Your public service announcement for the day -

PCMag.com has an article on how to create an I.C.E. (in case of emergency) listing on your cell phone. Now, I'm not one to succomb to living in fear, but this is simple, sensible and, in the event of emergency, vital.

Vodafone and a Cambridge-based paramedic continue their campaign—its importance highlighted by recent terrorist activity in London—to encourage users to keep emergency contact numbers stored in their mobile phones.

After entering ICE, the abbreviation for "in case of emergency," into the mobile phone's phone book, users can enter who they'd want contacted in an emergency situation.

U.K.-based paramedic Bob Brotchie came up with the plan after having difficulty getting emergency contact information from injured patients. In a statement, he said that at times he'd scroll through a mobile phone book to try to find contact information, but with no way of knowing which was the correct person to call.

For many years now, the Universe has been sending neat stuff my way with a regularity and consistancy that would be downright frightening if I wasn't so laid back complacent.

Generally, my posse and I refer to this process as "Universal Room Service," but, while accurate, the phrase plods a little to my hyperactive, ADHD-simulated mind, and it lacks that certain je ne se qouis.

Well, no more of that.

Today, I came across a link to a blog entry about a guy by the name of Mr. Jalopy's lucky find of a tossed-out pinball machine - a really sweet piece of machinery even in it's current state of disrepair, I might add - and in passing he refers to the presence of Divine abundance in his life in the following terms -

Clearly, I am powerless against the powers of obtainium. There is a never ending onslaught of really cool stuff and sometimes I am just in the way of it.

Obtainium. Yeah. I like it! The most basic element of the abundant Universe, the magnetic properties of which cause cool and useful stuff to be attracted to us like college students to an open bar. The element, no doubt, who's powers of attraction even led me back to itself, or at least to the right name for it.

Thanks, Mr. Jalopy! I owe you one.

It could be a sign of the coming apocalypse, but check out this article on WalMart stores going green:

Wal-Mart is experimenting with its first environmentally friendly store as it searches for ways to conserve resources and save money.

Add that to the post I wrote earlier about GE's doorstop of a right-practices-report and, folks, we officially have a movement!

Hooah!

In my inbox today was this piece of Christian scripture:

"Faith without works is dead." (James 2:20)

I bring it up because I have had many arguments debates with Christians regarding the dichotomy of faith and good works. One one side, there is the belief that, as stated above, faith without works is essentially a mental exercise and little more. On the other is the belief that works are good, but that faith alone is enough.

The big deal with point number two is that it allows for someone who believes in Christ (and, depending on who you talk to, is also baptized) to commit any manner of sins, even up to rape, murder and blasphemy, and still go to heaven; OTOH, someone such as Gandhi would go to hell if they did not believe that Jesus was their savior (and been baptized), despite a lifetime of Christ-like behavior and good works done in the name of whatever God they believe in.

(And yes, I've had Christians very sincerely agree that this is so, however regrettably, and if I don't like it...well, tough noogies and don't forget to pack the marshmallows for the eternal bonfire I'm going to end up in.)

This I have trouble swallowing. And, given the scripture above, it would even seem that the Bible itself is somewhat vague and internally contradictory on this issue, since it is likewise other Bible verses that support the "Halloween XXVII - Mike Meyers Goes To Heaven" scenario. ("He that believeth and is baptized shall be saved; but he that believeth not shall be damned." Mark 16:16)

For my part, I can't imagine a God (that I would willingly worship, anyway) that would condemn Gandhi or any other Godly person to hell simply because they weren't Christian, despite their earthly track record of Godly or Christ-like behavior, while allowing in any number of vicious, snarky, self-righteous, criminal-minded, Federal-Building-bombing, clinic-doctor-murdering, Waco-children-burning or serial-killing yahoos for whom it just so happens that somewhere, in the back of their minds, their childhood training that said Jesus is Lord (and their subsequent baptism with all their friends during Vacation Bible School) made an lasting impression.

At the very least, it seems like under that particular theological nightmare, hell is where all the good people will be, while heaven will be a monsterous mashup of horror films that will make Freddy vs Jason and Alien vs Predator look like Teletubbie outtakes, all wrapped in a whirlwind of Divine name-dropping. (Anyone remember the old 'Nuke A Gay Baby Whale For Christ' bumper stickers? Yeah, like that.)

