Freedom To Choose

Power Quote for the Week

Welcome to Sunday's regular feature. Every week you can look for a witty, wise, or profound quotation from assorted folks about power.

I choose these quotations about power as it refers to electricity, since that is what this blog is about. Sometimes though, I'll select a quotation about power, as it relates to the human condition.

Motivational speaker and author Stephen R. Covey said: "Between stimulus and response is our greatest power - the freedom to choose."

Sometimes, the difference between success and failure is a decision that sets one on a certain path. Analyze carefully. Gather information. Act accordingly.

Bringing Meaning To Madness

Choose wisely.

My Favorite Tax

I was reading an article by Scott Burns in the Business section of the Houston Chronicle recently. The title caught my eye because it had the word tax in it. I like to keep abreast of any news that might indicate changes afoot in the taxes we pay. Like most Americans, I think we pay too darn many from property taxes to sales taxes to income taxes.

Like Mr. Burns says in his article, I'm like everyone else. My favorite tax is one that doesn't affect me. Want to tax smokers? Bring it on. I don't smoke. I like to think I'm too smart for that since I saw my dad contribute to his death by smoking. My father-in-law too.

Taxes I'm Okay With

Want to slap a luxury tax on a yacht? Go for it. I don't plan to throw away a few million on a floating status symbol.

Want to tax imported luxury cars? Good for you. I buy American because I know enough about economics and balance of trade that it makes me feel downright virtuous to keep our economy strong by supporting the American automotive industry.

How about extremely expensive liquor? I can live with that. I'm a wine drinker mostly. Besides, I've still got a bottle of well-aged Scotch that I bought in a duty-free shop that should last me a very long time.

Let's Change

However, I know that eventually they'll run out of taxes I can live with then they'll start raising income taxes. After all, who do you think paid for all those clunkers that are being crushed if not us, taxpaying Americans?

Now's the time to make a change to a flat national sales tax. Everybody, individuals and businesses, would pay a flat percentage. They could, and should, exempt low income earners. With a small 1-2 per cent flat sales tax, the Treasury would overflow, and we'd all have much more from our hardwork than we currently get.

Think about it. You pay, let's say 1.5% of your annual salary, and Bill Gates pays 2% of his. Wow, we could balance the budget in nothing flat.

Bringing Meaning To Madness

How about it, America? Write your representatives and tell them you're in favor of a flat, across the board, national sales tax of 1.5%. That would be a win/win situation for everyone.

Faraday's Namesake Measurement

In the history of electricity, the invention of the capacitor, a device that can store a charge, began in the 18th century with German Ewald Georg von Kleist. A year later Dutch physicist Pieter van Musschenbroek invented a similar storage mechanism and named it the Leyden jar after the University of Leyden where he worked.

Daniel Gralath combined several Leyden jars in parallel, a "battery" that increased the charge storage capacity. Even Ben Franklin worked with a Leyden jar. He disproved the theory that the charge was stored in water when in fact it was stored on the glass itself. He's responsible for the term battery.

Storage media grew smaller and smaller and came to be known as condensers. Sometimes that word is still used instead of capacitor.

Since the capacitor is capable of storing an electrical charge, it therefore stores electrical energy in the resulting field. The measurement of a device's capacitance is called farad in honor of Michael Faraday. The symbol F is used to represent 1 farad, and that's the capacitance that develops a potential difference of one volt when it stores a charge of one coulomb.

Bringing Meaning to Madness

Aren't you glad you don't have to know all this in order to use electricity. Flip a switch, and the lights come on.

Don't Dream Small

Power Quote for the Week

Welcome to Sunday's regular feature. Every week you can look for a witty, wise, or profound quotation from assorted folks about power.

I choose these quotations about power as it refers to electricity, since that is what this blog is about. Sometimes though, I'll select a quotation about power, as it relates to the human condition.

Goethe

What should you know about Johann Wolfgang von Goethe? First, how to pronounce his surname. It's a hard G sound, and, in German, is very similar to "Ger Tuh."

