Try using about half the amount of detergent you usually use in the wash. Detergent residue tends to cling to clothes, especially if you have hard water, and will just attract dirt more quickly. Add a little bit of vinegar to the rinse water, as well-- it'll help remove soap or detergent buildup and helps condition the fabric without making it unabsorbent, as fabric softeners do.
The mash won't be useable again--the yeast eat the sugar, so there'd be nothing to feed the yeast in a reused batch, unless you've made a mash with way too much sugar in it.
If you're making moonshine out of sugar, as I describe above, then you won't need to stir or shake or strain. I expect that's still true even if you add a bit of corn for flavor. I'm afraid, though, if you're trying to use corn as your sugar source (instead of just using sugar), I don't have the answers for you.
The reason corn was used traditionally is that cheap corn was available locally, and it stayed cheap because it was really expensive to ship something bulky like corn. Nowadays, though, sugar is also cheap--probably cheaper than corn, unless you can buy in industrial quantities.
Great suggestions and I just moved my cash reserves into the Vanguard Tax-Exempt Money Market fund (VMSXX) that is currently yielding 5.84% - far above money market averages and with an industry bottom 0.17% management expense ratio. If you're in the 25% tax bracket, the return on this fund is equivalent of a taxable 7.7% APY! Can't get that anywhere else in the market right now!
This is my first run. I have a nice mash started but the cornmeal has settled to the bottom should I shake it up from time to time? When its time to move on to the still should I strain the mash first? If so is this stuff still usable in the next batch?
On a hot day you can take about a half cup of cat litter, a sack of tea (anykind) and a couple of ice cubes and you have yourself a fine shake or meal, depending on how much water. Full of fiber.
First off let my start by saying the original 3-page document that Bush and Paulson put forward was a bit of a joke, how in 3 pages could you possible “negotiate” the bail out package in “proper” detail.
I have read some of the final “bail out package” documents and its much cleaner and more specific.
I appreciate your thoughts on the matter. You touch on some very important points, specifically the idea that an economy must grow. Markets are based on human emotion and what we consider to be valuable. As the population increases, the various markets develop, and the supply of money increases (based on fractional reserves), you can obviously see that there eventuallly are an infinite number of things that must be considered when altering the money supply. Perhaps this is why all credit card transactions are now sent to the IRS, so they can better determine what the money supply should be? Anyway. Once our markets get to be so big, I don't think there is any way to maintain control. At least not with our current monetary system. Greed doesn't help either.
I haven't done enough research to get into a debate on these matters, but I've been interested in looking into competing currencies or a sustained economy (I don't mean communism) as alternatives. Any thoughts?
To everyone who has been lied to or have had funds embezzeled (ie inspection fees or any other fees) by Marty Sweeten at HMP Incorporated in Puyallup, WA.
If you have wired or deposited any money into his Wells Fargo account 0774, he will take your money and you will never hear from him. He has just did this with me, the property was suppose to close a few days ago and up until then he said the money was there and waiting on inspection. But low and behold he is not taking any calls or returning them. I have looked on other bogs and I am not the first person he has done this to. This guy needs to be stopped and I am going to the Washington State Attorny General's Office here in Olympia to start a class action law suite against Marty Sweeten. If you would like to become part of this suite please contact me at prprtyrental@aol.com I have been doing business in real estate for over 20 years and have never dealt with such an under-handed bottom feeder.
Someone mentioned this earlier inside a long post, but it's worth bringing out on its own...black Sharpies are really great for touching up black shoes that are showing a little bit of wear, just marker right on them! Also good for black purses that have started to get grey areas from a lot of use. I've been doing this since my poor college student days and I'm still keeping worn-out items I love looking nicer longer.
In the interests of full disclosure, I should mention that I have an undergraduate degree in economics, and that "money and banking" was my favorite course.
With that in mind, I've got no problem with fractional reserve banking (as long as what's going on is open and above-board).
I'm actually kind of peeved with the arguments against fractional reserve banking, because I think that the policy prescriptions that fractional reserve banking detractors come up with are good; I don't see why they want to hang them on their weird opposition to fractional reserve banking.
