News Feeds

ASTEP, the Antarctic Search for Transiting ExoPlanets, a small visible telescope operating at Concordia station, continues making a real impact in characterizing odd new exoplanetary systems.

I think this was news commentary, but I didn’t hear the whole show: just a snippet on my car radio. At any rate, one commenter said this:

 “Joe Biden is probably the last Democratic President for generations who will be in favor of Israel.”

One could say that the Democrats are taking a position of neutrality, favoring neither Israel or its opponents (e.g., Iran, Syria, Hezbollah, or Hamas), but I doubt that is the case. The Democratic Party is being taken over by so-called “progressives,” and they are opposed to Israel in general—not just “Zionism” (which means Israel’s existence as a state), and not just Netanyahu.  This, according to a poll of Palestinians  taken in the West Bank and Gaza two years ago, is who the Democrats are and will be favoring:

According to the poll, only seven percent of Gazans blamed Hamas for their suffering. Seventy-one percent of all Palestinians supported Hamas’s decision to attack Israel on October 7 — up 14 points among Gazans and down 11 points among West Bank Palestinians compared to three months ago. Fifty-nine percent of all Palestinians thought Hamas should rule Gaza, and 70 percent were satisfied with the role Hamas has played during the war.

Before October 7, Fatah would have defeated Hamas in a head-to-head vote of all Palestinians 26 to 22 percent. If elections were held today, Fatah would lose to Hamas 17 to 34 percent. Eighty-one percent of respondents were dissatisfied with Abbas, up from 76 percent before the war. Sixty-two percent did not view the recent resignation of former PA Prime Minister Mohammad Shtayyeh as a sign of reform. And 65 percent of Palestinians think the PA is a burden on the Palestinian people. Among likely voters, 56 percent supported Marwan Barghouti, who is serving multiple life sentences for his role in the murder of Jews during the Second Intifada. Thirty-two percent supported Qatar-based Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh, and 11 percent supported Abbas.

Only 5 percent of Palestinians think Hamas’s massacre on October 7 constitutes a war crime.

The poll was taken by a Palestinian organization, “the Ramallah-based non-profit Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research.”  And we have this breakdown of Democratic support (almost nil) from The Arab Center:

 On April 15, 2026, the United States Senate considered two resolutions to block nearly $450 million of arms sales to Israel over concerns about human rights violations and the US-Israel war on Iran. With pro-Israel Republicans controlling the Senate, the defeat of these resolutions, introduced by Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT), was predictable. Indeed, the first resolution, to stop a $295 million sale of bulldozers that Israel has used in the past to destroy civilian homes, lost in a 59-40 vote; the second, to halt a $151 million sale of 12,000 1,000-pound bombs, failed 63-36. The surprise was that more than three-quarters of the 47-member Democratic caucus voted to halt at least one of the sales—an unprecedented number.

Jews were reliably Democratic before the war, and Democrats were reliable friends of Israel. Brothers and sisters, friends and comrades, those days are gone. Democrats are not only ignoring Hamas’s war crimes and avowed desire to destroy Israel, but also favoring an oppressive, misogynistic, and truly genocidal regime against the only democratic state in the Middle East.  And no, I don’t think it’s just animus against Netanyahu or “Zionism” that’s motivating this change.  I think that Democratic opposition to Israel would be nearly as strong if Israel had some other Prime Minister. And it’s not “Zionism” they oppose, either, for that’s just the new euphemism for “Judaism”, for Zionism is just the recognition of the validity of the state of Israel as a refuge for Jews. (Do these people oppose the many explicitly Muslim states as examples of “Islamism”? If so, I haven’t heard about it.)

Israel (and Jews) are now seen as oppressors in the “oppressor-victim” narrative that’s behind wokeness. And the “oppression” by Israel involves the Two Big Lies: Israel is “genocidal” and “an apartheid state.” (For a refutation of the “genocide” canard go here, and of the “apartheid” canard go here).  We are seeing the Democratic Party becoming more antisemitic and anti-Enlightenment. For Democrats like me, this is depressing.  I’m not a one-issue candidate but I’m still Jewish, and how am I to vote for someone who is anti-Israel?

I now have three batches plus some singletons, and so we’ll have semi-regular photos for a while, at least.  Today’s batch of tidal invertebrate photos, and one video, comes from math professor Abby Thompson at UC Davis. Abby’s captions are indented, and you can enlarge the photos by clicking on them. The video is also hers.

