Wednesday: Hili dialogue

85 thoughts on “Wednesday: Hili dialogue”

1. But since I’ve gone to Antarctica, readership, as judged by page views on this site, has declined seriously, and so I must ponder again whether to continue this effort.

   Puhhhleeeeze do! A possible explanation for your decline in views….

   I visit this site every day. I look at all your antarctic pics. But, importantly, I don’t click on the individual article to do it. I don’t need to – your antarctic pictures and captions show up on the ‘main page’.

   Could it be that lots of regulars are doing what I do? And could it be that this sort of “front page-only browsing” doesn’t record as a “page view” of the individual articles?

   Something to check out, at least. If I’m right, then one test would be to put more of each of your articles “below” the front page and see if your page views go up.

   1. Ditto! (Not that I can’t be bothered to put in the effort, just that eric has expressed it very thoroughly.)

      1. Should we start a charity to make socks for ducks?

   2. I get them in my email so do not always go to the main pages here! But due to not having interweb at home – or a so-called ‘smart’ phone I also miss ones after about 5pm GMT…

   3. It’s not page views I see, it’s visits to the site total.

      1. Ignorance here: I often read your articles only on Feedly. Does my viewing of your articles there count as a page view? I’d hate to not be counted! If that’s the case, I’ll stop it and come here directly.

         1. I don’t know what Feedly is, but I doubt that it counts as a visit to the site. Other readers might know the answer.

2. Well I like the WEIT pages whether or not you are in the Antarctic!
   🙂

3. So you and Jeff Bridges are damn near exact coevals, eh, boss?

   For my money, Bridges is one of the great, naturalistic American film actors of his generation. I’ve been watching him since Bogdanovich’s The Last Picture Show. I don’t recall his ever turning in a bad performance (and almost never a false note). He’s had several great performances, and he’s made nearly everything he’s been in better.

4. Surely you’d expect a bit of a dip when you’re away for a month(even though there was still an impressive amount of postings)?

   I’d judge readership on whether the views return now that you’re back.

   Give it a few days, a week or so, and the views will get back to their normal level I’d have thought.

5. The snapping turtle isn’t actually frozen in the ice though is he? That really would be crazy.

   And am I imagining it, or do humans have dormant genes for hibernation? I seem to remember some discussion about this recently.

   1. No, the snapper isn’t actually frozen in the ice – it’s in cold cold water just beneath a layer of ice that is thick enough to support the human’s weight.

6. I second the posts of Eric and Jez.
   I have thoroughly enjoyed all of your posts from Antarctica and saved them all. In a minor way, I have been cruising northern fjords (Greenland, Iceland and Norway) with another Norwegian line, Fred. Olsen and have been enjoying making comparisons.

   A suggestion: why don’t you just summarise your Web posts in the emails? That would force people like me to click through to the Web.

   Alan J.

7. I’ve had a virus since September and a bunch of migraines with the bad weather as well as some other stupid health ailments, so all my energy has been going toward work and low brain activities so I haven’t been here as often.

   1. I hope you are feeling better soon!

      Winter is not my favorite time of year, especially Christmas time (“the most wonderful time of the year!” — not!)

      1. Thanks. At least my feet are somewhat better. I got new orthotics last week and started Physio. Now if this damn virus would go away! I actually took a sick day today instead of working from home like I did earlier in the week. I always feel guilty though I get everything done.

   2. Dear Diana
      Re: migraines

      My daughter has them & now they have vastly reduced since she has been having botox for some cosmetic changes to her forehead creases. It seems this is a useful side-effect. Worth exploring?

      1. Botox is used in fairly often in migraine treatment these days but I’ve tried it with injections in several spots including the scalp and it didn’t work. I’ve had migraines for about 17 years now and throughout that time have tried a few things but I will most likely always deal with migraines. Currently, I reduced my migraines from 15 per month to 4 per month (though November was a nightmare with 8 of them and I’ve already had 3 this month) by taking beta blockers commonly used as migraine preventatives – Propanolol. I take 40 mg 4x/day. As an abortive, I use a 40 mg oral triptan.

         I am interested in a non triptan nasal spray that I may pursue if I decide to find a neurologist (good ones that know about migraine are hard to come by). I don’t want to try the new injections which block proteins (Aimovig is the only one approved so far in Canada while the US has a couple more choices) because it is new and the long term side effects are unknown (one potential side effect could be developing Crohn’s Disease). If I had them every day as I did for 2 years straight 17 years ago, I would consider Aimovig.

