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Do we all see the same red? Or feel joy and sadness alike? Mapping how our inner experiences relate to one another could finally reveal how physical processes in the brain give rise to consciousness

We can now use the gravitational waves of black holes to test general relativity and look for evidence of alternative theories of gravity.

Sam Harris is widely demonized by the know-nothings, and I’m not quite sure why. Yes, he discussed the possibility of torture in certain circumstance, but this was a philosophical rumination which is perfectly justifiable if you have a utilitarian or consequentialist view of ethics, and in fact a similar discussion appears in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. His view are speculative and nuanced, and he thinks the torture by the American government should remain illegal. Nevertheless, over and over again I’ve seen him damned for advocating willy-nilly torture, as if he were some kind of latter-day Josef-Mengele.  And that is what I’ve seen people emphasize, though Sam has also discussed the possibility of American preemptive nuclear strikes, the nature of Islam (he’s been deemed an “Islamophobe”), and for profiling groups of people for airline security. That has been more fodder for going after him, though people always neglect the nuance.

I myself have criticized his position on “objective morality,” but that would never make me dismiss Sam, as his writings are always measured and thoughtful—and largely philosophical. They promote thought, and that is, after all, the goal of philosophy. But I guess when an avowed atheist dips into philosophy, he’s almost automatically damned.  So be it; I will continue to read him.

Yesterday Sam posted his views about our war with Iran, and his overall take is summarized in the title of this post. You can read his discussion by clicking on the link below, or reading the the piece archived here.

I think the moral confusion about the war, which I see as the conflict between feeling it’s a just war and the despair at the rationalizations for the war by our administration and Trump’s repeated lies about what’s going on and what he intends to do—all of this is the cause for the increasing anomie many of us feel about our engagement, as well as for the widespread opposition to the war by Americans. As Sam says, “To think clearly about this war, we need to hold two sets of ideas in our minds at the same moment: the Iranian regime is evil, and the Trump administration is dangerously amoral, corrupt, and incompetent.”

I’ll give a few quotes from Sam (indented). Text that is flush left is mine, as are the bold headings:

Why it’s a morally just war

The Islamic Republic has tormented its own people for forty-seven years. It has hanged dissidents from cranes, crushed peaceful protests with live ammunition, tortured political prisoners, and funded jihadist proxies throughout the Middle East and beyond. When Salman Rushdie was nearly killed by a knife-wielding fanatic, after living for thirty-three years under the shadow of the Ayatollah’s imbecilic curse, this was a direct export from the theocracy in Tehran—which has grown increasingly unpopular with the Iranian people. The protests of 2025 and 2026 reminded the world, yet again, of the Iranian majority’s desperation to be free. The assassination of Ayatollah Khamenei on the first day of this war was greeted with celebrations in Tehran, Isfahan, and among the Iranian diaspora in Los Angeles and New York. Whatever else one thinks about the decision to strike Iran, it is obscene to pretend that there was no moral or pragmatic argument for doing so.

Note that a credible figure for civilians killed by the Iranian regime for protesting is 30,000+.  The regime apprehends political prisoners for protesting the war, including the families of protestors, and tries to assassinate critics of the regime even when they are overseas (e.g., Masih Alinejad).  There’s no doubt that the Iranian people, overall, want to acquire the freedoms they had before the Revolution. All this, and the determination of Iran to export terrorism throughout the Middle East, makes this a just war.

The lame criticism of this war. (Sam sees this as a failure to recognize moral evil (or recognizing it and ignoring it), as he did when he wrote about the Gaza War)

And yet, most critics of the war speak as though Iran was a peaceful nation attacked by foreign aggressors. Notions of “sovereignty” and “international law” are invoked as though the Islamic Republic were Sweden. Almost no prominent critic of this war has anything cogent to say about the decades of misery the mullahs have inflicted on their own citizens, the threat that Iran’s network of proxy militias poses to the entire region, or the inconceivability of establishing deterrence once a jihadist death cult acquires nuclear weapons. If your opposition to this war cannot acknowledge the evil we are facing, your opposition is not morally sane.

I’ll add to this something that Sam takes up later: some of the motivation for criticizing this war comes from the fact that we’re allies with Israel, seen as a settler-colonialist and evil apartheid regime,and of course a Jewish state.

The justified criticism of this war.

But there is a serious case to be made against this war. One might believe, along with Damon Linker, that the risk of Iran becoming a failed state—a larger, more dangerous version of post-invasion Iraq—far outweighs the benefits of toppling the regime today. One could point to the apparent absence of a credible plan for what comes next, or to the fact that three weeks of bombardment haven’t produced anything resembling the “unconditional surrender” that Trump once demanded. Iranian state media has reported that the conflict has already killed more than 1,500 people, including over 200 children. Whatever the actual numbers, there can be no doubt that the humanitarian toll is real and mounting. These are intelligible concerns, and they deserve to be taken seriously.

But this is not the argument that most opponents of this war are making. They are making a much lazier set of claims—and often treating any American use of force as inherently unjust. Most critics are simply ignoring the question of what the world should do about a jihadist regime that has spent decades aspiring to commit genocide, views any peace as a temporary interval in which to gain the upper hand, and happens to be on the verge of acquiring nuclear weapons.

Admittedly, it is difficult to separate the ethics of destroying the Iranian regime, and seeking to liberate the Iranian people, from the staggering incompetence and callousness of the reality-television stars who are now sit atop our vast machinery of war and wield it for no clearly stated purpose.

Sam then recounts a lot of Trump’s lies (or confusions), including his back-and-forth on whether we’ve destroyed the regime and its nuclear program, whether or not he’ll demand “unconditional surrender”, his failure to include Congress in his deliberations, and his failure to prepare the American people for the conflict.  This leads to feelings of both anomie and impotence:

Congressional Democrats now face the agonizing reality that they cannot stop a war that is already underway—the question is whether they can impose constitutional oversight on an administration that started it without asking anyone’s permission.

How the war increased antisemitism

I think we all know that antisemitism is now a tenacious termite in Western democracies. Though not ubiquitous, we see it growing in America, in Canada, in Europe, and in Australia.  I’m not sure whether the conflict with Iran has actually increased it, or simply given antisemites an excuse to parade their views more openly. Sam blames Trump for his incompetence that has created an explanatory vacuum that’s fbeen filled with Jew-hating.

Finally, all of this bluster, confusion, dishonesty, and strategic incoherence has been a gift to the world’s antisemites. In the three weeks since the war began, antisemitic incidents worldwide have spiked by 34 percent. The resignation of Joe Kent, former director of the National Counterterrorism Center—who blamed “high-ranking Israeli officials and influential members of the American media” for encouraging the conflict—gave mainstream respectability to the conspiracy theory that most of our wars are fought at the behest of perfidious Jews. Far-right figures have seized on the joint U.S.-Israeli operation to push the narrative that American soldiers are dying for a foreign power. And the antiwar Left, rather than reject this framing, has amplified it. While the similarities between the far Right and the far Left may be overstated, for the Jews, “horseshoe theory” is now a daily reality.

