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.
Welcome to June’s first Hump Day (“Kuprio diena” in Lithuania): it’s Wednesday, June 3, 2026 and Chimborazo Day, celebrating the big mountain (an extinct volcano) in Ecuador, which I’ve seen. Wikipedia explains why it’s the highest point on Earth, if you measure from the center of the planet rather than from sea level:
Although not the tallest mountain in the Andes or on Earth relative to sea level, its summit is the farthest point on Earth’s surface from the Earth’s center due to its location along the planet’s equatorial bulge. Chimborazo’s height from sea level is 6,263 m (20,548 ft), well below that of Mount Everest at 8,849 m (29,032 ft).
Below: a diagram with the caption:
While Everest is Earth’s highest elevation (green) and Mauna Kea is tallest from its base (orange), Cayambe is farthest from Earth’s axis (pink) and Chimborazo is farthest from Earth’s centre (blue). Not to scale.
There’s a Google Doodle today celebrating the National Basketball Association (NBA) playoffs. Click screenshot below to see where it goes (it uses AI!):
Readers are welcome to mark notable events, births, or deaths on this day by consulting the June 3 Wikipedia page.
It’s Tuesday, June 2, and last night, Donald Trump announced that Hezbollah had agreed to a “full and immediate ceasefire” and that Israel was calling off its planned strikes on Hezbollah strongholds in Beirut. The declaration followed a phone call between Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu that Axios described in explosive terms. According to the report, the president called the prime minister “f—ing crazy” and yelled, “What the f— are you doing?” over Israel’s escalating operations in Lebanon, adding: “You’d be in prison if it weren’t for me. I’m saving your a–. Everybody hates you now. Everybody hates Israel because of this.”
However, a very senior source in the Prime Minister’s Office paints a completely different picture. According to the source, the conversation was significantly less dramatic—less Real Housewives and more actual strategic dialogue. The source insists Trump did not say anything personal to Netanyahu along the lines of warning him to stay out of jail, nor did he claim that Netanyahu or Israel is hated around the world. The conversation was indeed tense, the source says, but the friction came from mutual complaints over their dueling social media posts the night before, where both leaders were trying to publicly spin the outcomes of the ceasefire on their own terms. Ultimately, the discussion ended with Israel agreeing to the ceasefire conditions so long as Hezbollah upholds its obligations.
The conditions in question appear to be a quid pro quo: Israel will not strike Beirut and, in exchange, Hezbollah will not strike Israel proper. Meanwhile, the grinding war in southern Lebanon continues exactly as before, with ongoing IDF ground maneuvers and Hezbollah drone strikes. In short, it is a ceasefire for the cities and a continue-fire for the rest of southern Lebanon.
Here is the question everyone is asking: Is this a success?
If it works, then yes. Recall Israel’s position this past Sunday: locked into a low-intensity attritional conflict in the south, restricted from utilizing its full power or striking Beirut, even as the north of Israel faced ongoing bombardment. Ideally, an agreement would veer closer to the status quo preceding Operation Roaring Lion, keeping Beirut in the crosshairs while the IDF strikes Hezbollah’s infrastructure in the south—though this time with a significantly larger IDF presence. But the perfect shouldn’t be the enemy of the good. Securing a full night’s sleep for residents of Israel’s north while continuing operations in Lebanon’s south is a major step forward.
That is if it works, of course. Last night, Hezbollah expanded its range, firing rockets deep into the city of Tiberias. We are now waiting to see whether this was just a final, face-saving volley before the ceasefire actually takes hold, or the first sign that yesterday’s diplomatic production was nothing more than theater.
Regardless, the reaction in Israel has been far from celebratory. Strategic success or not, this ceasefire does not expedite the end of the conflict in any substantial way. The ceasefire promises that the slow, attritional warfare in southern Lebanon will grind on, bringing with it daily casualties. Israelis are exhausted. Since the April ceasefire, the public has been forced to live with a deep and stressful unpredictability. They are stuck in a constant state of limbo where schedules can be scrapped at a moment’s notice, flying abroad means risking getting stranded, and you never quite know when the next siren will force you back into a safe room.
