Why Evolution is True Feed

Today I’ve borrowed another batch of bird photos (with permission) from Aussie biologist Scott Ritchie, a great photographer whose Facebook page is here. Scott’s captions and IDs are indented, and you can enlarge his photos by clicking on them. Scott hails from Cairns.

I got up at six, heard light rain, made a coffee and checked the radar. There was quite a massive rain shower headed towards Cairns from the north. Anyway, I decided to take my time and just see how it panned out. There was a break after the big initial rain band, with rain ending around 8 to 830. My plan was to go to Redden Island and just concentrate on shorebirds because it was sort of dark outside. And I was trying out my 200 to 800 lens with the 1.4X teleconverter (max mag at 1120!). When I left, I saw that there was a new band of rain forming to our north. Bummer! I probably had about an hour hour and a half tops to get my birds.

And I did have fun with a couple of Pied Oystercatchers showing how they got their name. The little Red-capped Plover and the Greater Sand-Plover also put on a pretty good show. And I got a couple of terns in flight. It was fun to run into the gang just before the next rain band hit. Cheers and I hope you enjoy them.

Pied Oystercatcher [Haematopus longirostris] finds a succulent clam:

But it’s hard work getting it free from the shell:

He keeps trying while his mate keeps a hopeful eye.:

At last it’s coming free:

He washes the sand off the meat:

And down the hatch:

That was yummy!:

A Greater Sand-Plover [Anarhynchus leschenaultii] loosens up:

Shakes it loose:

And goes for a run on the beach!:

Caspian Tern [Hydroprogne caspia]:

Hovers looking for fish:

Red-capped plover [Anarhynchus ruficapillus]:

Doing his yoga stretches:

Crested Terns [Thalasseus bergii], Black-naped Terns (small ones; Sterna sumatrana). Please confirm the IDs!:

This YouTube video hasn’t gotten many views since it was posted three months ago, but I like it. It also is telling in showing the age difference in how Jews react when asked to “act or talk like a; Jew”. Here are the YouTube notes:

Inspired by the viral “Like a Girl” campaign by Always, JITC (Jewish Institute for Television & Cinema) Hollywood Bureau’s new video challenges the entertainment industry’s harmful Jewish tropes by showing what being Jewish really looks like, through the voices of Jewish children.

They describe “acting like a Jew” not as being neurotic or greedy – depictions that we too often see on screen, but as living with kindness, compassion, justice, and a drive to make the world better.

Already praised by Mayim Bialik, Nancy Spielberg, and others, the video calls on Hollywood to portray Jewish pride, joy, and authenticity.

Read the story behind the video and join the movement to change the narrative >> (Go here).

The older folks act out the stereotypes of a Jew (I love the guy who swigs Mylanta and the one with the cigar who controls the globe), while the younger people evince the actual principles of Judaism (I like the little girl who lights the candles). Go to the site that explains this video to learn more.

I think this video was deemed necessary because of the rise of antisemitism and the attendant stereotypes of Jews. For example, lots of people, including Young Turks moderator Ana Kasparian has said that the Israeli lobby controls the US (see this enlightening video showing Bill Maher vs. Kasparian).

Yesterday we were talking about Michael Shermer’s new book on Truth, but only insofar as I disagreed with his podcast characterization of free will.  Now, however, while promoting his book on the radio, Shermer encountered some misleading “progressivism” about sex from one of public radio’s most well-known announcers and on NPR’s biggest station: Brian Leher on WNYC in New York.  You can read about what happened by clicking on the sceenshot below at BROADview News. And below that you can hear the whole 35-minute interview of Shermer by Lehrer by clicking on the black screenshot and then on the “listen” arrow. You might want to start about halfway in (see below).

First, some excerpts from the article:

Like so many liberals, I grew up with NPR as my soundtrack: BJ Leiderman’s thumping theme songs in the background, or the soothing voice of the late great Susan Stamberg. I loved NPR.

It became difficult to listen to starting in 2016, as the mission changed from reporting to making sure that we all had the same opinion. Then, once Katie Herzog mentioned a game in which you turn NPR on at random times and see if they’re talking about race, NPR started to seem like a joke. But also: it wasn’t funny. It wasn’t funny when they reported on gender—because they often reported activist talking points about the medical interventions as facts, and labeled truths as disinformation.

We’ve seen shifts in other mainstream media outlets, even a kind of two-steps-forward, one-step-back movement in The New York Times’ reporting on gender. But NPR is more dug in than ever. I assume this is in reaction to the defunding of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. To admit that they were so biased that they didn’t deserve public funding was to retire their pitch for more funding from listeners—although what they should have done was pivot, to do a better job and argue that they deserved the funding.

All this is background for what happened yesterday on WNYC, the most-listened-to public radio station in the country. Journalist Brian Lehrer has hosted a weekday news call-in show for some 35 years, and was widely admired as one of the best out there—fair-minded and willing to engage with different voices. Like many others in the media, he changed.

You can see the change when “Mabel” calls in at 16:23. Mabel apparently didn’t tell the call screener what she wanted to say on the air, because she actually got through to the broadcast.  Mabel then emphasized that there were two biological sexes and members of one cannot become members of the other. As you’ll hear, Lehrer pushed back, saying that biological sex can be changed through “transgender’ hormones and surgery. (Lehrer apoparently doesn’t know the difference between sex and gender.) More from the article:

Mabel likely didn’t tell the screener what she really wanted to say, because it started with how America is becoming a third-world country and complaints about the lack of affordable housing. But then she said “The Democratic Party has let me down,” because they’ve also been untruthful. “Now they’re saying that men can become women and I feel that you are just discounting women as a species,” she said. Dems were “trying to make us believe that you can turn a male into a female.” She added that women were more than their anatomy; they were also shaped by their experiences.

That last part allowed Lehrer to make his case that “trans women would say they had their experience of being a woman before they had any hormone replacement therapy or surgery.” Amazingly, he added: “Maybe you’re just biased against a segment of society who you don’t like.”

Actually, you don’t have the experience of being a woman before you transition; you have the feeling that you are a woman and want to change aspects of your body to conform to that. More:

This was absolutely shocking—to hear Brian Lehrer, the former Voice of Reason, tell a caller that because she feels lied to about this issue she’s hateful was astonishing, and just incredibly unprofessional.

Shermer, on the other hand, handled it like a champ. He went into the difference between subjective truths—I feel like I was born in the wrong body—and objective ones: we cannot change sex, which is binary and based on gametes. Shermer said he worried about the future of the Democratic Party because it cannot distinguish between objective and subjective truths.

Lehrer himself seemed to be in shock, having hermetically sealed his studio to protect against any facts that interrupted the narrative he’d constructed. “This is what the right wing says, that it’s gender ideology,” he retorted. WNYC has worked hard to exclude liberal dissident voices, which has allowed them to maintain that left/right framing.

But Shermer pushed on. He explained the difference between the vanishingly rare occurrence of childhood-onset gender dysphoria and rapid-onset, the theory of social contagion, the poor evidence base, the shift in several European countries. “The facts matter,” he said.

Lehrer: “It sounds like you’re being very dismissive.” He said doctors would disagree that you can’t change sex, or that sex is binary. And finally, when Shermer came back with reasonable answers, Lehrer said: “You’re here supposedly representing science.” That is: Lehrer believed Shermer had lost all credibility by applying the same lens to youth gender medicine that he applied to everything else.

Most shocking about this whole exchange was what happened after it ended. Lehrer invited people who were offended to call in. After Shermer was gone! “Equal time,” he said—as if they’d ever given a minute to any of us wanting to share another side of the story.

And so, the parents and grandparents and uncles of trans kids rang up. . . .

Shermer did handle it like a champ, acknowledging that biology is binary but gender is an “internal, subjective state.”   If you want to just hear the relevant exchange, start the podcast at 16:23.

At the end of the piece, author Lisa Davis gives the emails of the segment’s producers in case readers or listeners want to write them, but you can go to the site above and complain if you wish. Regardless, Lehrer shows how fully NPR has bought into the theory that humans can change from one sex into another. Shermer does a great job correcting Lehrer, emphasizing that gender is an internal, subjective state and, as far as biological sex goes, we are not clownfish: humans can’t change from one sex to another.

 

Reader EdwardM has sent us some travel photos from Sri Lanka.  His captions are indented, and you can click on the photos to enlarge them.

These photos are of statuary and frescoes in the Dambulla Cave Temples outside Kandy, Sri Lanka. Kandy, by the way, has a venerated shrine which holds one of Buddha’s teeth! The Dambulla Cave Temples date to the first century AD. The caves, which sit high on a bare rock escarpment, were used as a refuge for a king, called Valagamba, and his people during one of the many invasions of Sri Lanka. To commemorate their survival, Valagamba and heirs founded a monastery in the caves. Over the centuries images, frescoes, and statues of the Lord Buddha, the bodhisattvas, and various gods and goddesses were installed. Typically they were funded by wealthy Sri Lankans for their private redemptive purposes, much like many Christian sites were funded by the wealthy in hopes of favor or forgiveness. The caves are full of these wonderfully vibrant icons.

The caves themselves were welcoming, with soft light and wonderfully cool air; a respite from the brutal Sri Lankan midday heat. One note I’d like to add. Sri Lanka is a fabulously beautiful land, and I know it has had a complex past with much turmoil and violence. But I became endeared to the people; they are delightful and they get genuine pleasure from other people’s happiness. They aren’t faking it. I loved the country, the people, and I encourage anyone who can go; visit.

