"I went back to ICE because there's no viable alternative to Tesla."

Audi E-Tron, BMWi3, Chevy Bolt, Ford Mach-e, Hyundai Ionoiq Electric, Hyundai Kona Electric, Jaguar I-Pace, Kandi K27, Kia Niro Electric, Lucid Air, MiniCooper SE, Nissan Leaf, Polestar 2, Porsche Taycan, Rivian R1T, Rivian R1S, Volvo XC40 and VW ID4. These are all on the market to buy new in Murrka. There are also some discontinued models available used. And I've probably missed a few of the current options. I don't know whether the Hyundai Ioniq 5 and the Kia EV 6 are on sale in Murrka, for example.

 There are over 100 models of new EV currently for sale in Europe. So why are most of them not on sale here in Murrka? That's a damn good question, if you ask me! And if you ask why so many more EV's are sold in Europe and in China than in Murrka, that's one of the obvious answers. And if people say that Murrkins don't buy small cars, I reply that we're not ABLE to buy cars which aren't offered for SALE here. (And I resist the urge to hit. I haven't punched anyone since 1978 and I'm proud of that.) Last time I checked, over half the top 10 bestselling EV's in Europe are not available in the US.

 

The only reason I'm talking more about EV's in Europe than in China is I know less about EV's in China. And about EV's in the rest of the world.

 

(And all of this is not counting large trucks, delivery vans, buses and so forth. There are a lot of those.)

 

Anyway, all of this is in response to a post I saw recently in social media from a person who had troubles with a Tesla (yes, shocking, I know, but he was less than fully satisfied), and went back to ICE, because "there is no viable alternative to Tesla."

 

Just a Thought

Philosophy as we know it began in Greece about 2,500 years ago. No one else anywhere on Earth had done anything like that before.

That really blew my mind at first. Because philosophy consists of things which are really familiar to us: thinking about the nature of reality, of perception, etc etc.

But then I had this thought: perhaps people had always thought about such things, and had always talked about such things, but before Greece, ca 500 BC, it had simply never occurred to anyone to write it down.

So for example, in Babylon in 2500 BC, two temple scribes could be taking a break and talking, speculating about how far away the moon was, and whether matter was composed of one substance or four substances or many substances; and then it was like, "Okay, break's over. I wish we could keep talking about these interesting things, but we have to get back to work, and think of three dozen more things to compare the king to."

Socrates, not the first philosopher but within 100 years of the first philosopher, and the most influential of all of them so far, never wrote any philosophy. He talked to people. That was his full-time job. And then after he was executed, his pupil Plato wrote down those conversations. That's what all of Plato's works are: conversations starring Socrates.

So maybe the explanation of why there isn't any earlier philosophy is staring us right in the face in the form of the best-known philosophy of all time, of some of the oldest: there was earlier philosophy, but it was all just conversations, so it never got recorded, never got organized, just blew away like dead leaves in the wind.

 

My Brother's New G-Shock

Ever since I became interested in G-Shocks last spring, I've talked and talked a lot to my brother about them, and he has listened very patiently. Even though he himself didn't wear a watch and had no plans to get one. He'd listen to me talking about G-Shocks and related topics. But he said, repeatedly, that he was not interested in watches, that watches were jewelry, and that jewelry is for girls. 

My brother is fifty-eight years old.

So naturally, for Christmas this year I got him a G-Shock. A DW5600E-1V. Amazon delivered it to him a couple of days ago.

I was going to get him a Casio F91W, a non-G-Shock, one of the cheapest Casio watches available as far as I know. But then I saw that Amazon was offering this DW5600 at about half retail price, so I pounced.

In appearance, the DW-5600 is very similar to the first G-Shock offered in 1983. These sorts of G-Shocks, although their display is rectangular and 8-sided, are referred to by us G-Shock guys as "squares." Squares can come with all of the fancy options: solar charging, atomic-clock synching, GPS, Bluetooth, altimeter, barometer, compass, ambient-air thermometer, etc, etc. They also can be had with cases and straps made of coated steel or titanium. 

Long story short, there are lots and lots of squares to choose from. There are lots and lots of people who are fanatical about squares. Lots of them own lots of squares each. Many of them no doubt would object to my list of options as being misleadingly short, and would be perfectly happy to talk to you all day and night about squares and why they are the most awesome thing ever. By the way, I'm not exaggerating at all.

The DW5600E-1V, the one I got for my brother, has none of the options. The case and strap are plastic. There's no Bluetooth, no GPS, no solar, no radio-controlled synching, not a lot of fancy stuff. Just yr basic tough-as-nails G-Shock as worn by many special forces personnel of many nations.

And amazingly, either my brother absolutely loves it, or he's trying very hard to convince me that he does. It doesn't seem like he's being sarcastic with his positive comments. 

It might be neither; maybe he doesn't like the watch, and also isn't being sarcastic, but is sincerely trying to hide his aggravation. Trying very hard not to shout in anger: "I told you I don't like watches! I told you I didn't have the slightest interest in having one! I said it clearly and repeatedly! What's wrong with you? What's WRONG with you?!"

You know how brothers can aggravate each other sometimes.

My brother is a bit of an enigma sometimes. But I believe he sincerely likes this Christmas present. He's full of questions and comments about it. I don't believe he's faking the interest.

I also don't believe he's going to quickly morph into a flat-out G-Shock fanatic the way I did. Although who knows.

More Musk Math

If Musk's Tesla stock was evenly divided between every Tesla employee, each one would get over $4 million worth of stock. And a lot of of them are making less than $40k/year.

It would be beautiful to see Musk forced out of Tesla, the way he forced out the founders. I realize that it wouldn't result in every poor schmuck Tesla employee getting $4 million, but I think that the boost to the company might just be huge. The boost in wages and other benefits, the boost in working conditions, the boost in the company's public image -- all of those things could be huge.

 

I know I'm dreaming. But I also know something else that not everybody knows: EVERYbody who tries to predict the future more than a week ahead is dreaming. We just don't know how things will work out. With Tesla or with anything else. There are simply too many factors. In this case: will the general public begin to see Musk as a bad man, bad for Tesla, bad for the environment, bad for himself, bad for just about everything except his net worth? I see him that way. A growing number of people see him that way. 

A number big enough to matter? Not yet. And if and when the number is big enough than Musk could be forced out of Tesla, out of the EV industry, so that all of those high ideals he claims to represent, but doesn't, could in fact be represented by millions of ex-Musk fans, spearheaded by a Tesla which actually did operate in a green and humanistic way -- if and when that will happen, is unknowable. There are too many factors. 

