The Josephson Institute, a Los-Angeles-based ethics institute, conducted a character survey of nearly 30,000 students at 100 randomly selected high schools nationwide. Among the findings:

• Sixty-four percent of students said they had cheated on a test in the past year.
• Thirty percent had stolen from a store.
• Forty-two percent said they would lie to save money.
• Eighty-three percent said they had lied to their parents about something significant.

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 ...

If you don't believe in God and the Devil, I wouldn't say you're crazy, but you're intellectually malnourished.

—U.S. author, Norman Mailer (1923–2007)

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 ...

Syndicated New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman, a keen observer of world trends, devoted a recent column to the idea that technology has made everyone a potential paparazzo.

Friedman explains that anyone we encounter could have a cell phone with a camera that could record our actions. If we're rude or misbehave, we could end up on the offended party's blog or MySpace website for the whole world ...

Once upon a time, the annual celebration of Thanksgiving was also an occasion for sober reflection….

Our nation, and its pursuit of liberty and justice for all, has always had enemies, more today than ever. But in earlier times, our nation's leaders recognized that the most dangerous enemy came from within—not traitors, anarchists, or terrorists, but the very people and government committed ...

Dallas Willard writes about a 2-and-a-half-year-old girl in her backyard who one day discovered the secret to making mud (which she called "warm chocolate"). Her grandmother had been reading and was facing away from the action, but after cleaning up what was to her a mess, she told little Larissa not to make any more chocolate and turned her chair around so as to be facing her granddaughter.

The little ...

In 2006, a Russian man named Vladimir Villisov specially designed his own coffin to accommodate his vast collection of pornography. "The girls in those magazines have been my companions for years," said Villisov, 66, "and I want them to accompany me to the next life."

According to an AP-Ipsos poll conducted in March of 2006, the use of profanity in American culture is increasing. Nearly 75 percent of people questioned said they encounter profanity in public either frequently or occasionally. Two-thirds said they think people swear more often than they did 20 years ago.

Not surprisingly, the respondents were more than "hearers of the words." Sixty-four percent said ...