The IDF, meanwhile, is caught in its own limbo. Its mission in southern Lebanon is straightforward: dismantle Hezbollah’s infrastructure, expand the security zone, and prevent the terror group from recovering. Conspicuously missing from these objectives, however, is a comprehensive strategy to eliminate the group entirely. But it is hard to plot the destruction of the tentacle while the fate of the head remains undecided. A major geopolitical shift on the Iranian front could open new doors for the IDF—perhaps even prompting an intervention by the fabled Lebanese Armed Forces. Yet as it stands, the patron is alive and kicking. Until that changes, the military is relegated to the grueling, uncreative work of slowly degrading Hezbollah’s capacity.
. . . . What is unique about this ceasefire is that it achieves the exact opposite of the previous: it actively links two active fronts rather than separating them.
In this agreement, Tehran’s decision to suspend negotiations with the U.S., rather than Israeli military pressure, brought Hezbollah to the table. If true, Iran just scored a major strategic victory. It successfully shielded Hezbollah from further degradation while artificially extending the diplomatic timeline—likely hoping to outlast Trump’s attention span on the issue. Furthermore, it validates Tehran’s preferred narrative: the collapse of the U.S.-Iran talks is a result of Israeli military operations, masking the true cause of the deadlock: the regime’s obstinacy.
In the end, Segal says, “My take: Is this ceasefire a defeat? It’s too early to tell.” Two things seem certain: Trump doesn’t give a hoot about northern Israel, just his own standing. Further, I put this all of this trouble on the UN, whose Security Council ordered Hezbollah to disarm two decades ago, and there are 10,000 UN troops in Lebanon who could enforce it. They won’t. Why doesn’t anybody point this out?
The staff of “60 Minutes” didn’t exactly roll out the Welcome Wagon for new executive producer Nick Bilton on Monday.
During his first official meeting with the producers and on-air talent of the iconic CBS News Sunday news show, Bilton was greeted with open hostility from high-profile correspondent Scott Pelley, according to people at the gathering.
Bilton was named to the post last week, an announcement that caught many in the media industry by surprise.
Pelley took aim at Bilton’s qualifications for the executive producer job. Bilton, who is the author of two New York Times bestsellers, wrote for the Times and served as special correspondent at Vanity Fair. While he has worked as a producer and executive producer on several documentaries, Bilton hasn’t run a weekly TV news show.
On Monday, Pelley also criticized CBS News Editor in Chief Bari Weiss, who hired Bilton and wasn’t present at the meeting. The correspondent accused her of “murdering” “60 Minutes,” said people familiar with his remarks. Pelley’s comments were met with applause by some in attendance, they said.
Pelley’s remarks come days after the network parted ways with “60 Minutes” correspondents Sharyn Alfonsi and Cecilia Vega. Both Alfonsi and Vega have been critical of Weiss’s involvement in “60 Minutes,” which had been accustomed to a fair amount of autonomy from the rest of CBS News.
Vega last week said that she and her producing teams experienced “efforts to insert political bias into our stories.” A CBS spokesman said those claims “are not based in reality.”’
. . . . The fireworks show the hurdles Bilton and Weiss face in winning over the team at “60 Minutes.” The news show has only had a handful of executive producers in its nearly 60-year run, and its staff can be wary of outsiders.
It looks like the fireworks all came from Scott Pelley, but the fact that others in attendance applauded shows that he is not alone. I am a fan of “60 Minutes,” though I haven’t watched it for a while, but I don’t remember any political bias in the show (there was a recent dust-up about Weiss’s changes in a segment about immigrants being sent back to that horrible prison in El Salvador, and some additional material was added before it was aired in the U.S.). But if it had remained independent from CBS News over the years, that’s the way it should stay. It isn’t news, but a hybrid between news and news analysis, with some human-interest segments thrown in.
*The Washington Post gives a good overview of the new Obama Center, his Presidential Library located only three blocks from my crib. (The article, with all the photos, is archived here.)
One end of the regulation-size basketball court that anchors the south tip of the Obama Presidential Center campus is emblazoned with the words “Yes We Can,” and at the other end, “Fired Up, Ready to Go.” The facility’s main tower, which houses a museum documenting the 44th president’s life and career, features a “Hope and Change Lobby,” and outside there is a playground (with a child-safe poured-in-place rubber surface), a women’s garden, barbecue grills, and a green roof with wheelchair-accessible raised beds for vegetables.