Dunno where I'm going with this - basically, I'm just commenting on a rather disturbing twist of Biblical logic that I have now found equally Biblical rebuttal for. Which, of course, makes the whole thing just crystal frakkin' clear.

Anyone else got a take on this?

From an article in my inbox today, an insightful look at how money management habits indicate and create a person's wealth.

Here's how the poor play the game of making money:

The poor go to work to earn money. They pay their taxes and spend the rest. All their discretionary income goes to the latest toys. If not to toys, it's to eating, drinking, smoking, or gambling. This keeps them poor forever.*

Here's how the middle-class play the game of making money:

The middle-class go to work, earn money, pay their taxes, and spend the rest. A home, a pool, a bigger home, a little for retirement. They seldom become rich.

Here's how the rich play the game of making money:

The rich go to work and spend most of their money to build an asset base. They pay taxes on the rest. (Often less tax than the poor pay! They know how to play the game well.)

*[Soni says: Insulting? Yes. True? More often than not. I would add to this list any escapist habits, such as spending 'left over' money on movies, drugs, lottery tickets, shopping network binges, get-rich-quick schemes and so on. And I'm not talking out of my ass from on high - I've been poorer than most of you, to the point of eating out of Dumpsters and being homeless more than once, so I know whereof I speak]

Now, while this is highly nutritional food for thought on financial wealth, it's also a good metric against which to examine what we do with our spiritual wealth. When you get a spiritual windfall (a sudden epiphany, a prayer answered, a timely bit of Divine intervention, a glance into what could be, a deeper understanding of some previously abstract issue, a moment of clarity about the gap between what you want and what you'll have to do to get it, etc), what do you do with it?

Do you just keep on keeping on, taking any windfall as your due or ignoring insights for fear what they mean or what they could lead to (or, just as likely, turning away from the work and change that would be involved in taking advantage of them)? If so, you'll probably stay poor in spirit despite rivers of Divine pearls being cast before your porcine snout, doomed to spend your life struggling to run faster than the ankle-biting Chihuahua of disaster. (definition: "casting pearls before swine")

Do you accept and even welcome such wonders, but use their insights, advantages or second chances simply to feather your earthly nest or add to your aquisitions or status without applying what you've learned to your spiritual growth: maybe writing a best seller about your experiences (not to share the wonder of God or to help others, but to make a few bucks while the fish are biting) or using your new-found insights to make your life on earth easier without a commensurate application to the growth of your spirit (nothing sells like success, especially when seasoned with Divine intervention)? If so, then you will remain forever spiritually middle-class - aware of what could be, but too gold-struck by the here and now to be capable of building toward the eternal other.

Or do you embrace such gifts and use them to reexamine your life, to build upon an already growing platform of spiritual practices and contemplations and to reach out to others who could benefit from your trials and experiences (whether there's money in it or not)? If this is your modus operandi, then you are truly rich in spirit and will only continue to get richer as time goes on.

So what's your investment strategy for your spiritual wealth? Are you building enough principle in strength, love, compassion, integrity, piety and devotion to live off the interest, or are you just barely managing to scrape by from miracle to miracle? Somewhere in between?

Just as in financial investing, it's all in your hands. You get to make the call about what you do with each and every penny from heaven. But don't take my word on it - I'm just a happy and fairly successful investor. Talk to your Broker today.

From Instapundit.com -

Osama bin Laden's standing has dropped significantly in some key Muslim countries, while support for suicide bombings and other acts of violence has "declined dramatically," according to a new survey released today.

From Suketu Mehta's NYT op-ed, "A Passage From India" (Need a log-in code? Get one here) -

There is a perverse hypocrisy about the whole jobs debate, especially in Europe. The colonial powers invaded countries like India and China, pillaged them of their treasures and commodities and made sure their industries weren't allowed to develop, so they would stay impoverished and unable to compete. Then the imperialists complained when the destitute people of the former colonies came to their shores to clean their toilets and dig their sewers; they complained when later generations came to earn high wages as doctors and engineers; and now they're complaining when their jobs are being lost to children of the empire who are working harder than they are. My grandfather was once confronted by an elderly Englishman in a London park who asked, "Why are you here?" My grandfather responded, "We are the creditors." We are here because you were there.