And Trump’s chaotic messaging bears much of the blame. When a president cannot clearly articulate why his country has gone to war, he leaves a vacuum that conspiracy theories will fill. A competent leader would have made the case for this war on its merits—the destruction of a terroristic theocracy’s military infrastructure, the elimination of its nuclear program, the liberation of 88 million people from a regime that jails and tortures women for the crime of uncovering their hair. Instead, Trump has offered a jumble of contradictions: Iran’s military is destroyed, but we need more troops; the war is almost over, but we may yet put boots on the ground; Iran wants to talk, but there is no one to talk to. This moral and logical void has become a vessel for antisemitic paranoia on both the Right and the Left. Needless to say, it doesn’t help that Trump and his family have been accepting personal gifts and payments from the Gulf states—a plane from Qatar, secretive investments from the UAE—while American forces protect those same regimes. The man is simultaneously waging a war of choice and running what appears to be an extortion racket.

The resultant ambivalence.

I think the first paragraph below, which involves us believing things that seem at odds with each other, explains at least for my ambivalence about the war.  A nutjob is in charge, someone who continually contradicts himself and acts on impulse, and yet he’s in charge of a just war.

It is possible, even necessary, to believe all of the following at once: the Iranian regime is a monstrosity that should be destroyed; the Iranian people deserve to be free; the risk that this war will end in catastrophe is real, largely because of the character of those who are waging it; and the rising tide of antisemitism that this conflict has unleashed is yet another moral emergency that people on both sides of the debate have a responsibility to confront.

The tragedy of this moment is that the right war is being waged by the wrong people, for the wrong reasons. And the opponents of the war, rather than making this case, have mostly opted for blinkered pacifism and conspiracy theories, while refusing to grapple with the manifest evil of the Iranian regime. Of course, the Iranian people, caught between their own tyrants, a reckless American president, and his feckless critics, will pay the heaviest price.

In the decades before the Wright brothers historic 1903 flight at Kitty Hawk there were many claims of powered heavier-than-air flying machines. There were also many false sightings of “airships”, amounting to a form of mass delusion. But the false claims and false sightings do not change the fact that the technology for powered flight was right on the cusp, and that the Wright brothers crossed that threshold in 1903, leading ultimately to the massive industry we have today. This is not surprising. There is often a sense, in the industry and spreading to the public, that the technological pieces are in place for a significant application breakthrough. Today this is more true than ever, with a vibrant industry of tech news, showcases, conferences, blogs, podcasts, etc. I cover plenty of tech new here. It’s interesting to try to glimpse what technology is right around the corner. Any technology that is closely watched and much anticipated is likely to generate lots of premature hype and false claims.

This is definitely true for battery technology. We are arguably in the middle of a massive effort to electrify as much of our industry as possible, especially transportation. Also maximizing intermittent renewable sources of energy would be greatly facilitated by advances in energy storage. Meanwhile electronic devices are becoming increasingly integrated into our daily lives. Advances in battery technology can have a dramatic impact on all these sectors, and is likely to be a critical technology for the next century. So it’s no surprise that there is a lot of hype surrounding battery tech, some of it legitimate, some of it fake, and some just premature. But this hype does not change the fact that battery technology is rapidly improving and the hype will become reality soon enough (just like the Wright flyer).

When it comes to EV batteries we all have a wish-list of features we would like to see. I now own two EVs, and they are the best cars I have ever owned. At least for my personal situation (I live in an exurb and own my own parking spots), EVs are great, and current battery technology is more than adequate for EVs. But sure, I live everyday with the reality of how advances in battery tech will make EVs even more convenient and useful. I have detailed the wish-list before, but here it is again: increased capacity, both in terms of volume but especially weight (specific energy), to decrease the weight while increasing the potential range of EVs, faster charging (with the holy grail being the ability to fully recharge an EV as fast as you can fill a car with gas), long charge-discharge cycle lifespan (longer than the lifespan of the car), useful in a wide range of temperatures, stability (does not spontaneously catch fire), and cheap, which is tied to being made from cheap and abundant elements. This last feature also means that the battery is not dependent on rare elements whose supply line is largely controlled by hostile or conflict-ridden countries.

Making a significant breakthrough in any one of these features is big news. This is why Donut Lab’s claim to have simultaneously improved all of these wish-list features at once was met with so much skepticism. (I will give a quick update on Donut Labs at the end of this post.) Now we have another bold claim, this one from a US company based in Dallas. Their claim focuses on just one feature of EV batteries, the recharge time, however they also claim reduced need for cobalt, which is nice. The company is OMI, who claims to have innovated a new iron-based cathode that allows an EV to recharge from empty to full in 3 minutes. That would be huge – 3 minutes is the holy grail, about as long as it takes to fill a tank of gas. Technically they claim a 20C recharge rate. The “C” is based on a convention with 1C meaning that a battery can fully charge in 1 hour. So a 20C battery, by definition, would recharge fully in 3 minutes. For reference, most fast charging EV batteries today are rated at 8-12C, or a 7.5 to 5 minute recharge time. This is already pretty good, and as you can see there is a diminishing return with increased C rating when translated into recharge time. Of note, however, these ratings are under ideal conditions. In the real world we are still looking at 10-12 minute recharge times for the fastest recharging batteries.

To me this is not a big deal at all. Even when I use a charger that requires 20 minutes to go from 20-80% charge, it’s rare I am doing that on the road (only during long trips), and it’s relatively easy to plan that around a pit stop anyway. Go to the restroom, get a snack, and by the time you get back to your car you are done or almost done. Any improvement from there is icing on the cake. Ten to twelve minutes would be fantastic. Three minutes is insane. Keep in mind, 99% of the time I am slow charging my EVs at home. But sure, that occasional time you are driving home late at night and you need a top off to make it home, and you have nothing to do but wait there while your car recharges, faster is definitely better.

So how reliable is this claim from OMI. It looks pretty credible. They are calling the technology LnFP (lithium nano-ferrophosphate). This is a variation on the established LMFP technology which uses manganese in the cathode. Doping the cathode with manganese allows for faster charging. OMI is not revealing the exact chemistry of their new cathode (industry secrets and all), but will only say that it is nano-structured, hence the “nano”. Nothing there that breaks the laws of physics, and this all seems reasonably incremental. But again, prematurely hyping plausible incremental advances, but ones that will give a company dominance in an industry, is not uncommon. Claim unlimited free energy and you are just an obvious crank or a fraudster. Claim a plausible incremental advance, and you generate excitement in the industry. But that still leaves the question – did they really achieve this, or are they hyping a lab phenomenon, or are they pulling a “fake it till you make it” maneuver to goose funding?

The broader context here is that OMI is not one of the major players in battery technology, investing billions in a global race to push the industry forward and grab market share. They are a small startup, although they have been providing components to large companies like Harley Davidson. Are we seeing the democratization of battery tech, with spunky small startup leveraging creativity and innovation to challenge the major players? Or is this mostly small startups trying to make a quick score by making bold claims and either attracting big funding or getting snapped up by one of the big boys? OMI claims their battery claims are validated, but I cannot find any independent third-part validation. They also claim they will go into production in 2027. That is the ultimate test – can they mass produce these batteries at a competitive price and they actually work as advertised in products?

