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.

And you thought cigarettes were bad for you - new study shows potato chips contain dangerous levels of cancer causing chemicals.

A California consumer legal group is campaigning to require warning labels on potato chips, saying they contain a chemical known to cause cancer and state law requires the warnings.

The chemical in question, acrylamide, is formed when starchy foods are baked or fried at high temperatures. Acrylamide is listed by the California Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment as a chemical known to cause cancer.

According to the Oakland, California-based Environmental Law Foundation, tests it commissioned found levels of acrylamide in many of the nation's most popular potato chip brands far exceeded the levels requiring warning labels under California law.

Cape Cod Robust Russet potato chips exceeded the required warning level by 910 times, while Kettle Chips Lightly Salted chips exceeded the level by 505 times, the group said.

Come on folks - you know junk food is no fit offering to the temple of your body to begin with. Do you really need another reason to lay off the Lays?

The local paper has a column called "Speak Out" which is the published results of a phone-in message center where readers can call in and express their opinions, concerns and views on various going's on.

Given the local population, it gets pretty hairy sometimes. For example, a year or so back there was an actual ongoing debate on whether or not we could change a local resevoir-created lake (all of 12 feet deep in some places) into a body of salt water (by the addition of a lot of cattle salt blocks) for the purposes of importing humbacked whales to pick up tourist money. I shit you not. There was also one guy who called in to complain about the birds in the park who had buzzed him and apparently disturbed his toupee. Not only did he want something done about these dangerous and obnoxious creatures, he made it quite clear that if nothing was done by the city, one day Jesus was coming back and then we'd see about those birds. Needless to say, it's an interesting column.

Recently, there has been a lot of back and forth over welfare, medicaid and so on - mainly along the lines of "they're all just lazy slackers trying to get all they can for free, and they should just keep their legs shut, get a job and quit whining." How very...enlightened.

Anywho, I got all het up and wrote a bona-fide letter to the editor lambasting this petty-mindedness and referencing several religious tenets that are shared by a near unanimity of the population (the midwest is not exactly reknown for its diversity and religious variety). Took a week, but they actually ran it yesterday. I even got a nice call from some happy reader who really liked it. Cool.

I'm including the letter below, if you're interested. I'd link to an online copy, but they don't put editorials in their archives. Note in my signature at the bottom that I whipped out the rev on them (yeah, I'm an ordained minister - I just don't make a big deal about it for most occasions). Here in the Bible Belt, that sort of title confers some degree of credibility over the general rabble and I was unabashedly out to boot rear and take names.

It's not my best work (reading over it, I can see a little disjointedness in the argument and some places I could have made a stronger case) but it got the job done. Anyway, I feel better. :-D

Now if we could just do something about those damn birds.

Dear editor

It is with dismay and frustration that I have been reading the exchanges in the local Speak Out column regarding use and abuse of the social services systems. In many of the responses there has been a grasping, brutish and almost gleefully taunting attitude of "touch noogies" that I find hard to reconcile with the fact that many people in this community, and in this country in general, claim to be Christians and follow the teachings of that elevated soul.

In a country this resource-rich, this technologically advanced, and this heavily populated with purportedly deeply spiritual people committed to bringing the reign of God down onto the earth, why shouldn't there be free and easy access to health care, child care and basic life support for anyone who needs it? Why shouldn't anyone who wants to pursue higher education to enrich themselves and the world around them be able to do so as a matter of course? Why do we balk at providing the members of our society with the very things that we know make a society stronger, richer and saner?

It can't be a matter of belief. Perhaps I wasn't paying as much attention in Sunday School as I should have been, but at what point in the Bible did Jesus require the leper to 'earn'� his cure, or the blind to prove their right to their sight before healing them? How did I miss the part of the story of the adulteress where he picks up a stone and joins in with her persecutors, enlightening her with the righteous insight that if she didn't want to suffer the consequences of her actions, she should have kept her legs together? And I'm afraid I must have slept through the part of the loaves and fishes story where the disciples set up a checkout stand to make sure that everyone paid for their meal before getting their sticky fingers on any of the grub. I mean, sheesh - if those slackers wanted to eat, they should have brought something from home, right?

