Why Evolution is True is a blog written by Jerry Coyne, centered on evolution and biology but also dealing with diverse topics like politics, culture, and cats.
Last night on the NBC News (and also on the same station the night before) I heard a report on a new cancer drug touted as being almost miraculous. The drug was called daraxonrasib, was described as working by blocking a mutated promoter of tumor growth in people with metastatic pancreatic cancer—a notoriously fatal disease (the median survival period after diagnosis of this stage is about 3-6 months, and the five-year survival rate is 3.2%). But the news confused survival time with survival rate, saying something like “the drug doubles the survival rate. . . .from 6 months to 13.2 months”. (I may have gotten the figures wrong as I’m working from memory.) I knew that something was wrong, as metastatic pancreatic cancer is almost always fatal, so the survival rate, which the percentage of people still alive after a specified period of time (often five years), cannot be expressed in months.
Sure enough, this mistake, expressing the effects as a doubling of survival rate, was not only misleading, but widespread. It’s easy to find similar errors in the press; just google the drug name and “survival rate”:
From CBS News (click all screenshots to read):
An excerpt (all excerpts are indented). I’ve put the confusing bits in bold:
A new, experimental medication nearly doubled overall survival rates for patients with advanced pancreatic cancer, according to the results of a study published Sunday.
Researchers say the findings are a significant marker of progress toward treating a notoriously deadly type of cancer, for which there have historically been limited effective options for therapies.
The drug is called daraxonrasib and it blocks a mutated protein that fuels tumor growth in more than 90% of pancreatic cancer cases — a target that had eluded treatment for decades.
“While not curing the cancer, it is a very large step forward,” said Dr. Zev Wainberg, of the University of California, Los Angeles, who helped lead the study.
The research team found that taking the medication, as a daily pill, reduced the risk of death by 60% for patients with metastatic, or spreading, pancreatic cancer who had previously received treatment. That was compared with survival rates of patients receiving standard chemotherapy, according to UCLA Health.
It randomly assigned the experimental drug or more chemotherapy to 500 patients whose metastatic cancer had quit responding to prior treatment. The findings were published in the New England Journal of Medicine and presented Sunday at the American Society for Clinical Oncology meeting in Chicago.
Those taking daraxonrasib lived for a median of 13.2 months compared with 6.7 months for chemotherapy recipients. While that may seem like a small improvement, Wainberg said it marked the first drug to show a substantial advantage over chemotherapy.
Note that while CBS says that it reduces the risk of death by 60%, there are NO DATA showing that. The risk of death is again nearly 100%, though survival time increases by a bit more than two. Also, “survival rates” have not been doubled. There are no data on that, at least not in the article.
From USA Today:
Excerpt:
An experimental drug nearly doubled the overall survival rates of pancreatic cancer patients, according to the results of its latest clinical trial.
The drug, daraxonrasib, targets the gene mutation behind most pancreatic cancer diagnoses.
It’s easy to find similar conflations. This one, less excusable because of the venue, is from The Clinical Trial Vanguard:
They give the results correctly but characterize them as showing “death risk”:
A 60% reduction in the risk of death—HR 0.40—in previously treated metastatic pancreatic cancer is not a number the oncology community has seen before, in any phase 3 trial, in any line of therapy. That is the threshold RASolute 302 crossed. Revolution Medicines enrolled 500 patients, randomized them between once-daily oral daraxonrasib and investigator’s choice of standard cytotoxic chemotherapy, and watched median overall survival reach 13.2 months on the experimental arm versus 6.6 months on chemotherapy in the RAS G12 mutant population. Doubling median OS in second-line pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma, a disease where incremental gains have defined ambition for decades, reframes what the endpoint space for this indication even looks like.
Nope; the chance of dying within a year or two remains about the same, I’d guess.
. . . and a post from someone on Facebook (I won’t give a name), touting a “60% reduction in the risk of death”. That’s wrong: the risk of death is probably still about 100%
The BBC gets it right, however:
This is correct:
A pill has been found to almost double the survival time for advanced pancreatic cancer patients, with experts describing the trial as a game changer.
The drug, called daraxonrasib, appears to be a breakthrough in managing a disease that has the highest mortality rate of all major cancers.
It helps prevent the spread of cancer by locking onto and shutting off the mutated KRAS gene, which is in more than 90% of pancreatic tumours and spurs cancer growth.
The trial, which included 500 patients in North America, Europe, and Asia, found the average survival time for patients on chemotherapy was 6.6 months, compared with 13.2 months for patients on daraxonrasib. It also caused fewer side-effects.
One other point: if “death risk” is meant to say “death risk over the course of the study,” then that might be accurate. But then the journalists must clarify it.
There are two points to be made, and they’re obvious. First, more than a few science/medicine journalists, including some writing on medical websites, don’t understand statistics, mistaking “rate” for “time”. I asked a science-friendly doctor if this mistake is common, and he replied, “All the time. Sometimes, I’m not sure it’s an unintentional mistake.”
Which leads us to the second point: this kind of conflation could provide false hope for cancer patients and their families. Knowing that you will live, on average, 6½ months longer if you take the new drug is a very different thing from knowing that you will still die with near certainty. It’s easy for one to think—and this is what I thought when I heard the teaser on television—that the drug will reduce the chance of dying by half. Seriously, journalists, please brush up on your statistics, for this one is not rocket science!
Do send in your photos if you have good one; we are missing many regulars, though I won’t drop names.
But today we have some plant photos by Rik Gern of Austin, Texas. Rik’s captions and IDs are indented, and, as always, you can enlarge the photos by clicking on them:
Here are some pictures of a mushroom that isn’t conventionally attractive, but is interesting nonetheless. This Hairy Hexagonia ( Hexagoia hydnoides) has been growing on the stump of a Hackberry tree (Celtis occidentalis) in my front yard for some time now.