Speaking of which, two months ago Donut Labs announced to the world a dream solid-state battery with all the wish-list features. Now they are claiming independent testing and validation, but again it is not quite worthy of the hype they are putting out. Finland’s state-owned VTT Technical Research Centre has tested some of its features. It tested the rapid recharge time revealing a 0-80% charge in 4.5 minutes, with a 5C rating. Testing has also demonstrated their solid state battery is not a supercapacitor, which was one of the theories. But that, so far, is it. The 400 Wh/kg specific energy has not been validated, and that is really the main feature. So far we have more of a glimpse than total verification. So I am still withholding ultimate judgement until all the evidence is in, but it still seems sketchy to me. I hope that everyone is wrong, and Donut Labs has really achieved what they claim. But that hope, I think, is the point.

The post Another Bold Battery Claim first appeared on NeuroLogica Blog.

Send ’em in if you got ’em.  The photo situation is dire.

But today we have whale photos by reader Ephriam Heller. His captions and IDs are indented, and you can enlarge his photos by clicking on them.

The best whale watching I have experienced is observing gray whales (Eschrichtius robustus) in the San Ignacio Lagoon on the Pacific coast of the Baja peninsula in Mexico. These whales are curious and “friendly,” often swimming up to boats to observe their occupants and even allowing themselves to be touched. Here is an example of an interaction between two species that each appear to exhibit curiosity and intelligence:

This is what a gray whale looks like (Image courtesy of International Whaling Commission):

They engage in numerous photogenic behaviors, such as rolling, riding the surf, waving their flippers and flukes in the air, and spyhopping to observe their surroundings.

The gray whale has longitudinal double blowholes. People claim that they form a heart shape, but think a heart with this shape needs immediate treatment:

When the sunlight hits their spray just right, one sees “rainblows”:

The gray whale has the most parasites of any whale, carrying up to 180 kg. At birth, babies have no barnacles or sea lice, but quickly acquire them from their mothers. The older the whale, the more barnacles and lice they collect. The whales rub along the seabed and piers to try to rid themselves of the parasites.

The whales carry one species of barnacle and four species of whale lice. The barnacles are Cryptolepas rhachianecti (whale barnacles) which are specific to gray whale hosts (i.e., they rarely occur on any other species), and they die when the whale dies.

There are four species of “whale lice,” which are not true lice (which are insects) but are amphipods in family Cyamidae: Cyamus scammony (the most common), Cyamus kessleri, and Cyamus eschrichtii are all found only on gray whales. Cyamus ceti is found on gray and bowhead whales. These cause minor irritation to healthy whales. Researchers view cyamid coverage and distribution (e.g., heavy clusters near blowhole, mouthline, genital slit) as indicators of stress, nutritional status, and chronic skin disease rather than as a primary cause of these problems.

There are two populations. The larger Eastern North Pacific population migrates along the continental coast between its breeding grounds in Baja, Mexico and its feeding grounds in Alaska. The small Western North Pacific population migrates along the Pacific coast of Asia. Gray whales hold the record for the longest migration of any mammal, with typical round-trip distances of about 20,000 km annually (although this isn’t close to the 70,000 km migration of the arctic tern).

Whales fall into two suborders: baleen (Mysticeti) and toothed (Odontoceti). Gray whales are in Mysticeti and use their baleen to feed on amphipods and plankton on the seafloor. During the six month summer feeding season, adults consume over 1 ton of food per day. They then fast for the remainder of the year, including the migration and winter birthing / breeding season. They exhibit “handedness,” in that most gray whales feed by scooping up sediments from the seafloor with the right side of their heads, resulting in their right sides having fewer adhering barnacles and sea lice.

They live up to ~70 years. Biggs transient killer whales (orcas) kill up to 35% of the calf population annually. Based on scarring, researchers speculate that almost every gray whale has been attacked by orcas. Most attacks occur as the young calves migrate north through Monterey Bay, California and Unimak Pass, Alaska.

The Eastern North Pacific population dropped to ~1,000 individuals around 1885 due to whaling, but has since recovered to ~27,000 in 2015-2016. The Western North Pacific population is tiny, comprising just a few hundred individuals. North Atlantic populations were extirpated (perhaps by whaling at the end of the medieval warm period) on the European coast in the 12th to 14th centuries, and on the American and African Atlantic coasts around the late 17th to early 18th centuries. Remains of gray whales from the time of the Roman empire have been found in the Mediterranean Sea, and they are still rarely seen there in modern times.

The gray whale has a dark slate-gray color and is covered by characteristic gray-white patterns, which are scars left by parasites that drop off in its cold feeding grounds. Individuals can be identified by their pigmentation patterns and their scars. I got this great photo of a whale’s tail; but it was just a fluke:

In case you are the kind of person who is interested in this sort of thing, this is what it looks like when whales mate:

Anyone with a younger brother will recognize this as the “head butt” greeting, a conserved behavior across all mammal species:

And this is the view when you saddle up a gray whale (I use a western saddle):

The eyes of gray whales are unlike the eyes of any other mammal I have seen, with what appear to be tangled filaments. My AI friend assures me that this is not the case and that they do not have any “extra” organs in their eyes: “The ‘tangled filaments’ you’re seeing are structures in the gray whale’s iris and surrounding tissues that become visible because the eye is small, very dark, and strongly three‑dimensional, so you are effectively looking across folded, ridged iris and ciliary tissues rather than through a flat, open pupil as in most mammals you see up close.”

Catching a comet in the process of falling apart is difficult, but a coincidence let astronomers see one in more detail than ever before using the Hubble Space Telescope – and revealed a mystery

Researchers have created the first living synthetic bacterium made from non-living parts by killing a bacterial cell and then transplanting the genome of another species into it, blurring the boundary between life and death

Researchers identified nearly 10,000 websites where API keys could be found, exposing details that could let attackers access sensitive information

A judge recently ruled that HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. went too far in his drive to turn ACIP into a an antivax committee. Meanwhile, ProPublica reports on where we are heading; it's not good.

The post RFK Jr. is definitely coming for your vaccines (part 9): ProPublica reports, and a bump in the road to remaking ACIP first appeared on Science-Based Medicine.

Scientists in Australia have demonstrated a prototype quantum battery that could revolutionize energy storage. By harnessing quantum effects, it can absorb energy in a rapid “super absorption” event, enabling much faster charging than conventional batteries. Even more surprisingly, the system becomes more efficient as it scales up. The research opens the door to ultra-fast, next-generation energy technologies.

A decades-old superconducting mystery just took a surprising turn. Strontium ruthenate, a material that conducts electricity with zero resistance at low temperatures, has long puzzled scientists with hints of an exotic, complex superconducting state. But by carefully twisting and distorting ultra-thin crystals, researchers found something unexpected: the material barely reacted at all. This challenges years of assumptions and suggests its behavior may be far simpler—or far stranger—than previously thought.

Scientists have created a new kind of time crystal using sound waves to levitate tiny beads in mid-air. These particles interact in a one-sided, unbalanced way, breaking the usual rules of motion and creating a steady, repeating rhythm. The system is surprisingly simple yet reveals complex physics with big implications. It could help advance quantum computing and deepen our understanding of biological timing systems.

As usual, I watched the NBC Evening News last night, even though some of its reporting has seemed slanted against Israel.  Since I wrote about the Guardian article yesterday, though, I’ve become more sensitized to how the media uses language to express political opinions—even in supposedly objective news reports.

