‘interesting developments’ in the negotiations with Lebanon.”
As early as the second week, it became clear that the regime would not fall from airstrikes alone. The U.S. and Israeli strategy pivoted: hit them hard, then allow internal pressure to build while the U.S. military remains in the region as a passive deterrent against mass repression. The recent prospect of negotiations complicates that signal to the Iranian public, but the core strategy may still hold.
While the Iranian threat has been at least temporarily defanged, a new long-term threat is rising: U.S. public opinion.
There is a two-part problem.
First, the United States has not yet achieved its stated objectives. Second, as long as those objectives remain unmet, the finger of blame will inevitably point toward Israel. We can already see the narrative forming: Israel gave the U.S. false intelligence that the regime was on the brink of collapse, deceiving Trump into wasting American resources and lives in pursuit of its own interests. Ignoring the likely fact that Donald Trump hasn’t been led into doing anything he didn’t want to do since he was an infant, this is the story that’s being told.
Israel cannot afford to be seen as the party that overpromised. It cannot be left holding the proverbial bag for an Iranian version of Iraq’s nonexistent WMDs.
Moving forward, Israel must urgently invest in rebuilding its own infrastructure devastated by the war: public support in the U.S.
A bit of the Q&A with Deri:
Q: Will we see a regime change in the near future?
“I believe so. By the way, Trump believes the current regime is far more measured and responsible than what came before. In a certain sense, I agree. The diplomatic figures there effectively forced the ceasefire because of the constraints, not because of any genuine change of heart. They understood that within two weeks Iran would go bankrupt.”
Q: “And aren’t you worried that Israel’s gains come at a cost – a growing sense in America that we dragged them into a war that wasn’t theirs?”
“That has nothing to do with Iran. We have a problem with the Democrats, and somewhat with some Republicans, too. But precisely because of that, this period with Trump in power is a major opportunity for Israel to cement its regional standing. In the end, the Americans – whatever administration – will understand that their real ally is us.”
*As always, I’ll steal a few items from Nellie Bowles’s weekly news-and-snark column in the Free Press, called this week, “TGIF: MMIWG2SLGBTQIA+” (yes, that’s a group; read on).
→ To study the forest, you must have a limp: A new job posting for a tenure-track position—Canada Research Chair in Forestry and Environmental Stewardship at the University of British Columbia—has an interesting requirement. “For this position, applicants must identify as having a disability.” Actually, more ideally, they must identify as disabled women or indigenous people of color:
In accordance with UBC’s CRC Equity, Diversity & Inclusion Action Plan, and pursuant to Section 42 of the BC Human Rights code, this search is restricted to people with disabilities. We welcome applications from disabled scholars who are also members of the following federally designated groups: Indigenous Peoples, racialized people, and women, and gender equity-seeking groups. Applicants to CRC positions are required to complete this equity survey.
To study the forest, you must have a limp. And be gay. Are you gay and are you limping? (Me, yes, frequently.) Now you may apply to be a professor of the forests. Also, this confirms my theory that the longer the job title, the more ridiculous the job. CanadaResearchChair in Forestry and Environmental Stewardship?
And elsewhere in Canada, a major political conference devolved into chaos as everyone fought over “equity cards,” differently colored little cards that let certain speakers cut in line according to their level of oppression. “I was standing here with my gender equity card before you called on the previous speaker. That’s my point of privilege,” one person said. Another: “Yesterday, this card was used in an inappropriate matter. And while I understand in Ontario, we note this as equity, even if that, this was also used inappropriately in terms of gender. I want everyone to be mindful that these cards for individuals like myself, who identify as a black woman, have no value outside of this space.” Okay, fine, one more: “I said, ‘Hey, this pertains to multiple intersecting parts of my lived experience, I’d like to speak.’ I was rejected when I talked. It’s frustrating when it’s—these are my rights being directly under attack right now in Alberta. A cisgender woman had spoken over me.” The delegates weren’t the only ones complaining, however. The chair had some words after their pronouns were tread upon: “I’ll again thank delegates not to call me ‘Madame Chair.’ I am a nonbinary person. My pronouns are they/them/their. Chair is sufficient.” I’d also like to thank my coworkers not to call me Nellie Bowels. Which they have multiple times this week, and which is (I swear to G-d) how my name is spelled on my official Paramount ID card. I thank you not to call me that. Chair is sufficient.
On my last Canadian note—it’s a 20! I’ll be here all week!—New Democratic Party MP Leah Gazan expressed her frustration at budget cuts by saying: “They provided $0 to deal with the ongoing genocide of MMIWG2SLGBTQQIA+.” Them’s a lot of letters. I thought that surely had to be a joke. So I googled the phrase and sure enough, it’s real. I really try not to make too much fun of the alphabet soup stuff. It’s too easy. It’s played out. I’m better than it. But then a member of parliament drops MMIWG2SLGBTQQIA+ on us. What are we supposed to do here, guys? When will the letters end? Is there pi of letters? Why two Q’s?
