How To

How not to treat your Betta fish

I have written this article with the hope of discouraging Betta owners from engaging in potentially hurtful practices when it comes to their fish. Bettas are treated quite casually and often abused. I believe they are much smarter than generally known (see article entitled The Underrated Betta Fish) and deserve better treatment.

The most important abuse that takes place is this: they are made to fight with each other in many countries, their owners knowing full well that they fight to the death. In the US and the more “civilized” countries, this practice is not as wide-spread, though what we have here is not a whole lot better. Here we sell Betta aquariums with clear dividers that are meant to house two or more Bettas in clear view of each other. This is supposed to enhance their appearance, because the poor things puff up their fins, thinking their territory is threatened. What few people realize is that this practice is very stressful for the Bettas. Although the fish are not damaged externally, and what I mean by this is that they don’t tear each other up, internally they experience the same stress. We all know what stress does to our bodies. Well, it has the same effect on Bettas. How would you like to live every moment of the day continually angry? That is what happens to them when they are placed in those sorts of aquariums. They feel continually threatened, and live in constant stress. Overtime, they get sick and die, whereas they would have had much longer and better lives if they were left to lead a peaceful existence.

Bettas are bred and transported in tiny little jars, and most of them never see a bigger aquarium, since they are also kept in small jars by their owners. This is an error, and it can be attributed to those people who say that Bettas are not pretentious, and that they’ve even heard of them living in the puddles left by horses’ hoofs somewhere in Southeast Asia. Just because Bettas can live in that sort of an environment doesn’t mean they like it. Fish love to live in large spreads of water, no matter what species they are.

Another issue is the cleanliness of the Betta aquariums. Just because Bettas can live in murky water doesn’t mean the average Betta owner can let the tank water get ridiculously dirty before they change it. What’s worse, some people actually believe that they can buy these sorts of Betta jars, where the poor thing is sandwiched in between the bottom of the tank and some silly plant growing above. I’m not sure who spread that silly rumor, but apparently they’ve said the Bettas need no food or fresh water when they’re placed in that sort of jar — and the rumor has spread! Apparently, the jar can be a fully self-contained, perpetual eco-system! What kind of a cockamamie story is that? I’d like to know what these people were on when they came up with this crud. Would you like to live in a tiny jar, surrounded by your own pee and doo-doo, and be forced to nibble on bitter plant roots when you’re naturally carnivorous? If you do, there’s something wrong with you. Bettas enjoy a nicely sized aquarium as much as the next fish. Don’t forget that while their origin is indeed from Southeast Asia, and they are commonly found in flooded rice paddies, their”aquariums” over there are quite large. They encompass entire fields! Yes, the water may be murky at times, and when the sun dries up the fields, they may shrink in size to little puddles, but that doesn’t mean the Bettas like to live that way all the time.

A mistake that people make is not spending enough time with their Bettas. Most of the time, they are thought of as ornaments to the room. That’s not how a smart fish can be treated. If they are continually ignored by their owners, the Bettas will withdraw into themselves, and will become loners. They will shy away from the owner when they are fed. The owner’s face next to the bowl will cause the fish to be frightened instead of happy.
Another problem I’ve found — and although it may seem minor, it does matter — is the size of the Betta Bits, the round pellets one finds in the pet stores. I’d like to know if the people who make those things have ever tried to feed them to the fish? They are much too big for their small mouths. My poor Bettas struggled to swallow them until I discovered that if I split them in half, it would make the job much easier for them. Why aren’t these things sized right? Bettas are not goldfish. They don’t have huge mouths. They are not the pigs of the aquarium; they are delicate little creatures, and their food ought to be tailor-made for them.

Do you know of other ways in which Bettas are shortchanged or worse, abused? Write about it in the comments.

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Thoughts

The Great Depression: past or future?

In reading the description of the Great Depression posted on the Encarta website, a great number of similarities strike me. As far as I’m concerned, we’re in the same boat. We’ve bought an enormous amount of things on credit, most Americans are in debt because of the prevailing idea of “consumerism”, of disposable goods that must be continually re-bought and renewed, and the stock market has just recently collapsed.

Here’s what’s written there: “Although the 1920s appeared on the surface to be a prosperous time, income was unevenly distributed. The wealthy made large profits, but more and more Americans spent more than they earned, and farmers faced low prices and heavy debt… These problems contributed to the crisis that began the Great Depression: the disastrous U.S. stock market crash of 1929, which ruined thousands of investors and destroyed confidence in the economy. Continuing throughout the 1930s, the depression ended in the United States only when massive spending for World War II began.” (1) Does this sound familiar to you?