The rich countries can't have it both ways. They can't provide huge subsidies for their agricultural conglomerates and complain when Indians who can't make a living on their farms then go to the cities and study computers and take away their jobs. Why are Indians willing to write code for a tenth of what Americans make for the same work? It's not by choice; it's because they're still struggling to stand on their feet after 200 years of colonial rule. The day will soon come when Indian companies will find that it's cheaper to hire computer programmers in Sri Lanka, and then it's there that the Indian jobs will go.

Ouchie.

Great piece, well worth the read both for it's road-rash inducing insight and it's powerful language that comes straight from the heart.

On a tangential note, if history plays true (and we refuse, once more, to learn from it's stories) look to the next generation's jobs to be going to the poor developing nations that America is currently vampirically snacking on as we suck out their natural resources, import mandatory Western ideals without the economy to support them and turn a blind eye to corruption in our hand-puppet regimes as long as our corporations are well supplied with cheap labor and a lax regulatory board.

Perhaps our children would do well to brush up on their Farsi.

Although he writes primarily about how to succeed in internet business, I noted a few spiritually resonant tidbits in internet business guru Pat O'Bryan's blog post, The Gold Zone:

You can make a good, even a GREAT, living by solving other people's problems. It pays well, and it's karmically good for you.

[snip]

It's good for me. I used [his book, "The Absolute Beginner's Guide to Internet Wealth"] to build a large and responsive list. I also get the psychic benefits of helping a lot of people- I like that.

So, I make money and I help others. Perfect niche.

You see, this ties into a long-standing belief I've had that the notion that you have to suffer, do without and otherwise make an abjectly piteous spectacle of yourself in order to remain pious, spiritually grounded and untainted - to seemingly do penence for the affrontry of having been born - is pure horse hockey.

Of course, I'm not advocating greed - addiction to anything, be it drugs, money or late night infomercials, is a poor substitute for life. But true and delightful prosperity, created in integrity and shared generously with others who aren't so lucky isn't a sin - it's a sacrament.

And I'll tell you why.

Tithing.

Now, I'm not talking about the value you return to the community by putting aside a portion of your income for those in need, although that is certainly a foundation of true prosperity and holiness, and one that grows in reach and impact as you prosper.

What I'm talking about is the concept that creating prosperity for yourself by way of providing genuinely valuable services and products for others is a tithe of your true divine potential - that by doing what you were designed to do and by so doing making the world around you a better place, you are reaping the rewards of your soul's true nature and at the same time passing on the results of that true nature to others in the form of stuff that makes their life better. In other words, offering others a tithe of the worth of your soul.

And of course, there's the ability to create an ever expanding tithe of your essential success and influence that's tied to that as well. As you become more and more successful, not only are you able to give back to others in the form of wealth (which is an amazing feeling, I can tell you) but you are also able to give back to others in the form of personal influence: your connections, mentorship, insider assistance, reputation, and so on. The right name in the right ear at the right time, your celebrity crowd-drawing ability for the charity events of your choice, the ability to help others leap over tall obstacles in a single bound - all of these are the tithe you give others from the account of your success.

In all spiritually enlightened societies and times, it has been the practice for those who could to joyously help those who couldn't - for those who were blessed with fertile fields to raise extra to provide for those whose crops were poor (and to leave the fallen grain from the harvest for the gleaners, who were poorer yet); for those who were strong of arm to revel in their ability to help the weak; and for those who were able-bodied to put aside time to aid the infirm.

Likewise, it's my opinion that God invests some of us with the ability to make up the shortfalls of those less well-gifted in the realm of success, prosperity and wealth, and as such we have a responsibility to use, develop and share that potential (and the fruits of it) with those less fortunate whenever we can.

Maybe you can do this through internet sales success, like Pat does. Or maybe by inventing the ultimate mousetrap for whatever problem people are having. Or maybe just by being the world's greatest CPA who works tax-time magic and pulls everyone's fat out of the fire for a fair and honest fee.

Whatever it is, do it with love and enthusiasm, and do it well. Make your first few million and refuse to feel guilty about it. Use that wealth and influence for your own and the greater good, and have a ball doing it. I haven't even made my first million (although I do tithe regularly and joyfully) and so far the ride's been a hoot. I can't wait to see what it's like when it picks up speed.