It would be easy to parody the Obama Foundation’s 19.3-acre complex, which opens June 19, and plenty of critics and politicians already have. The 225-foot-tall stone-clad tower, designed by Tod Williams Billie Tsien Architects, has been dubbed the Obamalisk, and architecture traditionalists, who have thrown their lot in with President Donald Trump, have savaged the design as stark, brutalist and fortresslike. Trump weighed in recently with a childish meme on social media: a monumental trash can surrounded by an urban clutter of cars and telephone poles.
This all feels a bit like trying to brand your political opponent before they can make a good first impression. And the Obama center makes a good first impression despite all the negative chatter. Tod Williams Billie Tsien Architects knows how to create buildings that feel welcoming and open while also cool and contemplative, public space that pulls one out of the fray and into new forms of communion. Like their design for the Barnes Foundation in Philadelphia, the Obama center is both porous to its urban environment, but with a slightly cloistered sense of detachment once you are inside.
The Obamas chose a site in Chicago’s Jackson Park, near the University of Chicago, on land that was used in 1893 to host the World’s Columbian Exposition, a giant world’s fair that did not allow African Americans to mount exhibitions or celebrate their contribution to American life. A center honoring the nation’s first Black president will open close to where one of architectural marvels of the 19th century once stood, the expo’s “White City” of gleaming classical pavilions that celebrated America’s ambition to be a global power.
You’ll have to look at the photos yourself, but it looks okay, though the lettering on the outside of the building is hard to read. The building itself is pretty nice, architecturally, and when if opens to the public, and after the dust has settled, I’ll wander over for a visit. But really, Presidential libraries are passé, and this is just a variant of one. (All Presidential documents can be scanned and put online.) I cannot imagine what kind of architectural monstrosity Trump will demand, but you can be sure he’ll want a big one. I do think that Chicago should not have given land to the center between Lake Shore Drive and the Lake, as that land is supposed to remain pristine, and some greenery and the basketball courts (!) won’t for me replace the land that was there. There were many protests over the Obama Center’s location, with a lot of these coming from inconvenienced black residents of the South Side, but of course it was a fait accompli from the beginning. The lakeshore, a glory of the city, is being nibbled away.
here’s been a theft at the British Museum. Unlike the jewel heist at the Louvre last year, the story has not appeared on the covers of most Western newspapers. Its operation won’t be recreated in sensational detail on the daily news. And no one will be arrested. In fact, no one will ever be caught—though the silent alarm has been sounding for years. And that’s because the object of the theft wasn’t a painting or the Crown Jewels, but the history of an entire people. And the co-conspirators include an ever-increasing share of “elite” Western institutions.
Last week, the British Museum postponed a lecture that Paul Collins, keeper of the museum’s Department of the Middle East, was scheduled to deliver on the histories of ancient Israel and Judea. The ostensible reason for the postponement was the discovery that some 25 of those who had signed up for the lecture, which was planned for Jewish Culture Month, intended to disrupt the event. That seems like an odd reason to postpone a presentation about historical artifacts at a museum dedicated to preserving and illuminating the past.
Prominent research institutions—museums no less than universities—shouldn’t be in the habit of postponing or canceling events simply because a few miscreants might break the rules. We don’t close our banks just because some people might rob them. The solution to rule violators is to punish and deter them, not encourage them with victory.
More fundamentally, the postponement gives those who threaten violence a curatorial role in the very institution whose history, methods, and purposes they reject. The British Museum declares its commitment to “all fields of human knowledge.” It describes its role as encouraging “critical scrutiny of all assumptions” and “open debate.” That commitment is consistent with the traditional role museums have played in open societies. The first museum, the famous Mouseion of Alexandria (built around 280 BCE), was a center of philosophical debate and research—not merely (or even primarily) a repository of historical objects. Stifling speech—whether about controversial or long-settled topics—would seem like an odd way of fulfilling the museum’s core commitments.
