Why Evolution is True Feed

I simply can’t bear to write anything about war or Trump today, though doubtlessly something related will pop up when I write the news for tomorrow’s Hili post. But until then I want to keep it lighthearted. The Great Duck Egress still weighs heavy on me.

It’s sad that I discovered Rick Beato so late in my life, as I generally share his taste in music, though I remain largely stuck in music of the Sixties through the early Seventies, while he’s much more open to newer music. However, his education and ear make him a great educator, and since I’ve watched his videos I’ve become a lot more attentive in listening to music, especially in understanding what  makes my favorite songs my favorite songs. His analyses of “what makes this song great” are my favorites.

In this video Beato lists what he sees at the top 40 “greatest sounding albums of all time,” and by that he means that all the songs on the album are good—but not only good but that sound good.  In other words, I think he’s choosing albums that show musicality throughout—that stimulate both the ear and the emotions.

I confess that I don’t know about a third of the albums he mentions, and I don’t share his opinion about many of the ones I do know.  Below I’ve put the 12 albums that I have heard and which I think deserve consideration for the list.  But many better albums are missing. For example, he gives the Beatles’ “Revolver” an honorable mention, but wouldn’t any of the Beatles albums after “Rubber Soul” be better music than Sufjean Stevens or Seal, good as they are? Apparently Mr Beato wants a variety of artists.

Note that the albums I list are not identical to the songs that Beato plays to exemplify the album, but, as he says, “Any of the songs from these albums are phenomenally great songs.” I am not sure I agree, though I do agree that his exemplar songs are great.

I list below the albums that I both know of and agree are excellent albums, but I would not say they belong on a list of best-sounding albums. Where is Dylan’s “Highway 61 Revisited”?  And Joni Mitchell’s “Blue” and “For the Roses” are, to me, at least as “musical” as “Court and Spark.”  “Aja” is a dubious choice for Steely Dan; I prefer “Can’t Buy a Thrill” or especially “Katy Lied.” But of course if you included the Beatles or others of that quality, the list would be heavily weighted with just a few artists.

My opinions are of course subjective, and everyone will see omissions on Beato’s list, or inclusions that don’t merit mention. That said, here is where I agree with Beato: these albnums are great as wholes—but not the best albums of all time, not by a long shot.

#35:  Bonnie Raitt, “Luck of the Draw”

#32: Tears for Fears, “Song from the Big Chair”.

#29  Sufjean Stevens, “Jacksonville”

#28  Sarah McLaughlin, “Fumbling towards Ecstasy”

#27  Chicago, “Greatest Hits”

#16  The Rolling Stones, “Let it Bleed”

#9   Seal, Seal

Here’s where I started agreeing more with Beato:

#6  The Beach Boys,”Pet Sounds”

#4 Steely Dan, “Aja”

#3   Stevie Wonder “Songs in the Key of Life”

#2  Joni Mitchell, “Court and Spark”

#1   John Coltrane, Jonny Hartman “John Coltane and Johnny Hartman”, which Beato describes as “Probably the most beautifully recorded record ever. “

Honorable Mention (there are several): one is the Beatles “Revolver”

I was delighted to see Coltrane and Hartman nab the top spot, and it’s one of my favorite jazz albums. To me, it is the greatest jazz album of modern times (by that I mean albums released after 1955).  But Coltrane/Hartman is jazz, not rock, pop, or folk like the others, and I’m not sure why Beato put it on the list. If you’re going to include jazz in the list of all-time best albums, well, you’re playing a whole new ballgame.

The entire Coltrane/Hartman album in its original incarnation is on YouTube, and I’ve put it below so you can have the pleasure of listening to it. It’s only 31 minutes long, so you have time to hear it today.  It’s the album I would give people who weren’t familiar with jazz to ease them into the genre, and I gave it to several women I fancied as a nuptial gift: the musical equivalent of a spider proffering to his swain a silk-wrapped fly.

Anyway, here’s Beato’s list. Don’t confuse his exemplar songs with the quality of the album itself; Beato is touting the album but selling it with a snippet of one of its songs.

Here’s the entire Coltrane/Hartman album. Coltrane is at his best, not too out there to put off newbies, but soft and ballad-y. Most of all his renditions blend perfectly with the smoky voice of Johnny Hartman, an underrated singer. (Hartman died at 60 of lung cancer, and I’m sure his voice reflected many cigarettes.)

In today’s Jesus and Mo strip, called “peer”, Mo asserts that many Muslims have memorized the Qur’an word for word. The belief that the book is literally true is ubiquitous among Muslims; one poll by Pew showed this:

 Only Muslims in sub-Saharan Africa were asked whether they view the Quran as the word of God or a book written by men; across most of the African nations polled, nine-in-ten or more Muslims say that the Quran is the word of God, including more than seven-in-ten who believe it should be taken literally, word for word.

But how many Muslims have memorized the entire word of God? Mo implies many, but Jesus calls to his attention that there’s confirmation bias.

The strip came with a short note saying, “It’s called Hifaz,” which is the name for the practice of memorizing the whole Qur’an  And indeed, there are sites that will, for a fee, help you memorize the entire book.

Today we have some intertidal photos taken in California by UC Davis math professor Abby Thompson. Abby’s captions and IDs are indented, and you can enlarge her photos by clicking on them.

May is a great month on the California coast, with extreme high and low tides.   Here are some photos from the most recent, excellent, set:

Pollicipes polymerus (Gooseneck barnacles). I’ve shown these, and some relatives, several times before, but they’re amazing animals. In case you think it’s too many barnacles, Darwin spent eight years looking at barnacles.   “Originally planning a brief month-long study to establish his credentials in invertebrate zoology, he became deeply immersed and cataloged every known living and fossil species.”  (Google AI).  I’m not sure what the green is doing here, presumably just growing on top of the animals.   Some relatives of the nudibranchs stay green from what they eat, and retain bits with the ability to photosynthesize, most famously the adorable leaf sheep:.

Dendronotus venustus (nudibranch):

Paciocinebrina lurida (a snail):

Tonicella lokii (flame-lined chiton):

Genus Tegula (maybe) (another snail). There was a hermit crab living in the shell- I didn’t get a good photo of him.    I’m not sure the genus is correct, but the shell was so pretty I wanted to post it:

Nucella ostrina (Northern striped dogwinkle). About the common name—well, it has stripes.   And it’s a “winkle” (a word you have to love), or “little whelk”.  The dog part, I dunno.   They’re very common, and voracious. Some species of Nucella (not sure about this one) can be used to make a deep purple dye, which used to be hard to come by.  There’s a fun account of making the dye here, although I’m afraid many snails must have been sacrificed in the process:

Paradialychone ecaudata (worm):

Limpet, probably Lottia pelta (shield limpet). The little lacy edge is tentacles: “Pallial tentacles are tiny, sensory structures lining the mantle margin (pallium) of limpets. . . The tips and shafts of these tentacles are covered in dense tufts of non-motile cilia, which act as sensory receptors.” (Google AI):

Seagulls at sunset:

As always, thanks to experts on inaturalist for help with some IDs.   Camera is an Olympus TG-7.

It’s been a long time since we’ve had a “spot the. . . ” challenge, but Robert Lang submitted one. His caption, indented below, tells you that there are three frogs in the photo. Can you spot them all? There will be a reveal at 11:30 a.m.  Robert wrote this:

It’s been a while since you’ve had a “Spot the…” photo, and I think this one qualifies. Here we’re looking for California Tree Frogs (Pseudacris cadaverina). The first one is obvious. The challenge is to spot the other two (total of three). This was taken in the Arroyo Seco in Southern California, on the way up the creek bed to Royal Falls.

Of course you must click the photo to enlarge it for starting your search.  PLEASE DO NOT GIVE THE ANSWER IN THE COMMENTS so that everyone can have a go without pointers.

 

News is pretty scant as it’s just the same-old same-old, but I have a few stray wildlife photos to exhibit today. I’m all out of photos excerpt for these, so please send in your good wildlife snaps. In all the photos below, readers’ captions are indented and, as always, you can enlarge the photos by clicking on them.

