The Market, Energy, And Political Page, T+14 -- November 20, 2018 20

Slowly but surely, electricity grid prices moving up. Nothing new here; simply for the archives. Demand will drop off significantly Thanksgiving Day and Black Friday. From ISO New England:

$55 oil: years ago I suggested that $50-oil was the "goldlilocks" price:

• American shale operators will survive
• American consumers will enjoy $1.99-gasoline (except out in California)
• Saudi will struggle
• Russia will struggle
• it will play havoc with non-dispatchable energy
• President Trump said today he wants to see the price of oil go lower  (which can be interpreted several ways)

From google:

Non-Dispatchable. In contrast, non-dispatchable refers to everything else. This includes all current nuclear power plants, most coal power plants, and run-of-river hydroelectric plants. It also includes intermittent energy sources such as wind, solar photovoltaics, and wave energy.

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The Book Page

Second or third reading of The Lagoon: How Aristotle Invented Science, Armand Marie Leroi, c. 2014.

This is a top shelf book.

It fascinated me when I first saw it at Barnes and Noble some time ago. My first reading: not particularly impressed, and did not read it closely. I keep pulling it off the shelf, reading bits and pieces to see if I could figure out what I was missing, or if "I was ready to read it."

I have a lot of books that way: a number of "coffee-table books" are still in their shrink wrap. I know I will eventually enjoy them but my mind is not quite ready for them for some reason.

The Bible is an excellent example. I had not read the Bible in ages, but a few weeks ago, for whatever reason, I felt ready to tackle the Torah, the Pentateuch, the Hebrew Bible from a historical and literary point of view. I was most interested in the authorship; how the Bible came to be; etc. I found it fascinating. I read Genesis closely; Exodus a bit more quickly; skimmed through Leviticus and Numbers, and then slowed down again when I got to Deuteronomy. I will go back through some of those book again before I move on to Joshua and Judges. For all I know, that's about where I will stop, until my mind is ready to read more.

I finished my third reading of Absolutely Small, a great book on quantum theory -- it gets better with each reading. LOL. I have put it aside and will return to it in a year or so, I suppose.

I'm looking for my highly marked-up copy of Wuthering Heights. It's possible I gave it away last year. That's fine. But I'm ready to re-read parts of Wuthering Heights.

But now, today, Aristotle. Contemporary of Alexander the Great, and his teacher.

This is interesting. On the back of the book jacket, The Lagoon got an endorsement from "Philip Hoare, author of Levithan, or The Whale. I have two copies of that book on my top shelf: one was the edition published in Great Britain; the other was the edition published in the United States. I have read it but remember little of it. I will have to go back to read it again ... and, of course, that will lead to Herman Melville and Moby Dick.

But now, on to The Lagoon.

One more digression. Some years ago I sent this short note to Arianna, our oldest granddaughter whose interest at the time was marine biology (and that interest continues -- she is looking to attend University of Texas - Galveston for its marine biology program -- apparently one of the best -- if not the best program in America -- for undergraduates). This letter from me to her is undated:

But now, this is really, really cool. Apple "Finder" keeps track of all this. Through "Finder" I note that this PDF was "created" on August 3, 2013, at 2:03 p.m. I must have sent her the note in the mail, and then sometime later found it at her house. Note her annotation at the bottom. She was noting that pelicans are also found in "lagoons."

By the way, the most recent new word I gave to Arianna: nonvolant, as in "nonvolant mammals."