Off-the-Record Republicans

Today, US Senator Josh Hawley, R-Missouri, announced that he will object to Joe Biden's Electoral College win in the joint session of Congress on January 6 because he's "concerned about the integrity of this election."

How many Republican lawsuits which were "concerned" about this have been thrown out of how many courts, because of an utter lack of evidence to back the claim that this election was stolen from Donald Trump? Claiming that Biden stole the election is like claiming that Hillary did something wrong regarding Benghazi: it's not just ridiculous, it's monotonous already. Can't the Republicans think up some new scam?

But even most of the Republican morons who couldn't stop beating the Benghazi dead horse still said, early in 2016, that Donald Trump was a grifter and a fraud who succeeded in politics by stirring up racism and belief in stupid conspiracy theories. On the subject of Donald Trump, they spoke like sane human beings, until Trump became the apparent 2016 Republican nominee. Then they all shut up, except for the ones who started to extravagantly praise the same grifter they had been denouncing the day before.

Countless times since then, Republicans have been quoted off the record as saying that they know how horrible Trump is. In some cases it's not so hard to guess who these off-the-record Republicans are: you just match up what they said to a reporter off the record in 2018 with what they said to a cheering campaign crowd in 2015. Or maybe Chris Christie and Ted Cruz sincerely changed their minds and now truly, deeply admire Donald Trump. Yes. That's probably it.

How many others have been publicly supporting Trump while they privately despise him? Will we ever know? Does that group of thoroughly-dishonest, two-faced, party-over-country hypocrites include Mitch McConnell? Mike Pence? Josh Hawley?

MRR beharrt darauf, dass Brecht kein ECHTER schottischer Kommie gewesen!

Als amerikanischer Germanist hatte ich seit Jahrzehnten viel von der "Literarischen Quartett" gehoert, aber bis vor einigen Tagen keine einzige Folge gesehen, bis mir endlich einfiel: ach ja, of course, YouTube. Seitdem habe ich vielleicht eineinhalb dutzenden Folgen gesehen. "Das Literarische Quartett" gefaellt mir mehr, als ich erwartet hatte, was vieles damit zu tun hat, dass mir MRR als Fernsehpersoenlichkeit mehr gefaellt, als ich erwartet haette. Bis vor einigen Tagen hatte ich niemals seine Stimme gehoert, nur etliches von ihm gelesen, was mich nur maessig interessiert hatte. Vielleicht liegt es an mir, und ich bin ein besserer Leser als damals. Vielleicht war MRR im Reden und Debattieren hoeher begabt als im Schreiben.

Wie dem auch sei, die Serie war ganz MRRs Show, und eher selten, in dem was ich bisher geschaut habe, sagt er etwas, was mir bloed vorkommt: fuer Literaturkritik, bei mir, ein sehr hoher Masstab.  Aber etwas irritierte mich: dass er jede Folge mit dem Brecht-Zitat "Wir sehen betroffen den Vorhang zu und all Fragen offen" endet, welch am Ende des Stueckes Der gute Mensch von Sezuan steht. Irritierend, neugierig machend, weil ich schon wusste, Dass MRR antikommunistisch eingestellt wurde, so wie sein konservative Heimat, die FAZ. 

Dann aber sagte MRR etwas, was mich so ueberrascht, dass ich kaum die eignen Ohre traute: er sagte, Brecht sei kein Kommunist gewesen.

Aber ich googelte diese bizarre Behauptung, und doch, MRR hat sie wiederholt gemacht, nicht nur im "Literarischen Quartett" sondern auch in dem Fersehen-Duett, das er mit Peter Voss gemacht hat: "Lauter schwierige Patienten," dessen erste Folge ganz Brecht gewidmet wurde. Da sagte MRR nicht nur, dass er Brecht fuer den besten deutschen Schriftsteller des 20. Jahrhunderts hielt. Er sagte auch:

"Ich bin ueberzeugt, dass Brecht kein Kommunist war und überhaupt kein politischer Mensch."

Dass Brecht der beste deutsche Schreiber des 20. Jahrhundetes war, darueber kann man durchaus diskutieren, die Behauptung ist, wie ich finde, gar nicht weithergeholt. 

Dass Brecht kein Kommunist war, das ist absoluter, undiskutabler Bloedsinn. Vielleicht war er doch der beste deutsche Schrifsteller des 20. Jahrhundertes. Und vielleicht war er auch der allerkommunistischer. Sehr, sehr kommunistisch war er, seit den 20er Jahren.

 

MRR, Antikommunist, war mit der peinlichen Tatsache konfrontiert, dass dieser Schriftsteller, den er so hoch schaetzte wie sehr wenige sonst, Kommunist war. Erzkommunist sogar. Einer, dem so eine Peinlichkeit bevorsteht, haette einige intelligenten Wahlen. Er haette sich entscheiden koennen, dass nicht alles in dem Kommunismus schlecht sein koennte, denn Brecht war drin, mitten drin. Er haette sich sagen koennte, gewiss mit erheblichem Schmerz, dass dieser Schriststeller, dessen Schaffen er tief libte, trotzdem in vielem ignorant or viellecht sogar boes war. 

Aber nein, MRR entschied sich, etwas zu leugnen, das ihm ganz klar vor Augen stand. Er beging den "No true Scotsman" Fehler. 

Zwei Schotten sitzen auf einem Bank im Park. Der erste sieht, wie die Schlagzeile auf der Hauptseite der Zeiting, die der zweite liest, von einem horriblen Verbrechen berichtet, und sagt, "Kein Schotter haette sowas getan. Nie und nimmer!" Der andere erwidert: "Der Taeter ist festgenommen worden, der ist doch Schotte." "Nein! -- Und wie heisst dieser angebliche Schotte?" "Robert Roy Burns MacGregor VI." "Der sechste sogar!" murmelt der ganz betruebte Patriot vor sich hin; aber nur ein Augenblick lang, bevor er sich in dem Unsinn rettet: "Naja, dass mag so sein, aber kein ECHTER Schotter haette sowas getan! Nie und nimmer!" No true Scotrsman.

Und ich? Bin ich denn ein Kommunist, oder was solll das ganze? Nein, ich bin ambivalent. Wenn Du saemtliche Ausgange Deines Staats verrammeln muesst, um vorzukommen, dass Dir Dein ganzes Volk nicht weglaeuft, sieht das nicht schmeichelhaft fuer Dich aus. 

Andererseits ist Kapitlismus auch sehr haesslich, und Kommunismus, der Rest, der davon bleibt, ist immer noch der schaerfste und teffendeste Kritiker der Makel des Kapitalismus. 

Und so bin ich weder kommunistisch noch kapitalistisch sondern postmodern. Noch viel mehr Fragen ganz weit offen, als bei der treue Kommunist Brecht.

The Ford Mustang Mach-E

If you follow this blog closely, you may already have noticed that I hate SUV's and crossovers. I hate it that the electric Volkswagen ID-3, a hatchback with exterior dimensions very similar to the Golf, which is getting rave reviews in Europe, is not being imported to the US. Instead, we have to wait for the ID-4 crossover, because everybody knows that Murrkins love SUV's and crossovers.

Do we really love them? Or has Detroit just been exceptionally successful in shoving millions of station wagons down our throats and convincing us that they're these new things called crossovers?