Such as the success or failure of other makers of EV's, and the quality of those companies. Such as how many people will no longer drive at all, such as public transportation and bicycles and plain old walking. 

Is Rivian a better company than Tesla? Is it run by people who are not monsters, who actually care about things other than their own net worths? I have no idea. They've made almost 700 RT1's. Still not very many at all, but they're much faster now than they were in September. 

Do Rivian's low production numbers mean they won't exist as a company a year from now? Or do they mean that Rivian wants to be known as the all-EV company which DOESN'T have panel gaps and other quality-control issues for the first 10 years?  

Things few people know yet. Things nobody knows.

Rangeman Guards the City

Rangeman began to roam the entire city of Manhattan, pausing now and then to warn people to cut that out and be nice.

That was Rangeman's primary message: Be nice, you there! Stop that! Give that back! And so forth.

After a couple of days he noticed that his GW9400

was water-resistant to 200 meters, and so he decided that he better learn how to swim. 

And because he thought it was unlikely that he would have to rescue someone in a YMCA swimming pool, he didn't train at the Y. Instead, he would suddenly start running toward the nearest water, whether that happened to be the Hudson river, the East River, the confluence of those two rivers downtown, the Harlem River, or what have you.

And since he reflected further that he was not likely to get advance warning of emergencies, he also did not plan swimming sessions, but interrupted whatever he was doing, whether it was eating, talking to friends, reading or whatever, to run to the water.

He was not a very good swimmer at all. It's not always a long distance across the Hudson or the East river to New Jersey or Long Island, but at first it almost killed Rangeman.

That was not said metaphorically, the way that people say that some strenuous but routine task "almost killed me." No. He very nearly drowned several times. Once, a passing tugboat struck him several times, until he was unconscious. He eventually washed up on shore in Brooklyn, and he might well have died on that shore, had not a playful cat happened by and jumped up and down on his chest until he coughed up a large amount of water and regained consciousness. 

He brought the cat back home, took very good care of it, and named it Lifeguard. He was not completely without a sense of humour.

Progress in swimming was slow and painful, but he was improving. He knew that he had a bad instinct of holding his head up too high. He was starting to overcome that.

One thing which made the swimming difficult was the frequency with which boats struck him. Were they doing that on purpose? It was difficult for Rangeman to believe that they were.

OMG, Samsung has invented WATERPROOF CELLPHONES!!!?!?!!!

Am I seriously impressed by this? NO! I'm seriously annoyed!

Cellphones have been on the market for almost 40 years now. IT has had almost 40 years to complete really basic necessary tasks like making cellphones waterproof and shatterproof. 

These new Samsung ads don't make me overjoyed that I can purchase a brand-new waterproof cellphone in 2021. They only remind me how lame the entire IT sector is for not having 100% scuba-diving-ready, 100% shatterproof cellphones for sale since 1990.

This is just one more example of how these nerds design stuff FOR THEMSELVES, stuff that 99% of us neither want nor need, and ignore really basic stuff. (Still waiting on a computer I can turn on and off like a TV, billionaire geniuses!)

And Apple, don't stand there beside me nodding and saying, "Yeah! That's what we're talking about!" You're worse!

Open Letter to Melvyn Bragg, re: the Latin Classics in the Middle Ages

Dear Mr Bragg, I'm a big fan of "In Our Time." Lately I've been listening to many episodes, often having to do with subjects in the Middle Ages. I'm writing because I have repeatedly gotten the impression that you, and consequently many of your listeners, are laboring under the impression that the "pagan," pre-Christian Latin Classics were shunned by Christian scholars in the Middle Ages, except in anomalous periods such as the Carolingian Renaissance or the 12th-century Renaissance. I keep waiting for one of your expert guests to clarify this point. And maybe one of them has in the meantime, which would make this open letter superfluous as far as you personally are concerned. But even in that case, perhaps someone else will learn something. And in any case, it's always good when something spurs me to write. 

The fact is that the Latin Classics were always read and discussed during the Middle Ages. The 9th and 12th centuries are referred to as Renaissances in reference to the Latin Classics, because a greater emphasis was put upon studying them than in other periods. Or to be more precise: education in general advanced greatly in 9th-century and again in 12th-century Catholic Europe, and, although this education was clearly Christian in its overall emphasis, Classical Latin was an essential part of the whole, and grew naturally as the whole of education grew.

 

Now, when it comes to the Greek Classics, it is true that knowledge of them was almost completely lost in Western Europe during the Middle Ages. A great part of the population of the ancient city of Rome, and of the ancient Western, Latin-speaking provinces, could read and write Greek. But in the Middle Ages, this familiarity with the Greek language dwindled to just a very few individuals in the West. Plato continued to be studied, but in Latin translation, and little else. Even Latin translations of Homer, apart from a few rather wretched abridgments, had to wait for the 15th century. When it comes to knowledge of the Greek language and the study of a broad array of the Greek Classics, "Renaissance" describes 15th-century Western Europe well.

When it comes to the Latin classics in the West, however, I am reminded of a wonderful remark made by Professor Eugen Weber in his television series from the 1980's, The Western Tradition. Debunking the notion that people were afraid that Columbus would sail off of the edge of the Earth, Weber said, "Some people in Columbus' time believed that the Earth was flat. Some people still do."

Similarly, some Medieval Christians were opposed to any study of the non-Christian Latin Classics, and some Christians still are. Some Medieval Christians were convinced that the Latin classics were evil, and some Christians still are. But at no point in time were such viewpoints prevalent enough to actually prevent the study of those Classics. 

One demonstration of this is the number of manuscripts of the classics which survive today from each of the Medieval centuries. The number swells in the 9th century, and again in the 12th, and especially in the 15th, until printing took over. Even in the 7th century, in the middle of the Dark Ages between the fall of the Western Empire and Charlemagne's new Empire, a few Classical manuscripts were made which still survive today. It's easy to find pronouncements by zealous and/or prudish Medieval Christians condemning this or that ancient Latin author, or condemning everything written in ancient Latin. Nevertheless, Cicero never ceased to be the model of Latin prose followed in the schools, or Vergil the model of Latin verse. Schoolboys have read Caesar from Caesar's time to the present, the only change being the growing number of schoolgirls who have joined them. Horace, Terence, Plautus, Ovid -- yes, Ovid -- and many others were read the whole time. A wide knowledge of the Latin Classics belonged to the well-rounded education a Pope or bishop was expected to possess. Pope Gregory the Great, in office for a long period in the late 6th and early 7th century, was no enthusiastic friend of the Classics, and may have been directly or indirectly responsible for their above-mentioned decline, but if so, he knew what it was which he opposed. And his distaste for the Classics was very unusual among Popes.