His life spanned 1749 to 1832, and he was a German writer, considered by many to be the most important German writer of all. His work influenced not just Germany but all of western civilization.

Goethe said: Dream no small dreams for they have no power to move the hearts of men.

Bringing Meaning to Madness

I hope you enjoy this week's Power Quote. If you do, let me know, and I'll keep 'em coming.

The Shack

Do you shop at Radio Shack, the little store that from Fort Worth, Texas, that became a huge store? Pretty soon, you'll be calling them The Shack. Maybe you already call them that. A lot of people do.

Their marketing officer decided to "embrace the fact" that so many associates, investors, and customers dropped the Radio from the title long ago and just called them The Shack.

Bringing Meaning To Madness

Change is constant. Get used to it.

Alert: New Phone for CenterPoint

Just thought I'd make sure you Texas residents who use CenterPoint know that they've changed their phone numbers recently. You do read your statements, don't you?

If you live in the CenterPoint service area for electricity, your Emergency Outage number, effective August 1, 2009. These are the new numbers for CenterPoint service area: 1-800-332-7143 or 713-207-2222.

Even if you don't use CenterPoint as your Retail Energy Provider (REP), they are still the transmission service company for this area, and they're responsible for the power lines, poles, etc.

Your REP, whoever that is, should provide service information to you so you'll know what to do in case of Outages and other emergencies. You may want to contact your REP to confirm your emergency service phone numbers.

Bringing Meaning to Madness

You must read your electricity bill, even the small print.

PGA Championship Upset

Today I watched History in the making on the PGA Tour. Tiger Woods had never lost a major championship when leading, going into the final round. He was 14 and 0 until today.

History From Many Aspects

Today, Tiger's record was broken by Y. E. Yang, a 37-year-old South Korean.

Yang also became the first Asian to win a Major PGA Championship. The worthy challenger was the first to dethrone the mighty Tiger. Yang did it in such a poised and professional way that no one could really be upset. Except maybe Tiger at himself.

It was nice watching Yang play such great golf. Even though I am a die-hard Tiger fan, my hat is off to Yang! He went out there, stood toe to toe with Tiger, and took the game. It was a historic moment in so many ways.

I also know Tiger will bounce back and continue to win many more tournaments and a few more majors. Probably more than a few, or so I hope.

Bringing Meaning To Madness

Oh, another thing. Yang, though born in South Korea, lives in Texas now. Smart guy.

Electricity Exists

Power Quote for the Week

Welcome to Sunday's regular feature. Every week you can look for a witty, wise, or profound quotation from assorted folks about power.

I choose these quotations about power as it refers to electricity, since that is what this blog is about. Sometimes though, I'll select a quotation about power, as it relates to the human condition.

Dave Barry

From newspaper columnist to novelist, American humorist Dave Barry has kept me laughing for decades.

Barry said: We believe that electricity exists, because the electric company keeps sending us bills for it, but we cannot figure out how it travels inside wires.

Bringing Meaning to Madness

I hope you enjoy this week's Power Quote. If you do, let me know, and I'll keep 'em coming.

Choosing Between Electricity and Family

Trying to do the right thing isn’t always easy. I’d like to see our nation become self reliant, and I am sure you would too, but at what cost? Why does it seem to always come out of my middle American pocket?

Suddenly, the electricity providers are pitching that I can help the environment by locking in my residential rate at an unbelievable rate of 12.8 cents per kWh. The “unbelievable” part is that they think I don't know that's not a good deal. I represent 2 of the lowest retail electricity providers in Texas so I know what I'm talking about.

Other Unbelievable Items

Apparently, electricity utilities think we are all made out of gold. What I find unbelievable is that they keep lining their already bulging pockets with more of everyone's hard-earned money. Of course, I guess that helps them meet their quota for a big honking bonus.