If you follow EV headlines, you already know that this vehicle,

 

which Ford calls the Mustang Mach-E, will be for sale very soon. I believe the reviewers who say it's an extremely impressive SUV-crossover. But it makes no sense to me to call a crossover a Mustang. Chevrolet could design and build a pickup which was 10 times better than any other pickup anyone had ever seen. Now, that would be one impressive pickup. And it would be really stupid for Chevrolet to call it a Corvette. 

To me, whatever this is, it's not a Mustang. If it was a true electric Mustang, it'd be a coupe or a convertible with a back seat too small for people, and an overall uncompromising focus on performance which would make the car reviewers forget all about those V-8 Mustangs they love so much. The reviewers are saying that they hope the V-8 Mustangs will continue to be built, while Mach-E can be a Mustang for more mature drivers. But "Mustang for the more mature driver" is a contradiction in terms. If an older driver is driving a Mustang, he should be having a mid-life crisis, look ridiculous and be having a wonderful time, not carpooling with 6 other people or hauling a refrigerator.

Dream Log: Sequel to 'Last Temptation of Christ'

I dreamed that a sequel to Martin Scorsese's Last Temptation of Christ was being filmed. (During the dream I didn't know why anyone could've have wanted to film a sequel to Last Temptation of Christ, but as soon as I woke up I remembered that there are rumours that Mel Gibson plans to film a sequel to The Passion of the Christ. That alone, the fact that there are rumours, could very well cause a sequel to Last Temptation to be made in real life. Hollywood monkey-see, Hollywood monkey-do.) In the dream, Martin Scorsese was not associated with the remake and was on public record as having disparaged the whole enterprise. Nobody anywhere near the film industry expected this movie to be any good. But there was a lot of debate about whether it was going to be a huge financial success.

I was hired to play a small part in the movie. I was so far out of the loop that I had no idea what the plot of the movie was going to be like. I was on location out in the remote desert in Arizona, but I had not even been given the script for my part yet, let alone a copy of the entire screenplay. I didn't even know my character's name, whether I was playing Zebedee, or Peasant #2, or what. All I knew for certain was that while I was here on location, I was making a huge amount of money, from my perspective. From Hollywood's perspective, I was making scale. For those of you who don't know what scale is, I was making $3,488 a week, plus $1,005 a day for one, two or three days in addition to a week. Plus a location per diem which I didn't need because between free hotel room service, and craft services, which is what they call the superb caterers who provide meals on film sets, I didn't have any idea what I could spend my money on.

Many others in the cast and crew seemed to be in a situation similar to mine: no idea what, if anything, was going on with the movie, but making more money than they were used to. From a purely capitalistic viewpoint, for us it was a brilliant arrangement. From an artistic point of view it was very frustrating. 

Our production had taken over a nice hotel in the desert. Other than the hotel, there was literally no man-made structure for miles around. I wondered why people came to this hotel if they weren't making a desert-themed movie. Off-road racing, perhaps? There was a group of young actors and actresses, in their 20's, I guessed, who got very restless out here in the middle of nowhere, and snuck out at night and drove to the nearest bar, miles away, to spend that per diem. One early morning, they could be seen on hotel security-camera footage, sneaking back into their hotel rooms through the windows. One of the women in this group was particularly beautiful, even compared to other young actresses, so beautiful that she was striking even on hotel security camera footage when she was horribly drunk and falling clumsily through an open hotel window. 

For some reason, this security camera footage was being passed around the cast and crew via our phones and other mobile devices. Most of us seemed to agree about two things: 1) these young people didn't have to try to hide the fact that they were going out nights looking for fun. It didn't bother anyone. And 2) that beautiful young woman most likely would have a fairly good acting career based on looks alone. And if she could actually also act, she could become a superstar. She was Jennifer Lawrence-level beautiful -- so beautiful that it actually sort of hurts.

 I woke up before learning anything at all about my part, and before seeing anything which resembled actual film production.

The US Automotive Market From a Global Perspective

Before Tesla, there were only 3 major American automakers: General Motors, Ford and Chrysler. Apart from some very small companies, every other automobile manufacturer in the US had either gone out of business or been bought up by one of the Big Three. And even Chrysler had been owned for a while by Daimler-Benz, turning the American Big Three into a Big Two. Chrysler is an independent, American-based entity again, and the Big Two became the Big Three again. 

The inability of any other corporation to challenge the Big Three led many to predict that Tesla wouldn't last, and some, although fewer, are still predicting that Tesla will either go broke or be bought out by one of the Big Three. Also, many people give other new American automakers such as Rivian, Bollinger and Lucid little chance of surviving. Some disagree, saying that EV's have changed the game, as demonstrated by Tesla. To that, some reply that the game is still making automobiles and that it hasn't changed all that much, despire Tesla having made a huge splash.

If we change our focus from the US to the global automotive industry, suddenly things are much more complex: there are currently more than 50 different countries who each have their own indigenous automobile brands. I'm not talking about all of the countries where automobiles are manufactured, because a company based in one country will very often have manufacturing plants based in other countries. If we count every country where there is an automobile factory, the count goes well up into three figures. No, what I mean is that more than 50 different countries have their own independent companies making their own separate brands of automobiles.

That number might seem very high to some Americans, because most of those countries have never tried to import cars to the US. From the 1980's to the present, the only countries who have imported cars to the US in large numbers have been Japan, Germany, France, Italy, South Korea, the UK, Sweden, Czechoslovakia/the Czech Republic and the former Yugoslavia. In the 1980's both Yugo from the former Yugoslavia and Hyundai from South Korea began importing automobiles into the US. At first, both brands, while undercutting every other automaker in the the US in price, were also very inferior in the quality of their products. Yugo disappeared again from the US market, while Hyundai improved its product quality to an amazing degree in a remarkably short time and are now thriving in the US along with their South Korean subsidiary KIA.

China's enormous automotive sector will very soon be trying to make a go of it in the US, with three brands importing cars: XPeng, Nio and Kandi. The US imports from these companies will be electric only. And other Chinese brands will be following, most likely importing EV's only. 

It seems that the whole wide world is in love with crossovers and SUV's. I'm not. But apparently the whole world is. In India, wealthier customers have been buying the same cars as wealthy people elsewhere: Rolls Royces, Mercedes, BMW's, Jaguars and so forth. They've been buying the same electric SUV's, The Jaguar I-Pace and the Audi e-tron. But there's a brand-new all-Indian electric SUV, the Tata Nexon EV, 

 

and the Indian automotive press is going more than a little bit nuts over it. Reviewers say it's just as good as the I-Pace and the e-tron, some say it's better. There's obviously a lot of Indian patriotic pride here over a domestic product which can stand comparison with the finest luxury SUV's in the world, but there's obviously also a very special new vehicle here. 

And although I haven't heard anyone else say anything about it, I have wondered whether Tata might bring the Nexon EV to the US, as the first Indian attempt to enter the US automotive market.

"Range Anxiety"? Range Insanity is What it Is!

Every single review of an EV talks about its range, a lot. And whether an EV can go 100 miles on a single charge, or 200, or 300, or 400, or more, the reviewer -- who is typically an EV enthusiast, not a hater! -- will almost always say that the range is not enough, that EV's need to be able to go still further between recharges before the mainstream public will dare to buy them. Don't wanna be stranded out there somewhere where they've never heard of electricity! However, almost no reviews of ICE vehicles mention how far they can go on a tank of gas or diesel. You know why? C'mon, you know why! Let's all sing it together in 5-part harmony: BECAUSE IT REALLY DOESN'T MATTER VERY MUCH! I mention that those EV reviews ALMOST always complain that the EV's range is not enough, that we need more, more, more! But it's only almost always, because now and then an unusually sensible reviewer will point out some relevant information such as that the average daily commute in the car-crazy, wide-open-spaces US is about 25 miles. 