There are some Classical manuscripts which were abridged by pious and/or prudish Medieval Christians, but these are very few, very much the exception. Marginal disapproving notes in the margins of the manuscripts are only slightly more common. As with the widely-held notion that people -- a lot of people -- thought Columbus was going to sail off the edge of a flat Earth, the notion that vast areas of Medieval Europe went for long periods of time completely unlettered in the Latin Classics is simply mistaken.

Dream Log: Left-Wing Think Tank

Recently I had another one of those dreams about an abnormally-huge building. 

I dreamed I was walking by the side of a road in the Detroit area. There were no distinguishing Detroit landmarks, but I knew where I was. Snow was piled up high everywhere except for the road, and I often had to wade through it in order to stay out of the way of traffic. There were no sidewalks. I had no vehicle, no money and no place to go.

The first building I looked at more more closely was very large, but not abnormally so. I went in through a loading bay and saw that it was a warehouse holding second-hand clothes. The used clothes made a surprising contrast with the new, generic-industrial-park exterior of the building. 

Walking further along the road, I passed two buildings which had been abandoned and were beginning to crumble. The first had once been a large bank in the middle of its parking lot, with several lanes for drive-through traffic.

The next building harder to identify. It was several stories high, it high white aluminum siding which was discolored in patches. 

And then I came to the abnormally-large building. There were cars in its parking lot, new ones. I walked through an entrance with two sets of automatically-sliding glass doors. The place looked like a hospital, except that I couldn't see any signs pointing to this department and that. A lot of people were bustling about, but the rooms were so huge that the place was not at all crowded. 

I walked through one high-ceiling after another, continuing to see many people and no signs. I also didn't notice any ID cars/security keys.

Most of the rooms were very monochrome: all the walls of each room were the same color, with large, expensive-looking sculptures always exactly matching the color of the walls. I was reminded of those men's suits with jacket, shirt, tie and trousers all exactly the same color. My initial impression was that I found the decor unimpressive. My second thought was that the amount of work which had gone into this whole huge interior, the amount of thought and planning, was impressive. The ambition was impressive whatever one thought of the finished product.

Eventually my presence was noticed. Instead of being briskly shown back outside into the deep snow, as I expected, everyone was very friendly and very nice. People asked about my circumstances, and I honestly replied that I was homeless and broke. People asked whether I was hungry and tired, I said yes to both questions. After being handed a faux-leather pouch stuff very full of 20-, 50- and 100-dollar bills, and then given a nice faux-leather backpack to carry the pouch, just because it was too big to fit into any of my pockets, I was given a very nice meal, and then shown a very nice room, and told it was mine. It contained a big bed, a big desk, its own big bathroom with a really huge shower, and just lots and lots of room and nice furnishing.

The next day, I was told that the director wanted to speak with me. I told myself that this might be where I found the big catch to all of this nice stuff. Like maybe that this was a cult, and I'd never leave the place alive.

The director's appearance did not immediately allay the cult suspicions: Like the ground-floor rooms, his attire was monochrome, but more like that of the villain in a 1950's sci-fi movie than a more recent fashionable man's suit. The director was tall and wiry, with blonde hair and blue eyes.

"What have you been thinking about?" he asked me.

"Andre Gorz," I replied, "and the necessity of changing from economic to ecological thinking."

"You agree with Gorz about that?"

"Absolutely," I said.

"I agree too," the director said. "But there are a lot of difficult details to be worked out."

I finally just asked straight-out what had been puzzling me the whole time: "What is this place?"

"A left-wing think tank."

Crusading Historians

There were gallant, pure-hearted Crusading knights -- where? In people's imaginations. 

 Edward Gibbon's Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, first published in six volumes between 1776 and 1788, severely disturbs this view of things, all the more so because it is so well-written and thoroughly researched that few of Gibbon's critics have even tried to say that it is not. Instead, the typical attack on Gibbon begins with some variation of "Gibbon's monumental work is masterfully written and exhaustively researched. But ..." and then goes on to claim that, despite the mastery and thoroughness, Gibbon got it all wrong.

For a while, Gibbon's negative view of the Crusades was contained to a relatively small academic readership by the means of abridged editions which ended around the time of the fall of the Western Empire in AD 476, so that many readers were eventually surprised to learn that Gibbon carried the story down past the fall of the Eastern (sometimes called the Byzantine) empire in AD 1453 and very close to his own time. Including a very large portion devoted to the Crusades, which portrayed the Crusaders in a much less flattering light that had been usual in the West. 

Flash-forward to the mid-20th century, when some readers of Steven Runciman's 3 volume History of the Crusades, published 1951-54, were startled to read Runciman's assertion, right there on the first page of the preface of the first volume, that Gibbon's chapters on the Crusades still "well deserve study." It seemed that this Runciman person, whom many were lauding as the greatest 20th century historian from England, referred to Gibbon as England's greatest historian, ever, as if there were not much debate about it. 

And then the attacks on Runciman began to pour in, so similar to the attacks on Gibbon that it's really difficult not to notice: Runciman's opponents acknowledge that he writes well and researches thoroughly, but...

And just as in Gibbon's case, the attacks come from those who feel that Runciman has been unfair to the Crusaders. 

It could be that the most highly regarded historian of the Crusaders since Runciman Is Jonathan Riley-Smith. I say it could be, because those who admire Runciman, and Gibbon, might well see much to criticize in Riley-Smith, and vice-versa. Some colleagues would call Riley-Smith the best historian of the Crusades since Runciman. I think some would call him something else, although they might manage to be more polite about it than I.

Just in case in it's not already clear: I'm on Gibbon's and Runciman's side. Furthermore: I don't think Riley-Smith is even a particularly good historian, let alone among the greatest scholars of his time.

Let's take his own stated aim, to examine the motivations of those Westerners who participated in the first Crusade. First of all, it implies that others, most certainly including Gibbon and Runciman, have failed to examine those motives. Further, it gives Riley-Smith great room to be imaginative. He's trying to restore the image of the gallant Crusaders on white horses.

For example, he rejects the very notion that any Crusaders went to war against the eastern infidels out of motives of personal gain, because, in fact, and nevermind those few who gained actual kingdoms or counties in the East, most of them ended up losing money on the enterprise.

