The last division of the Tertiary system is known as the Pliocene period. It was during this period that the great land masses of the world took on forms much like those of the present day. Although the seas still covered many areas which are now dry land, the great bodies of water were gradually becoming less and less extensive. This is shown by the limited number of remains of Pliocene sea life which we find stored as fossils in the rocks of the period.

Vast mountain-making movements, which began in the Eocene period, continued during the Pliocene. In Europe, for example, the mighty Alps were still in the process of being formed. In North America the Rocky Mountain region and the eastern part of the continent were being elevated. Many of the famous volcanoes about which we have read, such as Mount Etna in Sicily, show signs of great activity during the Pliocene period. The geysers and bubbling hot springs of Yellowstone National Park are the result of the violent volcanic disturbances that occurred during the Pliocene period.

In a great many ways the animal life of the Pliocene period closely resembled that of to-day. In fact, some of our present-day animals have come down to us from that far-off age almost completely unchanged in form and structure. Hyenas, wolves, bears and bison roamed the countryside. Fleet- footed deer, the hipparion (the three-toed horse), and long-necked camels fled before the ferocious attacks of the sabre-tooth tiger. The hippopotamus, tapir, wild boar and rhinoceros were also present during the Pliocene period. The mastodon, the great elephant-like beast that appeared in the Miocene period, lived on into the Pliocene of Europe and disappeared only late in that age. In America he continued to exist on into the Pleistocene period that followed.

Pliocene deposits have revealed a few scant indications that man may have existed at that time. Among the best known of these remains are those of Pit Izecant hro pus erectus, found in Java in 1891, and Sinanthro pus pekinensis, or Peking man, found in China in 1929. These early men knew how to make fire; and certain stones found with their remains may have been formed into implements of various sort by hand. These stones are known as eoliths, or “dawn stones.” It is not altogether certain that they were worked by hand. They may have been given their shape by purely natural action.

Toward the close of the Pliocene period the climate gradually turned colder and colder, a sign that the next age of the earth’s history was approaching.

This next period, called the Pleistocene, was the first section of the Quaternary, iii which we are now living. It is distinguished by the remarkable climatic changes which occurred, transforming whole continents into fields of ice. For this reason it is often called the Ice Age.

The climate grew colder than it ever had before. The snow fell in great quantities and became packed into vast ice-sheets a mile or more thick. From Canada, Greenland and northern Europe these ice-sheets, or glaciers, slowly spread south. A great ice-sheet covered England, filled the basins of the North Sea and the Baltic, and extended through Middle Europe as far as Silesia, Galicia and Poland. Enormous glaciers filled the Alpine valleys, and descended from the Pyrenees into Spain, while glaciers penetrated even into the heart of France. Practically all of Canada was under an ice-sheet, at least two miles thick in places. In the United States the ice covered New England, New York, northern New Jersey and Pennsylvania, and most of the region between the Ohio and Missouri rivers. In the Far West there was another ice-sheet. The mountainous regions of South America and Asia were also covered.

All Living Things Fled before the Advancing Ice 

Animal and plant life was unable to stand the bitter cold brought on by the glaciers and began to move towards milder climates in the south. It is difficult to imagine plants moving, but they really can if they are given sufficient time. However, it is an extremely slow process.

These arctic conditions passed away and the climate grew warmer. The glaciers ceased to spread over the world.

Plants began to move northward to those lands in which they had once flourished. They were followed by the animals who were dependent upon the plants for their food supply. This climatic change was only temporary, however, and again a period of ice and snow set in. It seems indeed likely that there were several glacial periods separated by intervals of warmer climate; certainly there are indications that the ice and snow alternately advanced and retreated more than once before they finally retired to the North. They left behind them many signs of their great force.

Ice Sheets, Thousands of Feet Thick, Marched Over Europe

In Europe the great distributing centre of the ice and snow seems to have been Scandinavia. From the high table-lands there the ice advanced over Europe in all directions, but the ice-sheet covering Great Britain, though joined with the Scandinavian ice- sheet, was independent, and slid down its own mountains and valleys. In the Scottish Highlands the ice-sheet was tremendous, and filled up valleys and lakes and fords, accumulating to a height of 4,000 or 5,000 feet. Mountains 3,000 feet high, with deep lakes at their bases, show marks of ice up to their summits.