But let's act as if this issue were really important, and do what very few do: point out how far various ICE vehicles can go on a tank of fuel. 

The coveted 2011 Bugatti Veyron 16.4 Super Sport, 

 

$2 million or so if you can find one for sale, has a big gas tank: 26.4 gallons. However, its EPA city rating is 7 miles per gallon. That comes out to 184.8 miles. If an EV were released in 2020 costing $100,000 or more which got less than 200 miles on a charge, there would be widespread rioting. Fortunately they all get well over 200 miles, some more than twice that. Keep in mind, 7 miles per gallon is the EPA rating for the Veyron. The EPA rating entails fairly sedate driving habits. If you really opened it up, the Veyron would presumably get a lot less than 7 miles per gallon. A Car & Driver review of the Veyron said that if you drove it at its 264 mph top speed continuously, its tires, over $40,000 for a set of 4, would be used up in about 15 minutes, or 65 miles, but that was okay, because it would use a full, 26.4 gallon tank of gas in about 10 minutes, or 45 miles, but that too was okay because there's no place on Earth where you could safely drive at 264 mph for that long. 26.4 gallons in 45 miles is about 1.7 mph. If you drive a Veyron very sedately, that $40,000 set of tires might last as long as 1000 miles. I was bent double with laughter for a while at the thought of someone buying a Veyron and then driving it sedately. You might as well just keep it in plastic shrink wrap like a collectible toy, which is pretty much what it is. By the way, when you change the tires you have to change the wheels too, and that's another $60,000 or more.

When a 1970 Dodge Challenger was new, there were no EPA mileage tests. Owners report about 8 miles to the gallon for one of those gems in peak tune. The car has an 18 gallon gas tank. That works out to 144 miles. And of course, if you let a ICE car go a little, it'll get worse mileage than when it's running perfectly. Is the 1970 Dodge Challenger being constantly abused for its lack of driving range? Are its owners warned never to dare trying to drive one from LA to Vegas? Not to my knowledge.

The 1967 Chevrolet Camaro also has an 18 gallon gas tank. At its official 5.4 miles per gallon, it has a range of under 100 miles -- and less if you floor it, of course. Just as with the Bugatti, just as with all ICE vehicles and all EV's, you get less than the standard range if you drive 'em hard.

The Hodinkee John Mayer G-Shock

Hodinkee, the nearest thing I've found to a horological periodical I can take seriously, narrowly beating out Time + Tide, put a post on Facebook with a huge headline about an upcoming release of a collaboration between John Mayer, G-Shock and Hodinkee. It's not even a link to a story about the new John Mayer G-Shock. Just a huge banner headline saying that it's coming soon.

My G-Shock cost under $50 on Amazon back in May. I'm pleased with it, although most days I wear a mechanical, or 2 mechanicals, one on each wrist. An expensive G-Shock (by which I mean, priced between $200 and many thousands) seems to me to be a contradiction of what a G-Shock is: superior basic function and no frills. It seems silly, like a solid gold Seiko 5 or a $200,000 deluxe Volkswagen Bug. 

John Mayer? A disappointment to me, but it's not his fault that such big expectations were set upon him. A disappointment MUSICALLY. As any kind of horological expert, he's not a disappointment, he's a joke. Or maybe not even a joke, but just a punchline. 

Hodinkee? Easier for me to take seriously when they're not involved in this sort of thing. 

But I have to remember that it's a mistake to take anything to do with watches too seriously. For about 40 years, quartz watches -- such as the G-Shock -- have been more accurate than mechanical watches. But we watch fanciers fancy mechanical watches almost all of the time. The biggest exception being the G-Shock, a very popular option among military special forces. 

 

But most of us who buy G-Shocks are just pretending to be commandos. (Do even commandos still actually need any sort of watches, or is that need now covered by phones and other computers, as it is with the rest of us? I have no idea.) The way that most people who buy diver's watches, which are mostly mechanical and can be extremely expensive, never go diving, and the way that most people who wear pilot's watches are not pilots -- and so forth. It's a big game which is all in our heads, the same way that most people who own Porsches which can go 200mph never drive them as fast as 100mph. The same way that very, very many things are just games in our heads.

It's all very, very silly, this business with watches. Whenever I forget that, I become even sillier.

The Master Took Everything

I'd been trying to remember what novel it was I'd read, which novel I was reminded of by Elon Musk and his fans, in which the protagonist, a follower, a hero-worshipper, breaks down and sobs toward the end of the story, an old man who has wasted his life serving someone who didn't deserve it. 1984? No, that wasn't it, although Winston Smith weeping as he loves Big Brother at last is a similar scene, a similarly heartbreaking catastrophic defeat. Today I remembered: it was The Remains of the Day by Kazuo Ishiguro. I read it not long after the movie came out in 1993. And I was struck above all by that scene near the end, and I have always felt that I was taught an important lesson there, not to give myself away to those who are not worthy.

I remembered the lesson always, and the image of the old man crying because the Master had taken everything from him, although I forgot for a while which book it was from. So what does this have to do with EV's? Well, I think about Elon Musk's fans. Tesla owners, Tesla shareholders. I also think about Trump's fans. Trump and Musk, and other narcissistic sociopaths, only take, they don't give back. I feel sorry for those who waste their lives giving to unworthy heroes, expecting rewards which they will not receive.

 

Over and over again, we hear people who've been cast aside by Trump, from chumps who'd paid for Trump University all the way up to former Cabinet members. After they had served him loyally, extremely loyally, but not extremely enough. They express their surprise, and we are surprised, wondering how they could have failed to noticed the thousands of similar cases which preceded their own. We're astonished that they could have been surprised.

 

The difference between Musk and Trump is that Musk is a little bit more clever, a little bit less obvious in his predatory behavior. But only a little bit. 

 

EV Headlines

Tesla stock is selling for over $500 a share, and the market cap of the company is over half a trillion dollars, which is more than the combined value of the rest of the North American automotive market sector. That is: more than the combined market cap of GM, Ford and Chrysler, plus all of their North American parts suppliers, plus all North American auto-parts stores and auto-repair businesses.

Many Tesla fans seem convinced, not only that Tesla makes better cars than anyone else on the planet, but also that no other manufacturer will ever catch up with them, and that Tesla will eventually, literally speaking, take over the entire world. If you believe that, then maybe Tesla's current valuation could be justified in your eyes. To everybody else, this looks like a bubble, and the only questions are when it will pop, how bad it will be, and how many of you fans will still think that Elon Musk is Jesus after you're living in your Teslas because you had to sell your houses after Tesla stock was wiped out, and then living on the sidewalk because you had to sell your Teslas. I know, I know: many of you will still think he's Jesus. Even if he sells all his Tesla stock before it crashes and is 4 times richer than Jeff Bezos. I know absolutely incurable madness when I see it.

An automotive stock whose market capitalization is currently slightly higher than GM's is NIO. This may surprise you if you've never heard of NIO, and if you're not heavy into EV's, you probably haven't. They are a Chinese company with some impressive models coming soon to the US market. So, how many vehicles have they sold worldwide since their start up in 2014? Just over 50,000. How many vehicles has GM sold in the same time? Over 20 million. Just in the US and Canada. So is NIO another bubble? Aehhmm...

Maybe GM is drastically undervalued. Maybe none of this, literally speaking, makes any sense at all. 