Here are a few of the shots from the complex. There are five caves but two of them we closed for work when we were there. First, a reclining Buddha with statues of minor gods and goddesses at his head and one of the bodhisattvas (I have no idea which) seated at left. The Buddha was carved out of the rock in the cave. There are several of these at Dambulla.

This image gives an idea of the size of this reclining Buddha. This one is not the largest in the complex. Amazing that this is carved from the rock itself:

 

Some more statuary. These are depictions of the bodhisattvas, the enlightened followers of Buddha. Unlike the reclining Buddhas, most of the statuary was NOT carved from the rock of the cave, but was instead carved outside the caves and installed within:

The monks (it’s an active monastery) place offerings to various gods and goddesses. Here they put these fabrics on statues of a couple of the Enlightened, but I don’t recall the significance:

More shots of statuary:

The walls and ceilings were covered in beautiful frescoes, some ancient. Here are a few shots:

Michael Shermer‘s new book is out, and in the video below, 55 minutes long, he gives an oral summary of its contents (a link to the book is at the bottom). The video was sent to me by reader Barry, who called my attention to the section on free will, and I’ve started the video at the 45-minutes mark—right when Shermer discusses the intractability of the “hard problem” of consciousness and then segues to free will. Here are the YouTube notes.

In this episode, Michael Shermer walks through the core ideas behind his new book Truth: What It Is, How to Find It, and Why It Still Matters, breaking down how humans confuse meaning with reality, stories with facts, and confidence with correctness.

I’ve put a few remarks about Shermer’s view of free will, which seems to me confused, below the video.

Shermer avers that he’s a compatibilist: someone who accepts both determinism and free will. As Wikipedia puts it under “compatibilism“:

Compatibilism is the belief that free will and determinism are mutually compatible and that it is possible to believe in both without being logically inconsistent.

And yet Shermer says he’s not a determinist, although he does define free will as “libertarian, could-have-done-otherwise” free will.  Shermer rejects libertarian free will because he says it’s dualistic, drawing a distinction between mind and matter, and here he’s absolutely right.

But then he argues that “determinists are wrong”! Why? He doesn’t say, but makes a confusing argument that the “could-have-done-otherwise” notion of free will is bogus because it involves replaying a tape of what happens when an instant of “choice” occurs.  Shermer says that if this is the contention, then of course you will do the same thing when you replay that instant, but argues that this is simply because you’re replaying a tape that already has a known consequence, like replaying a record. But if he thinks that, then what does he mean by saying that libertarian free will, which is the contention that replaying the tape could yield a different consequence, is wrong? He says that replaying the tape will always give the same result because it’s a tape. But that is not the argument that physical determinists make. The argument is that you are starting a fresh tape at the moment of choice, but it will always give the same result—absent any quantum effects (see below).

Shermer contends that “the past is determined, but the future isn’t”.  He doesn’t explain why, but here again I agree with his claim that the future is not absolutely determined. But Shermer doesn’t explain why it isn’t.  I will: the future is not completely determined only insofar as fundamentally unpredictable physical effects occur—that is, quantum effects, which as far as we know defy absolute predictability. We know quantum effects applied at the Big Bang, so at that moment the future of the universe was not predetermined.

But do quantum effects apply to human behavior and “choice”?  Perhaps; we just don’t know. Maybe an electron in a neuron in your brain will jump at the moment you’re ordering dinner, so you order fish instead of a hamburger.  If that could happen—and again we don’t know if it does—then yes, you could have done something other than what you did. However, because there’s no mind/body dualism, there is no way that you had any agency in moving that electron; it just happened. Is that what Shermer means by “free will”? If so, it’s a lame kind of free will, because the average person who believes in free will thinks in a dualistic way. Although they don’t say this expicitly, they contend that they have agency that can affect our neurons, brains and behavior.

I’ve written before about how predictability doesn’t equate to determinism, and by determinism I mean physical determinism, defined by Anthony Cashmore this way (this paper is what made me a determinist):

I believe that free will is better defined as a belief that there is a component to biological behavior that is something more than the unavoidable consequences of the genetic and environmental history of the individual and the possible stochastic laws of nature.

Cashmore adds that the environment is still “chemistry”, which of course is also “physics”:

Here, in some ways, it might be more appropriate to replace “genetic and environmental history” with “chemistry”—however, in this instance these terms are likely to be similar and the former is the one commonly used in such discussions.

In other words, to Cashmore (and to me) this form of free will involves dualism. It’s woo. Cashmore, who admits that unpredictable quantum effects can lead to a universe where pure predictability is impossible, adds that that still does not give us free will as defined above—free will not governed by the laws of physics.

We know now that on a macro level, predictability is quite good: we can predict, using classical mechanics, when solar eclipses will occur, where the planets will be in ten years, and we can also use classical mechanics to put people on the Moon. But since classical mechanics is simply a reification on a large scale of quantum mechanics, the future is not completely predictable as quantum effects accumulate. I’ve used as an example the possibility that genetic mutations could be quantum phenomena in some way. If that’s the case, then we can’t predict at a given moment what mutations will occur, and if that is the case, then the raw material for evolution is unpredictable, which further means that evolution is unpredictable.

Nevertheless, because our behaviors are still controlled by the laws of physics, if there is no mind/body dualism then there is no “agency” as most people believe it, and thus there’s no libertarian free will.

But Shermer, as an avowed compatibilist (he appears to be strongly influenced by Dan Dennett), thinks that we do have a form of “free will”, and supports it by using as an example his ability to affect his own future by making preparations for tomorrow’s morning bicycle ride, even if he doesn’t want to ride. He puts his bike in the trunk, he lays out his bicycle clothes for the morrow, and so on. As he says:

“I can choose to do certain things now to make my future different than what it was in the past. That’s freedom; that’s volition; that’s choice. That’s free will.  That’s as good as it gets. So all the determinists, they’re wrong; they’re just simply wrong; they’re assuming we live in a universe that we don’t live in: a predetermined universe.”

It’s sure not choice the way most people mean it, and believe me, I’ve had this argument any number of times. People are not physical determinists, but dualists, just like the saxophone player who nearly attacked me when I told him that at the moment he decided to play an improvised jazz solo, that solo was not something he could alter by thinking.  People are not sophisticated enough to draw a distinction between free will and physical determinsim; they are not sophisticated enough to see that the only physical force that can ultimately change a behavior is quantum mechanics.

Shermer contends that “In the real universe, determinists don’t exist.” He says he’s never met one. Well, Mr. Shermer, meet Mr. Coyne and Mr. Sapolsky, both physical determinists.  We don’t distort the notion of “free will” just so we can say people have it. (Dennett thought that belief in determinism would erode society, and that’s why he wrote two books redefining free will for the masses.)

Finally, Shermer tells us why he doesn’t think there are true determinists: it’s because we act as if we have free will.  He says that some people who pretend to be determinists take pride in the books they write. As he says, “Why would you take pride in your books? You didn’t do anything; it was all determined at the Big Bang.”  Well, I don’t have to respond to that, Shermer knows better. We may well be evolved to think we have agency. We certainly do think that, and have evolved to think that, but I don’t know if natural selection produced that frame of mind. Regardless, we can’t help taking pride in our accomplishments, or looking down on people who do bad things, because that’s the way our brains are configured. That does not mean that physical determinism should not affect our views of punishment and reward: it should, especially with regard to the justice system. But I’ve discussed this many times before.

The last thing I want to say is that some atheist writers whom I admire greatly—people like Shermer, Pinker, and Dawkins—seem to shy away from the free-will problem. I am not sure why; perhaps they realize that if you deny libertarian free will, people will think you’re crazy. You tell me!

Here’s Michael’s book, which came out yesterday from the Johns Hopkins Press.  I haven’t yet read it, but surely will. If you click on the cover you’ll go to the Amazon site:

The latest Jesus and Mo strip, called “looks,” came with a message: “It’s World Hijab Day on Sunday! Fortunately, it’s also No Hijab Day, so it balances out.”

And (a recurring theme): Mo himself shows precisely the phenomenon he criticizes.

Here are the guidelines for World No Hijab Day from the Council of Ex-Muslims of Britain:

How to take part in No Hijab Day:

• We are calling on women of all beliefs and backgrounds to take off their hijab, and put it on a man on February 1.
• Use this opportunity to spark meaningful conversations about purity culture in Islam, challenge sex-apartheid, and show your solidarity with ex-Muslim, Iranian, Afghan, and other women around the world who refuse to wear the hijab.
• Share your thoughts, experiences, and support using #NoHijabDay and #HijabSilences
• Let your voice inspire real change for women’s rights.

But I don’t want to wear a hijab!

Note that you can support the strip for as little as $1 per month. Also, see the funny FAQ about the strip.

We have one submission, today from Paul Handford, and I’ll show part 1 of his hummingbird photos. Paul’s captions are indented, and you can enlarge his photos by clicking on them.

While living in south-central British Columbia, I was so fortunate as to have had close encounters with North America’s smallest breeding bird, the Calliope hummingbird, which weighs just short of 3 grams— about 0.1 oz— and is just over 3 inches long.  Its scientific name, Selasphorus calliope, is well merited:  the generic name derives from ‘selas‘ = Gk. ‘a bright flame’ plus ‘phoros‘ = ‘bearing’, ‘carrying’, while the specific epithet references Kalliope, chief of the muses, and goddess of poetry.

First, the female.  Here are four views of her;  in two you can see that the wing-tips reach beyond the short tail;  in others you see the buffy flanks and faintly-spotted throat (the closely similar female Rufous hummer has a tail that extends beyond the wing-tips, and is strongly rufous on flanks and tail).