April tidepools, and a mystery den.

Starting with a video of a Ctenophore, Pleurobrachia bachei (Pacific sea gooseberry, a ‘comb jelly’). All appearances to the contrary, this is in a different phylum (Ctenophora) from the “jellyfish” of my earlier post, which are in the phylum Cnidaria.   The flashing lights are the cilia in the “combs” that run down the sides, used for locomotion.  This one wasn’t moving very much, but I was surprised it was moving at all.   I picked it up off the sand quite a way above the water line, and dumped it into a shallow pool to take a photo.    It seemed to be recovering pretty well from what I thought was death.   It’s about the size of a walnut.

Sea urchin “test”, or internal skeleton. Probably Strongylocentrotus purpuratus:

Ophiopholis aculeata (daisy brittle star):

Bispira pacifica (feather duster worm):

Close up of ‘feathers’ of pacifica:

Genus Eupentacta (sea cucumber):

Phoronis ijimai (tentative- the white things). This is a species of horseshoe worm, which lives in tubes.   I haven’t seen this species before, and it was in an awkward spot, so it was hard to get a good photo.   The photo below that is from a few years ago of a worm from the same family, so you can see their general shape better:

Phoronopsis harmeri (from July 2021) (same family):

Anthopleura artemisia (moonglow anemone):

And a few nudibranchs:

Triopha maculata (nudibranch):

Tenellia laguna (nudibranch):

Acanthodoris rhodoceras (nudibranch):

Rostanga pulchra (nudibranch):

Lastly the mystery den. Our entire front yard seems to have been tunneled under, with at least three major entrances- this pair of holes is just one of them.  The holes are large, about 10 inches across.  We’re dreaming of badgers, would be very happy with foxes, and really hoping it’s not skunks (I love skunks, but not in the front yard).  A wildlife cam is the next purchase:

Camera: Olympus TG-7.   Thanks as usual to some experts on inaturalist.

The giant planets in our solar system—Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune—have challenged our understanding of planetary formation and evolution. Specifically, their atmospheric formations and compositions have provided awe-inspiring images from spacecraft and given scientists key insights into the interior mechanisms of these massive worlds. But what about exoplanets? What can their atmospheres teach scientists about their formation, evolution, composition, and interior mechanisms? And how do longstanding exoplanet models stack up against the real thing?

As I write this the week of April 20, 2026, both mainstream media and social media are chockablock full of coverage of the disappearance or death of eleven (and counting) U.S. scientists who worked on UFOs, nuclear weapons, military defense, propulsion systems, or other related fields (a category that keeps growing as new deaths or disappearances are identified not associated with one of the original categories).

House Oversight Chair James Comer, for example, told Fox News “Congress is very concerned about this. Our committee is making this one of our priorities now because we view this as a national security threat,” adding “there’s a high possibility that something sinister is taking place here.”

Congressman Eric Burlison (R) told Fox News “This has all the hallmarks of a foreign operation,” and suggested to Elizabeth Vargas at NewsNation that it could be China, Russia, or Iran behind the cabal. Famed physicist Michio Kaku opined “If 10 scientists suddenly die or vanish who all have access to sensitive research, this is cause for national concern.” Even President Trump admitted that this is “pretty serious stuff…some of them were very important people,” but added “I hope it’s random.”

It’s random, Mr. President. Connecting a small cohort of individuals from a wide range of fields to deaths or disappearances is an example of what I call patternicity, or the tendency to find meaningful patterns in random noise. It is also a case study in what cognitive psychologists call base rate neglect, or the tendency to focus on specific, vivid, or anecdotal evidence and ignore statistical generalizations that better explain the phenomenon.

One of the eleven scientists, for example, Amy Eskridge, who was president of the Institute for Exotic Science (an organization she co-founded) and worked on anti-gravity propulsion and electrostatic propulsion systems, died by suicide of a self-inflicted gunshot wound to the head. How unusual is that? According to the Johns Hopkins University Center for Gun Violence Solutions, 27,300 people die each year by gun-inflicted suicide in the U.S. That’s the base rate, and Eskridge’s own non-conspiratorial family accepts the fact that Amy was another lamentable casualty of gun violence and suicidality and not the victim of a vicious UFO cabal. “Scientists die also, just like other people,” explained her father Richard.