In Canada there seem to have been three separate sheets which ran together, called the Labrador, the Keewatin, and the Cordilleran sheets. All of them came down into the United States.

As all these enormous ice-fields and glaciers moved along they brought about considerable geological changes. Huge masses of moving ice ground up the rocks over which they passed, and converted their surface layers into a mixture of clay, sand and stones known as boulder clay. As they carried the boulder clay along with them the sand and stones acted like great sheets of emery paper, and still further ground down the rocks. The glaciers even scoured over the floors of seas and lakes, and carried shells of shellfish in their further journey overland.

How the Glaciers Carved the Face of the Earth

There can be no doubt that the moving ice-sheets wore down the rocks to a considerable extent. We find everywhere rocks scratched, eaten away, ad polished, and the great masses of boulder clay sugest that enormous destruction occurred. Not only were rocks worn down, but they were often broken off, crumpled and bent by the weight and pressure of the ice. Thousands of lakes in Canada and the United States owe their origin to the ice-sheets. On the other hand, many lakes which existed during the period have now disappeared. The Great Lakes, once larger than at present, are of glacial origin.

When the ice-fields and the glaciers melted they naturally gave rise to streams and torrents whose rushing water continued the work of destruction. The direction of many streams was changed. Many of the waterfalls which now furnish power go back to glacial times. How long since the ice-sheet receded we can only guess. Few scientists think it was less than twenty-five thousand years.

Man and His Struggle to Exist in a Hostile World

Through all these changes man persisted. Flints, tools and skeletal remains are found in Pleistocene deposits, showing that man made great progress during that period. He must have had a hard fight for his life, but he managed to survive. He had to fight not only the glaciers but also the many formidable animals that then roamed the world. In this period the English Channel and the Irish Sea and the North Sea were all dry land and Britain was joined to the continent. The whole of northwestern Europe was overrun with elephants, mammoths, the wooly rhinoceros and the hippopotamus. Bears and hyenas were particularly plentiful in England. There were also great herds of reindeer, elk, bison, red deer and wild horses. All these man must have fought and hunted, and in the caves of the IJordogne Valley in France are found the bones of reindeer, elk, bison and other animals killed and eaten by the cave-men of those days. Even mammoths and bears fell a victim to these early hunters, for their bones are also found in the cave larders.

As man became better acquainted with the world about him, he developed a more advanced culture. Great strides were made in the fields of religion, social organization and the arts. In some of the caves of Spain and France are found remarkably life-like drawings of the animals hunted by early man.

Other drawings hint at religious ceremonies and rituals. On pages 192 and 193 some of these drawings are reproduced.

For tools, weapons and other implements to help him in his daily life, man first used naturally-formed stones found in stream- beds and along the shore. Later he discovered that these stones could be made into more serviceable implements by shaping them artificially. To be sure, his first attempts were crude, but as time went on he learned to become quite expert at chipping beautiful knives, arrow-points, axes and many other useful articles from stone. Still later he learned to polish these implements until they almost looked as though they bad been shaped and finished by modern machinery.

With each forward step, man slowly but surely became master oxer the other animals that had ruled the earth before him for millions and millions of years.

The Pleistocene period shades gradually into what we call the Recent or Human Age, and all the time there have been changes and redistributions of life. The mammoth has disappeared from America, the sabre-tooth tiger has gone, the elephants have departed from Europe. Such changes are still slowly going on. The wolf, among other animals, is doomed to extinction; even races of men are disappearing. Some animals are increasing in numbers and others are changing their haunts and habits. In many cases the march of civilization, more than nature, is responsible for these changes.

The surface of the earth, though in its larger features much the same through the Quaternary, has also been changing. It is changing still; the mountains are still being worn down into the sea, and under the sea new mountain ranges may still be in the process of formation.

