Under the new Federal Reserve Board rules announced June 15, credit card issuing banks have been asked to charge a late fee, no more than $25 for one-time offenders and not more than $35 for recurrent transgressors. At present, the late fee, on average, is $38. According to the data available with the government authorities, the late payment charges account for a tenth of the revenue of credit card issuers http://www.themoneytimes.com/featured/20100616/credit-card-users-get-protection-id-10117814.html

U.S. Military Identifies Vast Untapped Stores of Critical Mineral Deposits in Afghanistan
Follow up to previous postings on Afghanistan, the New York Times reports, "The United States has discovered nearly $1 trillion in untapped mineral deposits in Afghanistan, far beyond any previously known reserves and enough to fundamentally alter the Afghan economy and perhaps the Afghan war itself, according to senior American government officials. The previously unknown deposits—including huge veins of iron, copper, cobalt, gold and critical industrial metals like lithium—are so big and include so many minerals that are essential to modern industry that Afghanistan could eventually be transformed into one of the most important mining centers in the world, the United States officials believe. An internal Pentagon memo, for example, states that Afghanistan could become the “Saudi Arabia of lithium,” a key raw material in the manufacture of batteries for laptops and BlackBerrys." http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/14/world/asia/14minerals.html

In the 19th century, the Shakers called their settlement west of Lebanon, Ohio Union Village. Shakers, true to their communal lifestyle, cut the lumber and fired the bricks for Bethany Hall and built it from 1840 to ’44. t was thought to be the largest brick building in Ohio at the time. Today, there’s not much time left for the 166-year-old building, which will soon come down for a $3million fitness and community center for Otterbein Retirement Living Communities, owner of 1,600 acres of the old Shaker village that once was 4,500 acres. There’s virtually no hope of saving this link to the Union villagers who imported the first Merino sheep from Italy, bred the Poland China pig, invented clothespins and created evaporated milk.http://www.dispatch.com/live/content/local_news/stories/2010/05/23/shaker-towns-landmark-hall-to-come-down.html

Charles Warren Fairbanks (May 11, 1852 – June 4, 1918) was a Senator from Indiana and the 26th Vice President of the United States. Born in a log cabin near Unionville Center, Ohio, Fairbanks's ancestry traced back to Puritan followers of Oliver Cromwell, with Jonathan Fayerbankes the first family member to reach America in 1632. After attending country schools and working on a farm, Fairbanks attended Ohio Wesleyan University, where he graduated in 1872. While there, Fairbanks was co-editor of the school newspaper with Cornelia Cole, whom he married after both graduated from the school. Fairbanks, Alaska is named after Charles W. Fairbanks. He was elected Vice President of the United States in 1904 on the Republican ticket with Theodore Roosevelt and served all four years. Fairbanks sought the Republican nomination for President but Roosevelt (who chose to not seek reelection) supported William Howard Taft as his potential successor in 1908, sending Fairbanks back to the practice of law. In 1912, Fairbanks supported Taft's re-election against Roosevelt's Bull Moose candidacy. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_W._Fairbanks

We need protein in our diets. More specifically, each of us needs amino acids in a specific ratio to each other. Our bodies can make about half of the needed amino acids given proper starting materials including a source of nitrogen (such as other amino acids). There are eight amino acids we can’t make, so they must be present in our diets in a specific ratio to each other. These eight are collectively known as the essential amino acids and include: valine, leucine, isoleucine, the sulfur-containing amino acids: methionine and cysteine, the aromatic amino acids: phenylalanine and tyrosine, tryptophan, threonine, and lysine. Our bodies use amino acids in a specific ratio to each other, so if a person doesn’t get enough of one of them to match with the rest, the rest can only be used at a level to balance with that low one. Most of these amino acids are fairly easy to get in a reasonably well-balanced diet. However, there are three that are a little harder to get than the rest, thus it is important to make sure you’re getting enough of these three. These three are called limiting amino acids, because if a person’s diet is deficient in one of them, this will limit the usefulness of the others, even if those others are present in otherwise large enough quantities. The three limiting amino acids include the sulfur-containing ones (methionine and cysteine), tryptophan, and lysine. http://biology.clc.uc.edu/courses/bio104/compprot.htm

Wreak or wreck
Both words have similar origins, but in modern usage they are pronounced differently and have different meanings.
wreak [reek] v. to bring about, inflict, as in wreak havoc, wreak vengeance
wreck [reck] v. to cause ruin or damage
wreck [reck] n. something that has been ruined
The Old English verb wrecan meant “to drive, drive out, avenge.” Old Norse had a similar word. In Anglo-French these words evolved into a noun, wrec meaning “goods cast ashore after a shipwreck, flotsam.” The word reckless has a different origin. The Old English word reccan (past tense rohte) meant “to care, to trouble about, heed.” From it came a noun, rece meaning “care.” A reckless person doesn’t care what happens. The word reckon comes from another OE verb spelled reccan (past tense reahte). This one meant “to expound, relate.” One still talks about “reckoning accounts,” or, in a metaphorical sense, “the Final Reckoning.”
http://www.dailywritingtips.com/wreck-wreak-and-other-rek-words/

Quote "Life gets better the older you grow, until you grow too old of course."
The Bone People by Keri Hulme
http://www.listology.com/list/quotes-written-my-2005-journal