Most of the other scientists have similar prosaic (albeit heartbreaking) explanations. Monica Reza, who worked on orbital communication systems, for example, disappeared while hiking in the Angeles National Forest near Mount Waterman in California, which is a remote forested area near where I live in which people go missing every year. Although she was accompanied by two other experienced hikers who reported that she just dropped off the side of the trail, I have done a fair amount of hiking and mountain biking in those mountains and well know that there are countless precipitous cliffs off which one could easily fall off and disappear into thick brush below (which is how I broke my collarbone on a mountain bike ride in 1991).

A similar disappearance is that of retired Major General William Neil McCasland, who was Director of Air Force Research Lab who worked on hypersonics, directive energy systems, and advanced propulsion technology, who went missing during a wilderness hike on February 27, 2026 in New Mexico, apparently taking with him his wallet and a .38 caliber revolver and leather holster (leaving behind his phone and prescription glasses). According to his wife, McCasland had been experiencing short-term memory loss, medical issues, anxiety, and a lack of sleep, adding that she suspected he “planned not to be found” and, in any case, “He retired from the [Air Force] almost 13 years ago and has had only very commonly held clearances since. It seems quite unlikely that he was taken to extract very dated secrets from him.”

Before we jump to conspiratorial speculations on these particular vanishings, consider the fact that somewhere between 1,200 and 1,600 people disappear in America’s National Parks annually in the U.S., a stunning number that shrinks by comparison to the over 500,000 people who go missing each year according to the FBI. That’s a base rate one should never neglect and likely is the explanation for the disappearance of 48-year-old government contractor Steven Garcia in August of 2025, also in New Mexico, who worked on nuclear and aerospace research, carrying a handgun and also leaving behind his phone, keys, wallet and car. Anecdotally weird? Sure. Statistically out of the ordinary for missing persons? No.

The rest of the outcomes are equally unsurprising and not out of the ordinary: Michael Hicks “undisclosed cause of death” was in reality, according to the LA County Coroner, caused by arteriosclerotic cardiovascular disease, for which the CDC and the American Heart Association document over 900,000 Americans die each year due to this and related heart diseases. 

Plasma physicist Nuno Loureiro was murdered by a revenge-seeking ex-classmate from the 1990s, who confessed that he’d been planning it for years and that he was envious and resentful of Loureiro’s success. Disturbing, but not mysterious.

Astronomer Carl Grillmair, a 67-year-old Caltech professor who worked on exoplanets, stellar streams, and near-earth objects, was shot to death in February 2026 on the front porch of his rural home in Antelope Valley, CA (about a hundred miles from Caltech out in the desert outside Los Angeles), by 29-year-old Freddy Snyder, a known criminal with a long rap sheet that included carjacking and burglary, including on Grillmair’s property months before, which the astronomer responded to by calling the police on him (as one would rationally do). Again, troubling and tragic, but not inexplicable or grand conspiratorial.

And so on.

The Internet, especially X, is rapidly filling up with additional confusions over these alleged cabals. One Dr. John Brandenburg, a self-identified “plasma physicist” who works on “fusion energy and advanced space propulsion,” with “Phd” in his X username, told his 22.2k followers (see screenshot below) that the death of an “antigravity researcher” named Dr. Ning Li, who was stuck by a vehicle and sustained brain damage that would take her life many years later, was actually the victim of a murderous conspiracy: 

Dear Friends, Like Dr. Ning Li, antigravity researcher, professor John Mack of Harvard, Pulitzer Prize winner, and a Psychiatrist researching UFO abductees, was also run over by a car. This happened in London in 2004. This must end, and whoever is responsible brought to justice.

In fact, Dr. Li died of Alzheimer’s disease in 2021 at the age of 78, following a long health decline after a 2014 automobile accident where she was struck by a vehicle while crossing a street at the University of Alabama in Huntsville and sustained permanent brain damage. As I explained to Dr. Brandenberg in my response to his post on X: 

In the US ~7,500 pedestrians are killed in traffic crashes annually. Globally, WHO reports ~ 1.19 million deaths/year. Before you concoct wild conspiracy theories about UFO people being run over, stop neglecting the base rate.

The tireless UFO disclosure activist and one-time government insider Lue Elizondo went on Chris Cuomo’s popular podcast to explain that UFO disclosure activists and former (and present) government insiders are being murdered, which as I also pointed out on X (see screen shot below) is just what one would do if you didn’t actually believe that you could be murdered yourself.