The virtual world of Second Life has a real economy where real people are making real money. And now some of those people are getting ripped off by a black market economy of knock-offs as their creations are being stolen by the Copybot created by libsecondlife. The Copybot was supposed to be a useful tool, but the script was modified by someone outside libsecondlife and is being used to copy objects without an owner’s permission.

Libsecondlife is an open source software project. The idea behind the project is to understand how SL works and provide a toolset that allows the creation of third party applications capable of integrating Second Life with the rest of the internet. The Copybot is one of those tools and after much protest from the SL community, LindenLab, the makers of Second Life, have declared malicious use of Copybot to be a violation of their TOS. Violators will be expelled.

The Genie Is Out Of The Bottle

Name brand knockoffs and counterfeit products have plagued businesses in the real world for centuries. From twenty dollar Gucci bags to shady guys with raincoats full of cheap Rolex watches, black markets have thrived and expanded to make fraudulent versions of everything from software to electronics, furniture, and clothing.

Knockoffs are very profitable for their makers. There’s a definite lack of quality in counterfeit products and in some cases a lack of safety standards in their construction. In recent years, knockoff manufacturers are increasingly making a real effort to infiltrate the market, not as knockoffs, but under the guise that they are selling legitimate products. The reason is simply to make much higher profit margins.

In the virtual world, creating knockoffs is easy, which makes it potentially even more profitable. Once a snippet of computer code is copied it can be duplicated endlessly without cost. Although the Copybot only copies objects and not the scripts that animate or bring life to them, new versions of the bot with increased capabilities can’t be too far away.

Protecting Yourself Against The Copybot

Like the endless war between spammers and anti-spam software, this is likely to be an ongoing struggle.

A few programmers have developed scripts which shout out instructions to any avatar that comes near them. The instructions tell the Copybot script to stop running if it’s present. The problem with these scripts is that they add a great deal of automated spam to any conversation. And they have already been circumvented by patched versions of the bot.

The biggest tools in the war against unauthorized copying are LindenLab’s commitment to expel offenders and the vigilance of Second Life citizens to find and report offenders. Neither of these efforts will completely erradicate devious use of the Copybot, but they will slow down the crime rate. The future will involve complex theft-combatting tools yet to be written. It might involve groups of vigilante script warriors taking on the task to hunt down and stop Copybot crime lords.

The only thing for sure … somewhere inside the virtual world of Second Life, reality is setting in.

In 2005, Frank Warren started an experimental art project called PostSecret. Since then he has recieved over seventy five thousand postcards - each with a secret to tell.

You have to wonder what secret Frank’s mail carrier has to tell.

The secret behind the success of PostSecret is one of human nature. And on so many levels. People have secrets. Being able to tell someone those secrets releases some of the burden. Telling secrets through art forces you to spend time with them, think about them, and deal with them. Anonymity makes it easy to release them. Community makes it clear that you’re not alone.

The sense of community created by PostSecret is probably the most important thing the site has achieved. It’s not known how many people have found a glimmer of hope in the fact that so many other people have secrets. Many people have written in expressing thanks to the site and for the Hopeline link on the site. 

My Secret is Frank Warren’s second book; a compilation of selected secrets that have been sent to him as creative homemade postcards. You can get My Secret: A PostSecret Book on Amazon. There are secrets to make you laugh, cry, cringe, wonder, and as always, hope.

Do you wish you were an expert gift shopper? Have trouble figuring out what the right gift is for someone? Has it turned you into a giftcard guru? The answer is simple. Good gift shoppers don’t ask questions, they answer them. If you can answer one of the following questions, you can find the perfect gift for anyone:

