Evergreen Headline

"Water Rates are Going up Again."

With apologies to the U.S. Post Office, "Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night stays these water rates from swiftly increasing on customers' bimonthly bills."

Nothing customers do will prevent the increases. When we let our lawns die due to the drought, the fixed sewer charges (imposed even if one doesn't use any water) rose to $100 per month. Now that water is plentiful from the winter rains, the rates are still going up.

The reason is "due to projected increases in the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission (SFPUC) wholesale water rates and to provide necessary revenue for the maintenance, operation, and capital costs associated with the water distribution enterprise over a five-year term."

Economics 101 teaches that public utilities are often monopolies, can impose whatever prices they want, and therefore need to be regulated. "Regulatory capture" commonly occurs, and the regulatory agency usually rubber-stamps price increases.

That's why our water rates always go up, no matter how much or how little rain we get.

Flag Day

Outside City Hall (2021 photo)

The egalitarianism of the age frowns upon hierarchies, but as Jordan Peterson points out, hierarchical structure is not only intrinsic to human society, it's embedded in animal DNA. It was part of life long before humans walked the earth.

On the flagpole the relationships are clear. At the top is the U.S. flag, and just below it, albeit tangled, is the flag of the State of California. On the next level down is the flag of Foster City and the Rainbow Flag in honor of Pride Month.

Flags are just pieces of colored cloth, yet men have fought and died for them. Whether one stands or kneels before flags can inspire or enrage multitudes, depending on the context.

On Flag Day in our town there were no crowds or marching bands; nevertheless, there were a few of us who stopped by the flags and paused for a moment of reflection before going about our business.

Guacamole in my Future

Organic produce (blueberries, bananas, tomatoes, etc.) costs a few dollars more than the non-organic version at Costco.

However, a few days ago a bag of six organic avocados was going for $4.50, while the regular bag of six was $5.99. What was the catch (Costco never makes a pricing mistake)?

Simply squeezing the fruit yielded the answer. The organic avocados were soft and ripe--to be clear, not over-ripe or damaged--and Costco had to get rid of the inventory.

Although only one bag of six was on the shopping list, I bought two and congratulated myself on all the money I was saving.

San Mateo County Fair: Farm Animal Display

To those who are unfamiliar with San Mateo County one of the surprises may have been the display of farm animals at the Fair. The County is home to some of the wealthiest towns in California, and tech companies have a large footprint. But the land hasn't been entirely paved over.

There are still ranches along the coast south of Half Moon Bay. The Santa Cruz mountains have been a barrier to development, as environmental objections have stymied speedy transit from Silicon Valley and San Francisco.

Animal husbandry will be around years longer, and so will the farm animal display at the San Mateo County Fair.

The Religion - Health Connection

(WSJ illustration)

Despite the commonly held belief that religiosity is connected with good health, the causation arrow has been difficult to prove. Northeastern Professor of Psychology David DeSteno describes the current state of the research .

In a study published in JAMA Internal Medicine in 2016, using data from over 70,000 women who were part of the Nurses’ Health Study from 1992 to 2012, [Harvard epidemiologist Tyler] VanderWeele and colleagues found that those who attended religious services at least once a week had 33% lower mortality, from any cause, over a 16-year period. In particular, deaths due to cancer or cardiovascular disease were 75% the rate among non-attenders. While religion-associated reductions in smoking and increases in social support explained some of the benefit, the data suggested that religion worked through other, as yet unexplained, avenues too.

VanderWeele’s team found a similar benefit when it came to suicide risk. Among the nurses, attending services at least once a week or more cut the suicide rate by 80%, even when controlling for diagnoses of depression, cancer and cardiovascular disease. Researchers asked detailed questions to isolate the effect of social support from that of religious activity and found that while social connection did have a positive effect, it didn’t completely explain the benefits religion offered.

Using data from other large-scale, longitudinal studies, VanderWeele found that religiosity improves mental health. Attending services at least weekly or meditating regularly reduces feelings of depression and increases feelings of life satisfaction and purpose, even among adolescents. The health benefits are greater for those who attend services once a week or more than for those who only attend intermittently.

The aforementioned studies show that religion and health are positively correlated, but it's not clear that religion itself, as opposed to its attributes, is the key ingredient. After all, atheists can engage in healthy social interactions, lay off cigarettes, and meditate, all behaviors that have been shown to improve health.