I think what saved us from going into a full-blown depression now was entering into war with Iraq. The massive spending that took place to finance this money-losing operation (hundreds of billions so far) served to revive the economy to some extent, and the politicians managed to save our ship from sinking. The question is, how long will this temporary effect last?

In the 1940s, we financed our massive war spending through various methods, such as war bonds, loans and other such things. A lot of money was made available through the rationing of goods and the conservation of resources such as electricity and gasoline. After the war was over, there were an enormous number of contracts for American factories to fill overseas. None of that is happening today, though. Today, it’s mostly artificial. President Bush spent loaned money to finance the war in Iraq, and he’s spending more loaned money to finance the contracts for rebuilding Iraq. The contractors (Halliburton and others) are overcharging the government, and who is left as the scapegoat? Us, the regular taxpayers. Isn’t this crazy? We’re only going further into debt instead of coming out of it.

Where in the world do you think Congress gets the war money from? Debt! That’s where the money that government spends on big purchases has come from for years. But America is already deeply in debt. I hope that we’re all aware of how much in debt we are as a country. So tell me, what happens when you prop up an ailing economy by spending money you don’t have? I’ll tell you. You’re digging under yourself! And, what’s making it worse is that foreign investments in our government bonds are holding up our economy. China is fast becoming one of the biggest foreign investors, and when you have a communist country with their hand on your capitalist wallet, things aren’t quite right.

In order to counteract the possibility of an economic collapse, we’d need to get some very fiscally responsible politicians in the White House and in Congress. But does that ever happen? Nowadays, it seems that only fiscally irresponsible people ever get to either run for office, or stay in office. Sure, there are a few good senators, but there are far more overwhelmed people holding office, and their legislative votes only serve to worsen the situation. Regardless of who gets elected on November 2, 2004, the situation will not improve. Kerry is no better than Bush when it comes to dealing with the money situation realistically.

What’s to be done? I can’t predict the future, but unless we get someone in the White House who is willing to address the problem of debt head-on, I think our country is headed for certain disaster. You do the math, but economic collapse can’t be good for anyone.

(1) “Great Depression in the United States,” Microsoft Encarta Online Encyclopedia 2004.

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How To

A guide to saving energy

Given our dwindling energy resources, it makes good sense to conserve what we have left. If the phrase “dwindling energy resources” is news to you, welcome back to reality. Where have you been, and was it nice there?

With these concerns in my mind, I’ve put together a list of energy-saving tips that will help both the environment and your pocketbook. I’m fairly sure that you may have seen some of these tips before, but what I’ll try to do is to come up with a comprehensive list grouped by categories in alphabetical order, that I will update as I stumble upon more material.

Bathroom

  • Don’t take very hot showers. Some of us like that sort of thing (including me,) but not doing it saves a whole lot of energy, and according to my wife, is also better for the skin. Apparently very hot water dries the skin and makes it less resilient. Hot water is also bad for your hair. It dries it out too, and it has a tendency to break afterwards.
  • Don’t leave the water running while you brush your teeth.
  • Squeeze the toothpaste tube only from the bottom – just kidding! I squeeze it from the middle just to spite the people that write those directions on the tube.
  • You’ve all heard this saying, right? “If it’s yellow, let it mellow, if it’s brown, flush it down…” Well, I think it’s downright disgusting not to flush after urinating, so flush those toilets, for goodness’ sake! But you could invest in a toilet that uses less water per flush.

Cars

  • Be sensible and realize that oil reserves are not unlimited. Just because we don’t have to stand in line to buy gasoline here in the States doesn’t mean you have the right to drive a Hummer or some other gas guzzling SUV or large sedan. Think about this: now, in 2004, the price of gasoline in Europe is 2-3 times what we’ve got here. How long do you think this difference will last? I tell you, not long. Invest in a gas-sipping automobile, preferably a hybrid, before your monster’s resale value drops to nothing.
  • Plan your trips carefully. Going to the drugstore to floss shouldn’t qualify as a car trip. If you’re going to use your car, go to multiple stores during the same trip.
  • Quit trying to impress the person next to you in traffic lights. So your car is probably faster than theirs. So what! It doesn’t mean you should speed off every time just so your ego can get a nice pat on the back. Be reasonable and conserve your acceleration for those times when you really need it.