1. What do they love? Everyone has hobbies or passionate pursuits. Anything that encourages someone to follow their passion makes a great gift. Whatever they are totally into, look for the newest thing or accessory that just came out, or an old hard to find item. You might find a great book on the subject or tickets to an event. You might even find a gift that supports their passion by taking it into a new direction.
2. What do you love about them? Every person on the planet has their own unique set of quirks and character traits. This is more about what you see in them than what they see in themselves. If there is something they always say or do, you can find a gift that reflects that. Answer this question and you will always find a very special gift for someone. It’s the kind of gift that makes a person say “I don’t know why you got me this … but I love it!“. After you explain why you chose that particular thing, they love it even more. And they have some new insight into themselves.
3. What do they need? When you go over to someone’s house, if there’s something they never have or have enough of, that’s a great gift idea. The things they always borrow from you … great gift idea. In both cases you’ll find something practical, usable and both of you will have a good laugh. Maybe they don’t need a particular thing but they could use your particular talents to get something done. You can step in and volunteer your time and services with a custom gift certificate that they can cash in to you.
4. What do you think they would love? Sometimes you can’t answer a question specifically and the best thing to do is stop looking for something. Browse around with a clear and open mind and trust that feeling you get when you see something you think they would love. It’s always easier to find something when you’re not looking for it because it could be anything.
5. I’ve failed. Now what? When everything else fails, think gift card. The secret to giving gift cards is to get one at a store the person shops at often or can’t afford to shop at. And don’t just put it in a card. Wrap it up in a little package with some little extra thing - a gizmo, doodad, knick-knack, trinket, stuffy or whatever that’s cool, cute, or funny.

Finding a great gift idea is all about knowing the person you’re buying for. Sometimes we get disconnected because our busy lives get in the way. Get connected. Stay connected. The most valuable thing in our lives is not a thing at all. It’s the people.

The holiday season is particularly hard on some families who are already struggling to stay afloat. Sometimes it’s because of unemployment or under-employment in forgotten neighborhoods and communities. Sometimes serious medical problems wipe a family’s savings out and force them into debt.

One of the easiest and best things you can do to help people is to donate food to your local food bank. There are a lot of important charities that tackle different problems but one thing everyone in need can benefit from is food. It’s the kind of gift that can give people hope and take one more worry off their shoulders. Even if you can only afford to make a small donation, every little bit is needed and appreciated.

Find A Food Bank In Your Area

Each of these sites can give you information about food banks in your city, how to donate food or cash, and how you can get involved and volunteer some time to help people who really rely on these organizations to feed their families:

• USA: secondharvest.org
• Canada: Canadian Association of Food Banks
• UK: fareshare
• Australia: foodbank.org.au
• A great international organization is UNICEF

In addition to food banks, many churches have food collection and distribution programs or fund raising programs to help those in need. And check your local supermarket - a lot of them have donation bins, and you can buy some extra canned goods while you do your grocery shopping and donate them on your way out.

Other Ways To Give A Helping Hand

• Donate blood.
• Roll up that big pile of change you’ve been saving and donate it to a good cause.
• Get your family and friends involved and make a commitment together to raise money or volunteer your time.
• Do your spring cleanup now and find a charity that takes donations of clothing and furniture.

If you commit just one day this month to helping others, you’ll make a world of difference to someone.

Every day people make, take, and just can’t shake annoying cell phone calls.

Technology is supposed to make life more convenient. It’s not supposed to spark a world wide contest to find the most annoying person alive. But somewhere in between the search to find the silliest ringtone ever created and the quest to perfectly juggle every free minute of airtime available, cell phone etiquette died. And it took social etiquette with it.

It’s time to change all that. Stand up. Spread the word. These are the five rules for cellphone etiquette:

