Global Electrical Production and Use

In this post I'm citing random figures given on the Internet. Reliability of these figures: completely unknown to me. If someone can tell me where to get reliable figures, that would be wonderful. If someone can tell me why RECENT figures are so hard to find, that would be awesome. Because these figures are changing rapidly.

Global energy consumption in 2016: 21.8 terawatt hrs. That's 21.8 trillion watt hours. 21,800,000,000,000 watt hours.

Global installed electrical capacity (the most which could be generated at one time, theoretically, if everything was working, but it's never all working at the same time) was 4.15 terawatts in 2017.

Of that, 1.01 terawatts was renewable.

Global installation of new solar capacity in 2019 was 105 gigawatts. That's 105 billion watts. 105,000,000,000 watts. The total capacity of solar at the end of 2019 was 509.3 gigawatts.

If I have my figures straight, that would mean that about half of the renewable generating capacity, and about 1/8 of all capacity, worldwide, is solar. I have no idea whether my figures are even halfway straight. I also don't know the ratio of capacity to actual electricity generated. I'm sure it varies greatly from one type of generation to another. As opponents of alternative energy love to point out to us, is if we hadn't figured it out on our own, the sun doesn't shine at night and the wind doesn't always blow everywhere.

However, some things are completely clear: Solar power is growing at a very fast pace. It's cheaper than coal, oil or gas, and it keeps getting cheaper, while generating electricity with fossil fuels gets more expensive. Utilities, at least ones which are privately owned and operated, would rather generate that cheap solar energy themselves and sell it to the public than have Mr and Mrs Joe Blow Homeowner own solar panels on their roofs and compete with the utilities for the profits from selling solar electricity, if Mr and Mrs have any left over. The regulations about who can generate and sell how much of what type of energy very wildly from place to place across the US. Quite a few oil companies are among the companies who are building huge solar generating plants. Two very key factors which will determine whether or not humanity kills itself off with pollution and climate change, are information and politics.

Today

A lot of my dreams lately have been very... over-compensatory. I haven't blogged about them, because they're completely PG-13, if you know what I mean, and I believe you do. For instance, after last night's dream, I will never be able to look at Elaine Benes the same way again. See, already I've said too much.

I took a buncha cards out of my wallet.

It's much more comfortable now. Because my wallet is no longer overstuffed now, stuff is not falling out of it every time I open it, and when I close it, it feels much flat and un-stuffed. This was an overdue piece of housecleaning. This will be a big quality-of-life improvement.

I spoke to _________. I'm not mentioning her name because it might be embarrassing, to her, to myself, and to still others. (It's not Elaine Benes. It's not Julia Louis-Dreyfus either.) She's such a nice lady. *sigh* A while ago I asked her out, she said she was in a relationship, and since then when I see her I haven't been very social because I don't want it to be awkward and weird, and now she's reaching out to me whenever our paths happen to cross, to show me that it's not weird and that we're friends. She's awesome. I have some nice friends.

I VOTED TODAY! It always feels so good to vote. Know what I mean? Do you know what I mean? I voted early in the Michigan primary. I voted for Bernie, for reasons similar to the reasons I voted for Hillary in 2016: not because I believe the candidate I voted for is perfect, but because I believe she (then) and he (now) is out best shot to win. Now (just as then), all we have to do is get our shit together and UNIFY BEHIND THE CANDIDATE. All we have to do is keep our eye on the ball. And the ball is beating Trump.

Excuse me -- that's not all we have to do now, of course, but as soon as we have a candidate. But Bernie's out in front, so let's get on board, let's get with a winner! It's basic politics!

Gas Stations and Charging Stations

According to statista.com, as of December 2018 there were 20,021 public electric vehicle charging stations in the US, with a total of 57,187 charging outlets. That was over a year ago. I don't know what the current figures are, but I know they're much higher, because the news I follow is always full of headlines about new charging stations opening.

So that got me thinking about how many gas stations there must be in the US. I figured there had to be a million of them, but all the figures I see say that there are barely 100,000, and that the number is dropping.

What I haven't found anywhere is any total number of gas pumps in the US. If Mom and Pop gas stations with 4 pumps each are being put out of business by convenience stores with 16 pumps each, then the actual number of gas pumps could be rising while the number of gas stations drops. If the average is something like 8 pumps per gas station, that would make a total of roughly 1 million gas pumps in the US, and with over 250 million gas-burning vehicles, that makes over 250 vehicles per pump.

