Notable Quotes

"The natural progress of things is for liberty to yield and government to gain ground." --Thomas Jefferson

"Every time that we try to lift a problem from our own shoulders, and shift that problem to the hands of the government, to the same extent we are sacrificing the liberties of our people." --John F. Kennedy

"Government is instituted for the common good; for the protection, safety, prosperity, and happiness of the people; and not for profit, honor, or private interest of any one man, family, or class of men." --John Adams

"If an American is to amount to anything he must rely upon himself, and not upon the State; he must take pride in his own work, instead of sitting idle to envy the luck of others. He must face life with resolute courage, win victory if he can, and accept defeat if he must, without seeking to place on his fellow man a responsibility which is not theirs." --Theodore Roosevelt

"If a nation values anything more than freedom, it will lose its freedom; and the irony of it is that if it is comfort or money that it values more, it will lose that, too." --W. Somerset Maugham

"He is a man of sense who does not grieve for what he has not, but rejoices in what he has." --Epictetus

Giving Thanks

Marji Kruger, from Anchor Your Life, noted these passages about thanks in an e-mail (Thought for the Day) sent to subscribers (a free service):


Thanks be to God for his indescribable gift! (NIV) 2 Corinthians 9:15

** Give thanks to the LORD, for he is good; his love endures forever. (NIV) 1 Chronicles 16:34
** Enter his gates with thanksgiving and his courts with praise; give thanks to him and praise his name. (NIV) Psalm 100:4
** You are my God, and I will give you thanks; you are my God, and I will exalt you. (NIV) Psalm 118:28
** The LORD is my strength and my shield; my heart trusts in him, and I am helped. My heart leaps for joy and I will give thanks to him in song. (NIV) Psalm 28:7
** Give thanks to the LORD, call on his name; make known among the nations what he has done. (NIV) 1 Chronicles 16:8

** . . .thanks be to God! He gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ. (NIV) 1 Corinthians 15:57
** Thanks be to God for his indescribable gift! (NIV) 2 Corinthians 9:15
** I thank Christ Jesus our Lord, who has given me strength, that he considered me faithful, appointing me to his service. (NIV) 1 Timothy 1:12
** But thanks be to God that, though you used to be slaves to sin, you wholeheartedly obeyed the form of teaching to which you were entrusted. (NIV) Romans 6:17
** Thanks be to God-- through Jesus Christ our Lord! (NIV) Romans 7:25
** give thanks in all circumstances, for this is God's will for you in Christ Jesus. (NIV) 1 Thessalonians 5:18

** We always thank God for all of you, mentioning you in our prayers. (NIV) 1 Thessalonians 1:2
** We ought always to thank God for you, brothers (and sisters), and rightly so, because your faith is growing more and more, and the love every one of you has for each other is increasing. (NIV) 2 Thessalonians 1:3
** I always thank God for you because of his grace given you in Christ Jesus. (NIV) 1 Corinthians 1:4

We give thanks to you, Lord God Almighty, the One who is and who was, because you have taken your great power and have begun to reign. (NIV) Revelation 11:17

Search Engine Optimization Strategies

Getting Search Engine Optimization Right is the title of an article aimed at the legal community however, the information contained is relevant to non-legal businesses. The article reveals that it is contrary to Google policy to buy or sell links for the purpose of improving the ranking of one's own site with Google. According to the article the top three positions for search results account for about 70 per cent of total clicks. That came as a surprise to me.

Search engine owners have a natural incentive to please their customers. Therefore websites consumers find more useful will accrue ranking benefits.. What I found to be very informative was the description of how search engines go about evaluating the content of web pages. The term keyword density is useful because it refers to the frequency with which keywords or phrases appear. Keywords are counted and weighted a little more heavily when they appear in the title of a page or in the URL.

But what else goes into ranking? Links. How many other websites link to you and how significant are these sites? As the author pointed out the New York Times website will be thought of as more important than the website of an obscure individual.

Search engine optimization strategy is an important issue for businesses with websites and the linked article makes some valuable points relevant to SEO.

Current Events

Obama Upsets French, Arabs is an article written by Rachel Marsden. The article contains this informative remark:

Government regulations mandating things like environmental controls as a result of liberal pet-cause lobbying have accounted for 1/3 of US vehicle price increases, according to a study at the University of California, Davis. Another study by the Brookings Institution found that regulatory costs are absorbed by the manufacturers. Meanwhile, foreign auto companies are allowed to slap high tariffs on competing foreign imports. It really isn’t Bush’s mess to fix.