First, from Scott Ritchie, his favorite photograph of Australia’s golden-shouldered parrot (Psephotellus chrysopterygius), an endangered species and the world’s only parrot that lives in termite mounds.

Bob Jochums sent two photos of Barred owls (Strix varia) taken outside Atlanta, Georgia.

A family “portrait” (minus Papa) on the “veranda” of the nest box.

An earlier photo of Mama leaving the nest box to get a little time to herself … or to hunt for food or nuzzle with Papa.

From Claudia Baker:

Red-headed woodpecker (Melanerpes erythrocephalus), picking at the rail fence along the front of my property, in Eastern Ontario,  in July 2023. I have never seen one around here before, so was quite excited to get pictures of it. Can’t tell if it’s male or female, as the sexes are similar. It is the only eastern woodpecker with an entire head that is red. Their range is East of the Rockies from southern Canada to the Gulf states. They apparently will hide foot in crevices of wood and return for it later, so maybe this is what it was doing. In any case, it dug around in this rail fence for awhile, long enough for me to get several pictures.

It will hide insects and seeds in cracks in wood, under bark, in fenceposts, and under roof shingles. Grasshoppers are regularly stored alive, but wedged into crevices so tightly that they cannot escape. It has many nicknames, including half-a-shirt, jellycoat, flag bird and the flying checker-board. I read that the Red-headed woodpecker was the “spark bird” (bird that starts a person’s interest in birds) of legendary ornithologist Alexander Wilson in the 1700s.

I did not know that there are worms in my rail fencing. Or maybe this worm was hidden by this gorgeous bird earlier and it came to claim its lunch.
Red-headed woodpeckers are fierce defenders of their territory. They may remove the eggs of other species from nest and nest boxes, destroy other birds’ nests and even enter duck nest boxes and puncture the duck eggs. (!)  Quite mean for so beautiful a bird!

I have not seen another since this one in 2023. The oldest Red-headed woodpecker on record was banded in 1926 in Michigan and lived to be at least 9 years, 11 months old.

My friend Cate, to her surprise and wonder, found white leucistic squirrels (a genetic variant of the Eastern Gray Squirrel, Sciurus carolinensis) living around her summer house in Michigan. There are several more photos in this thread, including the famous white squirrels of Olney, Illinois. which are albinos.

You won’t believe this even exists but up here in Ludington, Michigan there are at least TWO entirely white squirrels, NOT albinos–I saw two of them, many miles apart, last year. And now there’s one in my yard! 1/8 pic.twitter.com/LHfbFhvAOi

— Roseland, Chicago: 1972 (@RoselandChi1972) May 10, 2026

It seems like the white squirrels might be new around here, because last year the year-round neighbors looked at me strange when I asked about them. This year, there have been other sightings, and one neighbor expressed envy that I got one in my yard. 3/8 pic.twitter.com/JOkUomJr6f

— Roseland, Chicago: 1972 (@RoselandChi1972) May 10, 2026

From Peggy Mason in Canada (see location at bottom):

These harbour seals (Phoca vitulina) were lying around on the rocks of Poise Island in Porpoise Bay in Sechelt, BC, Canada. There were five of them. They ranged from silvery white (the smallest, a baby I think) to black with some white markings.

This is the silvery white baby:

This is the very black one:

Here is the silvery white baby, possibly with its mother. That is what I thought – basically from their proximity and size difference – although I received no confirmatory data one way or the other on this:

Bonus pictures are a beautiful bald eagle (Haliaeetus leucocephalus), a juvenile judging by its coloring and some pretty pink flowers on Poise Island.:

And Peggy’s location:

As you may know from following the Botany Pond reports here, Vashti had one brood that vanished from the pond two days after the babies jumped into the water with Mom. I was out of town and nobody has any idea where it went.

About a week ago, another (unnamed) hen jumped down to the ground with nine of her ducklings (I had rescued one the previous afternoon and had it conveyed to a wildlife sanctuary).  Getting that hen to the pond with her babies was tough: she was followed by only three or four, and she tried to go to the Pond the wrong way around the building, which would require that everyone climb the stairs. The ducklings couldn’t manage stairs that big, so I herded the four (or five) around the south end of the building, around the bend, and through the vegetation into the pond.  That wasn’t easy given the intervening bushes. Then I went back to see what was left below the nest. There were five or six ducklings wandering around disco0nsolate, peeping plaintively for mom, and some of them had gotten themselves jammed in the window well. Fortunately, I had my trusty net and captured all of them without undue stress and no apparent injury (I mostly used my hands).

I took the babies around to the pond, placed them two by two on a rock, and their peeping, combined with Mom’s quacking, quickly reunited the brood, winding up with one proud and nine ducklings. It was hard, but I was heartened when the two major drakes in the pond (Armon and his “buddy”, whom he doesn’t like) left the brood alone. But then another drake flew in and the combination of three of them was too much for the mother: the hen walked out of the pond with her babies and into the vegetation on the other side of the south fence.

They did not reappear and I can presume only that they are gone, with the babies probably dead.  This was heartbreaking and I still haven’t recovered. I kick myself because I could have sent every baby to rehab, which would have required breaking up the family.  I made a guess, and it turned out to be the wrong decision–but only in retrospect.

But now I am pretty sure that Vashti and her first brood were also driven out of the pond by those odious drakes. I say “first brood” because Vashti has re-nested, laid seven eggs, and her second brood is going to hatch in mid-June.  This time, if there are too many drakes around, I think the best thing would be to capture the babies and have them taken to rehab.  That, of course, will break up her second family, and I can’t believe that derailing her maternal efforts twice won’t break her heart, in a ducky kind of way. It’s also sad because one of my great joys, and that of the pond’s visitors, is to see a brood of tiny fluffballs turn into full-size mallards, ready to fly away come late summer or fall.

The upshot is that I have photos of the latest brood but am not yet ready to put them up and relive the misery. I will post them as soon as I recover.

In the meantime, it’s sunny and warm, and the five turtles in the pond are busy sunning themselves on the rock.  Here’s a photo from the other day of three of them performing what we call “turtle yoga”: stretching out their limbs and necks to get as much sun as they can.  I explain to some of the Pond’s visitors that they are trying to get their body temperature up after immersion in cold water.

I’m not going to reread this because going over what happened upsets me, but here is Turtle Yoga. Click the photo to enlarge it: This photo was taken with my iPhone, so the quality is worse than usual. The photos that are coming will be better.

“Peace for our time” was, of course, the phrase uttered by British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain on September 30, 1938 after he returned from signing The Munich Agreement with Hitler. That treaty allowed Nazi Germany to occupy the Sudetenland, part of Czechoslovakia, in return for Hitler’s promise to leave the rest of Czechoslovakia—and Europe—alone. That was a lie, of course, and Germany invaded Poland, beginning World War II, on September 1, 1939. Chamberlain, and other dupes who believed Hitler, had thought that the treaty would avert war in Europe.  Skeptics like Churchill disagreed, and Chamberlain resigned on May 10, 1940, giving the PM slot to Churchill.

Now we are told by Trump and others that we’re close to peace for our time in Iran; here’s Trump’s announcement, bereft of details, from Truth Social:

It doesn’t say much about Israel except Trump had a “very good call” with Netanyahu. Israel is being shoved aside in Trump’s hell-bent desire to get some kind of peace with Iran. But what kind will we get? We can see more details in The Times of Israel. which partly quotes the NYT (headings below are mine, extracts from the ToI are indented, and my words are flush left):

Uranium:

Iran has agreed to give up its stockpile of highly enriched uranium as part of an agreement with the US to end the war, two US officials tell the New York Times.

According to the officials, Iran has committed in a general statement to giving up the uranium, rather than reaching an agreement with the US on exactly how it will relinquish it. Instead, the exact details will be worked out during the negotiations that will begin once a deal is reached.

The report comes days after Iranian sources claimed that Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Mojtaba Khamenei, had issued a directive that the near-weapons-grade uranium should not be sent abroad.