         Right now, I have to be careful how I medicate with abortives like the Triptans because if you take too much (and that is easy to do as too much can mean 3 a month sometimes) then you can get rebound migraines which can set off a period of intractable migraine like I had all those years ago. This is why I can’t take pain medication for my feet (I have insertional achilles tendonosis in both feet) – which seems to be the go to answer for MDs – as any NSAID I take for my feet takes away from what I can take if I have a migraine as it contributes to the potential of a rebound migraine.

         What annoys me even today is my neurologist discharged me those years ago when I had an intractable migraine and my GP basically shrugged his shoulders, leaving me to suffer when there were many options still available that I’m just now learning about. Those days were horrid. I would wake up in pain (always I was in pain), vomit, drive an hour to work, work, drive an hour home and repeat. I hope I am never that bad again.

         Some people also, instead of Botox, use nerve blockers but those also have limited efficacy. I’ve only had to go to the emergency once because I had changed my preventative to a slow release beta blocker and it didn’t prevent the migraines properly, causing my heart to race as a sort of aura. They gave me a shot of Toradol after we figured it was a migraine & not a heart attack but it’s an NSAID so, like Triptans, can cause rebound migraines (hence my new interest in the nasal spray which is non NSAID – but can’t be taken at the same time as a Triptan). I also take Cambia which you dissolve in water. It also helps with nausea but also is an NSAID so if I get a bad migraine that a triptan isn’t saving (rare for me as I’m very luck that triptans work for me), I drink the Cambia.

         This was probably way more than you needed to know about my migraines but it may be of interest to your daughter if she is new to the migraine experience.

         1. lots of pointers there Diana.

            Thanks I will pass them on.

            Such an awful thing to have,
            all the best

8. I too just visited the dentist and now will be on my way for a root canal. One of my favorite things not to do. I think Hili is like our cats, most of the toys are ignored unless the staff plays with them. The cats go for empty boxes, piles of paper and plastic bags. The hearings in the Judicial committee begin this morning, 9 o’clock central time. Tune in for a civics lesson. The report from the Intelligence committee was made available yesterday and runs about 300 pages. You don’t need to read the whole thing as there is a much shorter summery and a 4 page review.

   1. Ugh. How I hate root canals.

      1. But, when we think of the alternative it’s not so bad. It is also true the older you get, the less teeth you have. PCC should do something on that – we humans outlive our teeth, or at least some of them.

         1. I actually did the alternative and got an implant with one root canal. I had a bitch of a time with a different root canal though. I won’t go into details since you’re going for your own root canal. I’ll just mention the one that went well. That one is holding on like a trooper. I need to get two crowns for a couple molars though as they didn’t have root canals and I think they are mostly held together by amalgam from the 90s. But my insurance company is being a PITA about it.

            1. Yes, I know we all have our history, bad or good with past dentists. Maybe the fact that I moved many times in my life I avoided any long experience with the bad. I know that root canal is something that must be done very carefully and completely, otherwise it can cause future problems. I once had a dentist begin a route canal and later found the tooth was not savable. He did not charge me for the route canal. Today, we have specialist for everything and endodontics are around the city. I had another dentist who attempted to do the route canal and then decided I needed to go to the specialist. Maybe the best dentist is the one who knows her or his limits.

            2. I think my failed root canal was all bad luck and me. There was infection in the jaw that came out 2 years later so there was no way they could have prevented that and I had been on antibiotics. I let it go for months and months as the pain would come and go and then I had to go to a specialist to have it treated. I let it go so long she said she could smell it when she opened it up. Gross. They basically pour bleach in there to kill it. What sucked was the antibiotics I had to take made me super sick. I so hate taking antibiotics. Ugh. Stupid meat sack.

9. I can’t explain why readership dipped during your antarctic trip; I thought it one of the best things you have done.

   If I read the site without opening anything up does that make me invisible?

   1. “I can’t explain why readership dipped during your antarctic trip; I thought it one of the best things you have done.”

      Agreed! Anyone who decided not to read the site while PCC was traveling missed a lot of terrific posts.

10. …..page views on this site, has declined seriously, and so I must ponder again whether to continue this effort.
    I hope there will be no more talk of this. I’m putting it down to post-Antarctic blues which I trust will pass.
    Surely the dip in readership will be addressed by your return. Nearly 70,000 followers in’t too bad.

