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A colleague sent me this morning a column from the New York Times by Thomas L. Friedman. The column was an excerpt from Dr. Friedman's newest book, The World Is Flat: A Brief History of the Twenty-First Century. The excerpt was the most important document I've read in five or more years. I immediately ordered the book. I suggest you do as well. (Clicking on the link above takes you to Amazon.com where you can order it and painlessly help support this blog.)

Here are some of the juicier excerpts from the column:

Read the rest of the story

My wife and I got home from LA last night after spending an unplanned additional night there. Well, it was unplanned by me; she had it in mind from the beginning. It was a good intuitive choice on her part.

Marianne Williamson was quite good. Gary Zukav's presentation was a disappointment but not, I think, because of him. I went in with an expectation that was completely wrong. He undoubtedly delivered well what he expected to deliver.

I've learned a few things.

New SF 49ers Head Coach Mike Nolan told his players yesterday that the team goal for this season is to win the NFC West. Right. This team went 2-14 last year and, unless it drafts one of the two top college quarterbacks (which I suspect it won't), will be playing with a marginal signal-caller in a modestly tough conference, is going to win it all.

Not this week, coach. Not this season, either.

I expect the Niners to be respectable this year, probably break .500 (which will be tremendous progress) but win the conference? Dream on, Nolan.

I've spent a few hours tonight starting the revamp of my main personal Web site, converting it to my home base for my new career as a spiritual teacher and writer.

Over coming weeks, I will be spending increasing time on that site, including an offshoot blog where I'll concentrate on spiritual issues. This blog won't go away, though. I'm still interested in writing about sports, politics and other issues.

Visit my new site, though, if you're interested in that side of my life.

My wife and I arrived at our hotel an hour late for a conference we set out early enough to be three hours early for. We spent more than two hours on "the" 405 (why LA folks put a definite article in front of a highway number is beyond me). Beep and creep the entire way. That drive, I was assured, would take 30 minutes in light traffic, 45 in heavy. Two hours.

We wouldn't have been in that heavy traffic, I suspect, if it weren't for "unusually heavy" traffic on 101 South heading into LA. In addition to the usual Santa Barbara bottleneck, we were stop-and-go all the way through the Ventura area and most of Ventura County.

And don't get me started on the drivers here who are oblivious, insane and rude all at the same time.

I made a decision. I'll never, ever drive to or in LA again. In the future, if something drags me here, I'll fly. If I can't fly, I'll just stay home. No more of this. Yeesh.

My wife and I are heading to Los Angeles by car today, spending the weekend there. Net access and time will be scarce, so I'm not sure how much posting will get done.

We're attending spiritual workshops by Marianne Williamson and Gary Zhukav. Looking forward to coming home refreshed and uplifted on Monday.

Terri Schiavo has died. With considerably less dignity and more fanfare than she probably would have liked, but at least her wishes, as best they have been determined in dozens of court rulings, have finally been carried out.

May she finally rest in peace.

The question now is whether the Republican Party will let her enjoy that peace or whether they will use her "cause" to stir up more emotional crud and obfuscatory oratory. My guess? The right-wing elements of the party -- who seem unfortunately to be in nearly unchecked control these days -- cannot let this bone of contention loose. They will find ways in coming days and weeks to keep it in the headlines. This despite the fact that poll after poll shows that the GOP has been badly damaged in the public eye by its ill-considered stance on this issue.

Still, one can hope that sanity finally is allowed a seat at the table of the Right.

Last night's episode of "The West Wing" included an excerpt from a speech by California Republican Senator Arnold Vinick (Alan Alda) that was so gracious and positive that it was clear to me the writers had decided to eschew reality and go for a dream scenario. Next week, I expect Vinick will wake up, discover he said something nice about an opposing party's leader, and go ballistic, shooting up the convention floor with a recently legalized Stinger missile.

Meanwhile, it was nice to hear.

Interestingly, this fictional nicety comes on the heels of Tuesday's reading of former Missouri GOP Senator John Danforth's comments on the precipitous plunge to the right his party has taken of late. In that TV interview, Danforth said something refreshing as well. "As a senator, I worried every day about the size of the federal deficit. I did not spend a single minute worrying about the effect of gays on the institution of marriage."

If only.....

Former Missouri Republican Senator and party leader John Danforth is unhappy that his party has become the political arm of the religious right and he wants his party back.

I suspect we're going to hear a rising chorus of such views in coming months. The GOP really has been taken over by the zealots of the right who believe (erroneously, in my view) that Bush owes his presidency to them and they have a right to collect. To them "collect" means "make America follow our agenda and accept our rules."