Then, males.  The brilliant magenta feathers of the male’s gorget are very obvious when the bird faces you.  These feathers can be erected so as to form a ‘sunburst’ ruff, which males will do when engaged in disputes, and in courtship displays (see below):

The magenta of the throat feathers is produced by the phenomenon of interference rather than by pigment and, as mentioned above, this optical effect is striking when directed at the viewer.  But when seen from the side, these feathers lose their brilliance, often not appearing to be coloured at all:

Many hummingbirds are pretty pugnacious, and often engage in quite spectacular combat.  In these next pics, two males try to impress one another, and the ‘sunburst’ erect ruff is visible:

Assisted suicide, also known as “medical assistance in dying”, or MAID, has been legal in Canada since 2016 when the country’s Supreme Court ruled that “eligible adults with grievous and irremediable medical conditions” were entitled to medical assistance to end their lives.

In 2021 the permitted conditions for MAiD were expanded to this standard:

9.1.5 the person has a grievous and irremediable medical condition. These criteria are met only where the provider and assessor are of the opinion that:

(a) the person has a serious and incurable illness, disease, or disability;
(b) the person is in an advanced state of irreversible decline in capability; and
(c) the illness, disease, or disability or that state of decline causes the person enduring physical or psychological suffering that is intolerable to the person and cannot be relieved under conditions that the person considers acceptable.

(You can read the current MAID standards here.)

In the past MAID was largely restricted to people with a terminal illness, but now it includes patients with a medical condition that may not be terminal but causes physical or psychological sufffering that is intolerable. This thus includes people who want to end their lives because they’re suffering psychologically and/or physically with a medical condition and have found no relief. (“Depression”, however, does not qualify you in Canada for MAID; you must be suffering from a medical condition in a way that is intolerable. Nor can “depression” be listed on the death certificate—only the antecedent medical conditions that cause suffering.)  Similar standards apply in the Netherlands; however, in that country intolerable and irremediable mental distress itself qualifies you for euthanasia. (Subramanya wrote about this in a previous Free Press article, “I’m 28. And I’m scheduled to die in May.“)  The Guardian gives the Dutch standards:

Under Dutch law, to be eligible for an assisted death, a person must be experiencing “unbearable suffering with no prospect of improvement”. They must be fully informed and competent to take such a decision.

How is euthanasia performed in Canada ? The National Standards say this (these are limited to adults over 18 of sound mind, though if you have dementia you can order MAID in advance so long as you do it when you are in a period of compos mentis):

There are 2 methods of medical assistance in dying available in Canada.

Method 1: a physician or nurse practitioner directly administers a substance that causes death, such as an injection of a drug. This is sometimes called clinician-administered medical assistance in dying.

Method 2: a physician or nurse practitioner provides or prescribes a drug that the eligible person takes themselves, in order to bring about their own death. This is sometimes called self-administered medical assistance in dying.

Subramanya’s new article in The Free Press discusses the case of Kiano Vafeian, a 26-year-old Canadian who was blind and struggling with Type 1 diabetes with attendant severe neuropathy.  This had made hin depressed and he asked for MAID. He eventually got it and died from one of the two methods above. His death certificate said that his MAID was prompted by blindness and severe peripheral neuropathy; depression was not listed.  You can read the story, if you subscribe, by clicking on the screenshot below, or reading the free archived article here.

People are alarmed by assisted suicide, and the opponents are often religious.  Regardless, the proportion of all deaths that occur by MAID in Canada is in the range of 5-7%, and are rising. Here’s a graph of the increase from the article:

And the fate of requests for MAID. Note that most are approved.

You will be familiar with the reasons for objections to euthanasia. For very religious people, it is often that people should die when God wants them to go, regardless of their suffering (I call this the “Mother Teresa objection”). More rational people see MAID as a slippery slope, especially for someone like Kiano who wasn’t terminal. The new conditions, they say, will lead people who could otherwise lead tolerable lives to be euthanized in a moment of despair. (I’ll put some of the quotes below.) But of course, doctors have to testify that the euthanized patient did meet the criteria, so presumably they would investigate whether any depression could be cured (this is what they do in the Netherlands).  It’s not clear that Kiano was treated for his depression, though it’s implied, but to my mind I can understand how blindness and diabetes in a young man, with the diabetes slowly destroying his body, is sufficient to ethically permit euthanasia.

Kiano’s mother objected to his euthanasia because he seemed to have moments of enjoyment before he was put to sleep: he went to Mexico on vacation, joined a health club, and got a nice condominium in Toronto with a full-time caregiver paid for by mom. But it wasn’t enough.  He requested and got MAID on December 30, 2024.

Here are some opinions of non-relatives opposed to Kiano’s MAID:

Sonu Gaind, a University of Toronto psychiatry professor, told me that the fastest-growing category in the country’s MAID statistics is not cancer, heart disease, or any specific illness. It is a catch-all labeled as “other.” MAID deaths in the “other” category nearly doubled to 4,255 in 2023 from a year earlier, adding up to 28 percent of all assisted-suicide deaths, Gaind’s research found.

When I told Gaind about Vafaeian and what he had been through, Gaind responded: “I’m not denying his suffering, but it doesn’t paint a picture of someone who is constantly suffering. That contradiction should trouble people.”

He said that Canada’s assisted-suicide system “has been set up so that if the person says their suffering is intolerable, assessors will say, ‘Who am I to question that?’ ”

and

David Lepofsky, a blind lawyer and disability-rights advocate in Toronto, said that focusing on suffering rather than pain invites broad, subjective interpretations—and that the MAID process lacks any independent safeguards before death is delivered. “Blindness doesn’t cause pain,” Lepofsky said. “Millions of us live good, independent lives.”

and

Ramona Coelho, a family physician and member of Ontario’s MAID Death Review Committee, said provincial oversight reports increasingly show in general that the person’s suffering appeared to be driven less by medical decline than by loneliness, social distress, and fear of the future. “Young people relapse, and they also recover,” Coelho told me. Allowing government-sanctioned assisted suicide “during periods of acute vulnerability risks mistaking transient suffering for permanent decline.”

However, a doctor who performs MAID says this:

These are not people who seek assisted suicide “because of mental illness alone,” Wiebe insisted when we talked. “They have other things. . . . That’s what all of my experience is.”

Remember that chronic depression is a medical condition that is sometimes incurable and causes the same intolerable suffering specified by Canadian law (read the Subramanya’s previous [archived] account of a Dutch woman who requested and got euthanasia on the basis of severe and untreatable depression).

Some physicians object to MAID because their brief is to save lives (“First, do no harm”), but that is misguided. Throughout the U.S., for example, physicians often end the lives of suffering terminal patients by giving them an overdose of morphine. This is MAID, though it’s not given for depression. In 12 American states, though, including Illinois, assisted dying is legal.

The objections to Kiano’s euthanasia seem to me misguided—based on someone’s subjective opinion of the sufferer’s feelings. Gaind questions whether Kiano’s suffering really is intolerable.  He doesn’t seem to understand that such people can have, or act out, moments of seeming normality. Lepofsky, also blind, avers that his own sightlessness is tolerable to him, so why isn’t it tolerable to Kaiano? (He seems to forget that Kiano is suffering from painful effects of type 1 diabetes.) And Coelho doesn’t realize that proper treatment of people seeking MAID for mental illness might not cure severe depression.  In the case of 28-year-old Zoraya ter Beek in the Netherlands, the woman had tried many types of treatment and drugs for mental illness, and none of it worked. She wanted to end the pain of living, which had gone on for years, and I can fully understand that. (She died with assistance in 2024.)

It seems to me that the Canadian law doesn’t go far enough: it should consider mental illness alone sufficient grounds for euthanasia IF it is intolerable and doctors have been unable to relieve it over a substantial period of time. If doctors recognize that, who are other people to say that the mental distress is tolerable?

I think it’s time to realize that we should let some people go even if they are not medically terminally ill, for to do otherwise is to allow suffering that can’t be cured.  I am not worried about a “slippery slope,” which can be avoided with proper medical supervision before euthanasia. I am more worried about people suffering their whole lives and not being allowed to have a peaceful death with dignity. The alternative is a self-inflicted end by hanging, jumping from a building, or lying down in front of a train. Is that what we want?

I will add a poll:

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This is the last batch I have, so please send in your good wildlife photos. I know some of you out there are hoarding them. Don’t make me beg!

Fortunately, UC Davis math professor Abby Thompson has sent some photos of life in tide pools. Abby’s captions are indented, and you can enlarge her photos by clicking on them.

The weather over New Year’s was stormy; most of these pictures were taken when the rain let up for a few hours.   There are generally fewer creatures visible at this time of year in any case-—the big surge in intertidal species happens in the spring in Northern California.   An exception was one particular species of nudibranch,  Phidiana hiltoni, of which there were dozens for some reason.

Genus Heptacarpus (some kind of shrimp). Not a great photo, but the color is true, and if you look closely you can see she’s carrying eggs:

Superfamily Mytiloidea (some kind of mussel). Tidepools make you very aware of how much we don’t know.  This mussel species moved into my local pools in 2022, and this ID is still the best I have for it:

Pisaster ochraceus (Ochre star) Admiring his reflection:

Pollicipes polymerus (Gooseneck barnacle). The red “lips” on this cluster (common this time of year) I’ve read variously are because of the shade they’re in, the cool weather, high hemoglobin levels, or all of the above:

A baby gooseneck barnacle:

Velutina velutina (velvet shell snail):

Family Ampithoidae (some kind of amphipod). Again not a great photo but the spectacular color is true. The next photo shows the whole animal:

Family Ampithoiuidae:

Phidiana hiltoni (nudibranch) This was the species there were dozens of, with very few other species putting in an appearance:

It cleared up just at sunset one day, for this nice view over Bodega Head:

We’re not going to have a political discussion today, which can apparently lead to a website version of a fractious Thanksgiving dinner involving a family with sharply different political views. Instead, marvel here at the courage of two aged Japanese ladies, whose job is to catch deadly sea snakes—to make soup. It’s shown in the four-minute BBC video below.

