Archive for July 5, 2010


7 Fascinating Facts About Founding Father Benjamin Franklin

Filed under: Articles, Sticky Notes, Tail Feathers by Allen Scott — 1 Comment
July 5, 2010

I found this article very interesting and thought others would enjoy it as well. So here it is reprinted in part for my fellow travelers across the sky.

Benjamin Franklin
Image via Wikipedia

True, Founding Father Benjamin Franklin is on our $100 bill, but contrary to what many people believe, he was never president of the United States. He was far too busy to take on a job like that.As a scientist, writer, printer, philosopher, musician, politician, and inventor Franklin did more in a day than many people do in a lifetime. Here are some of our favorite Franklin facts.

He was a high school dropout. Franklin proved that you don’t need a fancy degree to succeed in life—due to family financial problems, he never graduated from high school.

He created America’s first library. In 1732, Franklin convinced a group of fellow intellectuals to create a library of their personal books, then added a subscription service, in which funds would be used to purchase new books for all to read. The Library Company of Philadelphia, as it was called, still exists today and has over 500,000 rare books.

He invented the first bifocal glasses, odometer, urinary catheter, lightning rod, and many other devices, yet never filed for a patent. Though any one of Franklin’s inventions could have made him a tremendous fortune, he wasn’t greedy about them. He believed that his work was for the common good, and “as we enjoy great advantages from the inventions of others, we should be glad of an opportunity to serve others by any invention of ours; and this we should do freely and generously,” he wrote in his autobiography. We bet he’d be a big fan of Creative Commons.

He Invented the Franklin Stove. In colonial America, most people warmed their homes by building a fire in a fireplace even though it was kind of dangerous and used a lot of wood. Ben figured that there had to be a better way. His invention of an iron furnace stove allowed people to warm their homes less dangerously and with less wood. Interestingly enough, Ben also established the first fire company and the first fire insurance company in order to help people live more safely.

He created a phonetic alphabet. Franklin’s alphabet got rid of six letters he thought were redundant, and added six new letters for other sounds. As you can probably tell, it never caught on.

As a young man, Franklin created a list of 13 virtues, and worked on obeying them throughout his life. Here is the list; you may find it helpful too:

Temperance: Eat not to dullness; drink not to elevation
Silence: Speak not but what may benefit others or yourself; avoid trifling conversations
Order: Let all your things have their places; let each part of your business have its time
Resolution: Resolve to perform what you ought; perform without fail what you resolve
Frugality: Make no expense but to do good to others or yourself; that is, waste nothing
Industry: Lose not time; be always employed in something useful; cut off all unnecessary actions
Sincerity: Use no hurtful deceit; think innocently and justly; speak accordingly Justice: Wrong none by doing injuries or omitting the benefits that are your duty Moderation: Avoid extremes; forbear resenting injuries so much as you think you deserve
Cleanliness: Tolerate no uncleanliness in body, clothes or habitation
Tranquility: Be not disturbed at trifles or accidents common or unavoidable Chastity: Rarely use venery but for health or offspring; never to dullness, weakness, or the injury of your own or another’s peace or reputation
Humility: Imitate Jesus and Socrates

20,000 people attended his funeral. Franklin truly was a rock star for his time—and he remains so today.

via 7 Fascinating Facts About Founding Father Benjamin Franklin | Gimundo | Good News… Served Daily.

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Church files claim against BP for spill revenue loss

Filed under: Articles, Current Events, DoDo Bird Award, From the Cuckoos Nest by Allen Scott — Leave a comment
July 5, 2010
dodo
Image by kevinzim via Flickr

This week’s DODO bird award winner is Anchor Assembly of God Church in Bayou La Batre, Ala. It is not bad enough that non-Christians are always looking for someone to blame for their problems, now we have a church teaching “disciples” of the Lord how to do the same thing. Perhaps if they spent more time on their knees in prayer and repentance before God, God would find a way to bless them in spite of their circumstances.

Let me quote someone greater than myself on this issue:

1 When one of you has a complaint against another, how dare you go to court to settle the matter in front of wicked people. Why don’t you settle it in front of God’s holy people? 2 Don’t you know that God’s people will judge the world? So if you’re going to judge the world, aren’t you capable of judging insignificant cases?  3 Don’t you know that we will judge angels, not to mention things in this life? 4 When you have cases dealing with this life, why do you allow people whom the church has a low opinion of to be your judges?
5 You should be ashamed of yourselves! Don’t you have at least one wise person who is able to settle disagreements between believers? 6 Instead, one believer goes to court against another believer, and this happens in front of unbelievers. 7 You are already totally defeated because you have lawsuits against each other. Why don’t you accept the fact that you have been wronged? Why don’t you accept that you have been cheated? 8 Instead, you do wrong and cheat, and you do this to other believers. 1 Cor 6:1-8 (GW)

This church would do well to heed the words of the Apostle Paul. It would be far better for this church to preach forgiveness and to judge their own hearts. Where does forgiveness come in? When does turning the other cheek apply? Where does loving our neighbors as ourselves apply?  How about applying the lessons of the good Samaritan and offer help and hope to BP, they surely could use some divine intervention don’t you agree?