This mushroom has no stem and hardens over time. I tapped on it, and it appears to have the density of balsa wood. The underside has striped bands and you can see the small cylindrical spores.
Before it hardened, the mushroom was soft enough for blades of grass to grow through, and poke out the top:
The cap is convex and in addition to being banded like the underside, is covered with small hairs:
This closeup makes the hairs look wet, but they are dry and brittle:
Another closeup gives the impression of a hilly, arid landscape:
The impulse to anthropomorphize must really run deep, because when I look at this picture of two Hairy Hexagonia caps touching I think of courtship and a gentle reaching out!:
I use the app Seek by iNaturalist to identify species, and the next mushroom shows the limits of relying on that app. These popped up on the ground next to the Hairy Hexagonia during a rainy spell. Unlike the Hexagonia, they lasted only a few days. iNaturalist consistently gave me two different answers depending on the vantage point I used when talking pictures. The choices it gave me were Pale Brittlestem (Candolleomyces candolleanus) and Coprinopsis strossmayer, for which I could find only the Latin name, but no common name. Of the two, I’d pick Pale Brittlestem because an image search shows mushrooms that look more like the ones I saw, but it serves a reminder that any identification made thru an app is provisional.
Anyway, I thought the gills on these two looked cool, so I accentuated them a little:
Welcome to the cruelest day: Tuesday, June 2, 2026 and National I Love My Dentist Day. Although I don’t love my dentist, he is honest, cautious, won’t do work that’s not needed, friendly, and loves to travel. He’s a pro, and is the official dentist of the Chicago Blackhawks hockey team. They have a clinic in the arena, and he has to attend every home game to repair any teeth that get broken, which is not infrequent. I asked him what could be done to prevent the frequent loss of teeth in hockey players, and he said it was easy: just make players wear plastic shields in front of their faces like the goalie does. I asked him why they don’t, and he responded that it was sort of a macho thing. Oy vey!
It’s also National Rocky Road Ice Cream Day, and National Rotisserie Chicken Day. The best deal for the latter is Costco, where the chickens are hot, bit (about four pounds), cheap ($4.99 for years), and fresh (they’re taken off the spit and used for other dishes if they’re not sold within two hours). I always get one when I go to Costco. They are loss leaders: the store loses money on every chicken sold. I can make at least four meals out of one.
Readers are welcome to mark notable events, births, or deaths on this day by consulting the June 2 Wikipedia page.
Iran launched two ballistic missiles targeting American forces based in Kuwait early Monday local time, the U.S. military said, further rattling the already shaky cease-fire in the Middle East.
Both missiles were intercepted and no American personnel were harmed, the U.S. military’s Central Command, which oversees the Middle East, said in a statement on social media. The episode followed days of low-level skirmishes between Iran and the United States that have raised fears of escalation, and have strained negotiations to end the U.S.-Israeli war with Iran that began in late February.
The U.S. military said late Sunday that it had attacked radar and command sites in southern Iran over the weekend, in retaliation for Iran shooting down an American drone over international waters. Less than an hour later, Iran’s Revolutionary Guards said on state media that its forces had targeted a military base from which a U.S. attack on a communications facility had originated.
While President Trump has claimed that the United States has obliterated Iran’s military capabilities, U.S. intelligence assessments suggest that Iran still has significant stockpiles of missiles and overall military power.
Talks to lift Iran’s effective blockade of the Strait of Hormuz, a vital waterway for oil and gas shipments, and end the war have advanced in fits and bursts. Last week, officials familiar with the negotiations said that U.S. and Iranian negotiators had agreed on a document that had been sent to the two countries’ leaders for approval.
It is unclear whether Mojtaba Khamenei, the Iranian supreme leader believed to be in hiding, responded to the proposal. But Mr. Trump has pushed to toughen the terms of the deal, sending a revised document to Iran, according to three officials who spoke anonymously because they could not discuss the matter publicly.
Drones are one thing, missiles another—and more serious. I suspect that Mojtaba Khamenei is dead (or in a coma) as he’s not made any videos or statements since he was injured. That means we’re dealing with IRGC hard-liners. I represent myself, not American as a whole, so though America is pushing Trump to end the war, I want him to do so in terms that let Iran know that it’s definitely lost, that they open the Strait of Hormuz without tolls or oversight, that they will enrich no uranium above levels needed for peaceful purposes, and that the U.S. bombs Kharg Island if Iran keeps trying to win.
Oh, and the fighting continues in Lebanon, though Netanyahu appears to have backed off his threat to strike Hezbollah in Beirut. This comes after Trump told Israel to back off and the UN security Council asked Israel to withdraw from southern Beirut.
*Over at the Free Press, Mitchell Robson tells us “What the spelling bee taught me about excellence.” (He participated in the Bee, and says it “may be the purest meritocracy America has left.”
This year’s competition, which featured nine finalists, was hosted by ESPN’s Mina Kimes, fresh off her recent Celebrity Jeopardy! victory. The winner of the night was California eighth-grader Shrey Parikh, who aced 18 rounds of regular spelling before shocking the crowd in the last lightning round by correctly spelling 32 words—including chikungunya and bromocriptine—in 90 seconds.
The lightning round, as well as Kimes’ role as host, are new additions to the spelling bee this year, made in an effort to boost viewership after years of declining audience numbers. It’s unclear if it worked—viewership last year was less than half of its 2012 peak of 1 million, and this year’s numbers haven’t been published—but those who did watch Parikh storm through the final round would find it hard to disagree with sports writer Rodger Sherman, who called it the “new greatest athletic accomplishment of 2026.” (Even if Bee purists, myself included, are critical of the newfangled lightning round.)