Here’s a video showing all the NBC Evening News from last night, but you don’t have to watch it all unless you want to see bodycam video of a clearly inebriated Justin Timberlake being arrested for DUI (17:05).  The part that made me prick up my ears is at 4:07, when the news shows cute little Lebanese Muslim kids getting presents at the end of Ramadan. But they are not in their homes.  The narration says this (bolding is mine):

While across the Muslim world, the end of Ramadan means presents for children.  These kids are among the one million people displaced in Lebanon by Israel’s expanding offensive against Hezbollah.

The rest of the short segment seems designed to evoke the viewers’ sympathy for Lebanese people—especially the kids—displaced by the wicked Jewish state.  And indeed, it’s sad that people have to flee their homes. HOWEVER, the report neglects to mention that there had been a cease-fire between Israel and Hezbollah that largely held until March 2 of this year. Then, on March 2, three days after the U.S. and Israel struck Iran, Hezbollah in fired a barrage of missiles and drones from Lebanon at northern Israel, explicitly saying that this was in response to the killing of Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and what Hezbollah called were “repeated Israeli aggressions” (there were minor attacks by both sides during the ceasefire, with UNIFIL and the Lebanese government failing to rein in Hezbollah, as they are supposed to. Israel responded big time, but to construe that as an “expanding offensive” minimizes the defensive nature of Israel’s attacks, designed to stop Hezbollah’s rockets and drones for once and for all.

Again, it’s a small remark, but a telling one. “Expanding offensive” implies that Israel started the attacks in Lebanon going on now.  It didn’t, just as Israel didn’t start the war with Hamas on October 7.

But at the end you might want to see the inevitable “there’s-good-news-tonight” segment (several nice pieces starting at 18:05, with an especially moving bit at 19:54 as a woman is assigned to take the final call from an Air Force officer as he leaves the military—an officer who happens to be her dad).    As the world is falling apart, nearly all the major television news stations like to leave viewers with a good taste in their mouths.

There’s simply no news today, I’m exhausted from lack of sleep, and as I looked at the latest draft posts I have (there are over 2,600 drafts, most of which will never see the light of day), I was not inspired to write anything, though there are two science posts that I’ll be working on. We’ll see if anybody reads them.

Ergo, enjoy Bill Maher’s comedy-and-politics bit from his latest episode of Real Time. In this 8.75-minute segment,  Maher decries Terminally Online Disease (TOD), one of whose symptoms is the fervent need to express an opinion on everything. (The video begins by excusing cat haters, who include Oscar-winning actress Jessie Buckley—not a propitious start.) Maher then goes on to criticize people who spend all their time doomscrolling through social-media sites on “devices”, mistaking what they read for a national or international consensus and apparently anxious to get outraged.  The scrollers are contrasted with regular people who have “shit to do.”

All told, it’s a pretty curmudgeonly bit and not as funny as his usual shticks.  But it’s all I got.

The guests were Tristan Harris, co-founder of the Center for Humane Technology, Paul Begala, CNN contributor and Democratic strategist, and Rep. Anna Paulina Luna (R-FL). 

Today we have some travel and wildlife photos from reader Jan Malik.  Jan’s captions are indented, and you can enlarge the photos by clicking on them. (Don’t miss the Taiwan barbet!)

Here are a few pictures I took during my short stay in Taipei, Taiwan (Republic of China) in 2016. Business trips usually allow very little time for sightseeing — the familiar, morbid cycle of airport → hotel → conference room → hotel → airport — but on this occasion I had a few free hours in the afternoon. Naturally, I decided to explore the nearby Taipei Botanical Garden with a birding lens that mysteriously strayed into my suitcase:

On my way to the Botanical Garden, I visited the National Chiang Kai-shek Memorial Park and Hall, the latter built in the late 1970s after the President’s death. I include it here for documentary reasons — who knows how long it is going to survive, given the volatile political situation.

Inside stands a larger‑than‑life sculpture of the Generalissimo. Taiwan’s history is typical of right‑wing dictatorships which, like South Korea, Spain, or Portugal, began as oppressive authoritarian regimes and then evolved into genuine democracies. Conversely, left‑wing dictatorships typically resist fundamental change and persist until their eventual collapse:

Onward to wildlife. The entrance to the Mausoleum was guarded by a lion (Panthera leo var. lapideus):

Already in the Botanical Garden, I encountered a cat, doing what cats do best – contemplating:

In one of the alleys I came upon a sizable crowd — people were observing local celebrities, a pair of nesting Oriental magpie‑robins (Copsychus saularis). The birds seemed completely unfazed by the attention, the male singing and standing guard at the nest;

These birds are bold and well adapted to human habitats. The female does most of the feeding; here she brings an unidentified moth to her chicks in a rotted‑out branch stump:

At a nearby pond I spotted a duck. It was likely a domestic bird, possibly with a dash of wild Mallard  (Anas platyrhynchos) ancestry:

The pond was full of lotus plants, which provided excellent habitat for the Common moorhen (Gallinula chloropus). Like all rails, these birds have relatively small wings and strong feet, well suited to foraging on land as well as in water. They swim well despite lacking webbing between their toes. These traits help explain why, when rails successfully colonize remote predator‑free islands, they often evolve reduced flight or complete flightlessness;

Moving further along the park alleys, I spotted a Taiwan barbet (Psilopogon nuchalis) looking out of its nest cavity. As an endemic species, it was a special find for me. Barbets vary widely in sexual dimorphism — in the Taiwan barbet the sexes are practically indistinguishable, in others (like the Coppersmith barbet) the differences are subtle, and in still others (such as the Red‑and‑yellow barbet) they are striking. I wonder why, in this species, bright coloration in females is not maladaptive. Perhaps the fact that they are obligate cavity nesters shields incubating females from predators. The same logic applies to woodpeckers, whose sexes are also similar aside from modest red patches in males:

Shortly after the barbet, I hit another jackpot in my endemics count — the Taiwan blue magpie (Urocissa caerulea). Like other corvids, it is social and omnivorous, and like Taiwanese barbets, it is sexually monomorphic. Corvids also evolved cooperative breeding: fledglings often remain with their parents and help raise the next brood. This likely evolved through kin selection. Why does it work so well in corvids and not in most other birds? Perhaps in environments with limited resources, young birds have better reproductive success by helping relatives than by attempting to breed independently?:

Having spent some time observing the magpie, I moved on — my remaining time before the flight was getting short. Soon I saw another first for me, though a common sight in Southeast Asia: the light‑vented bulbul (Pycnonotus sinensis). An omnivorous bird, here it was about to snatch a ripe fig:

Moving on, I photographed a dragonfly, which I believe is a male Crimson Marsh Glider (Trithemis aurora). These insects are sexually dimorphic, with olive‑colored females. This male appears to be orienting its abdomen toward the sun to reduce the surface area exposed to solar radiation and prevent overheating — a behavior known as “obelisking”:

Near the Botanical Garden exit I saw the last animal in this series, the Eurasian tree sparrow (Passer montanus). They always bring a smile to my face. Unlike many other sparrows, the sexes are alike. In 1958 they were targeted during China’s “Four Pests” campaign, a fine example of how ideology can override basic biological understanding:

While driving toward the airport that evening, I saw a Buddhist temple by the roadside, adorned with a symbol that, in European cultural circles, evokes entirely non‑religious sentiments. It was adopted in the 1920s by the National‑Socialist German Workers’ Party, but in Asia it is an ancient religious emblem. It is not identical to the Hakenkreuz — it “rotates” counterclockwise — and its meaning here is entirely benign:

 

Researchers have uncovered friction without contact—driven entirely by magnetic interactions. As two magnetic layers slide, their internal forces compete, causing constant rearrangements that dramatically increase resistance at certain distances. This creates a surprising peak in friction instead of a steady rise, breaking a long-standing physics law.