A couple of my friends are big fans of the Golden State Warriors of the NBA. They've been raving lately about how much better the team has become this year. At this writing, they've won four of their last five, six of their last 10 and seem to be on a bit of an upswing.

But this is cause for rejoicing?

Their season record is 25-45. There are 12 games left. That means even if they win all 12, which they won't, of course, they'd still fall one short of their best-in-10-years total wins of 38 frmo 2002-03 and just tie their record from last season. Dismal.

Baron Davis looks like the real deal. Mike Montgomery looks like he's starting to get his legs as an NBA coach. But this team, while it may be headed in the right direction, is headed that way so slowly that motion and progress are imperceptible.

I don't agree with everything she writes, but Arianna Huffington nails it for me on Salon.com today.

Democrats need to start listening to critics like her who keep reminding them that moral values aren't the exclusive turf of a narrow, bigoted Right wing, that such values form the core and heart of traditional American liberalism, and that the GOP is pretty easy to hoist by its own petard.

I found it interesting and puzzling that the Rev. Jesse Jackson came out on the side of Terri Schiavo's parents and asked authorities to reconsider a bill that would restore the feeding tube. Jackson is generally on the liberal side of such issues and all the liberals I know -- including myself -- feel strongly that the right to die with dignity is a moral issue that calls out for liberal defense.

Yet here is Jackson, a man I generally respect and sometimes admire, standing with the parents. In his public pronouncements after meeting and praying with them, he did nothing to clarify the rationale for his position. Instead, he offered an emotional appeal involving Ms. Schiavo's "parched lips" and the denial of ice to soothe them.

Tell us why you favor keeping her artificially alive, Jesse. What is the moral ground on which you stand to take this position? What do you wish we would learn? How would you persuade us to think?

I don't get it but I'm willing to learn.

(After I posted this, I read a War Room piece on Salon.com that shed some light on why I was uneasy with Jackson's actions. Ultimately, he's given the right wing the shelter of a credible liberal endorsement of a policy position that was both unpopular and, in my view at least, immoral.

Some 59 former American diplomats from the ranks of Democrats, Republicans and independents have joined forces to request that the Senate reject President Bush's horrendous nomination of John Bolton to be this country's ambassador to the United Nations.

Bolton, an avowed enemy of the UN and a man whose stance on the importance of that body as a tool of American foreign policy only, would send a terrible message to the world if he's confirmed. The message would undo all the good Bush and Conde Rice have been trying to do, with varying degrees of success, since Bush's election in November.

Surely there must be someone out there Bush would find palatable who hasn't already alienated so many of our UN allies and fellow leaders so much that he's a joke.

For many years I was a professional sports writer. For part of that time, I was a college sports information director (SID). I always found college basketball to be one of the most exciting sports around. But I didn't graduate from college as a youth, don't have an alma mater, and as a result I don't have a conference that I really follow. So over the years my interest in NCAA hoops dwindled to zero. I didn't watch a single game this season.

Until today.

When my wife and I came home from church this Easter Sunday I was just too tired to do anything, so I plopped in front of the TV and turned it on. It was tuned to CBS and the North Carolina-Wisconsin game was just back from halftime with the score tied at 44. I decided to watch a few minutes while my wife was changing clothes and doing other wife things.

Before she got to the living room, I was hooked. Before the game was over, so was she. "I didn't think I even liked basketball," she said excitedly as we settled in to watch the closing game between Michigan State and Kentucky.

So now we're getting ready to watch the Stanford women tonight as they take on UConn in the NCAAs and we're trying to figure out how to arrange our lives next weekend to be able to see the men's semi-finals while we're in LA attending a spiritual workshop.

Great games, great excitement. Next season I'm going to pick a conference or a team early on and watch more of the season unfold.

(I went to a Big Ten school so I was pleased when that conference had three teams in the Elite Eight and now two in the Final Four. But I'm far removed from the Big Ten in so many ways now that I'm not sure I can generate real enthusiasm for them. I'm in Pac-10 country but I have no history with the rivalries there. If you were me, who would you pick to watch and why?)

Happy Easter to all of my Christian friends, readers and colleagues. Today, more than Christmas, is the seminal Christian holiday, or more properly holy day.

In my own take at Christianity, which is decidedly mystic and metaphysical, this day symbolizes for me the opportunity we all face every day to resurrect and reinvent ourselves, to leave behind a past whose only power lies in our accepting its ability to influence our lives and to awaken to the Eternal Now Moment which is, after all, the only time we ever really have.

Today I focus on peace -- inner and in the outer -- and on renewal of life, energy, and love. And wish you peace and blessings.

Today's San Jose Mercury carried a feature article in the opinion section on the use of technology to keep closer track of your teens. This includes a couple of chips that can let you track how erratically your teen is driving and what s/he is doing at the time of such bad driving. Of course, Global Positioning Systems (GPS) chips in cell phones were featured, too, as a way of knowing precisely where your teen is when he calls to say he's at a friend's house but is really at the library. Right.

