Culture

Yesterday was "Quit Facebook Day." People pledged to quit Facebook due to concerns about their privacy. In recent weeks there have been many concerns raised regarding Facebook's privacy policies, but one group of people who benefit from the openness of peoples' online information is divorce lawyers, as reported by CNN: "Facebook is a great source...

We’ve all had moments when we’ve wished the ground would open up and swallow us. For one family in Quebec that’s exactly what happened.  According to reports on CNN.com a 500 yard sinkhole opened up threatening five homes in the town of Saint-Jude.  One home was sucked into the hole and a family of five lost their lives.  They were in the...

"What's the price of happiness? For an average Briton, it's a home worth 500,000 pounds and an annual salary of 42,000 pounds, a new study has revealed." (rediff.com Business) For some perspective, the Global Rich List website tells us that a person earning £42,000 per year (approximately $62,500US) is in the top 1% richest people in the world. Elsewhere,...

Success is:______. How would you fill in the blank? "That's easy," you might say. "Success is ... for an athlete, winning the Super Bowl, the World Series, or a gold medal: for an entertainer, winning an Oscar, a Grammy, or an Emmy; for a businessperson, being a top executive with one of the Fortune 500 companies: for a university student, being...

I used to work with a very wise woman named June. June had seen a lot of life and I loved listening to her stories.  One thing that stuck with me the most had to do with change.  She said quite simply “Don’t try to change other people.  The only person I can change is me.” She was talking about how tempting it can be to try an alter...

If  you could wish for anything in the world, what do you most desire? Take a minute and dream big.  If you could write the story of your life any way at all, what would it look like? What would you give in exchange for the satisfaction of that longing? We all long for something more – and it’s not necessarily the things you can buy at the...

It might surprise you to learn that the tradition of fasting has very little to do with food.  In many religions including Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, and Buddhism fasting is a spiritual discipline.   Abstaining from all food, or certain foods, is more about spiritual focus than diet. In his article, “Fasting: Is it Healthy?” Darren...