Free Republic

DECLINING house prices, rising job layoffs, skyrocketing oil costs and a major credit crunch have brought consumer confidence to its lowest point in five years. With a relatively long recession looking increasingly likely, many American families may be planning to tighten their belts. Interestingly, restraining our consumer spending, in the short term, may cause us to actually loosen the belts around our waists. What’s the connection? The brain has a limited capacity for self-regulation, so exerting willpower in one area often leads to backsliding in others. The good news, however, is that practice increases willpower capacity, so that in the...

New Year's Resolutions: Why You Can't Keep Them by Richard Deem Why is it that we make New Year's resolutions, but fail to keep them within the first month of the new year? Some will say that you lack the willpower. Others have given up making New Year's resolutions altogether. The fact is that all people lack the willpower to keep all but the easiest of resolutions. The Bible makes the claim that the reason why we are unable to do what is good because we are, by nature, sinners.1 In fact, the Bible claims that we are born sinners.2...

EDITOR'S NOTE: The following is adapted from Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld's speech yesterday at the American Legion National Convention. The American Legion has achieved a great deal for our country since its founding in the months following World War I. That year, 1919 turned out to be one of those pivotal junctures in modern history - the beginning of a period where, over time, a very different set of views would come to dominate discourse and thinking in the West. A sentiment took root that contended that, if only the growing threats that had begun to emerge in Europe and...

A DECADE ago when I was an undergraduate psychologist, a departmental librarian called Anne was doing something any psychologist would say was impossible. Every year, with near-perfect accuracy, she would predict which third-year undergraduates would be awarded first-class degrees. Anne didn't know how their essays were rated, what A-level grades they had under their belts, or how they scored on IQ tests. (All information many would say was essential to forecasting final results.) All she knew was how often she had seen students in the department library: reading course notes, photocopying journals, borrowing books. And the handful of students who...

COMMENTARY: KATHLEEN PARKER Food for thought: Eating should be pleasurable Kathleen Parker July 16, 2003 Acareful reading of the day's headlines reveals this poetic tension: God and America's tort lawyers are on opposite sides of the war on fat. Playing his parenting role as surely he intended it, God is inspiring people such as Lucille Johnson of Denver to take personal responsibility for her actions. Johnson is one of 150,000 overweight Coloradoans who have joined the "America on the Move" program, vowing to walk 2,000 extra steps per day and to eat 100 fewer calories. Although the program isn't church-affiliated,...

"Let's Hope the Prophets of Doom Stop Talking About Resignations" VATICAN CITY, JULY 2, 2002 (Zenit.org).- John Paul II won't let his physical problems stop him, Cardinal Ersilio Tonini, archbishop emeritus of Ravenna, Italy, said in an interview with the daily La Repubblica last Sunday. Q: Cardinal Ersilio Tonini, were you surprised by the Pope's homily yesterday? Cardinal Tonini: "I have never doubted his strength and will power. And yesterday he confirmed it once again. The Holy Father is strong, despite his health problems, he will never resign. Let's hope that the prophets of doom will be at peace and...