Here’s the answer. There’s other mishigas from Canada at the article. Note that this isn’t really a “genocide” since most of the perps are indigenous people themselves, and I suspect that domestic violence is a major contributor:
→ Updates on Jewish life: What a time it has been! Sixty percent of American adults now largely dislike Israel, according to a new Pew Research Center survey and also my entire Instagram feed, and everyone else in the world minus the people I work and associate with.
. . . A politician from Britain’s Labour Party made and posted a video with the words Jew and kike spelled out over different Tories’ faces. But don’t worry—he was just quoting a song, just a random line that happened to be transcribed randomly. Must be AI’s fault. A total accident, he says, of the word kike spelled out over his oppositions’ faces. Happens all the time, I’m sure. I’ve been there, man, hang in there, says the rest of the country.
In a vestigial twitch of fairness, NPR’s public editor did note that it was odd how the news outlet covered the attack on a Michigan synagogue and preschool. See, NPR sent a reporter to a Lebanese village to help contextualize why the suspect in that Michigan attack might have been so upset (Israel killed his relatives, one of whom was reportedly a Hezbollah commander, so you see, blowing up a Jewish preschool is fair). The public editor notes: “I couldn’t find any stories that quote rabbis, congregation members, or the families of the children who had to flee the building.” Seems bad! Alas, not really that bad. The piece ends: “NPR has given Americans what they need to understand their government’s motivations and to hold their elected officials accountable for this war.” All’s well. Nothing to see here.
Meanwhile, a NYT piece on the youth these days defines the term J-pilled as simply “far-right slang for skepticism of Israeli influence.” J-pilled. Interesting; does Israel start with J? Does it have a J? Maybe it stands for Jabba the Hutt? Oh, right. It means Jew-pilled, and the NYT is trying to soften it. Like how the mainstream media always translates the Arabic wordYahud to Israelis instead of Jews, which is what it means. But the people saying J-pilled speak English! They’re literally calling themselves Jew-pilled, and our greatest newspaper is desperate to make it go down smoothly. Some days I’m ready for the human-alien hybrids to reveal themselves.
*John McWhorter responds to both AI and DEI in a new NYT column, “What A.I. and D.E.I. have in common” (article is archived here). The commonality involves casting suspicion on people and their work.
I never thought A.I. would get me thinking of D.E.I.
I’ve reached a depressing turning point as a college professor. With A.I. now entrenched in academic life, when a student submits a wonderful essay, I will never again be sure that it was purely a work of the student’s initiative, intelligence and talent.
Some essays will be. But there will be no way to really tell. Technology could allow me to determine only what was likely. And would an essay count as original if the student used A.I. to begin the paper but then built upon those prompts?
Let’s face it: From now on we will have to revise our sense of what is original and authentic. There is no way to adjudicate where to draw the line, and few professors will be up for submitting every essay they receive to this kind of evaluation.
. . .And there is something else gloomy about A.I. making it unnecessary to write an essay from the ground up. A.I. will put more people under the sort of suspicion that D.E.I. does.
A.I. will put artistic and intellectual achievement under a cloud of doubt, a sense that the creator did not do it all on their own, and possibly could not have. And this is the burden that D.E.I. policies often saddle its intended beneficiaries with.
Call it diversity, equity and inclusion or affirmative action or racial preferences, it is rooted in a quest to give people an opportunity to compete more easily against straight white people, especially men.
Adjusting standards for admission or hiring in view of a group’s past handicap is a unique moral advance.
But it should be applied for as limited a time as possible because of the side effects. Under a policy that allows certain people to be judged even partly on who they are rather than what they bring to the table, people of color are often suspected of being “D.E.I. hires,” brought on with lesser qualifications than their white equivalent would be permitted to have.
Sometimes, the charge is false. From what I see, and from what people with law degrees whose opinions I trust tell me, the Supreme Court justice Ketanji Brown Jackson is clearly qualified for her position.
But the interviews Karine Jean-Pierre gave during her book tour last year gave credence to the idea that when President Joe Biden made her White House press secretary her race, gender and sexual orientation were more important criteria than her ability to convey policy, positions and ideas clearly.
I haven’t seen Jean-Pierre’s interviews, but here’s a video from the Left-wing site The Young Turks arguing (at the start) that her book tour was a “disaster”:
*If you want to hear about the sex binary for its expert, as well as rebuttals of several widespread criticisms of the (real) sex binary, there’s an interview with Colin Wright published on his substack called “One reality, two sexes, and endless debates.” You can read for free; it’s a transcript of a interview he did with the German rationalist/skeptic organization Die Gesellschaft zur wissenschaftlichen Untersuchung von Parawissenschaften (GWUP),(The Society for the Scientific Study of Parasciences). Here are two of many Q&As:
Q: Your paper identifies five main models used to argue against the sex binary. Could you briefly outline them?
