Strange as it sounds, the recent collapse of the economy was predicted in a nursery rhyme. Every child in past generations learned it, although I don’t know if they do now.

For want of a nail the shoe was lost.
For want of a shoe the horse was lost.
For want of a horse the rider was lost.
For want of a rider the battle was lost.
For want of a battle the kingdom was lost.
And all for the want of a horseshoe nail.

But what are these values, exactly?

If they are in the spirit, people turn their thoughts to love on Valentine’s Day. It would be fitting to honor someone who never took his thoughts away from love: Rumi, A.D. 1207-1273, the greatest of Persian poets. No one has made more sense of ecstasy, raising the fleeting impulse of passion into something permanent and abiding.

The dust of the centuries hasn’t dimmed Rumi’s amorousness, which began with the flesh and ended with God. Actually, that’s not right. His passion was for the flesh and God at the same time, without the slightest gap between them. In the middle of one verse he burns for his lover:

Last column I painted a grim picture of science’s dark side. A trend toward diabolical creativity began with the atom bomb in 1945 and has only accelerated since then. But it’s not just weapons of mechanized death that cause the problem. Science has long demanded that it be separate from ordinary morality. Medicine marches on unscathed after a drug like Thalidomide produces thousands of deformed babies. Pesticides march on after the serious ecological damage of DDT. Surgeries that have never been properly tested, like the radical mastectomy, thrive as standard practice for decades.

Is amoral science the same as good science?

By Deepak Chopra and Ken Robinson

It’s a sore temptation to hunt down Osama bin Laden - one of the most consistent campaign promises made by President Obama - and yet there are strong arguments against it. U.S. forces would have to penetrate deep into provincial Pakistan and perhaps even conduct house-to-house searches. Such incursions would destabilize Pakistan’s already shaky regime and inflame the extremist element. More troops would have to be committed to the Afghanistan war zone, with no positive outcome in sight. And making a martyr of bin Laden would probably incite a crop of new terrorists as deadly as he and his cohorts.

On the day that George W. Bush made one last attempt at a feel-good, don't-blame-me farewell, Eric Holder said that waterboarding is torture. The two events made a jarring juxtaposition. On the one hand a stubborn, reactionary president threw both of those qualities in our face. On the other hand, the incoming attorney general began the long process of undoing the worst effects of the Bush years.

In mid-February, the Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of Sciences and the Bravewell Collaborative are convening a “Summit on Integrative Medicine and the Health of the Public.” This is a watershed in the evolution of integrative medicine, a holistic approach to health care that uses the best of conventional and alternative therapies such as meditation, yoga, acupuncture and herbal remedies. Many of these therapies are now scientifically documented to be not only medically effective but also cost effective.

Israel's massive assault on Gaza is the worst sort of déjà vu all over again. As news commentators wearily point out that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is a never-ending story, there are shifts in that story. The most important one: George Bush's decision to studiously ignore the whole problem. For eight years the U.S. has abandoned its responsibility to broker peace. The result has been an ongoing catastrophe. No one needs reminding of that.

“For 2009, your first resolution should be, ‘ I will make relationships the first priority and consumption the last.’ That’s the most important thing you can do.”

Read more Words from Deepak in the archives