. . .Anyone who reaches the upper levels of competitive spelling knows that brute-force memorization of words is necessary, but nowhere near sufficient for success. Elite spellers must develop an understanding of roots, linguistics, and spelling conventions across dozens of languages of origin. Often, those patterns become the only lifeline available when confronting an unfamiliar word.
And that skill is just as vital—if not more so—in daily life as it has ever been.
. . .During this year’s finals, audience members gasped when Shrey correctly spelled the Welsh-derived word hwyl, pronounced “HOO-il.” But the spelling follows a recognizable linguistic pattern: In Welsh-derived words, the oo sound is frequently represented by the letter w. Once one knows that convention, hwyl becomes far less mysterious.
Why does any of this matter? In particular, why does it matter for someone like me, who later majored in physics and quantum engineering?
First, knowing the building blocks of language is relevant to every single field. In my college physics lectures, for example, the word bremsstrahlung might have sounded to others like an errant sneeze; I immediately recognized it as a type of radiation. That said, nowadays, medical or scientific terminology—along with words in virtually any knowledge sphere—can be defined or translated with a quick online search. Does this mean there is no utility in learning them?
. . .spelling bees offer no circumvention of merit. There are no referees making subjective judgment calls. No participation trophies. No second chances or mulligans. And no AI assistance. There are no points for almost getting a word right. There is only the contestant, the word, and his knowledge of the dictionary.
In other words, the Scripps National Spelling Bee may be one of the purest meritocracies American society has left.
The unforgiving structure of the Bee may sound harsh, but I have come to appreciate it deeply, gaining something much more enduring than a repository of obscure vocabulary and spelling skills. The Bee rewards preparation, composure, resilience, and intellectual curiosity in perhaps their most distilled forms. Because I maintain close friendships with some fellow competitors, I can speak for many of them by saying that these skills have proven endlessly valuable throughout the rest of our lives: in high school, college classes, and our now fledgling careers. Shrey Parikh, and the students who competed alongside him, will soon learn the same.
As the world tackles the academic, workforce, and societal changes brought on by artificial intelligence—as well as the generalized suppression of meritocracy—it is all the more critical to cling to arenas in which work ethic and curiosity remain foundational. The Scripps National Spelling Bee is one of those arenas. It teaches that meaningful achievement is forged not in moments of public recognition, but in long, mundane hours spent in silence and without applause, pursuing knowledge, rigor, and excellence.
I have mentioned this before, but if you look at this year’s contestants, or a list of past winners, you’ll see that since 2000 it’s been dominated by East Asians and East Asian Americans. I strongly suspect this reflects a cultural emphasis on diligence and study and not any genetic propensity for accurate spelling.
The White House memorandum describing President Trump’s recent physical examination lacks details of the results of tests to assess his cardiovascular health, according to physicians who read the report.
That is one of several areas of the report that doctors said stood out for its lack of specificity. Trump spent about three hours at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center on Tuesday, where he underwent a battery of tests as part of his annual medical examination.
The president’s physician, Navy Capt. Sean Barbabella, wrote in a memorandum released late Friday that Trump “remains in excellent health, demonstrating strong cardiac, pulmonary, neurological and overall physical function.”
Barbabella’s description of Trump’s cardiac health cites results from a coronary CT angiography, typically done to check for narrowed or blocked arteries in the heart; an echocardiogram, which makes an image of the heart using sound waves; and an artificial-intelligence-enhanced electrocardiogram analysis. He said the AI analysis estimated the president’s cardiac age at 14 years younger than his actual age of 79.
Yet the White House memo didn’t include crucial information typically yielded from such tests that would provide evidence for Barbabella’s finding that Trump’s cardiac function is normal. Barbabella also said an ultrasound of the carotid arteries showed normal results without providing specific metrics.
“If I was creating a report to send to another physician, I would have mentioned a little bit more about the carotid ultrasound,” said Dr. William Shutze, a Texas vascular surgeon. “What amount of plaque there is going to be—because almost all of us are going to have some buildup there.”
To fully assess the president’s cardiac health, other doctors said they would want to see a calcium score, a description of any plaque in the arteries, and a CAD-RADS score to assess narrowing in the arteries. The report simply stated there is “no arterial obstruction or structural abnormalities” in the heart or major blood vessels, which could simply mean there isn’t a blockage, physicians said.
Additional detail from the echocardiogram, such as the ejection fraction—the percentage of blood pumped with each heart contraction—would also provide a fuller picture of the president’s health. Trump’s 2018 report did include a measurement of his ejection fraction.
. . .The report lacked detail in other key areas where Trump is known to have had health problems. He went to Walter Reed three times last year, including a trip to address the swelling of his lower legs, which his doctor diagnosed as chronic venous insufficiency. It is a common condition in older patients where one-way valves inside the veins don’t work properly.
Trump’s most recent report describes that he has “slight lower leg swelling” and notes “improvement from last year” when the chronic venous insufficiency was diagnosed. The report gives no reason for the improvement. Trump told The Wall Street Journal several months ago that he balked at wearing compression stockings—a typical treatment. Doctors said it is unusual for the condition to improve without treatment.
Lordy, isn’t that enough information? Does the public deserve a complete account of his health? Is nothing private? The WSJ also quotes a doctor saying that his cholesterol numbers were good–too good!: “The report said Trump takes rosuvastatin and ezetimibe for cholesterol control. ‘He’s got like the best cholesterol numbers you’ll see,’ said Dr. Daniel Torrent, a Georgia vascular surgeon, who added that it is unusual for medication to achieve such favorable numbers. ‘We don’t usually manage people to the point where they’re that good’.” Doesn’t that imply that the doctor is releasing false information? In my view, what has been reported is sufficient to show that the man has no major medical problems or signs of dementia.