Astronomers have uncovered surprising evidence of a thick atmosphere surrounding TOI-561 b, a scorching, fast-orbiting rocky planet once thought too extreme to hold onto any gas. Using NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope, researchers found the planet is far cooler than expected for a bare rock, hinting at a heat-distributing atmosphere above a churning magma ocean. This strange world—where a year lasts just over 10 hours and one side is locked in eternal daylight—may even be rich in volatile materials, behaving like a “wet lava ball.”

“A brain biased toward seeing meaning rather than randomness is one of our greatest assets. The price we pay is occasionally connecting dots that don’t really belong together.”1 –Rob Brotherton

For nearly a decade, a mysterious ailment known as “Havana Syndrome” has been portrayed as proof that American diplomats and intelligence officers have been attacked by a foreign adversary using a secret energy weapon. Few outlets have promoted this narrative more forcefully than the CBS television News Magazine 60 Minutes, which has presented the saga as a chilling geopolitical mystery. Yet after years of investigation, the U.S. intelligence community has concluded that such attacks are “highly unlikely.” So how did one of America’s most respected news programs become so invested in a story that the evidence increasingly contradicts? The answer tells us less about the shadowy world of spycraft and secret weapons, and more about the psychology of belief, the power of social contagion, and the media’s enduring fascination with invisible enemies. 

60 Minutes is widely regarded as one of the most prestigious and successful news programs in American television history. For decades it has been the gold standard in investigative reporting and has won every major award in broadcast journalism since its inception in 1968.2 Over the past decade the program has aired four exposés on “Havana Syndrome,” a mysterious clustering of health complaints first noticed by U.S. government officials in Havana, Cuba in 2016 (hence the name).3 However, for the past three years its reputation has been tarnished by two separate intelligence assessments that have challenged and discredited key elements of their investigations.4 

Immediately after their third report aired in March 2024, which claimed that an elite Russian military unit was targeting Americans with an energy weapon, the segment prompted calls for a renewed congressional investigation.5 Yet the CIA Director in the Biden Administration, William Burns, responded to the broadcast by issuing a firm assurance that the claims had been thoroughly investigated and were unfounded.6 This conclusion was reaffirmed in an updated intelligence assessment that was issued in 2025.7

On Sunday March 8, 2026, 60 Minutes aired its fourth investigation into “Havana Syndrome” in nine years, once again making dramatic claims that American spies, diplomats, and military personnel have been targeted by a mysterious weapon, first in Havana, and later around the world.8 The three previous segments were critiqued in the pages of Skeptic as they relied heavily on speculation with limited physical evidence, while largely excluding skeptical perspectives.9 The latest chapter in this saga is no different, repeating old, discredited claims and introducing a striking new allegation that the government purchased a Havana Syndrome-type device on the Russian black market.10

The “Attacks” on Chris and Heidi

In the latest segment, narrator Scott Pelley interviews Chris (last name withheld) who worked on top secret spy satellites near Washington DC, and claimed to have been attacked several times between August and December 2020. Pelley implies that Chris had been targeted with an energy weapon, describing him as having been “struck by an unseen force.” He said the first incident felt like someone punched him in the throat, his left ear was clogged, and a sharp pain shot down his left arm. During the second incident, in the kitchen of his Virginia home, he suddenly felt like a vice was squeezing his head, and he became disoriented, confused, and dizzy. A third episode occurred in his living room when he was stricken with a cramping of his back muscles “like a charley horse,” accompanied by a hot, sharp pain. In the final episode, he woke up feeling like a vice was gripping his brainstem and he experienced “a full body convulsion.” 

While the segment frames Chris’s experience as a targeted strike, his clinical presentation is consistent with common neurological and psychological conditions such as migraines and anxiety disorder. Migraines often cluster over several months and grow progressively worse before resolving. His description of vice-like pressure is commonly reported by migraine sufferers. Symptoms typically involve head pressure and pain, dizziness, confusion, disorientation, muscle spasms, and throat sensations. They often include unilateral symptoms (affecting one side of the body) such as the clogging of his left ear and the shooting pain down his left arm.  

That he experienced several distinct episodes with differing symptoms raises further questions about the likelihood of an attack. Why would the same weapon produce such different effects? Chris’s other symptoms such as throat tightness (globus) and muscle spasms that grew progressively worse, may reflect anxiety from someone who was working in an extreme stress environment (a classified spy satellite program). The least likely explanation for his symptoms is an attack by a directed energy weapon. 

The 60 Minutes narrative survives primarily through a strategic omission of key facts.

His partner Heidi described waking up with joint pain that was concentrated in her left shoulder. Pelley said that “bones in her shoulder were dissolving,” and she was diagnosed with osteolysis, which required an operation. The implication was that she too had been struck with the same mysterious weapon. But osteolysis of the shoulder is a well-known condition that is becoming increasingly diagnosed in women. It is associated with repetitive strain injuries, weightlifting, trauma, and inflammation, not mysterious external agents.11 Heidi’s shoulder condition is an entirely different pathology from that of Chris. It is far more probable that two people living together simply developed two unrelated conditions.  

Pelley then mentions several other victims who supposedly had similar symptoms: an FBI agent who experienced a drilling sensation in her right ear; a Commerce Department official who reported severe head pressure and ear pain; and the wife of an official who felt a piercing pain and pressure in her left ear and a headache. He asserts that a striking aspect of these stories is that “people who never met tell it the same way.” A more plausible explanation is that they were suffering from vestibular disorders: conditions that affect the inner ear and parts of the brain that regulate balance and spatial awareness. The symptoms described in the 60 Minutes interviews include ear pain and pressure, headaches and head pressure, and unusual sounds and sensations in the ear. The descriptions of the victims would be familiar to any vestibular neurologist treating migraines and inner ear conditions including unusual ear sensations, stabbing pains, or a perception of drilling, pulsation, or vibrations.12 It is estimated that one-third of adults over 40 will experience vestibular dysfunction.13

The Omission of Key Information

The 60 Minutes narrative survives primarily through a strategic omission of key facts. It fails to mention that the foundational studies in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) that gave rise to the belief that a mysterious weapon had injured American personnel in Cuba, were mired in controversy. This included internal ethics complaints, the withdrawal of authors, and accusations of scientific misconduct. In doing so, the program presents a house of cards as a fortress of settled science. The first study appeared in JAMA in February 2018, and caused a sensation with claims that the patients suffered brain damage.14 Prior to its publication, UCLA neurologist Dr. Robert Baloh, who developed some of the tests that were used in the study, was asked by the editors to review the findings. He found the manuscript to be laden with inconsistencies, described the claims as “science fiction,” and recommended against acceptance.15

