Sin's ability to disintegrate the soul is the subject of a book by a Duke professor named Dan Ariely. In The Honest Truth about Dishonesty: How We Lie to Everyone—Especially Ourselves, Ariely is astounded by how widespread tendency is to cheat, be self-centered, lie, and be deceitful.

Ariely says, "Over the course of many years of teaching, I have noticed that there typically seems to be a rash of deaths among students' relatives at the end of the semester. It happens mostly in the week before final exams and before papers are due." Guess which relative most often dies? Grandma. I am not making this stuff up.

Mike Adams, a professor at Eastern Connecticut State University, has done research on this. He has shown that grandmothers are ten times more likely to die before a midterm exam, and nineteen times more likely to die before a final exam. Worse, grandmothers of students who are not doing well in class are at even higher risk. Students who are failing are fifty times more likely to lose Grandma than non-failing students. It turns out that the greatest predictor of mortality among senior citizens in our day is their grandchildren's GPA. The moral of all this is, if you are a grandparent, do not let your grandchildren to go to college. It'll kill you, especially if he or she is intellectually challenged.