Iran has a stockpile of more than 400 kilograms of highly enriched uranium in its possession, which Israeli officials have said is sufficient for 11 nuclear bombs if enriched further.

Earlier this month, a senior Israeli military official said if the uranium wasn’t removed, the war launched in February could be considered “one big failure.”

More on uranium:

And, reports the Times, the officials say issues relating to Iran’s nuclear program will be put off, to be negotiated within 30 to 60 days.

The Times adds the caveat that it is “not clear if the proposal Iranian officials said they had agreed to was what President Trump was referring to in his post on social media.”

Citing Middle East officials, The Times also says the leaders of Arab and Muslim-majority countries with whom Trump spoke in a conference earlier today told him that they support the proposal and urged him to accept it.

The Strait of Hormuz:

While Iran’s Fars news has derided President Donald Trump’s talk of a deal being nearly done, with the Strait of Hormuz to reopen, three senior Iranian officials tell the New York Times that Tehran has agreed to “a memorandum of understanding that would stop the fighting and reopen the Strait of Hormuz.”

The deal would release $25 billion in Iranian assets frozen overseas, the officials are quoted as saying.

The Times says the officials say the agreement “would halt fighting on all fronts, including in Lebanon.”

They add that its terms focus “on opening the strait— including lifting the US naval blockade against Iran and allowing free commercial traffic without Iran charging any tolls.”’

. . .Iran’s Fars news agency says the Strait of Hormuz will remain under Iran’s management under the provisions of the latest exchanged text for a deal between Iran and the US.

Fars, a semi-state outlet close to Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, dismisses as “incomplete and inconsistent with reality” Trump’s announcement two hours ago that the deal was now being finalized and would include the reopening of the strait.

Trump posted on social media that an agreement with Iran “has been largely negotiated.” He specified that the deal would include the opening of the strait, the key pathway for the global oil supply that Tehran has largely blocked since the beginning of the war some three months ago.

Regime change: 

None, of course. Although some in the Trump administration say there has been regime change, all that means is that the Ayatollah Khamenei is dead, his son, the Ayatollah Mojtaba Khamenei, may be alive but isn’t doing much, and military hard-liners still run the country and the war. The Iranian people are no closer to freedom than they were before the war.

Lebanon and Hezbollah:

No information yet; see Segal’s excerpt below in which Iranian sources claim that the agreement would stop fighting in Lebanon (but would presumably not require Hezbollah to disarm).

As you see, not much is clear, and the fate of Iran’s uranium stockpile—the reason Trump says we attacked Iran—remains unclear.

Over at It’s Noon in Israel, Amit Segal’s post about it is called “The art of a bad deal,” with the subtitle, “Trump’s proposed deal threatens to leave Iran stronger than it was before Operation Epic Fury.”  Excerpt:

t’s Sunday, May 24, and at the outset of Operation Roaring Lion, there were two definitions of victory on the table: capturing Iran’s enriched uranium or toppling the regime altogether. Given that regime change does not appear to be materializing and one of the parties appears hesitant to make the necessary investments for such an outcome, the sole remaining path to victory appears to be securing the uranium.

The most recent proposal—which Donald Trump claims is already “largely negotiated”—seemingly attempts to follow this path. According to a report from Channel 12, the agreement would reopen the Strait of Hormuz in exchange for the lifting of the naval blockade and substantial financial relief. However, the core issues regarding the nuclear program and the extraction of Iran’s enriched uranium stockpile would not be resolved upfront; instead, they would be deferred for separate negotiations over a 60-day period. Critically, Senior Iranian sources speaking with The New York Times said the deal would release $25 billion in Iranian assets frozen overseas. They added that the agreement “would halt fighting on all fronts, including in Lebanon.”

If the enriched uranium is indeed surrendered to the United States, it is indeed a notable achievement, but there are two caveats:

The first caveat concerns the actual scope and reality of the nuclear concessions. According to current reports, the negotiations slated to follow the reopening of the Strait of Hormuz will focus exclusively on uranium enriched to 60 percent—the roughly 440 kilograms currently believed to be buried beneath the rubble of the Natanz facility. Meanwhile, the tons of uranium enriched to three percent appear destined to remain inside Iran, with any future restrictions on its enrichment left dangerously ambiguous. Compounding this uncertainty, a senior Iranian official bluntly told Reuters today that Tehran has not actually agreed to hand over any material at all, emphasizing that the preliminary agreement does not even formally address the nuclear issue.

The second caveat is procedural, but no less critical. The framework currently on the table is not a finalized treaty, but merely a temporary Memorandum of Understanding meant to serve as a baseline for future talks. All the thorny details regarding the nuclear stockpile are slated to be ironed out over a 60-day negotiation window. The official justification for this delay is logistical—that safely extracting highly enriched uranium from bombed-out, irradiated rubble is a highly complex operation. In practice, however, it is far more likely a calculated delay, offering Tehran an extended opportunity to rest and recover before entering their next phase of nuclear intractability.

Israel has greeted the news with deep skepticism and more than a touch of fear. The reported memorandum makes zero mention of ballistic missile restrictions. What began largely as a defensive shield for Iran’s nuclear ambitions has mutated into a formidable threat in its own right. Even without the ultimate deterrent of a nuclear warhead, an Iranian ballistic arsenal numbering in the tens of thousands is more than sufficient to paralyze any military action against the Islamic Republic. According to Channel 12, this critical issue—whether through an immediate American concession or a simple lack of interest—never even made it to the negotiating table.

The current form of the deal also leaves the Islamic Republic holding another critical asset: the Strait of Hormuz. While the strategic waterway is slated to reopen, it does so not by virtue of an American victory, but rather by Iran’s sufferance. The current framework temporarily ensures toll-free passage, but absolutely nothing in the agreement guarantees that Tehran won’t eventually set up a toll booth—or abruptly choke off shipping the moment they feel the subsequent 60-day negotiations are stalling.

A secondary, but equally pressing concern in Jerusalem is that the regime has not yet fallen. While never explicitly declared as a military objective, regime change has been the unofficial policy undercurrent of the entire conflict. So far, Tehran has successfully managed to cling to power. Yet, senior Israeli intelligence officials maintain that a collapse from within remains a distinct possibility—provided the crippling economic blockade is sustained through the end of 2026. If the blockade and economic warfare are traded away for a partial agreement today, that window permanently closes. Meanwhile, domestic repression continues apace; just this morning, Iran executed a man accused of sending information to the US and Israel during the war. Cutting this deal now would not just throw Tehran a financial lifeline—it would constitute a total abandonment of the Iranian protesters who began this entire conflict.

Segal also discusses Lebanon, where fighting has escalated but Israel has pretty much held its fire until Iran stopped fighting. Tehran wants to link the Iran peace deal to Lebanon, allowing Hezbollah to continue attacking Israel.  Israelis won’t stand for that, or so I think. Segal sums up the deal this way:

For a leader who has spent decades building his brand as the sole guarantor of Israeli security, accepting a deal that leaves the regime intact, Hezbollah armed, the ballistic missile program recovering, and Tehran flush with sanctions relief is electoral assisted suicide for Netanyahu. Hanging in the balance of these negotiations is the fate of more than one regime.

To me, this seems like a bad deal for the U.S. and especially for Israel. Nuclear enrichment could continue with the unenriched uranium possessed by Iran, it could eventually build a bomb, Hezbollah might persist as a threat to Israel, there is no regime change (we’re blowing a chance for one, says Segal), and the fate of the Strait of Hormuz remains unclear. Trump just keeps putting up deadline after deadline and then ignoring them, hoping that something will fall into place.

So I ask readers to weigh in by checking one box in this unscientific poll. I’ve given a deadline, but am just assessing reader sentiment here; so please check a box:

Note: There is a poll embedded within this post, please visit the site to participate in this post's poll.

Once again I’ve stolen some photos (with permission) from the Facebook page of Scott Ritchie of Cairns, Australia. Scott has documented a trip to Queensland, and his text and IDs are indented. You can enlarge his photos by clicking on them.

