What Matters in Life

1899 inspirational essay by Elbert Hubbard. It is estimated to be one of the highest-selling books in history. It was given to every u.s. Navy enlistee and every u.s. Marine in both World Wars.

In all this Cuban business there is one man [who] stands out on the horizon of my memory like Mars at perihelion. When war broke out between Spain and the United States, it was very necessary to communicate quickly with the leader of the Insurgents. García was somewhere in the mountain fastnesses of Cuba—no one knew where. No mail nor telegraph message could reach him. The President must secure his co-operation, and quickly. What to do!

Some one said to the President, “there is a fellow by the name of Rowan [who] will find García for you, if anybody can.” Rowan was sent for and given a letter to be delivered to García.

How the “fellow by the name of Rowan” took the letter, sealed it up in an oilskin pouch, strapped it over his heart, in four days landed by night off the coast of Cuba from an open boat, disappeared into the jungle, and in three weeks came out on the other side of the Island, having traversed a hostile country on foot, and delivered his letter to García—are things I have no special desire now to tell in detail. The point that I wish to make is this: McKinley gave Rowan a letter to be delivered to García; Rowan took the letter and did not ask, “Where is he at?”

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Tags: Entrepreneurship

A friend of mine was reading a letter to a newspaper from a reader who was involved in an extramarital affair with a high school girlfriend. This reader was asking for advice on what to do since he loved both women, and feared his wife suspected what was going on since she had recently grown more distant towards him.

My heart sinks when I hear stories like this. Sometimes I wonder why we spend years studying all kinds of diverse subjects that bear no importance in the eternal scheme of things only to have the greatest misconceptions on the subject that we seem to care the most about: love. The word love is ubiquitous and, in our culture, seems to wear all kinds of meanings with the greatest ease. It can mean craving for a delicious Sicilian Cannoli dessert, desire for the latest line of Armani fashion clothes, or lust for the latest young Hollywood bimbo; often all at the same time. There surely seems to be a lot of Continue Reading »

Tags: Love, Selfishness

A few days ago, george w. bush accused Iran of being a threat to the world. Speaking in Abu Dhabi, the third stop of his tour of Arab allies, Bush said Shi’ite Muslim Iran was the world’s number one sponsor of terrorism. Continue Reading »

Tags: Bible, Christians, Mass Media, Terrorism, War

This interview with dr. maurice hilleman, chief of the Merck pharmaceutical company’s vaccine division was cut from the TV program The Health Century because of its potentially disastrous social, humane, and legal implications. Continue Reading »

Tags: cancer, diseases, Immune System, Merck, vaccines

The word “bible” derives from the Greek “Ta Biblia,” which means “The Books.” It is the sacred text of Judaism and Christianity and arguably the most influential book of all time. Throughout the centuries, people of all countries have been enthralled by the importance of its message and the beauty of its literature, and scholars have been devoting to it an entire apparatus of critical analysis—called biblical exegesis—which has been approached in two ways: on the one hand, Jewish and Christian scholars approach the Bible with the belief that it is the inerrant and inspired Word of God; on the other hand is the critical scholarship, whose origins go back to the medieval period and reached their peak with the German scholar Julius Wellhausen in the nineteenth century; its purpose is to convey Continue Reading »

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Tags: Bible, Biblical Exegesis, Book of the Law, Moses, Pentateuch