An armored truck driver recently admitted to stealing $15,000 from his truck.

Upon his dismissal, the man's boss told reporters who had found humor in the story, "It happens all the time."

It's there every day. Sitting behind you. Bags and bags of cash. The opportunity is always there.

So does the profession of "armored truck driver" really attract a more malicious individual, or do the temptations of those job responsibilities simply bring out the criminal within you?

Or put differently, is Kobe Bryant innately immoral and an adulterous wretch - or might you eventually break to countless women perpetually begging to sleep with you every night?


Were the guys at Lehman brothers innately immoral - or did they just have an easier opportunity than most?

Ever pirated music? Are you immoral? Or was it just really easy to do?

Are we good because of our innate goodness or because of a lack of opportunity to be all that bad?

I don't care if you vote for my guy.

But I refuse to let you think you're voting for a "slash-and-burn budget cutting extremist" when their most drastic budget actually increases our federal spending over the next 10 years.

I refuse to let you think that just cutting the "pork", the "waste", without touching social security, defense spending or medicare, does anything of real significance to solving our long-term budget problems.

You can vote for whoever you want. As long as you can separate your candidate's fiscal rhetoric from objective fiscal reality.

I'm typically bothered when someone uses the phrase, "That's just the way I am."

Because typically, this is an excuse for one's lack of moral progress.

I'm just a little racist. I'm just a little lazy. I'm just a lot chauvinist.

Well, the "way you are" might suck. How dare you pretend you're stuck there.

What if financial planning companies paid homeless people to wear custom-designed and branded t-shirts that said something like,

"If I had saved through Edward Jones, I wouldn't be here right now."

As a marketer, I loved this idea. As a human, I see it as borderline evil.

As a capitalist, I can see the win-win. The homeless guy has a job opportunity (despite it being demeaning, there aren't too many other viable options right now), and Edward Jones gets HUGE PR from it.

Plus, Edward Jones offers all of their new homeless workforce free job training/pre-professional education to mitigate the backlash.

I kind of think this should happen?

We instinctively recognize the power of unity. And so we call for it.

We ask individuals to unite together for the good of our country. Our church. Our workplace.

But, the "what" we are to be united behind is often left unsaid. Because it's so obvious?

And yet, I have absolutely no idea what it is.

An assumed foundation of what America is supposed to be? An assumed design for how the local church might best function? An assumed vision for what all our colleagues are working together toward?

The problem is - I think we have very distinct visions. Wholly and mutually exclusive.

And I'm not sure a call for unity can take place until it is determined what we can all get behind, believe in and be willing to fight for.

There was a 50% drop in domestic violence from 1993 to 2008.*
There was a 50% drop in physical and sexual abuse against children from the early 90s to 2007.*
There has been an 85% drop in rape since 1991.*
Divorce rates have been falling for the past 25 years.*

Through information saturation and glossy screens, we now have an up-close and personal look at the depravity that exists - forgetting it has always existed.

The world is actually getting better. We just see the "worse" more clearly.

*Reason, April 2012 p. 46-47

My daughter is 1.

And if you could PROMISE me that if we were to take her to the gym for early morning workouts 6 days a week for the next 14 years, that she would be absolutely guaranteed to win an Olympic gold medal...I still wouldn't do it.

I think these kids are crazy. I think their parents are crazy.

One person in the world gets their dream come true - and their life peak occurs at the ripe age of 15.

The rest are given the consolation prize of little to no freedom or fun throughout their childhood, and the resulting chronic depression that stems from getting beaten out by that one said person.

I don't get it.

But it sure is fun to watch, since in my head, they're not real people.

20 years ago, Siskel and Ebert were the most practical movie filter we had. Two thumbs up, and you'd probably enjoy your trip to the movies that weekend. Two thumbs down was a warning to stay away.

It was a very helpful system.

Of course, over time, you started learning that when Siskel and Ebert disagreed, you tended to regularly side with one or the other.

Perhaps Ebert's single thumbs up was a better recommendation to your personal preference than the aggregate of the two?

Therein lies the problem with digital recommendation engines like Pandora. Because an aggregate of Bon Iver fans are not going to be nearly as similar to me in their musical tastes as an individual I can find among them.

It's why a news site's "Top 10 Most Read Posts of the Day" are rarely your top 10. As an individual, you just don't have enough overlap with the aggregate. And until Pandora robots REALLY get you, human filters are going to be better at picking out great things.

Until recently, my primary music filter had been Paste mPlayer, a wonderful weekly exposure to new music that I pay $2.99 a month for. Absolutely worth it. But, then my friend Carl Ryan sent me his May 2012 Spotify playlist.

Carl lives in L.A. and has worked in the music business since college, first at Warner Bros. and now at Interscope Records. He eats, sleeps, breathes music. He's at a different concert every night. And we have a lot of overlap in our musical preferences.

His monthly Spotify playlists are simply better than my Paste mPlayer subscription. And he's doing it for free on his own, just to organize his favorite new music for himself.

There's something big here. And it seems kind of old school. Heck, Roger Ebert was doing this in 1980.

We just need to start finding our own Roger Ebert for movies, music, technology, food and everything else.

Recently, when rumors arose that Penn State may potentially remove the 900-pound bronzen idol of Joe Paterno from outside Beaver Stadium, a mass student rebellion rang out in support for JoePa.

And from the outside, none of us could understand what they were thinking - still in support for this fallen man, this proven myth?

But, we see this all the time. Next week, you will see massive Russian pride when the Summer Olympics begin. You will see athletes from every country have pride in that which we don't understand.

Nationalism causes you to overlook that which outsiders see so clearly.

During college, I remember hearing a story about a guy who threw away his computer.

He was so serious about sexual purity, he decided to get rid of his greatest temptation to give in.

I remember thinking that was pretty stupid.

Not the desire for purity of course. That was admirable.

But, I remember wondering whether getting rid of the temptation altogether was the same thing as overcoming it?


For, I can chain you to a wall in order to prevent you from making foolish decisions.

But, is that the end-game?

Do we rid the temptation or learn to overcome the flesh altogether?