1. Turn it down. Sometimes, no matter where you are or what you’re doing, you have to be available to take an important call. Maybe you’re on call for work or family members need to check in routinely. The best thing to do is put your cell phone on vibrate so it doesn’t disrupt others. At the very least turn down the volume down and stay away from annoying ringtones. Use a simple ringtone that doesn’t play endlessly and make dogs howl at the moon. 
2. Turn it off. Life worked out just fine before we all needed to have a pager, a cellphone, a BlackBerry, a satellite phone, a digital camera and an iPod with us everywhere we went. Here’s a deep thought - if it didn’t, we wouldn’t be here now. Practice leaving your collection of electronic gizmos at home when you go out. Get creative and find new ways to communicate with people like talking to them in person. It’ll be an adventure and you might even survive it.
3. Be discrete. Get people to text you if they can’t get a hold of you on the phone. You can read the message and determine how important a call is right away without interrupting others during a meeting. If you have to answer your cell phone or make a call, excuse yourself from everyone and take a walk to do so.
4. Be where you are. The absolute most annoying thing in the world is to hang out with someone who spends more time talking on their phone than they do talking to you. If you’d rather be somewhere else talking to someone else then that’s where you should be! You’re in the wrong location. Get out of there!
5. Cut the leash. It’s just not cool anymore to be a slave to a tiny piece of plastic and the world of people on the other end of the line. Even though important people get important calls which they need to answer immediately, more important people check their messages later and call back when it’s convenient for them.

It’s a good idea to call everyone you know and make sure they’re aware of the rules for cell phone etiquette. If you have trouble getting hold of anyone, call their cell.

The online virtual world, Second Life, recently crowned it’s first real life millionaire. This milestone brings home the fact that virtual worlds with real economies are going to be a huge part of the internet’s future. Maybe bigger than YouTube in the same way that video games overtook the revenues of the film industry simply because players can interact with the story. In Second Life you are the story.

Second Life is a world of almost 2 million people where your avatar (your three dimensional character) can meet and chat with other people. As John Chow recently commented on his blog, virtually anything is possible. Big corporations hold meetings in Second Life. Reuters recently conducted an interview with Nintendo President Reggie Fils-Aime in Second Life. NBC sponsored a tree lighting ceremony that mirrored the annual tree lighting in Rockefeller Center. You can buy, sell or rent land. You can create your own clothes, house, or working spaceship.

Alright, so how do you make money in this Second Life?

Getting started with Second Life

The first thing you need is a good, fast internet connection and a good, fast computer with a great graphics card. Basically, the same thing you would need if you were into online gaming. It’s a three dimensional world and the graphics are intense.

Then you need to sign up to Second Life. They have a free basic account and this is a good place to start. You can upgrade to a premium account for 10 bucks a month once you get the feel of things.

Linden Dollars

Every person in Second Life gets a stipends or weekly salary of a few hundred Linden dollars ($L). Linden dollars can be converted into US dollars at around 250 to 1. That means that 1 Linden dollar is worth about a half cent in real money.

In addition to the stipends, you can work for someone or start your own business to earn Linden dollars or you can buy them at online currency exchanges with real dollars. This feature of Linden dollars and US dollars being interchangable makes it possible to turn your virtual income into real income. So much so, that Congress has met to discuss the future of taxing this income.

Earning a Living in Second Life

There are a number of things you can do to earn money in SL. How much you can earn depends on your skills, your creativity and your business savvy, just as in real life. There are many people who earn a couple or a few thousand real dollars every month from their Second Life work.

Minimum Wage Jobs

There are lots of these. They typically pay 2 or 3 Linden dollars per 10 minutes of work and they involve kicking back in a chair and chatting with your friends. What? They pay you to relax?!! Yes or at some places you can push a broom or stand on a dance pad that animates your avatar. Basically you get paid just to be at the location.

The reason business owners will pay you just to be there is that people go to second life to meet new people and chat with them. The Second Life satellite map is a lot like Google Earth. People are drawn to places where there are groups of other people which is shown in the map as a collection of green dots. So having traffic will bring you more traffic and you can make enough money to pay your ‘employees’ and earn a profit by selling your wares or offering casino games.

Dancing, Hosting and Management Jobs

If you’ve got a hot avatar, which you can design yourself or purchase, then you might find work at one of the clubs as an exotic dancer. As a dancer, some places will pay you a wage and you can earn tips.

If you’re outgoing and a great chatter, you might be able to earn a little more as a club host, hostess or manager.

Design and Construction Businesses

With 3d modeling, photoshop or programming skills you can start to make some good money. If you have two or all of these skills, then the sky is the limit.