A: First, there’s the conflation of mating types with sexes. Some fungi and slime molds reproduce sexually using gametes of the same size—we call these isogamous species. They have chemical compatibility types between gametes, sometimes thousands of them. Articles about ‘the slime mold with 30,000 sexes’ are based on a fundamental misunderstanding. Sexes refer only to males and females, which are defined by different-sized gametes. Species with same-sized gametes don’t have males and females—they have mating types.
Second, there’s the chromosomal or karyotype model. You’ll hear people say, ‘if you’re XX you’re female, if you’re XY you’re male.’ But this conflates how sex is determined in humans with what sex is. Many crocodilians and turtles don’t have sex chromosomes at all—their sex is determined by egg incubation temperature. People with Klinefelter syndrome (XXY) aren’t a third sex; they’re biologically male. These are chromosomal variations within the two sexes.
Third, there’s the sex spectrum model, which holds that sex is a continuous variable based on genital morphology. Some proponents think males and females aren’t real entities but exist only in a statistical sense—you can be varying degrees of male or female, but not definitively male or female. This ignores gametes entirely and has circular problems: how do you know what genital shape is ‘male’ unless you already know what males are, rooted in gametes?
Fourth, there’s the polythetic categories model—like family resemblance, in which members share overlapping characteristics, with no single feature necessary for membership. They try to apply this to sex, saying it’s a combination of chromosomes, hormones, height, and voice pitch, and many other sex-related traits. But how do you define which chromosomes or hormone profiles are ‘male’ without presupposing what males are, rooted in gametes?
Fifth—and most influential—is the multi-level model, which says we can’t talk about bodies having a sex. Instead, you’d say someone is ‘genetically male’ or ‘hormonally female’ or has a ‘male height.’ But again, how are they determining which chromosomes are male without presupposing that males and females exist apart from chromosomes, inevitably rooted in gametes?
and:
Q: What evidence would you need to change your view that there are only two sexes?
A: That’s a crucial question. In the skeptic community, you always need to have something that could convince you you’re wrong. If you don’t, you’re just a zealot, not doing science.
For me, it’s really easy: we define sexes by the type of gamete an individual is biologically capable of producing. You’d need to present a third novel gamete type—in addition to or intermediate between sperm and ova—that an individual’s reproductive system could have the function to produce. That’s the only thing that could make there be more than two sexes.
*Chimp wars! The WSJ describes a lethal war between a previously amiable group of chimpanzees. We’ve long known that chimpanzees can engage in lethal intergroup violence, sometimes tearing apart an outsider chimp limb from limb. But in an article called “Inside the deadly civil war that tore apart a group of chimpanzees in Uganda“, the paper describe fractionation of a previously harmonious group, and a big group, too. I’ve put the original article from Science below, which you can also click to read. The article’s conclusion is that fractioning a group doesn’t require “cultural markers” like ethnicity, religion, or language, since chimps don’t have those.
A rare and deadly “civil war” has broken out between two factions of chimps in Africa, according to new research.
The dispute erupted in what was once a cohesive group of about 200 chimps whose ties stretched back two decades. It took just three years for them to turn on each other, according to a new study in the journal Science.
“We’ve known for a long time that chimpanzees will attack and kill their neighbors,” said primatologist John Mitani, professor emeritus at the University of Michigan and a study co-author. “It turns out they will do this even when those neighbors are former friends and allies.”
For 20 years, the Ngogo chimps of Uganda’s Kibale National Park “were living the good life by being together,” Mitani said. They helped one another, dominated and killed apes from neighboring groups, expanded their territory and boosted their babies’ chances of survival.
But in 2015, the group started splitting into two clusters. Several male chimps who had bridged cliques within the larger group died from disease, weakening social ties. Around the same time, a new alpha male rose to dominance.
Changes in the dominance hierarchy can fuel more aggression and tension, said Aaron Sandel, an associate professor of anthropology at the University of Texas at Austin and study co-author. As aggression escalated, the factions drifted into separate areas of the park.
By 2018, the split was complete. The two groups had no remaining social or reproductive ties between them; the last chimp infant with parents from different groups was born in 2015. What was once the center of the group’s territory became a border, which chimps patrolled, the researchers found.
Then the hostilities began in earnest.
Members of the smaller of the two groups launched coordinated lethal attacks on the other, aiming to kill rival adult males. By 2021, these raids had expanded to target younger apes, averaging several infant deaths a year since.
