Chew on that and other tasty questions raised by recent headlines. This week: sinless suicide, the feminine mystique, art and criticism, and unsolicited spiritual advice.

Should suicide be forgivable?
I saw a Rollingstone.com article Sunday morning that Mark Linkous—singer/songwriter and collaborator with acts including Sparklehorse, Danger Mouse, and Daniel Johnston—had taken his own life. Multimedia titanic RS, of course, provided a link to a gallery of musicians lost before their time—Kurt Cobain and Elliot Smith were among the notable suicides. I’m not sure whether the gallery was too morbid, but I am sure of this: The suicidal don’t deserve damnation. Yes, suicide can be interpreted as an extremely selfish act—it can even be interpreted as murder. But I say tragedy overrules all objections: The torment and disparity leading to suicide is prerequisite punishment. The lostest of all lost souls need not carry any further burden.

Why do we obsess over the trivial and dismiss the profound?
Yesterday was International Women's Day. Noting the event, the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe said that peace "can only be achieved with the participation of women as equal partners with men." And last week, U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said international goals "stand in jeopardy" because women still live in poverty. Well, duh. But the question is, why do we only talk about the imbalance and discrimination one day out of the year? Seems like we're short-changing 50% of the population. Instead, we obsess over the trivial. Speaking of the trivial, did we mention the National Enquirer is being considered for a Pulitzer Prize? For a story on Sen. John Edwards' extramarital affair that the tabloid bought and paid for? Yes, you read that right. What is the world coming to? Poor women are ignored 364 days of the year, while a gossip rag is the best that U.S. journalism has to offer. Sigh.

How can artists balance their vocal criticisms with self-preservation?
There’s a great interview with Golshifteh Farahani in the Sunday morning edition of The Observer that also ran on the Guardian online. The Iranian actress that co-starred with Leo DiCaprio and Russell Crowe in Body of Lies two years ago is now a Parisian artist-in-exile after months of interrogation by Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s Ministry of Information for her role in the film, which is highly critical of U.S. policy in the Middle East. Farahani comments on last week’s detention of Jafar Panahi, a film director who was taken from his Tehran home and remains imprisoned, ostensibly for a documentary he was making on the protests of last year’s disputed Iranian elections. She also describes her struggle to find the path between creative courage and self-preservation. That courage, I think, should inspire others to be vocally critical with their art. The absurdity of jailing artists or intimidating them into exile is just a symptom of a larger madness—one where a government finds fault with artists for being politically subversive. It's kind of like finding fault with kittens for having paws.

What? You can’t find spirituality in a book?
Shaman Durek has a direct take on spirituality and some equally concise directions for finding the Source over at the Huffington Post—not necessarily the place I’d expect to find some spiritually refreshing advice, but there you go. Durek equates the mass of church-going, book-reading, class-taking, spirit-seekers to a legion of bobbleheads and says that just sitting and digesting information or listening is not enough. For a larger, more evolved spirituality, one must commit to independent thought, Durek says, and put the resulting beliefs from that thought to the test in real world deed and action. Such was the path of Christ, Buddha, and Mohammad. And for a limited time, it can be yours, too, if you’d just wake up, stop listening, and get yourself out there believing!