Let's compare this to the ratio of electric vehicles per public charging outlets. The US had 57,187 public charging outlets at the end of 2018. 250 electric vehicles per each one of those outlets would've made a total of 14,296,750. Were there 14 million EV's on the US roads in December 2018? Would've been nice, but no, the number was more like 1.2 million. Which means that there were less than 21 electric vehicles per charging station.

The whole point of this post has to do with something which afficianados of electric vehicles refer to as "range anxiety" -- the worry that you can't drive around very far or very freely in an electric vehicle because of the danger that you'll run out of electricity and be stranded and nothing can be done and oh my God it'll be so horrible. As people who know about EV's are constantly attemptinbg to point out to anyone who'll listen, range anxiety, like many other kinds of anxiety, is completely irrational. Yes, it's possible to run out of electricity in an electric vehicle, but it's also possible to run out of gas in an internal-combustion, and you'd have to be pretty careless to do either one.

And, actually, electric vehicles have a huge advantage over gasoline-burning vehicles in this regard. Most of us can't get gasoline anywhere in the US except at one of those 100,000 or so public gas stations. But there are a lot of ways to get electricity into an EV, including hooking them up to outlets which look like this:

There are a lot more than 57,000 of those outlets in the US, there are a lot more than a million of them, and every single electric vehicle can plug into every one of them. A lot of electric vehicles never or rarely have to visit public charging stations, because their owners just plug them in overnight every night, significantly lowering the average number of EV's which actually rely on that swiftly-increasing number of public charging stations. Becoming actually completely stranded in an EV in the US, with no access to electricity, would, I sincerely believe, be a lot harder than being stranded because your gas-burning car ran out of gas. To be completely stranded in an electric vehicle, you'd have to really work hard at it, and be exceptionally careless, and be way out in the boonies at the same time.

So, enough with range anxiety! Enough with worrying that you can't drive where you need to go in an electric vehicle! You can! If anything, there's quite an overkill in the charging infrastructure! That's the actual facts! Learn the facts, get an EV, or even better, take the electric train! That'd be even better for the environment. What electric train? Well, yeah, for that, you have to be in certain parts of the US, or in Europe or Japan or vast areas of the rest of the Earth. That's a good subject for another blog post. But for now, even in Murrka, there's just no rational reason to be afraid to drive an EV. Only irrational reasons.

Aulus Gellius

Aulus Gellius, born around AD 125, died after 180, was probably born in Rome, and spent most of his life there. He is one of those ancient Latin authors known as grammarians who each quoted many other authors, and whose works today are of less interest for what they have to say about grammar than for being a source of the texts of those other writers. Gellius is our only source of quotations of some other writers. In many more cases he is valuable for establishing the texts of known authors.

Gellius' family was wealthy, and he was sent to Athens for a part of his education. His family intended him to be a lawyer, and, unlike many people with literary interests whose families have intended them to become lawyers, Gellius actually became one. His only surviving work, the Noctes Atticae (Athenean Nights), is so called because it was begun during the long winter nights in Athens. Gellius continued to compile the work back in Rome, in the spare time he had left over from his job adjudicating civil cases. If its 20 books have some sort of overall plan or organization, it has eluded scholars so far. But Gellius quotes more than 275 authors, most Latin, some Greek, ensuring that Classical scholars will continue to study him with profit and pleasure.

The Noctes Attica was very popular among other ancient authors. Those who cite it include Lactantius, Nonius Marcellus, Ammianus Marcellinus, author of the Historia Augusta, Servius, Augustine, and above all, Macrobius, who, in his Saturnalia, written after AD 400, quotes from Gellius so extensively -- without, however, ever naming him as a source -- that no one who edits the text of Gellius can afford to ignore Macrobius as a source.

In contrast, we have very little evidence of Gellius having been known at all in the early Middle Ages; with one exception, our earliest surviving manuscripts of Gellius are from the 10th century. That one exception is the remarkable manuscript known as Vatican Pal Lat 24. It contains several books of the Old Testament written in the 8th century; however, early in the 19th century, palimpsests, indentations left by older writing on the parchment which had been scraped off, were discovered beneath the 8th-century Old Testament text. It turns out that parchment from several older books had been re-used in order to make the 8th-century volume; one of those older books was a 4th-century manuscript containing parts of books 1-4 of Gellius, now with large gaps. The conspectus siglorum of Hosius' 1903 Teubner edition, besides Pal lat 24 (mistakenly described as saec VII?) and the the 2 10th-century manuscripts, lists 5 from the 12th century, 3 from the 13th, and one each from the 14th and 15th centuries. A recent critical edition is by PK Marshall in Oxford Classical Texts, 1968, 2nd edition 1990.