NIO and another Chinese Company, XPeng, will be bringing high-performance cars to the US market soon. Automotive journalists have test driven NIO's and XPeng's products and described them as serious competition for Tesla. 

But the car currently regarded as the most serious competition for Tesla is the Lucid Air, coming soon from the American start-up Lucid Motors. I don't have range anxiety, but I know that many of you do, so for your sake I'll just mention that the Lucid Air goes over 500 miles on a single charge.

And that 500-mile range excites a lot of people. Bores the Hell out of me. But the following excites me. In another market sector, the affordable electric car, yet another Chinese company, Kandi, is making big news in the US: their model K27 

may actually beat NIO and XPeng and Lucid into US showrooms. To be frank, some of the cheapest electric cars for sale so far have been golf carts which somehow have received street-legal status. Kandi's entry-level K27 is no golf cart. Some reviewers have described it as roomier, peppier and just all-around better than a Smart Electric. And Kandi has K27's in Texas right now and is working on getting them homologated and setting up a dealer network. Looks like like they might miss their stated intention to have cars for sale in the US by the end of this year. But even if so, they won't miss it by much.

And the K27 is rather affordable. I'm not clear exactly what the sticker price will be. It was going to be $20,000, but if a recent report it's accurate, Kandi have changed their minds, and lowered it to $17,500. If that's accurate, it might be a smart move on Kandi's part, because $17,500 minus the federal $7500 EV rebate equals exactly $10,000, and then any state or local rebates which bring the K27 down into four figures, so much for for-real new EV's not being affordable. For example, it would cost $6000 in Colorado, and as low as $3000 in California. For a legit -- although very small -- brand new EV which has all the features you'd expect on a new car. I'm picturing a lot of suburban Daddy's girls in families which never considered EV's before this, getting brand-new Kandis for their 16th birthdays. Could be big. Could be big business. Watch this space.

Oh, btw, just for extra oomph: if the K27 does go on sale for $17,500, that would be exactly half of the $35,000 sticker price which Tesla promised for the Model 3, but never delivered on. I know, a lot of Tesla zombies will insist that Tesla did so offer a $35,000 Model 3, but just keep in mind, they also believe that they, as Tesla stockholders, will soon rule the world. And that Elon Musk makes about $20,000 a year working for Tesla. They believe a lot of very silly things.

EV's and Politics

Some of the most prominent EV vloggers on YouTube say repeatedly that they want to avoid political statements, that their videos about EV's are unpolitical. One, who calls himself Electric Vehicle Man, which is also the name of his excellent YouTube channel, which has lots of EV road tests and lots of debunking of negative misconceptions about EV's, also says that he is sometimes accused of being an eco warrior, an accusation which he says is inaccurate.

 

Eco warrior? I was unfamiliar with the term before hearing Electric Vehicle Man repeatedly insist that he is not one. I googled what is an eco warrior, and the first definition I saw was "a person actively involved in preventing damage to the environment." Which Electric Vehicle Man certainly is. In fact, when he says I'm not an eco warrior, he usually goes on to say, Yes, I promote electric vehicles, and I choose electricity from my utility which comes from wind and solar, and I do other things to help the environment. So apparently different people define the term differently. Maybe Electric Vehicle Man thinks that you need to actually chain yourself to a tree, or live in a tree for a month or longer, or be very strictly vegan, or even all three, or even more, in order to be accurately called an eco warrior. Maybe he has already precisely defined what he understands the term to mean and why it doesn't apply to him in his opinion. One of the good things about his You Tube channel is the large amount of precise and detailed information he provides.

Electric Vehicle Man and I definitely define the term "politics" differently. As I said, many people who make a living -- or in some cases just a supplementary second income -- promoting electric vehicles on You Tube insist that their advocacy of EV's has nothing to do with politics. How can they say that? They're constantly mentioning how the prices of EV's include government rebates worth thousands of dollars or Euros or British pounds per vehicle, rebates which are much larger in certain places than others. And they know that politicians determine the size of those rebates, and that different political parties want the rebates to get get bigger or smaller. They constantly report on factories being built which will manufacture EV's, and the involvement of governments in making the construction of these factories easier or more difficult.

Electric Vehicle Man frequently mentions that using public transportation is even better for the environment than driving an EV, and that where he lives, in his part of Yorkshire in the UK, there is very little public transportation, and also very little public charging infrastructure for EV's. Oh, and he also mentioned, when he drove an EV up through Scotland for his video channel, that Scotland not only has a lot of public EV charging infrastructure, but also THAT EV CHARGING IS FREE FOR EVERYONE IN SCOTLAND. (Which is almost 100% true: sometimes there's a small parking fee for those Scottish chargers, sometimes not. Other than that -- FREE!!!)

I tend to think that everything is political. But leaving aside this opinion of mine for the moment, it seems particularly obvious to me that the poor state of public transportation in Yorkshire, about which Electric Vehicle Man complains, is a political issue. They even put the word "public" in public transportation to make it even easier to see how it's political. Does Electric Vehicle Man really not understand that if he and his neighbors there in his part of Yorkshire became more involved in political parties and were more active in promoting and criticizing the agendas of political parties, one benefit of that is that they might get much better public transportation? Among many, many other very good things?

Does Electric Vehicle Man really not grasp that? Really? REALLY???

Some say that if you don't at least vote, you have no right to complain about anything the state does. I wouldn't go quite that far, but I do think it's self-contradictory to complain about government while not doing a thing to participate in it. And strange and quite sad.

By the way, I also think it's rather cheesy of Electric Vehicle Man to call himself Electric Vehicle Man while he not only currently owns an ICE vehicle in addition to an EV, but also intends to buy other ICE vehicles in the future. (Perhaps in large part because of the public transportation situation in his area about which he's always complaining, without seeming to DO much about it?) I think he's doing a lot of good by promoting EV's, but I think there are others who deserve that superhero title a lot more than he does, because they're a lot more committed to the cause. For example, the guy who hosts the YouTube vlog News Coulomb. It seems very clear to me that no-one is perfect, but calling yourself Electric Vehicle Man does definitely imply a level of purity. Calling yourself that and not only owning ICE vehicles, but intending to own more ICE vehicles in the future, is misleading at the very best.

Perhaps complaining about such things makes me an eco warrior in Electric Vehicle Man's eyes. And maybe that means that I and everyone like me is completely unbearable to him. Or perhaps it just means that a few things I do annoy him somewhat, without him thinking I'm a horrible person in general. Which would make the two of us about even.

Biden Says the Transition is Going Well

Joe Biden says that the transition from the Trump administration to his own is going well, and that outreach from the present administration, across the board, has been sincere and not begrudging.

In short, Biden says that the behavior of the Trump administration has been the exact opposite of what the public has seen and heard from President Trump himself.

If you've been reading a lot news from Washington over the past four years, as I have, then surely it has struck you have often members of Trump's administration, as well as Republicans in Congress, have expressed strong opposition, even horror and disgust, to Trump, off the record. 

What a strange approach: to privately oppose a leader whom you publicly slavishly follow and extravagantly praise. Will all of these Republicans ever go on the record and actually tell the truth right out in public about what they have been thinking and doing during the Trump Presidency?

Or, on the contrary, will there been so many Republicans who claim to have been secretly anti-Trump, secretly saving the world from Trump from within the belly of the beast, that it will be damned hard to believe all of them?

There's a problem with believing anyone who says, I was lying all that time, but now I'm telling the truth. Hey, come to think of it, that's sort of the whole point of that story which has been told to so many children, about the boy who lied about wolves being around.