Using this sort of thinking, we could say that most of the people who go to Las Vegas to gamble are not hoping for personal gain. It's a fact that almost all of the gamblers in Vegas lose money.

I recently heard an episode of "In Our Time," the BBC radio series hosted by Melvyn Bragg, devoted to the Third Crusade. It first aired in 2001, I heard it in 2021. Riley-Smith was one of the three invited experts. Toward the end of the episode, the massacre perpetrated by the Crusaders at the climax of the First Crusade, when they captured Jerusalem after a long siege, and killed non-combatants of the city by the thousands, men, women and children, Muslims, Jews and Eastern Christians indiscriminately -- this massacre was mentioned, an event similarly described by eyewitnesses of all religious affiliations. Riley-Smith became audibly angry, insisting that there was nothing unusual about the Crusaders' behavior at this moment, insisting that the Muslims were just as bad, refusing even to refer to the event as a massacre, repeatedly using the term sack instead of massacre. He even started to talking about ways in which Christians' mentality could have impelled them to greatly exaggerate the horror of the -- sack -- in their descriptions of it. 

Yes, concentrating on people's motivations as Riley-Smith does, gives an historian a very great amount of flexibility in his depictions of events. 

One thing is encouraging: of all the historians who attacked Gibbon during his own lifetime and for a century after -- I don't know one of their names. I'm confident that very few of you could name a single one of them.

Dream Log: Keanu Reeves/Siddhartha/High-Powered Lawyer

I dreamed I was Siddhartha, the prince in India who was going to renounce his wealth and become the Buddha; and also Keanu Revves;

 

and also a high-priced lawyer in Manhattan. I moved back and forth from the prince's ancestral palace in ancient India to present-day Manhattan, but after a while I stayed in Manhattan. The ancient prince was about to leave his family's palace to wander and seek enlightenment, and the attorney was about to leave his wealth and position behind to do the same. Ray Liotta was also in both realities: in ancient India he was one of the prince's most loyal servants, and in present-day Manhattan he was the attorney's loyal assistant.

The differences between the two times and places seemed unimportant. In both, Ray was very upset that Keanu was about to leave. "Let me come with you," he asked, not for the first time.

"We've been through this," I/Keanu/Siddhartha answered. "I need to go alone."

"I'm going to miss you."

"I'm going to miss you, too," I said. "But, to some extent, we can choose whether missing someone is painful. We can choose to be happy thinking about what was good in that other person." (I have no idea whether any part of this post resembles Buddhism in the slightest. I have no wish to offend Buddhists with this post.)

I also reminded him that Maura Tierney, another attorney in the firm, was staying. Ray liked her a lot.

Philip Seymour Hoffman was/was playing a defendant represented by the firm, a whistleblower who had exposed very bad things done routinely by a very big company, charged with criminal theft of documents belonging to that company. It was late afternoon, the jury was about to return. The other attorneys were already in the courtroom. Almost the entire firm was in the courthouse except for me. I was going to set out on my quest for enlightenment after the verdict. I rushed over to the courthouse, and then realized that I had neglected to put on a shirt.

Maura Tierney had a car and drove me back to the firm. By the time I was properly dressed, multiple texts had infomed us that Philip Seymour Hoffman had been declared innocent, so instead of rushing back to the courthouse, Maura and I waited for everyone else to join us at the firm for a party. Caterers began to arrive and set up shop. It was getting dark. It was one of those old Manhattan offices with a lot of exposed hardwood.

I said to Maura, "You know, Ray's crazy about you." By the way that she blushed and looked away, smiling, it seemed that the feelings were mutual. Which in turn made it seem that right now, with a party in celebration of having won a good fight about to get underway, would be an excellent time for me to go. I slipped out via the stairs and the alley. It was cold, my breath billowed out in big clouds. On the sidewalk and out in the street people were in a big hurry, typical for Manhattan. I, on the other hand, didn't know where I was going, so it made sense for me to just stand there, except to jump up and down when I needed some warmth. After a while I decided to turn left. Left was east. I started walking east on 42nd Street.

Dream Log: Economic Mediocrity in Manhattan

I dreamed I was in a department store in Manhattan when my G-Shock alerted me that a package had been fired at the store like a bullet from far away, and was about to fly through an open window. Quickly I grabbed a drone from a shelf, took it out of its package, assembled it, and got it into the air where if deflected the package, knocking it to the ground and avoiding injury or collision with other goods.

A store manager saw this, assumed that I was already an employee, and set me to work deflecting more packages which flew in through the store's one open window.

I quit this job and got a delivery job, delivering bags of candy from a storefront. However, I felt sure that the commissions for these deliveries must be very low, so when I saw a bunch of people going onto an office to start a day's work on another delivery job, and they said they were always hiring, I tagged along. 

In this job, every single package delivered by anybody contained one Three Musketeers candy bar. We were each given a bag of packages and a list of addresses and sent out. 

I found myself walking in Upper Manhattan looking for 176th St. Other delivery people from the same company, each with a bag of Three Musketeers, were walking along beside me. The streets were filled with a mixture of sea salt left by evaporation from the nearby Atlantic, and toxic waste. There were no sidewalks in this region of warehouses. We dodged speeding semi trucks. The salty poison piled high in the streets was beginning to melt the rubber in the soles of our sneakers. We were afraid it would burn right through our shoes and burn our feet. 

We managed to get out of that area uninjured. But I still hadn't found a single address. I was beginning to wonder what kind of commission I could possibly expect from such a job. I had neglected to ask how much I was going to be paid. 

The boss of my previous job, where I had been delivering bags of candy, and where I had also not asked about the pay, spotted me walking along and yelled at me angrily for disappearing. However, he also made it clear that I was not fired. He was a big burly guy with black handlebar moustaches.

Then things became much more abstract. For example, I was holding a tennis ball inside a steel protective case. Then, I was inside a beauty shop, and a women held my head between her hands as she murmured incantations which I didn't understand. Then, I was in Wisconsin for just a moment. I don't know how I knew it was Wisconsin. It was a rural area, autumn, and the trees were full of firy-bright red and orange and yellow leaves. Very few leaves had fallen yet from the trees. Then I was back in the department store were the dream began, and the store manager was yelling at me for pretending to be an employee. Then I was sitting on the ground in African grasslands among some lions, and I wasn't afraid of them and they weren't afraid of me. Then I was back in NYC, on the sidewalk, with some people I've only met on Facebook. Then I was playing basketball in what appeared to a comfortably-old NYC YMCA or school gym. Then I was testifying before a legislative body in favor of massive expansion of public funding for rooftop-solar, and also in favor of 100% net metering. Then I woke up.