A shareholder of The New York Times is demanding a full inspection of The New York Times’ Board and Audit Committee records, giving the outlet five days to respond or face court.
The National Center for Public Policy Research (NCPPR), a beneficial shareholder of the NYT Company, is requesting an inspection of certain books and records following the controversial May 11, 2026, Nicholas Kristof column, titled “The silence that meets the rape of Palestinians.”
The Kristof article claimed to report widespread sexual violence by Israeli prison guards against Palestinian prisoners, including the allegation that Israeli prison guards trained dogs to commit rape. Following publication, the Israeli government announced its intention to pursue a defamation lawsuit against The New York Times and Kristof.
The purpose of the demand is also to determine whether these programs were followed or bypassed with respect to the Kristof article.For example, following the publication, former Israeli prime minister Ehud Olmert, who was named as an on-the-record source, said that his statements were misrepresented.
“When a columnist’s own quoted source publicly accuses the columnist of misrepresentation after publication, that is not a detail the company can wave away by noting the editors found no errors,” NJAC said.
It is worth noting that NJAC is not seeking reporter notes, unpublished drafts, confidential source identities, or attorney work. It is also not asking the NYT to justify its viewpoint (this is protected by the First Amendment). It is instead seeking to investigate possible corporate mismanagement, inadequate oversight, and incomplete public discourse.“The NYT said their biggest asset is trust. You can’t tell shareholders [that] credibility is your core asset and then hide records about your processes. We are just asking the board whether it did its job,” Mark Goldfeder, CEO of NJAC, told The Jerusalem Post on Sunday.In its most recent annual Form 10-K filing for the fiscal year ending December 31, 2025, submitted to the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), The New York Times Company said, “Our brand and reputation are key assets; negative perceptions or publicity could adversely affect our business, financial condition, and results of operations.”
Note that this is not a request for the paper or Kristof to provide corrections, but to see if the paper is doing its fiduciary duty to shareholders, which is why a shareholder has standing to make such a demand. I’m curious to see what the NYT will do about this given that it’s stood firm on Kristof’s investigation that produced his controversial column. This will come to nothing as any shareholder could demand the same thing about any story they don’t like.
*Here’s a video from FB showing the nine times that Palestinians were offered a state, and refused. As anybody with two neurons to rub together knows, the Palestinians want only their own state and no Jewish state—i.e., the exterrmination of Israel.
And a chart put on FB by Andrzej. Both of these are presented without comment:
Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili’s having a chinwag with the gardener:
Andrzej: What are you guys talking about? Hili: About mowing the lawn, gnats, and music.
In Polish:
Ja: O czym rozmawiacie?
Hili: O koszeniu trawy, meszkach i muzyce.
*******************
Another gem of medieval letter interpretation from TherionArms:
Some reader whose name I’ve forgotten has put my face into Edvard Munch’s “The Scream“:
Reposted by Masih. First, the translation from Farsi:
#Masoud Piahoh, a citizen who had posted this video as a story from the peaceful protest of a Deymah protester in front of Aladdin Passage and face-to-face with the special unit, has been sentenced to 10 years in prison.
#مسعود_پیاهو، شهروندی که این ویدیو را از اعتراض مسالمتآمیز یک معترض دی ماه جلوی پاساژ علاالدین و رو در روی یگان ویژه، استوری کرده بود، به ۱۰ سال حبس محکوم شده pic.twitter.com/g9gv1a2zLD
— Maryam Moqaddam مریم مقدم (@MaryamMoqaddam) May 31, 2026
From Luana; you can read more about this here. The name is Sam BRINTON, and according to Wikipedia Sam was “the deputy assistant secretary of Spent Fuel and Waste Disposition in the Office of Nuclear Energy from June to December 2022,” but dismissed from that post after luggage thefts.
Sam Britton’s luggage theft is still one of the weirdest & funniest political scandals of the last five years. I still chuckle at the thought of a Tanzanian lady recognizing her own handmade dress being worn by Sam.
The organisers are pleased to announce the following additions to the bill:
– The Crazy Frog
– The kid who mowed Trump’s lawn
– The KKK singers
– An Ed Sheeran lookalike
– Pete Hegseth playing the spoons https://t.co/vCZezk7K5d
And two from Dr. Cobb. He also gave the answer: “The answer in the linked tweet is from the Arxiv article – 10^8 bananas needed to power a 1000kg probe to 10% of light speed…
Fabulous. Using the antimatter in bananas (yes!) to power an interstellar craft. How many bananas would you need?
This deep sea creature is as sharp & clear as broken class, & can grow as long as your hand. This giant amphipod, (Cystisoma) only has two colored body parts: the dense orange stomach/egg pouch, & two MASSIVE eyes, which are a glittering holographic orange layer completely covering its head.📽️ MBARI
There’s a dearth of news, or should I say there’s a dearth of news that I want to write about: the interesting news is relevated to the morning Hili post. But since it’s June 1, which marks for me the Day to Begin Wearing Hawaiian shirts, I present my garb for today. I have about 50 Hawaiian shirts, acquired when I went through an aloha-shirt phase, but I wear them only in appropriat weather. This one is semi-authentic, as it’s not old but has coconut buttons and a pocket matched with the shirt’s pattern—two features of an authentic Hawaiian shirt. (The real old ones from decades ago are made of rayon, not cotton. I got it from a now-defunct outfit that had gorgeous Hawaiian shirts: “Paradise on a Hanger” (great name). Sadly, it is not longer in business, but i have enough shirts.