There's a definite advantage to just telling the truth, publicly, privately, on the record, off the record, every which way. Several advantages. Several huge advantages. Several huge obvious advantages.

But if some Trump administration official or Republican Congressperson or Senator wants to try to explain to me why he or she was saying one thing in public and the exact opposite off the record, for four long years, and wants to explain to me how that behavior actually made some sort of sense, I'll listen.

For a little while, anyway.

Jesus, Yeshua

I just read... something. I could go off on various tangents describing it, and get even more worked up than I am, but why? It was... I suppose it was a message which was meant in a very positive way. I suppose it's possible that it was meant in a very positive way. I could go all negative and denounce them as hucksters as if I were a New Atheist, but why? Especially when I'm already getting way too upset on linguistic grounds?

They're fine with the conventional English forms of Sophia, Mary, Magdelene, Sarah, Anne, Brigit, Avalon, Ireland, Joseph, Michael, Catherine, Hilda, Cathars and Templars.

But they have to say Yeshua instead of Jesus. Well, what if I just say "Joshua" and "garbled translation," and "Jacob" and "James" while I'm at it?!

 

Or maybe if I quote from a very silly Wikipedia article entitled... "Yeshua."

"The 2004 film The Passion of the Christ, which was made in Aramaic, used Yeshua as the name of Jesus and is the most well known western Christian work to have done so."

Now, while I certainly have a bone or two to pick with Mel Gibson, him calling Jesus Yeshua in The Passion of the Christ is not one of them. Anybody want to guess why? I'll tell you why: because the whole film was in Aramaic and Latin. You see? You see where I'm going with this? Am I all alone here? They didn't just change one word. They changed all of them.

It would be remiss of me if I ended this rant without mentioning that some people who are much better at Latin than I am, are very upset by what they see as the way that Gibson screwed up the Latin in The Passion of the Christ. I know some people who are rather advanced in Aramaic, but, so far, I haven't heard their opinions of the film. Maybe they'll have something to say about the sequel. That's right: there may be a sequel. Jim says Mel just sent him the third draft of the screenplay. The Passion of the Christ 2: This Time, It's Personal.

Bashing EV's, and Ecological Action in General

Some say that EV's are bad for the environment, because some pollution is involved in making them. I disagree, because I think you've got to measure their effect by comparing it to the effect of ICE vehicles. Yes, not owning a car at all would be even better. 

 

But saying that EV's are bad for the environment, imho, is like saying that rooftop solar panels are bad for the environment because it would be even better if humans just went extinct. Which some environmentalists actually want. See for example Jeff Gibbs and his recent, disgusting documentary Planet of the Humans, which basically takes a big long piss on everybody who's trying to combat climate change and pollution for not doing a 100% perfect job of it. News flash: nothing is 100% perfect, not everyone who's trying to help is a fool or a dupe, and it is possible that humans will reverse the damage we've done to the environment. People don't deserve to be castigated for trying to help. Jeff Gibbs is a huge jerk and a pathological misanthropist. He's not trying to help.

Improvement is improvement. Some ICE vehicles are, in fact, much cleaner than others. A hybrid is better for the environment than an ICE vehicle. An EV is better than a hybrid. Walking, riding a non-electric bicycle or taking public transportation is better than driving an EV. 

Misinformation or disinformation (deliberate misinformation) is bad. It tends to encourage people to think that their actions make no difference, and that they might as well just give up, keep polluting as much as anybody does, and get ready to die, because the whole planet is going to die soon and there's nothing we can do about it. Which is completely inaccurate, there are all sports of things we can do about it and are doing about it. We need to keep on doing those things, and doing more. For example, the charge that EV batteries are going to end up causing horrible pollution in landfills, besides coming from people who never before in their lives expressed any concern about pollution or landfills, also happens to be dead wrong: those batteries, after lasting much longer in EV's than anyone expected, will be used in other ways, such as storing energy in people's homes or for utilities, and when they finally do expire, they will be recycled. No part of them will go into landfills. So if you've been telling people that EV batteries will soon be choking landfills and killing us all, please stop, and inform yourself on the topic. Thank you very much.

Of course, the belief that global warming is a hoax and that burning coal doesn't harm living things and that windmills are causing birds to go extinct, and so forth, that form of misinformation and disinformation is bad, too, but, thank goodness, it's finally dying out. Which shows us that other forms can be overcome as well.

The charge that driving EV's causes people to stop worrying about other causes of climate crisis such as overconsumption and overpopulation, seems to be untrue as well. On the contrary, while a few EV owners may be unconscientious, massively-polluting pigs who own six huge EV's which are all powered by coal-generated electricity and never carpool, most tend to support climate science and renewable energy (including putting solar panels on their own roofs in a high percentage of cases), and to be better than average at reducing consumption of plastic, to be vegan more often than non-EV drivers, and in general: it's crap, the charge that driving an EV makes a person think they've done all they ever need to do for the environment, and they're done.

Thank goodness, more and more people already know all of the things I've said in this post, and it's getting harder and harder to attack EV's, or solar or wind energy, or climate science, or engaged, woke people in general, without looking like a complete fool.

This is Appalling!

Today I learned that a sequel to "Full House," the inexplicably popular sitcom which ran on ABC from 1987 to 1995, starring, among others, Bob Saget, who between starring in, directing and producing the show earned about half a billion dollars, and had a second run of fame after the show when word got around that Saget, star of "Full House," an unbelievably corny purveyor of conservative "family values," also happens to be a stand-up comedian whose act is very unusually dirty -- it's not particularly good, unfortunately. But it really is exceptionally offensive -- Today I learned that "Full House" has a sequel called "Fuller House" which has been on Netflix for several seasons now, and that Candace Cameron Bure, 

a main cast member in both series, who apparently is one of those Republican celebrities who is publicly known as a Christian because they publicly make a big deal of how they're Christians, has caused an uproar among Republican Christians who closely follow the lives of famous Republican Christians, because she put a picture of herself and her husband on Instagram in which her husband is touching her breast, and not just incidentally-accidentally brushing up against it or anything either, but blatantly grabbing it in a manner which many Christians have found to be un-Christian, and they've both got big smiles on their faces too, and Bure has responded to the uproar by saying that sex is something which God has given to people for us to enjoy. Even if they're Republican Christians. I believe at first she said she was sorry for upsetting people, and then later she said, You know what? I'm not sorry I upset you!

And I thought to myself: this is appalling! They've actually made a SEQUEL to "Full House"?! People actually hadn't had ENOUGH of "Full House"?!

What's the Perfect Size For a Wristwatch?

 Are you already way ahead of me?

Grown men -- mostly men. Men are to watches as women are to shoes: the primary market, dwarfing the volume sold to the other gender. Or maybe an apter comparison is jewelry: there are many sorts of jewelry made for women, and for men, mostly one kind is made: watches -- spend a lot of time and energy debating whether this watch or that watch is too big or too small.

By far, most of the comments on this subject seem to be made by men with slender wrists. I don't know how many times I've read a comment saying "I have slender wrists" and going on to say that they're glad that the newest model of this watch is smaller, or that they're disappointed that that watch is so big. I can't recall one single guy saying that he had big wrists and that this or that watch was too small.

I've seen I don't know how many debates of this sort, over a period of years. And not just random guys on the Internet participate in the debates, so do the most highly-respected journalists who specialize in watches, and so do the most highly-respected watch designers. And among watch enthusiasts, you don't get more highly respected than the top watch designers. 

