Paradise Spell. Half of our 2007 New Years’ resolutions have already crashed and burned. Health club memberships are up, attendance has begun to slack. Americans are like Jay Gatsby who “believed in the green light… that year by year recedes before us.” We’re “motivated by the Paradise Spell,” as David Brooks puts it, “by the…

Implicit answer. The best companies, according to consultant Nikos Mourkogiannis, invest in something greater than strictly bottom-line concerns. Red® is an example. It’s not a charity but a company that sells red iPods, phones, credit cards, and clothing apparel. Their purpose is to invest some of its profits to buy and distribute antiretroviral drugs for…

Wipe out. 37-year-old Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs recently flew back from Toronto to be with his girlfriend Kim Porter while she gave birth to his twin girls – D’Lila Star and Jessie James. Diddy already has two sons – Christian, 8, with Porter, and Justin, 12, who live with his ex-girlfriend, Misa Hylton-Brim. This isn’t Lifestyles…

The world is flat. Using fiber-optic cables, advanced compression technologies, and aeronautical work force software, Boeing has set up a twenty-four hour ‘round-the-world workday (two shifts in Russia and one in America). In Russia 1,000 engineers, formerly with different Russian aircraft companies like Ilyusian, Tupelov and Sukhoi, pass engineering plans back and forth with American…

Boring. “Have you read a good Buddhist novel lately?” That question was put to a friend of mine years ago by a Princeton University PhD candidate. Her thesis focused on early Japanese literature (including Buddhist stories) and frankly it was pretty boring stuff. Buddhism lacks one element that makes any story compelling. Ironically, that same…

Horror. Katie Mason was a nine-year girl visiting a Connecticut summer fair with several of her playmates. Her mother, Joan, briefly left Katie with the other mothers as she crossed the road toward a concession stand. Just then she heard a commotion behind her…

Horror. Katie Mason was a nine-year girl visiting a Connecticut summer fair with several of her playmates. Her mother, Joan, briefly left Katie with the other mothers as she crossed the road toward a concession stand. Just then she heard a commotion behind her…

Innocently blind. On business trips, he would spend several hours praying and reading the Bible each morning, with another round of prayers at midday. As a ship captain, he enjoyed long spells of solitude on deck, keeping a diary and recording that he knew no “calling that… affords greater advantages to an awakened mind, for…

The greatest evil is not done in those sordid dens of crime that Dickens loved to paint. It is conceived and moved (seconded and carried and minuted), in clean, carpeted, warmed and well-lighted offices, by quiet men with white collars and cut fingernails, and smooth-shaven chins, who do not need to raise their voices.1 Not…

Imagine there’s no Heaven It’s easy if you try No hell below us Above us only sky… John Lennon was right – it is easy to imagine no heaven or hell… and no god. Atheists imagine this all the time. And they seem to be enjoying a mild resurgence in popular media.