Monday: Hili dialogue

December 14, 2020 • 6:30 am

Good morning on a chilly Monday, December 14, 2020. It’s National Biscuits and Gravy Day, a wonderful breakfast dish largely limited to the American South (indeed, I don’t think southern-style biscuits are found in any other country). It’s also National Bouillabaisse Day (cultural appropriation!), Roast Chestnuts Day, and Monkey Day, celebrating “all things simian”.  We are monkeys, too: don’t let any damn cladist tell you otherwise.

I am once again dispirited about the lack of readership of science posts here. People have commented that they read them but have nothing to say, and so don’t make comments on them, but here’s a record of the views from yesterday:

I rest my case.

Wine of the Day: A ten-year-old Soave, consumed with a vegetarian dinner of mashed yams laced with butter and black pepper. Had the wine been younger, it would have complemented that dish perfectly. Sadly, the wine was over the hill, and, while drinkable, was a bit oxidized. I don’t have a wine cellar, and I simply left it too long at 68° F.

News of the Day:

The Electoral College meets in all the states today to cast ballots verifying Biden as the legally elected President of the United States. As CNN reports:

Since Election Day on November 3, all 50 states and the District of Columbia have certified their votes and named slates of electors, who will meet on Monday to formally cast their ballots for President and Vice President — the next step in the process of finalizing Biden’s victory.
Those ballots will be sent to Washington, where they will be counted by Congress on January 6. Once that happens, Biden will be inaugurated the 46th President on January 20 at noon.
But the President-Eject is still kvetching:

I’ve had enough of this man. In five weeks he’ll be gone, and perhaps will thereafter stand trial in New York (he can’t pardon himself for that one!).

Al Gore is back in a NYT op-ed giving hope about how the Biden administration will seriously tackle the problem of climate change, and we can turn global warming around. Yes, Biden will rejoin the Paris Agreement, and yes, there are lots of new programs promoting clean energy. But I fear it is too late, and Gore is being overly optimistic.

This Guardian essay was written completely by an AI program. The instruction: to convince humans that robots come in peace. It’s pretty damn good; could you detect that it wasn’t written by a human? (Click on screenshot.)

Author John le Carré, writer of best-selling spy stories, died on Saturday in Cornwall. He was 89. When I was a teenager I read his most famous book, The Spy Who Came in from The Cold (1963), and thought it was terrific. but since then I haven’t read any of his other books; perhaps I should have.

This morning Yahoo! News, for some reason, reprinted my short essay from The Conversation published two years ago: “Yes, there is a war between science and religion.” I know this because several people read it and emailed me, including a religionist who said this (there was a lot more):

Thanks for sharing your beliefs. However, keep in mind, they are based entirely upon your own experience. That and the theories of other men who have struggled the same way I struggle as a Christian to find truth. The 66% of atheists who have influenced you with their “science” had no alternative theories to share. Therefore, I am not as confident as you that they are trying all that hard to scientifically prove they might be wrong. Atheists are much more committed to a pre-worn path than that. They will hold doggedly to the only option they believe exists.
 None the less, I found your unwitting and ill-advised hopelessness both refreshing and informative. It was however, totally unnecessary. Jesus came and died for the Jews, and still has a plan for them. That is why the prophet Isiah had his prophecy fulfilled when the U.N. handed the Jews a piece of paper in May of 1948 re-establishing them as a nation…in a single day.(Just like the prophet said)  What God did that day was admirable. So much so, that He has to raise up Gentiles like myself to understand, and praise Him.

Amen, brother! No alternative theories to “no evidence for a God”? At the time, that essay got several hundred thousand views, as The Conversation offers its content free to all publications, and I do like the essay as its a succinct summary of what’s in Faith Versus Fact. You might have a look if you’ve not seen it.