 And in this mode, I also pointed out on X all the proponents of UFO and UAP disclosure who have not been murdered or disappeared, which again as a counterfactual would seem to negate what is on the table with this so-called mystery, namely that such people are being murdered by some nefarious “they” purportedly operating in the name of some government agency or private corporation.

More generally, this phenomenon is also emblematic of what I call the fallacy of excluded exceptions, an illustration for which can be seen in a 2x2 matrix of four cells (see figure below). Cell 1 represents our mystery, namely UFO and nuclear/military scientists who go missing or are found dead before old age. What about all the UFO and nuclear/military scientists who do not go missing or are not found dead before old age (Cell 2)? Or the non-UFO and non-nuclear/military scientists who go missing or are found dead before old age (Cell 3)? Or the non-UFO and non-nuclear/military scientists who do not go missing or are not found dead before old age (Cell 4)? Suddenly our mystery disappears. There’s nothing unusual to explain in the broader context of everything else that could happen but are ignored in our focus on just the combination we’re interested in exploring.

Keep this matrix of possibilities in mind as we hear about additional Cell 1 examples in the coming days and weeks, such as the one posted by Representative Anna Paulina Luna (R) on April 21, 2026 (see screenshot below), about “the tragic passing of David Wilcock,” citing the biblical passage of John 8:32, which reads “Then you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.”

What truth is that? David Wilcock was an American paranormal writer and YouTube influencer (over 500,000 followers) deeply involved in the UFO “disclosure movement”, who suggested that he might be the reincarnation of the famed early 20th century psychic Edgar Cayce, that he is in telepathic contact with space aliens, and that reptilian aliens inhabit parts of Antarctica where they are preparing for an invasion to take over the world’s governments and banks. 

Sadly, Wilcock died by suicide the morning of April 20, 2026. Although Luna suggests otherwise, according to the Boulder County Sheriff’s Office, “The emergency communications specialist who took the call suspected the caller was experiencing a mental health crisis.” Additional details noted that “officers reportedly reached around 11:02am and tried to make contact with the male who was outside his residence holding a weapon.” 

Again, regretfully but necessarily, we must consider the base rate for this issue: according to the CDC nearly 50,000 Americans every year die by suicide, around half of which are struggling with mental health issues. As such, and woefully but realistically, I think most of us can agree that if you think you are telepathically communicating with alien beings and you think they may be trying to take over the world, you may not be fully sound of mind.

No doubt more deaths and disappearances will be announced in the coming weeks as believers go digging around for more examples of Cell 1, but keep the other cells in mind, along with these other principles of critical thinking, before jumping to unwarranted conspiratorial conclusions.

Scientists have created tiny “optical tornadoes” — swirling beams of light that twist like miniature whirlwinds — using a surprisingly simple setup based on liquid crystals. Instead of relying on complex nanotechnology, the team used self-organizing structures called torons to trap and manipulate light, causing it to spiral and rotate in intricate ways. Even more impressively, they achieved this effect in light’s most stable, lowest-energy state, making it far easier to generate laser-like beams with these unusual properties.

Scientists have created tiny “optical tornadoes” — swirling beams of light that twist like miniature whirlwinds — using a surprisingly simple setup based on liquid crystals. Instead of relying on complex nanotechnology, the team used self-organizing structures called torons to trap and manipulate light, causing it to spiral and rotate in intricate ways. Even more impressively, they achieved this effect in light’s most stable, lowest-energy state, making it far easier to generate laser-like beams with these unusual properties.

A major physics experiment has uncovered evidence for a strange new form of matter, where a fleeting particle gets trapped inside a nucleus. This exotic state may reveal how mass is generated, suggesting that particles can weigh less when surrounded by dense nuclear matter. The findings support long-standing theories about how the vacuum of space influences mass.

A major physics experiment has uncovered evidence for a strange new form of matter, where a fleeting particle gets trapped inside a nucleus. This exotic state may reveal how mass is generated, suggesting that particles can weigh less when surrounded by dense nuclear matter. The findings support long-standing theories about how the vacuum of space influences mass.

In the chaotic first moments after the Big Bang, ripples in spacetime may have done more than just echo through the cosmos—they could have helped create dark matter itself. New research suggests that faint, ancient gravitational waves might have transformed into particles that eventually became the invisible substance shaping galaxies today.

In the chaotic first moments after the Big Bang, ripples in spacetime may have done more than just echo through the cosmos—they could have helped create dark matter itself. New research suggests that faint, ancient gravitational waves might have transformed into particles that eventually became the invisible substance shaping galaxies today.

