Here is the follow up piece to Monday's post on balancing work and leisure. In it, success guru Michael Masterson talks about trading in his "I've scheduled 15 minutes for fun Thurday after next between 4 and 5" kind of life tfor a "If it ain't fun, I ain't doing it" alternative.

So, how does he plan to do that and still maintain that cutting edge, multi-millionaire success guru level of existence? Check out his "life is for fun" plan for yourself. (Scroll down to the "Today's Message" segment.)

A new addition to the freaky world of science meets enlightenment - Dr. Bruce Lipton's new book, Biology of Belief:

The Biology of Belief is a groundbreaking work in the field of New Biology. Author Dr. Bruce Lipton is a former medical school professor and research scientist. His experiments, and those of other leading-edge scientists, have examined in great detail the processes by which cells receive information. The implications of this research radically change our understanding of life. It shows that genes and DNA do not control our biology; that instead DNA is controlled by signals from outside the cell, including the energetic messages emanating from our positive and negative thoughts. Dr. Lipton92s profoundly hopeful synthesis of the latest and best research in cell biology and quantum physics is being hailed as a major breakthrough showing that our bodies can be changed as we retrain our thinking.

Basically, the gist of the tome is this - the instructions your cells get to do what they do (whether that is rev up, multiply, die, go haywire, or whatever) comes not from some mysterious "within" but from outside, specifically your thoughts and beliefs.

In other words, those goofball metaphysicists on Art Bell have one thing right. You literally are (or will become) what you think, feel and believe. Of course the tin-foil-hat guys are still high up on the crazy list, but you can't win them all.

Hanford Area Tests Find Plutonium in Fish, Mulberry Trees

Radioactive contamination in public areas surrounding the Hanford Nuclear Site in Richland, Washington is higher and more geographically widespread than previously thought, according to a report today from a government watchdog group and a chemical data firm. The Government Accountability Project (GAP) and Boston Chemical Data Corporation issued a study that includes the first reports of plutonium in clams and fish in the Columbia River.

The report includes evidence that radiation levels in mulberry trees are higher than previously reported, and that strontium-90 has entered the ecosystem in high levels.

"This is hard evidence that points to past Department of Energy reports as being inadequate to protect the people of southwest Washington and northern Oregon," said Tom Carpenter, GAP Nuclear Oversight Campaign Director.

Yum yum - toxic berries. Okay, scratching the "enjoy the scenic wilderness of Washington" off my list of things to do - ever.

Check out Steve Jobs' exceedingly forthright and inspiring commencement speech to Stanford.

...for the past 33 years, I have looked in the mirror every morning and asked myself, "If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today?" And whenever the answer has been "no" for too many days in a row, I know I need to change something. Remembering that I'll be dead soon is the most important thing I've ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life, because almost everything--all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure--these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart.

Apparently the guy is making up for some serious karmic backlogs, but aside from that his message to the grads (cliff notes version: shit happens and guess what - that's where the best stuff's going to happen to you in your life) is dead-on, low on the BS quotient and high on "get over yourself and learn to embrace the chaos" clarity.

All that and Nemo, too. Now that's my kind of guy.

Mark Daniels provides an alternative and refreshingly vitriol-free Christian view on the Supreme Court's ruling on the public display of the 10 Commandments.

As a purely spiritual matter, I believe that the display of the Ten Commandments on public property may be:

(1) Contrary to God's will;

(2) Destructive of a positive witness for Christ.

The cause to which every Christian is called to be committed--sharing the Good News of Jesus Christ's death and resurrection and their power to give new life to all who follow Him--is not something that we are to "farm out" to the government. Each follower of Christ is to embrace this as part of their personal mission.

For we Christians to insist that tax dollars be used in what often is an act of proselytization not only violates constitutional principles, but Biblical ones as well. It smacks of coercion, of using one's status in a community to force our views on others. Scour the Bible from cover to cover and you won't find God ever sanctioning the coercive imposition of our faith on others. In fact, we're called upon to share our faith with compassion, with humility, and with respect for those with whom we differ.

I'm with Mr. Daniels on this issue - the less I see of any religion marking out territory in the halls of civil justice, the better I feel about the security of the knot in Justice's blindfold. And let's be honest - if you feel that you have to shove your religion into everyone's face at every opportunity, then it's hardly a resounding testament to said religion's intrinsic appeal, now is it?