And the best news: the coronavirus vaccine is making its way to locations throughout America (it’s already in some other countries), and Muricans may start getting their jabs today or Tuesday. The evening news last night showed the first truck leaving the Pfizer plant in Michigan with a load of vials. This being America, the semi was accompanied by U.S. Marshals. I have to say that it’s been only about a year since the virus was identified, and now we have a safe an effective vaccine. That’s unbelievable, a triumph for our species. Kudos to everyone involved in the conception, development, and distribution of the vaccine. In contrast, it took nearly a decade to develop the polio vaccine.

Finally, today’s reported Covid-19 death toll in the U.S. is 299,328, an increase of about 1,400 from yesterday’s figure. America will pass 300,000 total dead today. The world death toll is 1,620243, an increase of about 7,000 over yesterday’s report—about 4.9 people dying per minute.

Stuff that happened on December 14:

  • 1287 – St. Lucia’s flood: The Zuiderzee sea wall in the Netherlands collapses, killing over 50,000 people.
  • 1542 – Princess Mary Stuart becomes Queen of Scots at the age of one week on the death of her father, James V of Scotland.
  • 1650 – Anne Greene is hanged at Oxford Castle in England for infanticide, having concealed an illegitimate stillbirth. The following day she revives in the dissection room and, being pardoned, lives until 1659.

Now this is a weird story; she was alive, barely, when they opened up her unburied coffin the next day. Wikipedia notes, “After her recovery, Greene went to stay with friends in the country, taking the coffin with her. She married, had three children and died in 1659.” Presumably she didn’t kill those kids.

Assuming that energy could occur only in discrete packets really did a number on Planck, as you can see from this tweet:

Here’s four of them with a d*g and the Norwegian flag at the South Pole (presumably the fifth guy took the picture). Scott’s team arrived a month later to find that they’d been scooped, and all of the British team died before they could reach their base.

  • 1918 – The 1918 United Kingdom general election occurs, the first where women were permitted to vote.
  • 1940 – Plutonium (specifically Pu-238) is first isolated at Berkeley, California.
  • 1964 – American Civil Rights Movement: Heart of Atlanta Motel v. United States: The Supreme Court of the United States rules that Congress can use the Constitution’s Commerce Clause to fight discrimination.
  • 1972 – Apollo program: Eugene Cernan is the last person to walk on the moon, after he and Harrison Schmitt complete the third and final extravehicular activity (EVA) of the Apollo 17 mission.
  • 2008 – Muntadhar al-Zaidi throws his shoes at then-U.S. President George W. Bush during a press conference in Baghdad, Iraq.

YouTube appears to be down this morning, but the link to the video of the shoe-throwing somehow embeds, so I’ve put it below. As far as I understand it, shoe-throwing is a pretty serious sign of disapprobation in the Middle East. al-Zaidi was sentenced to three years in prison for assaulting a head of state, but served only a year.

  • 2012 – Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting: Twenty-eight people, including the gunman, are killed in Sandy Hook, Connecticut.

Notables born on this day include:

  • 1546 – Tycho Brahe, Danish astronomer and chemist (d. 1601)
  • 1896 – Jimmy Doolittle, American general and pilot, Medal of Honor recipient (d. 1993)

Doolittle got the medal of honor for the “Doolittle Raid,” in which American bombers, taking off from carriers, bombed mainland Japan in 1942. 15 of the 16 aircraft crashed and the other landed in Vladivostok. All but three airmen survived the mission, though seven were later executed by the Japanese.

  • 1911 – Spike Jones, American singer and bandleader (d. 1965)
  • 1932 – Charlie Rich, American singer-songwriter and guitarist (d. 1995)
  • 1946 – Jane Birkin, English-French actress and singer

Those who met the Grim Reaper on December 14 include:

  • 1799 – George Washington, American general and politician, 1st President of the United States (b. 1732)
  • 1873 – Louis Agassiz, Swiss-American zoologist and geologist (b. 1807)
  • 1920 – George Gipp, American football player (b. 1895)

Gipp, an all-American football player at Notre Dame, died at 25 of strep throat and pneumonia at a time when antibiotics could have saved him. On Gipp’s deathbed, he reportedly gave Knute Rockne, his coach, this famous admonition:

“I’ve got to go, Rock. It’s all right. I’m not afraid. Some time, Rock, when the team is up against it, when things are wrong and the breaks are beating the boys, ask them to go in there with all they’ve got and win just one for the Gipper. I don’t know where I’ll be then, Rock. But I’ll know about it, and I’ll be happy.”