Wow.

That's all I can say right now.

Wow.

And what has stirred this spate of speechlessness, this state of awe? Is it an image of the Virgin Mary toasted into the side of my burrito? The announcement of a new electric toothbrush so technically advanced that it's sentient? Did I finally get to rub noses with Pierce Brosnan?

No, no and (sigh) no. And yet, wow.

It's simply this -

General Electric's Citizenship Report - 77 pages of fact-dense copy justifying their corporate existence based not on their profitability and fiscal soundness, nor on their ability to buy off the governing bodies of small, third-world countries in the name of productivity and cost-cutting, but on the fact that they have, essentially, done the right thing. In fact, not only have they done the right thing, but apparently they've got the right thing oozing out of their pores like a protective fog of righteous pheremones.

...Given GE's status as a management trendsetter, its tome will likely up the ante for others. The proof lies in the advance orders: GE says it...has requests for copies from rival companies looking to write their own big books of citizenship.

-- WAG newsletter

Now, don't get me wrong. I'm not one to wax rhapsodic about corporate writing. And GE is far from the first to put one of these things out. But they're one of the biggest.

And 77 pages of "we're doing the right thing and our stock is kickin' it" is a hell of a heady brew for the for the rest of the corporate world to wake up and smell, especially when their stockholders begin hearing about it and reading it and sending emails to the main office with questions like "Why aren't we doing this?" in the subject line.

In other words, it's not the honking great paperweight of dead trees that's got me flabbergasted. It's the fact that I've lived to see the day when the big blue-chip corporations find such actions - and the egregious display of proof of such - absolutely vital to remain competitive, viable and functional in today's reality.

And they're right. It is. Glancing over their stuff, the first thought that bubbled up through my consciousness was "I gotta buy some of their stock." Cha-ching!

Doing what's right really, really works. And GE's proof that the big guys in the corner office are really, really beginning to get that.

Wow.

Okay, call me old-fashioned, but this is just sickening.

Via Boing Boing, here is a beauty pagent site that holds a contest for "Photoshop enhanced" pagent shots.

Two things:
One - Is it just me or do these photos make your hair stand on end, too? At first, I thought it was some sort of parody site, that maybe the enhancements were supposed to mimic some jokey- kitchy figurine series that I hadn't heard of. Reading further, however, I was disabused of this notion by the guidelines for the Free Monthly Photo Contest rules. This is serious folks, not a joke (check out a professional photog that makes a living doing these). At this point, I am just ill. These people are so far gone into their own little world that they don't even recognize how creepy this all is - these photos really represent their ideal of beauty. God have mercy on the souls of their children.

Second - look at the little girls, the really young ones. Now, I'm not even going to offer a sliver of excuse for paedophiles doing what they do, so don't even go there on me. But can anyone say "live bait?" I'm sorry, but you dress grade-schoolers like this and you can almost forgive some poor souls with questionable or clouded sanity for not recognizing that they are not ripe for picking.

Now, I have nothing against natural beauty and the illustrative artistic representation of such. But my God, some of these children (both on this site and the photog linked above) look tastier than a $500 whore. And the $5.00 cousins of those expensive treats are about the only place I've seen eyes that blank and that empty. Excuse me while I try to avoid reprocessing my lunch.

Is this what we've come to in America - that the ideals of beauty have become so disturbingly twisted that the slightest hint of personality, life, individuality, asymetry, depth or spark are such a black spot on beauty that only digital manipulation can offer absolutions for the sin of individual expression?

Are we so hung up on sexual allure as the hallmark of youth and attractiveness that even in pagents where the competitors are too young to go to school, the difference between a national winner and second best is the ability to make a Madison Avenue call girl look positively low-rent?

And are we so lost in our own fear of age, 'ugliness' and death that we would force an entire generation to grow up thinking that this unspeakable parody of attractiveness is what they have to create, personify and maintain in order to be considered "winners" and to deserve the approval, attention and adoration of others?

I was wrong. This is a parody site. A parody of all that is good, beautiful and right about childhood, self-worth and love. Unfortunately, the joke is on us.