11. Particularly for our non-us readers (l appreciated the several attempts by uk readers to explain the brexit situation): neal katyal, a current law professor and a former solicitor general during president obama’s administration has just speed written a short (150 pages plus appendix of original source material) but very informative book, “Impeach: The Case Against Donald Trump”. Published in paperback last week, i believe it was written and published over just a few weeks..reasonably edited with the efforttoward timeliness. It explains the thinking and discussions by the founding fathers in 1787 as they debated putting impeachment into the constitution as well as including a history of earlier impeachments and some very recent congressional testimony from just a few weeks ago. As an engineer observor of the political scene, i found the book to be extremely helpful.

    1. At the Atlantic site, constitutional scholars have posted an essay, which I recommend all should read, that discusses how the constitution as conceived by James Madison has become debased over the years. They note that for Madison “the entire Constitution was established to prevent the selection of demagogues who would flatter factions, or partisan mobs, and rule by passion rather than reason. It contains a series of obstacles to prevent hasty decisions based on mob rule and to promote deliberation on the public good. These included: the selection processes originally designed for senators (chosen by state legislators) and the president (chosen by a deliberative Electoral College); the division of power between the federal and state governments and among the three branches of the federal government, each of which would vigorously defend its own prerogatives; and the hope that factions would check one another in Congress to prevent any one from dominating.” They go on: “As Madison emphasized at the Virginia ratifying convention, however, the most effective guardian of a republican government devoted to the public good was not an expectation of virtuous representatives but the cultivation of virtuous people, committed to governing themselves and to choosing representatives based on reason rather than passion.”

       Things have not worked out as Madison hoped. The American system of governance came perilously close to collapse during the American Civil War and is now threatened by the presidency of a mentally ill demagogue, who has the undying loyalty of one political party and a cult consisting of about 40% of the electorate. The authors believe that the best way to restore national sanity is this: “The success of the Madisonian Constitution, in the end, will depend on the whole people’s commitment to the enterprise of making government work on behalf of the public good. That commitment requires citizens to rise to the challenges of educating themselves about history, the Constitution, and the most pressing issues of the day.” Good luck with that. In an age when the recommendations for a “good” education are largely limited to the STEM fields, it seems to me highly unlikely that many people will take the time to educate themselves about the constitution or history. Even if the nation survives Trump, the threat of demagoguery will not go away. Madison’s vision of the American Republic is unlikely to return (if it ever existed.). The rise of Trump and the corruption of his political party demonstrates how fragile democracy is.

       https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2019/12/madison-constitution/602929/

       1. Thanks for that additional info and attached article. People should note, they will have 4 Historians or constitutional experts at the hearing today. Should be some good info.

          I remember in my reading about the Constitutional Convention in 1787, when it was just finishing up, Madison thought he had lost the most important issues and at first went home very unhappy. Later he changed. Boy did he change. The two critical losses he had were: The Senate, with two per state and not based on population. Also the issue of sovereighty. The federal government would not have veto power over the states. These issues are killing us today.

          1. Closest thing the federal government has to a “veto” over the states is the Supremacy Clause in Article VI, Clause 2 of the US constitution.

             As for the US senate, just 18% of the US population elects 50 of the 100 senators (and just 24% elects a filibuster-proof 60 senators).

             1. If I am not mistaken that Article VI is only in reference to Treaties.

             2. By its terms, the Supremacy Clause applies to the “Constitution, and the Laws of the United States which shall be made in Pursuance thereof; and all Treaties[.]” It makes ALL those forms of federal law “the supreme Law of the Land; and the Judges in every State shall be bound thereby, any Thing in the Constitution or Laws of any State to the Contrary notwithstanding.”

       2. *deliberative* EC? How was that to work?

12. I thought of you when I saw the duck feet on the glass on King-Smith’s twitter.

    1. So did I. That twitter post was kind of like a haiku that began with the title and continued on with the duck’s feet finishing the poem.

13. I read the site every day, even when you are gone! I would miss this site terribly if you were to stop. Please don’t. I am going to make sure I click on all the posts I read.

    1. Yep. I started reading this site a few months after it began and it has been for a long time the first place to visit each day on the internet.

14. Why did readership decline when you were in Antarctica/ I raced everyday to see your latest entry.

    Please continue.

    Elizabeth

    1. Readership has declined for a while but took a nosedive when I was in Antarctica. It’s not just the clicks; it’s the number of comments. It used to average over 50 per post, now it’s dropping, and I vowed that when that happened I would consider hanging it up. Comments are an index of who’s reading.