Now all banded sea snakes are highly toxic, and are the kraits (genus Bungarus). Although bitten victims can be treated with antivenom, mortality from some species can be as high as 80% in untreated victims (age of victim and time until treatment begins are crucial). The venoms are neurotoxic and the symptoms are dire.

The snakes being hunted in this video, are probably the black-banded sea krait (Laticauda semifasciata), and they’re caught for food. From Wikipedia:

Black-banded sea krait venom is reportedly ten times stronger than that of a cobra; however, as with the vast majority of venomous snake species, the black-banded sea krait generally does not aggressively strike at humans unless it is cornered or threatened (or otherwise maliciously provoked), preferring to conserve its energy and venom supplies for hunting purposes, reacting defensively only as a very last resort.

Despite its potent venom, which is concentrated in the snake’s venom glands (behind the eyes), the meat of the erabu snake is a winter staple food in southern Japan, where it is believed to replenish a female’s womanhood or increase fertility. Irabu soup, or irabu-jiru (ja:イラブー汁), is said to taste like miso and a bit like tuna. This dish was a favorite of the royal court of the Ryukyu Kingdom; it is thought to have analeptic properties.

During certain warm years, the sea snakes are drawn en masse to the sea caves and tide pools of the coastal Ryukyu cliffs, in search of fresh water to drink and possibly to mate. It is in these cryptic spots where, by cover of darkness (and usually guided only by lantern light), elderly women—who are the most experienced at preparing irabu-jiru—explore the dangerous caverns in pursuit of black-banded sea kraits, which the ladies catch with their bare hands. Some areas may contain hundreds of the snakes, some engaged in active breeding balls, yet the women hike through the caves barefoot or with minimal protective gear. As with the handling of any venomous snake species, the sea snakes are grabbed quickly behind the head, as to avoid any potential envenomation. They are placed in a cloth bag, alive, and later quickly dispatched and prepared in a simple broth with kombu or other edible kelp, and possibly a bit of pork.

Look how they handle these snakes! Bare-handed, and no real protection.  Would you do this?

As I’m occupied with another writing assignment, and because I’m trying to take a wee break from writing about news, as it’s so depressing, I’ll proffer this post to readers who want to weigh in on Minnesota.

As I’ve said before, I haven’t formed firm opinions about a lot of aspects of the ICE/military presence there and the clashes with protestors, and that’s because it’s hard to do so when you’re not on the ground seeing what happens in the street. Each side has its own videos and own interpretations, and it’s hard to figure out what is real and what is propaganda. It is clear that ICE has acted in a heavy-handed manner, that Trump is trying to punish that blue state, but it’s also hard to judge whether some ICE actions are defensible. Further, it’s clear that some of the protestors are, like Martin Luther King, Jr.in the Sixties, trying to provoke violence by the authorities as it helps their cause. That is civil disobedience, but for ICE the morality of the protestors’ cause is (to me) not nearly as clear as it was for the civil rights protests.  I do not favor open borders, but it seems like many of the protestors—like many Democrats in general—do.

At any rate, that’s all the opinions I have now, and they are subject to change. (I haven’t weighed in on what happened to Renée Good, except that there needs to be an objective and thorough investigation by both the federal government and Minnesota, with sharing of information by both). If ICE officers look like they committed crimes, they should go through the judicial process.

So, here are some questions to discuss, but feel free to say what you think about the situation in general. Remember, be civil and don’t jump down my throat for raising this issue.

a.) How heavy-handed is ICE acting relative to how they should be acting?  Should they even be there?
b.) It’s likely that the National Guard and the U.S. military will be employed if the protests continue. Is this justifiable? If so, is it proper for Trump to invoke the Insurrection Act?
c.) Is the violence being exacerbated by the protestors, or is it solely the result of ICE?
d.) Do you think the protestors really want no enforcement of immigration laws, i.e., open borders? Would that apply to every immigrant, including the criminals so loudly touted by Kristi Noem?
e.) Are governor Walz and Minneapolis mayor Jacob Frey exacerbating the situation? Are they correct in calling for ICE to leave Minnesota?
f.) If you were President, how would you handle the situation?

. . . and so on.

Colin McGinn is a well-known philosopher of mind who has written a short piece on the “history of knowledge” on his personal website. He takes an evolutionary view of the topic, which is what he means by “history”. But I found the piece, despite McGinn’s reputation and his authorship of nearly 30 books (many of them on consciousness), confusing and probably misleading. You can read it yourself by clicking on the link below

No doubt McGinn will take issue with my criticisms, for I am but a poor evolutionary biologist trying to understand this the best way I can. However, I do know some biology.  I will put what I see as McGinn’s two main misconceptions under my own bold headings, with McGinn’s quotes indented and my own comments flush left.

McGinn conflates “knowledge” with “consciousness”.  In general, knowledge, which most people define as “justified true belief” is acquired, and does not evolve.  Since it involves belief, it does require a mind that is conscious.  (I’ll take consciousness as McGinn does. meaning “having subjective awareness” or “being able to experience qualia: sense perceptions like the feeling of pain and pleasure, the apprehension of color and touch, and so on”.)

The problem is that what evolves is consciousness, not “knowledge”.  We do not know whether consciousness is a direct, adaptive product of natural selection, or is a byproduct of evolution, but it is certainly a result of our neuronal wiring. I’ll leave aside the problem of which animals are conscious. Based on parallel behavior, I think that many vertebrates and all mammals are conscious, but of course I can’t even say if other people are conscious. (Remember Thomas Nagel’s famous article,  “What is it like to be a bat?” We don’t know.) So consciousness has evolved, perhaps via selection, and it’s likely that the consciousness of many vertebrates had a common evolutionary origin based on neuronal wiring, though again it may have evolved independently in different lineages.

But regardless of these unknowns, since “knowledge” is largely acquired rather than inherited (remember its definition), it’s difficult to see how knowledge can evolve genetically, rather than being learned or passed on culturally.  Monkeys and apes peel bananas differently from how we do it: starting from the flower (bottom) end rather than the stem end (try it–it’s easier), but surely that knowledge is not evolved.  Anything acquired through experience is not knowledge bequeathed by evolution, even though the capacity to acquire certain knowledge (like learning language) can be evolved.

Now in some cases “knowledge” seemingly can be inherited, so the conflation is not total. Male birds of paradise, for example, “know” how to do specific displays to lure females of their species, and that is an instinct (does that count as “knowledge”?) which is inborn, not learned. But different birds of paradise have different displays or songs, and those displays surely evolved independently based on evolved differences in female preferences. We cannot say with any assurance that the genes or neuronal wiring for one species evolved from homologous genes and wiring in another species. Is one songbird’s knowledge of how to find edible berries evolutionarily related to another the ability of another species of songbird to find food? Both may be learned or both may be evolved, but there’s no reason to think that “knowledge” of different species forms an evolutionary tree the way that their genes do.

You can see this conflation in McGinn’s opening paragraph, which assumes that there was a primordial “knowledge” that gave rise to descendant knowledge:

 This is a big subject—a long story—but I will keep it short, brevity being the soul of wisdom. We all know those books about the history of this or that area of human knowledge: physics, astronomy, mathematics, psychology (not so much biology). They are quite engaging, partly because they show the progress of knowledge—obstacles overcome, discoveries made. But they only cover the most recent chapters of the whole history of knowledge—human recorded history. Before that, there stretches a vast history of knowledge, human and animal. Knowledge has evolved over eons, from the primitive to the sophisticated. It would be nice to have a story of the origins and phases of knowledge, analogous to the evolutionary history of other animal traits: when it first appeared and to whom, how it evolved over time, what the mechanisms were, what its phenotypes are. It would be good to have an evolutionary epistemic science. This would be like cognitive science—a mixture of psychology, biology, neuroscience, philosophy, and the various branches of knowledge. It need not focus on human knowledge but could take in the knowledge possessed by other species; there could be an epistemic science of the squirrel, for example. One of the tasks of this nascent science would be the ordering of the various types of knowledge in time—what preceded what. In particular, what was the nature of the very first form of knowledge—the most primitive type of knowledge. For that is likely to shape all later elaborations. We will approach these questions in a Darwinian spirit, regarding animal knowledge as a biological adaptation descended from earlier adaptations. As species and traits of species evolve from earlier species and traits, so knowledge evolves from earlier knowledge, forming a more or less smooth progression (no saltation). Yet we must respect differences—the classic problem of all evolutionary science. We can’t suppose that all knowledge was created simultaneously, or that each type of knowledge arose independently. And we must be prepared to accept that the origins of later knowledge lie in humble beginnings quite far removed from their eventual forms (like bacteria and butterflies). The following question therefore assumes fundamental importance: what was the first type of knowledge to exist on planet Earth?