We know what happens if the money supply remains relatively fixed as the economy grows--deflation. If that happens in a very modest way (as it did several different times when the gold standard was in effect--anytime the mining of new gold didn't keep up with the growth in the economy), it can actually be a kind of pleasant situation (at least for people with little or no debt)--your money is worth a little more every year, growth occurs at a calm comfortable pace, and bubbles are unlikely. Often, though, a static money supply isn't so benign. Deflation often produces results in a steady transfer of wealth from the poor to the rich (because the rich already have money, and the money is becoming more valuable relative to other things).
In the days of the gold standard things worked pretty well, as long as the productivity of the worlds mines happened to roughly match the productivity of the rest of the economy. When the supply of gold grew faster than the rest of the economy (as when the new world gold flowed into Europe) the result was inflation and instability. When the supply of gold grew slower, the resut was grinding poverty for all but the wealthy.
Modern central banking tries to address this by having "experts" arrange for the money supply grow at about the same speed as the economy. They did a crappy job in the 1970s (producing quite a bit of inflation). They did an okay job in the 1980s. In the late 1990s and early 2000s, though, the Federal Reserve screwed up big time, largely because Greenspan focused too much on a narrow view of prices--figuring that as long as consumer prices weren't going up too fast, he must not be producing too much money. We now know that the extra money flowed into financial and real estate assets, because consumer prices were being held down by globalization.
You won't find me saying anything good about inflation--it's just about the most pernicious force in an economy, destroying value everywhere. (War is worse. Nothing else comes to mind.)
Credit, on the other hand, is a good thing. I wrote a post a while ago called Good debt, bad debt. I think the financial markets are so volatile right now that I would advise anyone to be especially cautious about taking on more debt just at the moment, even for productive purposes, but I stand by that post in general.
Line drying is of course essential. Washing and ironing clothes inside out is a good idea as well.
To get out stains up to and including blood and hair color I use hairspray (Navy trick). The cheaper the better, Aqua Net is best. Spray the stain till wet, let dry and wash. On really hard stains don't give up, sometimes a 2nd or 3rd wash will get it out all the way. The hairspray is also good for yellow on white linens and military uniforms or anything for that matter.
To keep colors bright and new looking, on the first wash when you get them home, wash them with a cup of salt in cold. The salt color fasts colors and you will find they last longer.(Navy trick) With rit dye using salt on the first wash after dying will hold the color.
By the way on the subject of making clothes last. I have several t shirts from concerts and such that i like but wore out or shrunk so I stuffed them with batting and sewed them up and now my favorite t's are my favorite pillows.
Are you familiar with fractional reserve banking? If so, do you approve of the practice? Now that I know more about it, I don't. The money supply is constantly increasing which means the purchasing power of the dollar gets smaller and smaller. Wages are not increased at the same rate as inflation, and consider those that are retired and no longer have a source of income. Our savings are being eaten by this inflation.
Why is it that the cost of a house is tens of thousands of dollars more today than years ago? Did the value go up or did the market adjust to the amount of money in circulation? Imagine if you managed to save $1,000 about twenty years ago. It probably would have purchased quite a bit. Now imagine if you saved that money until today. Won't go very far, will it?
Speaking of housing. The government's borrowing from the federal reserve is limited by it's assets, like say gold. If you've stretched yourself to the limit and need more assets to borrow against, what's a good option? How about taking ownership of half the nation's houses?
I'm a little confused, and maybe it's because I'm an apartment dweller.
Line drying your clothes is just a catch-all term for not using the dryer, right? I have a folding drying rack set up in my bedroom and I occasionally use my shower rod. With my allergies I'd never dry things outside even if I had that option. But using the folding rack saves me money and helps maintain fabrics.