Let's take the case of the Audemars Piguet Royal Oak, one of the most highly-esteemed of all long-running watch models, designed by Gerald Genta, as well-respected as they come, introduced in 1972 and still, apparently, easily selling as many as Audemars Piguet can make. Royal Oaks are probably most well-known for being worn by several of the characters in the HBO series "Entourage." I haven't seen the whole series, but if I've got this straight, Ari Gold, the Hollywood  super-agent played by Jeremy Piven, is given a gift of a Royal Oak by a beloved mentor who tells him it's the best watch in the world. Ari is awestruck by the gift, and soon several of his friends and acquaintances are also wearing Royal Oaks.  

The thing is, there have been many different models of the Royal Oak made since 1972. The original one was 39 millimeters wide -- big for 1972, smallish today. It was just 7 millimeters thick: very thin, for any era. And its case and bracelet -- watch guys refer to metal watch bands as bracelets. Bands made of soft material such as leather or rubber are called straps -- were made of stainless steel. This caused a sensation In 1972, luxury watches usually had cases and bracelets of gold or platinum, and Audemars Piquet has always been a luxury brand. Now, steel is not unusual at any price point. The Royal Oak is the watch which made that change.

But today, you can get a Royal Oak with a case made of gold, or platinum, or titanium, or still other materials besides steel. And steel is also still available. And straps are available as well as bracelets.

In 1992, to celebrate the Royal Oak's 20th anniversary, Audemars Piguet unveiled the Royal Oak Offshore. The original Royal Oak, as I mentioned, is 39 millimeters wide. The Royal Oak Offshore, or the ROO, as fans sometimes call it, is 41 millimeters wide. 

Might not seem like such a big difference. I know of men's wristwatches for sale today as small as 33 mm and as big as 50 mm. But making a new variant of the Royal Oak in 1992 which was 2 mm bigger than the original was enough to cause the designer of the original, Gerald Genta, to storm Audemars Piguet's booth at the Basel watch show where the ROO was introduced, shouting that his creation had been destroyed.  

So. Yes. People not only debate about the proper size of watches, they sometimes even fight about it. Even about differences in sizes which might be barely perceptible to most people. Is Ari wearing a conventional 39 mm Royal Oak in that picture above, or a 41 mm ROO? I don't have the slightest idea.

And then a couple of days ago, it finally struck me that the debate is absurd. Few if any people, I'm nearly 100% certain, have ever earnestly argued that a certain size of shoe, or belt, is correct, and that other sizes are either too big or too small. No, we realize that people come in all different sizes and that one size does not fit all. Similarly, a guy with a slender wrist might look best with a watch which is 37 mm wide (considered smallish today), while a much bigger man with huge wrists might be best suited with a watch 42 mm wide or even larger. It's just about as simple as that. It couldn't be clearer.

And yet the debate will continue. I'm sure of that. I don't know why it ever existed at all, I don't know why it will continue, but I know it will. Maybe it's no more or less than sneakiness on the part of watchmakers, selling more watches by making the newest ones bigger or smaller the way fashion designers sell more clothes by making the fashionable hemlines higher and the lower and then higher again.

Electrical Power to the People!

There are probably 400,000,000,000,000,000,000 idiots -- approximately, give or take -- raving full-time about how EV's don't have enough range. They're wrong. I could fill whole posts with the details of the ways in which they are wrong, but if we could somehow distract them from this topic, and get them raving full-time about how there need to be more charging options instead, that could really do some good.

I'm not just talking about fast-charge options -- the public places where you pull up in your EV and plug it in and then pay when you're done, like a gas station except with electricity instead of gas. This is cheaper than putting gas into a conventional car, but it's not as cheap as plugging an EV into a regular wall socket overnight. I'm also talking about houses with garages. A lot of people who own EV's seldom or never use those public charging stations, because they plug their cars into regular sockets

 

overnight. This takes longer than the public charging stations, but it's also much cheaper. 

So people who own their own houses save money by plugging their EV's in overnight, while poor people who can't afford the price of a new EV to begin with also tend not to own their own houses, and usually don't have any wall sockets which they can easily plug their used EV's into overnight. Maybe they could get a 100-foot extension cord and run it from their 2012 Nissan Leaf parked on the street up the side of their apartment building, in the window of their 3rd-floor apartment and into the wall socket and charge their electric cars while they sleep the way that rich people do. Maybe. But it would be difficult, and the problems would be much greater still if they lived on the 10th floor. 

Similarly, many employers offer free EV charging to their employees, but we're usually talking about employees who are already well-paid. Similarly, Tesla offers free public charging to many Tesla owners -- but again, Teslas are even more expensive than other EV's. And that's just one of the problems with owning a Tesla. 

And electricity is much more widely available in the US and Europe than in some poorer regions of the world.

You see the pattern here. It's easy for you to get those famous huge energy savings by owning an EV -- but in most cases, you can only get the FULL savings if you're rich enough not to really need those savings. It's the infamous Tom Petty It's Ab-So-Lute-Lute-Ly Backwards Law of Microeconomics again. Poorer people will still save money buying electricity for their cars instead of gasoline, but generally not as much money. Let's get those 400,000,000,000,000,000,000 idiots raving about giving poor people their own houses with garages with wall outlets in them -- they could talk to Jimmy Carter and some of his associates about that one -- or giving them very cheap or free electricity some other way. Then, those 400,000,000,000,000,000,000 idiots would actually be accomplishing something.

Dream Log: Time-Traveling Espionage

 COVID did not exist in last night's dream. It was the present day, for the most part, and I was my real age, 59 years old. Most of the dream took place in and around some of those extremely enormous buildings which exist in many of my dreams but not in reality. These buildings, a half dozen of them covering as much area as a medium sized city, had previously been what Americans call a public school, and Brits call a state school. Concrete, dirty windows, dingy floor tiles, very small scraps of lawn and shrubbery between the unrealistically-huge buildings.

At the beginning of the dream I had the ability to travel through time back into the past. Only into the past. I went back and forth between the present day, and selected points in the past. I did not do this by means of technology. Rather, it was a talent I had, like juggling or playing tennis exceptionally well. 

At first I was not aware of any other time travelers, and I was being coached by a time of what I assumed to be good people, government agents, about how to do the most good for mankind with my ability. But then I met another time traveler, who asked me how I could be certain that these advisors were who and what what they said they were. And then I kept seeing more and more time travelers, and it became clear to me that there were many different factions among them, representing conflicting interests. Furthermore, the groups to which the individual time travelers belonged were composed to a very great extent according to personal likes and dislikes among their members. And individuals were constantly moving from one group to another, and they were spying on each other, often belonging to one group only so that they could report on that group to another, hostile group. In short, the whole city-sized former school buildings were swarming with thousands of ruthless, cut-throat time traveling spies. Some worked for governments, some worked for corporations, some worked only for themselves. If there actually was a faction among them dedicated to helping the world in general, they were very greatly outnumbered. And a great many of them were double or triple agents. All in all, it was pretty depressing, apart from the great fascination -- for me at least -- of the huge imaginary architecture.

I only saw people planning trips to and from the past, never into the future.

I was still in the process of looking for a group I thought I might be able to trust, a group which appeared to be things I thought worth doing, when I woke up.

Haircut

I'm cutting my hair for third time during COVID-19. That's right: present tense. I'm cutting my hair now. I'm in the process of doing it. My clippers are re-charging now. I ran the battery all the way down today, recharged the clippers, and then ran the battery all the way down again, and I'm writing this post because I need something to do while they're charging again. This is not a picture of me, but it gives you a general idea about how far I feel I am from an acceptable stopping point.