Dream Log: Married to Jennifer Lopez

 I dreamed I got married to Jennifer Lopez.

But in the first part of the dream, I was a small-time criminal in a gang in a city. Or maybe it was more just a group of friends in a poor neighborhood, than a gang. Don't know what city. Some friends and I learned that another friend of ours was being chased by plainclothes police, so we went to help. 

The chase seemed to be more of a tense stand-off. As long as we just stood there around our friend and didn't budge, the police weren't able to arrest him. Then one of the policemen drew a small automatic pistol. One of our group pointed out that there were a lot of witnesses around. Finally the other police convinced him to put his pistol away, and the standoff ended with no injuries and no arrests. 

We were going to celebrate our friend's escape from trouble by having dinner in a restaurant, but I got separated from the others on the way there, and the next thing I knew, Jennifer Lopez, who was part of an ambulance crew, was threatening my cat. I was poor, but I had a cat. I yelled that if anyone hurt my cat, I'd kill them. 

Apparently my angry but empty threat impressed Jennifer Lopez, because the next thing I knew she and I got married. And now she was no longer an EMS worker, but approximately the same huge movie and music star she is in real life. Approximately, not exactly. For example, in the dream she had a lot of children, including one who was still a toddler. In real life, as I learned this morning while researching her in preparation for this blog post, Jennifer Lopez has two children, with her ex-husband Marc Anthony, twins, a boy and a girl, now 13 years old. 

In the dream, we were living in Jennifer's modernist mansion somewhere in southern California, with her numerous children and even more numerous entourage, plus a domestic staff, and a photographer who was taking photos of me with the toddler, and various agents, managers, movie-studio and music-company personnel, etc. Just a huge crowd of people. The mansion was large, but it was quite crowded at the moment.

Gradually I formed the impression that Jennifer was always testing me. For example, when we had first met, when she was an EMS on that ambulance crew, she was pretending to intend harm to my cat, to see whether I would vigorously protect it. I passed that test, which got our relationship started. 

Now we were married, and there was always a huge crowd of people between her and me. Eventually I became sure that Jennifer had intentionally set things up this way, and wanted to see me become more assertive and insist on being alone with her. Which was very much what I wanted too. I was about to start yelling at everybody to clear out, when I woke up.

Another SLOW Month in Non-Tesla Murrkin EV News

Lucid have actually delivered some vehicles to customers! I don't know how many.

 

So what do you think, is Lucid currently delivering units at a faster pace than Rivian?

Rivian has said they will deliver 1,000 units in 2021, so I think the only question about that is, how late in 2022 will the 1,000th unit be delivered? (I'm highly confident that they can do it before January 1, 2023.)

Seriously, though, I wish Rivian and Lucid well. And Bollinger, and Farraday Future and Fisker, and... I was about to say "and Nikola too," but it's really hard to wish those assholes well.

But someone has to crush Tesla.

Another question: Musk has always said, in media interviews, that he wishes nothing but success for anyone making EV's, and that Tesla want to do everything they can to help all of those other EV manufacturers.

So my question is: am I actually the only person on Earth who sees that Musk is completely full of shit when he says those things? Does no-one else have the computing power in their brain-grease to see that, if Tesla was actually helping even a little bit, the combined deliveries of all non-Tesla Murrkin EV-only manufacturers would currently be a lot higher than a few hundred? (Not counting aftermarket conversions, which I would guess number in the thousands in the US alone by now.)

 

Am I the only one on Earth who suspects Tesla of actual illegal interference with other EV manufacturers? Not just everyday hardball business-as-usual dirty tricks, but actual completely illegal sabotage? Answer me! Am I the only one? I did a Google search, tesla sabotage of other ev manufacturers, all I got were some stories from 2018 about Musk yelling that someone had sabotaged Tesla, no doubt to divert from the latest horrible thing he himself had done. FEAR MY SUPER-POWERED AUTISTIC BRAIN-GREASE, MUSK! You fool all these others. Not me.

Collectivization in the USSR

Stalin is accused of intentionally starving several million people in the Ukraine starting in 1928, under the process of collectivization of agriculture. The INTENT of collectivization was to grow more food so that people wouldn't starve. The intent was to farm more efficiently, using more scientific methods and so forth. Collectivization was begun because there had already been several near-famines in the USSR, and because it was clear that the other European countries weren't going to help in case of an emergency. They had a system in place to help each other in case of famine, but when people in the Soviet Union began to starve, they said, Oh, that horrible monster Josef Stalin, starving his own people! and, amazingly the charge has stuck to this day.

The Ukraine was the biggest source of food for the USSR. Farmers in the Ukraine reacted to collectivization by burning whole fields of crops, and slaughtering livestock and letting the meat rot, by not growing food to begin with, etc. In short, collectivization was a huge failure. And as a result of this -- and as a result of other nations not helping, when they had food surpluses and could have helped -- several million people starved. Other European countries stood by and watched (and hypocritically blamed Stalin).

You can blame Stalin of lying about collectivization being a huge success, when it was failing. Yes, he did lie about that. But I don't see how you can blame him for famine, when he didn't have the food to feed people. And, again, other European countries DID have the food to feed them. And they did nothing to help. Because they preferred to take the opportunity to falsely accuse Stalin of intentionally starving millions of his own people. The INTENT of collectivization was to PREVENT famine.

 

Cancer

My Mom died of cancer. My sister-in-law died of cancer. So have many other of my relatives and friends. My best Facebook friend has been struggling with a very serious case of cancer for a long time. I recently googled how many people get cancer. Google says about 1/2 of the women and 1/3 of the men.

Three years ago, they discovered I had a huge tumor in my lower-right abdomen. They were going to have to take it out to know for sure whether it was cancer. (Turns out it was.) And to take it out, they had to remove one of my kidneys, which was no longer functioning because the tumor had completely enveloped it. The tumor weighed 13 1/2 pounds. They had to cut a pretty big hole in my diaphragm to get it out.

From first discovering that I had a tumor, to the surgery, was just 3 weeks. It was not enough time for me to become really traumatized. But in the three years after the operation I have become traumatized. I have not been the same, physically or mentally, since then.

 

And now my doctor wants me to have a colonoscopy, because my latest annual stool test shows a possibility of cancer. (That's right: you can have an annual stool test instead of a colonoscopy every five years. I have a feeling most men don't know that.)

