My first visit to a health club was in the 1970s. Health clubs were new. My friend Frank told me he had a membership and that I could come with him as his guest for a workout.

When I met Frank at the club, we went into a room filled with weight machines. I'd never seen these things before in my life. Frank called it "the circuit." The idea was to spend a few minutes on each machine, exercising all ...

Among his many virtues, [St. Francis of Assisi] is known for his passionate embrace of poverty. Not only did he forbid his emerging Order to own property, he added this discipline for each of the brothers: "Let none of the brothers … wherever he may be or go, carry, receive, or have received in any way coin or money, whether for clothing, books, or payment for work."

There were few exceptions. ...

For the last 11 years, an anti-lawsuit group from Michigan has held "The Wacky Warning Label Contest" to show the effects of lawsuits on warning labels. A warning sticker on a small tractor that reads "Danger: Avoid Death" took home the top prize in 2007. Kevin Soave, a resident of the Detroit suburb Farmington Hills, submitted the winning label. Carrianne, Jacob, and Robby Turin of Greensburg, Pennsylvania, ...

In Jesus Mean and Wild, author Mark Galli discusses the challenge of repentance in American culture:

I look at myself some days and it's hard to imagine that I am a miserable offender and that there is no health in me [as the Book of Common Prayer suggests]. I go to church. I read my Bible. I help at the homeless shelter once a month. At home, I do the dishes, take out the trash, and don't beat my ...

Haddon Robinson writes about something the apostle Paul could certainly identify with, namely, the tendency of the law to put ideas in our heads:

The law can prompt us to sin. I am told that several years ago a high-rise hotel was built in Galveston, Texas, overlooking the Gulf of Mexico. In fact, they sank pilings into the gulf and built the structure out over the water. When the hotel was about ...

In the Christian life, nothing, nothing at all, can be purchased at the do-it-yourself shop.

—Author Harry Blamires

When our children were young, my husband and I decided we wouldn't watch R-rated movies. We wouldn't allow our children to watch them, so we decided that to watch them ourselves would be confusing to them. We made this decision in good conscience and never regretted it. I found, however, that it made me feel judgmental toward other parents who watched R-rated movies. I began to feel they weren't fully ...

I took a job as an accountant in downtown Chicago. As your basic 9-to-5 bookkeeper, my duties included managing the petty cash. Salesmen would come in from the road and turn in their receipts. I'd give them cash and put the receipts in the petty-cash drawer. At the end of the day, I'd have to reconcile what was in the drawer with the receipts. It was always close, but it never balanced. At five o'clock, ...

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 ...

In May of 2006, the Journal of the Air and Waste Management Association published a study conducted by the National Science Foundation on the side effects of several indoor air purifiers. Surprisingly, the study found that certain ionic air purifiers (those using a process called ozonolysis) actually produce pollution.

Here's how it works. Ionic air purifiers function by charging airborne particles ...