       1. Speaking for myself, but it may be suggestive of a broader pattern….

          While you were off in Antartica, WEIT postings were relatively light and constrained, subject-wise. There was less to comment during the hiatus, and I had little to say regarding the travelogue posts.

          I don’t think you should take the Antarctic drop too seriously. See what happens in the next month or so.

15. I have a sock puzzle :

    It’s dark. Your sock drawer contains 12 red and 12 blue socks of the same size/etc. so the total number of socks is 24. you have to run to catch a plane. What is the smallest number of socks to take that guarantees you won’t have mismatched socks?

    1. 3

    2. That seems easy: 3. If it’s not three, you have some ‘splaining to do!

       1. Three is not right since you can still have mismatched socks. I think the correct answer is “1”. The problem doesn’t specify that you need to take a pair!

          1. Yeah but it says “socks” not “sock” doesn’t it? I feel like the WOPER in War Games when it decides thermonuclear war is a silly game.

    3. here are some more interesting problems in the sock drawer style :

       1. https://youtu.be/wjsG2Os0–o
       2. https://www.mathsisfun.com/puzzles/matching-socks.html
       3. https://youtu.be/GuqcnrtdUCc

       … I didn’t solve these yet…

16. What do I have to click to be counted as viewer? I read the posts as email.

    Is there some way to count readers in email?

    Please keep posting. Please. Please.

    Elizabeth Nall

17. 🐾🐾

18. Does Coynezaa have any music? For example, Coynezaa Carols, or The St. Ritz Quacker Passion?

19. Your predictions on how the impeachment thing will go will probably be accurate.
    What puzzles me is why Republicans don’t see the silver lining to just impeaching the bastard, so long as they can get an assurance from Michael Pence that he would run for election in 2020. Think about it: President Michael Pence would vow to continue Trumps’ domestic and foreign policies, which are very popular with their base. He would be “Trump 2.0”, without the baggage of the Orange One. Their base would be re-invigorated & mad as hell, while the Democratic base will have to re-calibrate. There would be a lack of motivation to vote against Trump.
    So with President Pence running in 2020 the election of a Democrat would be far from a sure thing. I wonder why the Republicans don’t see that.

    1. Your comments are interesting but I don’t believe they apply here. As knowledge of what took place in the Ukraine matter widens, it is apparent that Pence, and other cabinet members knew what was going on and were involved in it. So unless the zombie cult of Trump follows to Pence, I don’t see him with any chance of re-election. The actions of Trump have made many complicit in his illegal acts.

    2. I would not mind if Pence replaces tRump. Well, I would, but I don’t think he’d be nearly as bad a tRump. He wouldn’t endanger the world in the same way.

       1. I think it’s short-sighted to give Pence the benefit of the doubt. His evangelical religious convictions could lead him to carry on across the board with the destructive things that Trump’s presidency set in motion. And he’s corrupt too; he’s been implicated in this Ukraine scandal and he’s compromised his religious principles from the beginning. It’s ad hominem but I have no compunction saying that his perpetual enigmatic smile and obsequious deference to Trump scares me.

          1. Bad as that, he’s just a mini-tRump. 😎

    3. This is a cult of personality, simple as that. You can’t replace Trump, he’s the only person in the R party who has never had an heir apparent. There is no silver lining, just a wasteland after he’s (hopefully) gone into the strange land he thinks he rules. Pence is and could never be “Trump 2.0″…it just doesn’t work like that at this point. He’s the figurehead that the base will never concede…especially to some wimp like Pence.

       1. Just read a long article in the October Atlantic about how Ivsnka and Don Jr. are jockeying, one hopes unsuccessfully, to be T’s successor.

20. I am here, boss, as always. I read or scan every post.

    1. Yeah. Me, too!

    2. I think that perhaps more and more of us are reading the posts on our phones, and thus don’t count unless we actually visit the site.

    3. Me too.

21. Frosty The Beerman is an appropriate seasonal character, since tomorrow (5 December) is the 86th anniversary of the repeal of prohibition.

22. First, and foremost, please do not abandon this site. It is the first site I check every morning, even before the New Woke Times. (That made me chuckle.)

    Second, PCC and his ducks. Inter-species love has always interested me. I loved my animals more than many human beings, even relatives. What causes this oxytocin bonding? I suppose it is redirected parental motivation, but the intensity and prevalence is curious.

