Why Evolution Is True

I don’t usually respond to attacks on me from the Discovery Institute and its flacks, but I couldn’t resist listening to this 25-minute talk on free will from pediatric neurosurgeon and Intelligent Design advocate Michael Egnor, who’s been going after me for years (read the last link to Wikipedia, and his Discovery Institute biography here). … Continue reading ID advocate Michael Egnor defends fr…

Today’s collection is from math prof Abby Thompson at UC Davis, who sends us intertidal photos from California. Abby’s IDs and captions are indented, and you can enlarge her photos by clicking on them. The photos were taken at Dillon Beach. Orienthella piunca (nudibranch), with eggs (the white squiggly things), and a small crab spectating”: … Continue reading Readers’ wildlife photos

Welcome to Sunday, June 21: the FIRST DAY OF SUMMER and the longest day of the year. Summer officially began at 3:24 a.m. Chicago time and, sadly, rain is predicted for our area. It’s also Father’s Day, so my ducks will be fêting me, I hope.  The unnamed pair of ducks is still at Botany … Continue reading Sunday: Hili dialogue

Reader Enrico alerted me to last night’s “Real Time” with Bill Maher, whose guests were t.v. producer and writer Sam Levinson, California Democratic congressman Ro Khanna, and political journalist Jonathan Martin. Maher’s two-minute opening monologue, below, deals with the abject failure of the U.S. to achieve any of Trump’s aims in our war with Iran. … Continue reading Last night’s “Real Time” w…

On May 9, the AP’s odd news site recounted a kitten rescue (click on screenshot to read): An excerpt: As storm chaser Ashton Lemley picked his way through a tornado-ravaged Mississippi trailer park, he heard the unmistakable meow of a kitten pierce the predawn darkness. The homes were flattened just hours earlier as storms spawned at … Continue reading Caturday felids trifecta: kitten rescued aft…

On my way to the grocery store early this morning, I came across a guy sitting on a low wall on 57th Street, and there was a wet gosling lingering around his feet. Of course I asked him what was going on, and he told me, in a foreign accent, that the gosling had followed … Continue reading Reader’s wildlife photo: gosling rescue

Welcome to CaturSaturday, June, 20, 2026, shabbos for Jewish cats, and World Juggling Day.  Here’s a short performance by a man who’s been called “the best juggler in the world”: It’s also American Eagle Day, National Ice Cream Soda Day,  National Kouign Amann Day (celebrating the world’s fattiest pastry), National Vanilla Milkshake Day, and Plain … Continue reading Saturday: Hili dialogue

For many of you it’s been a three-day weekend; have you considered sending me photos? This is the last batch I have. And today’s batch comes from reader Jan Malik. Jan’s captions and IDs are indented, and you can enlarge his photos by clicking on them. My home state of New Jersey is, for the … Continue reading Readers’ wildlife photos

Welcome to Friday, June 19, 2026, and it happens to be Juneteenth, celebrating what’s considered to be the end of slavery in the U.S.: Planters and other slaveholders from eastern states had migrated into Texas to escape the fighting, and many brought enslaved people with them, increasing by the thousands the enslaved population in the … Continue reading Friday: Hili dialogue

Homeopathy is one of the biggest scams I know of.  The products have no curative properties and yet people spend billions on them: First, the NIH describes its uselessness and the principles said to underlie it. Some products could even be dangerous! What do we know about the effectiveness of homeopathy? There’s little evidence to … Continue reading Despite its uselessness, homeopathy persists

Welcome to Thursday, June 18, 2026, and National Cheesemakers Day. Bless them all! Here is a picture of the cheese platter in one of my erstwhile favorite restaurants in Paris (Astier), where you could have as much and as many cheeses as you wanted after dinner. And one of my favorite cheese stores in Paris. … Continue reading Thursday: Hili dialogue

The other day I reported on the death of Marjane Satrapi, comic book creator (she preferred that term to “graphic novel”), film producer, and author.  She was only 56, and her family reported that she became depressed and “died of sadness” about a year after her partner, Mattias Ripa, died of cancer.  Wikipedia outlines her … Continue reading “Persepolis” by Marjane Satrapi

I understood that Trump was going to make public the “Memorandum of Understanding” (MoU) that laid out the framework for a peace deal between the U.S. and Iran, and was even going to read it aloud on television. That apparently didn’t happen, and if you look for the text of the MoU on the Internet, … Continue reading The “Memorandum of Understanding”

There’s a new Jesus and Mo comic, called “context,” which came with the note, “Another eternal, uncreated Jesus & Mo strip,” as well as this caption: And it’s eternally important that you don’t hang around after dinner. As I point out in my foreword to the latest J&M collection (see below), Mo always instantiates the … Continue reading Jesus ‘n’ Mo ‘n’ context

Welcome to a Hump Day (“Dies Gibbosus” in Latin): June 17, 2026, and National Apple Strudel Day. Here’s a great snack: an apple strudel and an Einspänner (coffee) at a famous cafe in Vienna. Eaten and photographed in October, 2012.  Lots of Schlag here! It’s also the Islamic New Year, National Eat Your Vegetables Day … Continue reading Wednesday: Hili dialogue

Today’s plant photos come from Rik Gern of Austin, Texas.  Rik’s captions and IDs are indented and, as always, you can click on the photos to enlarge them. Here are a few odds and ends from around my neighborhood for you. When it’s the leaves fill out in the Summertime the Chinaberry Tree (Melia Azedarach) … Continue reading Readers’ wildlife photos

Welcome to the Cruelest Day, a Tuesday, and June 16 to be exact. It’s also National Cannoli Day, which brings to mind this scene from “The Godfather”. The original script called for Clemenza (Richard Castellano) to say just, “Leave the gun.” But Castellano ad-libbed an addition, “Take the cannoli,” which Coppola decided to keep. It’s … Continue reading Tuesday: Hili dialogue

“Fat Studies” is not a pejorative term, but rather an activist branch of academia with an agenda, including the claim that being fat is not unhealthy, and is a sign of oppression by the weight-deprived.  Particularly disturbing—and detrimental to health—is the persistent assertion that fatness (or whatever you want to call obesity) is not injurious … Continue reading Luana Maroja encounters “Fat …

We have a batch of photos, sans captions, from reader Roger Lambert, who does give an introduction (indented below). His words are indented: We just had a bit of a heat wave this past week in Vermont, so I have some photos for your consideration of Vermont’s rivers and lakes to cool folks off. Looking … Continue reading Readers’ wildlife photos

UPDATE: I’ve added a new caricature which has both ducks and cats (at bottom). Just to see how much ChatGPT knows about me, I gave it this task: Draw a caricature of Jerry Coyne based on everything you know about him (including his love of ducks). I also included a picture of myself.  I have … Continue reading Chat GPT caricature