Prof. DeSteno says that there is an additional "unexplained" health benefit that he doesn't quantify here. I guess we will have to take his claim on faith.

San Mateo County Fair: Senior Showcase

The Senior Showcase was one of the busiest exhibits at the San Mateo County Fair. Businesses and government agencies answered questions about assisted living, Medicare and senior health insurance, reverse mortgages, medical equipment, and veterans benefits.

The themes of disability and decrepitude were covered thoroughly, as was the Big "D" by the presence of cemeteries and funeral homes.

I've never noticed an exhibit like this at a fair, probably because I wasn't looking for it. The merry-go-round and Ferris wheel period of my life went by too quickly.

San Mateo County Fair: Giant Turkey Legs

Colorful signs made me buy it

At the San Mateo County Fair the dining offerings were nothing special (hamburgers, tacos, etc.) as well as overpriced.

A surfeit of sugary options--candied apples, cotton candy, sugar-covered fennel cakes, caramel popcorn--tempted, but they were verboten to those who have to watch their sugar intake.

Then I saw the signs for Giant Turkey Legs. They fit the bill: low carb, high protein, not commonly served in nearby restaurants, and, most importantly, I happen to like turkey.

I asked the heavy-set lady, How much is a turkey leg?

"Twenty dollars."

Does anything come with it? I thought it was a sensible question ($20 for just a drumstick?).

Surprised at such a ridiculous question, she answered with a stare. Hey, don't you know it's not polite to treat a customer this way?

I don't like getting ripped off, but I also have regrets about not trying something different when given the opportunity. I handed over two sawbucks, and she wrapped the drumstick in foil and inserted same into a paper bag.

Later that afternoon I unwrapped the turkey leg. There was a smoky flavor throughout. Although the surface layers were dry, the insides were moist. It was a pleasant surprise, but at that price I wouldn't go out of my way to buy it again.

San Mateo County Fair: Grandma's Plymouth

On Thursday the $20 admission fee ($18 if purchased online) was waived for adults over 62. That was a deal impossible to pass up, and so it was that I found myself at the San Mateo County Fair.

In the vintage-auto exhibit was a car from my childhood, a 1950 Plymouth. This one had enhancements my grandmother never had, most notably an embellished hood, but it looked like the same black car.

I checked the interior to make sure. There was the shifter that extended from the right side of the steering column, and there was the front bench seat. Grandmother would let me stand (I know, horrors) next to her as she backed the Plymouth out of the driveway. She would press in the clutch, and I would pull the handle down into first gear. Yes, thought this 4-year-old, I am driving.

Manual transmissions are rare enough today, but manufacturers no longer make steering-column-shifters at all. They were developed to accommodate front benches, which have also gone the way of the dodo bird.

As have little boys who stand next to their grandmother, "helping" her shift the gears.

Apple Savings: Easy to Put In, Hard to Take Out

Set up took two minutes

Six weeks ago I opened an Apple Savings account to earn the highly attractive 4.15% interest rate. The major banks now offer CD's in that range, but Apple Savings still has an advantage because the account holder can withdraw the funds instantly, or so I thought:

Some customers say it has been hard to get their money out.

Nathan Thacker, who lives outside Atlanta, had been trying to transfer $1,700 from his Apple account to JPMorgan Chase since May 15. Each time he called Goldman’s customer service department, he said, he was told to give it a few more days.

The money arrived in his Chase account Thursday morning, he said, after The Wall Street Journal contacted Goldman about his and other customers’ experiences.

Others said they also had trouble transferring money from their new Apple accounts. Customer service representatives at Goldman, which holds the deposits, sometimes gave differing responses about what to do, they said. Sometimes, their money appeared to have simply vanished, not showing up in their Apple account or in the account they were trying to move it to.

Unnerved by the Journal's June 1st article, I immediately ordered a $100 withdrawal to be sent to my bank account. The credit appeared on June 2nd, a 1-day delay that I find perfectly acceptable.

The article goes on to state that withdrawals can be delayed if there are certain "red flags": [bold added]

On brand-new accounts, like Apple’s, transfers that make up a large share of the overall balance can trigger anti–money-laundering alerts or other security concerns that require additional review, according to people in the AML field. Those delays usually last five or so days, they said.