Note that he implicitly envisages an evolutionary tree of knowledge. It would be clearer if he used “consciousness” for “knowledge”, and defined both of them, which he doesn’t.  But even if you think that, well, McGinn may be onto something here, that “something” comes crashing down when he starts talking about what “knowledge” was the ancestral knowledge. This brings us to the second problem:

McGinn is dead certain that the first “knowledge” that evolved, by which he really means the first quale, or subjective sensation, is the experience of pain. There is no evidence , or even a convincing scenario, for this proposition.  Here’s where he proposes this, and not with much doubt, either:

I believe that pain was the first form of consciousness to exist.[1] I won’t repeat my reasons for saying this; I take it that it is prima facie plausible, given the function of pain, namely to warn of damage and danger. Pain is a marvelous aid to survival (the “survival of the painiest”). Then it is a short step to the thesis that the most primitive form of knowledge involves pain, either intrinsically or as a consequence. We can either suppose that pain itself is a type of knowledge (of harm to the body or impending harm) or that the organism will necessarily know it is in pain when it is (how could it not know?). Actually, I think the first claim is quite compelling: pain is a way of knowing relevant facts about the body without looking or otherwise sensing them—to feel pain is to have this kind of primordial knowledge. To experience pain is to apprehend a bodily condition—and in a highly motivating way. In feeling pain your body knows it is in trouble. It is perceiving bodily harm. Somehow the organism then came to have an extra piece of knowledge, namely that it has the first piece, the sensation itself. It knows a mode of knowing. Pain is thus inherently epistemic—though not at this early stage in the way later knowledge came to exist. Call it proto-knowledge if you feel queasy about applying the modern concept. We can leave the niceties aside; the point is that the first knowledge was inextricably bound up with the sensation of pain, which itself no doubt evolved further refinements and types. Assuming this, we have an important clue to the history of knowledge as a biological phenomenon: knowledge in all its forms grew from pain knowledge; it has pain knowledge in its DNA, literally. Pain is the most basic way that organisms know the world—it is known as painful. Later, we may suppose, pleasure came on the scene, perhaps as a modification of pain, so that knowledge now had some pleasure mixed in with it; knowledge came to have a pain-pleasure axis. Both pain and pleasure are associated with knowledge, it having evolved from these primitive sensations. This is long ago, but the evolutionary past has a way of clinging on over time. Bacterial Adam and Eve knew pain and pleasure (in that order), and we still sense the connection. Knowledge can hurt, but it can also produce pleasure.

When you poke an earthworm, it recoils.  Does it do so because it feels pain? I doubt it, as it seems to me unlikely that an earthworm is conscious. Perhaps it just has an evolved neuronal network and morphology that retracts the body when it senses (not consciously) that it’s been touched. It could simply be like our kneejerk reaction: a reflex that evolved, but is not perceived consciously (remember, we take our hand off a hot stove before we are even conscious of feeling pain). But even if you think earthworms are conscious, certainly single-celled animals are not, yet they exhibit adaptive behavior as well.  One-celled animals can move toward or away from light, are attracted to chemical gradients that denote the proximity of food, move away when disturbed by a touch, seek out other individuals for reproduction, and so on. All animals, whether you think they’re conscious or not, have some kind of evolved instinct to find individuals of the opposite sex when it’s time to have offspring. And surely that “knowledge” (if you will) is the most evolutionarily important of all.

Why, then, is awareness of pain supposed to be the very first “knowledge” to evolve?  Why not responses to touch, to chemical gradients, to a drive for reproduction, or all the qualia that involve senses: touch, taste, sight, hearing, hunger and thirst, and so on?  All of those can be seen as adaptive as a sense of pain, whether it be conscious or not.

Seeing various behavioral responses as constituting “knowledge”, then, adds nothing to our understanding of either evolution or consciousness. It muddles one’s thinking.  The problem is instantiated by sentences like this one:

The organism knows how to get about without banging into things and making a mess. We could call this “substance knowledge”.

Well, simple organisms like rotifers also avoid obstacles.  They are almost certainly not conscious, and you can’t have knowledge without consciousness.  Do they “know” how to get about without banging into things, or is it an evolved trait based on cues associated with “being touched”. What “knowledge” is being shown here?

McGinn then proposes, with near certainty, an evolutionary progression of “knowledge”:

So, let’s declare the age of sense perception the second great phase in the development of knowledge on planet Earth. The two types of knowledge will be connected, because sensed objects are sources of pain and pleasure: it’s good to know about external objects because they are the things that occasion pain or pleasure, and hence aid survival.

I will now speed up the narrative, as promised. Next on the scene we will have knowledge of motion (hence space and time), knowledge of other organisms and their behavior (hence their psychology), followed by knowledge of right and wrong, knowledge of beauty, scientific knowledge of various kinds, social and political knowledge, and philosophical knowledge. Eventually we will have the technology of knowledge: books, libraries, education, computers, artificial intelligence. All this grows from a tiny seed long ago swimming in a vast ocean: the sensation of pain.

The “knowledge” of right and wrong is a learned and cultural phenomenon, completely unlike our “knowledge” of pain, whether it be conscious or a simple reflex reaction to harmful stimuli. What bothers me about all this is not just the mere conflation of “knowledge” with “consciousness”, or the idea that pain was the first “knowledge”; it is the sheer certainty McGinn displays in his essay. Perhaps that comes from his being a philosopher rather than a biologist, as biologists are surely more cautious than philosophers. A quote:

 It was pain that got the ball rolling, and maybe nothing else would have (pain really marks a watershed in the evolution of life on Earth).

I could say with just as much evidence that the perception of touch (either conscious or as an evolved reflex) “got the ball rolling”.  And a response to touch in simple organisms cannot be construed as “knowledge” in any respect.

There is more in this article, but I find the whole thing confusing.  We don’t even know whether consciousness evolved as an adaptive phenomenon. We don’t know whether our consciousness is a post facto construct for perceiving qualia that the body has already detected (remember, you pull your hand off a hot stove before you feel pain). Above all, we don’t know the neuronal basis of consciousness, much less which animals are conscious and which are not.  In Matthew Cobb’s biography of Francis Crick, you can see his subject struggling with this issue in the last part of his life, and admitting that we know little about it. Crick laid out a program for sussing out the neuronal basis of consciousness, but, as Matthew noted in these pages, scientists haven’t gotten far with this problem.

I have no idea why McGinn is so certain about evolution and qualia. I don’t know any evolutionist who would agree with his thesis. I even broached it to a neurobiologist who knows evolution, and that person found the whole concept totally misguided.

As I said, McGinn is no slouch; he is a highly respected philosopher whose work I’ve read and respected. But I get the feeling that he’s driven out of his lane here.

Yes, ’tis true: I’ve run out of readers’ photographs and there will be no more such posts until I get some good photos.

In the meantime, have a photo of one of last spring’s ducklings, all grown up and zooming around on Botany Pond, learning to take off and fly:

Spring is coming!

My Facebook page is filled with criticisms of all the craziness in the world due to Trump’s actions, and of course most of the news and websites I read are similar.  Because I usually use Facebook to see what my friends are doing, or to look at pictures of cats, ducks, and other animals, I find the constant harping on Trump and his deeds depressing. That’s not because I disagree with these views; as should be clear by now, I think the man is mentally ill and that his presidency has been a disaster, with him veering between one crazy, drastic decision and another. (The threat to take over Greenland was merely the latest dumbass move.)

I say this because I think I need to make my position clear before I ask a question. And the question is this:

What do you think are the beneficial things Trump has done?

Why am I asking this? Well, first, because I think he has done some good stuff, including helping Israel, taking out Maduro, attacking Iran along with Israel, defining sex for official purposes as biological sex rather than self-identification, reducing illegal immigration at the border (I am not, of course, approving of the heavy-handed and often injurious tactics of ICE), and trying to expand the use of mental institutions to reduce the privations suffered by homeless people who are mentally ill.  Again, I am not saying that the net effect of all of Trump’s policies are good for America, as one can easily make the case otherwise—most notably in his changing a checks-and-balance Presidency into a quasi-dictatorship.

However, I don’t think that people’s opinions of policies should rest on an assessment of the person, but should be based on the policies themselves.  It’s both divisive and irrational to refuse to admit that, if someone does something good, it’s really bad because the person is bad (in Trump’s case, he’s often called a “Nazi”, which is hyperbolic and inaccurate).

So, I’m asking readers to answer the question above. If you wish to add a caveat about disliking Trump as I have done above, you’re welcome to do so, but I’m not asking for harangues about the man, as I can read those everywhere on the Internet. (I can guarantee that this  very post will lead me to be called a “right-winger,” just as my opposition to biological men being put in women’s prisons or participating in women’s sports has led to my being called a “transphobe”. More on that later.)

If you don’t think he’s ever done anything good, feel free to say that, too.

Well, we’ve run out of photos from readers and I am heartbroken again. BUT we still have the third and final batch of photos from Cairns resident Scott Ritchie, summarizing his best photos of 2025.  Scott’s captions are indented, and you can enlarge the photos by clicking on them.  Scott’s Facebook page is here.

Warning cuteness ahead! Here’s a couple of mammals from my Western Australia trip. A Honey Possum [Tarsipes rostratus] feeding on a Scarlet Banksia at Cheynes Beach.