It turns out that even after studying our solar system in depth and discovering more than 6,100 exoplanets across more than 4,500 exoplanetary systems, not all solar systems are created equal. The longstanding notion is that planets orbit almost entirely in the same orbital path, also called an orbital plane. But what if an exoplanetary system was found to have exoplanets that not only orbit in different planes, but also exhibits changing behavior regarding when they pass in front of their star?

The Moon has played a huge role in the development of Earth. It stabilizes the planet, tempered dramatic climate swings, and possibly even provided the tidal heating that might have led to the first life forms. So it’s natural we would want to find a similar Earth/Luna system somewhere else in the cosmos. But astronomers have been searching for one for years at this point to no avail. And a new paper from Emily Pass and her colleagues at MIT, Harvard, and the University of Chicago describes using the James Webb Space Telescope to track some of the most promising exomoon candidates - only to be foiled by the star they were orbiting.

The new Colibre cosmological simulation includes more critical detail than previous simulations. It also includes updated models of things like AGN feedback and star formation. The simulations also include a sonic component, giving the results a cinematic and information-rich flair.

Measuring the strength of gravity is extraordinarily difficult, and different experiments have always disagreed – but a new test is paving the way to finally understanding nature’s most enigmatic force

This week’s Jesus and Mo strip, called “bite2”, is new but came out a bit late on Wednesday.  In response to last week’s criticism of Islam, Mo now gets the chance to make fun of Christian ritual.  He does a good job, but Jesus gets the last word.

Zoologist by career, TV celebrity in the 1960s, renowned surrealist painter, and bestselling author of more than 70 books, Desmond Morris left a legacy that enlightened our species, answered taboo questions, and made audiences around the world look at behavior with renewed eyes. This is a tribute to one of the greatest observers of human behavior.

He never shied away from controversy. His first popular book, published in 1967, proclaimed on its cover what at the time was seen as offensive: that we humans are “naked apes.” The logic was compelling: if one were to place close to 400 primate species side by side, a quick visual inspection would reveal that the most notorious difference is the general lack of body hair in humans. Not intelligence, not language, not technology. That was the beginning of his effort to spoon-feed society a lesson in evolutionary humility: there is nothing insulting in seeing humans as animals; every species is extraordinary in its own way.

Going back to that book, in his 1979 autobiography Animal Days, Morris recounts the 30 days he took to write the whole manuscript for The Naked Ape on a typewriter, without editing—an astonishing result by any measure. The book spread fast not only because of its provocativeness, but because the world got to experience what descriptive, entertaining, and compelling writing can do when science merges with audience-centered prose. With over 20 million copies sold, it still stands among the 100 bestselling books in history.

Desmond’s curiosity was unstoppable, and it can be traced back to his unusual rise in academic science through the study of animal behavior. His Ph.D. began with small fish, sticklebacks. While his mentor Niko Tinbergen—the man who showed him there was a path for studying animals without putting them in cages through ethology—was adamant about the importance of specializing in a single species, Desmond rebelled against that idea. That was his character. He then expanded, in his postdoctoral studies, to birds, particularly the small finch. By this time his basement at the university had become overcrowded with multiple species, and there was even an aviary on the department’s roof. No fewer than 84 species passed through his lab during this period at Oxford. He was able to dedicate three full years to the ten-spined stickleback, while exploring variation in other species, fulfilling his tendency to be a “spreader”—to broaden his interests too much.

Out of academia, Morris became curator of the largest collection of mammals at the renowned London Zoo, sharpening his observations across more than 300 species. His insatiable curiosity pushed him to want to know everything there was to know about every mammal. He later focused on our closest relatives, non-human primates, such as Congo—the chimpanzee he taught to paint and whose works ended up in the hands of world-class painters like Picasso and Miró. Again, non-human primates were only a pitstop before the next stage, an obvious one to him: humans.

Once The Naked Ape skyrocketed, Morris moved to Malta, where he enjoyed the pleasure of spending his earnings and living a comfortable life. There he realized something that we may better understand from the flip side: “The city is not a concrete jungle, it is a human zoo.” Under that premise, he published what could be seen as a follow-up to The Naked Ape, called Human Zoo (1969), where he revisits controversial topics of status, sex, and power. From this work, his commandments of dominance are priceless. He lists the behaviors that, in primate species, are associated with gaining and defending power and status, like “make changes even if no change is needed to demonstrate that you are in control” or “a leader should display his position in their demeanour.” All his work cultivated a unique view of the human animal through the lens of ethology, or through Desmond’s eyes.