Three of the study’s original authors removed their names just prior to publication as they were refused access to the data or earlier revisions of the manuscript. One of them—Dr. Carey Balaban, an ear, nose and throat specialist at the University of Pittsburgh, was so disturbed by this that he filed an ethics complaint over what he described as potential scientific misconduct.16 When the study appeared, there were calls by neurologists for their methods to be clarified or the study retracted.17 A later attempt to clarify the study’s findings was described by University of Edinburgh neurologist Sergio Della Sala as incomprehensible.18 Prior to its publication, information had been leaked to the media that several of the patients suffered white matter tract changes in their brains, prompting dramatic headlines about brain damage. However, when the study appeared, the prevalence of white matter changes fell within a normal range.19 

A second JAMA study in 2019, was equally controversial. It found brain anomalies in a small group of victims, once again prompting sensational headlines about brain damage. The study’s lead author, Dr. Ragini Verma, even described the differences in brain images of “Havana Syndrome” victims and a control group as “jaw-dropping.”20 Yet such findings are common in small cohorts and are consistent with what one would expect to see in a group of people under prolonged stress. The authors even admitted that the anomalies were so minor that they could have been caused by individual variation.21 Another problem was that 12 of the Havana Syndrome patients had pre-existing histories of concussion compared to none in the control group. Despite this, many media outlets had a field day citing a few rogue scientists who proclaimed that it was clear evidence of an attack by a microwave weapon. 

Dubious Beginnings 

The 60 Minutes segment also failed to mention that social contagion may have played a role in the initial spread of “Havana Syndrome.” CIA analyst Fulton Armstrong would later reveal that the undercover intelligence agent in Havana who first reported the mysterious sounds and believed they were responsible for his health issues, had engaged in a vigorous campaign to persuade colleagues that the sounds were significant. “He was lobbying, if not coercing, people to report symptoms and connect the dots,” Armstrong said.22 The man, who has since been dubbed “patient zero,” later attended a gathering of embassy personnel and played the recording of his “attack,” encouraging them to report their symptoms as he was convinced that they too had been targeted. His recording was analyzed by government scientists and identified as crickets.23 In fact, eight of the first group of victims in Cuba who reported feeling unwell and hearing sounds, recorded their “attacks.” They were later identified as the mating call of the Indies short-tailed cricket.24

Soon American and Canadian diplomats stationed in Havana were on the lookout for strange sounds and health complaints. Eventually the U.S. government alerted all of its active military personnel and embassy staff around the world to be vigilant for mysterious sounds and “anomalous health incidents.” In response, there were over 1,500 reports of possible attacks. The problem with these alerts is that “Havana Syndrome” symptoms are common in the general population and include headaches, nausea, dizziness, forgetfulness, difficulty concentrating, tinnitus, fatigue, facial pressure, hearing loss, ear pain, trouble walking, depression, irritability, and even nose bleeds.

One study found that the average person experiences five different symptoms in any given week. Thirty-six percent noted fatigue; 35 percent reported headaches. Nearly 30 percent said they had insomnia, while 15 percent had difficulty concentrating, 13 percent reported memory problems; roughly 8 percent noted nausea and dizziness.25 These symptoms overlap with those attributed to “Havana Syndrome.” When one eliminates claims of brain damage and hearing loss (which were never demonstrated), one is left with an array of exceedingly common symptoms.

A Fixation on David Relman

The 60 Minutes segment includes extensive interviews with Stanford University microbiologist David Relman who headed two panels that both concluded that pulsed microwave radiation was likely involved in some cases. As with the earlier 60 Minutes investigations, the government intelligence assessments on “Havana Syndrome” have rejected his conclusions. One of Relman’s panels said it was not possible to assess the involvement of social contagion as there was no data on the early spread.26 Yet, the spread from “patient zero” to fellow spies and diplomats in Havana has been well-documented and was widely known over a year before the panel issued their findings in December 2020.27 The same panel interviewed fringe figures such as Dr. Beatrice Golomb, a researcher at the University of California, San Diego, known for her extreme views on mass psychogenic illness, which she believes does not exist.28 His 2022 panel concluded that social contagion could not have affected spies and diplomats operating in Havana because they were highly educated and trained to deal with stress.29 This is a common fallacy.30 These conclusions may not be surprising given that Relman’s panels failed to interview a single prominent skeptic.  

The enduring lesson of “Havana Syndrome” is not secret weapons but the psychology of belief.

Scott Pelley complains that the panels’ conclusions have been ignored by the intelligence community. Relman told Pelley that it was embarrassing and insulting that the victims have been “dismissed as malingerers or people who are manufacturing things.” Pelley concurred by saying that the American government “has doubted their stories” and they have been labelled as “delusional.” These claims are misleading. In 2023, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence stated unequivocally that it was the consensus of the intelligence community that the symptoms exhibited by “Havana Syndrome” sufferers are real, but it was “highly unlikely” the stimulus was a directed energy weapon from a foreign adversary. Instead, they attributed the complaints to an array of factors including pre-existing conditions, conventional illnesses, environmental causes, and social factors (a clear reference to mass suggestion and social contagion). The intelligence assessment explicitly states that their findings “do not call into question the very real experiences and symptoms that our colleagues and their family members have reported.”31 A second intelligence assessment issued in 2025 reached a similar conclusion,32 while a recent study by the National Institutes of Health found no evidence of brain damage.33  

The Portable Microwave Device

The 60 Minutes segment also reported that in 2024 undercover U.S. government agents obtained a portable microwave weapon from a Russian criminal network and have tested it on animals. They said that the Pentagon-funded mission to obtain the weapon cost about $15 million. For being the centerpiece of this story, they provide few details. Pelley said “Our confidential sources tell us the still classified weapon has been tested in a U.S. military lab for more than a year. Tests on rats and sheep show injuries consistent with those seen in humans.” The problem with this claim is that there is no credible evidence that the victims of “Havana Syndrome” were injured by a weapon. 60 Minutes didn’t break this story; that distinction goes to CNN, who this year reported on their investigation into the same device, but their perspective was in sharp contrast to the 60 Minutes claims. The CNN sources said there was an ongoing debate and skepticism over attempts to link the device to “Havana Syndrome.”34

The claims by 60 Minutes are based on anonymous sources rather than technical reports, there are no test results, and they did not even obtain a picture of the device! Even after the device was acquired, the updated assessment on “Havana Syndrome” that was published in 2025 continued to maintain that the involvement of an adversarial weapon was highly unlikely. The U.S. and foreign governments have long conducted research on potential new weapons, so the existence of the Russian device should come as no surprise. Yet there is a big difference between testing, and producing an effective, practical weapon, with a major impediment being the laws of physics. The details surrounding the device and who created it, are nebulous. For instance, how could a Russian criminal syndicate obtain such a highly classified device and offer it for sale on the black market, without the knowledge of Russian intelligence, or U.S. intelligence for that matter?  

A Media Zombie That Won’t Die

This is not the first claim of its kind. In February 2026, the Washington Post reported that a Norwegian government researcher had built a device that was purportedly behind the Havana Syndrome “attacks.”35 Unnamed sources claimed that after exposing himself to pulsed microwave radiation, he developed neurological symptoms consistent with the victims. The report stated that after the Norwegian government informed the CIA, officials from both the White House and Pentagon visited Norway on two occasions to learn more. However, the Norwegian government says they know nothing about it. An investigation by one of the country’s leading newspapers was unable to identify any such researcher, while a microwave expert at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology, Trym Holter, said any such study would have required ethics approval and been carried out in a controlled fashion with test subjects. He said for someone to have conducted such an experiment on themselves would have been “completely crazy” and he questioned whether any such experiment had ever occurred.36

Perhaps the most troubling reason for this one-sided reporting is a glaring conflict of interest: the producers behind all four 60 Minutes segments, are marketing a book on the subject.