Solar Energy Storage

As critics of solar power have pointed out, the sun only shines during the day, so whaddya gonna do fr power in the night-time, huh, smart guy? The answer is batteries.

And Tesla is not the only company in the world that makes devices for the purpose of storing solar energy, although some people talk as if they believe that Tesla's Powerpack is the only energy storage option for home solar. You know what, a lot of them probably do believe that. But the fact is, some large companies including LG, Mercedes, Nissan, BMW, Sonnen, SimpliPhi, Sunverge, Powervault and ElectrIQ are competing with Tesla for a slice of the home solar storage market, as well as a lot of smaller companies. Tesla also makes those Giga Batteries, which utility companies use to store the electricity from their solar and wind and other generating sources, but there, too, Tesla is far from the only option.

So shop around, please.

Or, if you're a do-it-yourself sort of person, save some more money and do it yourself. Jehu Garcia, a fascinating individual, has a popular You Tube channel, where many of the videos have to do with showing do-it-yourselfer's how to make and improve their own home solar energy storage units. Some of Garcia's other videos have to do with the 2 vintage Volkswagen Buses he has converted from gasoline to electric; some others show him working with the company EV West -- here is their popular YouTube channel -- which converts all sorts of internal-combustion engines to electric. I'm not sure whether Garcia's day job is at EV West, or if he just collaborates with them from time to time, or what. In any case, Garcia made a solar energy storage unit for EV West's main building, which is a very large building.

In that EV West storage unit, and in the storage unit which Garcia makes for one-family homes, and in the portable, suitcase-sized storage units he makes, and in those VW Buses he converted to electric, and in most of the conversions EV West does -- and, for that matter, in most Teslas and most other electric vehicles -- the batteries used are the same ones used in personal computers and laptops. The very same batteries.

A house just uses more of them than a computer does. You can think of an electric vehicle as a mobile energy storage unit, or of an laptop computer as an energy storage unit that also computes.

A do-it-yourself home solar energy storage unit can use brand-new batteries, or it can use 2nd-hand batteries which have lost a bit of their capacity and are no longer appropriate for use in computers or cars. So there's an answer to the guys asking, so, whaddya gonna do with all them batteries in them electric cars when they run down? Huh? Smart guy?

The answer is, there are all sorts of things you can do with a lot of those run-down batteries, dumb guy. Actually, that's the second answer. The first answer is that the batteries last a lot longer in the cars than people thought they would.

I'm not able to keep up with all of the tech when someone explains how to put solar panels on a roof or make a solar energy storage unit -- I didn't pay attention in shop or science classes in school, and I'm old and tired, so how about you cut me some slack, eh? -- but there are a lot of people on YouTube showing the DIY (Do It Yourself) types how to do all sorts of things with solar and storage and electric vehicles, and a lot of how-to books being sold covering the same ground. There are a lot of people learning how to do these things, the same way that people have learned how to fix their own internal-combustion cars and trucks, and fix and improve their own homes. They are the very same people, in many cases, and of course in other cases, new people are coming into the DIY sector because the environmental benefits of some of these technologies are adding a new fascination to it all.

The Siglia in an Edition of an Ancient Latin or Greek Text

In the volumes of ancient Greek and Latin texts published in the series Oxford Classical Texts, also known as scriptorum classicorum bibliotheca oxoniensis, and in what is known as the Teubner series, or bibliotheca scriptorum graecorum et romanorum teubneriana, and in many other similar series of publications from other publishers as well, customarily, after the preface by the editor and just before the ancient text itself, there is a section, perhaps half a page, perhaps several pages long, entitled "SIGLA," which is Latin for "KEY" [PS, 15 February 2020: OOPS! "SIGLA" actually means "ABBREVIATIONS," which makes even more sense] ,

or something similar to "SIGLA."

In this key are listed the manuscripts (and sometimes other sources such as earlier editions) which were discussed in the preface, upon which the editor has based the present text, and which are referred to in the writing at the bottom of each page of the text which is known as the critical apparatus, and which shows which sources the text has been based on, as well as differing readings -- called variants -- which are to be found in other manuscripts, editions etc.

