In his book The Cell's Design: How Chemistry Reveals the Creator's Artistry, Fanzale Rana gives the following account of the approach used to authenticate a piece of artwork by Picasso, often referred to as The Unknown Masterpiece:

In the early 1970s, a junk dealer came across five ink drawings while clearing out a deceased woman's apartment in London. He hung onto them for several years, [and then] ...

Do you ever feel that if anyone found out the truth about you, you'd be finished? Do you go through life basically trying to convince others that you are something you're not—that you're cool when you know you're not, that you're confident or skillful or good-hearted when you know it's not so?

John Corcoran knows what that's like. During grade school he never learned to read or write, but he ...

Many products are designed to imitate the real thing. There is plastic decking that looks like real wood. Vinyl flooring that appears to be ceramic tile. You can purchase fake fur or jewelry, phony noses, hairpieces, and other body parts. The purpose behind all of these items is fairly obvious, but what about a can of Spray-on Mud?

Spray-on Mud is designed for use on the outside of your SUV. That way ...

If you don't live it, it won't come out of your horn.

—Jazz saxophonist Charlie Parker (1920-1955)

Some churches specialize in generating emotion. The platform people are experts at moving worshipers to laughter or tears. Attenders gradually learn to evaluate the service in terms of the emotion they feel.

In time, however, the law of diminishing returns sets in. Prayers are offered in highly emotive style and bathed in background music. Stories have to get more dramatic, songs more sentimental, ...

According to a recent study, doctrine and church beliefs were found to be the most important reasons why adults switch churches. For those who have regularly attended more than one church as an adult, 89 percent indicated they would select a new church on the basis of what the church says it believes. Next in line of importance is the preaching (87 percent), with the authenticity of the church members ...

Dave Davila, age 24, took a job in Chicago and had to leave his close-knit family in East Moline, Illinois. But family gatherings just weren't the same without Dave. So his mother took a digital photo of him and had it blown up to his actual height—5 foot 8 inches—and mounted on heavy cardboard from a neighbor's new stove box.

So there's Dave, standing casually, hands in pockets, a blue button-down ...

Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest continues the swashbuckling story of Captain Jack Sparrow (Johnny Depp) and his friends, Will Turner (Orlando Bloom) and Elizabeth Swann (Keira Knightly).

In this scene, pirates Ragetti and Pintel are in a longboat on the open sea. Having just escaped from jail, they are headed for Cannibal Island in search of Jack Sparrow's ship, The Black Pearl. Both pirates ...

The film Walk the Line is a biographical story of music legend Johnny Cash. In an early scene, based on Johnny's first audition for a recording contract, Johnny (played by Joaquin Phoenix) and his two band members are in a studio with music executive Sam Phillips. The song they're auditioning, however, is a common gospel tune that he and his band perform flatly, without emotion or conviction. Part ...

In Blue Like Jazz, Donald Miller talks honestly about his evangelistic misgivings before his faith deepened:

I could not in good conscience tell a friend about a faith that didn't excite me. I couldn't share something I wasn't experiencing. And I wasn't experiencing Christianity. It didn't do anything for me at all. It felt like math, like a system of rights and wrongs and political beliefs, but it ...