This pattern of credulous reporting is not limited to CBS News or the Post. Recently British journalist Nicky Woolf wrote a sensational article in the Sunday Times claiming that the evidence for a directed energy weapon is now overwhelming, while omitting the US intelligence community’s own conclusions to the contrary.37 He stated (falsely) that “many of the early cases didn’t know about each other,” and repeated the debunked claim that during the recent US raid in Venezuela, the American military used a directed energy weapon to incapacitate enemy soldiers.38

Historical Precedents

Unfortunately, 60 Minutes has repeatedly focused on one side of the story instead of presenting competing perspectives. A key problem when evaluating controversial claims is that once investigators become convinced that a hidden adversary exists, the belief itself can shape how evidence is interpreted. History is replete with examples. During the Salem witch-hunts of 1692, an idea spread that witches were attacking members of the community. Before long, over 200 residents were accused of consorting with the devil. During the “Red Scare” of the 1950s, a belief spread that communist sympathizers had infiltrated communities across the United States. In response, scores of innocent people were blacklisted, often on the flimsiest of evidence.

The enduring lesson of “Havana Syndrome” is not secret weapons but the psychology of belief. The producers at 60 Minutes continue to focus on exotic explanations while ignoring mundane ones. The colloquial term for this is “doubling down”—the stubborn persistence of clinging to a discredited hypothesis in the face of compelling evidence to the contrary. In the case of CBS News, it may be a subconscious attempt to avoid the embarrassment of having to correct the record after having been mistaken. The continued advocacy by David Relman and Scott Pelley for the microwave weapon hypothesis despite intelligence assessments to the contrary, exemplifies what psychologists refer to as “belief perseverance.” This is the well-documented tendency to maintain deeply held beliefs in the face of contrary evidence. 

Perhaps the most troubling reason for this one-sided reporting is a glaring conflict of interest: the producers behind all four 60 Minutes segments, are marketing a book on the subject. The Havana Syndrome: Secret Weapons, a Government cover-up, and the Greatest Spy Mystery of Our Time, is scheduled to be published this fall, with an introduction by none other than Scott Pelley himself.39 By continuing to air these “exposés,” CBS News is effectively providing a multi-million-dollar infomercial for a product that relies on a spy mystery narrative to drive sales. The authors say their reason for writing the book is “to tell the whole story” including “the cover-up.” This is ironic given that their reports have consistently left out key parts of the narrative.40  

Chasing Shadows

The history of science and journalism are replete with examples of how institutions can cling to persuasive stories long after the evidence begins to unravel. In the 1840s Hungarian physician Ignaz Semmelweis produced strong empirical evidence that handwashing among midwives dramatically reduced the deaths of mothers from childbed fever, yet his findings were resisted for decades by the medical establishment.41 More recently, in the lead-up to the Iraq War many media outlets published erroneous stories that Saddam Hussein had obtained weapons of mass destruction (WMDs) even though United Nations weapons inspectors in the field insisted they had found no clear evidence.42 This led to an apology by The New York Times for publishing claims that were never independently verified, and the Washington Post acknowledging that skeptical stories were frequently “pushed to the back of the paper” while pro-WMD claims dominated the front pages.43

This pursuit of unicorns over horses is a cautionary tale of how fear, expectation, and sensational storytelling can create a phantom menace where there is no concrete evidence that one exists.

When investigators become convinced of the existence of a hidden adversary, ambiguous evidence can take on new meaning and be seen as patterns in a grand conspiracy. Anonymous sources become credible witnesses. Coincidences can appear to be coordinated acts of aggression, and mundane symptoms are redefined as signs of an attack. As physicist Richard Feynman famously warned: “The first principle is that you must not fool yourself—and you are the easiest person to fool.”44  Throughout history, when a seductive explanation takes root—whether in the form of germs, hidden arsenals, or mysterious attacks—ambiguous signs are reinterpreted as confirmation rather than treated with skepticism. 

The promotion of ghostly enemies while omitting key facts is a dangerous game because it expends valuable resources at a time of confirmed threats to our homeland. This pursuit of unicorns over horses is a cautionary tale of how fear, expectation, and sensational storytelling can create a phantom menace where there is no concrete evidence that one exists.

Beliefs Have Consequences 

Unfounded beliefs and pseudoscientific ideas can have serious consequences by distorting scientific understanding, propagating myths, and shaping public policy.

Shortly after the airing of the 60 Minutes episode, the House Intelligence Committee met on March 19th with its chair, Republican Rick Crawford, asserting that the 2023 and 2025 assessments about that the involvement of an energy weapon was “highly unlikely,” were influenced by members of the Biden administration who have been covering up the ‘real’ cause – attacks by a foreign adversary.

National Intelligence Director Tulsi Gabbard, FBI Director Kash Patel, and National Security Agency acting director William Hartman all agreed that there was an urgent need to retract the current assessment.

The last major hearing on ‘Havana Syndrome’ was conducted by the House Committee on Homeland Security on March 8, 2024. The hearing was titled: “Silent Weapons: Examining Foreign Anomalous Health Incidents Targeting Americans in the Homeland and Abroad.”

The title reflects the biased nature of the hearing. Not surprisingly, the witnesses were all supporters of the energy weapon hypothesis.

I was originally asked if I would be willing to testify at this hearing, only to be later told my testimony was no longer required.

Marie Mortreux, an assistant professor in the University of Rhode Island’s College of Health Sciences, is part of an international team of researchers studying how the Mars’s gravity would affect astronauts’ skeletal muscle.

Today we again have three items plus lagniappe, and I will keep on with Caturday posts for at least a month.

First, we have a four-minute video of Marvin the Cat getting a “rave bath”, whatever that is.  The YouTube notes give a link and a caption:

So I asked Grok what a “rave bath for a cat” is. The AI answer:

A “rave bath” is a fun, creative bath-time setup for a cat (specifically one that actually enjoys water—rare for most cats!) where the owner turns the bathtub into a glowing “party” atmosphere.

It comes from a popular 2024 viral video by The Dodo featuring a cat named Marvin, who is obsessed with baths. His owner came up with the idea to make bath time even more exciting:

• They turn down the lights in the bathroom to make it dark.
• They add glow sticks (the kind you crack and shake) floating in the water for Marvin to swat, chase, and play with.
• Sometimes they include a light layer of pet-safe bubble bath or bath bombs for extra splashing fun.

The result looks like a mini rave or underwater wonderland with colorful glowing lights reflecting in the tub. Marvin goes wild splashing around and clearly loves it.