Let's take for example the key to volume 1 of W M Lindsay's edition of Isidore's Etmology in the Oxford Classical Texts, first published in 1911, reprinted some time later, ISBN 0-19-814619-1. The key, entitled "SIGLA CODICUM" in this edition, lists the manuscripts Lindsay used. The first item on the list is:

"A = Ambrosianus L 99 sup., saec. viii"

What this means is that the manuscript referred to as A in the critical apparatus has the library card number of of L 99 sup. in the Ambrosian Library of Milan, and that it was made in the 8th century. Any reader who has paid any attention at all to these keys is used to seeing dates for the manuscripts listed in the keys, from saec. V, 5th century, to saec. XV, 15th century, and, in a very few cases, dates earlier than the 5th century or later than than 15th. Or the date may be given more exactly, if it is known more exactly: early 10th century. Late 12th century. 1320's. Sometimes the exact year is known. On the other hand, the editor might end an entry in the key with something like saec. IX vel X, which means 9th or 10th century, or saec. XI?, which means possibly 11th century, but the editor isn't sure.

Then there are rare volumes, the actual subject of this post, such as Robert Maxwell Ogilvie's 1974 edition of volume I, books I-V, of Livy, published 1974 in Oxford Classical Texts, or Otto Seel's 1985 Teubner edition of Justinus. In these volumes, the keys do not mention dates for the manuscripts at all. For example, the second item in Ogilvie's "CONSPECTUS SIGLORUM" on p xxiv is

"V = Codex Veronensis rescriptus"

which means "V refers to the palimpsest of Verona."

And the first item in Seel's "SIGLA" is

"A = Cod. Parisinus, olim Puteanus"

Which means "A refers to the Paris manuscript, formerly known as the DuPuy manuscript."

No information about the dates of the manuscripts.

Now, the dates of the manuscripts are given in the prefaces of these volumes, just as they are in every other volume from Oxford Classical Texts and Teubner. So, by referring to Ogilvie's preface, I can see that V was written in the 5th century, overwritten witten with Saint Gregory's Moralibus in the 8th century, and discovered by Blum, who published his finding in the Rheinischer Merkur in 1828. Likewise, Seel informs the reader of his preface that A is a 9th-century manuscript.

It's just that putting that information in the key, in the sigla, like everybody else does, is much more convenient for anyone looking for that specific information. Which is why, I presume, that specific information has been put in the key by almost everyone for centuries now.

Dream Log: Clueless Corporate Chairman

I dreamed I was in NYC, and I agreed to take over a non-vinyl music store, even though I have never shown any aptitude for business. The store was bare white walls illuminated by bare light bulbs on the street-level floor of a big 1920's skyscraper, the previous tenants had moved everything out.

I already had a couple of employees in this space, and they came with me to another one whose interior resembled a 4-car parking garage in a suburban apartment building, except that there were no vehicles and no fuel smells.

More employees kept joining the company, and if any of them doubted my competence, they hid it well. I ran motivational drills to foster esprit de corps. In the meantime some of the employees did what they would do in a music store, actually buying and selling the CD's and keeping records and so forth, without my having to ask them to do it, which was good, because I didn't even know any of the words involved. If an employee came to me for help or advice I would usually either slap them on the back and tell them they were doing great, or tell them to ask another one of the employees. I began to get the feeling that this method was actually working well and that the company might turn out to be a success.

Adjacent to the part of the business space which resembled 4 parking spaces, there was an alcove with windows that let in a lot of sunlight. Some employees, on their own initiative but with my praise, were turning the alcove into a place that looked like a colonial American alcove. There came a problem when they were starting a process which turned some beer into something that smelled like the animal poop in a colonial American barn. Some of the employees were upset about the poop smells. I solved this problem by simply telling them to use other smells, like the smells of budding flowers. Then I poured a pint of the beer, made sure that it did not smell like poop, and took a sip.

It occurred to me that I was not certain that any of the employees was as old as half my age. (In addition to my other shortcomings as boss, I had not looked at any of their applications, where I could have learned their ages.) It seemed wrong to me to continue to abuse their naive, misplaced trust in me. I decided that the best thing to do would be to pick one of them to replace me. I was beginning to think about who should replace me when I woke up.

Edward Gibbon and Anselm's Ontological Argument

People continue to accuse Gibbon of being unfair to Christians, a charge which from one point of view is about as true or false as it's ever been. After 15 years of New Atheism, one might be inclined to chime in and say that Gibbon is just annoying already -- if you forget that Gibbon was writing in the eighteenth century, and fighting for freedoms of expression which people by 2004 had started taking for granted.

Freedoms somewhat less in evidence in Anselm's day. I find it very difficult to believe that his ontological argument (Google anselm ontological argument, cause I just can't get into the details right now without endangering the serenity for which I am so famous) would not have been about as savagely criticized as it is today, had Anselm's contemporaries been as free to speak and write about it as we are. About as difficult as it it is for me to believe that he had a horror of every worldly advancement, this Archbishop of Canterbury.