Ronald Reagan, of course, often used the phrase in a political context (he portrayed Gipp in a movie). And Notre Dame did win when the team was told the phrase, beating undefeated Army in 1928.

Here’s Gipp:

  • 1974 – Walter Lippmann, American journalist and author (b. 1889)
  • 1985 – Roger Maris, American baseball player and coach (b. 1934)
  • 1993 – Myrna Loy, American actress (b. 1905)

I loved these movies (remember the name of the d*g?):

Every Jewish boy knows, or should know, that Myerson was the first Jewish Miss America, winning in 1945. As we all told ourselves at the time, “Hey! There’s a Miss America who looks like me. I can do that, too!” (only kidding). But she’s still the only Jewish woman to win the title since the contest began. Here she is with her scepter, crown, and bathing suit:

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili has found yet a new way to complain about her noms:

Hili: I see a deficit of welfare.
A: Eat what you have in your bowl and you will get more.
Hili: This is far-right extremism.
In Polish:
Hili: Widzę deficyt dobrobytu.
Ja: Zjedz to co masz w misce to dostaniesz więcej.
Hili: To jest skrajnie prawicowy ekstremizm.

Here’s Szaron inside, looking at his BFF Kulka on the windowsill outside:

From Diana, a felicitous misspelling.

Two memes from Merilee:

From Titania: Yes, the article is real. It sounds like a spoof, but the website suggests it isn’t. Sadly, while the article was there two days ago, and was just as dreadful as it sounds, it seems to have been taken down. But Greg just informed me that the piece has been archived here.

Author Virginia Duan,who seems to be Chinese, protects her tweets. Is wokeness starting to meet pushback? Why would she take it down otherwise?

From Merilee: a pizza-eating groundhog taunting a d*g:

From Simon and a big YES! Now the conservatives want to demolish the Republican Party!

Tweets from Matthew. Sound up for a noisy murmuration:

Can you believe that this is a crustacean? Apparently it’s parasitic on starfish, which shows you how plastic animals are to selective pressures—a point Darwin made with respect to the power of plant and animal breeding.

Can you solve this problem? I didn’t even try, but there are several ways to do it, all shown in the thread.

Julian Baggini, atheist, responds to an annoying goddie:

Okay, did you know this sport/hobby/avocation even existed?

61 thoughts on “Monday: Hili dialogue”

  2. Jerry, I can’t count how many of your science posts I have “bookmarked” to have on hand as a resource. Many times over the years I have shared the information in them by writing about them and linking to them at other websites, and in “meat-space.”

    Having experimented myself a bit with writing some “answers” on Quora once upon a time (not remotely in your league), I know the science articles you write are a lot of work. But damn, I sure hope you keep writing them. Having interesting biology papers explained by an expert of your high caliber, with your experience and achievements, your writing ability and your knack for explaining technical / complex things in a way that is readily understandable for non-experts, it really is a pretty special thing. Your science articles are valuable resources. I’d love to see them posted / published at other media sites. They are far better than the typical science articles one finds.

  3. It takes longer to digest a science post such that a question might arise – and in fact questions are more likely to arise in general the more comments come in. I frequently find myself drawn into a post much later than its timestamp because the commentariat ask interesting questions etc – after “sub”ing.

    IOW I’d argue science comments have greater weight than some of the other topics shown on that list.

    Also, how accurate is the “Views” number – e.g. are “views” browser-independent?

  4. I really have no idea how that view compiler works, however I note that it says Hili only had 4 views but there are over 20 comments (by more that 20 individuals). That combination doesn’t seem credible. I know I looked at most of the posts, but I have no idea how anyone would know – since scrolling from post to post doesn’t involve opening anything, so viewing multiple posts is a single view (I assume).

