To combat the effect of light on sterling silver many manufacturers of jewelry will plate their sterling with rhodium, a platinum-like metal which does not tarnish. A thin layer of rhodium on the jewelry blocks out the light and imparts a silvery look to your sterling jewelry. But rhodium, like platinum, is very expensive so only a small amount of rhodium is plated onto the silver surface. The rhodium soon wears off and you are left with exposed areas of silver which soon tarnishes.

Another little known fact about silver and tarnish is that .925 sterling silver, being .075 parts nickel, tarnishes faster than .999 pure silver. The addition of nickel to the silver alloy known as 'sterling' makes it even more reactive to light, but much more usable as jewelry and silverware because the sterling silver is now harder and keeps it's shape much better than the softer .999 silver.

Sterling silver with a small amount of tarnish can be cleaned quickly simply by wiping with a soft cloth. Tougher jobs are best tackled using a half and half mixture of household ammonia and water. The ammonia with detergent works best and a soft bristled tooth brush will get into recesses. Soak the silver in the ammonia for 5 minutes then brush until clean and rinse with copious amounts of water. For extra tough jobs use a stronger mixture of ammonia to water.

Once your silver is shiny and clean, when you are not wearing it keep it in a dark place like a jewelry box. Silverware should be wrapped in a soft cloth and kept in a box for lengthy periods of storage.

Things NOT to use on silver include bleach, household cleaners like 409, Scotchbrite pads and steel wool. These products will either scratch your jewelry or turn it black. Once blackened by harsh chemicals the tarnish is nearly impossible to remove by anyone other than a jeweler.

While Al and friends would have us fear global warming as being a precursor to the death of us all, a more realistic view would be to examine the health and welfare benefits of it. While only Al and friends would profit from the fear of a warmer globe, all the rest of us would profit from actual global warming.

Here's how Al plans to profit from the global warming scam. He sets up a corporation which sells "Carbon Credits" or "Carbon Offsets". If you are a big company with a big "Carbon Footprint" then you can pay Al to offset your big footprint by transferring some amount of your emissions to a company that has a small amount of emissions. In other words he takes your money and makes a note on a file in his computer. Nothing changes, except Al gets richer.

Here's a better idea. Send me $1,000 and I will plant a couple trees in your name. At least a tree or two will be out there working to clean up the air.

Have you heard that the US Government has actually (I am not kidding) designated CO2 as a poison gas! Yes, CO2 is the stuff you breathe out, the stuff trees absorb and convert to Oxygen, which is the stuff we breathe in. CO2 is necessary for plant growth, but the wizards in Washington have decided it will kill you, eventually. So, to summarize, eliminating CO2 would kill the plants, which in turn would kill us.

Another crack-pot scare du jour is that melting ice caps will drown us all. Really! Most of the ice at the polar caps is floating. Ice which is floating will not raise the water level when melted. Otherwise your iced tea would run over. The ice that is not floating amounts to less than 1/10th of 1 percent of the water on the planet. If it all melted we might see a rise of an inch or two. We routinely see much more flooding from rain than melting ice caps could ever produce. Maybe Al and Pals should find a way to make it stop raining!

So, bring on the global warming! Turn Anchorage into a tropical paradise and watch the economy grow to historic proportions!

P.S. I just saw on TV one of the Microsoft Geniuses, Nathan Myhrvold, who has an actual proposal, which he claims to have submitted to exhaustive testing (via computer program), to run a garden hose, via balloon, up into the higher reaches of our atmosphere. The purpose of this hose is to spray Sulphur Dioxide into the air, which will diffuse the sun's warming rays, and cool down the planet or at least that part of the planet where the noxious gas is sprayed.

Can you say Acid Rain? I'll take a surplus of CO2 over Acid Rain anytime.

Thursday, January 21, 2010
No Good Deed Shall Go Unpunished

or, Damned If You Do and Damned If You Don't
by Josh

I would suppose you are rather like me, you have a certain amount of debt which you pay on time, month after month, and almost always pay well above the minimum. Your credit score is adequate or better.

I have built my credit by following that simple formula and in 6 years raised my score from a miserable 378 to a respectable 750. But that was a year or so ago, before the bubble was burst by our lending institutions with not so good borrowing or lending practices. In short, they were greedy.

I am on social security, the place I live in is rented, but my car is paid off. I had almost $40,000 in credit lines which I respectfully did not abuse. I kept my debt level to a place where it was barely 50% of what was available. I could and did afford a reasonably comfortable life style.

Then, because the banks were greedy and nearly failing, we taxpayers found ourselves in the odd position of lending the banks enough money to cover their losses and maintain thier lavish life styles. To show their appreciation they began to lower all our credit lines which caused my debt to available credit ratio to move out of the good range I had maintained to a place that allowed the Equifax cartel to lower my credit rating.

As you have already guessed, that move caused my lenders to further lower my credit lines, which increased the debt ratio, and further lower my credit score. This is no accident or anything to do with any algorhythm set up to keep national credit on an even keel. This is a deliberate plot by the money industry to screw us all to the wall.

My credit score has recently plunged to 615 even though I still have not missed a payment or paid less than 20% over the minimum due. My interest rates have risen to double or more the original deal I signed up for. That is, all except one loan through a credit union, who is not so greedy.

I fail to see how all this benefits the credit industry. They are literally cutting off the people who are keeping them afloat. If bankruptcies continue at the alarming current rate they are bound to go bust yet again. But next time I dare say they will be left flopping on the beach. At least that is what I hope for. It would be poetic justice at last.

I can read the writing on the wall and for me it says that I will pay as long as I can, but eventually find I am unable to pay as I should. My interest rates and payments are rising due to the lender's greed and I will eventually find there is not enough money to go around. If I fail to pay, my credit rating will tank and I will be unable to rent a half way decent place to live. Once again, I fail to see how this benefits the lenders. It smacks of evil and spite to me.

I am composing a letter to send out to members of congress, the comptroller of the currency, and any other entity I feel might just try to get us back where we were and make ordinary life affordable again. I hope you will do the same. It's all we have left.