How can this be? you ask. Well, you see, early on during the pandemic, I wondered whether to buy some hair clippers on Amazon, or just to get the beard clippers in front of me at Kroger's. I got the beard clippers. Mistake. I don't have a beard, I shave every day, I was looking for something to cut my own hair. I suppose I have an unwise preference for instant gratification. The beard clippers were right there in front of me. Shipping time: zero. 

Also: on the package it said that they could be used to cut hair as well as beard, and I'm a bit annoyed at them for that. Technically, they're not lying when they say that these beard clippers can cut hair. I have a very full head of hair, and I'm giving myself a buzz cut with these beard clippers for the third time right now. So, saying that these clippers CAN be used to cut hair is not technically a lie.

But it's still kind of a lie, because saying that they CAN be used to cut hair implies that they SHOULD be used to cut hair. And they shouldn't.

So I googled best hair clippers, and I ordered the clippers which Men's Health says are the best bargain, and Jesus, Lord from Above, please, please, please let them be much better at cutting hair than these beard clippers. Which, for all I know, may be just perfect for trimming beards.

Chess Log: A Quick One

First off, an apology to those of my readers whose interest in this blog is mainly chess. I know, it's been years since I've posted about chess. This has to do with technical difficulties, with IT. I am old and not very good with IT. I'm more interested in chess than ever. Will I post more often about chess in the future. I don't know. I hope so. In brief, the problem is copy-and-paste: When I played at FICS, I could copy and paste my games into my blog posts. I haven't figured out how to copy the moves on lichess. Apparently I'm one a them there OK boomers.

Anyway: the following was short enough for me to easily copy out by hand. With a pen. Some of you younger readers, maybe you can ask a boomer what a pen is. This was a 5-0 blitz game, I played White:

1. e4 d5 2 exd5 Qxd5 3. Nc3 Qe6+ 4. Qe2 Nf6 5. Qxe6 g6??? 6. Qxc8!#

Advanced chess players might spot several mistakes made by Black, but surely the biggest one was not taking my Queen on his 5th move.

YouTube EV and Green Energy Channels

A few months ago I stopped watching Rich Benoit's YouTube channel Rich Rebuilds, which until then had focused on his efforts to repair his own and other Teslas, in the face of great opposition from Tesla, because he had finally had enough of Tesla, and was going to focus on an ICE machine instead. Yesterday, I tuned in to a Jehu Garcia podcast interview with Mr Benoit, thinking that perhaps I had misunderstood him. Rich has been known to makes with the jokes. 

A couple of minutes into the podcast Rich said, "I'm into both electric and gas," and I stopped watching. 

You're into both electric and gas, Rich. Isn't that special? Well, some of us are into breathing. Maybe someday, you will grasp some extremely basic, simple and important facts, and maybe then I will again find you to be worthy of my attention. Til then -- bye, Felicia!

Sandy Munro has had a very high rep for a very long time as an auto mechanic, maker of machine tools and parts supplier, and a few years ago he became convinced of the basic technological superiority of EV's as against ICE, and in particular he has become very bullish on Tesla, Inc, and since then he has been a popular guest on YouTube EV channels. Yesterday I started to watch an interview with him on E for Electric. He said he was very excited about Tesla's new battery. And perhaps he has every reason to be. He said that Tesla's new battery was going to eliminate ICE. I'd like to believe that, but it sounds like the statement of someone who's getting carried away. 

And then he said that all of those Wall Street types who are bearish on Tesla have MBA's, "but I have this!" and he held up a copy of Sun-Tzu's Art of War. 

Is it possible for someone not to know that The Art of War has been the most-read book among MBA's since at least 1987?

Anyway, I switched off the interview at that point.

Maybe I just don't get Rich Benoit's or Sandy Munro's sense of humor. Maybe if I just kept watching each interview a little bit longer, I would've learned that Rich is more of an EV guy than ever, and that Sandy Munro knows full well what MBA's read and was about to make a swell joke.

That would be really great. 

I also learned yesterday that NIO,

 

a Chinese EV manufacturer which began selling cars in 2017 and currently has cumulative all-time sales of just over 50,000 units, has just passed General Motors in market capitalization.

Big-Boy Pants

It's Friday afternoon, and the mayor of Philadelphia, Jim Kenney, has said what many of us have been thinking: that's it's time for Trump to "put on his big-boy pants" and concede that Joe Biden has been elected President.

But there's a problem here, and we all know exactly what it is: President Trump has no big-boy pants. There've been countless moments over the past five years, since well before Trump was elected, when he has demonstrated that he has no big-boy pants. There can be no shred of doubt left in any sane observer's mind that has no maturity, no decorum, no sense of fair play, no respect for anyone or anything. This has been clear for a while. No one is surprised by how Trump is behaving. Everyone knew that this election was going to be a two-step process: first vote Trump out, then force him to leave office. Step one: mission accomplished. Step two -- ? 

It's up to us. He won't go quietly. And we all knew he wouldn't.

Dream Log: Pasta Competition

In a decaying commercial neighborhood in an American city, amid strip malls which were going under, a TV network had bought three glass-walled fast food restaurants and converted them into fancier restaurants for the purpose of a competition where a chef and their staff would move into each of the restaurants and make fancy pasta dishes. I was one of the chefs, Johnny Depp was one of the others, and I don't remember anything at all about the third one. COVID-19 didn't exist in this dream. So in that way, it was sort of like being a Republican.

In the dream I was a renowned chef of Italian cuisine, and I was annoyed that Depp had the nerve to enter this competition against me. In the first round, we had a short period of time in which to prepare several pasta-based entrees. I made several traditional Italian entrees. When I saw the menu which Depp presented to the judges after he was done, at first I wondered whether his kitchen had been out of protein and dairy, and whether he had just used a small amount of lightly-cooked vegetables and a whole bunch of spice in a desperate attempt to compensate for the missing ingredients. 

However, to my astonishment, Depp was awarded first place in this round, and I came in second. Oh well, I thought, those are the perks of being a world-beloved movie star. But then I tasted a couple of his entrees, and was astonished again, because they tasted very, very good. I wondered, Did he have a ringer? A world-class sous-chef, perhaps? I reached out for info to my many contacts in the culinary world, and found out that, in this dream, in addition to being a huge movie star, he was also, in fact, a well-respected chef specializing in varieties of East Asian cuisine which were not well-known in the West.

In the first round the only rule had been to prepare several pasta-based entrees. In the second round we were to prepare several pasta-based entrees in which pork was prominently featured. In the dream, I was known as an Italian chef. Fewer people knew that I also was well-versed in very eclectic global cuisine. Well, a lot more people were going to find out, because this competition was being recorded for a television network, and in the second round, I and my staff worked hard and pulled off several magnificent Chinese-French-Thai creations. And once again, Depp got first place and I came in second. This meant that it was very unlikely that I would be able to overtake Depp in the third and final round to win to the overall competition. 

And I was not taking it well. After the second round, we had a session of on-camera interviews, being shot in a building which looked as if it might be a strip mall which was in the process of being demolished or converted into something else. The front of the building was mostly glass. And if it had once been a strip mall, the walls between the individual stores had been knocked out, so that a long and narrow space remained.

Depp was being very gracious and polite. I was not. He said very complimentary things on-camera about me and the food I made and about my whole life in general. He came over to me and held out his hand for a handshake. I didn't shake his hand. Instead, I told him that he looked as if it had been several years since he had taken a bath, and advised him to stay downwind of any judges sampling his cuisine.