What They Don't Know

How is it that one of the companies I represent can offer 8.0 cents per kWh for residential accounts right now and only lock me in for 12 months? Let’s compare. Do I pay more as in 12.8 cents per kWh to enrich a company that does not respond to anyone's needs during tough economic times? Or do I reduce my cost and pay a fair price of 8.0 cents and use that extra savings to help my family?

Bringing Meaning To Madness

What would you do? Help your family and yourself or help your electric company? I know my answer.

Derivatives Defined

In a previous post I mentioned derivative. Someone asked me what that actually meant. Aha! An idea for a blog post. So here's our lesson for today.

Energy Lesson

A derivative is a financial contract.

The value of this contract comes from another security, for instance, a stock, bond, currency, a commodity, or a market index like the S&P 500.

These are the most common types of derivatives: options, futures, and securities backed by mortgages. I've traded all kinds.

Derivatives are often used to hedge your risk. (Though you may not think you know what a Financial Hedge is, just think about the phrase "hedging your bets" and you'll have a basic understanding of why a hedge is used.)

A hedge is put on to help companies limit their financial exposure due to fluctuations in the currency exchange rate or the volatility of the fuel prices.

Derivatives, like any financial tool, can be risky if not properly understood and managed by someone with expertise. I've used them often and successfully, but many people don't have enough experience with them to use them wisely.

Bringing Meaning To Madness

Like any tool, experience and knowledge is required to wield it well.

Go Fly A Kite

Everyone knows about Benjamin Franklin's experiment with the kite. In June 1752, he allegedly tied a key to a wet kite string, went out in a storm, and flew his kite.

Sparks jumped from the key, down the wet string, and to his hand. That proved to our founding father, who had studied electricity in depth, that lightning was electrical in nature.

Later in 1791, Luigi Galvani published his discovery in Bioelectricity. He showed that electricity was the medium nerve cells used to "pass" signals to muscles.

A few years later, Alessandro Volta made a battery by alternating layers of zinc and copper. This voltaic pile gave scientists a more reliable source of electrical energy than the electrostatic machines that had been used in the past.

You can thank Hans Christian Orsted and Andre-Marie Ampere for recognizing the unity of electric and magnetic phenomena called electromagnetism. That was in 1819-1820. Then a year later Michael Faraday invented the electric motor, and Georg Ohm figured out the electrical a few years later.

Bringing Meaning To Madness

From all of these, we get the words most people recognize as having to do with electricity: galvanized, volt, amp, and ohm.

Control Self

Power Quote for the Week

Welcome to Sunday's regular feature. Every week you can look for a witty, wise, or profound quotation from assorted folks about power.

I choose these quotations about power as it refers to electricity, since that is what this blog is about. Sometimes though, I'll select a quotation about power, as it relates to the human condition.

Seneca

Lucius Annaeus Seneca, usually referred to as Seneca, or Seneca the Younger, was a Roman Stoic philosopher and statesman. He was also a writer, a tutor, and an advisor to Nero who eventually had him executed. Seneca was accused, some say unjustly, as a conspirator in a plot to assassinate Nero.

Seneca said: Most powerful is he who has himself in his own power.

Bringing Meaning to Madness

I hope you enjoy this week's Power Quote. If you do, let me know, and I'll keep 'em coming.

Death To All Mosquitoes

I started to reflect on mosquitoes, but I decided all I want to do is squash them. Fast. Preferably before they bite me since I'm lying in bed at the moment. Don't you just hate it when you turn the light off, and then you hear that buzz by your ear.

Bringing Meaning To Madness

American actor and writer Tom Wilson was probably right when he said: "Mosquitoes remind us that we are not as high up on the food chain as we think."

Look To Your Windows

I'm always reading tips on how to save on utilities. I mean, as a Business Development Agent for a couple of Retail Energy Providers, I like to post information that can help my clients, both commercial and residential.