It even more cuteness. A numbat [Myrmecobius fasciatus] searches for his nest hollow. This was taken it Dryandra Forest National Park, Western Australia:

I like my ducks and he’s not the prettiest one, but I love his weirdness. The Musk Duck [Biziura lobata]. This male has this weird leather pouch under his chin and the tail feathers like a crown of the Statue of Liberty. And he likes laying on his back like a sea otter. Very cool beast. This was taken in Albany, Westerrn Australia:

I love my fairywrens. They’re usually extremely beautiful but before they grow up, they’re sort of brownish birds designed to blend in with the bush. This is a young male Splendid Fairywren [Malurus splendens] in eclipse phase, just starting to grow his beautiful blue feathers. You can just see them around his eye. This photo gives us a hint of what’s to come. Pemberton Western Australia:

And here’s the Splendid Fairyrwen in full eclipse mode singing is heart out. I love the blue and gray patchwork. It reminds me of a flannel shirt I have:

“in case you’re wondering what I look like in full costume, here it is!” Male Splendid Fairywren, Nannup, Western Australia.

I was really fortunate to run across a group of Baudin’s Black Cockatoos [Zanda baudinii] near Pemberton. A very endangered and magnificent parrot:

A Yellow-tailed Black Cockatoo [Zanda funerea] navigates through the forest. This bird was part of a group that had been warned to flee in response to an incoming sea-eagle. Most cockatoos post sentries to stand guard while the others feed:

A sentry male Crimson Rosella [Platycercus elegans] in a Gumtree forest in the Dandenong Ranges in Victoria:

I really taken to capturing wider views, “birdscapes”. They allow you to appreciate the birds and their natural environment. Here’s a group of Great Knots [Calidris tenuirostris] and a Great Egret [Ardea alba] at sunrise on the Cairns Esplanade:

I really love Red-tailed Black Cockatoos [Calyptorhynchus banksii]. It was great to get this male in flight with his tail spread so that you can appreciate his lovely red panels. It was also cool to get him flying across the rainforest in the rain. An iconic north Queensland moment:

Spring is rebirth. And here a group of Radjah Shelducks [Radjah radjah], mother, father and their nine little ducklings, cruise across Freshwater Lake in Cairns. I call this a duck love train:

And finally, our local Rufus Owls, after several nest failures, managed to produce a chick. This young fledgling Rufous Owl [Ninox rufa] cautiously sticks his head out the late evening light, looking for his parents to come and feed him. These birds had survived harassment by waves of Sulphur-crested Cockatoos that wanted to take over the nesting hollow. However, the owls were staunch in their defense, and eventually the chick fledged and left the nest. A end of year treat for all us local birders!:

In the last week I’ve finished watching an excellent movie and reading a mediocre book, both of which were recommended by readers or friends. I rely a lot on such recommendations because, after all, life is short and critics can help guide us through the arts.

The good news is that the movie, “Hamnet,” turned out to be great. I had read the eponymous book by Maggie O’Farrell in 2022 (see my short take here), and was enthralled, saying this:

I loved the book and recommend it highly, just a notch in quality behind All the Light We Cannot See, but I still give it an A. I’m surprised that it hasn’t been made into a movie, for it would lend itself well to drama. I see now that in fact a feature-length movie is in the works, and I hope they get good actors and a great screenwriter.

They did. Now the movie is out, and it’s nearly as good as the book. Since the book is superb, the movie is close to superb. That is, it’s excellent but perhaps not an all-time classic, though it will always be worth watching. Author O’Farrell co-wrote the screenplay with director  Chloé Zhao, guaranteeing that the movie wouldn’t stray too far from the book. As you may remember, the book centers on Agnes, another name for Shakespeare’s wife Anne Hathaway, a woman who is somewhat of a seer (the book has a bit of magical realism). And the story covers the period from the meeting of Shakespeare and Agnes until Shakespeare writes and performs “Hamlet,” a play that O’Farrell sees as based on the death from plague of their only son Hamnet (another name for Hamlet; apparently names were variable in England).  I won’t give away the plot of the book or movie, which are the same, save to say that the movie differs in having a bit less magic and a little more of Shakespeare’s presence. (He hardly shows up in the book.)

The movie suffers a bit from overemotionality; in fact, there’s basically no time in the movie when someone is not suffering or in a state of high anxiety.  But that is a quibble. The performances, with Jessie Buckley as Agnes and Paul Mescal as Shakespeare, are terrific. Buckley’s is, in fact, Oscar-worthy, and I’ll be surprised if she doesn’t win a Best Actress Oscar this year.  The last ten minutes of the movie focuses on her face as she watches the first performance of “Hamlet” in London’s Globe theater, and the gamut of emotions she expresses just from a close shot of her face is a story in itself.  Go see this movie (bring some Kleenex for the end), but also read the book.  Here’s the trailer:

On to the book. Well, it was tedious and boring, though as I recall Mother Mary Comes to Me, by Indian author Arundhati Roy, was highly praised. Roy’s first novel, The God of Small Things, won the Booker Prize and I loved it; her second, The Ministry of Utmost Happiness, was not as good.  I read Mother Mary simply because I liked her first book and try to read all highly-touted fiction from India, as I’ve been there many times, I love to read about the country, and Indian novelists are often very good.

Sadly, Mother Mary was disappointing. There’s no doubt that Roy had a tumultuous and diverse live, and the autobiography centers around her  relationship with her mother (Mary, of course), a teacher in the Indian state of Kerala. The two have a tumultuous connection that, no matter how many times Roy flees from Kerala, is always on her mind.  It persists during Roy’s tenure in architectural school, her marriage to a rich man (they had no children), and her later discovery of writing as well as her entry into Indian politics, including a time spent with Marxist guerrillas and campaigning for peaceful treatment of Kashmiris.

The book failed to engage me for two reasons. First, Mother Mary was a horrible person, capable of being lovable to her schoolchildren at one second and a horrible, nasty witch at the next.  She was never nice to her daughter, and the book failed to explain (to me, at least) why the daughter loved such a hateful mother. There’s plenty of introspection, but nothing convincing. Since the central message of the novel seems to be this abiding mother/daughter relationship, I was left cold.

Further, there’s a lot of moralizing and proselytizing, which is simply tedious. Although Roy avows herself as self-effacting, she comes off as a hidebound and rather pompous moralist, something that takes the sheen off a fascinating life.  Granted, there are good bits, but overall the writing is bland.  I would not recommend this book.

Two thumbs down for this one:

Of course I write these small reviews to encourage readers to tell us what books and/or movies they’ve encountered lately, and whether or not they liked them. I get a lot of good recommendations from these posts; in fact, it was from a reader that I found out about Hamnet.

I’ve posted many times about the “God-shaped hole” (GSH) that all of us are supposed to have. In case you’ve been in, say, Alma-Ata, you will know what it is: it’s the longing for religious faith that nearly all of us are supposed to harbor, a lacuna that, unless filled by belief in God, leaves us miserable and unsatisfied with life.

Of course the GSH is bogus: many of us are atheists and don’t feel any longing for religion. Further, if you’re a nonbeliever, it’s very hard if not impossible to force yourself to believe the pablum shoved down our throats by the faithful—or those who, nonbelievers themselves, like the NYT’s Lauren Jackson, see belief as the spackle we need to fill America’s GSH.  As I’ve written several times, the GSH is touted these days as the force behind America’s so-called “return to religion”, which is not an increase in faith but a temporary pause in a long-term drop in faith.

In his essay “What if false beliefs make you happy?“, my philosopher friend Maarten Boudry (also an atheist) criticizes the view that we should believe things even if they’re dubious, so long as they comfort us. An excerpt:

But such a project of self-deception cannot tolerate too much in the way of self-reflection. You don’t just have to bring yourself to believe in God; you must also – and simultaneously – forget that this is in fact what you’re doing. As long as you remain aware that you’re engaging in a project of self-deception, I doubt that Pascal’s advice will achieve the desired effect. At the very least, there will always be some nagging doubt at the back of your mind about why you embarked on this whole church-going and hymn-singing project in the first place. And remember that you can only reap the benefits of your beneficial misbelief if you truly and sincerely believe it.

After being astounded that some of his friends would indeed take a pill that, overnight, would make you truly believe in an afterlife (and forget you took that pill), Boudry says this:

Is such a life of voluntary delusion really what you should want? Even if you don’t have any objections against untruthfulness per se, how can you foresee all of the consequences and ramifications of your false belief in an afterlife, or in any other comforting fiction? If you were absolutely convinced that your personal death (or that of other people) doesn’t really matter, because there’s another life after this one, you might end up doing some crazy and reckless things. [JAC: like flying airplanes into the World Trade Center.] And if you genuinely believe that you are wonderfully talented, that your health is perfectly fine or that your spouse is not cheating on you (despite extensive evidence to the contrary), you may still be “mugged by reality” later on. Reality, as the writer Philip K. Dick argued, is that which, after you stop believing in it, doesn’t go away.

In an essay on his Substack column (click the screenshot below to read for free), psychologist Paul Bloom denies that we even have a GSH:

A couple of excerpts: He starts by explaining what the GSH is and then says why he doesn’t think it’s ubiquitous:

There was always reason to be skeptical. For one thing, the idea of inborn spiritual yearning never made much evolutionary sense. There are plausible enough accounts of how we could evolve other appetites, including basic ones like hunger and thirst, and fancier ones such as a desire for respect and a curiosity about the world around us. But why would evolution lead us to be wired up for spiritual yearning? How would that lead to increased survival and reproduction? Perhaps it’s a by-product of other evolved appetites, but I’ve never seen an account of this that’s even close to convincing.

I know the theistic response here: So much the worse for biological evolution! Some theists would argue that the universal yearning for the transcendent is evidence for divine intervention during the evolutionary process. They would endorse Francis Collins’ proposal that God stepped in at some point after we separated from other primates and wired up the hominid brain to endow us with various transcendental features, such as an enlightened morality and a spiritual yearning for the Almighty.

