Many of us act as if repentance is a matter of the will. [But] we can't "will" ourselves into change. We can't "will" ourselves into feeling contrition or remorse. Repentance isn't doing something about our sin; rather it means admitting that we can't do anything about our sin. We cannot woo ourselves into anything but the most external form of repentance.

All our effort, striving, and willpower have ...

The first time I visited Rwanda, I went looking for monsters, albeit a different category of monster—the kind that isn't relegated to B movies. I had heard about the 1994 genocide that had left one million people dead—tortured, raped, viciously murdered—and somehow I thought it would be easy to spot the perpetrators. I naïvely assumed I would be able to look men and women in the ...

Most of us spend the first six days of each week sowing wild oats, then we go to church on Sunday and pray for a crop failure.

—Fred Allen, U.S. comedian (1894–1956)

Michael Shermer, publisher of Skeptic magazine and author of The Science of Good and Evil, writes:

I once had the opportunity to ask Thomas Keneally, author of Schindler's List, what he thought was the difference between Oskar Schindler, rescuer of Jews and hero of his story, and Amon Goeth, the Nazi commandant of the Plaszow concentration camp. His answer was revealing. Not much, he said. Had there ...

As human beings, we pride ourselves on being the only species that understands the concept of risk. Yet we have a confounding habit of worrying about mere possibilities while ignoring probabilities—of building barricades against perceived dangers while leaving ourselves exposed to real ones.

For example, we agonize over the avian flu, which [as of December 2006] had killed precisely no one in ...

When I was about ten years old, my dad, a medical doctor, received a special gift from one of his patients: a beautiful globe with shiny sequins. The globe spun around on its base and played one of my dad's favorite songs. My dad proudly demonstrated how it worked: grab it by the base, slowly wind it counter-clockwise, and then release it, letting it spin clockwise while playing beautiful music. He ...

Is it possible to play yourself to death? Officials at a Chinese Internet cafe think so ever since a 30-year-old man died after playing a game online for three days. The man collapsed, and paramedics failed to revive him on the scene. About 100 other people using the cafe for Internet purposes left in fear.

China is second only to the U.S. in number of Internet users and is home to millions of online ...

Thank You For Smoking is about the shameless tactics of pro-cigarette lobbyists and their efforts to both protect and promote the tobacco industry.

Lobbyist Nick Naylor (Aaron Eckhart) and his 12-year-old son Joey are having a conversation as they walk through a Santa Monica amusement park.

"So, you go to an office, then you go on TV to talk about cigarettes. Then you fly out to L.A. to talk to some ...

On January 1, 2007, Texas Tech basketball coach Bob Knight won his 880th game—the most by any coach in men's Division I college basketball history. In a press conference after the game, he said: "I did it my way—and when I look back on it, I don't think my way was all that bad."

The movie Comeback Season is about Walter Pearce (Ray Liotta), a married man who has a one-time adulterous encounter with his assistant at work. When he confesses his indiscretion to his wife, she kicks him out of the house. Walter then enlists the help of Skylar Eckerman (Shaun Sipos), the local high school football star, to win her back. In this scene, Skylar asks Walter to explain the slippery ...