SEVEN DEADLY VIRTUES

Hi! This is Wally Oblong, with an interim report from the MusicLab at the Center for Peripheral Studies.

Since the first of this year, there've been a half a dozen bustups about whether or not a plaque inscribed with the Ten Commandments can be displayed in US courthouses. Now the charter of the Center for Peripheral Studies forbids our taking a *legal* position on this particular controversy.

But, ever on the lookout for unforseen consequences, we believe we may have found a way to leverage the attention it has brought to bear upon some of the basic standards or principles by which we are supposed to live.

Becuz what ARE the Ten Commandments? Programming! Software! And for a long time, or so we're told, they really worked in getting people to do the right (and NOT do the wrong) things, just like clean code will when it's used on the machine it was written for.

But what happens to those machines? When was the last time YOU used Windows 3.1 or System 6 with Multifinder? That's right: time like an ever rolling stream bears all its sons away, and with them the software which programmed their lives. You snooze you lose. Gotta upgrade.

This has already happened with the Seven Deadly Sins. Think about it: Pride, Envy, Gluttony, Lust, Wrath, Greed, Sloth? The Seven Deadly Sins? Excuse me, these are the SEVEN KILLER DRIVERS OF THE MARKET ECONOMY! Pride feeds ambition, Lust sells *everything*, and Greed -- for want of a better word -- is GOOD. Envy drives competition, Wrath rides the airwaves, and you tell me the difference between Gluttony and all you can eat.

As for sloth, is it not the inspiration and goal behind the entire productivity movement? -- more output for less effort: you got a problem with that?

Life is change; how it differs from the rocks! And unless you're a rock, change has just gotta be on your agenda. But it's hard to remember these things without a plaque. So here in the MusicLab at the Center for Peripheral Studies, we've devised a prototype upgrade for another major life-directing program: the Beatitudes -- the first of its kind, as far as we know.

Our model here is not the bronze plate nailed to the wall but the commercial jingle, or, to use a particularly vivid Germanism, the ohrwurm -- ear worm. A song!

Maestro...?