High Cost Of Non-Dispatchable, Unreliable Energy -- August 8, 2018

From the EIA;

And promoters still tell rate-paying utility customers that wind and solar projects will bring down their utility rates. LOL.

Screenshot of the day:

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The Modern Art Page

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Notes to the Granddaughters

Olivia is taking a robot-building course this week. There are about a dozen in the class, some older than she; some younger.

So far, on the first two days, her robots have out-raced all other rivals.

It is absolutely fascinating to listen to her stories. Before building the robot, she studies very carefully the parameters, looking for the "secret": the one thing that is most crucial. Yesterday, the robot they were to build had to negotiate an eight-turn maze. She noted that the 5th curve was the "secret." If she could figure out the "trick" this curve presented, she would win the race.

They build their robots. She was the last to finish -- she was interrupted by an obnoxious adolescent male who was sure he would win and was stealing her parts (the instructor was unaware; he was helping someone else); and, Olivia took time away from her own project to help a younger student. By the time she got back to her project, the races were beginning.

She completed her robot.

The robots raced the maze one-at-a-time, being timed with a stop-watch. She raced last. And, wow, was she ecstatic. Some robots were unable to complete the maze, but among the robots that finished, she completed the 8-turn maze, taking first place. Second best: in the time Olivia's robot completed the 8-turn maze, the second-place robot had only completed the first five turns.

The fifth turn was a nearly-180-degree -- sharp switch-back, I guess. Olivia rightly figured out how the robot was programmed to turn before the "student engineers" tweaked the code to modify that turning. That was the trick: the robot would naturally make the 180-degree turn if she "pretty-much" left the program alone -- minor tweaking was all that was needed.

Meanwhile, the oldest granddaughter is "off the grid." She is up in Minnesota attending a Spanish camp. At time of registration, everyone had to 'turn in" their cell phones. Once a day, they hand-write a note which the camp typist then e-mails to parents. The parents can reply to the e-mail, but the camp recorder prints off the reply and gives the paper-reply to the student.

Arianna was at this camp last year for a week and was eagerly looking forward to returning this summer for two weeks. It's likely she will return next summer for a full three weeks if she can squeeze it in.

Sophia? Enjoying her new bicycle.

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The Book Page

From Darwin's Fossils: The Collection That Shaped The Theory Of Evolution, Adrian Lister, c. 2018, page 184:

The Beagle had departed England 27 December 1831.

The Beagle docked at Falmouth in Cornwall on 2 October 1836 (two months short of a full-five-year voyage.

After visiting his family and rejoining the Beagle in London to unload the remainder of his belongings, Darwin took lodgings in Cambridge to consult with Henslow and, with the help of his Beagle servant Syms Covington, to unpack and sort his collections.

There were also important people to meet -- Sir Charles Lyell, whose Principles of Geology has been crucial to Darwin's work on the voyage, invited him a tea party on 29 October 1836, where he also met for the first time the anatomist Richard Owen of the Royal College of Surgeons, where Darwin's fossil bones had been sent.

Darwin subsequently visited Owen at the College on several occasions in December, 1836, and invited him to undertake research on the fossils.

Whereas William Clift, the curator, had received and prepared the specimens as they reached the College in 1833 and 1834, it was Owen who was now the rising star of comparative anatomy, having been elevated from his initial position as Clift's assistant to his recent appointment as Hunterian Professor.

While Owen's fame would undoubtedly have been assured by his later, seminal work on fossil reptiles, dinosaurs and much else besides, his study of Darwin's fossil mammals launched his career as a palaeontologist and did much to establish his reputation as the 'British Cuvier.'

Later, in February, 1838, Owen was delighted to receive the Geological Society's Wallaston Medal for his description of Toxodon, Darwin's most celebrated fossil find.

From page 81:

Toxodon platensis, the last of an endemic group of South American mammals. Initially described as a rhinoceros-sized rodent, it is now thought to be a distant relative of the rhinoceros itself.

Darwin's Toxodon fossil is among the treasured possessions of the Natural History Museum in London (p. 76).