This one has a lovely green-and-orange fish pattern. I wish that mainland Americans would take up this habit, for you see them all over the islands of Hawaii, especially on “aloha Fridays.” It counts as “business casual” garb, too. You can hardly be unhappy when all around you are colorful shirts.
And Matthew sent this short YouTube video about a new puggle (the name for a baby platypus, Ornithorhynchus anatinus) from ZoosVictoria, which really does seem to be interested in conservation. Note that the incubation for the egg is just ten days, but it’s four months until it emerges from the den. It’s okay to hold females, but remember that males have poison spurs on their hind legs, which can inflict a painful and slow-healing wound.
From PCC(E): After watching the explosion of Jeff Bezos’s Blue Origin rocket last week, a rocket that is designed to help create the first human colony on the Moon, I thought to myself, “What is all this mishigass? Why do we need a human colony on the Moon? What will it tell us that unmanned exploration using drones or robotic vehicles won’t?” I couldn’t think of any answers, but I beefed about this to my friend (and reader) Jim “Bat” Batterson, who used to work for NASA. I was surprised that he pretty much agreed with me, and wrote an email to that effect. I asked him if he could turn the email into a short post, and he gladly assented. So here’s Bat’s take on space missions (indented):
Before Trump’s election and, really, its Project 2025 budgetary guidance, NASA spent roughly equal amounts on “human spaceflight” (also called “human exploration”) and “science”. In the NASA budget, “science” is a category that includes basic/fundamental science —mostly via grants to universities and institutes in the sub-areas of planetary science, like heliophysics, astrophysics, and earth/atmospheric science. The areas within “science” are prioritized by “decadal” committees of experts who, every ten years, assess the possible knowledge that NASA could help create. These needs can be very expensive, requiring the engineering of entirely new spacecraft and instrumentation needing long timelines and large teams of unique technical expertise (think space telescopes, planetary landers, comet or asteroid fly-bys).
Human Exploration, on the other hand, deals with all endeavors in which humans go into space in rockets, capsules, and space stations. The Mars Rover, for example, counts as “Science” and not “Human Exploration” because humans aren’t involved.
Until this past year. Human Exploration and Science were each budgeted at about $8 billion yearly with an additional $3 billion in human spaceflight operations such as running the International Space Station.
Last year, the administration’s (i.e., the President’s) budget recommended cutting Science by about 50%(!), and raising Human Exploration by $1 billion. Congress rejected that and kept the budget as it was. The same attempt to cut the budget was made this year, and Congress again rejected it.
The lunar moon base or colony, as well as the Mars colonization form of mental masturbation, both fit under the exploration and human spaceflight operations budget. Space telescopes, robotic missions to the planets and asteroids, earth-observing satellites and the like are generally counted in the “Science” portion of NASA’s budget. Even if Congress again restores the full Science budget, the chaos and uncertainty brought on these multi-year efforts can easily erode NASA if talented engineers and scientists seek more stable work to support their families.
I fully agree that there is no “science” in human colonization of the Moon as opposed to using robotic rovers; and the addition of humans to the mix entails not only danger to human lives, but much extra expense. The significant science that comes out of human exploration of space is limited to understanding the complexities of humans living and working in space. The only justification I see for a lunar base is the same as that given for the “first man in space” competition with Russia in the 1960’s: the claim of “soft” military/international presence IF another country such as China plants their flag along with a human colony. Adjusted for inflation, the NASA budget of the early 1960’s was three times that of today’s budgets, reflecting the more serious devotion to putting humans on the Moon in the Sixties. You can see a good budget summary from planetary society at thislink.
By the way, using Department-of-Defense comparisons, I like to think in terms of how many aircraft0-carrier-equivalents aspects of the NASA budget represent. A new aircraft carrier these days costs around $13 billion +/- out the door. So the cost of the of NASA Human Exploration program is on the order of a new aircraft carrier each year.
So, dear readers, both Bat and I agree that we’re wasting a lot of dough (our dough) trying to put human colonies on the Moon and on Mars. It is a performative gesture with no real scientific benefits, and only tiny and unforseeable military benefits. That money could well be used to alleviate human problems right here on Earth.
If you have any questions about this, put them in the comments and Bat will be glad to answer them.
Today we have pictures from the shore of New Jersey taken by Jan Malik. Jan’s captions and IDs are indented, and you can enlarge the photos by clicking on them.
Here are a few pictures from my walks on Cape May and Sandy Hook, taken this April.