Then, motivated by his book editor, Morris began the odyssey that he never finished. It started with a simple premise: a full description of the repertoire of human behavior. After a few months of work, his editor asked about his progress, and he said he was covering the eyebrows. To the editor’s surprise, he had started not from the feet but from the top of the head. That was a sign that his dedication to cataloging gestures was going to take him a lifetime, much like the Oxford English Dictionary (OED). 

Not coincidentally, Morris moved to North Oxford, to the house of James Murray, one of the main lexicographic contributors to the OED, as if foreshadowing his own intentions. His book originally titled Manwatching (1977), later adapted to the zeitgeist of our times as Peoplewatching (2003), is still, to this day, the most exhaustive and profound description of human behavior. I believe it offers the highest rate of insight per sentence among all the books I’ve read, and I have called it the bible of human behavior. Ten years later Morris produced another version of that project, this time focused on areas of the body, covering each one through biology, anatomy, culture, and behavior, called Bodywatching (1985). For the serious human observer, these two are indispensable guides.

But Morris knew that the journey was longer than a book. The human repertoire of behaviors cannot be compressed into a trade book. He kept collecting behaviors, labeling them one by one. He had to coin names for many of them, because code-to-elbow or nose-to-forehead behaviors are not commonly described in ordinary language. His approach aimed to solve the natural ambiguity of behavior, so he used descriptive labels to avoid subjective interpretations. His encyclopedia of human actions, titled The Human Ethogram, reached at least two thousand entries by the time he decided to let it go. Now those archives sit at the University of Porto, at the Museu de História Natural e da Ciência, where at some point they may be compiled into one of those posthumous manuscripts worthy of Desmond’s legacy.

Morris’s success transcended writing, probably inspired by the admiration he held for Julian Huxley, a trailblazing biologist who broke scientific etiquette by appearing in mass media. Desmond became a celebrity-like figure with his weekly TV show Zootime. Each week he introduced audiences to different species from the London Zoo, where he worked. The anecdotes are hilarious, and his descriptions of behavior glued audiences to topics they otherwise might have ignored. He developed a charismatic presence that evolved further in his documentaries.

Over his life Morris ended up writing three autobiographies, each time adding new elements, culminating in his more than 600-page 2006 memoir, Watching. This book is as funny as a comedy, and it has the depth and texture of stories that let you enjoy and learn in equal parts. In it, Desmond shares an observational palate so rich that he successfully predicts winners of sumo fights, accidentally receives a papal blessing from Paul VI, and is mistaken for British intelligence in Moscow.

Since 2017, I have had the great good fortune to be in regular contact with Desmond Morris. We exchanged ideas, discussed a few gesture interpretations, like the elbow clapping, and he revealed that his favorite animal was the chequered elephant shrew. He kindly wrote a letter of recommendation for my Ph.D., gave me a few signed books, and invited me to dinner with his family in Ireland. I conducted one of the last interviews with him.

Desmond Morris with the author, Alan Crawley.

Over these years I asked Morris many questions. Among them was: “If you have to give a single recommendation to those interested in studying nonverbal behavior, what would it be?” Here is Desmond Morris’s insightful response (personal communication, 03/03/2021):

With body language studies, it is my impression that there is often too much abstract theorizing and semantic debate, when we should be getting out in the street conducting field studies. The question I would ask any student of human behavior is “How many hours of field observation have you done?”, not “How many theoretical papers have you written?” How many riots, bar-fights, pop concerts, boxing matches, art auctions, festivals, law courts, beach parties, military parades, religious gatherings and sporting events, have you attended as an objective, body language observer?

Desmond had in mind Tinbergen’s warning about his tendency to spread too thin across multiple problems and numerous species, a signature of his identity. That tension lived in the two sides of his personality: scientific researcher and popularizer. Those identities wrestled within him, and both appear relentlessly in his work and demeanor. For example, in Oxford Morris bought the neighboring house to accommodate his collection of more than 20,000 books. Intrigued by how many of them he had actually read, I asked. His answer was revealing:

I can’t remember the last time I read a book cover to cover.