• 3d modeling. You can build and sell anything you can imagine from custom avator bodies to vehicles, plants, homes and commercial buildings. Pretty much anything. If it’s well designed, people will buy it. You can download Second Life’s basic avatar bodies and modify them yourself using Poser.
• Photoshop. Creating custom textures for anything from clothing design to marble flooring can earn you good money. Fashion in Second Life is big business just as it is in the real world. Everyone wants to look good.
• Programming. SL script is used to animate avatars and objects. It can make your avatar dance. It makes a slot machine work or a spaceship fly. Programmers bring SL to life with animation and functionality.

Become a Real Estate Mogul

Anshe Chung is an SL property developer and may very well become Second Life’s first billionaire. She has amassed property and holdings worth over $250 million Linden which translates into $1 million dollars in the real world - She’s the first real world millionaire with income earned entirely from virtual world profits.

Second Life has a First Land program which allows first time buyers to purchase a small plot of real estate below market value. In addition, you can buy land from other residents or at auctions. You can even buy your own private island.

The key to real estate is to buy land, subdivide it into plots and develop those plots with an optimum mix of commercial and residential buildings. Then you can rent these plots out or sell the development.

Like most real world big businesses, Anshe Chung has been at the heart of some controversy for establishing zoning rules on the land she holds - in other words you can’t build a commercial business on a residential plot. She has also evicted renters from land she has purchased, so that she can develop it into a more profitable neighborhood.

Where’s It All Going?

As you can see, many real world business models are possible in Second Life’s virtual world. The few key business opportunites being utilized now will expand as more people develop new ideas. The key is to look at what’s possible in the real world and find a way to bring it to the virtual world.

Then, you just might be Second Life’s next real life millionaire.

Hopefully you never run into a situation where you may have to defend yourself, but the world is filled with crazy places, crazy times, and unfortunately, crazy people. There are a lot of things that spur people to violence; usually they’re intoxicated or easily angered. Sometimes they’re trying to steal something and occasionally they’re just evil.

Here are the five rules for self defense:

1. Control your environment. The first rule is to not get into a situation that could turn ugly. Stay aware of the people around you because a situation can often be avoided before it starts. When something is not right or someone is making you uncomfortable, leave. When you go out, go with friends and stay with them. Don’t wander away from your group alone or with someone you’ve just met. When you’re out and about by yourself, stay around where there are other people. You can quickly go to someone or attract attention if you feel threatened. If you live alone, think about getting a roommate or two. There is safety in numbers. The more people and more diverse a group of people that you are around, the better the chances are that someone will come to your rescue. You don’t have to change everything in your life, just be more aware of your surroundings and keep your lifestyle well populated. Domestic abuse often happens when no one else is around or when very few people are around. Always keep your life full of a good variety of people.
2. Train and exercise. You’ve heard the old axiom “survival of the fittest”. There’s no place that’s more true than in a physical conflict so a good place to start is to keep in shape. Staying healthy and strong is a good idea anyway, but if you’re ever attacked it will give you the strength and the stamina to either fight back or escape. Strength training, aerobics and jogging are all good for you. If you want to get some exercise and gain some defensive tools at the same time, take some classes in boxing, kickboxing or study a martial art like Judo. Classes are great because you’ll meet interesting people, get a great workout, and gain more confidence.
3. Walk, then run away. Simple and obvious but there’s a bit more to it. Agitated people looking for a confrontation usually ratchet up the confrontation in stages. In other words, they get more hyped and pumped up as the situation unfolds and they are looking for a reaction from you to push them into high gear. Don’t say anything. Don’t do anything. Without seeming intimidated, simply walk away. Words will provoke someone just as easily as action will and it doesn’t matter to them what you say. Even running might provoke them into an adrenaline filled chase. Calmly and casually put as much space and as many barriers between you and this person as quickly as you can. If they follow you or move towards you quickly as you walk away, then it’s time to run. Run towards people. Yell. Attract attention and try to put some obstacles between you and your attacker.
4. You are a weapon. When taking flight is not an option and you have to defend yourself against an attacker then whatever you can find that will help you strike back is going to help you. Most women don’t carry guns or pepper spray around for self defense and there are a lot of good arguments on why these things don’t work. Weapons are easily used against the people they’re meant to defend. In a sudden attack, you won’t even have time to pull them out of your purse. Your best weapon is you. Your fists, palms, elbows, knees and feet are your strong points and can all do damage if used correctly. If you feel the urge to lash out with an object, think about the common things you carry with you; car keys, a cell phone, rings, or a wrist watch are hard or sharp objects and can help you defend yourself.
5. Strike the right targets. Everyone has soft spots. You want to use your strong points and strike the soft spots to do the most damage. The groin area is one target but there are others that are equally effective at stopping an attack. The eyes are a good soft target. You can poke, gouge or strike the eyes or eye area to blind an attacker. The throat is an excellent target. A hard strike to the throat can seriously immobilize a person and is more effective than hitting them in the face. Other places to strike at are the face, stomach, knees and shins but the groin, eyes, and throat are your best targets when defending yourself.