Unfortunately, those commitments have already shown signs of crumbling. This past February, reports indicated that the British Museum anachronistically used the label Palestine in exhibits dedicated to periods that predate the first-century imposition of the name by the Roman empire. After a complaint filed by UK Lawyers for Israel (UKFLI) pointed these errors out, the museum corrected several panels—changing “Palestinian descent” to “Canaanite descent” on a panel in the Egyptian galleries. That fix unleashed a storm of controversy, inflamed by false reports that the British Museum had erased the term Palestine in response to Jewish lobbying, when the reality was that the museum had anachronistically used the name Palestine only because it had bought into the anti-Israel narrative. As UKFLI explained, the inaccurate use of Palestine had “the compounding effect of erasing the kingdoms of Israel and of Judea, which emerged from around 1,000 BC, and of reframing the origins of the Israelites and Jewish people as erroneously stemming from Palestine.”’
The British Museum did nothing to reclaim the historical high ground, insisting that “[w]e continue to use Palestine across a series of galleries, both contemporary and historic.” That response failed to identify the issue, which was not about using the term, but about using it accurately.
The author, Roy K. Altman contends that the Museum has deliberately downplayed the history of the Jewish people in the Middle East, and give examples. Here’s one below:
Which brings us to the heart of the matter. In all its many rooms and floors, covering thousands of years of human history—and featuring plenty of now-extinct peoples like the Etruscans (Room 71), the Lycians (Room 20), and the Anatolians (Room 54)—the British Museum doesn’t actually have a dedicated wing to the people who brought us monotheism, Jesus, and the Bible. There are, it’s true, individual items of ancient Jewish origin. They just aren’t displayed with descriptions that make clear the ancient and continuous connection between the Jewish people and the Land of Israel. Here’s a photograph I took of an absurd sign at the entrance to a room full of ancient Israelite artifacts:
Phoenician sign at the British Museum. (Courtesy of author)
That opening line should shock anyone who knows even a little bit of ancient Levantine history: “By the beginning of the first millennium BC,” the museum’s curators wrote, “the Israelites occupied most of Palestine.” But that’s a historical anachronism. There was no such thing as Palestine at the beginning of the first millennium BC. The Land of Israel wouldn’t be renamed “Palestine” until a thousand years later, after Rome crushed the Bar Kokhba Revolt in 135 CE, after which the Emperor Hadrian renamed Judea (Hebrew for land of the Jews) Palaestina for the Philistines—a Greek people who had invaded the area of modern-day Gaza in ancient times, who had gone extinct long before the Romans arrived, and who had absolutely nothing to do with Muslim Arabs, who wouldn’t exist for another 500 years. Palestine was thus a name Hadrian concocted to punish the Jews for their treachery and encourage the world to forget the Jews’ ancient connection to their homeland.. . . Last week, a widely admired federal judge told me that he’d read my book about ancient Israel. His only objection was that it felt as though I had spent 80 or 90 pages establishing that Jews are the indigenous people of the Land of Israel—a proposition he compared to a lengthy chapter dedicated to the notion that two and two is four. “Who would believe this Jews-are-colonists-in-their-own-land garbage anyway?” he wondered. He evidently hadn’t spent much time in the British Museum.
There are more examples, but I have little doubt that the BM is indeed doing this, for Britain is full of Israel hatred, and museums can be considered part of academia. But read the piece for yourself (if you subscribe) and see if Altman’s thesis holds up.
*We’ve known for a while that some birds navigate using the Earth’s magnetic field, though we’re not sure where the detection of magnetism occurs; the beak, eye, or inner ear have been suggested. Now a new paper suggests that “Pigeons may be navigating with their livers.” The phenomenon of “homing pigeons” probably reflects this facility.
“The magnetic sense has been this mystery for almost 100 years,” said Martin Wikelski with the Max Planck Institute of Animal Behavior in Germany.
AD
In a new study, Wikelski and other researchers decided to draw back the curtain on pigeons’ navigational secrets. They searched for magnetic clues in the birds’ organs and found a strong signal in an unexpected place: the liver.
Specialized immune cells in the pigeon’s liver break down red blood cells and store iron. When scientists temporarily stripped pigeons of those immune cells and let them fly, the birds “just couldn’t find their way,” said Christian Kurts with the University of Bonn in Germany. That suggested the iron-rich liver cells might play a role in their sense of direction.