Practical? Hmmm

A lot of the stuff I read just isn't practical in today's world. Every ecology article or consumer tips list usually includes things like "line dry your laundry." Who, in this world of two career households, has time to lug a basket of wet clothes out to a clothesline and hang them, then take them in later, and iron them. Trust me, if you line dry clothes, they'll have to be ironed. If you line dry a towel, you can probably use it to sandpaper the deck.

Sure, it will save a lot of electricity, but who has the time or the inclination? Where I live, there are deed restrictions enforced by the community association that prevents you from even having a clothesline with laundry hanging on it. Most large metropolitan areas are like this too.

Grounded In Reality

So, for a tip today, I'll offer this. Think about the heat gain from your windows. Today's home decorating seems to call for minimal window coverings, or what I call naked windows. I've been in many homes that have nothing over the windows except a designer thing at the top. Oh, my wife said that's a window treatment or valance. Some windows have blinds or sheer curtains, neither of which provide a lot of insulation.

Here are some things you can do and they work for business or residential, summer or winter.

1. Install draw drapes that insulate. My wife watches those design programs on TV. She's always raving about the draperies that Candice Olson does on Divine Design, her favorite show. Take a tip from Candice and layer your window coverings with sheers and drapes as she does on many shows. Both of these can be drawn open to get maximum light on cloudy days.

2. If you insist on minimal window coverings, consider getting that tinted solar film. It needs to be applied by professionals but it will reduce your cooling costs.

3. It goes without saying that you should increase your insulation and every year check your caulking and weather stripping.

4. Oh, I've got to say this. Contact me and let me offer you the lowest electric rates possible with one of the Retail Energy Providers I represent.

Bringing Meaning To Madness

There are things you can do to reduce your expenses, but the most important thing is to take action.

The English & Electricity

In the last years of the reign of Queen Elizabeth I, English doctor William Gilbert studied electricity and magnetism. He made a distinction between the lodestone effect (magnetism) and the static electricity created by rubbing amber. (I talked about the static electricity created from rubbing amber rods last week.)

Gilbert is the one who coined the word electricus (New Latin) meaning of amber or like amber to describe the characteristic of attracting small objects after being rubbed, what we know as static electricity. Eventually, from this, the English words electric and electricity were born. These two words were first seen in print in Thomas Browne's Pseudodoxia Epidemica of 1646.

Bringing Meaning To Madness

As in most scientific advances, it took the combined work of many people in many countries to add to the wealth of knowledge that led to breakthroughs and discoveries.

Burn Candles

Power Quote for the Week

Welcome to Sunday's regular feature. Every week you can look for a witty, wise, or profound quotation from assorted folks about power.

I choose these quotations about power as it refers to electricity, since that is what this blog is about. Sometimes though, I'll select a quotation about power, as it relates to the human condition.

Thomas Alva Edison

Our premier American inventor held, either individually or jointly, 1,093 patents. He also created the world's first industrial research lab.

Edison said: I shall make electricity so cheap that only the rich can afford to burn candles.


Bringing Meaning to Madness

I hope you enjoy this week's Power Quote. If you do, let me know, and I'll keep 'em coming.

El Nino or La Nina

Everyone talks about the heat, but I think the reason it's so hot is the El Nino effect. Someone else is getting our rain, and we're getting all the heat. You know El Nino, don't you? It's always on the news in conjunction with California usually, but it effects a lot more than California.

Depending on where the weather pattern starts, lower part of the Pacific or the upper, it's called El Nino or La Nina. Can't remember which so I'll have to look that up. I may not know at the moment which it's called, but I do know the golfers have given in to the heat. Today when I drove by the golf course, there wasn't a golf cart in sight.

About 20 years ago, it was equally hot here in Texas. Then in 1980, it was one of the hottest summers in history. We were living in Dallas at the time, and the cracks in the ground were big enough to lose a golf club in.

Bringing Meaning To Madness

Weather is cyclical. Global warming may be a real phenomenon though it hasn't been proven yet, but this summer heat in Texas does seems to run in 10 year cycles.