Drought & Heat Relief Tips

Given California’s ongoing drought conditions and prospects for dry seasons to come, it’s time we took a hard look at steps average Ukiahans can take to help.

Timely tips:

1) Prepare now for spikes in summer temperatures by removing and discarding old worn-out insulation from your home’s attic, thereby allowing more space for air to circulate and help cool the hottest spot in your house.

 2) Sprinkler systems should be maintained at their most efficient settings in order to create favorable impacts on water supplies. Experts agree running sprinklers 24 hours a day, every day, helps combat harmful fluctuations in water flow and eliminate wasteful evaporation by keeping soil, sidewalks and driveways consistently moistened.

Numerous crops (rice, kelp, trout, seaweed, mosquitoes) thrive in such conditions, helping turn wasteful “ornamental” landscaping into productive farmland. Contact the Mendocino Agriculture Commission for tips and literature to install rice paddies and wildlife wetlands in your back yard. You may qualify for state and federal subsidies.

3) In winter months keep indoor temperatures at a steady 78 degrees Fahrenheit. This will minimize wear on your heating system’s vital thermostatic unit. Also, maintaining 78 degrees in your home avoids costly “peak” heating hours.

4) Scientific tests suggest beanies with wind powered propellors produce eco-positive cooling for adults and children alike. (Clinical trials also show beanie headgear combined with solar powered full body wetsuits, utilizing urine and perspiration as cooling agents, potentially reduce body heat by up to five degrees.)

4) Encourage children to play outdoors during cold, rainy winters. Doctors agree there’s no substitute for exercise, plus vigorous physical activity helps the li’l tykes stay warm.

5) Keep doors and windows open in winter months to help your furnace “breathe.” Do not allow old, over-used stale air to accumulate in your heating system.

6) Run air conditioning during winter months when there is less demand for home cooling.

7) Prevent toxic automobile batteries from entering fragile landfill ecosystems by allowing your securely garaged car or truck engine to idle overnight at low, safe rpms. In the morning, a pre-warmed engine awaits, with no wasteful wear on the battery.

My Bitcoin, Your Money

You and I missed some of the best and brightest investment opportunities of the recent past, which makes us a ripe target for Bitcoins.

Bitcoins are just like pet rocks, Beanie Babies, Mona Vie supplement juice or a Ponzi scheme, but better. Selling people Bitcoins has the advantage of being invisible so when someone gives you money for Bitcoins they don’t expect anything in return. And nothing is exactly what you’ll provide, with a firm handshake and confident smile. Print out a certificate if they need something to hang on the wall.

A New York Times article reported that a man bought two Papa John pizzas with $40 of Bitcoin in 2010, now worth $400 million. That’s enough pizza to last a lifetime!

So Bitcoins are much like pixie dust, except that on the other side of the double-entry bookkeeping ledger we see Bitcoins more like a kettle of leprechaun gold at the end of a rainbow in a Lake County swamp run by the Alligator Bros., Inc.

First: Are bitcoins money? Well, yes, in the same sense that pixie dust is truly magic or a Jackson Pollack painting has genuine value.

Next, remind yourself that money has not always been shiny coins and small sheets of paper in a pocket, and has undergone many changes, including the word “money.” It was once called “barter” and that’s when I gave you a pig and you gave me a bushel of apples.

My ancestors would have handed over the pig in a sack (aka a “poke”) and yours would have put rocks and hay in a basket and covered them over with apples.

Carrying pigs and apples in our pockets proved cumbersome so it was decided that since gold was worth killing for, it was valuable enough to trade for a house or a horse or a wagonload of pigs.

Many societies began printing and stamping out monies of their own design and value; most of those societies disappeared, wealth buried with them, unless their coins were gold. Few were.

Good luck if you uncover a trunk of German rentenmarks, a type of currency in Germany 100 years ago. A loaf of bread that cost 250 rentenmarks would, within a few months cost 200 million rentenmarks.

Etcetera etcetera, until in our era we arrive at Cabbage Patch Dolls and Mickey Mantle baseball cards, and from there a short hop to cocaine and Prada purses.

Now comes Bitcoin. No one says that what happened to rentenmarks will happen to Bitcoins of course, but certainly no one in the Biden administration can say it won’t.

Remember that things of so-called value, including scraps of paper kept in a pocket or a bank vault, are worth whatever other people, or one person, will pay for them. Unless they decide to kill for them. 

 (Note: Even today, people kill for apples and pigs.)

Hope this clarifies matters. I know I learned something; I’m going to invest in pork bellies and Gravensteins.