Depp had been perfectly nice until then. Even now he kept smiling, but he retorted right away by saying that I looked as if it had been several years since I had been able to run a hundred yards without stopping to rest partway through. 

"Touchee," I said, and then I ripped off my microphone, stormed out of the building, wearing heavy winter clothes because it was winter and we were somewhere in the northern US, turned up a long, steep hill and began running very fast, into a stiff headwind. Even still I ran uphill for a long longer than a hundred yards, just in case any of the TV cameras were following me.

And, once AGAIN, just as in quite a few other dreams I've had in the past several years, the running felt so real that I thought to myself, "Okay, it's NOT just a dream, I really CAN run pretty darn well!"

But, once again, after yet another fairly glorious, long dream-run, I woke up, and was confused for a little while about the running until I figured out, Okay, that was just another one of those running dreams. Could I run a hundred yards right now? I don't know. 

I ought to try sometime.

Dream Log: Dogs and Academia

 

I dreamed I was in a dog park in a beautiful wooded hilly area in autumn. There was no COVID-19 in this dream. I had no dogs, but other people didn't seem to mind my playing with their dogs. One grey-haired lady who was there with several dogs (I'm grey-haired irl. That's weird.) tossed me one of her several frisbees and encouraged me to play with one of her dogs. I don't know much about dog breeds, but I'm going to say that this dog was huge and yellow. 

After a little while I threw the frisbee back to the grey-haired lady and said I had to go. She informed me that the big yellow dog was mine now, but I refused to agree to that, although she was rather insistent. I told her that I was sympathetic to the situation of the dog needing a home, but that I was not the best person to provide that home.

I walked a short distance to the campus of an Ivy League university. Which university it was, was not specified in the dream. I do not know whether any of the real-life Ivy League universities is situated in a rural, wooded, hilly region like this. I also do not know whether any Ivy League universities have campuses a long distance from their main campuses. But in the dream, although I did not know exactly where I was, it felt somehow as if I were a long way to the west of the East Coast Ivy League. 

At this point the dream became weird and dreamlike. The university had a walk-in virtual-reality catalog of courses. When you walked toward a course which interested you, the course display expanded to surround you.  Written text and pictures went from the floor to the ten-foot ceiling, and audio description of the course began.

The written texts and the descriptions were in English and Latin. You didn't have the option of switching between languages: there was just one version, part English and part Latin. Both the English and the Latin were very badly written, with many quotations both unattributed and badly chosen, many clumsy original phrases in both languages, and many grammatical mistakes. 

The images were odd also: for every course, from algebra to zoology, there was a big picture of a baroque paintings of fleshy humans struggling with fleshy animals. If there was ever a conscious relationship between a particular course and the painting associated with it, I couldn't see it. I was still puzzling this over when I woke up.

Celebrities and Rolex

Just because you have a wonderful talent for acting or singing, or playing the baritone sax, or cooking while talking to cameras about cooking, or even all of the above, there's no guarantee that you will know much at all about any other given thing. Luxury watches, for example. Ask the average person to list as many brands of luxury watches as they can, and they'll say: "Rolex... Uhhhh... Ummmm..."

And celebrities seem to be pretty average when it comes to watches. Over and over again, a headline about some celebrity's watch collection leads to a story about a collection of Rolexes (also known as "the genuine fake Timexes"), or a collection of mostly Rolexes. Over and over again, some person whose talents apart from the world of watches impresses me very much, has disappointed me in this way. I'm just about all out of hope. 

I don't have a lot of room to complain here. Faithful readers of this blog may recall that after suddenly developing a fascination with watches around 2010, and before reaching a certain level of sophistication in my knowledge of watches more recently, I myself, for a couple of years, was fascinated by, indeed, somewhat obsessed with, a certain Rolex model, the platinum Daytona on a platinum bracelet:

Which is a perfectly fine watch. All Rolexes are very high-quality, very dependable and accurate timepieces. Rolex is also an extremely conservative brand, to the point of being boring, with very slight changes in styling and function coming only once in a great while. Also, a Rolex typically will cost about twice as much as an Omega made from comparable materials, with comparable function and quality.

And some might argue that Omegas, too, are somewhat overpriced, because, although, as I mentioned above, Rolex is the only luxury watch brand of which many people have heard, if they've heard of two, there's a good chance that the second brand is Omega, so that their prices may be due more to marketing than to any inherent quality in their products.

Now let's compare this to the point of view of someone who actually knows a bit about luxury watches. Among real connoisseurs, there are three Swiss brands which for decades have been considered the pinnacle of watchmaking: Patek Philippe, Audemars Piguet and Vacheron Constantine. Apart from things like very small specialty brands who turn out one custom-made hand-made watch every several years at a price of several million dollars, these three brands have widely been considered to be the very best there is. Although recently, some would say that a fourth Swiss brand, Jaeger-LeCoultre, should be considered alongside or even above the Holy Trinity, and some would say that the German manufacturer A Lange & Soehne is right up there, and others would say Grand Seiko, which recently split off from the Japanese brand Seiko.

All of the brands mentioned so far are relatively conservative in styling. Two Swiss brands which are definitely outside the box with their designs, but which still don't seem to offend the snobs, are MB&F and Urwerk. Two brands which are way outside of the box, which definitely DO offend snobs, are Hublot and Richard Mille. In my opinion, with watches as with anything else, I think that if you give any weight to the opinions and nasty remarks of snobs, it's a real shame. 

But anyway, Rolex is just not in that upper echelon. Someone who really knows about all of those other brands may sneer at you for wearing a Rolex, or make some nasty remark about Rolex being God's way of marking fools who until recently had too much money. Or, if they're nice, they might say that if you're sure you can afford it, and you're sure that it's really really the watch you want, then a Rolex is a fine watch. (And they wouldn't be lying.) But they also might urge you to shop around a little in the other brands I've mentioned, and there are still others that could be mentioned, dozens of brands which are just as good as, if not better than Rolex.

So, why is Rolex so much more well-known? It's rather mysterious. It's as if Mercedes-Benz were the only luxury auto brand people had ever heard of -- unless maybe they'd also heard of BMW (in analogy to Omega).

Many watch brands, including Rolex, have what are known as "brand ambassadors," famous people who wear their watches in public in exchanges for free watches, or money, or both. Rolex has brand ambassadors -- perhaps it won't shock you to learn that Jack Nicklaus is one -- and they have ads in fancy magazines. But not enough of either one to explain their complete world domination. Not enough to explain why there are waiting lists years long for the choicest Rolex models.

I just had a sinister idea. The fact that most celebrities who collect watches, collect Rolexes and not much else, is tremendous advertising for Rolex. Maybe Rolex has many more brand ambassadors than they admit. Maybe they have shadowy agents everywhere in the world of fame. Whenever a performer or athlete seems about to break through into fame, perhaps the anonymous Rolex guy appears and says, "Hey, Rolex admires what you do. And we'd like you to have a Rolex on us -- Hell, take two, they're small! Heh heh heh. Yeah, there are some vintage watches in there with the new ones. You could mix it up. New is interesting. Old is interesting in a different way. We'd just ask one favor: don't tell anybody that Rolex gave these watches to you. Let people think that you bought them. And then maybe I'll come around to visit you on a regular basis."

Yes, that's a rather extreme speculation of mendacity. But Rolex has a rather extreme position in the watch market. It's extremely difficult to explain.