Artemis Station, Cape York Peninsula, Queensland, Australia. The name that signifies excellence in Australian birding. This past weekend, I went on a wonderful camping trip with the Cairns Birders, led by Shane Kennedy and Doug Herrington, to Artemis Station. Doug then led us on a drive past Musgrave Roadhouse to Marina Plains. The last time I went up the Cape with Doug, we saw an adult Southern Cassowary with its chick at the top of the Kuranda Range. Well, lightning did strike twice.

Up the cape. It was magic. The weather was great, the sunsets so beautiful. The night sky was full on Milky Way. The sunrises were full of bird song. And the key “lifers”, the iconic Golden Shouldered Parrot (GSP) and the Red Goshawk, were on show. Here are some of my favourite photos from this trip.

My hat goes off to the staff of Artemis Station. Not only for hosting us, but for their heroic conservation efforts to save the last of the “termite” parrots in Queensland. Thank you Sue and Tom Shepherd, who own the station and tend to the parrots.

Adult Southern Cassowary (Casuarius casuarius). Great way to start the trip!:

And his chick!:

Galahs (Eolophus roseicapilla) were common, flying around in noisy flocks at dawn and dusk:

 

Galahs, in the outback!:

Patrick of Artemis Station shows us the ant (termite) mound used by Golden-Shouldered Parrots (Psephotellus chrysopterygius). They dig a tunnel in the mound. An electric fence barrier us used to keep out marauding snakes and monitor lizard. Great lengths are taken to maximise survival and production of these critically endangered birds.

The ant hill also has interesting camouflaged invertebrates, such as this cicada:

Female and male Golden-Shouldered Parrots (GSP) at a feeding station. Wild birds are provided with a feeding station of grass seeds to enhance survival:

An immature male GSP flies past a trail camera at the feeding station. They keep an eye out for predators, and to monitor bird health and numbers:

Another critically endangered bird, the Red Goshawk (Erythrotriorchis radiatus), also lives in Cape York. A male goshawk keeps a sharp eye on his partner:

. . .who is building a nest for the seasons brood:

“What do you think, is it sturdy enough?”:

 

We were greeted at the campsite by an Australian Boobook (Ninox boobook):

This cute owl kept a close eye on us for 2 nights.:

An Australian Hobby (Falco longipennis), a species of falcon, was seen regularly at a nearby pond:

Its long wings enable it to really crank it up!:

Welcome to Saturday, May 23, 2026.

Posting will probably be limited to this very short Hili today; I am dispirited because the brood of nine mallards (plus mom) that I rescued yesterday was driven out of the pond area by aggressive mallards.  I do not know if they will return. This is of course the second time this has happened, and it may well be a duckless summer. I will show pictures when I can bear to look at them.

The drakes are simply too aggressive and mean to permit new broods in the pond; there are too many of them and they attack the mother.

Readers are welcome to mark notable events, births, or deaths on this day by consulting the May 23 Wikipedia page.

So that this won’t be a total loss, I invite readers to weigh in on any topic of their choice: ducks, the war, Trump, Nicholas Kristof’s (and his editor’s) response to his column on Israeli abuse of Palestinian prisoners, the new rules on getting a green card (the Administration has made them much harder to get; you have to apply from overseas), and so on. Anything goes, but be civil, please.

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili notices a disparity between the cats’ breakfast and Andrzej’s.

Szaron: He’s eating breakfast.
Hili: And he thinks we’ve already eaten enough.

In Polish:

Szaron: On je śniadanie.
Hili: I sądzi, że myśmy się już najedli

One I reposted from the Auschwitz Memorial:

A Dutch Jewish mother and her son were gassed as soon as they arrived in Auschwitz. He was five years old. https://t.co/6RKhE3rLgu

— Jerry Coyne (@Evolutionistrue) May 23, 2026

It’s a long story but I got all eight and rescued one yesterday that went to rehab.  Mom and eight are in the pond. I need a name for the hen.

They came out of nowhere. Vashti’s brood is still being incubated. I do not know this mother.

“Chiropractic” (a name that in my mind should really be “chiropracty”) is a form of treatment for various disorders in which the cure supposedly comes from mechanical manipulation of the body, especially the spine. It is considered “alternative medicine,” and, as Wikipedia says, is of dubious efficacy for everything:

Many chiropractors (often known informally as chiros), especially those in the field’s early history, have proposed that mechanical disorders affect general health, and that regular manipulation of the spine (spinal adjustment) improves general health. A chiropractor may have a Doctor of Chiropractic (D.C.) degree and be referred to as “doctor” but is not a Doctor of Medicine (M.D.) or a Doctor of Osteopathic Medicine (D.O.). While many chiropractors view themselves as primary care providers, chiropractic clinical training does not meet the requirements for that designation. A small but significant number of chiropractors spread vaccine misinformation, promote unproven dietary supplements, or administer full-spine x-rays.

There is no compelling evidence that either primary or maintenance chiropractic adjustment is effective for any symptoms or diseases, including low back pain. A 2011 critical evaluation of 45 systematic reviews concluded that the data included in the study “fail[ed] to demonstrate convincingly that spinal manipulation is an effective intervention for any condition.” Conclusions about cost-effectiveness are limited by low-quality studies, uncertainty about efficacy, and insufficient evidence.

There is not sufficient data to establish the safety of chiropractic manipulations. It is frequently associated with mild to moderate adverse effects, with serious or fatal complications in rare cases. There is controversy regarding the degree of risk of vertebral artery dissection, which can lead to stroke and death, from cervical manipulation.Several deaths have been associated with this technique  and it has been suggested that the relationship is causative, a claim which is disputed by many chiropractors.

Here’s the meta-analysis article referenced by Wikipedia, click to access:

Part of the paper’s abstract:

Results Forty-five systematic reviews were included relating to the following conditions: low back pain (n=7), headache (n=6), neck pain (n=4), asthma (n=4), musculoskeletal conditions (n=3), any non-musculoskeletal conditions (n=2), fibromyalgia (n=2), infant colic (n=2), any medical problem (n=1), any paediatric conditions (n=1), carpal tunnel syndrome (n=1), cervicogenic dizziness (n=1), dysmenorrhoea (n=1), gastrointestinal problems (n=1), hypertension (n=1), idiopathic scoliosis (n=1), lateral epicondylitis (n=1), lower extremity conditions (n=1), pregnancy and related conditions (n=1), psychological outcome (n=1), shoulder pain (n=1), upper extremity conditions (n=1) and whiplash injury (n=1). Positive or, for multiple SR, unanimously positive conclusions were drawn for psychological outcomes (n=1) and whiplash (n=1).

Conclusion Collectively these data fail to demonstrate convincingly that spinal manipulation is an effective intervention for any condition

Based on the reports of fatalities associated with this procedure (see here for one study of 26 deaths from arterial dissection associated with neck manipulation), I would avoid this therapy: as the paper says, “The risks of this treatment by far outweigh its benefit.”

A new article in the NYT, however, while warning people of using chiropractic for most things, says that it can be useful in alleviating lower back pain.  Click below to read it and you may find it archived here (I can’t access it). We thus have a contradiction between the paper and the analysis above.

 

From the article:

While chiropractors often refer to themselves as doctors, their degree is different from medical doctors.

To practice in the United States, chiropractors typically attend a four-year program where they take courses in basic science and lifestyle and nutrition counseling. They also learn how to perform manual adjustments, which involve putting pressure onto the joints and creating a deep stretch in the tiny muscles that connect the spine’s vertebrae, said William Lauretti, a professor of integrated chiropractic therapies at Northeast College of Health Sciences and a spokesman for the American Chiropractic Association.

(The popping sound heard during this adjustment is a result of gas being released from the fluid that surrounds your joints. While satisfying, Mr. Lauretti said the sound is not the goal of the adjustment.)

After training, chiropractors must pass a national board exam to be eligible for state licensure.

What chiropractors can and can’t do depends on where they practice. For example, in Oregon chiropractors are legally allowed to deliver babies (though they do so rarely) and perform very minor surgery, like stitches and removing skin tags. New York, which has stricter laws for chiropractors, requires them to focus to spinal conditions.