Starting from the Atlantic Ocean (eastern) shore on Cape May, I met this pair of American Oystercatchers (Haematopus palliatus). In Cape May, a section of the beach is fenced off to protect nesting sites for them and for Piping plovers. They are feisty birds and every spring there is a competition for nesting sites; the bird on the right is calling at another Oystercatcher:
The pair took off to drive out the intruder:
The place where I found that pair was littered with the remains of Sand fleas (possibly Emerita talpoida). These fossorial crustaceans normally stay buried in the sand, exiting only when the sand is awash with the shallow tide, but Oystercatchers’ bills are well adapted to dig them out. I think the birds ate only the soft and juicy parts of their telsons, leaving the crustaceans mortally wounded and unable to move:
These Sand fleas are small and difficult to catch alive. That’s what their front end and first pair of legs look like. These crabs dig backwards, starting from their telson, and the front pair of legs is used as a sand anchor:
Another arthropod – the Horseshoe crab (Limulus polyphemus), came ashore, atypically for it, on the Atlantic Ocean side of the peninsula. These are treacherous waters for these spiderlike creatures, for they are easily flipped over by ocean waves and become stranded. They are an interesting part of the Delaware Bay ecosystem and I may share more pictures of them later:
On the Delaware Bay shore of Cape May, there were already many Laughing gulls (Leucophaeus atricilla), which mostly move south in winter but return to their breeding grounds in the spring. They are quite similar to the Eurasian Black-headed gull:
Terns also made their appearance. I think this may be a Forster’s tern (Sterna forsteri) because of the lack of black tips on its primaries and its pure white underbelly, but they are difficult to tell apart from Common terns (Sterna hirundo):
The terns landed on old quay pilings and started courting. There’s no way to tell females from males other than by their courting behavior; males can be slightly larger, but the difference is less than 5%, which is hardly discernible to the human eye:
The courting consists of the two mates trying to look “smug”, with wings drooped, necks extended, and bills pointed toward the sky:
Then there’s the courtship dance and ritual feeding. Here is a fragment of it, taken from a large distance, so I’ve compensated for the lack of pixels by cobbling together this composite. The male presents a fry to the female and then, if she accepts (which is not a given), circles around the female while stomping his feet:
On my way home, I stopped at Sandy Hook, a sand spit where shore gun batteries protecting New York Harbor were once located. It is now a prime nesting site for Ospreys (Pandion haliaetus):
The former Army garrison required many houses for the officers, and these are now excellent nesting sites for Ospreys. Standing in the center of Officers Row (as the area is called), I counted four nests on top of chimneys:
The meadow below the houses was full of American robins (Turdus migratorius) fattening up for the nesting season by preying on earthworms. I know little about annelids, but I’m going to go out on a limb and say it is the common earthworm (Lumbricus terrestris), since it is a favorite prey for robins:
Finally, moving to the class Mammalia, here are Sandy Hook’s harbor seals (Phoca vitulina), congregating on rocks exposed by low tide (the tide was rising so, one by one, the seals were forced to slip back into the water). There are eight seals in this picture, but I counted 15 in total. Their population around the New York inlet has increased in recent years, which may soon put them on a collision course with the fishing industry:
It’s JUNE!!! Welcome to the first day of that month, Monday, June 1, 2026, and here’s a depiction of the month in the illuminated manuscript the Très Riches Heures du Duc de Berry, with the caption “JunePalais de la Cité and the Sainte-Chapelle”. This scene must be right outside 15th-century Paris, as that’s where Cité and Sainte-Chapelle are (they still look the same). The barefooted peasants are cultivating the crops:
Limbourg brothers, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
Here’s an up-to-date video showing what you should do if someone is choking. Watch it, as we should all know how to do this. Remember to first give those five sharp blows to the back.
There’s a Google Doodle below celebrating Pride Month. The caption: “In celebration of Pride Month, today’s Doodle celebrates the art of disco by shining a light on the LGBTQ+ artists who helped create space for everyone on the dance floor.” Click on the icon to see where it goes:
Readers are welcome to mark notable events, births, or deaths on this day by consulting the June 1 Wikipedia page
President Donald Trump will headline an opening ceremony for the Great American State Fair on the National Mall next month after many of the musical performers slated for the event canceled, citing the event’s associations with him.
The Great American State Fair — organized by Freedom 250, a Trump-aligned entity he created by executive order to plan semiquincentennial events — this week announced a lineup of performers. More than half canceled shortly thereafter, including Martina McBride and Bret Michaels, claiming they had not known about the organizing group’s connections to the president.
After Trump said on his Truth Social platform Saturday that he understood “Artists are getting ‘the yips’” about performing and suggested headlining the event himself, Danielle Alvarez, an adviser to Freedom 250, confirmed to The Washington Post that Trump will now kick off an opening event for the fair.
“As the visionary behind the Great American State Fair, we are excited to announce that President Trump will personally kick off this historic celebration on Wednesday, June 24 in an opening ceremony celebrating America’s 250th birthday,” Alvarez said in a statement first shared with The Post. She called the multiday event “a World’s Fair celebrating the people, traditions, innovations, and spirit that make America the greatest nation on Earth.”
Trump earlier Saturday said that he was “ordering my Representatives to look at the feasibility of doing an AMERICA IS BACK Rally.”
Two of Trump’s advisers told The Post on Saturday, on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the plans publicly, that they were quickly working to make his suggestion of being the fair’s opening act a reality.
While the president’s post suggested he wanted his speech to take place on Wednesday, the Great American State Fair was originally set to begin June 25 and run through July 10.
And get a load of this fulminating narcissism, written by the President:
Prior to Freedom 250 confirming the newly planned speech, Trump in his Truth Social post wrote that he was “thinking about bringing the Number One Attraction anywhere in the World, the man who gets much larger audiences than Elvis in his prime, and he does so without a guitar, the man who loves our Country more than anyone else, and the man who some say is the Greatest President in History (THE GOAT!), DONALD J. TRUMP, to take the place of these highly paid, Third Rate ‘Artists,’ and give a major speech, rallying the Country forward like I have done ever since being President!”
What’s he going to do for his opening act: give another speech? Will the other acts go on? Of course given the politics of most popular musicians, I’m not sure that even if Trump hadn’t politicized the event, musicians would have declined simply because the government (aka Trump) is behind this celebration. It’s a shame, as there are many good things about America, and what do we get? A CAGE FIGHT, for crying out loud!
*The CBC reported that an autistic girl, 14 years of age, went missing in Toronto, and her family offered a $25,000 for her safe return and lots of posters were put up. Would you be able to guess what happened when it was known she was Jewish? The posters were torn down, of course.
Toronto police say they’ve received reports of multiple posters for a missing teen girl being torn down, while her family has announced a $25,000-reward for any information leading to her “safe return.”