It can also be a red flag when a customer tries to transfer a large amount of money from a newly opened savings account into an account that is different from the one where the money originally came from.

The above precautions sound reasonable, but Nathan Thacker was only trying to transfer $1,700, a small transaction in banking circles.

Although one deposit and one withdrawal went smoothly, I'm going to wait until next year before putting any more funds in Apple Savings.

Bay Area Water Outlook: Underground Storage to the Rescue

Recharge ponds in Campbell (Mercury photo)

We've written before how the replenishment of underground aquifers is a relatively low-cost alternative solution to California's failure to build more reservoirs.

It may take years for the Central Valley to recover, but there is good news already about groundwater levels in the Bay Area. [bold added]

Groundwater provides 40% of the water supply for 2 million people in Santa Clara County. Following more than a dozen major atmospheric river storms this winter, the main water table in the county has risen 35 feet since last June — and is up 51 feet since the most extreme part of the drought in September 2021 — returning to pre-drought levels. The county’s main groundwater basin is now about 90% full.

...Readings taken two weeks ago show that groundwater is just 64 feet below the surface at the district’s main monitoring well in San Jose near the corner of Hamilton and Leigh avenues. That’s the highest level ever recorded since readings began there in 1936.

Similar rebounds have occurred in wells in Sunnyvale, Milpitas and Morgan Hill, where the main index well came up 50 feet since September of 2021 and is now at its highest level in five years.

A similar trend has unfolded at the Alameda County Water District, which provides water to 345,000 people in Fremont, Newark and Union City.

There, the water table has risen 13 feet since Dec. 31 at the Niles Cone Groundwater Basin, which provides 40% of the district’s supplies.

On a State-wide level recovery is less robust:

But some clues are emerging. Of 3,400 wells monitored by the State Department of Water Resources where measurements were taken this spring, 35% showed groundwater increases of at least 5 feet — however, 59% showed no change and 6% showed a decrease when compared with levels a year ago.

Regardless, California's water outlook is much better than it was a year ago.

This year's reprieve should not cause reservoir construction to slow, but historical performance would not make that a safe bet.

Apple Introduces the Vision Pro

Apple introduced its Vision Pro headset today:

Apple said the device, which will sell for $3,499 and won’t be available until early next year, would be a new way to interact with digital content in the physical space using the user’s hands, eyes and voice to interact with apps.

Users can control the device with their hands and experience movies, TV shows and games in a more immersive way. [CEO Tim] Cook called it a new “spatial computing” platform...

The Vision Pro can project a massive movie screen into any environment for a user, as well as capture or play three-dimensional video, making it possible for a user to watch a movie on a giant screen or interact with life-size personal photos or videos projected into their living environment.

The $3,499 price will be a barrier to mass adoption. However, thousands of people in the Bay Area alone have room in their budget to buy one. The question is whether the Vision Pro has enough unique and valuable features to cause these buyers to pull the trigger.

WSJ tech reporter Joanna Stern tried it on:

During my 30-minute demo, it weighed down on my nose and made me a bit nauseous. (Apple says these will get better by the time it ships early next year.) But wow…the interface and hand gestures are intuitive, 3-D movies are finally making sense and it really felt like a huge dinosaur broke through a wall right in front of me...

The Vision Pro is different from any other headset I’ve tried because of how easy it is to toggle between seeing the real world and the digital world. An Apple Watch-like Digital Crown on the right brow allows you to control the immersion: To go more virtual, you scroll in one direction; to see more reality, you scroll in the other...

Apple is differentiating itself with an experience that is fully grounded in reality. This is not virtual reality where you escape your surroundings. Instead, it’s all about bringing the digital world to your real world. What Apple calls “spatial computing.”

Like curious others I'll hie me down to the local Apple Store when the demo is available. If the experience is as immersive as some reviewers claim, and if they catch me in a weak moment, who knows what I might do?

Creation Story

Today it was my turn to do the Old Testament reading. It was the Creation story, i.e. the entire first chapter of Genesis plus three verses of the second. It's a lengthy passage, and familiar to most churchgoers.

Later, I took another look at 1:27:

So God created humankind in his image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them.

I wonder how long that passage will remain intact.