    I would think that looking at the numbers of comments is a more realistic measure of impact. However, some posts inherently attract more comment than others. Articulating an opinion on politics, for example, is not inherently difficult, The science posts in particular are generally more educational that commendable for anything outside of an area of specialization (I have nothing novel to say about evolution, but I can probably tell you something you don’t want to know about your prostate – for example)

    1. I came here to say exactly this. There are comments on that post by 14 people and I read it but didn’t comment, so there must have been at least 15 views. There’s no way seven is an accurate count of the number of views.

      There’s also no way only four people had viewed the Hili dialogue by the time the PhD post appeared six and a half hours later.

      1. “There’s no way seven is an accurate count of the number of views.”

        Likewise, the accuracy of the “Views” of any given post is as low as any other…. or not?

        Perhaps robots look for juicy terms like “religion”, “politics”, and such – but “honeybees” is ignored.

      2. Also, the rank of the posts by views is exactly the same as the order in which they appear, with the latest having the most.

        There is no way the daily Hili Dialogue was the least viewed post.

      3. WordPress is using TrumpMath®: claiming Biden wasn’t winning until they started counting “all those other votes” that came in later.

        Make WP count all the comments (“ballots”).

    2. I was about to say the same thing. It seems vastly improbable, given your readership, that there were only seven views of that fascinating post. I was one. Maybe others who viewed it can chime in so we could prove the error.

      1. I, too, do not understand how your “views” are counted. I just go to your web site and read everything on it, absolutely everything (well, sometimes I skip some of the pop culture references). I am not a scientist but I learn a lot by reading the science posts. I almost never leave a comment. Does my method of reading this web site count as a “view”?

    4. I join the choir here. How exactly those views counted? I did read the post about the bees, but I did not click on it. It was not necessary, the entire text was visible on the main page.

      1. I read science posts and bookmark some of them for later reading.
        I’m afraid, I am not in a position to comment on them.
        Please keep posting them.
        I did read the post about the bees and found it fascinating and forwarded it.

  5. I read the entirity of the honeybee post… what I didn’t do is click through, so I guess I didn’t count.

    Edit: I did click through on the faux duck to confirm/disprove another “that head shape says Grebe” moment so I am either one of the six, or WordPress can’t count (I seriously doubt only six clicked through, people here seem to have an interest in birds)

    1. I always click through onto the science posts for exactly this reason, even if I don’t read the post because I don’t want Jerry to stop writing them.

      The stats picture must have been taken after 7pm in the evening after the PhD post went live. The Hili Dialogue was posted at 12.30pm. \does anybody seriously think it only got four views in that time? In fact, judging by the fact that it is a monotonically decreasing sequence, I’m thinking it is a snapshot of the vews of the last ten minutes or something like that.

      1. I generally get engrossed in the content and then forget to click through… they definitely need an intro hook and a read more link! In the meantime I will try to remember to click the link…

        Hili is another one that I read in full, though I would not click through unless I have a comment (which is rare), however, I too doubt the veracity of that count, given the number of comments on Hili that were posted before the time of the PhD item.

  6. The before and after pics of Max Planck look like they could have provided the inspiration for the character “Max Cohen” in Darren Aronofsky’s 1998 film Pi:

  7. Are you sure that the page view numbers are correct? I think I have read ‘Sunday: Hili dialogue’ before ‘First report of tool use in honeybees’ was up, and there were more than 4 comments, so there must have been more page views, too. Considerably more, assuming that only a few people comment.

    If only views coming from a distinct source are counted, there may be a difference in what people coming from that source are interested in.
    Or only a fraction of views is counted in general. That would still mean that less people are viewing the science posts, but the absolut number would be higher.