Many insurers will cover many services offered by chiropractors, including adjustments, nutrition counseling and X-rays. Medicare coverage is more stringent, often only covering adjustments, though chiropractors are lobbying Congress to change this.

The paper does say that they’re of some use for lower back pain, in contrast to the Wikipedia article, but I would still consult a genuine M.D. for any pain. As for neck pain, I myself would stay far away:

Chiropractors advertise their services for a wide range of conditions: back pain, arthritis, diabetes, asthma and ear infections. But what the research says chiropractors are effective at treating is doesn’t necessarily match up.

There’s robust evidence that shows chiropractic adjustments can be mildly to moderately effective at managing lower back pain, said Christine Goertz, a professor of musculoskeletal research at the Duke Clinical Research Institute and a licensed chiropractor. An analysis of 47 randomized controlled trials — often considered the gold standard of scientific evidence — determined that manual manipulation was equally effective as treatments like acupuncture or massage therapy.

The article referenced above is from the British Medical Journal, and you can find it here. Back to the NYT:

And the risks of side effects are low compared to some other common interventions, like anti-inflammatory medications and corticosteroid injections. Fractures or other serious complications from spinal manipulation are possible but rare, occurring in roughly 1 per 2 million manipulations, according to one study.

For that reason, spinal manipulation is often recommended as a first line of treatment for low back pain, including in guidelines from the World Health Organization and the Department of Veterans Affairs.

“It is at least as good as, or maybe a little bit better than, other care options for low back pain,” Dr. Goertz said. (Though, as skeptics note, treatments for lower back pain are not very effective in general.)

There is less evidence supporting the use of chiropractic treatment for neck pain. A review of six studies found that chiropractic adjustments did improve acute neck pain. However, the researchers noted that more research was needed to draw any firm conclusion, since many of the studies had only a small number of participants and other limitations.

Some doctors advise against manipulating the neck because of the potential risk of arterial dissection, in which vessels that supply blood to the brain are torn. This can lead to stroke or death. Some analyses have suggested an association between neck adjustments and this injury, but it’s not clear there is a causal link.

I don’t know of a causal link between the spine’s position and stuff like diabetes and ear infections, so I would never go to a chiropractor for anything. But I’m sure some readers have, and perhaps they’ve been helped, though there’s no blind test with individual readers’ cases. If you have experience with chiropractic, describe it below. Note: I am not touting this therapy; use your own judgement. As I said, I will never use it myself.

The article ends with a section on what you should look for if you’re shopping for chiropractors, but I’ll let you read that yourself.

Here’s an entire BBC concert by Joni Mitchell, filmed in September, 1970. I’ve always thought that BBC concerts were the best, as they will always live and without accompaniment.  This one is 48 minutes long, and she had long career after this with some great albums (“Blue,” “For the Roses” and “Court and Spark”).

I have nothing to add to this music save to say that I think she’s the greatest combination of singer, songwriter, and instrumentalist of our time, and like most boys my age (I was 21), I was hopelessly in love with her. James Taylor, who also had a BBC concert that same year, rivals her on the male side for the trio of talents, but Joni has the overall edge.

Oh, and some of my favorite songs here are “Chelsea Morning” (at the start), “My Old Man” (16:47), “Woodstock” (25:10), “All I Want” (31:00, on the dulcimer), “All I Want” (31:45), “California” (36:45), and of course “Both Sides Now” (44:25)

Can you imagine being in the audience and hearing these songs for the first time?

The first comment is ineffably poignant:

@chaulahopefisher4064

2 years ago

I am at the end of my life, 68 years old and in hospice…dying with leukemia. I remember owning my first JONI MITCHELL album with clouds and Michael from mountains, Nathan la frenier, etc…. it changed my life and initiated my music career. I have lived lifetimes since then and changed careers several times. Now, resting on my couch, I listen to this old concert and remember how I felt when I was 13 years old and just hearing these songs for the very first time. at the time she was the older wiser woman whom I wanted to emulate…. now, watching this, she is dewy youth and I the rusk, ready to blow away on the wind with a song in my heart

Today’s strip is an oldie called “idea”, and came with the following note from the author:

There’s an old strip up at J&M, page

It’s Draw Mohammed Day, and I’m away, so here’s an oldie from 2013. Remember: “There is no god, and Mohammed is his prophet.”

Help J&M to keep going by becoming a patron of Jesus & Mo:

or buy a book: – The latest J&M collection of J&M strips, which has a foreword by Jerry Coyne, is available here.

Peace and blessings,

Author J&M

Give the author a few bucks a month or so if you like the strip! Meanwhile, here’s “Idea”.

“Shahada pants,” also called “harem pants“, are baggy trousers once worn by Muslim women, and then became popular for women in the 20th century (these are also M. C. Hammer’s baggy trousers). It’s not clear why Mo is wearing what looks like a Speedo, unless he is going to don shahada pants:

Pratyaydipta Rudra is back with part 2 of his duck photo series (part 1 is here), which of course features DUCKS. Pratyay’s IDs and comments are indented, and you can enlarge the photos by clicking on them:

Here is the second part of the series of photos that I took while spending time with a group of breeding Wood Ducks (Aix sponsa).

A couple of males doing their things:

A duckling floating by:

Mother showing kiddo how to search for food on/under the floating logs:

The duckling tries some on its ownL

A few more ducklings join in:

Like mother like baby. Part 1: The sweet call!:

 Like mother like baby. Part 2: The wing flaps!:

A couple of ducklings resting on the rock:

There were four in total. I think at this time they were aware of me taking photos and got slightly alert:

Duckling swimming in…

 Checking the “mirror”? Not an ugly duckling for sure:

Father was close by floating on the reflective water of the pond:

If you’re getting weary of the endless but necessary attacks on Nicholas Kristof for his misleading and almost antisemitic column about Israel’s “policy” of sexually assaulting Palestinian prisoners, Roy K. Altman has written in the Free Press the definitive critique of Kristof’s column—that is, until investigations by Israel reveal more information.

Wikipedia identifies Altman as “a Venezuelan-American lawyer and jurist who serves as a United States district judge for the United States District Court for the Southern District of Florida” and also identifies him as Jewish.

You can read Altman’s column by clicking below—if you subscribe to the Free Press.

The “miscarriage of journalism” is, overall, the promulgation of “fake news” by Kristof: accusations that are improperly vetted (if at all), which come from questionable sources, and which are contradicted by existing Israeli policy and behavior. Altman’s thesis is that this kind of journalism subverts the “marketplace of opinions” that, it’s been said, is necessary for the American public to judge what is true. Excerpts from Altman and others are indented; prose that is flush left is mine:

. . . we entrust our fellow Americans with the power to make these choices because we believe that a virtuous people will be equipped to make the right choices—principally because we assume that our citizens will be prepared to discern truth from fiction. And we feel comfortable in that assumption because we’ve devised a system of laws—based on evidence, burdens of proof, and a time-tested set of rules—to help us assess the veracity of contested claims. In this way, the jury system isn’t simply a means of ensuring fair trials. Rather, it’s a way of training free citizens to make difficult decisions for themselves.

Today, this whole system is being undermined by the proliferation of false information—especially on the internet. But it’s one thing to have our geopolitical and ideological enemies—whether China, Russia, or the Muslim Brotherhood—pushing unverified claims about our closest allies into our cell phones. It’s another thing entirely for The New York Times, a supposed “paper of record,” and one of its Pulitzer Prize–winning journalists to offer a story that—in its disregard of basic evidence-gathering norms, its unwillingness to investigate the opposing side’s position, and its inversion of common sense—violates the fundamental rules of fairness and due process that have, for centuries, served as the bulwark of our democracy.

In his explosive essay, Kristof accused Israel of using sexual violence against detained Palestinian prisoners as a kind of “standard operating procedure.” Kristof’s claim is thus not merely that a few rogue Israeli prison guards sometimes behave illegally—as happens in all Western democracies, including our own. It is, instead, that the Israeli government has implemented a systemic policy of deploying sexual violence against Palestinian prisoners on a massive scale.