I think more people should be forced to think like those of us who shell out $1 a load for the washer and then another $1 a load for the dryer. Economy breeds creativity :)
When my kids were growing up, there came the inevitable buy me this and buy me that. I taught them there are 5 things that we NEED to buy for our modern existence - food, clothing, shelter, transportation and medical care. I also taught them to try to define the use of a want and identify a cheaper substitute. Once you boil things down to that, you can start differentiating needs from wants.
Most people live unconsciously and buy what they want without thinking whether they need it or not. Otherwise, why would most people carry credit card debt? This mortgages their future and puts them at the mercy of credit card companies who know most people can't or won't move their debt to another card.
Oh, I'm staying out of debt--I think it's always a sensible decision for households, and especially so now.
But a credit crunch hurts everybody, including sensible households. That's my main point. (Also, although the pain hits various places harder than others, it doesn't reliably hit the guilty any harder than it hits the innocent, so there's not as much satisfaction as there might be in gloating while the economy rolls over the careless and imprudent.)
We may live in a country where humidity is preventing air drying
of clothes totally. I lived in such a location where the fogs used to moist the clothes from 4 p.m.onwards after they were almost dry. In that case the stuff must get off the line as fast as possible. Almost dry is the best moment for drying off by machine.
It saves money and hardly doesn't harm.
It should never be in the drying machine more than 25 minutes which also means that whet clothes shouldn't go into a drier.
Shake well when the drying cycle is finished to avoid ironing of most stuff because, ironing also causes an earlier death or clothes in my mind.
By the way, an expensive drier does less damage to clothes and makes them last longer than a cheap one. I found this out by experience.
Over 98% of central heating systems use a time clock, boiler and room thermostat to control the heating. A hopelessly inefficient system based on technology that was around 100 year ago! None of this much mattered when oil was $10 a barrel - it's now between $120 and $147 and its still summer!
Replacing your central heating clock with a HeatingSave controller can save you 100's if not 1,000's off your heating bill! Usually paying for itself in less than a year!
I'm surprised you didn't also mention associated content, to which it seems a lot of bloggers contribute. Which makes sense, since they are complimentary income streams - you can use your blog to direct traffic to your AC content, and your AC content/profile to direct traffic to your blog. It's not a contest, per se, but you are 'competing for traffice', I suppose!
I hear what you are saying but again, just because credit is available doesn't make it a good decision. I don't know where your son lives, but perhaps there's public transportation available? Perhaps he's close enough to work that he could buy a bike or walk? Perhaps there's another co-worker in his area that he could share a ride with?
People used to work together to solve problems. Farmers used to have children to help with the work. If they couldn't afford equipment they would work with other farmers to pay for it, and share it. Now children are a tax write off because they are a burden and provide no "value" to a household. I hope you know what I mean by that.
By relying on credit we've only set ourselves up for major disaster. Look at all the programs that have been cut in schools because there is no budget. How many people know how to work on a car, fix a house, or plant a garden? We've taken things like this for granted and never asked ourselves what we'd do if the bottom falls out. Sure we can look this stuff up on the internet, but what will we do when the power companies don't have the money to run their machines?
I'm not trying to make a lecture here, as I too fear that I won't be able to provide for my family if our economy collapses. I have a mortgage, car loan, and student loan. Without this credit I certainly wouldn't have these things. However knowing what I know now, that these loans are at the expense of future generations, I can't in good consience want to continue participating in this system. Each generation gets further and further into debt while all the wealth gets directed to a select few.
My friend at work has bought a old Bronco this spring. After reading the story she found that her tires were made on the 24th week of 03. Money is really too tight right now to replace them. I still worry about her. She is going to try to replace them after tax time. I hope they stay on that long.
Great article!
Thanks for the encouragement. We've been squirreling away funds these past years and found that during the last two we've had to go into it as things have been very tight. We're grateful the stash is there, and especially grateful we don't have to go into debt.
Try using about half the amount of detergent you usually use in the wash. Detergent residue tends to cling to clothes, especially if you have hard water, and will just attract dirt more quickly. Add a little bit of vinegar to the rinse water, as well-- it'll help remove soap or detergent buildup and helps condition the fabric without making it unabsorbent, as fabric softeners do.