Yes definitely this one belongs in the cuckoo’s nest.

BAYOU LA BATRE, Ala. – God only knows what will happen to churches and other nonprofit organizations who say they are struggling for survival because of the Gulf oil spill crisis.

Months after the Deepwater Horizon rig exploded and its well started gushing oil, the British petroleum giant says it has yet to decide how to handle claims filed by religious groups and other charitable organizations that are endangered because people can no longer afford to contribute.

Pastor Dan Brown prays BP PLC comes up with a solution quickly: He said he filed a $50,000 claim last month over lost revenues at Anchor Assembly of God. His small, storefront church outlived Hurricane Katrina and is now struggling because of the oil crisis.

Shrimpers and oystermen left jobless by the oil spill in this seafood town can barely afford to feed their families and pay their boat loans, much less give money to their church, Brown said. Giving and tithing is down by $12,000 over the last few weeks, he said, and the oil spill will cost another $38,000 in lost revenues over the next year, making up the total of the church’s claim.

via Church files claim against BP for spill revenue loss (OneNewsNow.com).

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Supreme Court Nominee Struck Dumb on Commerce Clause

Filed under: Articles, Current Events, Eagle Views by Allen Scott — 1 Comment
July 5, 2010
Kagan-35
Image by Harvard Law Record via Flickr

Another shining example of educated morons. Harvard Law is on a roll with all their graduates apparently illiterate when it comes to matters of our own Constitution. It is no wonder, the study of the Constitution is not a requirement in Harvard Law school, international law however is.

Makes sense we are turning out international lawyers who are now running our country according to the laws of third world dictatorships.

I wonder how much Federal Money goes to Harvard Law School?

Sen. Tom Coburn asked Elana Kagan a simple straightforward question: can the government, under the guise of the Commerce Clause, pass a law requiring Americans to eat three vegetables a day? The video of this exchange, which you can see
Ms. Kagan’s response is one of stupefied, stunned silence. A long awkward pause follows the question. Her reaction was so blank that it would be uncharitable to our antlered friends in the forest to describe her facial expression as that of a deer caught in the headlights.
James Madison, who, as you may recall, is the Father of the Constitution and therefore may be presumed to have more right to speak to this issue than the mind-numbed Ms. Kagan, made it clear in Federalist Paper Number 42 that the purpose of the Commerce Clause was to prevent states from imposing import and export taxes on goods shipped across their borders from neighboring states.
Merchants in the days of the founding, in order to get their goods to metropolitan centers or to shipping ports, would often have to transport them across state lines. States had taken to charging import taxes on these goods when they came into their jurisdiction and slapping export taxes on them when they left.
Madison and the Founders recognized the threat this posed to harmony among the States of the newly created Union. Said Madison, if this practice were allowed to continue, “it would nourish unceasing animosities, and not improbably terminate in serous interruptions of the public tranquillity.” So the Commerce Clause was added to prevent this pernicious practice.
Let’s be clear: the Commerce Clause, as framed by the Founders, gives Congress no authority other than to ban the imposition of import and export fees by the various States. That’s it.
The fact that Dean Kagan does not understand this is alone reason enough to disqualify her from sitting on the highest bench in the land.
It is perhaps unsurprising to find that it is possible to graduate from Harvard Law School without ever once taking a class in constitutional law. Dean Kagan made a class in international law obligatory, but a class in constitutional law is still just an elective.Read more at action.afa.net
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Obama Hosts BBQ on 4th

Filed under: Articles by Allen Scott — Leave a comment
July 5, 2010
This is a classic example of do as I say not as I do. Obama urged Americans to live the principles that founded the nation while he systematically goes about dismantling those very same principles.

He held up the Declaration as more than just words and yet for years the supreme court has manipulated the words of the Constitution (the law of the land) and misshapen their meanings into mere shells of the originalists intent.

He holds the Declaration up as the document that made us a beacon to the world while he ignores the Constitution which outlines the limits of federal government’s control over a free people. The Declaration of Independence was penned because of the abuse of power of King George III over the colonies attempts to live free of the Crown’s influence. This gave rise to the Declaration of Independence, a call to arms, to over throw the tyrannical crown.

The Constitution of the United States and its guidling principles are what built this great nation into a beacon of hope for the world. And to that ends Obama talked about newly created liberties not delieniated in the Constitution or the Declaration of Independence. If he actually read either document perhaps he would see the hypocrisy of his own Presidency and especially of this 4th of July message from the White House balcony.

clipped from www.breitbart.com
Calling the Declaration of Independence more than words on an aging parchment, President Barack Obama marked the Fourth of July on Sunday by urging Americans to live the principles that founded the nation as well as celebrate them.

“This is the day when we celebrate the very essence of America and the spirit that has defined us as a people and as a nation for more than two centuries,” Obama told guests at a South Lawn barbecue honoring service members and their families.

“We celebrate the principles that are timeless, tenets first declared by men of property and wealth but which gave rise to what Lincoln called a new birth of freedom in America—civil rights and voting rights, workers’ rights and women’s rights, and the rights of every American,” he said. “And on this day that is uniquely American we are reminded that our Declaration, our example, made us a beacon to the world.”

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