i was buying a plane ticket online the other day—when it was time for me to ‘check out’ the travel site offered me all kinds of add-ons for my time in colorado—but one add-on for my purchase stuck out to me: a carbon offset.

yep, that’s right, i’ll be burning up some fuel on my flight and expedia.com has figured out a way to help me travel guilt free.

i posted recently about my favor for the band TRAVIS and their new disc ‘the boy with no name.’ the second track on the album is called ‘selfish jean,’ a song that upon first listen sounds like the band decided to screw around for a while and sing a little ditty about some guy they know who is a jerk. but i recently stumbled upon selfishjean.com, a site that has been started up in response to this song. at selfishjean.com, you can confess your selfish acts, rank just how selfish you think you are [and others], and then seek forgiveness through pounds [british pounds that is] or penance.

while the site feels much more light hearted than the more popular postsecret.com , it is no doubt aiming for the same thing. It is a venue for confession. this is interesting in a culture where, even in the catholic church, confession is on the decline .

jaime pressly won an emmy for her role in ‘my name is earl’ earlier this month. ‘earl’ is a show whose main character is trying to swing karma’s ledger back in his favor by going back and setting past grievances against people right by helping them out. and so here we are again—our mainstream culture putting this penance/karma/offset idea in front of us.

but does this work? or is peter schweizer from USA Today right—are these just ways we dodge our moral responsibility the first time around? can we really go through life undoing our past with good in the future?