The mash won't be useable again--the yeast eat the sugar, so there'd be nothing to feed the yeast in a reused batch, unless you've made a mash with way too much sugar in it.
If you're making moonshine out of sugar, as I describe above, then you won't need to stir or shake or strain. I expect that's still true even if you add a bit of corn for flavor. I'm afraid, though, if you're trying to use corn as your sugar source (instead of just using sugar), I don't have the answers for you.
The reason corn was used traditionally is that cheap corn was available locally, and it stayed cheap because it was really expensive to ship something bulky like corn. Nowadays, though, sugar is also cheap--probably cheaper than corn, unless you can buy in industrial quantities.
Great suggestions and I just moved my cash reserves into the Vanguard Tax-Exempt Money Market fund (VMSXX) that is currently yielding 5.84% - far above money market averages and with an industry bottom 0.17% management expense ratio. If you're in the 25% tax bracket, the return on this fund is equivalent of a taxable 7.7% APY! Can't get that anywhere else in the market right now!
This is my first run. I have a nice mash started but the cornmeal has settled to the bottom should I shake it up from time to time? When its time to move on to the still should I strain the mash first? If so is this stuff still usable in the next batch?
On a hot day you can take about a half cup of cat litter, a sack of tea (anykind) and a couple of ice cubes and you have yourself a fine shake or meal, depending on how much water. Full of fiber.
Like ken said, the root cause was people taking out loan which they could not afford, BUT also it’s the banks for allowing them to get the loans!
You might be interested in these two posts of mine:
The one on local currencies never got much attention when I wrote it. I was kind of sorry about that. It's a fascinating topic.
First off let my start by saying the original 3-page document that Bush and Paulson put forward was a bit of a joke, how in 3 pages could you possible “negotiate” the bail out package in “proper” detail.
I have read some of the final “bail out package” documents and its much cleaner and more specific.
I appreciate your thoughts on the matter. You touch on some very important points, specifically the idea that an economy must grow. Markets are based on human emotion and what we consider to be valuable. As the population increases, the various markets develop, and the supply of money increases (based on fractional reserves), you can obviously see that there eventuallly are an infinite number of things that must be considered when altering the money supply. Perhaps this is why all credit card transactions are now sent to the IRS, so they can better determine what the money supply should be? Anyway. Once our markets get to be so big, I don't think there is any way to maintain control. At least not with our current monetary system. Greed doesn't help either.
I haven't done enough research to get into a debate on these matters, but I've been interested in looking into competing currencies or a sustained economy (I don't mean communism) as alternatives. Any thoughts?
To everyone who has been lied to or have had funds embezzeled (ie inspection fees or any other fees) by Marty Sweeten at HMP Incorporated in Puyallup, WA.
If you have wired or deposited any money into his Wells Fargo account 0774, he will take your money and you will never hear from him. He has just did this with me, the property was suppose to close a few days ago and up until then he said the money was there and waiting on inspection. But low and behold he is not taking any calls or returning them. I have looked on other bogs and I am not the first person he has done this to. This guy needs to be stopped and I am going to the Washington State Attorny General's Office here in Olympia to start a class action law suite against Marty Sweeten. If you would like to become part of this suite please contact me at prprtyrental@aol.com I have been doing business in real estate for over 20 years and have never dealt with such an under-handed bottom feeder.
Someone mentioned this earlier inside a long post, but it's worth bringing out on its own...black Sharpies are really great for touching up black shoes that are showing a little bit of wear, just marker right on them! Also good for black purses that have started to get grey areas from a lot of use. I've been doing this since my poor college student days and I'm still keeping worn-out items I love looking nicer longer.
In the interests of full disclosure, I should mention that I have an undergraduate degree in economics, and that "money and banking" was my favorite course.
With that in mind, I've got no problem with fractional reserve banking (as long as what's going on is open and above-board).
I'm actually kind of peeved with the arguments against fractional reserve banking, because I think that the policy prescriptions that fractional reserve banking detractors come up with are good; I don't see why they want to hang them on their weird opposition to fractional reserve banking.
