Friday, December 31, 2021

"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."
 

Sunday, December 26, 2021

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.
 

Monday, December 20, 2021

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.

Saturday, December 18, 2021

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.

Sunday, December 12, 2021

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.

Saturday, December 11, 2021

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!

Thursday, December 9, 2021

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.

Tuesday, December 7, 2021

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."

Sunday, December 5, 2021

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.