The 14-year-old girl was last seen in the area of Bathurst Street and Hotspur Road, south of Highway 401, on Saturday at 12:01 a.m., police say.
On Sunday, Toronto Reddit users posted images of what appeared to be torn-down posters reporting the girl missing. The Jewish and wider community in Toronto are concerned about these actions and the motivations behind them.
Nadine Ramadan, spokesperson for Toronto police, said in an email that police “understand reports of these posters being torn down are upsetting for the community.”
“However, removing posters is not necessarily a criminal offence,” she said. “Our focus remains on the investigation.”
Maureen Leshem, a spokesperson for the family, said it was “disturbing and cruel” to see the posters being torn down.
“When a family is desperately trying to find their child, this kind of behaviour should concern every person in our city,” she said in an emailed statement.
“Right now, the only focus should be on finding [her]. Instead, volunteers who have spent days and nights searching, postering, and raising awareness are watching those efforts deliberately undermined.”
Leshem said a $25,000 reward is being offered for information leading to the girl’s safe return.
You have to have no moral compass to tear down posters advertising for the return of an autistic girl–simply because she’s Jewish. But this is what’s happening in Canada these days, and not just Canada. But, there’s good news about the missing girl:
UPDATE: Toronto police say the missing 14-year-old was found safe on May 28. You can find the latest here. CBC News is no longer naming the girl to protect her privacy now that she has been found.
New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani will not attend an annual parade honoring Israel on Sunday, breaking with a decades-long political custom because of his support of Palestinian rights.
Though it has gone by different names over the years, the Israel Day parade has always been a must-attend event for mayors, governors and other political leaders eager to win over the throngs of flag-waving revelers who congregate on Fifth Avenue to celebrate the birth of the Jewish state in 1948.
Not so for Mamdani. Two weeks ago the mayor’s office released a video commemorating the Nakba, an Arabic word for “catastrophe” that is used to describe the displacement of an estimated 700,000 Palestinians during the 1948 Arab-Israeli war that followed Israel’s establishment.
“I said on the campaign trail that I wouldn’t be attending the parade, and I’ve made my views on the Israeli government abundantly clear,” Mamdani said at a news conference Thursday.
This is the first time in 60 years that the Mayor hasn’t marched in the Israel parade.
And, in fact, the Nakba really refers to the disaster that occurred to five Arab armies when they Israel the day it announced independence. Israel did not expel Arabs who weren’t fighting against them, but encouraged peaceful Arabs to stay. Many, many Arab residents of then fled Israel on their own— at the request of the Arab states attacking it, who said that they could return when Israel lost. It didn’t lose. Ergo, Nakba, an embarrassment for the Arab states. It’s absurd that the mayor’s office would release a video commemorating it: a blatant ideological statement that has nothing to do with the governance of New York City. A bit more:
The city’s police commissioner, Jessica Tisch, who is Jewish, told reporters she would attend.
“It is the mayor’s decision not to march, and it is my decision to march proudly,” she said as she stood alongside Mamdani at police headquarters.
The mayor’s absence, though long expected, has given fresh fuel to opponents who view his criticism of the Israeli government as antisemitic.
Rabbi Marc Schneier, founding senior rabbi of The Hampton Synagogue on Long Island and president of the Foundation for Ethnic Understanding, which advocates for better relationships between Jews and Muslims, called Mamdani’s decision to not attend the parade “a slap in the face to all Jewish New Yorkers.”
AD
“Do us a favor, stay home,” he said. “We don’t need you. We don’t want you.”
Nope, but, as Sam Harris said, Mamdani is either an Islamist or a promoter of Islamism, which is a government run along Muslim Islamic lines. And it’s clear he’s an antisemite. Jews who voted for him are getting exactly what they deserve, even if it’s unexpected.
Six years ago, in the 2020 year of progressive pandemic madness, the University of California led the Ivory Tower movement to drop standardized tests as an admissions requirement in the name of equity. The experiment has been a failure, as more than 750 professors in STEM disciplines across the UC system now admit in a cri de coeur to reverse course.
“We now observe preparation gaps so severe that instructors must reteach middle-school mathematics while simultaneously teaching the material students need for sciences, engineering, economics, and other quantitatively demanding fields,” the professors write in an open letter to the Board of Regents signed by seven of nine chairs of UC math departments.
The Board of Regents in May 2020 moved to scrap the university’s SAT/ACT requirement on the spurious rationale that tests discriminate against minorities. Gov. Gavin Newsom, who appoints most regents, had claimed the tests exacerbate “the inequities for underrepresented students,” even though a faculty senate report found otherwise.
Test scores “add substantially to UC’s ability to predict student success” beyond high school grades, especially for minority groups, the faculty report said. It stressed that the university “does not appear to use standardized test scores in a way that amplifies racial disparities.” Without test scores, admissions would hinge on inflated grades, extracurricular activities and essays.
Note that the regents went against the faculty and against data suggesting that submitting tests in fact help get in qualified minorities.
Those warnings have borne out. The new faculty letter says that “for three consecutive years, 20-30% of UC Berkeley first-semester calculus students who participated in mathematical diagnostic testing displayed severe preparation deficits.” Drop standards, and learning mastery declines. Imagine that.
The letter stresses that current admissions standards cannot “reliably distinguish readiness for university-level STEM majors in an era of severe grade inflation and AI-assisted application essays.” Eliminating the test requirement has resulted in admitting students to STEM programs “without a reliable measure of whether they are prepared to succeed. This serves no one well.”
“Failing to measure preparation gaps does not remove barriers; it moves them into the classroom, where they become harder to overcome,” the professors write. “Obscuring preparation gaps harms both students individually and the University collectively. It offers the appearance of access while undermining the chance of success.”