 

I haven't scheduled the colonoscopy yet. I realize I'm behaving irrationally by not scheduling it. My doctor, my general practitioner, who is very intelligent and extremely competent, and in whom I have a very high level of trust, says she's like to see me have the procedure -- "the dreaded procedure," as they called it on "Seinfeld" -- in the next 6 months. If I don't have the procedure, and if I do have cancer, she says, it could take up to 10 years for other symptoms of the cancer to show.

So if I've seemed sort of grumpy lately, that may have been part of the reason.

 

Dream Log: Lost on Sunday

I dreamed that I and some friends were in a car together, and we pulled into the parking lot of a Catholic church in an area somewhere on the border between suburban and rural. Mass was about to begin. The others went inside, and I decided to take a walk until Mass was over. 

There was a tall, steep hill near the church, and I climbed it. The hilltop was very broad and flat. Even though I was in church clothes, I felt like running. After I had been jogging along for a while, a man zoomed past me, wearing the Chariots of Fire running outfit: white T-shirt tucked into white shorts, white socks, black shoes. 

I took the difference between his speed and mine as a challenge, and sped up. He soon disappeared around a bend and I never saw him again, but I enjoyed running fast. For a while I was self-conscious because I was running in a dark red shirt under a dark red sweater, dark red corduroy pants, white socks and black shoes, but then I told myself to worry less about what people thought and enjoy myself.

I ran so far that when I stopped I didn't know where I was, and couldn't find my way back to the church where my friends were. The area had become much more urban. 

I walked through a plaza lined with Renaissance-style apartment buildings which, I felt sure, many connoisseurs would disparage as absurdly gaudy and over-the-top. But then I told myself that I didn't have to let some hypothetical snobs stop me from enjoying the view. 

And the dream went on like that for quite a while: I walked through many different architectural styles which I liked although, somehow, I was sure that there were many experts who would laugh at them, and over and over, I was able to overcome my self-consciousness and like what I like. None of it was Sylvester Stallone's sort of thing. I don't like architecture that's THAT gaudy. (And there's no reason that Sylvester Stallone should be upset about that.) One of the buildings was a mall which included a shop whose wares included some of those old books which are as tall and wide as a man, which often appear in my dreams, or, more likely, new replicas of those old books.

RANGEMAN!

This is how an ordinary guy became the superhero Rangeman.

The ordinary guy lived in an apartment in NYC. There were three idiots who hung out on the front steps of his apartment building and harrassed people. The ordinary guy didn't have any reason to be intimidated by these  idiots, because he was a huge ordinary guy and strong as an ox. But he was very timid. He tended to go around with his head down and his shoulders hunched. 

One day he left his apartment and walked past the idiots, who were harrassing a young woman. They had taken her purse and were tossing it around, playing a game of keep-away. The ordinary guy hurried past, ashamed that he was afraid to do anything. 

Suddenly he was face to face with a gnarled figure in a hood who blocked his path on the sidewalk and glared at him. Lightning lit up the edges of his silhouette and thunder boomed as he looked at the ordinary guy and held up a Casio G-Shock Rangeman GW94001,

and said, "You really need this. I'll spare you the unboxing. Here," he said, and fastened it on the wrist of the ordinary guy, who suddenly became Rangeman. Thunder boomed again as lightning ominously lit the edges of things. 

Rangeman unhunched his shoulders and held his head up high. He turned around and returned to the entrance of his apartment building. "Give the lady her purse back and stop bothering her," he said. And because he was about as big as all three of the idiots put together -- and not fat. He was cut -- they did as he said and mumbled apologies and slunk away. The young lady gave Rangeman a big smile.

"Hey," the gnarled figure shouted, "I didn't just give you that watch. Hundred bucks. That's a good price. It's almost new."

Rangeman paid him and they parted with a friendly handshake.

A little while later, Rangeman was in Stark Tower, giving the Avengers a hand. Tony Stark pointed out a work station which had been set aside for him, with a desktop computer plugged into the big Stark/Avengers computer with its large screens looming over everything.

"Thanks," Rangeman said, as he took a few Casio gadgets from his backpack and arranged them in his station. "You all probably know that I'm autistic. That shouldn't be much of a problem, I hope. But I have a few quirks which I'd like you to respect. For instance, if you could just not touch anything in my station. I know it's silly, but it'll help me to concentrate and do a better job for you, and..."

And right on cue, Tony Stark, because he is a dick, because he had a traumatic childhood, had picked up a G-Shock which Rangeman had laid down in his station. "What's this -- Casio?" Tony asked, sneering at the inexpensiveness of the brand.

"Well, um," Rangeman said, "I've made a few modifications, but yes, it's a G-Shock..." and then Rangeman's voice trailed off, and he sighed and decided to just cut to the chase: he reached out, grabbed Tony by the larynx, and began to choke him just a little bit. "What's that, Tony?" he asked. "I can't make out what you're trying to say. Are you annoyed with me, because of the choking? Does it make you feel like I'm disrespecting your boundaries? Yeah, I can see how it might feel that way. Hey, imagine if you had specifically asked us all not to choke you, five seconds before I grabbed your larynx. That would've made it even worse, wouldn't it have? Are you getting my sarcasm, or have I already cut off too much blood flow to your brain?"

Tony let go of the G-Shock he had taken. Rangeman caught it in mid-air, set it back where it had been, and let go of Tony's throat. Tony gasped and bent over double as his face gradually returned to its normal color. Rangeman asked him, "Do you have a better sense of my boundaries now?' Tony coughed and nodded, nodded and coughed, and Rangeman shouted, "I HOPE SO!"

Once he had recovered his voice, Tony turned to the others and asked, "Were you going to step in at some point?"

"Why?" Captain America asked. "New Guy looked like he had the situation well in hand."

"Needed to be done." "I've been this close to choking you for months, Tony," others chimed in. Thor, Falcon and others. "Well done, New Guy!" "Wow, check out these guns! Oops, I'm sorry I didn't ask first."

"It's fine," Rangeman said, smiling, and even starting to laugh as the level of backslapping, muscle-squeezing, hair-tousling and general friendly rough-housing among big guys intensified. "It's obvious that you care and don't want to intentionally annoy me. And that alone makes a big difference."

"It DOES, doesn't ?!" "Did you catch that, Tony? Intentionally annoy other people less, get choked less!" "See how that works?" "I think New Guy's gonna be Employee of the Month!"