That line reveals the tradeoff between scope and depth. Morris consumed texts across domains, ages, and styles, allowing him to create unique compilations of facts organized under a single ethological framework, something that could only have been achieved by an unsatisfied curious mind that pursued one question and then moved on to the next. Such an approach may increase the likelihood of stating inaccurate claims, and some people use Desmond’s mistakes as a convenient excuse to discard the rest of his ideas. That is a dishonest and unfair approach. He was a prolific well of novel ideas: where others saw laughter, he saw an evolved mechanism of tension; where Freud saw sexual fixation, Morris described behavioral relics that increase in frequency under discomfort.

Awards and prizes were not his motivation. He was never interested in being knighted as a Sir. Someone of his accomplishments would have been a strong candidate for such recognition. I once asked him about this, to which he replied in his unique humorous manner:

I have made enough rude comments about the authorities and about politicians to ensure that my name is safe from that nonsense. And The Naked Ape won’t have helped.

Morris was well aware of the consequences brought on by the depiction he made of the human animal. Those depictions may have reached their widest audience through his TV documentaries, like The Human Animal, a fantastic visual portrayal of human behavior across more than 40 cultures.

Desmond enjoyed his competing interests—writing and painting—which occupied his mind deeply throughout the day. In his words:

There are two Desmond Morrises, and they are quite different people. I can easily pass from one to the other, but I cannot be both at the same time. When I'm Desmond Morris the painter, I am quite different.... There is rarely any clash between the two aspects. The one helps the other. I obey the two sides of my brain alternately.

Morris’s legacy is gigantic. Beyond more than 12 books on human behavior, he produced books on the behavior of dogs, cats, horses, primates, bison, leopards, and owls. Yet his impact on surrealism was far more than a hobby. Not only were books like The Lives of Surrealists (2018) influential, but, more importantly, in 1950 his paintings were exhibited in galleries alongside Joan Miró. He was an accomplished surrealist painter and filmmaker. If you have read Dawkins’ most famous book, The Selfish Gene, you may have encountered one of his paintings, since Richard himself chose one for the cover.

Until his last days he kept painting and writing. In perspective, he was an outlier who reached the highest level in two incredibly different professions through sheer excellence. And that excellence was cultivated over time, until the end.

For the past five years, he shared in his emails that he woke up with the desire to write and paint—a man in his late 90s who continued relentlessly to enjoy his daily work. Someone who, at the age of 95, published three books in a single year. This year he was also doing two gallery exhibitions of his paintings. That was Desmond: an unstoppable force of passion and curiosity.

Thanks, Desmond. We will continue watching for you.

Much of visual astronomy requires nothing more than clear skies, keen eyes, and patience. If you’re out skywatching Saturday evening and live in North or South America, watch for the waxing gibbous Moon pairing with Regulus at dusk. For a privileged region, the Moon will actually blot out or occult the star, in one of the best-placed lunar occultations of a bright star for 2026.

A mysterious cosmic explosion has astronomers buzzing, as a strange event may hint at an entirely new kind of stellar cataclysm. After detecting ripples in space-time, scientists spotted a fast-fading red glow that initially looked like a rare kilonova—the kind of collision that forges gold and uranium. But just days later, the signal shifted, behaving more like a supernova, leaving researchers puzzled. Now, some think they may have witnessed something never seen before: a “superkilonova.”

It was a lazy day today, with one visit to an architectural/history site and then one big and delicious meal.  After we had a leisurely breakfast and did our ablutions, it was nearly 11 a.m.  We then walked the ten blocks to the Owens-Thomas House and Slave Quarters:

The Owens–Thomas House & Slave Quarters (originally known as the Richardson House) is a historic home in Savannah, Georgia, that is operated as a historic house museum by Telfair Museums. It is located at 124 Abercorn Street, on the northeast corner of Oglethorpe Square. The Owens–Thomas House was designated a National Historic Landmark in 1976, as one of the nation’s finest examples of English Regency architecture.

Renovations in the 1990s uncovered and restored one of the oldest and best preserved urban slave quarters in the American South.

. . . The house is notable for its early cast iron side veranda with elaborate acanthus scroll supports on which the Marquis de Lafayette addressed the citizens of Savannah on his visit in 1825.

The house was built between 1816 and 1819, designed by the architect William Jay of Bath and financed and occupied by Richard Richardson. It was then purchased by attorney and politician George Welshman Owens, who was briefly mayor of Savannah and later a U.S. Representative.