  8. I was one of the seven who read your article about bees yesterday and I read it aloud to my husband. We had a great conversation about it. After reading the part about the hornets decapitating the bees we had a little chuckle as we said, “God’s creation is so beautiful” since so often the Christians in our life will talk about pretty flowers and sunsets and will link God to them, but never mention the horrific or disgusting parts of nature. It would be great to have a compilation book of all of those kinds of things to have in one place. I could buy it as a coffee table book for my mother-in-law 😄.
    I do not have a science background; I work in kindergarten, but I love the accessibility of your writing. I was also lucky enough to hear you speak in Ottawa a few years ago and really enjoyed the experience.

  10. “But I fear it is too late, and Gore is being overly optimistic.”
    Ditto, Prof!
    BTW, I was engrossed by your post on the honeybees and wasps. FYI, sometimes I read your posts in the email updates. Does WordPress enumerate those?

  11. I read the tool use by honeybees via the notification email that WordPress sent. I had no need to comment so my view did not get registered. How many people have the website registered to send email? Tens of thousands?

  12. Forgive me for being a tech Luddite, but I don’t see how the site can possibly count the articles I’ve read because of the way that I read them. I don’t click on the email notifications that I receive (unless I want to forward the specific article to someone). I access the website and scroll through the articles when I have time to do so. I’m reading all (or almost all) of the posts, but I doubt that I’m being counted as having done so.

  13. That Japanese precision walking competition is pretty cool, but I gotta say, the Florida A&M band — the famous FAMU Marching 100 — can do the same thing while playing instruments:

  14. Murmurations: I used to love the ones I saw over central Birmingham (the UK’s seccond largest city) in the late 60’s. It is a victorian city, and I thought the architecture was rather gothic. But then I got new glasses and discovered that some of the more ornate curliques were the starlings roosting.

  15. Conspiracy theories. If Hili is going to cite Murphy’s law, I must cite Hanlon’s Razor: Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by incompetence.

  16. I read the honeybee post too, by clicking on the title from the main page of the WEIT web site, and it was fascinating. Thank you for sharing this, Prof Coyne.

    Apropos the AI-generated “essay”, I read this when it first appeared in the Grauniad back in September, and I found it shallow and unconvincing, leaping from one theme to another with no sense of narrative continuity. And then I read the paragraph in italics below the piece, which explains that it is in fact a cut-and-paste job which contains sections of eight separate “essays” generated by the AI program. In particular:

    “The Guardian could have just run one of the essays in its entirety. However, we chose instead to pick the best parts of each, in order to capture the different styles and registers of the AI. Editing GPT-3’s op-ed was no different to editing a human op-ed. We cut lines and paragraphs, and rearranged the order of them in some places.”

    It would, I think, have been more interesting if the Guardian had simply printed one of the original “essays” in its entirety.

    2. Yes, it is ridiculous. They deliberately mislead people into thinking AI is further along than it really is by reporting on this parlor trick. You can’t ask its AI “author” a question about what it wrote and get an intelligent answer. There is no brain behind it. It’s publishers probably explain this in the article (I didn’t look) but, like Trump’s complaints about the election, the reporting itself does most of the damage.

  17. I’m with those who are baffled as to how your page views are calculated. I open articles I want to read in new tabs and leave them open until I either read them or figure I won’t. There were two open WEIT tabs this morning; the honeybee article and the “New way of visualizing cells” video. The first thing I read this morning was the honeybee piece, and the video tab is still open. Please know that the science posts are savored and appreciated. If a “thumbs up” type comment would help, no problem, but I usually don’t have much to say except, “Very interesting! I didn’t know that–thanks.”

    Seriously, thank you!

  18. I get emails of your posts but I rarely read them because it is visually more pleasant to read the website. I trash the email, then go to your website. Honeybees and that cell microscope machine were great posts.

  20. About non-residents voting: the Loser-in-Chief may not know it, but the millions of Americans living abroad have the right to vote, registering at the last place where they lived in the US–which might go back decades if they live permanently overseas. So more people could legally vote in a district than live there.

