Word: lies
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...Western country is threatened. The present war in the Middle East is actually a war against international terrorism and the Iranian regime, which is a threat to all of the West. One day the world will recognize the importance of that fight and Israel's essential contribution. Aurélie Simonet Geneva, Switzerland The College Gender Gap Barbara Ehrenreich's essay about boys goofing off at college while girls are overachieving was nothing more than the flip side of the stories during the 1950s and '60s that claimed women went to college only to find husbands [July 31]. I didn...
...taqiyya, the practice of hiding one's religious faith under life threatening circumstances. Taqiyya evolved during the early centuries of Islam, when Shi'ite Muslims faced persecution for their minority status at the hands of majority Sunnis. The concept is not, as sometimes described, carte blanche for telling lies or promoting one's interests, but rather a moral pass to tell one very specific lie (?I am not a Shi'ite') expressly to avoid being killed. From this ancient practice that is today irrelevant (in Iran at least, where no one is persecuted for their sect), modern Iran observers sometimes...
Private companies like No Lie MRI face legal hurdles too. So young a technology has almost no chance of clearing the admissibility bar in criminal cases, limiting its value to potential customers in law enforcement. And the Employee Polygraph Protection Act of 1988, which restricts the circumstances under which current or prospective employers may use existing lie-detection technology, will probably apply to fMRIs...
...lie-detection techniques are likely to remain in the same ambiguous ethical holding area as so many other privacy issues in the twitchy post-9/11 years. We'll give up a lot to keep our cities, airplanes and children safe. But it's hard to say in the abstract when "a lot" becomes "too much." We can only hope that we'll recognize it when it happens...
Others may lie for more practical reasons. In 1965, when handyman Albert DeSalvo told police he was the Boston Strangler, he confessed to having brutally murdered 13 women. Some experts now suspect that DeSalvo, who at the time was in custody on lesser charges, hoped the lavish claims would bolster his rep in prison and save him from execution via an insanity plea...