The Owens family lived in the house for a while, but after some decades turned it into a boarding house, which is when Lafayette stayed there on his final visit to America on the 50th anniversary of the American Revolution—in which Lafayette played a huge role.

In 1951 the family turned the house over to the Telfair Academy of Arts and Sciences , which still owns it (I visited the other two parts of the Museum on my first day here).

The sign below gives pretty much the same information above.

The front of the house (I forgot to photograph the famous balcony).  When Lafayette, an abolitionist, visited Savannah in 1825, the town kept all the slaves inside, along with the free blacks, so they wouldn’t be incited by Lafayette’s antislavery sentiments.

The back garden of the house, designed to be completely symmetrical. In the rear are the slave quarters.  This is only part of them: the small house held 12 people, and there were a bit more than 20 enslaved people working for the white residents.

This sign was in the slave quarters, explaining why the guides and many of the signs used the terms “enslaved people” instead of “slaves.”

Inside the quarters, which slept at least twelve people, though many of the enslaved, like the cook and those who took care of the chlldren, slept inside the big house.

The dining room.  Food was cooked in the basement, and since there was no dumbwaiter it was carried on trays up two floors from the basement and put in the butler’s pantry before being served.

The butler’s pantry was a small room, with four empty bottles of wine sitting on the sideboard. As the tour moved on, I picked up one of the bottles and saw what’s below: a bottle of Barton and Guestier bordeaux—from 1870! I’d never held a wine bottle that old before.  And this chateau is still going strong; it was founded in 1725.

The structural material of the house was tabby, an equal mixture of sand, burnt oyster shells, water, and ash. It was an early form of concrete, and was quite durable. As you see, the tabby was covered with wood paneling.

This room was presumed to be the library/study, though now they’re unsure what all the rooms were used for.

This is presumed to be the oldest son’s bedroom.

And a mirror, at the bottom of which you can see a selfie of Professor Ceiling Cat (Emeritus):

The (presumed) master bedroom, now a word that’s out of favor for obvious reasons (I can’t remember what it’s supposed to be called now).

After the tour we walked home and then got in the car to drive to a restaurant I’d scoped out as a likely prospect: great food, not overly expensive and, most important, Southern. Yes, we went to Erica Davis Lowcountry.  It turned out to be all I hoped for, though if you drove by this place you wouldn’t think to go in. But you’d be making a mistake if you didn’t.

We split two appetizers. First, oysters Rockefeller made with local oysters. Wikipedia describes the dish this way:

Oysters Rockefeller is a dish consisting of oysters on the half-shell that have been topped with a rich sauce of butter, parsley and other green herbs, bread crumbs, and then baked or broiled.

There were also collard greens, cream. and Parmesan cheese.  It was scrumptious—the first time I’ve had this dish. With all that garnish you could still taste the oysters, and I love oysters. You’d think the dish would be too busy with all the ingredients, but the flavors mingled perfectly.

Another Southern classic: fried green tomatoes, these with feta cheese and balsamic vinegar reduction.

The menu was so full of good stuff (see the link above) that I asked the waiter what she recommended. Without question she mentioned the shrimp, which are local, fresh, and delicious. So I got a half pound of boiled shrimp. They came with clarified butter, shrimp sauce, and two sides (I chose cheese grits and deep-fried okra).  And oy, were those shrimp good! I ate the shells, of course, as all good shrimp lovers do.

Tim had the Wassaw redfish, described as “pan-seared redfish filet, garlic beurre blanc, heirloom tomato, stone ground grits, fresh green beans.” He pronounced it excellent.

Betsy had two crab cakes along with green beans and cole slaw. As expected, the cakes were almost all lump crabmeat, with just a small amount of filling to hold them together. With a little bit of the sauce on the crab, it was a Platonic version of this dish.

And my Southern dessert: the third helping of banana pudding I’ve had on this trip—this time served in a Mason jar. This was the fanciest version of all I’ve had.  As you can see, it’s topped with whipped cream dusted with vanilla wafer crumbs, with a whole wafer on the side. (Banana pudding sans vanilla wafers is unthinkable.) Then there’s a layer of banana pudding, then a layer of cake, and then a bottom layer of pudding with chunks of banana. This was the best version I had on this trip, and probably the best version I’d ever had. (I’ve eaten it many times, often with BBQ or a meat-and-three plate in the South.)

The meal was terrific, not very expensive, and prepared with great care. I’d recommend this place very highly to anyone who visits Savannah.