I had already encountered Aquinas' fivefold proof of God's existence, and rolled my eyes aplenty at it. Still, I felt quite positively disposed toward Aquinas as I heard about his attack on Anselm's proof, even cheered him on a little bit. Did Aquinas develop his fivefold proof because Anselm's ontological argument seemed embarrassingly flimsy to him? Was there no more to it than that?

I find it quite hard to conceive of anyone who doesn't already believe in God having their mind changed by Aquinas, and much more difficult still to imagine them having their mind changed by Anselm. I find it quite easy to imagine people rolling their eyes back when Anselm and Aquinas were alive, and holding their tongues because it wasn't worth being tortured and then burned alive.

A few days ago, I was made aware of the title of Richard Dawkins' latest book, by walking past it in a bookstore: Outgrowing God: A Beginner's Guide. And I felt quite embarrassed, as an atheist. As with Aquinas and even more so with Anselm, but in reverse, I thought about Dawkins' lack of appeal with non-atheists. Even a lot of us who are atheists find Dawkins thoroughly obnoxious. Is a believer going to see a book with a title like Outgrowing God and feel any way except personally insulted and less well-disposed toward atheists than they were a moment before?

It's hard for me to imagine.

And Dawkins doesn't have the excuse which embarrassed defenders of Anselm or Aquinas -- if any of them ever do feel embarrassed. I can't think of any such at the moment, but than again I haven't subjected myself to many of their fans -- always have at hand: that Anselm and Aquinas rarely came into contact with someone who is allowed to say that they think differently.

Anselm with his argument and Aquinas with his proofs, were they answering Lucretius? Or their own subconscious minds? That's one thing which still puzzles me: to whom were they talking? Were they actually trying to change anyone's mind, beyond some purely imaginary mind of some non-believer who was not ever at hand? Is this the Glass Bead Game I've wondered about my whole life, the one they played (and still play) just because they loved the game so much, with no further point to it at all?

Propertius

Sextus Propertius (ca 55 BC -- after 16 BC), foremost of ancient Latin elegiasts, was born into a wealthy family in Assisi in Umbria. His father died while he was still a small child, but his mother oversaw his education, which was good even by the standards of wealthy Romans. Part of the family's property was seized in 40 BC and used to pay the soldiers of Octavian, the future emperor Augustus. This reduced their income considerably, although it appears that Propertius never was bothered by having to make a living.

In 34 BC the family moved to the city of Rome, and Propertius took on the dress and habits of adulthood. He showed no interest in the law law, politics or army life. He befriended poets such as Ovid as Bassus.

In 29 BC Propertius published his first book of elegies, known as Cynthia after the woman who was their main subject. It was immediately popular, and remained the most sought-after of his works, and are still the most popular today, despite the fact that his later three books of elegies, less single-minded in the love-struck pursuit of romance, are often regarded as his best work. Propertius published a total of four books of elegies during his lifetime. They were sold together, or the first book, Cynthia, could be bought by itself; therefore, it was sometimes referred to as Monobiblos. Propertius himself seems to have been a little embarrassed to be so often associated only with Monobiblios, and he protested that he could do more than just sigh and moan over a woman. His later works often treat mythological subjects including but not limited to the founding of Rome, which the ancient Romans did not refer to as mythological whether they knew better or not.

The popularity of Propertius' first effort brought him to the attention of the wealthy literary patron Maecenas, which in turn led to his friendship with Vergil and Horace, and to the favour of the Imperial family, and this led to some poems which extravagantly praise Augustus.

The earliest surviving written copies of Propertius' poems are graffiti on the walls of Pompeii, which seem to confirm the impression that he was very popular indeed in his own time. Then in the 2nd century, Apuleius mentions him, and opines that Cynthia's real name was Hostia. But overall, not many mentions of Propertius have been found between his own time and the mid 12th century, when he is his praised and quoted by John of Salisbury. The oldest surviving complete manuscript of his poems, referred to as N because it had spent some time in Naples, was made shortly before AD 1200. The second is known as A and was made around AD 1250. A number of 14th- and 15th-century manuscripts survive, most or all of which seem to derive ultimately from either N or A. After a thousand years in which there apparently was very little interest in his work, Propertius has been one of the most highly-regarded Latin poets from the Renaissance down to our own day. Just another reminder that literary tastes sometimes change considerably.