    Although I strive to be kind to all animals, I have never loved a bird. My inter-species love seems confined to fellow mammals. Hamilton’s rule?

    In any case, I am sure the ducks will be fine.

23. “Inter-species love has always interested me. I loved my animals more than many human beings, even relatives.”

    I’ve always been interested in that too. Particularly why many of us find kittens/puppies/ducklings MORE instinctively appealing and cute than human babies. You’d think that would be maladaptive, to find the offspring of another species cuter than the offspring of your own species, or if not actively maladaptive then at least completely pointless.

    And I understand that it’s a kind of epiphenomenal outgrowth of our love for things that kittens happen to possess: lovely soft fur, big eyes, etc… But then you’d also expect human babies to be _even more_ cute and appealing, and to have those things in even more abundance.

    1. That love for fur is especially curious since our own species has so little.

24. ” and so I must ponder again whether to continue this effort.”

    No more of this crazy talk PCC!!! It’s your post antarctic stress syndrome getting the best of you.

25. I read every article but receive them in my email. I start every day at my computer reading your articles. Please don’t stop.

26. “I didn’t know they breathed through their bums!”
    Alas, they do not, at least not much or well. This is a commonly asserted myth. Cloacal respiration has been demonstrated only in some pleurodiran (side-necked) turtles from Australia and South America. No cryptodiran turtle (which includes all North American species) has been shown capable of effective cloacal respiration. Yet the internet is so rife with the assertion that it’s now become “well-known”. *sigh*
    Apologies that my reference is a self-citation:
    Peterson CC, D Greenshields 2001 Negative test for cloacal drinking in a semi‐aquatic turtle (Trachemys scripta), with comments on the functions of cloacal bursae. Journal of Experimental Zoology 290 (3), 247-254

    1. …by the way, the turtle under ice in the picture is an alligator snapping turtle, not the more common sort.

       1. How DO they breathe then?

          Thanks for the clarification.

          1. Maybe straight through the skin?

          2. Emydines, such as the ones inhabiting your U of C pond, hold their breath, as I recall.

       2. Don’t trionychids have some capacity for trans-dermal gas exchange? I seem to recall reading something like that.

27. Unless something drastic happens, though, he will be impeached by the House but not convicted by the Senate. Even so, his reputation is tarnished and his chances for re-election next year considerably diminished.

    May that go straight from your lips to Hank’2 ear! 🙂

28. Jesus Jerry, don’t scare me like this. Where else will I go when I need a little dose of rationality and decency to sustain me through the day?

29. I’m another person who looks at your site every day – I really, really, want to go to Antarctica now. I put the orobot video up for my evolution class just this morning. They were really interested! I imagine the US Thanksgiving holiday might account for some of the dip in readership. My personal screen time dropped considerably for several days while I was entertaining relatives, etc.

30. Two things start my day — black coffee and reading WEIT. Please continue! I need my morning dose of science and rationality as well as my caffeine.

31. WEIT is also the first site that I access every morning, after a cup of strong tea and my emails. Please don’t stop. I am willing and able to click on any button you like to prove my commitment!

    On topic, I note that some of the comments above seem relaxed about the prospect of a President Pence. Really? Seen from this side of the pond, it looks like he would carry on the theocratic, anti-LGBTQ, anti-abortion, etc, policies of Trump, except that he would understand what he was doing, and he would really mean it.

    1. Bumbling boor in his dotage, or theocrat. Hard choice …

32. The latest Superfood: Phytoplankton! I’d not heard of this before https://www.amazon.com/Marine-Phytoplankton-All-one-Nutritional/dp/B00AUU23TG

    “Learn how Karen Phytoplankton can help your immune system, your heart, your eyesight, your detox system, and provide food for the brain. Read more”

    The only question now is will it be sold on Goop?

33. When I was in high school in the 60s, with a 100% score in biology class, I proposed a science project to my teacher. The idea was to determine how efficient aquatic turtles (red-eared sliders) were at absorbing oxygen from the water. When the teacher told me it would require sacrificing the turtles, I bailed. I just couldn’t see killing animals for no purpose other than winning a prize.

    1. You have excellent qualities Stephen.

       1. I was a little worried about virtue signaling when I posted this, but if it were fruit flies I wouldn’t have a problem. 🙂

          1. In high school, I over sedated all my fruit flies & killed them. Anesthesiologist is a career choice many are most likely glad I never pursued.

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