Computers

  • We have all heard that it pays to leave your computer on all the time, because it’s built with energy-saving devices, and it can be programmed to power individual devices such as hard drives off, etc. Let’s do a bit of math here. Most computers nowadays come with a 320W power source and some with ~400W power sources. If you leave it on all the time, chances are it will only be used actively for about 4-5 hours out of a day, more for some people, less for others. For the rest of that time, it will consume electricity at the rate of 3 (that’s three) 100-watt light bulbs and some change. Would you leave three 100-watt light bulbs on all the time? I didn’t think so. If you’re not sure about the impact your computer has on your electricity bill, just turn off everything else in the house and go look at your electricity meter (note: at 2004 rates, if left on all the time, a computer will cost about $12-15 per month in electricity). That meter’s rotating kind of fast, doesn’t it? Now do you begin to get the point? Therefore set your computer to go into Standby mode after a half hour of idle time. If your network card is equipped with Wake On LAN capability, then get your computer to go into Hibernate mode – most Windows computers using the latest OS can do this without a problem. On an Apple this is Sleep mode – Apple doesn’t have a Standby mode. If neither Standby nor Hibernate will work for you, just TURN IT OFF. Don’t worry about those who say that over time, it will damage the computer. It’ll probably still last upwards of 5 years, which is well beyond the projected lifetime of most PCs.
  • Set your computer to turn the monitor off after 5-10 idle minutes. CRT screens use quite a bit of electricity by themselves. Just look at the labels on their backs to see how much yours consumes. You can also just turn off the monitor. The power switch can take it, don’t worry. It’ll work for years, and years, and years… Well, you get the idea.
  • Set the computer to turn off the hard drives after 30 minutes – 1 hour of idle time. They can start back up without a problem in about 5-10 seconds.
  • Purchase a flat screen monitor if you can afford it. They consume a lot less electricity than CRT screens (about 2-3 times less), and they’re better on your eyes. They also emit less radiation, not to mention they take up a whole lot less space.
  • Instead of adding extra hard drives to the inside of the computer, add them to the outside by purchasing a USB or Firewire hard drive enclosure. That way, when you’re not using them, you can simply unplug them and not have to worry about the extra electricity each uses as it spins around whenever the computer is on. Use them to store files you don’t need to access often.
  • Purchase extra RAM. More RAM means less access time seeking the hard drives, thus, over time, less energy usage.

House

  • Replace all your incandescent bulbs with the new fluorescent spiral bulbs. They consume 3-4 times less energy and give off better light.
  • If you’re building a new house, or just replacing your drywall in your old house, then invest in good insulation. There are plenty of websites on the Internet that can teach you how to properly layer a wall from the outside to the inside in order to get the maximum energy savings – the process is easy and fairly cheap to implement. Just do a search on Google for this stuff. You’ll be happy you did when your heating/cooling bills arrive.
  • If you’ve got a house, put a solar panel (or more if you’d like) on the roof. Store the electricity generated in a battery or generator. You can then use it to power the devices in your house, including air conditioning devices. I’ve heard of people that get paid by their energy company every month because they generate more energy from the solar panels that they are using. A little extra cash can’t hurt, right? Again, there are detailed descriptions for this stuff on the Internet.
  • Install double glass pane windows. There are those windows that have two layers of glass and are filled with an inert gas in the middle. They are very energy efficient.
  • Install draft guards on the main door(s) to your house/apartment. This will not only keep in the nice cool air in the summer (or warm air in the winter) but it will also keep out bugs, and we all want that, right?
  • At night, only turn on the lights in those rooms that you’re using. If you’re afraid you’ll stumble over things, invest in night-lights. You can find fluorescent green night-lights that consume very little energy and last for years and years. Or you could purchase those combination night-light/deodorizers.

Kitchen

  • Don’t use the dishwasher if you can help it.
  • If you do end up having to use it, only wash full loads and put it on the cycle that takes the least time to clean the dishes. What I’ve found is that you can wash a full load in the Light cycle and get results that are just the same or better than washing it in the Normal cycle. I don’t know why, but that’s been my personal experience.
  • Don’t leave the water running in the sink while you’re doing the dishes.
  • Don’t open the faucets all the way if you don’t need a full jet of water.
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Thoughts

A better way to store and install printer drivers

How many of us have been irked by the fact that we had to always install printer drivers for our printing devices?

I think printers should store common printer drivers in on-board flash memory chips, and should be programmed to allow us to install the drivers directly from the printer, thus eliminating the need for driver CDs, which always have a way of getting lost. Along with the drivers, the printers would also install software that would check for driver updates on the manufacturer’s website, and would automatically install the updates to the computer as well as to the printer’s flash memory, thus ensuring that the drivers are kept up to date in both locations.

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Thoughts

Integrating solar panels into our windows

Now that the technology for producing solar panels is getting cheaper, I think they should be integrated into our windows. We should be able to purchase windows that are pre-fitted with transparent (or close to transparent) solar panels, that can collect solar energy and transform it into electricity. I’m not too knowledgeable about how to feed the electricity produced back into our house’s electrical circuits, but I would imagine that it could be made in such a way that we could just plug it into a wall outlet. The electricity thus produced could offset the cost of our monthly electricity bill and overall, help reduce heat-trapping gas emissions from power plans.

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