Altman also faults the timing of the column, which came out the evening before the Civil Commission’s issued its 298-page report on sexual violence against Israelis on October 7, 2023. The Israeli Foreign Ministry says that the Commission offered this report to the paper but the paper wasn’t interested.  The paper denies this, so for the time being we have a “he said/she said” situation. Regardless, Altman avers that the “psychological doctrine of primacy” argues that “a fact finder is often most persuaded by the story he hears first”, implying that Kristof, regardless of the deficiencies of his piece, should at least have held off publishing it until the Civil Commission’s report came out.  We won’t go further into this issue, as Altman finds three major faults with the column:

On the merits, Kristof’s article violates three central precepts of our legal system: It disregards basic rules of evidence gathering; it refuses to investigate the opposing side’s views; and it ignores logic and common sense.

Within this list of three there are buried two other sub-lists, which makes the piece a bit confusing. But Altman’s claims and his accusations of Kristof are pretty clear.  I’ll number the main claims as 1, 2, and 3, with sub-lists given letters as well as numbers.

1.) The column is unfair by making uncheckable claims.  

Let’s start with fairness. One of the fundamental rules of our justice system is that a man should be permitted to confront his accuser. Whether in civil or criminal cases, we have for hundreds of years rejected the English Star Chamber’s technique of allowing anonymous witnesses to advance salacious claims in secret. This principle is so essential to any basic system of fairness that it appears repeatedly throughout our laws—from the Sixth Amendment’s Confrontation Clause and its guarantee of public trials to our hearsay rules, which preclude out-of-court statements the accused never had an opportunity to cross-examine. But Kristof’s article relies mostly on anonymous sources whose credibility—much less their political or ideological affiliations—cannot be tested and thus cannot be known.

Here we have four sub-points that expand on this claim:

Kristof justifies his reliance on anonymity by suggesting that his sources would face retribution, either from Israeli authorities or from their own communities, if they came forward. But there are at least four major problems with this excuse.

1a. There is no evidence of retribution against prisoners who claimed to be sexually assaulted, and some claims changed over time:

Kristof provides no evidence of any similar retribution against one of the men he spoke with who has publicly accused Israeli guards of sexual assault. For months now, Sami al-Sai has repeatedly and publicly claimed, including to major news outlets like NPR and the Times, that he was sexually assaulted while in Israeli detention. There are real problems with al-Sai’s claims. For one thing, soon after his detention, he filed a petition with the Israeli Supreme Court, arguing that he was wrongly detained and asking for his immediate release. In that petition, he complained about the quality of the food he was given and said that he was treated badly,but he notably never mentioned any of the sex allegations he’s now advancing.

. . . But the point here is that, far from suffering any retribution for complaining about his detention, al-Sai was later freed, and Kristof never suggests that he’s since been subject to any form of punishment.

1b. Israel has in place an often-used system for registering and adjudicating prisoner’s complains about mistreatment

Two,any cursory review of Israeli legal databases would reveal that Israeli prisons allow Palestinian prisoners to file complaints about the conditions of their confinement—and that these complaints do get filed. Indeed, since 2023, Israel has received 182 such complaints filed by Israel Prison Service detainees from the Gaza Strip. . . But the point is that Kristof offers not a single shred of evidence that any of the Palestinian prisoners who filed complaints has ever been subjected to retribution—much less that this speculation about retribution has ever been a feature of the Israeli prison system.

1c. Kristof’s insistence on anonymity makes his allegations uncheckable. 

Kristof’s reliance on anonymity ensures that no one—most especially the Israelis—can ever prove him wrong. That’s because he not only tells us very little about the accusers, he tells us nothing about the offenses. No locations. No dates. No perpetrators. Israeli prisons, like many of our own, are often videotaped, and those recordings are reviewed not just by prison guards but by prison officials and lawyers. If Kristof had conducted anything resembling a fair analysis, we would have expected him to have asked to review some of this footage. But there’s no indication that he ever did. Nor can anyone else do so now because Kristof gave us no details to check against his claims.

1d. The accused has a right to the details of accusations, which gives them a chance to defend themselves. “The accused” here include onot just IDF soldiers and prison officials, but Israel itself, which is threatening to sue the paper.

Four, we should acknowledge that it’s always hard for victims of sexual assault to advance their claims publicly. But any system committed to basic fairness recognizes that the accuser’s preference for anonymity must bend to the accused’s right to confront the claims against him. And that’s not just because we want to allow the accused to test the reliability of the accuser’s claims. It’s also because we presume that the mere act of declaring something publicly itself evinces some degree of credibility.

Kristof fails to mention, for example, that Euro-Med, one of his principal sources, is  an organization with known ties to Hamas and has made false claims about Israel before, including the blood libel that Israel harvests organs of prisoners.

On to the second major point:

********

2.) Kristof failed to investigate “the opposing side’s position”, including systemic aspects of Israeli law that would make widespread abuse improbable.  Again Altman breaks this down into a sublist of three items:

2a. Kristof doesn’t mention Israeli laws prohibiting sexual abuse of prisoners. 

First, in advancing his claim that Israel permits or encourages sexual abuse of detainees as a matter of state policy, Kristof fails even to mention that sexual offenses are strictly prohibited under Israel’s penal code. Indeed, the Israeli legal system imposes enhanced penalties when sexual offenses, including by security personnel, are motivated by race, skin color, or national origin. And Israeli military forces are bound by a host of additional directives, which further protect prisoners from state-sponsored violence, including sexual violence.

Altman implies that Kristof was trying to hide this fact.  Well, yes, probably, but shouldn’t we know that this conduct is against the law? What’s worse is that Kristof also fails to mention that similar Palestinian prisoners’ allegations of abuse have led to serious prison sentences for over a dozen Israeli abusers.

2b. Kristof fails to mention that there’s a special unit of Israeli police designed to investigate claims of prison misconduct. 

Kristof likewise fails to disclose that there’s an elite unit in Israel’s police force, called Lahav 433, tasked with investigating misconduct by the Israeli Prison Service. Now, it’s entirely possible that Israel created this unit inside what’s known as the “Israeli FBI” and filled it with elite servicemembers who do nothing but sit in an office all day, twiddling their thumbs and happily allowing misconduct to go unchecked. The far more plausible inference, I submit, is that Israel didn’t create this elite investigative unit simply to do nothing. But the point is that we don’t know—and cannot know—the answers to any of these questions from Kristof’s “opinion” piece because he never bothered to mention this unit, never thought to interview its members, and never investigated the extent to which it actually enforces Israeli law.

Well, the existence of such a unit doesn’t prove that there wasn’t misconduct, but it does show that there were quite a few deterrents to misconduct.

2c.  A quote from a former Prime Minister of Israel was presented, but a later clarification of that quote by the PM was ignored. Perhaps worse than the two omissions above is Kristof’s shoddy (indeed, slimy) treatment of a comment by a former Israeli Prime Minister. Here’s what Kristof said.

To try to make sense of what I found, I called up Ehud Olmert, who was Israel’s prime minister from 2006 to 2009. Olmert told me he didn’t know much about sexual violence against Palestinians but was not surprised by the accounts I had heard.

“Do I believe it happens?” he asked. “Definitely.”

“There are war crimes committed every day in the territories,” he added.

Of all people to ask! Olmert had been convicted of corruption and bribery as Israel’s finance minister and served 16 months of a 27-month prison sentence. Kristof doesn’t mention this, and Kristof might have added, post facto, this clarification by Olmert:

Olmert clarified, in a statement to The New York Times and obtained by The Free Press, that “Mr. Kristof’s article includes claims of extraordinary gravity: that Israeli authorities have directed the rape of children, that dogs have been used as instruments of sexual assault, that systematic sexual torture is state policy. I did not validate these claims.”

Surely this should have been an addendum to Kristof’s piece. It wasn’t, The NYT hasn’t responded directly to this clarification save to say that Olmert’s statement was tape-recorded and presented accurately “in context”. But when when Olmert later denied that he was not validating claims of sexual abuse, that was no deemed worthy of a mention or correction by the NYT.

