In 2008, New York Magazine ran a comprehensive article about research concerning kids and lying. In one study researchers gathered a group of children together and read them a version of The Boy Who Cried Wolf where the little boy is eaten by the wolf because he lies. In a survey of adults taken before the study, most thought the negative consequences in The Boy Who Cried Wolf would lead the children ...

FOX recently premiered "Moment of Truth," a TV show that wrestles with whether or not anyone is ever willing to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. Contestants are hooked up to a state-of-the-art lie detector test in order to determine whether or not they are spinning lies while asked a series of questions. If contestants tell the truth, they'll win $500,000. To add a little ...

In 2004 Bella DePaulo, a visiting professor at the University of California, Santa Barbara, who specializes in studying forms of human deception, asked college students and members of the community-at-large to keep a notebook to tally up the number of lies they told in one week. By the end of the experiment, DePaulo found that the students had lied at least once to 38 percent of the people they came ...

Benjamin Franklin vividly remembered a visit he made as a young man to see the Puritan preacher Cotton Mather and the life lesson learned. Franklin recalled:

He was showing me out of the house, and there was a very low beam near the doorway. I was still talking when Mather began shouting, "Stoop! Stoop!" I didn't understand what he meant and banged my head on the beam. "You're young," he said, "and ...

Rock star Courtney Love isn't used to waiting in line. She's used to the fame that came with her marriage to mega-star Curt Cobaine of the rock band Nirvana. She's used to the front cover of Rolling Stone magazine (October, 1998), and the wealth that came with her multi-platinum selling albums.

She's used to the black stretch limousine that dropped her off in front of the Manhattan Criminal Court building, ...

1) How long did the Hundred Years War last?

2) Which country makes Panama hats?

3) From which animal do we get catgut?

4) In which month do Russians celebrate the October Revolution?

5) What is a camel's-hair brush made of?

6) The Canary Islands in the Pacific are named after what animal?

7) What was King George VI's first name?

8) What color is a purple finch?

9) Where are Chinese gooseberries from?

10) How ...

When Julius Caesar returned to Rome after many years of fighting its battles abroad, he planned great festivities and triumphal processions to celebrate his victories over Gaul, Egypt, Pontos, and Africa. Each of the four processions took an entire day. His goal was to hold the city spellbound by his greatness.

The cavalcades wound through the streets and ended at the temple of Jupiter, displaying ...

In The Atlantic Monthly, Mark Bowden writes:

What does Saddam want? By all accounts, he is not interested in money. This is not the case with other members of his family. His wife, Sajida, is known to have gone on million-dollar shopping sprees in New York and London, back in the days of Saddam's good relations with the West. His son Uday drives expensive cars and wears custom-tailored suits of his ...

Pastor Ben Patterson writes on the satisfaction of being a father:

Blythe is a desert town on the Arizona-California border. My family and I were on our way back home from vacation when we stopped at a McDonald's in Blythe. Lauretta, my wife, asked me to hold Mary, our eighteen-month old, while she went to the restroom and our three sons romped in the play area.

Picture me holding my daughter, a few ...

"It's sort of exhausting, this self-congratulatory atmosphere in which the movie community lives. It's unbearable. We're not that important in the world, but we certainly all think we are…I shouldn't talk about it, I mean I'm really grateful that my work is recognized…but boy, we've gotten a little bloated. It's so grand and the outfits are so incredible and the critique of how everybody ...