Monday: Hili dialogue

April 13, 2015 • 4:38 am

It’s Monday! Yay! (Not really. .  .).  Today Professor Ceiling Cat addresses evolution students via Skype at SUNY Syracuse, where they’re reading WEIT and want to query the author. Then I work on my talks and read Breaking the Spell again (if you read it, weigh in below), and then haz chicken breast, biscuits, green beans, and a 2008 Bordeaux for dinner. Yay for biscuits, too, and a pity to those outside the U.S. who haven’t tasted this indigenous but wonderful breadstuff. Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili aspires to be a bigger cat:

Hili: Do I look like a lynx?
A: A very friendly lynx.

P1020530
Well, does she? What a noble thing is a cat!
In Polish:
Hili: Czy wyglądam jak ryś?
Ja: Jak bardzo przyjazny ryś.

19 thoughts on “Monday: Hili dialogue”

    1. Just two:

      1. Is humanity getting dumber because people in third-world countries are having more offspring than those in first-world countries. (My answer: no evidence for difference in intelligence among those countries, and even if there were, it’s a question we shouldn’t worry about since humanity’s collective intelligence is what matters to us now.

      2. What about the “psychedelic human” theory of evolution, in which somebody has posited that early hominins ate magic mushrooms (from animal dung) and that somehow promoted sociality, language, and intelligence. My answer: no evidence for tripping H. erectus, and no mechanistic connection between drugs and human evolution anyway.

      3. Is there any way to persuade creationists to accept evolution? My answer: it’s very hard, but some people will come around. But people don’t realize how immunized to facts people can be by an injection of religion.

      There were a lot more questions, and good ones, but that’s all I have time to write about now.

  4. Hili does look like a lynx in the photo, and what lovely blossoms in the background!

  5. Oh! These are not cherries but apricots. Our cherries have white flowers and the blooming will come first in 2-3 weeks.

    1. Oh, yes, I remember now from your past photos. The apricot blooms are gorgeous, rather like flowering almond at a distance. I have not had luck growing apricot trees (well, I tried just once, and it croaked).

  7. Gorgeous feline. I wonder what she is when she’s dreaming. I’m convinced that Summer-the-stripey-cat becomes a tiger when she’s asleep.

  8. They have biscuits in Venice. Well, maybe more like dinner rolls. But they put green olives in them. And they are absolutely outta sight! Beyond amazing (really – I’ve been on a quest to find them in the US for 17yrs). A big wood-fired bread oven is about to start up in Braddock, and I hope to get the (NB: Diana) Canadian baker that’s running it to add them to her repertoire.

    Anyone else here ever run into them?

      1. No idea. I don’t even think there was a sign on them in the bakery I bought them from. I just pointed. But I told a relatively food-obsessed friend who went there last year to watch out for them. He hunted, didn’t find them, and then forgot until he was at a dinner and bit into one absent-mindedly. Now he’s in full agreement.

  9. I’ve wondered about American biscuits. Someone told me they’re like scones, which I love. I’ve always wanted to try them. What we call biscuits, you call cookies.

    Great pic of Hili! She does look like she’s channeling a wild ancestor. 🙂

  11. I’d say Hili’s question is backwards. It’s not so much that she looks like a lynx as that lynxen look like her.

    And, for those wondering…biscuits are quick breads, leavened with baking soda; no yeast. They’re typically very simple, light, and fluffy…but only if the chef has good technique. If you don’t know what you’re doing, they’ll turn out like hockey pucks….

    b&

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