Matthew Paris

Matthew Paris lived from c AD 1200-1259. Just now, Amazon delivered the 3rd volume of Matthew Paris' Historia Minor. I now have all 3 volumes. That is, I have all 3 volumes in the Rolls Series, published in the 19th century. I believe this 19th century edition is still the standard edition. Things sometimes move slowly in the world of publishing in Latin, and compared to ancient Latin, publishing in Medieval Latin is much slower still.

Matthew Paris is generally considered to be one of the best Medieval historians. In addition to the Historia Minor, he wrote the Chronica Maiora, which runs to 7 volumes in the Rolls Series. I have a few of those volumes.

A few years ago the Cartography Department of the U of M had an open house, and I went, and I learned that this same Matthew Paris is considered one of the best medieval cartographers. One of the Department's big displays was one of Matthew Paris' maps. I'm not sure whether the people in that department had ever given much thought to Matthew's historical writings. They were definitely much more interested in his maps.

Once, long ago, must have been in the 1990's, I was in a hotel room which had a small TV and either no cable or just basic cable, so I ended up watching some women's bowling. And one of the bowlers was Lisa Wagner. Turned out, Lisa Wagner is one of the greatest female bowlers of all time.

While she was kicking ass in this bowling competition, as she did in many competitions, the commentators were talking about her. And, besides mentioning how much ass she was kicking those days, they also mentioned her very long fingers. She had an exceptionally good grip on the ball for a woman.

And that was when they mentioned that Lisa Wagner was a direct descendant of the famous 19th-century pianist Franz Liszt.

And that was when I realized that she was probably also a direct descendant of Richard Wagner,  who composed operas and wrote books, and married Cosima Liszt, Franz Liszt' daughter, and had 2 children with her.

And that those bowling commentators probably didn't know who Richard Wagner was. And I wondered whether Lisa Wagner knew who Richard Wagner was. Among other things, he was, and is, much, much more famous than his friend and father-in-law, the star pianist Franz Liszt.

And I wondered what Richard Wagner would think about one of female descendants becoming a professional bowler.

110's and 2100's

 My interest in G-Shocks was awoken earlier this year by pictures of the GM110RB:

I learned that the GM110 (M for their metal cases) series of G-Shocks had been released in 2020 to celebrate the 10th anniversary of the similar GA110 series (with plastic cases), which as of a while ago were the all-time best-selling series of G-Shocks, and may still be.

I had at first assumed that the above-pictured GM110RB was a departure in the 110 series as far as its intensely colorful nature is concerned. My assumption was incorrect. Just do a google image search for ga110 colorful and you will find pictures of all sorts of very boldly colorful GA110's, such as this one:

If anything, compared to the boldest GA110's, the GM110RB may be toning it down a little.

And to me, this is all good news because I like bright colorful stuff.

For a while I worried that maybe either the GA110 line, the plastic ones made since the year 2010, or the GM110's, the metal ones which came out in the year 2020, might soon be discontinued. But it seems that both GA110's and GM110's will still be around, at least for a while. The GM110RB, unfortunately, is a limited edition, and several other GM110's have been limited editions, but the gold GM110 Eminem wore in the "Higher" video, and the original silver GM110 both seem to be in production. As are a bunch of GA110's. 

As to whether or not the GA110 is still the most popular G-Shock series, as I said above, I think it's possible. But I doubt it. All signs I can see indicate that the 2100 series is now the most popular sort of G-Shock. The 2100. The Casioak. I hate the Casioak. That's all I have to say about the Casioak right now. If you want to learn more about it, just google casioak, and you find many people who are more than willing to go on and on about it, with no end of pictures of the watch they love and I hate.

I'm worried that the Casiok, the 2100 series, might be so popular that it will completely replace the 110's, that the 110's will stop being made, but that's probably a fairly irrational worry. However, the worry that fewer new 110 models will be made, to give Casio more time and resources to feed the public's hunger for Casioaks in ever more variations and colors -- that seems to me to be a perfectly rational worry. It's already happening.

King Arthur and Jesus

 King Arthur never existed. I'm not sure whether Jesus existed. 

And of course, I'm talking about a completely non-supernatural Jesus, who was crucified by Pontius Pilate around 30 AD. Supernatural details were added to the story later. They were either added to the biography of a real person, or the entire biography is fiction.

Academics overwhelmingly say Jesus existed. This is the only case where I go against an overwhelming academic consensus. I still can't figure out why the academics are convinced.

I believe John the Baptist existed. I believe Pontius Pilate existed. I believe Saint Paul existed. But the evidence for Jesus seems very thin, to me. The story of Jesus could be based on John the Baptist. Paul could have made Jesus up because he thought the story would be good for people.

Or something else.  Or he might really have existed.

King Arthur is a slam-dunk case: never existed. 

 

Merlin might have existed. The earliest writing about a King named Arthur comes from Geoffrey of Monmouth, who wrote a terrific book (in Latin) in the 1130's called de gestis Britonum (The History of the Kings of Britain). Fantastic book of fiction, great story, zero reason to regard it as actual history.

What Geoffrey thought he was writing is very hard to tell. He said his book was a translation of a book in Welsh. But there's no trace of that book except Geoffrey mentioning it.

I see several possibilities:

1) Geoffrey never intended anyone to regard his book as non-fiction. The Welsh book was just one more fictional detail.

2) Geoffrey wrote what he regarded as a mixture of history and legends. In this case, the Welsh book could have been 2a) real, or 2b) made up by Geoffrey.

3) Geoffrey could have been completely sincere, and the Welsh book could have been real, and Geoffrey could have done no more or less than translate it into Latin.

If Geoffrey never intended de gestis Britonum to be regarded as non-fiction, Boy, did that go wrong: it took about 500 years until the main stream of academia began to have doubts about Geoffrey's book, and large parts of the general public are still, today, having trouble sorting this out.

It's possible that that Welsh book really existed, but if so, it's very strange and extremely unusual that we can find no trace of it except for Geoffrey's mention. Still, it's possible that that Welsh book, and/or some other written description of a Dark Age Welsh King named Arthur, may turn up. 

But if and when they are found, they, like all other tales of King Arthur, will be legends. There may have been a soldier named Arthur in 5th or 6th century Wales. There may have been more than one. One of them, or more than one, may have been what could reasonably have been called a general. 

 

But enough light has been thrown upon the Dark Ages that we can say, with great confidence, that there never was a King Arthur. 

 

Many of the stories are still magnificent, though. That hasn't changed at all.

