Mount Katahdin marks the northern end of the Appalachian Trail in north-central Maine. I had been to its peak before, where previous hikers had built a ten-foot-high pile of rocks so that, standing atop it, one could accurately claim to be one mile above sea level. The main trail to…

Russia (and China) are on the verge of collapse! (Not.) The US (and NATO) are on the verge of collapse! (Not.) Speculation is rampant that the war on Ukraine is a harbinger of huge geopolitical changes to come in rapid succession. This is often premised on one or the other…

[I have not read the article; my membership has lapsed. So I may be repeating something that's in it. AT] There is a common misinterpretation of the dramatic photos of gutted builings in Stalingrad, i.e., that the destruction occurred during the street-by-street combat. Actually, the German air force firebombed the city in advance of the ground forces. This triggered the first firestorm of WWII (of which there were subsequently many). Indeed, the attempt to occupy the city had to wait for the firestorm to burn iself out.

How about this for changing the narrative: Nukes are NOT weapons, they are The Ultimate Instrument of Mass Terror. And, please, no damn acronyms (TUIMT??), spell it out every time. Nuclear deterrence? "Balance of Terror." First use? Mass Terrorism. No self-respecting military establishment should want The Ultimate Instrument of Terror…

An alien visit is most probably not in the cards, but we might very well be able to start listening in on a cosmic conversation going on between alien civilizations that have long ago establish two-way communication. They probably have not visited each other, but they could exchange ideas and scientific discoveries. The long lapses between question and reply would be frustrating, often arriving after the question has already been answered by the questioner, but occasionally arriving as a new insight.

Bad decision; Worse timing. The Government of the United Kingdom (UK) has come under a fully-justified barrage of criticism for its recent announcement regarding changes to its nuclear weapons stance. …

Alfonso Garcia Robles shared the 1982 Nobel Peace Prize with Alva Myrdal of Sweden. On the momentous occasion of the entry into force of the Treaty Prohibiting Nuclear Weapons (TPNW), January 22, 2021, I would like to share some reflections on the past and future of independent, collective action by…

The summit of Mt. Everest is the highest point above sea level. But sea level is not as far from the center of the Earth at Everest’s latitude as it is at the Equator. If you want to find the highest point on Earth as measured from the center of…

The trailhead for Mount Shasta is only just above the timberline and far below the summit. (Or at least it was in the 1970s, on the day in question.) So I awoke before dawn to make it up and down before sunset. The first thing I discovered was that, during…