I think there are a lot of problems with this view (see here for my critical response to Collins’ proposal), but the main one I want to focus on here is that it’s explaining a phenomenon that doesn’t exist. There is no good evidence that spiritual yearning is part of human nature. Children are certainly receptive to the religious ideas that their parents and the rest of society throw at them (they are very good at acquiring all forms of culture), but I’ve seen no support for the view that they spontaneously express a spiritual yearning that isn’t modeled for them. Children raised by secular parents tend to be thoroughly secular.

Bloom then criticizes the “milder” view that we might not be born with a drive to seek God, but experience of the world will eventually force the “reflective person” to seek the transcendent. The factors said to promote this drive are things we don’t like, especially “death, injustice, the seeming randomness of tragedy and good fortune, and so on.”  But I don’t see that, either.  In fact, the more reflective you are, the more likely you should be to believe things based on a mental Bayesian process: believing things more firmly when there’s more evidence supporting them. And only those with a bent for spirituality in the first place would think that injustice or death would raise the prior probability that there’s a God. As I’ve said, I always dowgrade my opinion of someone’s ability to reason when I find they’re believers in God. (I don’t do this so often with people in the distant past, when many phenomena were imputed to God that we now know have a scientific explanation.)

Bloom dismissed this milder form of the GSH hypothesis when he returned from a Templeton-run conference in which theologian Tony Jones was on a panel called “Yearning and Meaning,” and all the panelists were asked what finding of their work was most surprising. (As you see below, Jones has written about this at greater length.) The bolding is Bloom’s

 I used to think this was plausible enough, but I just came back from a conference where I heard Tony Jones talk about this work with Ryan Burge. Jones and Burge are the principal investigators of a Templeton-funded project studying Americans who claim to be not affiliated with any religion. There are a lot of these “Nones”—about 30% of Americans, with the proportion rising to 45% when you look at Gen Z.

Jones was on a panel called “Yearning and Meaning,” and the conference organizer went around to each panelist and asked what their most surprising finding was. Rather than try to quote Jones from memory, I’ll draw on his Substack post where he talked about this finding. (This post is also where I got the Pascal quotation I used above.)

His finding concerned a specific subgroup of “Nones”. As Jones and Burge find, not all the self-described “Nones” really reject the transcendent. Some of them are indistinguishable from religious people—they just don’t like to call themselves “religious”—others fall into the category of “spiritual-but-not-religious”. The interesting finding concerns those Nones who are totally secular.

Another large group — 33 million Americans — we classify as the Dones, or the Disengaged. Ninety-nine percent of them report praying “seldom or never.” Same for how often they attend a religious service. They’re not going to get married or buried in a church. They’re not going to let their kids go to Young Life camp.

And here’s the finding.

And they don’t have a God-shaped hole. They don’t long for religion, and they don’t miss it. You might say they’re filling that hole with other things (travelling soccer teams, mushrooms, Crossfit), but that doesn’t show up in the data. Their mental health and well-being indicators are a couple points lower than the Nones who look more religious, but it’s not a massive chasm. They aren’t religious or spiritual, and they’re just fine, thank you very much.

The title of his post is: Pascal Was Wrong: There (Probably) Is No God-Shaped Hole.

It shouldn’t come as no surprise that the theory of a universal GSH is wrong. Religion in America is waning, and it’s been nearly gone in Europe for several centuries. You don’t see the Swedes or Danes yearning and pining for the transcendent. Like many of us, they find enough meaning in life without going beyond life; they find meaning in their work, their families, their friends, and their avocations.

Now Bloom admits that some people have a God-shaped hole:  we know from what they aver that this is the case. But the GSH is far from universal, and, as we know, you can’t force yourself to believe what you don’t believe. Further, arguments that the GSH evolved are bogus: there’s no clear connection between reproductive output and spirituality, and at any rate, the waning of religion is much faster than we would expect if it represents a reversed form of biological evolution. Two more quotes:

Bloom:

As Robert Wright points out in The Evolution of God, the claim that religion is about morality, spirituality, or the answers to “deep questions” is only true of more recent religions. These are not features of religion more generally. In a review of Wright’s book, I described early deities as “doofus gods”.

Boudry:

What if some supernatural misbeliefs have been carefully ‘designed’ by natural selection for our benefit? Even if God doesn’t exist, it was necessary for evolution to invent him. The problem is that, even if you think such evolutionary accounts are plausible, natural selection (whether in the biological or cultural realm) does not really care about our happiness. According to scholars like Ara Norenzayan and Joe Henrich, belief in moralizing Big Gods has fostered pro-sociality and enabled large-scale human cooperation. That sounds beautiful and uplifting, but if you look a little closer, it turns out that it’s mostly the nasty, vengeful, punishing gods that bring pro-social benefits. The sticks works better than the carrot. Which raises the question: is belief in a wrathful god who will torture you in hell if you disobey him really good for you, even if we assume that it has helped to scale up human cooperation?

At the end, Bloom admits two more things about evolution beyond saying that yes, some people have a GSH. These are the two:

Second, I do think that religion is in some sense a natural outgrowth of the human mind. If you dropped children on a desert island and waited a few dozen generations to see the society that they came up with, my bet is that this society would include religion.

I disagree. The existence of “nones”, as well as the waning of religion, disprove the idea that faith is a “natural outgrowth of the human mind”.  Until the suggested experiment is done, I reject that claim.

Third, I agree that we are drawn towards meaning; this was a central theme of my book The Sweet Spot. But, along the same lines as what I just said about religion, the sort of meaning that we are drawn to isn’t inherently spiritual or transcendental. Meaningfulness encompasses such secular activities such as deep, satisfying relationships and difficult pursuits that make a difference in the world. Some people do find meaning in religion, but this is just one source among many.

I disagree again, but only mildly.  What we’re drawn to are things that give us pleasure and fulfillment. If you want to call that “meaning”, fine.  Yes, people are social and seek the company of others; and that’s likely a result of how we evolved. But does that suggest that we are drawn to other people to fill a meaning-shaped hole? No more than we’re drawn to eat because we have a “food-shaped hole.”

A while back I asked readers to tell us what they thought gave their life “meaning and purpose.” There were 373 answers, more than I’ve gotten for any other post on this site. And, almost without exception, they said that whatever meaning and purpose they found in life was simply the meaning and purpose they brought to it—without God.  I would go further and say that meaning and purpose (like our feeling of “agency”) are not usually there in advance and that we strive to fulfill them, but more often are post facto rationalizations of the things we discovered that bring us happiness and joy. (Yes, there are some people who decide to be priests or nuns in advance, but I claim most people, even secular ones, don’t set out to fill a “meaning-shaped hole” in their being.)  They discover what they like to do, and then do it. That becomes “purpose and meaning.”

In short, the God-shaped hole is a crock.

h/t: Robert

Today’s Jesus and Mo strip, called “mustard,” came with a note:

I wouldn’t say writing these X-Factor strips is particularly easy, but it’s not rocket surgery.

I await the song with baited* breath!

*It’s “bated breath,” Jake!

Well, this is the last batch of photos I have, so you know what to do.

Today’s contribution is from Ephraim Heller, this time with photos from America rather than Brazil. Ephraim’s captions and IDs are indented, and you can enlarge the photos by clicking on them.

It has been a busy January on the Snake River in Grand Teton National Park.

After a warm early winter, a few weeks ago we finally had a hard freeze. A branch of the Snake River froze solid. However, there is a location where a warm spring feeds into the branch and this inlet stayed open. Hundreds of Utah sucker fish (Catostomus ardens) were trapped in this area of open water surrounded by ice, isolated from the main body of the Snake River. Naturally, this provided a smorgasbord for the local bald eagles and coyotes.

As I observed the Utah suckers at various times of day, I noticed that in the late afternoon they would all rise to the surface and expose their dorsal fins. Intrigued, I queried my AI which informed me that this is a matter of oxygen dynamics:

• The warm water holds less oxygen than cold water, and thermal springs typically have low dissolved oxygen content due to high temperatures.
• In confined areas with high fish density, oxygen is rapidly depleted.
• Fish respond to low oxygen levels by “piping” or “aquatic surface respiration” (ASR) when oxygen levels drop below critical thresholds. This behavior involves positioning at the water surface with mouths/dorsal fins exposed to access the oxygen-rich surface layer. This behavior indicates that the fish are stressed.

However, the AI also stated that “Aquatic plants produce oxygen through photosynthesis during daylight, with peak production in late afternoon. At night, plants consume oxygen through respiration. Dissolved oxygen levels are highest in late afternoon and lowest just before dawn.” This doesn’t seem consistent with the timing I observed.

I don’t know how much of this is true vs. AI hallucination, but it sounds plausible to me. I’d appreciate it if the ichthyologists and limnologists among the readers would confirm or refute this story.