The birds’ magnetic compasses only got scrambled on overcast days. That’s because they also use the sun as a navigational guide.
Scientists have previously wondered whether immune cells could be involved in magnetic sensing, but the new study published Thursday in the journal Science is the first to present a full-fledged theory.
“I would never have guessed it, but once it was explained to me, it makes sense,” said behavioral ecologist Albert Kao with the University of Massachusetts Boston, who had no role in the study.
AD
The immune cells are located near nerve fibers in the liver. That might be how they transmit their “magnetic sense” to the brain “and help the pigeons to navigate,” said study co-author Clivia Lisowski with the University of Bonn.
Well, we don’t know, but this is a clever study, though stripping immune cells from the liver might just mess them up in other ways. You can see the original Science paper here.
Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili asks an interesting question:
Hili: Why is there evolutionary psychology, but not evolutionary sociology yet?
Andrzej: Because the evolution of sociologists took a different path.
In Polish:
Hili: Dlaczego jest psychologia ewolucyjna, a nie ma jeszcze socjologii ewolucyjnej?
Ja: Bo ewolucja socjologów poszła inną ścieżką.
Masih is upset that the world is concerned almost exclusively with nuclear weapons and the Strait of Hormuz when they discuss the ceasefire; she wants the light shone on the oppressed Iranian people, murdered by the thousands by their own regime. Here’s part of her passionate speech at a meeting:
Here’s what the “pro-human rights” crowd won’t say: the UN is a joke. Guterres and his left and liberal fan club in America and Europe are the biggest embarrassment to democracy while Iranians are being slaughtered.
From Michael, who notes, “You mentioned the journalist RS a few days ago in a post about euthanasia. Her twitter feed is interesting. Here she critiques the new Canadian federal panel that has been formed to combat antisemitism. As she notes, the new panel has only one Jewish person. The others are progressive activists or Muslims (plus an Olympic speed skater). Only in Canada. . . .”
Carney has unveiled a new council to combat antisemitism in Canada. The lineup includes a former Liberal minister who is a Muslim, a DEI executive who is also Muslim, a progressive lawyer interested in social justice issues who represented pro-Palestinian encampment activists,… pic.twitter.com/bvfXhKyblv
One from my feed. Why do they give them ice cubes? Wouldn’t otters prefer fish or crabs?
At an aquarium in Japan, after closing time, some clever little otter pups help their grandpa tidy up their toys. As a reward, he gives them ice cubes pic.twitter.com/isj4w8ENGk
Wait for it… This Peritrichia (Vaginicola?) extends out of its lorica (the ‘vase’) to use its cilia to feed. Then it snaps back in so quickly, blink and you’d miss it! #marineplankton 🦑 #protistsonsky
I didn’t believe the (hehehe) “real housewives” call between Trump and Netanyahu for a moment – it didn’t pass the smell test. Remember, Axios is a leak bank, so sometimes they’ll misfire.
Israel will, and HAS to ignore anybody saying “Go easy on Lebanon” -including maybe Trump and certainly the western media(s), PBS, BBC, NYT, etc. They’re saying that because Hezb attacks on north Israel go almost unreported.
Consequently MANY MANY people think Israel’s operations there are “Israel looking to invade [for… reasons…I guess] for a “GREATER ISRAEL” or to somehow “win” the prize of owning Sth Lebanon, something I’d compare to that threat in coffee shops: “Loud children will be given a puppy.”
NOBODY wants Sth Lebanon, even Sth Lebanese who mainly emigrate. Israel just wants the (unreported) south-flying missiles to stop.
“Almost” unreported? D.A…..I would say totally unreported. The idea that IDF action in South Lebanon is in anyway a defensive response to ongoing Hzb attacks into civilian areas of Israel is far from the awareness of your average U.S. person on the street I think.
It’s rarely mentioned. You just read about Israel in Lebanon without any context (ie Hezbollah firing missiles). The reader naturally concludes that Israel is trying to take over Lebanon.