The term “rave bath” stuck because of how the owner describes it in the video: “We came up with the cutest thing ever. It’s a rave bath… It’s like a Wonderland.” The video has millions of views across YouTube, TikTok, and Facebook, and people now sometimes use the phrase for any glow-stick-enhanced bath for water-loving pets.It’s basically the opposite of a normal stressful cat bath—pure pampering and play for cats like Marvin who beg for water time instead of running away from it. If your cat hates baths, this probably won’t convert them, but it’s adorable to watch! You can find the original video by searching “Woman Throws A ‘Rave Bath’ For Her Cat Who Loves Bath Time | The Dodo.” [JAC: note the disco music during the rave bath.]

This is a woman who loves her cats!

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You should all know by now that Turkey is probably the most cat-loving country in the world. I’ve seen it for myself on several visits: one of the notable aspects is the groups of cats that congregate in outdoor restaurants, with the customers occasionally feeding them. Here’s a photo I took in March, 2008 in Istanbul:

From the Facebook site Fact Fuel: we learn that some Turks erect minature ladders to keep cats dry (and note the cat houses):

Winter in parts of Turkey can blanket cities in heavy snow, leaving stray cats searching for warmth along icy streets. In response, some apartment residents have installed small, cat-sized ladders leading from the ground up to their balconies. These narrow wooden or metal pathways are carefully secured against building walls, giving outdoor cats a safe route upward instead of forcing them to remain exposed to freezing temperatures below.

Once on the balcony, many residents place insulated boxes, blankets, or small shelters where the cats can curl up and rest. The ladders act as bridges between street life and temporary refuge, especially during storms. For animals accustomed to navigating rooftops and alleyways, the climb becomes a familiar path to safety.

The gesture reflects a cultural affection for street cats that runs deep in many Turkish communities. Rather than ignoring their presence, neighbors adapt their living spaces to include them. In the quiet snowfall of winter nights, these modest ladders stand as vertical lifelines — proving that compassion can be built step by step, right alongside everyday homes.

The ladders:

And if you click on the screenshot below you’ll go to an Instagram video:

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And we return to the perennial problem described in this NYT column, which refers to a paper in the Anatomical Record by a team of Japanese authors (second secreenshot). You can access both sites by clicking on the titles (the NYT goes to an archived link).  The key is the way a cat’s spine is configured.

From the NYT article:

In a paper, published last month in the journal The Anatomical Record, researchers offered a novel take on falling felines. Their evidence suggests new insights into the so-called falling cat problem, particularly that cats have a very flexible segment of their spines that allows them to correct their orientation midair.

Greg Gbur, a physicist and cat-falling expert at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte who was not involved with the paper, said the study was the first he knew of that explored “what the structure of the cat’s spine tells us about how a cat turns over while falling.” He added that the research uncovered many remarkable details about how cats maneuver while falling.

People have been curious about falling cats perhaps as long as the animals have been living with humans, but the method to their acrobatic abilities remains enigmatic. Part of the difficulty is that the anatomy of the cat has not been studied in detail, explains Yasuo Higurashi, a physiologist at Yamaguchi University in Japan and lead author of the study.

“Physicists have tried to model the behavior in relatively simple equations,” said Ruslan Belyaev, a zoologist at the Severtsov Institute of Ecology and Evolution in Moscow who was not involved in the study. But, he added, “the real cat” is anything but simple.

Modern research has split the falling cat problem into two competing models.

The first, “legs in, legs out,” suggests that cats correct their falling trajectory by first extending their hind limbs before retracting them, using a sequential twist of their upper and then lower trunk to gain the proper posture while in free fall.

The second model, “tuck and turn,” suggests that cats turn their upper and lower bodies in simultaneous juxtaposed movements.

In the new study, Dr. Higurashi and his colleagues scrutinized different segments of cat spines using donated cadavers. They also conducted dropping experiments on a pair of live cats, from about three feet up.

But wait! There’s more:

The researchers found that the feline spine was extremely flexible in the upper thoracic vertebrae, but stiffer and heavier in the lower lumbar vertebrae. The discovery matches video evidence showing the cats first turn their front legs, and then their lower legs. The results suggest the cat quickly spins its flexible upper torso to face the ground, allowing it to see so that it can correctly twist the rest of its body to match.

They measured the spinal flexion in cat cadavers whose spines had been removed, and they twisted the removed spines until they “failed”. Here’s a figure from the paper:

(from the paper): (a) Schematic diagram of the testing apparatus used to twist a spinal region until failure. The rotary table was operated manually to rotate the caudal end of the spinal region counterclockwise relative to the immobilized cranial end at a quasi-static loading rate. Torque was measured using the transducer between the table and specimen. The rotation of both the table and specimen was filmed using a digital camcorder. (b) Torque-angular displacement curves obtained for Cat A, illustrating the mechanical properties measured in this study. Torque was recorded at every 5° of angular displacement. The neutral zone (NZ) was defined as the part of the curve with minimal resistance to vertebral rotation. The lumbar spine had no NZ. Stiffness was measured as the ratio of the change in torque to the change in angular displacement in the linear part of the curve. Max, maximum torque; ROM, range of motion.

“The thoracic spine of the cat can rotate like our neck,” Dr. Higurashi said.

Experiments on the spine show the upper vertebrae can twist an astounding 360 degrees, he says, which helps cats make these correcting movements with ease. The results are consistent with the “legs in, legs out” model, but definitively determining which model is correct will take more work, Dr. Higurashi says.

The results also yielded another discovery: Cats, like many animals, appear to have a right-side bias. One of the dropped cats corrected itself by turning to the right eight out of eight times, while the other turned right six out of eight times.

Here’s a figure from the paper showing the cats being dropped (onto soft pillows, mind you). Note that in (b) the anterior part of the cat rotates faster than the rear part,  This cat looks scared, with its tongue sticking out. The caption tells you what’s going on.

From the paper: (a) A representative frame sequence illustrating sequential rotation of the anterior and posterior trunk without counterrotation during air-righting. In this sequence, a cat rotates to the right. (1) The dorsal sides of both the anterior and posterior trunk are initially oriented downwards. (2) Upon release, the anterior trunk becomes oriented laterally, while the posterior trunk remains oriented downwards. (3) The anterior trunk is oriented upwards, indicating that its rotation has been completed, whereas the posterior trunk is oriented laterally. (4) The anterior and posterior trunk are both oriented upwards, indicating the completion of posterior trunk rotation. (b) Bar charts with individual data points showing the time required to complete anterior and posterior trunk rotation during air-righting for each of the two cats (Cats H and I). Error bars represent ±1 SD from the mean. The start of free fall was defined as time zero. Significant differences were assessed using paired Student’s t-tests. **p < 0.01.

If you want to see the paper, click below:

Here’s an enlightening video of how cats spin their bodies (front first) to land on their feet. It’s clearly instinctive, i.e., reflecting a behavioral-genetic program molded by natural selection:

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Lagniappe: Larry the 10 Downing Street cat has put out a video about what’s going on in his block. Most important, the Brits have decided to replace historical figures on their banknotes (they once included Darwin), with wildlife. Larry makes a strong case that he’s both wildlife and a historic figure!

 

Extra lagniappe: A CBS news report on the rescue of Biscuit, a stranded moggy:

And a third lagniappe item. This photo and caption arrived just half an hour ago from Robert Lang. His caption:

Yesterday I and some friends did a hike to a little-visited waterfall in the San Gabriels. At the trailhead, which is shared with some other popular trails, we met this person who was bringing his moggie along for their hike:’

h/t: Carl, Robert