Of course, the objection is often made that although someone may be a Christian, we cannot expect them to be as perfect as Christ in their actions. And this is quite true. But it is also quite true that this is often trotted out as an excuse to go with our first knee-jerk attitudes of superiority, discrimination and fear of loss rather than facing up to the challenge of leaving these destructive habits behind for a better way. Let's face it - doing the right thing is hard work. Especially when it's so danged easy to just forsake and forget.

And surely we cant be objecting to the cost, since the investment to savings ratio is so high. One recent study published in the American Journal of Psychiatry in Nov. 2004, showed that certain basic nutritional deficiencies (a situation that food stamps help prevent) can result in a 51% increase in antisocial and violent behavior in children by age 17. And it's not just intangible rewards we reap. In fact, a study quoted in the October 1998 issue of National Geographic pointed out that for every $400.00 invested in a single mother, the state of Utah discovered that it saved $400,000.00 over the lifetime of her child in other social service expenditures. Of course, those are 7-year-old figures and no doubt the numbers themselves have changed since then. But I doubt the ratio between them has wandered far too off the mark.

That's a thousand-fold return, folks. If there was a stock out there that was quoted as bringing in even a quarter of that, the same people who complain about 'wasting'� money on social services would be selling their grandmother's christening dress on eBay for the money to buy in. But why would they do that? After all, if we the people are expected to fair for ourselves in the cold, hard world shouldnt businesses be expected to do the same, without us hard-working folks carrying them around on our back by purchasing stock?

Of course, those stocks pay us back in cash dividends (if were lucky), and those quarterly checks make a substantially bigger impression on our attention than the 'invisible'� savings that increased social services would provide in lower taxes, less crime and cheaper health insurance (since uninsured patients often can't pay and wait until an injury or illness is serious before seeking care, hospitals raise rates all around to cover the gap, and that results in insurance providers raising premiums to cover their costs). Like the environmentalists say, there's no 'away'� to throw the trash; what you refuse to someone today will simply be taken out of your pocket tomorrow - with interest.

But if caring for each other is a basic tenet of our espoused beliefs, and the end result is to save us far more money than we invest upfront as well as providing ourselves and our children a safer and more peaceful community to enjoy those saving in, why is there still this undercurrent of anger, resentment and gnawing stinginess at the prospect of being our brother's keeper? I vote for fear. Fear that there won't be enough for everyone, that life is a zero-sum game - anything you get is less for me.

But generosity and compassion come from love, and love can only multiply our resources, not divide them (just ask any parent of more than one child). For our sake and the sake of the community we live in, we need to let go of our fear - the fear that says "anyone else's gain is your loss"� and that convinces us that other people deserve to suffer for their mistakes or flaws, perhaps because we've had to suffer so much for ours. We also need to wake up to the stark reality that if God hasn't pulled the plug on someone else's oxygen supply yet, maybe that's a hint that He views their life as somehow valuable or even vital to His grand work. And that the quality of their life and their future might just end up affecting the quality of our own.

As the Missouri Department of Social Services says on their web site, "A true measure of a society is the extent of its concern for those less fortunate - its intent of keeping families together, preventing abuse and neglect, and encouraging self-sufficiency and independence." By this measure, I think we are falling far, far short of the mark.

Of course, it's your life - if you want to fill it with fear, mean-spiritedness and parsimony that's your choice. But just remember that the world you create today is the one you have to live in tomorrow. And that doesn't exactly sound like heaven on earth to me.

The Rev. Soni Pitts

Edit: Ack - sorry for the MS Word crap-code random character generator effect. I think I got them all.

In the morning hear the Way; in the evening die content. -- Confucius

Insightful guy, that K'ung-fu-tzu (Confucius). I wrote about a similar concept in my article Is Your Life Ready For Groundhog Day which explores living life in such a way that every day is self-contained perfection (although it took me a few pages to get my point across - I'm nowhere as erudite as the Master).

And as an addendum to all of the above, I'll throw in Ashleigh Brilliant's exquisite advice on making your life smoother and more interesting:

"Try to relax and enjoy the crisis."