The controversy that has been going on in the news and on Facebook about whether or not all employers that provide medical insurance as a benefit to their employees had to provide birth control pills free of charge has really been quite heated. What seemed to me a simple “common sense” situation that all medical insurance should provide that benefit as an open and shut case has become a controversy over separation of church and state, and people have really gone nuts over the whole thing.

Many people felt that if an employer offers medical insurance to their employees, then religion should not be a part of it. Others felt that this was a case of the government interfering with the church’s position on birth control. Finally the President arranged a change in the wording of the law so that it was not giving people the impression that the church was condoning birth control, and it appears that now everyone is satisfied. At least I hope that everyone is satisfied!

Guest post by Mary Beckwith

Isn’t it fantastic how quickly technology is advancing in our lifetime? Every now and then I stop and look around and take a few minutes to be grateful for all of the modern conveniences of today’s life. My kids laugh when I tell them about how difficult it used to be do do things long-distance when I was younger. And by “younger” I mean back in the ’70s, which to me seems like last year!

I can still remember the telephone call that came into the house late one night to my parents that my oldest brother had been arrested for a prank that he and a couple of friends pulled when they were in college. Seems that the police didn’t have much of a sense of humor back then and charged them with grand larceny theft. Seems that they had relocated a friend’s stereo out of his dorm room, and by the time the friend realized that it was just a prank the court system had a very firm hold on the perpetrators.

Finding a california criminal lawyer was not a simple task back then; there was no internet to be able to just go to the computer and “Google” los angeles criminal defense lawyer in the search bar. Having been a teenager back then, my parents tried their best to keep all of the details from me, and the rest of the kids, but I know that they spent a lot of time on the phone behind closed doors and that somehow they ended up hiring a criminal defense attorney los angeles to represent my brother.

To be perfectly honest, if something like that happened to our family and there was no Internet to turn to, I don’t have a clue where I would go for information like that. Maybe call a local lawyer and ask him for a referral? All I can say at this point in time is, I’m really glad that we have the Internet – it is a fantastic source of information. One drawback, though, it does not help us learn to delay gratification! Everything is right there immediately!

I’ve noticed that credit card companies from time to time decide to change my credit card number.  They say it is for security reasons, and I can understand them trying to be “secure” and all of that, but it is a huge aggravation on two levels.  OK, maybe three levels.  First of all, I’ve memorized my credit card numbers, and it is hard to “forget” the numbers I’ve memorized and learn new ones.  Second of all, I have the credit card number listed for automatic charges on a lot of accounts, and now I have to notify them all of the change.  On the third account, every single time that they do this to me, the very first billing cycle after the account number changes, there are fraudulent charges on my new account number!  How is that being more “secure?”  So I have to challenge the charges, which is a royal pain in the neck!

A friend of mine sent me a link to a blog that was talking about how someone has found a way to burn salt water, and that the possibility was there to further develop that to actually be able to run cars with that technology.

So I was just googling “fuel from salt water” and was reading the different links about it.

From what I can tell, right now it takes more energy to create the fuel than the fuel itself would generate, which makes it impractical.  Perhaps someone can refine the process, but I also read that when the salt water DOES burn, it releases a deadly form of chlorine gas, which probably would not be a good thing!

So, I think that quite a bit of “tweaking” needs to be done for that technology to hit the mainstream use of running our cars on saltwater!

Guest post from: Constance Rodgers

It’s hard being the youngest in a room and at my job, that’s always the case. I work for a restaurant marketer and there’s always some kind of fire to put out but I feel like being in such a professional, fast paced environment makes sure I learn something new each and every day. If only I hadn’t waited so long to graduate and had been doing this for two extra years! My bosses seem to really see something in me and they’re always giving me some kind of cool assignment like looking up card services or talking to a vendor about price and it’s only a matter of time before I think I get promoted. I already make more than a lot of my friends who have jobs right out of school so I’m doing pretty well for myself and don’t think I’ve got too far to go! I love this place and I feel like I’m lucky to have fallen into a job I really see myself staying at for the long term.