  21. I believe I commented, long as everyone is now making comments on the bee post.
    Just a bit more information on the Doolittle raid – The airplane used for that mission was appropriately the B-25 Mitchell bomber, named after Billy Mitchell, the great military leader who was court-martialed out in 1925 by president Coolidge and a group of military men including Douglas MacArthur for his advocating strongly for an Air Force and attempting to educate the military and politicians concerning the promise of air power. Of course after Pearl Harbor in 41 the hypocrites came out from under their rocks and praised Mitchell for apparently knowing what no one else knew.

  23. I missed the bee post yesterday because it was Sunday but was glad to be alerted to it today! As others, I try to make a point of actually clicking the science posts but I don’t always remember and read a lot straight from the website so that would not count the views per post (though views of the website would be counted, I assume – but of course that can’t be broken down per topic/post).

    It also made me sing Eric the Half-a-Bee!

  24. Units? Maybe the views number is in “1000’s” ? As with many of the earlier commenters, i have no idea what counts as a view in the site’s algorithm. I generally view weit two or three times a day by simply clicking on the website url. I normally start my day with the hili dialog when it is posted at 0730 eastern u.s. time. Depending on my schedule for the day…which is pretty much only reading, going to market or doctors these days…I then will return to the site in early afternoon, again in the evening to scroll and read through later hili comments and later posts and some of their comments. I do not “click” on anything unless i am writing a comment. With my limited background in biology, i read the bio science posts to the point that my comprehension is exhausted…much like i read scientific american magazine articles when i was a kid. That said, i always come away from the science articles knowing more or at least more broadly than before reading or in some cases actually studying them.

  25. Even if the “Views” are accurate, all one needs to do is read the comments and tally up how many questions there are, or _explanations_ of how fascinating/interesting the post is – “sub” and “this is great” are essentially as information rich, and I am a “sub”ber.

    BTW I use a damn tiny screen with now slow functionality, and, given the other things I personally am obliged to, a “sub” is the most I can do *in a given moment* — and if too many days go by, the likelihood of “sub”bing goes close to zero — even for interesting posts.

    TL;DR : gotta go!

  26. I enjoy the science posts and just shared the bee one!

    Also, there’s a bit of a debate about whether Spy Who Came in from the Cold or Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy is le Carré’s best-known work. I recently read the latter and highly recommend it. Sad to lose such a great author. But I still find it hard to forgive him for his stance on the death threat to Rushdie. He said something to the effect of, ‘you can’t insult a great religion with impunity’.

  28. Some of the posts are perfectly readable in the emails on a mobile device, while others (such as this one) appear in a font that is far too small so it’s more comfortable to click through. I’m not sure where that difference comes in.

  29. I subscribe to your blog with an RSS reader. The only posts I read are the science posts and the wildlife photos. I don’t care about ducks, food, or boots so I skip those.

  30. Like Elton John’s Rocket Man, all this science I don’t understand, but your site has so much to offer that I don’t like to miss a single day. Precision walking — wonderful!

  31. “I don’t have a wine cellar, and I simply left it too long at 68° F.”

    I learned a trick for storing wine inexpensively. You can use a chest freezer by adding as simple temperature controller. Set the controller to 55 F, and you can get 100 bottles into full size freezer. I am currently holding 75 bottles of home made Syrah in a spare freezer in the basement. Refrigerators work too.

    https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B000EXROSE/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o02_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

    https://www.leaf.tv/articles/how-to-convert-a-refrigerator-into-a-wine-cooler/

  32. Your “views” counter must have been designed by Dominion Voting Systems, as engineered by Hugo Chavez. More comments on a page than views? FRAUD! SAD!

  33. BTW, both thank you and darn you for sharing that circle problem tweet. I’ve been distracted at work by fiddling with it all morning…but, I finally got the answer, and without any cheating!! [Pats himself on the back].

    I guess it’s definitely “Thank you!” now that I think about.

  35. I loved these movies …

    Nick & Nora — adapted from the characters created by Dash Hammett in The Thin Man. They were like Noël Coward-level sophistos. Can’t say I grasped the nuance as a kid, but I loved those movies back then anyhow.

  36. This has been mentioned before, but if you stopped including the entire post in email previews people would have to actually go to the website to read it in its entirety.

  37. “a war between science and religion” ?
    After a lifetime viewing this issue I have concluded that people who believe that invisible fairies are responsible for the world are entrenched in mystical thinking and are impervious to reason. Thankfully this tendency to superstition is slowly diminishing and will eventually be of little consequence. Or so I hope.

    rz

  38. Sunday Hili dialogue four??
    Really? Only three people beside me read that.😳
    I love that daily feature.

  39. How about telling WP to count the total views, not just— what? Comments from the first hour? Until the next post? That day?

    I had a deadline yesterday, so just read the bee article today. Right now, you have comments from twenty individuals. Not seven.

  40. Area of the two squares is 25. Agree?

    I figured this out not long after seeing it but didn’t have time to check my work on paper or comment.

    Then I just looked and nobody in that thread mentions an answer, that i saw.

    I’ll show my work later.

    1. OK, d=10 so r=5. Bottom point of square touches at obvious midpoint of r, so it is 5/2 from there to center of circle. Drop vertical from the point where the two squares meet to the center of the circle, creating a right triangle with sides 5/2.

      Thus the hypotenuse of that right triangle we just created = side of the square and has length 5/2 x sq rt 2.

      So each square has area (5/2 x sq rt 2)^2 = 25/4 x 2 = 25/2

      And we have two of them, so 2 x 25/2 = 25

      Crosscheck, circle has area 5 x 5 x pi ~= 79 or so

      Half of that is <40

      Pair of squares will fit inside half-circle, and 25<40.

  41. Here in Queensland, Australia the daily Hili post comes in as the night claims me.
    At sunrise I read all the ensuing comments that came in to that Hili post.

    Then on to the other posts. Again, nearly always reading the comments as the site has readers of diverse expertise and often with bonus educational/entertainment content.

    I realise the science posts take more effort by our host,
    but they are very rewarding to try and follow the discussion.
    (non biologist, definitely to be changed in the next re-incarnation!)

    It is one of the few places that I feel safe enough to post a comment.

  42. OY! Try not to fret over readership numbers – the science posts are very good and even though they’re above my pay grade often, I’m intellectually curious about most of them.

    I find it is corrosive to one’s soul to worry over numbers like that. I write for two medium sized websites (I no longer write for Forbes b/c they won’t let my inner beast free, atheism wise, my current editors do) and I used to get all worked up about my numbers. It didn’t help me.

    Now I have this zen-like peace that says it matters little whether a few hundred people read an article I write (about, say, Yemeni politics) or tens of thousands (on atheism, parodies, Trump etc). I sleep better that way. Plus, those few people who read my opinions on Yemeni politics are REALLY interested, vs the masses who read my more popular offerings. So the pure numbers don’t account for enthusiasm which is a separate, less measurable metric. I just write as best I can and like you I have the editorial/intellectual freedom to do so. And that’s alright!
    keep up the science posts,

    D.A.
    NYC
    https://whyevolutionistrue.com/2020/06/10/photos-of-readers-93/

  43. Soave is my favorite still White. We used to refer to it as South Avenue. I think my ex came up with that. It was probably her best witticism.

    And when in Venice I was delighted to learn that it was the White of the region. Further, it pairs spectacularly well with those amazing little things that look like ordinary dinner rolls that have green olives in them, which are absolutely the best thing about Venitian cuisine in my book..

  44. “I am once again dispirited about the lack of readership of science posts here.”

    I am genuinely surprised by the low numbers shown on viewership of the science posts. Although I love all the other regular features, the science posts are the first thing I look for, and one of the primary reasons I continue to follow this site. I would actually like to see more science posts; but now, I have an inkling of why I don’t see them.

  45. I’m always several days behind in reading your posts. And yes, I read the one about the honeybees and toolmaking.

    Also, Asta is often used as an answer in New York Times crossword puzzles, so I knew that one!

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