We know what happens if the money supply remains relatively fixed as the economy grows--deflation. If that happens in a very modest way (as it did several different times when the gold standard was in effect--anytime the mining of new gold didn't keep up with the growth in the economy), it can actually be a kind of pleasant situation (at least for people with little or no debt)--your money is worth a little more every year, growth occurs at a calm comfortable pace, and bubbles are unlikely. Often, though, a static money supply isn't so benign. Deflation often produces results in a steady transfer of wealth from the poor to the rich (because the rich already have money, and the money is becoming more valuable relative to other things).
In the days of the gold standard things worked pretty well, as long as the productivity of the worlds mines happened to roughly match the productivity of the rest of the economy. When the supply of gold grew faster than the rest of the economy (as when the new world gold flowed into Europe) the result was inflation and instability. When the supply of gold grew slower, the resut was grinding poverty for all but the wealthy.
Modern central banking tries to address this by having "experts" arrange for the money supply grow at about the same speed as the economy. They did a crappy job in the 1970s (producing quite a bit of inflation). They did an okay job in the 1980s. In the late 1990s and early 2000s, though, the Federal Reserve screwed up big time, largely because Greenspan focused too much on a narrow view of prices--figuring that as long as consumer prices weren't going up too fast, he must not be producing too much money. We now know that the extra money flowed into financial and real estate assets, because consumer prices were being held down by globalization.
You won't find me saying anything good about inflation--it's just about the most pernicious force in an economy, destroying value everywhere. (War is worse. Nothing else comes to mind.)
Credit, on the other hand, is a good thing. I wrote a post a while ago called Good debt, bad debt. I think the financial markets are so volatile right now that I would advise anyone to be especially cautious about taking on more debt just at the moment, even for productive purposes, but I stand by that post in general.
Line drying is of course essential. Washing and ironing clothes inside out is a good idea as well.
To get out stains up to and including blood and hair color I use hairspray (Navy trick). The cheaper the better, Aqua Net is best. Spray the stain till wet, let dry and wash. On really hard stains don't give up, sometimes a 2nd or 3rd wash will get it out all the way. The hairspray is also good for yellow on white linens and military uniforms or anything for that matter.
To keep colors bright and new looking, on the first wash when you get them home, wash them with a cup of salt in cold. The salt color fasts colors and you will find they last longer.(Navy trick) With rit dye using salt on the first wash after dying will hold the color.
By the way on the subject of making clothes last. I have several t shirts from concerts and such that i like but wore out or shrunk so I stuffed them with batting and sewed them up and now my favorite t's are my favorite pillows.
Phillip,
Are you familiar with fractional reserve banking? If so, do you approve of the practice? Now that I know more about it, I don't. The money supply is constantly increasing which means the purchasing power of the dollar gets smaller and smaller. Wages are not increased at the same rate as inflation, and consider those that are retired and no longer have a source of income. Our savings are being eaten by this inflation.
Why is it that the cost of a house is tens of thousands of dollars more today than years ago? Did the value go up or did the market adjust to the amount of money in circulation? Imagine if you managed to save $1,000 about twenty years ago. It probably would have purchased quite a bit. Now imagine if you saved that money until today. Won't go very far, will it?
Speaking of housing. The government's borrowing from the federal reserve is limited by it's assets, like say gold. If you've stretched yourself to the limit and need more assets to borrow against, what's a good option? How about taking ownership of half the nation's houses?
Still think credit is a good plan?
I'm a little confused, and maybe it's because I'm an apartment dweller.
Line drying your clothes is just a catch-all term for not using the dryer, right? I have a folding drying rack set up in my bedroom and I occasionally use my shower rod. With my allergies I'd never dry things outside even if I had that option. But using the folding rack saves me money and helps maintain fabrics.
I think more people should be forced to think like those of us who shell out $1 a load for the washer and then another $1 a load for the dryer. Economy breeds creativity :)
and several of the commenters. Feel free to peruse our reasons for disliking it.