********

3.) The “dog rape” claims is pure blood libel, in line with previous anti-Israel claims. (And there’s no evidence for it. Indeed, many have deemed the “trained dog rape scenario” to be impossible (I’m not ruling it out with complete certainty, and it will surely need investigating. But I do find it stupid.)

Which brings us to Kristof’s final departure from our fundamental precepts: his lack of common sense. The most salacious claim in Kristof’s piece is the allegation that Israel is now systematically training dogs to rape Arab Muslim men. This claim used to live only on the fringes of the wildest internet conspiracy theories. In 2010, there was a spate of shark attacks in the Red Sea, situated between Israel and Egypt. For whatever reason, most (if not all) of these attacks occurred on the Egyptian side of the border. I happened to be in Israel that summer and heard an Egyptian minister wondering whether the Mossad, Israel’s foreign intelligence service, was systematically training sharks to eat only Arab flesh. My father and I, hearing this over the radio in a cab, laughed at the absurdity of the claim.

What we’ve seen over the last few years is that wild and illogical conspiracy theories that used to reside only on the internet and in the anti-Israel Arab street now circulate in the mainstream media, brought there by irresponsible journalists who flout evidentiary standards, ignore basic notions of fairness, and disregard common sense and the truth. What kind of a society will we be if we don’t reverse this disturbing erosion in our ability to tell truth from falsehood?

Altman’s claims add up to a serious indictment of Kristof’s column, which, though presented as an op-ed piece, could easily have run as a news piece, but the paper was apparently too lazy to check its claims. To me, the most serious accusations are twofold: the failure of Kristof to document the accusations so they could be checked, even making the complainers anonymous; and also Kristof’s failure to mention the anti-Israel jostpru of some of the individuals and organizations (especially Euro-Med) making the claims.  It is a one-sided column, even for Kristof, who in the past hasn’t done due diligence in checking claims.

The more I think about this, the more I think Kristof should be fired, as the op-ed is a serious lapse in standards, even for an op-ed. If op-ed editor James Bennet could be fired (as he was) for allowing Senator Tom Cotton to write an op-ed arguing that the military might be used to quell post-George Floyd riots, surely Kristof should also be forced to resign. After all, Cotton was just giving an opinion that didn’t rest on facts, while Kristof made many allegations that he didn’t bother to either qualify or investigate.

But of course Kristof is a golden boy for the NYT, and the his column buttresses the NYT’s well known stance against Israel. The NYT is standing behind his column (it has no public editor), and don’t expect it to fact-check his claims. That will be up to Israel.

This is the last full batch of photos I have save a few singletons and doubletons. But I ain’t too proud to beg. . .

Today we have some lovely photos by Ephraim Heller on, of all things, herring. Ephraim’s captions and IDs are indented, and you can enlarge the photos by clicking on them.

Pacific herring (Clupea pallasii) spend most of the year dispersed across the open North Pacific, but each spring they converge on Sitka Sound to spawn. The 2026 spawning biomass was estimated at roughly 233,000 tons of mature herring. This attracts commercial fishermen, fishing birds, Steller sea lions, gray whales, humpback whales, and. . . me. My last post featured humpback whales.

Today’s post features the mayhem taking place off the coast of Sitka on the opening day of commercial herring season. The fishing boats employ purse netting, a form of seine netting, in which a school of fish are surrounded by a net which is pulled tight around them. As the net closes and the herring are forced to the surface, a buffet is created for glaucous-winged gulls (Larus glaucescens) and bald eagles (Haliaeetus leucocephalus).

A commercial fishing boat hauling in a seine net filled with Pacific herring:

The herring are forced to the surface by the seine:

Glaucous-winged gulls at the buffet:

It was impressive to watch the gulls catch a herring, quickly reposition the squirming fish in their bills, and swallow them in flight in a matter of seconds:

Such speed seems necessary because kleptoparasites abound:

Now for the bald eagles:

Air traffic control is kept busy:

Right now I’m reading Steve Stewart-Williams’s new book: A Billion Years of Sex Differences: How Evolution Shaped the Minds of Men and Women. It is neither a pure blank-slate social-constructivist book nor a hereditarian, genetic-deterministic book, but takes an evidence-based middle ground, asking to what extent behaviors and mindset are molded by evolution and to what extent social conditioning plays a role.  I won’t give a take on the book as I’m not yet finished, but it does make many arguments I’m familiar with.  One of these is the familiar and well-documented claim that, based on different degrees of parental investment, men concentrate more than women on beauty when looking for a mate, while women are less interested in appearance than are men but more interested in paternal behavior, status, and wealth of a prospective mate. These are not absolute differences, of course: many men want women who will invest a lot in their offspring (we are, after all, generally monogamous), and many women want men who are pleasing to the eye. This is a difference in average preferences, not absolute ones characterizing all individuals.

Although some of this average sex difference in behavior may reflect social conditioning, its evolutionary background is likely based in part on the differential investment between the sexes in offspring: although many societies are polyandrous and monogamous, on average males still have a potentially larger number of offspring than do females. This appears to be true in many societies, as well as in our closest relatives, the apes and in most species of animals. Women, who by virtue of their reproduction (as well as by both the evolutionary and social impetus to do most of the childcare) need fathers who will do their share of parental duties and provide for the offspring.  And of course men do share some of those duties, but are also more interested in casual sex and adultery—a way to spread more of their genes when they don’t invest as much in offspring.

If you want the evidence for this, read Stewart-Williams’s book or the references he cites.

Why am I pondering this? Because when I went to the library the other day, I caught a glimpse of myself in the entry door and thought, “Geez, look at that ugly old man!”  Whatever attractive physical features I once had—and I was never close to being a Robert Redford—have vanished, carried away by time’s wingéd chariot.  Women, too, worry about ageing, and are even more concerned about it because of a key difference between men and women: as women get older and become unable to reproduce, they become less desirable faster than do men.  A man can have offspring even in his eighties, while in their early fifties most women hit menopause, which means no more kids. Since men have largely evolved to be physically attracted to women who can give them children, women try harder than do men to retain the signs of youth: hair color, plastic surgery, botox, and the like. On average, they try harder to retain physical attractiveness because it is that rather than status that is a dominant way of attracting partners—and most people want a partner.

Which brings up a tangential point: what about gay men and women?  I don’t know their preferences but it would be interesting to study (and I’m sure people have) whether men attracted to other men for lasting partnerships are less concerned with looks than are women attracted to other women for partnerships.

Back to the point, which is this. It is my theory, which is mine (and likely many other people’s) that there is really no objective difference in physical attractiveness with age, in either men or women.  Old men and women look different from their younger selves (I now refrain from looking in mirrors), but the beauty associated with youth and the loss in attractiveness associated with age are not anything objective (beauty never is, of course).  We are simply evolved to think that those features associated with having more offspring on us are more “beautiful”, as those mindsets are the ones promoted by natural selection. This explains why women are more concerned with the physical ravages of time then are men, for their physical attractiveness to the other sex wanes faster with time. I’ve often heard older actresses say that by the time they hit forty, Hollywood no longer wants them, while that doesn’t happen so much with male actors.  Why is this difference retained past the age of reproduction in women? I suppose it’s because it’s largely innate and most women didn’t live past menopause during most of our evolution.

Thus beauty is in the eye of the beholder: it is subjective, like all standards of beauty, but the subjectivity is molded in certain directions by natural selection.

I am not, of course, saying that this is good—only that much of it is natural. I do not want to commit the naturalistic fallacy here, but simply consider what aspects of our minds and behaviors might be based on genes, to what extent, and whether those evolutionary bits have been molded by natural selection.

This parallels a point I’ve made before: other aspects of our senses, like tastes, are clearly molded by natural selection.  I have said, for example, that to a vulture rotten meat tastes as good as an ice-cream sundae does to us.  Animals have evolved to search for food that tastes good because, over time, our senses evolve to find the food we need to grow and reproduce to be tasty. In other words, natural selextion has molded our taste buds and our brains so we prefer what is nutritious and fosters reproduction.  This can be hijacked: we now eat too many fats and sweets because those substances were desirable to our ancestors as they were rare but promoted reproduction.  Now they no longer do so because of the surfeit of “bad” food on tap.  But our taste buds haven’t yet caught up to our health.

