Sam Harris tries to make a case for objective morals in his book "The Moral Landscape". He tries to establish that morality is not subjective, and that it is possible to know with scientific certainty what is moral and what isn't. How does he achieve this? The entire book rests on a assertion about the underpinnings of morality. He states that the well being of sentient beings is the primary value. From this simple axiom he can deduce whether specific actions are either good or bad for sentient beings like ourselves, and thus what is moral.

Twelve year ago I featured in ComputerWorld describing a project I had started to bring invoices and other business documents to the Internet. Since then UBL2 has been developed by OASIS to provide standard XML business document schemas. However, if you ask who is using these schemas you will hear nothing but crickets. What went wrong?

The following was sent to me by email. Written by Regina Brett it is living proof that Stoicism isn't a arcane and obscure ancient philosophy, but is rather available to anyone who questions what is good in life. Regina may not identify herself as a Stoic, but there is little doubt that this is the living heart of philosophy at work.

Most people would take an immediate dislike to the idea of raising taxes. The Government taking more money from hard working New Zealanders. But before you turn off let me suggest a tax that might just save us a bunch of money. Raising the tax on petrol by 50%.