When my kids were growing up, there came the inevitable buy me this and buy me that. I taught them there are 5 things that we NEED to buy for our modern existence - food, clothing, shelter, transportation and medical care. I also taught them to try to define the use of a want and identify a cheaper substitute. Once you boil things down to that, you can start differentiating needs from wants.
Most people live unconsciously and buy what they want without thinking whether they need it or not. Otherwise, why would most people carry credit card debt? This mortgages their future and puts them at the mercy of credit card companies who know most people can't or won't move their debt to another card.
Oh, I'm staying out of debt--I think it's always a sensible decision for households, and especially so now.
But a credit crunch hurts everybody, including sensible households. That's my main point. (Also, although the pain hits various places harder than others, it doesn't reliably hit the guilty any harder than it hits the innocent, so there's not as much satisfaction as there might be in gloating while the economy rolls over the careless and imprudent.)
Great Post! Just a comment, We should always separate Wants from Needs and should not wait for "These Times" to do this ...
We may live in a country where humidity is preventing air drying
of clothes totally. I lived in such a location where the fogs used to moist the clothes from 4 p.m.onwards after they were almost dry. In that case the stuff must get off the line as fast as possible. Almost dry is the best moment for drying off by machine.
It saves money and hardly doesn't harm.
It should never be in the drying machine more than 25 minutes which also means that whet clothes shouldn't go into a drier.
Shake well when the drying cycle is finished to avoid ironing of most stuff because, ironing also causes an earlier death or clothes in my mind.
By the way, an expensive drier does less damage to clothes and makes them last longer than a cheap one. I found this out by experience.
A simple way to save money on your heating bills is by using a system like this one.
Heating save http://heatingsave.co.uk/
Over 98% of central heating systems use a time clock, boiler and room thermostat to control the heating. A hopelessly inefficient system based on technology that was around 100 year ago! None of this much mattered when oil was $10 a barrel - it's now between $120 and $147 and its still summer!
Replacing your central heating clock with a HeatingSave controller can save you 100's if not 1,000's off your heating bill! Usually paying for itself in less than a year!
I'm surprised you didn't also mention associated content, to which it seems a lot of bloggers contribute. Which makes sense, since they are complimentary income streams - you can use your blog to direct traffic to your AC content, and your AC content/profile to direct traffic to your blog. It's not a contest, per se, but you are 'competing for traffice', I suppose!
I hear what you are saying but again, just because credit is available doesn't make it a good decision. I don't know where your son lives, but perhaps there's public transportation available? Perhaps he's close enough to work that he could buy a bike or walk? Perhaps there's another co-worker in his area that he could share a ride with?
People used to work together to solve problems. Farmers used to have children to help with the work. If they couldn't afford equipment they would work with other farmers to pay for it, and share it. Now children are a tax write off because they are a burden and provide no "value" to a household. I hope you know what I mean by that.
By relying on credit we've only set ourselves up for major disaster. Look at all the programs that have been cut in schools because there is no budget. How many people know how to work on a car, fix a house, or plant a garden? We've taken things like this for granted and never asked ourselves what we'd do if the bottom falls out. Sure we can look this stuff up on the internet, but what will we do when the power companies don't have the money to run their machines?
I'm not trying to make a lecture here, as I too fear that I won't be able to provide for my family if our economy collapses. I have a mortgage, car loan, and student loan. Without this credit I certainly wouldn't have these things. However knowing what I know now, that these loans are at the expense of future generations, I can't in good consience want to continue participating in this system. Each generation gets further and further into debt while all the wealth gets directed to a select few.
Just some thoughts. Please take care.
My friend at work has bought a old Bronco this spring. After reading the story she found that her tires were made on the 24th week of 03. Money is really too tight right now to replace them. I still worry about her. She is going to try to replace them after tax time. I hope they stay on that long.
Great article!
Thanks for the encouragement. We've been squirreling away funds these past years and found that during the last two we've had to go into it as things have been very tight. We're grateful the stash is there, and especially grateful we don't have to go into debt.