Every story leads with implied indignation over Israel’s deeper incursion into Lebanon, an “escalation” that has the capital (and population center) of Beirut in the crosshairs. Buried deep in the text is a cursory mention of Hezbollah rockets—providing plausible deniability to any criticism that the reporting is one-sided. Completely left out is that Israel is not trying to conquer Beirut, but is targeting Hezbollah leadership and infrastructure in Dahiyeh, a specific suburb and Hezbollah stronghold. Israel is not trying to conquer Lebanon. It’s doing its job of protecting its citizens in the north of Israel. The reporting is not just wrong. It’s wrong on purpose.
“About 95 per cent of them (334 papers) appear to have used the antibodies incorrectly — that is, they used a p16-ARC antibody while claiming to measure p16-INK4a.”
“Tod Williams Billie Tsien Architects knows how to create buildings that feel welcoming and open while also cool and contemplative, public space that pulls one out of the fray and into new forms of communion.”
Oh, indeed :
“The whole history of the alienation-process and the whole process of the retraction of the alienation is therefore nothing but the history of the production of abstract (i.e., absolute) thought—of logical, speculative thought. The estrangement, which therefore forms the real interest of this alienation and of the transcendence of this alienation, is the opposition of in itself and for itself, of consciousness and self-consciousness, of object and subject—that is to say, it is the opposition, within thought itself, between abstract thinking and sensuous reality or real sensuousness.”
-Karl Marx Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844
1932 (1959 English)
Masih is entirely correct. Yes, we need to be concerned about the big picture: possible treaties, Iranian nukes, Iranian ballistic missiles, freedom of the seas, etc etc. But we in the West should not lose concern for the human factors, whether they be Iranian protesters. Israel civilian on the Lebanese border living under constant rocket fire, etc. To do so reduces our humanity to the level of the enemies of civilization that we are defending ourselves against.
On an other note: I just took my dog home from the major veterinary hospital. While waiting for release, I spike to a soldier from the K-9 unit who was there with is partner, a Belgian Malinois, who had been severely wounded some months ago in Gaza. The dog saved the lives of a company and actually decorated by the IDF. He was helicoptered to the hospital and saved by the staff. His partner is due to be released from service in a few months, and the dog will be released with him; they are going home together.
The business with the mountains reminds me of a puzzle that I found in an old magazine aimed at high-school grads taking technical training. And no, it wasn’t Scientific American.
Imagine you have wrapped an inelastic steel wire tightly around an ideally smooth perfect sphere the size of the earth such that the plane so described passes through the equator. Now cut the wire at one point and splice in exactly one additional yard of wire, reconnecting the ends. Which of the following objects is the largest that can be passed under the now longer wire? The wire hoop must remain perfectly circular and in the same plane as before.
a. Gas molecules
b. Human hair
c. Deck of playing cards
d. Regulation basketball
The change in radius is half that. If the hoop remains concentric with the sphere, the basketball won’t pass under. But the puzzle didn’t say it had to. If you let the hoop become eccentric by forcing it to touch the earth opposite to where you’re standing, the clearance on your side will now exploit the full diameter change and the basketball will roll under as you calculated.
(We use this trick to get bicycle tires off a wheel rim with our bare hands. The circumference of the well of the rim where the spoke holes are is less than that of the bead edges where the tire hooks onto. Make the tire eccentric with the wheel and it should roll off.)
The summit of Chimborazo, of course, is further from the center of the earth than the summit of Mount Everest.
But that’s irrelevant to anything that matters to humans crawling about on earth (aside from perhaps GPS calculations). It’s just a mildly interesting bit of trivia.
Elevation above sea level is what matters:
– How far you have to climb up
– Density of the atmosphere
– How much energy it takes to lift things to the elevation
E.g. airplanes don’t measure distance from the center of the earth. They measure and care about altitude above sea level. Elevation above sea level is what drives the difficulty of climbing very high peaks (aside from technical difficulty).
The “height” of a mountain is defined as its elevation above sea level.
The things you are describing are purely accidents of anatomy. The highest point on a spheroid is a geometrical issue, not a physiological one.
I am a big fan of Chimborazo, which I can almost see from my house. It is full of fascinating plants, and these have been studied a lot, beginning with Humboldt.
You can drive to the 16,000 foot level on Chimborazo. I did that once and felt breathless while hiking there. People have died of altitude sickness after driving up that road from Guayaquil which is at sea level. I drove from Quito which is around 11,000 feet altitude so was already somewhat acclimatized, but not quite enough.