Additionally, as Daniels points out, the current cultural concept of America as a Christian nation is in fact a highly a changable reality. Given immigration, minority birthrates, fashionable philosophical drift, public availiablity of other religious teachings, paediphiliac priests and so on, there's no reason to think that in 50 years it'll still be that way - and I don't think those currently pissed at losing this power to freely proselytize would be particularly happy to see Muslims, Buddhists or Jews (or even worse, Scientologists) hauling the old Commandment plaques out to make room for their own versions, should they gain the majority.

Maybe this is the birth of a new golden rule: Never ask for legislated favor that you wouldn't want to see in the hands of others.

In Friday's Early To Rise, a personal success newsletter that I love, http://earlytorise.com/_pages/_daily-archives/062006/06242005.cfmsuccess guru Michael Masterson writes about changing the way he views work (scroll down to the "Today's Message" section).

Every so often, while visiting business projects in third-world countries, I'll hear someone say something like, "People here don't know the meaning of hard work."

It's not true. And if you understand how it's not true, you'll have the key to unlocking your mind and allowing yourself a great deal more freedom in how you work and how much leisure time you give yourself.

This piece offers some good tips for fine-tuning your work-life balance. There's a great complementary piece that came out in today's edition that explores the philosophical issues surrounding our culture's unnatural and arbitrary division of work and fun. I'll link to it when they get it up on the archive.

Second ping for Seth tonight, catching up to stuff I missed over the past few days out of town. Here's what he has to say about the way we shop and why he thinks the comfortable disconnect between our wallets and our souls is beginning to falter as we see the power of our actions on a global scale.

What happens when consumers use the power of their money to make their feelings clear? What happens to Chick-fil-A or Bennetton when every purchase becomes a political act?

None of this used to matter very much. Corporations had far less power and were far less global. Their actions were more contained--you probably didn't have programmers in three continents and factories on four. And the competition for dollars was much less severe.

I think that's about to change.

An update on the whole government not funding NPR biz that I blogged about last week, this news:

After massive outcry and public protests, Congress restored 100 million of the proposed $200 million cuts in a party-line-trampling vote. Not a complete turnaround (some funding for childrens' programing, like Sesame Street, were left unfunded among other things), but given the fact that most people had nearly conceded that we'd have to pry any funding for NPR out of the cold, dead hands of conservative Republican budget-busters, the magnitude of this miracle is along the lines of, while not quite being able to book a luxury ice-skating vacation in hell, still being able to build some decent snowmen. Brrrrrr....

Next on the agenda - trying to restore Big Bird's funding in the Senate.

How did your Representative vote? Check it out the roll call for that vote (an aye vote is a vote to preserve the funding). Don't like what you see? Let your Congressman or Congresswoman know how you feel.

In the mail today -

God builds his temple in the heart on the ruins of churches and religions. -- Ralph Waldo Emerson, writer and philosopher (1803-1882)

Here's an article on restoring the wealth of Africa to it's people by doing away with the rampant colonialistic profiteering by foreign powers.

In this piece, the author explores the idea that the reason Africa is so poor is not because of it's massive international debt (although that doesn't help matters any), but rather because all of it's natural resources are being funneled off-continent to line the pockets of foriegn corporations like Shell Petroleum. It's sort of like how big chain stores deplete local communities of their cash by sending all the profits to a distant central HQ, only on a global scale.

The radical concept espoused by this author: let the people of Africa be the ones to profit from the wealth of Africa. Gee - there's a thought.

Gordon Brown has a new idea about how to "make poverty history" in time for the G-8 summit in Scotland. With Washington so far refusing to double its aid to Africa by 2015, the British Chancellor is appealing to the "richer oil-producing states" of the Middle East to fill the funding gap. "Oil wealth urged to save Africa," reads the headline in London's Observer.

Here is a better idea: Instead of Saudi Arabia's oil wealth being used to "save Africa," how about if Africa's oil wealth was used to save Africa--along with its gas, diamond, gold, platinum, chromium, ferroalloy and coal wealth?

This is what keeps Africa poor: not a lack of political will but the tremendous profitability of the current arrangement. Sub-Saharan Africa, the poorest place on earth, is also its most profitable investment destination: It offers, according to the World Bank's 2003 Global Development Finance report, "the highest returns on foreign direct investment of any region in the world." Africa is poor because its investors and its creditors are so unspeakably rich.