I have lost my patience with all the people rising up to claim the "big bad oil companies" were price goring after the hurricanes which hit the south. I will explain a rather simple but profound concept called supply and demand. To simply the example, I will explain this concept using 5 farmers and 5 grain millers. The 5 farmers all grow the same grain using by the grain millers; however, each farmer employs different number of people, owns a different size plot of land, and has a different size crop result in different prices for their grain. The 5 grain millers go to market to buy the grain necessary to grind in order to sell to the bread bakers as flour. They will naturally try to buy grain at the lowest price possibly but that farmer only has a limited supply. The grain millers will then bid up the price (offer a higher price to the farmers) in order to reach a price at which enough grain is sold to satisfy the grain millers. As the supply of grain goes up, the price will naturally be lower as fewer grain millers have to bid up the price to gain the necessary amount of grain. The reverse occurs if the supply of grain drops. The farmers unable to sell their grain at the market price because their costs are too high will go out of business. This is what occurred with the oil companies and nothing more. Why is the price returning to lower then hurricane levels if they could simply raise the price of oil without consequence? A profit was gain by those companies who didn’t have their supply affect by the hurricane. However, America would have faced a lack of oil without the higher prices to entice those companies to sell their extra oil to us. To those whining about higher prices, shut up and open an economic textbook.

To all the veterans out there, I thank you from the bottom of my heart for the freedom and liberty which I enjoy because you have risked yours. In their honor, I bring a short essay on courage by G.K. Chesterton.

"Courage is almost a contradiction in terms. It means a strong desire to live taking the form of a readiness to die. 'He that will lose his life, the same shall save it,' is not a piece of mysticism for saints and heroes. It is a piece of everyday advice for sailors or mountaineers. It might be printed in an Alpine guide -- or a drill-book. This paradox is the whole principle of courage even of quite earthly or quite brutal courage. A man cut off by the sea may save his life if he will risk it on the precipice. He can only get away from death by continually stepping within an inch of it. A soldier, surrounded by enemies, if he is to cut his way out, needs to combine a strong desire for living with a strange carelessness about dying. He must not merely cling to life, for then he will be a coward, and will not escape. He must not merely wait for death, for then he will be a suicide, and will not escape. He must seek his life in a spirit of furious indifference to it; he must desire life like water and yet drink death like wine. No philosopher, I fancy, has ever expressed this romantic riddle with adequate lucidity, and I certainly have not done so. But Christianity has done more: it has marked the limits of it in the awful graves of the suicide and the hero, showing the distance between him who dies for the sake of living and him who dies for the sake of dying. And it has held up ever since above the European lances the banner of the mystery of chivalry the Christian courage which is a disdain of death; not the Chinese courage which is a disdain of life."
-- Orthodoxy

God bless America and its veterans.

Who invented daylight savings time and why did they think it was a grand idea? Suddenly, I must fight off the annoying rays of light poking their unwanted heads through my blinds. No longer can I sleep in peace during the morning. Then the sun renders the earth dark by 5 pm so you have no hope of enjoying the drive home from work while soaking the last few remaining rays of light. I repeat. Who thought this was benefical in any way? I have effectively traded sunlight when I want it for sunlight when I would rather be left in the dark. The trade makes about as much sense as selling the island of NY for a bunch of brightly colored beads. I know some people will point out that in a few months it wont make that much of difference because there will be so few hours of sunlight anyway. Well if that is the case why not wait till that is indeed the case and then change the clocks. Why do something now which can be done later and no one will know the difference? All I ask is to enjoy the limited sleep I do get. So if anyone wishes to join me, I will be boycotting daylight savings time until further notice.