Speaking of Mount Everest, most summiteers (is that a word??) don’t climb the whole mountain, they fly in to the airfield at 2800 meters and begin there.
Tim Macartney-Snape is the only person ever to have travelled to the top of the mountain from sea-level. He waded onto land at the Bay Of Bengal and walked 1200 kilometers to the mountain, and then began his ascent. He did the climb without auxillary oxygen, too.
There’s a park in Richmond on E Broad named Chimborazo. Back when I lived in Richmond, there was no internet so facile understanding of the origin of the name was not possible.
Obama Center: What I’ve seen in pix (exterior only), I like it. And I hate Brutalism – I’d never call it Brutalist. My gut impression is that it’s rooted in Moorish. It’s different and seems cool. Did Obama have any say in the design selection?
Scott Pelley has been fired.
Sad.
That will be in tomorrow’s news. Pity–he was a great journalist, but he crossed News Editor Bari Weiss.
I didn’t believe the (hehehe) “real housewives” call between Trump and Netanyahu for a moment – it didn’t pass the smell test. Remember, Axios is a leak bank, so sometimes they’ll misfire.
Israel will, and HAS to ignore anybody saying “Go easy on Lebanon” -including maybe Trump and certainly the western media(s), PBS, BBC, NYT, etc. They’re saying that because Hezb attacks on north Israel go almost unreported.
Consequently MANY MANY people think Israel’s operations there are “Israel looking to invade [for… reasons…I guess] for a “GREATER ISRAEL” or to somehow “win” the prize of owning Sth Lebanon, something I’d compare to that threat in coffee shops: “Loud children will be given a puppy.”
NOBODY wants Sth Lebanon, even Sth Lebanese who mainly emigrate. Israel just wants the (unreported) south-flying missiles to stop.
D.A.
NYC 🗽
“Almost” unreported? D.A…..I would say totally unreported. The idea that IDF action in South Lebanon is in anyway a defensive response to ongoing Hzb attacks into civilian areas of Israel is far from the awareness of your average U.S. person on the street I think.
It’s rarely mentioned. You just read about Israel in Lebanon without any context (ie Hezbollah firing missiles). The reader naturally concludes that Israel is trying to take over Lebanon.
Every story leads with implied indignation over Israel’s deeper incursion into Lebanon, an “escalation” that has the capital (and population center) of Beirut in the crosshairs. Buried deep in the text is a cursory mention of Hezbollah rockets—providing plausible deniability to any criticism that the reporting is one-sided. Completely left out is that Israel is not trying to conquer Beirut, but is targeting Hezbollah leadership and infrastructure in Dahiyeh, a specific suburb and Hezbollah stronghold. Israel is not trying to conquer Lebanon. It’s doing its job of protecting its citizens in the north of Israel. The reporting is not just wrong. It’s wrong on purpose.
Another scandal in scientific publishing has been revealed
https://www.thetimes.com/uk/science/article/amateur-sleuth-science-cancer-antibody-error-7qq6v6qz2
“About 95 per cent of them (334 papers) appear to have used the antibodies incorrectly — that is, they used a p16-ARC antibody while claiming to measure p16-INK4a.”
https://forbetterscience.com/2026/06/02/mind-over-antibody/
Scandal, or just multiple examples of the same typo?
From the WaPo article (bold added):
“Tod Williams Billie Tsien Architects knows how to create buildings that feel welcoming and open while also cool and contemplative, public space that pulls one out of the fray and into new forms of communion.”
Oh, indeed :
“The whole history of the alienation-process and the whole process of the retraction of the alienation is therefore nothing but the history of the production of abstract (i.e., absolute) thought—of logical, speculative thought. The estrangement, which therefore forms the real interest of this alienation and of the transcendence of this alienation, is the opposition of in itself and for itself, of consciousness and self-consciousness, of object and subject—that is to say, it is the opposition, within thought itself, between abstract thinking and sensuous reality or real sensuousness.”
-Karl Marx
Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844
1932 (1959 English)
Masih is entirely correct. Yes, we need to be concerned about the big picture: possible treaties, Iranian nukes, Iranian ballistic missiles, freedom of the seas, etc etc. But we in the West should not lose concern for the human factors, whether they be Iranian protesters. Israel civilian on the Lebanese border living under constant rocket fire, etc. To do so reduces our humanity to the level of the enemies of civilization that we are defending ourselves against.