Information like this highlights the hidden costs of environmental policies. Is the environmental impact of regulations worth the price of multi-billion dollar taxpayer bailouts or bankruptcy? Are most people even aware of the downside?



New reporting has become blatently politicized. O’Reilly Alone Reports Gay Attack on Christians is a Culture and Media Institute article which shows the bias. The content of the article speaks for itself. The actions described are disturbing yet newsworthy. So why is the mainstream media ignoring these events?

Yankee Pitching Prospects

The Future Of The New York Yankees: Pitching Prospects To Keep An Eye On is the title of this linked article of the Bleacher Report. The article, dated September 13, 2008, discusses four Yankee pitching prospects in some detail and gives honorable mention to others. Zach McAllister is one of the four. He was drafted out of high school in 2006 and stands 6'6" tall. His fastball is clocked in the low 90s but has good movement. He was only 20 years old when the article was written.

6'10" Andrew Brackman is another of the four. A first round pick in the 2007 draft Brackman has missed time due to Tommy John surgery. He has thrown both a two seamer and a four seamer, the latter in the high 90s. He also has excellent control.

Dellin Betances, at 6'9", is another big pitcher. He throws in the mid-90s and also has a reliable knuckle-curveball. His weakness has been too many walks.

Alan Horne rounds things out. Although 25 years of age Horne throws in the low to mid-90s and has has a good slider and change-up. He also throws strikes.

Fuel Cells

Fuel Cells are devices that generate electricity through a process which produces water as a by-product. Fuel cells consist of basic components which include two electrodes described as anodes and cathodes as well as an electrolyte. Electrodes are conductors of electrical currents. An electrolyte is a liquid medium which conducts electricity. Ions in the electrolyte enable the generation of power in fuel cells as they physically separate oxygen and hydrogen. Hydrogen passes over one electrode (the anode) and oxygen over the other (the cathode). A catalyst splits the proton of a hydrogen atom from its electron. The protons subsequently pass through the electrolyte while the electrons from the anode form a direct current that leaves the fuel cell through an electrical circuit. The opposite charges are directed to the cathode where a reaction with oxygen takes place producing water.

The hydrogen supplied to fuel cells can be either in liquid or gaseous form. But it can also be extracted from more conventional fuel sources which include diesel fuel, gasoline, methanol and natural gas. Extracting hydrogen from hydrocarbon fuel sources is known as fuel reforming also sometimes dubbed fuel processing. The reforming can be either external or internal. The former takes place outside a fuel cell while the latter inside the fuel cell stack. A chemical plant or a refinery can be the external location where the processing occurs.

This site offers a comparison of fuel cell technologies.

Electric Utility Deregulation

The supply and demand concept is a good indicator of how a consumer is likely to fare in purchasing a good or servce. However, some industries have unique circumstances which make supply and demand an incomplete gauge of pricing. Electric utilities are one such industry. Both the supply of electricity and its consumption are largely inelastic in their variation to economic circumstances. While it is true that consumers will adjust their rates of consumption according to the rise and fall of prices electricity has become a need in modern societies which means useage must remain within a certain range to avoid the possibility of a personal and financial upheavals. In addition the introduction of new power sources is not quickly or easily accomplished. It takes years to plan and construct new power plants.

What then is likely to happen when a regulated industry like electric power becomes deregulated. Based on the experiences of some in states where deregulation has been implemented there can be many unanticipated consequences. The news and advocacy group Common Dreams posted an Associated Press story Power Bills Soar After Electric Deregulation, showing that electric bills can greatly increase following deregulation. Regulated industries tend to keep prices artifically low. When regulation is removed prices naturally go up. The antidote for continuous price increases is increased competition which it encourages. However, as has already been noted it takes some time before increased energy output can become a reality.

Another article, Electric utilities enter the era of deregulation, points out that the electric utility market tends to be regionalized. This makes it impossible for a company in one region to attract customers in another even though the power grid is interconnected. Investors must bear market limitations in mind when choosing their options.

Ohio deregulation fails show that deregulation can have the unintended effect of actually increasing government involvement in the utility business. This is in part due to the previously mentioned regionalization of the industry and the need for companies outside a particular region to meet the demands of established power companies within a region. Expensive obstacles can be put into place to bar competition and government regulators must step in to mitigate their effects.

Deregulation in Texas required action by the Public Utilities Commission to maintain reliability in the generation and transmission of power. Removing some regulation enables actions previously not possible which in turn can lead to a need for further regulation of a different nature.