The paper below says that “over the next 7 years [after fission], members of one group made 24 attacks, killing at least seven mature males and 17 infants in the other group.”
Here’s the paper’s conclusion, which contains what I think an unwarranted extrapolation to humans. It’s ok to speculate, I guess, but I’m not sure I would have written what’s below:
This study encourages a reevaluation of current models of human collective violence. If chimpanzee groups can polarize, split, and engage in lethal aggression without human-type cultural markers, then relational dynamics may play a larger causal role in human conflict than often assumed. Cultural traits remain essential for large-scale cooperation, but many conflicts may originate in the breakdown of interpersonal relationships rather than in entrenched ethnic or ideological divisions . It is tempting to attribute polarization and war that occur in humans today to ethnic, religious, or political divisions. Focusing entirely on these cultural factors, however, overlooks social processes that shape human behavior—processes also present in one of our closest animal relatives. In some cases, it may be in the small, daily acts of reconciliation and reunion between individuals that we find opportunities for peace.
Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Andrzej gives his opinion about philosophy:
Andrzej: Are you asleep?
Hili: No, I’m practicing philosophy.
Andrzej: Sometimes that amounts to the same thing.\
In Polish:
Ja: Śpisz?
Hili: Nie, uprawiam filozofię.
Ja: To czasem na jedno wychodzi.
From Bryan: a short but provocative interview with Dan Dennett (text and video) about consciousness:
Daniel Dennett: You don’t know your own mind as well as you think you do.
In a 1993 Dutch documentary series, A Glorious Accident, philosopher Daniel Dennett laid out one of the most unsettling ideas in all of philosophy, the possibility that we are fundamentally mistaken about… pic.twitter.com/UZ0hZuwmG0
— Big Brain Philosophy (@BigBrainPhiloso) April 9, 2026
From Luana on Biden’s immigration policy, which was no policy:
Most Americans still don’t fully understand what happened under Biden…
8% of Nicaragua entered the US in 4 years.
8% of the entire country.
— Why you should have a cat (@ShouldHaveCat) March 9, 2026
One from my feed; more evidence that the Turks love their cats (translation from the Turkish: “In Turkey, an elderly man who makes his living by shining shoes never turns away this little friend when a cat that shows up at the same time every morning asks to have its fur brushed.”
Türkiye’de ayakkabı boyayarak geçimini sağlayan yaşlı bir amcanın yanına her sabah aynı saatte gelen bir kedi, tüylerinin taranmasını isteyince amca bu minik dostunu asla geri çevirmiyor. pic.twitter.com/ktjJE66upn
Artemis II returns today, if everything works okay. As I’ve said, there are some concerns about the heat shield, but not serious concerns. The space.com article below (click on it to read) gives the details as well as several links. I’ve put its video link (the best one, I think) below. Be sure to watch it live starting about 7:40 this evening, Eastern time, as several events will occur at or during re-entry.
Jim Batterson sent this link and added a few words:
In particular item #14 talks about their egress and being carried to the Navy recovery ship by helicopter. After the crew are safe on board the ship, I think that the capsule is simply retrieved into the ship’s onboard “well”. The astronauts are then helicoptered to firmer terra firma.
A short excerpt:
The Artemis 2 Orion capsule will return to Earth tonight, April 10, at 8:07 p.m. EDT (0007 April 11 GMT) with a splashdown in the Pacific Ocean off the coast of San Diego, California. Returning home on the ship to end a 10-day trip to the moon are NASA astronauts Reid Wiseman (commander), Victor Glover (pilot), Christina Koch (mission specialist) and Canadian Space Agency astronaut Jeremy Hansen (mission specialist). You can watch the landing live on Space.com, beginning at 6:30 p.m. EDT (2230 GMT). You can also follow the mission live online on our Artemis 2 mission updates page.
After an epic trip to the moon and back, it’s landing day for the four astronauts of NASA’s Artemis 2 mission. For the first time in over 53 years, astronauts are returning to Earth from the moon.
But returning from deep space is no easy feat, especially for the Artemis 2 astronauts, who are the first crew to fly on NASA’s Orion spacecraft. The most harrowing part of the journey lies ahead: a fiery 13-minute plunge through Earth’s atmosphere at about 24,000 mph (38,600 kph) that will subject them to temperatures of up to 5,000 degrees Fahrenheit (2,760 degrees Celsius) with only their heat shield for protection and parachutes to slow down.
“Every system we’ve demonstrated over the past nine days — life support, navigation, propulsion, communications — all of it depends on the final minutes of flight,” NASA Associate Administrator Amit Kshatriya told reporters Thursday (April 9). “We have high confidence in the system, in the heat shield, and the parachutes and the recovery system that we’ve put together.”