Now for the photos:

Here are the Utah sucker fish at the surface of the open water pool in the evening, trapped by the surrounding ice:

Here is a close up of the fish at the surface:

Every so often the fish would go into a frenzy at the surface. I don’t know why. It was unrelated to anything I saw happening at the surface. Here is a bald eagle (Haliaeetus leucocephalus) watching the frenzy and assessing his menu options:

Having made up his mind, the eagle helps himself to a serving of fresh fish:

The common ravens (Corvus corax) have found a lovely rotting fish. Instead of exerting the effort to catch a fresh fish, this eagle has decided that it is easier to steal the carrion:

Bald eagles are kleptoparasites, so when an eagle with energy and initiative catches a fish the other eagles won’t let him dine in peace:

Ravens are smart birds. This one is surely thinking “If those eagle ignoramuses can catch a fish then surely I can do it better.” Unfortunately for him, the fish got away:

In spite of their inability to fish, common ravens are handsome birds:

To my surprise, the North American river otters (Lontra canadensis) who live half a mile downstream have not been dining at the buffet. I think it is because this branch of the river is frozen solid and the otters don’t like traveling on the ice surface for long distances without the safety of accessible water. So I donned my cross country skis and visited them at another, unfrozen branch of the Snake River. They, too, were feasting on Utah suckers:

Also on the river are trumpeter swans (Cygnus buccinator) in the morning mist:

Trumpeters need a long runway to take off. These four are just starting to accelerate:

Once airborne they are graceful:

Finally, this old-time general store sits adjacent to the Snake River in Grand Teton National Park. In this star trail time lapse, the stars are, of course, circling Polaris, the north star. The Tetons are to the left of the store:

Well, the cease-fire agreements in Gaza are proceeding, as Trump has appointed some committees (all approved by the UN) to run the territory. But again we have a dog’s breakfast, as there are multiple committees with two big problems: there are at least five committees with somewhat overlapping functions and members, and, second, there is no roadmap for the major task of getting rid of Hamas.

Here’s the composition as given by the NYT (bolding below is mine):

Mr. Trump’s “Board of Peace,” which he named himself the chairman of, is backed by a legal United Nations mandate and had previously been expected to be composed of world leaders who would supervise the Trump administration’s plan for an “International Stabilization Force” to occupy, demilitarize and govern Gaza during a yearslong reconstruction effort.

But the list of officials on the executive board announced on Monday included three members of the Trump administration — Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Steve Witkoff and Robert Gabriel — as well as Jared Kushner, Mr. Trump’s son-in-law; Ajay Banga, the head of the World Bank; the billionaire Trump ally Marc Rowan; and former Prime Minister Tony Blair of Britain. Of the seven, only Mr. Blair is not American, and he was previously the Middle East envoy for the Quartet, a diplomatic group made up of the United States, Russia, the United Nations and the European Union, and considered a candidate to lead a transitional government in Gaza.

A second executive board, similarly named the “Gaza executive board,” includes a wider roster of foreign officials from Europe and the Middle East, and is implied to be in a supporting role. Some American officials sit on both executive boards, as well as Mr. Blair.

Maj. Gen. Jasper Jeffers, the commander of U.S. Special Operations Command Central, which operates in the Middle East, was also tapped to lead the “International Stabilization Force,” the peacekeeping force authorized by the United Nations to be deployed to Gaza as part of the peace plan. General Jeffers previously helped oversee a brokered cease-fire between Israel and Lebanon last year.

Note that what seems to be the most important committee is almost all American, and the peacekeeping force, which presumably will be tasked with disarming Hamas, is also headed by an American general.  So who is going to disarm Hamas? Israel can’t, as that would violate the ceasefire agreement, and the U.S. certainly won’t send troops to Gaza. So how will Hamas disarm and disband: the first item on Trump’s agenda?

Trump apparently will solve it by threats:

It is not clear how the international force would ensure that Gaza is demilitarized. Hamas, which specializes in insurgent tactics and has not disbanded its battalions of armed fighters, has long regarded giving up all its weapons as tantamount to surrender, with armed struggle against Israel a crucial part of its ideology. On Thursday, Mr. Trump threatened Hamas with a renewed conflict if they did not disarm, writing on social media: “they can do this the easy way, or the hard way.”

The Times of Israel, as usual, has more information about the committees, and notes that the Board of Peace isn’t really the most important board, with the Gaza Executive Board really tasked with doing the heavy lifting. Bold headings are mine. And the ToI article implies that the NYT missed two committees:

The Board of Peace:

The Board of Peace is the umbrella body that was mandated by the UN Security Council to oversee the postwar management of Gaza until the end of 2027.

The Board of Peace is chaired by Trump, and will largely be made up of heads of state from around the world.

Formal invitations to become members of the Board of Peace were sent out on Friday, and by Saturday the leaders of Turkey, Egypt, Canada and Argentina confirmed having received the offer — an indication that they will likely accept

While this is the most prominent of all the panels established, the Board of Peace will play a generally symbolic role and be more relevant during the fundraising stage, a senior Arab diplomat told The Times of Israel.

The Gaza Executive Board:

The Gaza Executive Board is the operational arm of the Board of Peace and the body that will actually oversee the postwar management of Gaza.

Sitting on the Executive Board are Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan, senior Qatari diplomat Ali Thawadi, Egyptian intelligence chief Hassan Rashad, UAE Minister of International Cooperation Reem Al-Hashimy, former UK prime minister Tony Blair, US special envoy Steve Witkoff, top Trump aide Jared Kushner, Apollo Global Management CEO Marc Rowan, Israeli-Cypriot businessman Yakir Gabay, former UN humanitarian coordinator Sigrid Kaag, and former UN envoy to the Mideast Nickolay Mladenov.

Israel has expressed opposition to the makeup of the Executive Board, apparently taking issue with the inclusion of representatives from Turkey and Qatar, who were heavily critical of its prosecution of the war in Gaza.

However, the inclusion of both countries demonstrates their perceived utility to Trump, who has touted his personal relationships with the leaders of Turkey and Qatar as well as their success in pressuring Hamas to accept a ceasefire deal in October.

The Founding Executive Board:

In addition to inexplicably sharing nearly the same name as the Gaza Executive Board, the Founding Executive Board also consists of many of the same members.

Joining Witkoff, Kushner, Blair and Rowan on this additional board are US Secretary of State Marco Rubio, World Bank president Ajay Banga and Trump’s former deputy national security adviser Robert Gabriel.

The White House said that each member of the Founding Executive Board “will oversee a defined portfolio critical to Gaza’s stabilization and long-term success, including, but not limited to, governance capacity-building, regional relations, reconstruction, investment attraction, large-scale funding, and capital mobilization.”

The National Committee for the Administration of Gaza:

. . . .The National Committee for the Administration of Gaza is the committee of Palestinian technocrats that will be tasked with running daily affairs on the ground and providing services for Gazans in place of Hamas.

While Egypt, in announcing the new panel, claimed it consists of 15 members, the actual figure is 12, and they are headed by former Palestinian Authority deputy planning minister Ali Shaath.

. . . . Each of the other panel members was given a portfolio covering the fields in which they are experts.

Abdul Karim Ashour, who heads an agricultural non-profit, will serve as agriculture commissioner.

Aed Yaghi, who currently heads the Palestinian Medical Relief Society, will serve as health commissioner.

Osama Sa’adawi, who previously headed the Palestinian Housing Council nonprofit, will serve as housing commissioner.

Adnan Abu Warda, a former PA Supreme Constitutional Court judge, will serve as justice commissioner.

Maj. Gen. Sami Nassman, who has served in the PA’s General Intelligence Service and is seen as a strong opponent of Hamas, will serve as internal security and police commissioner

And so on, including commissioners for water and municipal affairs, social affairs, communications, economy, and trade. You can see that their duties will overlap. Who resolves conflicts? A member of the Palestinian Authority, which of course is anti-Israel, and is an organization hated by Hamas.  Finally, there is the crucial

International Stabilization Force:

The International Stabilization Force is tasked with providing security for the Strip, while gradually phasing out the IDF, which currently remains in control of 53% of the enclave.

While the US has said the ISF will support efforts to disarm Hamas, officials familiar with the matter said the multinational force won’t be expected to engage in kinetic activity to seize weapons from the terror group, which has pledged not to give them up.

Instead, they will support the disarmament process once an agreement is reached, with mediators optimistic that Hamas will agree to a gradual process that starts with the return of heavy weapons, Arab and US officials have said.

. . .The US had struggled to convince countries to contribute troops to the ISF board amid heavy skepticism that Hamas will disarm and that the IDF will withdraw further from Gaza. One of the two countries Washington had publicly touted, Azerbaijan, announced earlier this month that it would not be participating.

US officials briefing reporters last week insisted that they now have enough countries offering troops and that an announcement can be expected in about two weeks.

This is a mess.  There are five committees whose jobs are overlapping, a heavy U.S. presence on the supervising Board of Peace, and what I see as the most important committee at the outset—the group tasked with demilitarizing Gaza by erasing Hamas—has no specified troops.

It’s not surprising that no country wants to take on Hamas, since they know the international opprobrium attached to that task.  Since Hamas refuses to disarm, this guarantees that there will be extensive fighting in Gaza for a long time to come.  Getting rid of Hamas is Job #1, and until that is done, none of the other committees can do their jobs.

Now the UN could run the whole show instead of the U.S., but that might be even worse given the UN’s hatred of Israel. I doubt that the UN has the stomach to disarm Hamas. They have UN troops that could try, but the UN troops in Lebanon, tasked with disarming Hezbollah, are completely ineffectual. UN troops would be useless against the determined fighters of Hamas.

My conclusion: this messy plan won’t work, and therefore the destruction in Gaza will continue for some time to come.  And don’t forget that Hamas and the Gazans hate the Palestinian Authority, so there can be no solution that allows the PA to run the Gaza Strip. I feel for the Gazan civilians that must endure this mishigass for years to come. If readers have an alternative solution, do suggest it below.

To describe the odious, terroristic nature of Hamas, which all of you should know about by now (even though many young Americans are on their side), I proffer Rawan Osman, a Syrian-born but pro-Israeli activist who was brought up as an Israeli-hating Muslim: