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.
As I said, I’ve been running out of photos, and I’m nearly there. I have a couple of contributions from people who have posted recently, but I want to hold onto those (I space out readers’ contributions). And there may be a few other contributions in the works.
However, unless I get more photos, this feature will become sporadic and may well die. So if you have good wildlife photos, send them along as per the directions on the sidebar.
Thanks!
We now have a tech guy who may be able to fix the issues readers are having with this site. If you don’t mind (you’ve probably done this before), please recount in the comments the problems you’ve had reading or posting on this site. We’ll do our best to try to fix them.
Thanks!
Lately there’s been an influx of rather toxic new posters, people whose first posts are nasty, rude, clueless, or call other posters names. If you’re going to make your first post on this site, please read “Da Roolz”—the guidelines for posting on this site. You can find them here or on the site’s left sidebar. I’ve been rejecting comments that don’t follow these guidelines, and, if the comments are sufficiently obtuse (e.g., taking me to task for not accepting the “overwhelming evidence for God”), I’ll just ban the commenter.
I have no idea why this is happening; is it “post-pandemic meanness”? I’ll remind posters of rules 7 and 8:
7.) Do not insult your host. Pretend that you’re speaking to me in my living room which is, in a sense, what this website is.
8.) Most important, please try to refrain from insulting other posters, no matter how misguided you think they are. I don’t like name-calling, for it lessens whatever class this site has and certainly doesn’t foster discussion. I will often warn people about this behavior either on the site, or in a private email. About 70% of those who are warned respond with truculence, either insulting me or saying that their behavior is fully justified. That’s a good way to get blacklisted—almost as good as telling me to stop posting on cats or cowboy boots. If I ask you to apologize to a commenter whom you insulted, please do so.
Also, I’m delighted to get readers’ wildlife photos (but please hold off until Sept. 23), and there’s another link that shows you how to send then to me. Please send good photos of the quality that usually appears here.
Several readers noted a glitch in the Jordan Peterson post, which involved the text running in a narrow column way down the page, making a mess of the whole thing.
Fortunately, Greg found the cause: some bad code that somehow got inserted into that post. He spent a fair amount of time fixing it, and now I think things are okay.
Many, many thanks to Greg for taking the time to do this. I hope we’ll be okay from now on.
Oh, and if you left a comment on the Jordan Peterson post that disappeared in the fix, please make it again. Thanks!
My crack website tech person has attacked the issue of all the comments having to be moderated, and I think that one is solved. The resolution was technical, and I don’t need to go into details, for what I want to ask the readers is this:
Are you having any problems at all posting or subscribing to comments?
Please describe any technical issues in the comments below, and if there’s something afflicting several people, I’ll try to get it solved.
“We aim to please”
This afternoon I head to France, and will immediately take the Metro to the First, where I’ll have a slap-up lunch at Chez Denise with a friend. Restaurant reservations are made for all eight days, and I will try to walk a lot and eat only once per day to stave off obesity.
What this means for readers is that there will be fewer posts, and they will concentrate mainly on Paris, travel, and food.
Also, since the comments feature has a glitch whereby I have to approve nearly every comment manually, regardless of whether a reader has posted before, your comments may take a while before they appear. Bear with me, and please don’t write me telling me your comment isn’t up! I do my best.
Please keep emails to me to a minimum until I’ll back in business on April 20.
À plus tard!
The person who handles the technical aspects of this site has left a comment on today’s Hili dialogue asking for you to notify him of what problems you’re having getting emails from the site, not having comments go through immediately, and so on. (As I’ve said, I’m now having to approve virtually every comment, even of those people who were never moderated, and it’s a pain.) Here’s what he says, but go to the comment itself (click on link in previous sentence or on screenshot below to reply) to beef about your issues. Now’s your chance. Please be as specific as possible. Thanks!
Once again I tender two reminders for readers new and old.
First, if you haven’t read the commenting rules, affectionately called “Da Roolz”, please do so before you begin commenting at this site. You can find “Da Roolz” here or on the left sidebar of the site. Please pay attention to the length limits I ask for comments, as well as my request that you don’t dominate a comment thread.
Second, I am inundated with many emails—several hundred per day—and am finding it hard to keep up. Please try to contact me at most once per day unless you want to point out any errors I’ve made in the posts. If you have news or tweets to send, and I welcome these, please collect them in a single email.
Thanks! I am Professor Ceiling Cat (Emeritus) and . . .