AI won’t help you much (if at all) on SATs, and the Berkeley data shows that you can’t have equity and merit—not so long as you don’t accept standardized tests. Colleges are starting to use them again, though.
*I keep reading about “suicidal empathy,” in which empathic feelings lead one down paths of supporting odious causes (college students supporting Hamas is one example); and now Gad Saad has a new eponymous book on it. Sadly, Quillette gave it a damning review.
Homeowner Jane invites the homeless James to live with her. “I’d hate to be homeless,” she tells herself. James starts to exploit and abuse her. She accepts it. “I would not exploit and abuse someone unless something truly terrible had happened to me,” she thinks. This is what Gad Saad would call “suicidal empathy.” In his book of the same name, the Canadian commentator rails against “the orgiastic misfiring of one of our most noble virtues, empathy.”
There is merit to Saad’s critique. He is correct that empathy is problematic when people exaggerate the similarities between individuals. In all likelihood, James is not exploiting and abusing Jane because he has been maddened by trauma. He is, fundamentally, a less conscientious person.
Saad is clear—and rightly so—that he has no inherent objection to empathy. He objects to empathy, and all other emotions, when they are not regulated by rationality. The extent to which we empathise with other people must be framed by a rational understanding of those people and their circumstances.
. . .So far, so good. But Saad, a marketing professor at Concordia University in Montreal, is a terrible guide to his theme. If the concept of “suicidal empathy” can be compared to an interesting neighbourhood, Saad does the equivalent of leading the reader on an extensive tour of an entire metropolis—ranting and bragging as he does so.
Saad has form here. A man who has never missed an opportunity to congratulate himself, he soaked his previous book—The Parasitic Mind: How Infectious Ideas Are Killing Common Sense—in narcissism, with incessant references to his courage, dedication, and football skills in the introduction alone. Suicidal Empathy isn’t quite that bad but he still can’t seem to finish a page without referencing his books, podcasts, talks et cetera; recounting his Twitter feuds; and making irrelevant and pandering remarks about contemporary politics.
This makes Suicidal Empathy almost impossible to read. Saad rambles smugly between subjects and tends to conflate sarcasm with wit—and with thinking that what makes a joke really entertaining is to repeat it. This passage may give you a sense of the Saad experience:
Late into the pandemic, the Quebec government had instituted a nighttime curfew that forbade people to walk their dogs outside, which they eventually rescinded after a dogged backlash. I hope that Fido does not have diarrhea during the curfew. After all, to walk your dog at 10:00 p.m. in a deserted residential area during a Montreal winter is simply too dangerous. You might pass the COVID virus to the accumulated snow. Much of the snow had yet to be mandatorily vaccinated, so empathetically speaking it was important to be vigilant. Snow Lives Matter.
I fully agree that COVID restrictions had diminishing returns. But so do jokes.
. . . In addition to this unfocused and self-satisfied style, there are deeper analytical problems. Saad is capable of making effective arguments (for example, he makes a decent case against “single-issue optimization” in the context of the pandemic). But he often leaps between arguments before he has actually finished making them, sacrificing thoroughness and coherence.
. . . If the Left can suffer from suicidal empathy, which is true, then right-wingers can suffer from homicidal incuriosity. This is a kind of self-absorbed arrogance that makes people assume that they have total knowledge of the facts of complex circumstances, including other people’s motivations, abilities, opinions, etc., and the power to control and reshape them as they please.
It goes on, but I’m familiar with Saad’s style, which is truly self-absorbed and self-aggrandizing. On the other hand, the Amazon rating is below, and on that page are a lot of blurbs from well known people. And it’s #3 on the NYT list of print/e-book nonfiction works. So somebody likes it! If you’ve read it, weigh in.
Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili’s still distressed at the state of the world:
Hili: Oh God, you look like you’ve just finished going through the news.
Me: You guessed it.
In Polish:
Hili: O Boże, wyglądasz jakbyś właśnie skończył przegląd wiadomości.
Ja: Zgadłaś.
From Masih, who breaks down on the CBS news as she thinks about Iranian protestors who have been killed or imprisoned. I’ve never heard her lose it before, but she’s a tough woman and four assassination attempts are too many:
I broke down crying on live CBS television. I couldn’t hold it together anymore. Because it was the 4th time that I sat in a courtroom watching actual assassins, convicted murderers sent by the Islamic Republic to kill me, face charges on American soil.
From Luana, who doesn’t like Grokipedia. I haven’t tried it, but you can find it here, and the PNAS assessment here, which is not positive about the AI encyclopedia:
No, headline writers, no.
According to the study, Grokipedia doesn’t “lean right.” It’s just slightly less left-leaning than Wikipedia.
Let me give team Grokipedia some free advice… 👇 pic.twitter.com/jVRqdp5yfn
Posted by Emma; a commenter notes, in response to criticism, that there is no way to plot biological sex as a continuous distribution; these are traits connected with sex:
When people claim sex is bimodal, they never define the X-axis: what are they measuring exactly and how?
Luckily for them, we’ve taken it upon ourselves to do just that. And we’ve discovered that sex is… not actually bimodal at all.@FondOfBeetlespic.twitter.com/5aXvQeOuKJ
Two from Dr. Cobb. He calls this first one “poorly spuds”:
Have you, like me, spent the last 26 years worrying if the Canadian Potato Museum STILL has the display of various potato diseases with potatoes in little coffins? Stop worrying. I checked today. Still there.
About 60% of sharks are viviparous, meaning they use placental gestation like humans.Which means: SHARKS CAN HAVE BELLY BUTTONS.These small scars generally heal/disappear in a few months after live birth, making them a useful indicator of newborns in viviparous shark species.(📷:NOAA)