Why do feces and vomit repel us, smelling foul? It’s very likely that these substances were evolutionarily associated with the spread of disease, and so we evolved smell-detectors that find them repugnant. After all, dung beetles love the odor of feces!

I’ll draw one more parallel here. Anybody who thinks about it seriously must admit that male orgasms, intricate and immensely pleasurable physiological mechanisms associated with ejaculation, have evolved as a way of promoting reproduction (the evolutionary basis of female orgasms is more speculative, but there is no shortage of adaptive hypotheses).  Orgasms are a way of getting men to produce offspring, just as sweetness is a way of getting us to eat sugar. And, like eating too many sweets, orgasms can be hijacked—severed from their reproductive function by condoms, chemicals, or medication. Organizations like the Catholic Church have tried mightily to try to reconnect sex and reproduction, but it is largely in vain.

I have undoubtedly written this too fast, as I just had some thoughts and wanted to get them down on paper before I forget them. I’ve considered that I’m trying to dispel my idea that I’m unattractive, and in so doing thought about physical attraction in general. And yes, I’m also reading Stewart-Williams’s book, which considers in detail this and other aspects of human (and animal) mentation and behavior.

Once you get an evolutionary mindset, all sorts of behaviors now become more interesting. That doesn’t mean we should make up adaptive stories and consider those stories to be true, but neither should we ignore possible evolutionary explanations. To explain the evolutionary basis of human behaviors and minds will be hard, as most of them evolved in the unrecoverable distant past—in our ancestors.  But some of the explanations are testable, and here I must stop.

I did one of my favorite shopping expeditions today, stocking up on groceries in Chinatown. A giant supermarket opened there in the last couple of years, and it has everything one would want for Chinese food, including the hoisin sauce, sesame oil, soy sauce, and Botan Calrose short-grained rice that I favor.  But there are many, many aisles of things that aren’t even labeled in English, and tons of goodies like the first two shown below. I love wandering the aisles (usually I’m the only white guy there, and certainly the only Jew), so it takes me much longer to shop than I usually do.  They also have Chinese pastries, including various buns and cakes that are perfect for a weekend breakfast.  Also congee and crullers.

About the title above: no, this, it isn’t food for cats, but cat-shaped food for humans, plus a “veggie cat” nail salon downstairs.  The Chinese do love their cats, and it shows in the many products emblazoned with moggies.  The “good luck cat”  (maneki-neko in Japanese), raising its hand to wish you prosperity, is ubiquitous, and is on this first group of cat pastries:

I have a reclining maneki-neko in my office that is solar powered, so it waves its paw when the sun is out.  No good luck on overcast days!

I’d never seen this one before: cat-shaped butter-and-cheese cookies in a great package. Now I’m sorry I didn’t buy them:

And this was downstairs, but closed on Sunday. What on earth is a “veggie cat,” and what does it have to do with fingernails?

Bill Maher continues his defense of Israel on the country’s birthday by pointing out the pervasive Israel-dissing of the mainstream media, adding that there is one thing that the American Left and Right agree on: Israel is the “monster country of all time” (he includes the NYT in this category). He also calls out Democrats, professors, influencers and young people for hating on the Jewish state.  Some of the quotes Maher gives will curl the soles of your shoes.  As he says, “Jew hatred isn’t just acceptable, now; it’s cool. Celebrities love it and make it trendy; it’s the new Che Guevara tee shirt.”

The guests on view are Dan Jones, a historian and author of Castles: A Fortified History, and David French, New York Times columnist and co-host of the podcast Advisory Opinions. I wonder what French thought of Maher’s slap at the NYT at 1:44.

This is more serious and less funny than his usual bits, but it’s a good one.

British physicist and science popularizer Phil Halper emailed me about two new surveys he and others had conducted with 1675 physicists, asking their views about fundamental questions in the field.  This is not, of course, a guide to the truth, but simply a snapshot of where physicists stand on things like quantum gravity, black holes, and the Big Bang.  The links to the surveys are in the text below, sent by Phil. I’ll highlight a few of their stands on interesting (to me) issues. Phil’s words are indented:

My co-authors and I just released the largest survey of physicists ever done. In conjunction with the American Physical Society we got more than 1600 replies to our Big Mysteries Survey.

What’s relevant for debates between believers and non believers is that we only got a large consensus on one topic and that is the Big Bang should be understood only as a theory that says the universe evolved from a hot dense state that says nothing at all about a beginning of time . Interestingly, we got 68% in both this large survey of a broad cross section of physicists and for a smaller scale survey we did of leading physicists in Copenhagen with the Niels Bohr Institute. This seriously undermines William Lane Craig’s Kalam cosmological argument which is defended by claiming that physicists agree that the Big Bang has shown that the universe had a beginning, we now have strong empirical evidence that physicists think no such thing.

On the fine tuning argument the most popular answer  was that constants are brute facts that need no explanation. This was found in both of our survey and in the Phil papers survey of philosophers.

You can see the results here

And the Copenhagen Survey is here.

JAC: The Copenhagen Survey involved views of 151 physicists attending a conference on black holes in 2024.

And there is a video with Sean Caroll, Niayesh Afshordi, and Ghazal Geshnizjani discussing the results here. [JAC: I’ve put the video below.]

You might also enjoy the recent debate I did on science, cosmology and faith with Stephen Meyer here.

I haven’t yet watched the videos, but I did look at the big survey; you can access the pdf for free by clicking on the screenshot below:

First, a bit of methodology from the paper:

In the summer of 2024, a survey was conducted at the Black Hole Inside Out Conference in Copenhagen to assess physicists’ views on a range of ongoing controversies [1]. Eighty-five scientists responded. One year later, the authors collaborated with the American Physical Society’s Physics Magazine on a substantially larger follow-up survey, which polled 1,675 participants from the magazine’s readership and the members of the American Physical Society. The Physics Magazine survey therefore provides a broader view of attitudes within the physics community and allows comparisons with the more focused conference-based Copenhagen sample.

Taken together, the two surveys make it possible to compare views expressed in a specialist conference setting with those expressed by a much larger and more heterogeneous respondent pool. On some topics, the results are remarkably similar; on others, the differences are substantial. This paper presents the Big Mysteries Survey results, offers commentary on their interpretation, and highlights points of agreement and divergence relative to the Copenhagen survey

Here are a few bar charts from the paper. First, what the Big Bang implies (Sean Carroll explains this at the beginning of the video below).  A big majority of physicists think that the Big Bang says nothing about whether it marked the ‘beginning of time”:

Of course tyros like me have no idea why the Big Bang doesn’t imply the beginning of time, but so be it: all of this is above my pay grade but I’m happy to see where physicists stand on these issues now.

What about cosmic inflation? A bit more than half of physicists think that cosmic inflation (the expanding universe) explains “an unexpected uniformity” of the universe.

Dark matter: does it explain anomalies in the rate of rotation of galaxies? No consensus:

Also no consensus on whether dark energy explains the accelerating expansion of the Universe:

There’s no consensus on why the universe’s physical constants appear to be “fine-tuned” for the existence of worlds that can produce life. (This is a favorite theological argument for God.) The “brute facts” explanation brings a stop to searching for explanations, but only 26% of physicists hold it.  20%—and I think this includes Carroll—think it’s explained by a multiverse.

There are more graphs, but I’ll show just one more. What kind of picture of the Universe is provided by quantum mechanics? The Copenhagen explanatoin, which people like me can’t reconcile with physical reality, is the favored explanation. I believe it was Feynman who said that if you think you understand quantum mechanics, you don’t. I’m still baffled by the issue of quantum entanglement, and don’t even understand the experiments buttressing it.

And here’s the video with Sean Caroll, Niayesh Afshordi, and Ghazal Geshnizjani.  Carroll, as usual, gives some very succinct and lucid explanations. The other physicists are good as well.

Have a look at the paper for more opinions, including about what black holes mean and what they do.