On an other note: I just took my dog home from the major veterinary hospital. While waiting for release, I spike to a soldier from the K-9 unit who was there with is partner, a Belgian Malinois, who had been severely wounded some months ago in Gaza. The dog saved the lives of a company and actually decorated by the IDF. He was helicoptered to the hospital and saved by the staff. His partner is due to be released from service in a few months, and the dog will be released with him; they are going home together.
Lovely story! I hope the two heroes will have the safe and peaceful retirement they deserve.
Good! Retirement with their dog apparently doesn’t always happen. It should!
The business with the mountains reminds me of a puzzle that I found in an old magazine aimed at high-school grads taking technical training. And no, it wasn’t Scientific American.
Imagine you have wrapped an inelastic steel wire tightly around an ideally smooth perfect sphere the size of the earth such that the plane so described passes through the equator. Now cut the wire at one point and splice in exactly one additional yard of wire, reconnecting the ends. Which of the following objects is the largest that can be passed under the now longer wire? The wire hoop must remain perfectly circular and in the same plane as before.
A basketball.
Average earth radius: 6371000 m
Circumference (computed from radius): 20015086.80 m
One yard: 0.9144 m
Revised circumference: 20015087.71 m
Change in radius: 0.29106256 m
Diameter of a basketball: 0.24 to 0.242 m
My calculation is more complicated than it needed to be. Just divide one yard by Pi and compare to the diameter of a basketball.
I hope I didn’t make the classic factor-of-2 error in there!
The change in radius is half that. If the hoop remains concentric with the sphere, the basketball won’t pass under. But the puzzle didn’t say it had to. If you let the hoop become eccentric by forcing it to touch the earth opposite to where you’re standing, the clearance on your side will now exploit the full diameter change and the basketball will roll under as you calculated.
(We use this trick to get bicycle tires off a wheel rim with our bare hands. The circumference of the well of the rim where the spoke holes are is less than that of the bead edges where the tire hooks onto. Make the tire eccentric with the wheel and it should roll off.)
Or just deflate the basketball
The summit of Chimborazo, of course, is further from the center of the earth than the summit of Mount Everest.
But that’s irrelevant to anything that matters to humans crawling about on earth (aside from perhaps GPS calculations). It’s just a mildly interesting bit of trivia.
Elevation above sea level is what matters:
– How far you have to climb up
– Density of the atmosphere
– How much energy it takes to lift things to the elevation
E.g. airplanes don’t measure distance from the center of the earth. They measure and care about altitude above sea level. Elevation above sea level is what drives the difficulty of climbing very high peaks (aside from technical difficulty).
The “height” of a mountain is defined as its elevation above sea level.
The things you are describing are purely accidents of anatomy. The highest point on a spheroid is a geometrical issue, not a physiological one.
I am a big fan of Chimborazo, which I can almost see from my house. It is full of fascinating plants, and these have been studied a lot, beginning with Humboldt.
You can drive to the 16,000 foot level on Chimborazo. I did that once and felt breathless while hiking there. People have died of altitude sickness after driving up that road from Guayaquil which is at sea level. I drove from Quito which is around 11,000 feet altitude so was already somewhat acclimatized, but not quite enough.
Speaking of Mount Everest, most summiteers (is that a word??) don’t climb the whole mountain, they fly in to the airfield at 2800 meters and begin there.
Tim Macartney-Snape is the only person ever to have travelled to the top of the mountain from sea-level. He waded onto land at the Bay Of Bengal and walked 1200 kilometers to the mountain, and then began his ascent. He did the climb without auxillary oxygen, too.
My d*g loves ice cubes. They’re crunchy.
There’s a park in Richmond on E Broad named Chimborazo. Back when I lived in Richmond, there was no internet so facile understanding of the origin of the name was not possible.
Obama Center: What I’ve seen in pix (exterior only), I like it. And I hate Brutalism – I’d never call it Brutalist. My gut impression is that it’s rooted in Moorish. It’s different and seems cool. Did Obama have any say in the design selection?