 

Dream Log: Hollywood vs the Aliens

Last night I dreamed that the Earth was being invaded by violent extraterrestrials, and that Hollywood saved the world from the attack. I was a part of the Hollywood effort which saved the world. 

Now that I am awake, the details of how we saved everybody are rather vague. It involved a lot of scary costumes by special-effects experts. I think this was less to try to scare the aliens away, as to try to blend in with them. They were scary-looking. We would get into scary alien costumes and lead the real aliens into traps. Something like that. 

For most of the dream, I had less contact with the aliens, than with Rob and Sherri Moon Zombie.

 

 

That is to say: I was working with a bunch of Hollywood people, and I didn't recognize any of them except the Zombies. 

Pretty soon they figured out I had a crush on Sheri (who doesn't?), and they both teased me about that a lot, but in a nice way.

The alien invasion was scary at first, but soon it was evident that the humans had the aliens on the run. Rob was in charge of our group. There were hundreds of such groups operating all over the world. Ours was based in Phoenix. Several of us, including me, would be made up to look like the aliens, and then we would go out and -- as I said, the details are vague to me now. Most of the action of misleading the aliens occurred on city streets. We would run along in traffic, and the aliens would follow us, and then -- something. Something bad for the invasion and good for the safety of the Earth. Apparently we were luring the aliens into some kinds of traps, where they were incarcerated. And then we would go back to headquarters, have our costumes repaired, and repeat. 

Soon the alien invasion was all over with and done. Rob was going around shouting into any news microphone he could find that he hoped, FINALLY, that horror-movie people would get a little more respect, since they had just literally saved the world.

Update on Green Energy

Around 2.6 million EV's were sold in the first half of 2021. For some perspective on this, the total number of EV's on the road in the world passed 2.6 million during 2016. At the end of 2019 there were about 7.5 million. That number has probably doubled since then. It's possible that the total sales for 2021 alone will exceed 7.5, although most predictions are closer to 6 million.

 

So, yes, graphs of EV's sales currently show a line going almost straight up. The numbers in the US are much smaller than in Europe and China -- approximately 350,000 in 2020 in the US and around 1.5 each in Europe and China -- but in all 3 regions, 2021 are expected to double the figures from 2020. 

Why are more EV's being sold in Europe and China than in the US? The answer is: the Republican Party and gas, coal and oil companies. There's no big mystery or debate about this: the numbers since 1990 speed up when Democrats are in charge and slow down when Republicans are in power. And the same, unsurprisingly, is true of solar and wind power: the US lead the world, by a large margin, several decades ago, and since then, the GOP, bought and paid for by Big Oil and Coal and Gas, have slowed down progress just as much as they can. The GOP, plus a few Democrats in places like West Virginia and Oklahoma.

Globally, however, there has been a lot a progress. Vote Democratic and help the US join in on this good stuff. 

Other regions which have been held back by the fossil fuel industry include Brasil and Australia.

Globally, we can see a lot of improvement, and a lot of room for improvement. The human race might just survive its habit of burning stuff. Wouldn't that be something.

Dream Log: Australian Uncertainty

I dreamed I was out in the countryside in Australia,  walking over green wooded hills, looking for some sign of other humans. Eventually I found a dirt road, which led to a paved road, which led to a bus stop. I boarded a bus which I thought was headed toward Brisbane, but I wasn't sure. There were two other passengers besides me, and they both were dressed as if they might be off-duty bus drivers. 

 

One of them said something I didn't understand, looked at me and asked, "Eh?" I said I didn't know, and walked to the back of the bus to get away from them. Gradually the bus began to fill up with passengers. A couple of times I saw what looked like it might be Brisbane's far-off skyline, but I wasn't sure if it was Brisbane. 

As the area we drove through became more and more urban, the bus got more and more full. As far as I could see, everyone on the bus was white. I was completely unsure whether the other people were left or right wing. I was completely alone and almost completely broke, and, generally speaking, left wing people would be more likely to help a stranger in need, because he needed help, and right wingers would be more likely to mistreat him, because he was a stranger. So I was unsure whether speaking up, drawing attention to myself, would improve my situation or make it worse. I felt my best bet was get to downtown Brisbane and take things from there.

We got downtown, and went into a place filled with buses. Everyone stood up. I assumed this was because they knew we were coming to the end of the line. I stood up, kept my mouth shut, tried to blend in. The bus stopped and everyone got out. 

I hadn't walked far when I saw a basset hound puppy standing still on the sidewalk amid all the hurrying people. It was obviously lost or abandoned. I picked it up and did my best to comfort it. I went to a store, found that I had enough Australian currency in my pocket to buy a half pint cartoon of milk, sat down on a curb and started to feed the puppy. It had been crying, but very soon, after a few gulps of milk, it was in a much better mood, wagging its tail and jumping around. 

Then, very suddenly, a large Australian woman was hugging me and crying, and the rest of her family was all around, jumping up and down and exclaiming. I couldn't make out more than one word in five, but, obviously, I had rescued their lost puppy. Suddenly my own problems didn't seem so insoluble. Then I woke up.

Mayo & Mustard

Mayonnaise is French or Spanish in origin. Mustard-based condiments may have originally been invented in ancient Rome, but since then, Germany has developed a lot of different kinds of mustard. 

 

They also have lots of different kinds of sausage. Often a sidewalk food truck will have just one or two kinds of sausage, maybe with just one or two kinds of mustard to put on it, and there are also regional specialties, but if you add up everything in Germany, it's an amazing variety of sausage. And mustard.

 

And of course, Germany has beer. Great beer. A small amount of bad beer compared to Murrka, but also huge amounts of amazing beer that doesn't cost much at all.

I used to tell people that beer was invented in Germany, but I was mistaken. (I used to tell people all sorts of things which were inaccurate, and you know what? I probably still do!) People in the Middle East were drinking beer 10,000 years ago, in the earliest towns built from stone. By 2000 BC there were huge beer festivals in Egypt, where everyone would get very very drunk and dance maniacally and have sex in public. The attitudes of ancient Egyptians about sex were very different than ours today. Don't get me started. 

 

Knowledge of beermaking doesn't appear to have gotten as far north as Germany until 800 BC.

But mead remained the most popular northern European drink well into the Middle Ages. Generally speaking, beer and wine moved north alongside the Latin language, reading and writing, and Christianity. And in some areas it didn't replace mead as the most popular booze for a long, long time after that. And, as you may know, there are still people who make mead and grow beards and sing wimpy folk songs.

 

I've never had mead. Unless I have, and I was so drunk that I don't remember it, which is possible.