I don't know about you, but having raised four teenage daughters, I'm opposed to these new techniques. Frankly, I already knew way more than I wanted to about what they were doing. My wife was so good at figuring out what was going on with them and calling them on it that it was uncanny. I would also ask her for the "Reader's Digest Condensed Version" of any conversations she had with the girls. This was not because I wasn't interested or didn't care about them or what happened to them. It was because I wouldn't have had a clue how to intervene, help or even support them. They were -- and in many ways still are now that they are adults and on their own -- mysterious to me.

I know. Men don't "get" women. That's true for me, for sure. I can't tell you how many times in my 26 years of marriage my wife has shaken her head in disbelief at my naivete when confronted with what for her is typical and transparent female behavior. But when those women are your daughters, the opacity triples or worse. One of my daughters would say something to me about where she'd been or what she'd been doing and I'd say something politely palatable back only to hear later from my wife that said daughter was not only not where she claimed to be, doing what she said she was doing, she was in a horrible crack-infested shooting gallery with Tony the Brute. Well, OK, not quite that bad, but you get my point.

So if I were raising teenagers in today's climate -- which I grant is hundreds of times more difficult and complex than the one in which I sort of helped raise my kids -- I'd opt out of all this technology and remain blissfully ignorant.

There is, however, one piece of modern technology I'd want them to use.

An ankle bracelet.

Heh heh.

Keep an eye on this situation as it unfolds. A court has apparently ordered the FCC to deal with political advertising on the Internet, including paid advertising and spam email. The FCC says it's reluctant to enter into this messy area and some privacy advocates are up in arms.

Is this the beginning of the descent down a slippery slope of government intervention in the Internet? Maybe, maybe not. But, as I say, it's worth keeping an eye on.

I've spent virtually all of my adult life engaged in some form of communications, most of it for pay but increasing amounts of it solely for the passion of it. I've always figured if I didn't get my message across, it was my responsibility, my failure. If I'm trying to convince you of something and I fail to do so, it seems to me that the problem is mine, not yours. I either didn't communicate clearly or I picked an audience that couldn't be convinced or I picked a rotten topic or example. In fact, I can't remember ever blaming the audience for my failure to communicate.

Well, turns out I was missing something really important. The LA district attorney who failed to convince a jury last week that actor Robert Blake had killed his wife put the blame squarely on the jurors, whom he called "incredibly stupid." He said, "There was a failure in this case. It was not my prosecutor. It was not the work of LAPD. It was the jurors didn't quite get it," he said, conceding, however, "I could have phrased it differently."

Yeah, he could have phrased it, "My prosecutor didn't do his job of convincing these 12 people with no axe to grind that Blake did what we accused him of doing." That's the point of the jury system, isn't it? You failed to meet your burden of proof to the jury. End of story. Stop whining and move on.

Yeesh.

The unfortunate case of Terri Schiavo, the Florida woman who was kept artificially alive for years while her parents and her husband fought in court over whether to suspend the feeding tube points up the necessity of having a written document that tells everyone what you want to have happen to you in such circumstances.

Very few people evidently have signed documents called Living Wills or Durable Powers of Attorney or Advance Health Care Directives. I urge you to consider doing so. Then if you should find yourself for any reason unable to make medical decisions for yourself, you will have provided a clear, written statement of your intentions. You may also designate an agent to make decisions for you in that event.

The best place I've found for downloading the legal forms for creating these documents is here. It has absolutely free forms for many of the states. If there isn't one for your state, Google for it. Don't let your ultimate fate be decided by politicians and judges.

Last night's episode of "The West Wing" continued the show's focus on the campaign to replace Jed Bartlett in the White House. I've really enjoyed this theme, though I have occasionally groused about the tendency it's caused to abandon White House story lines. If you're not following, you ought to.

Alan Alda and Jimmy Smits are about to become the GOP and Democratic Party candidates, respectively, though Smits' character, an Hispanic Congressman named Matt Santos, is locked in a tight battle while Alda's has already locked up the nomination. The writers have made Alda's character, Sen. Arnold Vinnick, seem so believable and real and honest that he almost doesn't seem like a real politician!

Last night, Vinnick's religious life was under examination and he told a gathering of reporters that it was dangerous to ask candidates for public office about their religion. "Most of them will lie to you," he warned, "because it's one of the easiest lies they can tell." He refused the invitation of a former rival for the nomination to appear at his rival's church and pray with him. "I won't use his church for my own personal political gain." Gosh, how I wish we had real politicians with that kind of candor and insight.