We have previously observed how Progressive ideology is entering the Episcopal Church through language revisions that no one has bothered to explain to the great unwashed.

Substituting genderless language (e.g. "humankind" for "mankind") is probably acceptable to most, but the Church will lose many followers if the new theology embraces the idea that there are more genders than male and female and if it doesn't explain why the change is right and necessary.

Inheriting a Parent's House: Not a Hallmark movie

It's the plot of a dozen Hallmark movies. A small-town girl (the character is usually female) who moved to the big city years ago returns to dispose of the home she inherited from a parent, grandparent, aunt or uncle.

During the process of putting the property up for sale she meets her high-school sweetheart who is single, divorced, or widowed, and she falls in love with him again. She also missed the small town friendliness more than she realized; the big-city partnership or corporate vice presidency she had been pursuing would not have been fulfilling. In the end she keeps the family home and moves back to the small town to form a family with her former lover.

(WSJ illustration)

But life isn't a Hallmark movie. Inherited homes are usually sold. [bold added]

One of the first things many people do when they inherit their parents’ home these days is put up a for-sale sign.

Deciding what to do with a family property is often both an emotional and financial decision, but the rising costs of renovations, property taxes and utilities are making it harder for adult children to hold on to the real estate, financial advisers say. Higher home prices and mortgage rates have often also made it impractical for heirs to buy out their siblings, said Dick Stoner, a Realtor in Rockville, Md.

The high home prices of the past few years have made the decision to sell even more attractive. If inheritors can unload a house in a hot location for a high price, the proceeds from the home’s sale can help secure their finances and fund goals such as retirement, advisers say.

Older heirs are probably comfortably situated and are unlikely to want to move to a half-century-old homestead in need of a lot of expensive repairs. Also, middle-class estates tend to be house-rich and cash-poor, so whichever sibling wants to keep the house will likely have to sell his existing home to buy out his brothers and sisters and fix the place. That's a real commitment to sentiment, and unrealistic like a Hallmark movie.

Now It’s Insurance’s Turn

Ever since we became homeowners over 40 years ago we've bought earthquake insurance. Lately the premium on our 4BR house has approached $3,000, and that's with a deductible of around $200,000. In all those years we've never made a claim.

The earthquake premium is 50% higher than a regular homeowners policy, and one would think that insurance companies would be happy to write the business. One would be wrong.

Last month we received notice (right) that our provider won't renew the earthquake policy, so we'll have to start looking.

We should count ourselves lucky that we do have homeowners coverage through July, 2024. Insurance giants Allstate and State Farm have stopped taking new customers.

It was not immediately clear what prompted Allstate’s pullback on new policies. But State Farm, the largest provider of property and casualty insurance in California, made waves in late May by announcing it would stop issuing new homeowner policies in the state due to inflation, wildfires and rising reinsurance costs.

The WSJ blames California regulators for the dwindling number of suppliers:

The nation’s top property and casualty insurer on Friday said it won’t accept new applications for homeowners insurance, citing “historic increases in construction costs outpacing inflation, rapidly growing catastrophe exposure, and a challenging reinsurance market.”

In other words, State Farm can’t accurately price risk and increase its rates to cover ballooning liabilities. Other property and casualty insurers, including AIG and Chubb, have also been shrinking their California footprint after years of catastrophic wildfires, which are becoming more common owing to drought and decades of poor forest management.

Wildfires in 2017 and 2018 wiped out two times the underwriting profits that insurers had accrued over the prior 26 years. Yet state Insurance Commissioner Ricardo Lara won’t let insurers raise premiums to account for increasing wildfire risks.

Only California can make insurance companies sympathetic.

I Got the Jab Anyway

Three years after the government locked down everything, fear of the coronavirus has largely dissipated. Outside of hospitals and doctors' offices few people wear masks.

While mRNA vaccines appear to provide some benefit, their protection against COVID-19 isn't foolproof. Also, scientists and government officials now confirm that there can be side effects, including myocarditis and pericarditis.

Despite the apparent lessening of the COVID-19 danger, and the now-documented potential side effects of the vaccine, I got the jab anyway.

We'll be traveling next month to visit family in Hawaii, and I don't want it on my conscience should an elderly person get sick.

And yes, I'll wear a mask, too.