Again, hopefully you never run into such a situation, but women can stay safe and defend themselves by being aware of the people around them and by building some practical self defence skills. Keep the learning fun and if you find yourself in a threatening situation, keep your cool and use what you’ve learned.

People often say that the eyes are the windows to the soul. They’re also the door to the truth.

People talk to each other everyday without saying a word. A massive amount of information is exchanged between people just with body language. Some people are experts at reading body language, and often they don’t even know it. They just get a feeling about someone that might be good or bad.

There are a lot of different body gestures that say a lot. For example, when someone crosses their arms or their legs, that’s called a barrier or a block. It’s a sign that they feel uncomfortable or have something to hide. It’s a defensive mechanism and people do it automatically without even thinking about it. The eyes are very special because, how people move their eyes will give off subtle clues as to which part of their brains they are accessing information from. Knowing that, you can often tell whether they are lying by how they move their eyes in response to a question. 

Which smileys in the picture do you think are lying? Can you spot them? Can you tell who’s telling the truth? Read on. The answers are further down.

People can also put up a block with their eyes. One of the ways they do this is by constricting their pupils (making them smaller). This is an unconscious thing that you can’t really control “pupil watching” is practiced by all sorts of people from poker players to business negotiators. It’s one of the reasons that poker players like to wear sunglasses. When a person’s pupils are large (dilated) they’re being more open, and it’s likely that they are telling the truth.

When you look someone straight in the eyes, it’s very intimate. It could just be a friendly gaze or it could mean a heart pounding va-va-va-voom! Looking over someones eyes to the center of their forehead is a commanding or domineering type of stare. This is used in business a lot as well. It’s when someone seems to be looking right through you instead of at you. Tall people do it well.

So which smileys are lying?

1. Liar! … maybe. If you ask someone to picture something in their heads, their eyes will often go up and to their right side, and there’s nothing untruthful about that. But when answering factual questions, usually this is where they look when they’re constructing some kind of excuse. So it really depends on the question you’re asking them.
2. The remembering look. Up and to their left. This is one of the most honest looks. It means the person is checking through their memory to find the information to answer your question.
3. There are a lot of clues that you have to look at when someone looks staight at you. What’s their overall expression? Are they fidgeting? Is it an intimate gaze or a commanding one? Are their pupils dilated? The only thing for sure is that looking straight at someone is very powerful, so they’re either really, really telling the truth or really, really lying big!
4. When someone looks down and to their right, they’re remembering a feeling. Not just a visual picture but an experience that might involve sights, smells, sounds, what it’s like to touch something or hold it. It could be a very richly textured memory or the person could be imagining what an experience might be like. It usually signals the truth because it’s not the type of eye movement that’s really associated questions. But  a crafty person telling a long story could be remembering an experience in order to alter some of the details that make them guilty.
5. If you like talking to yourself inside your head then you probably look down and to the left a fair amount. This signals a mental conversation going on inside someone’s head. They might be trying to figure out what to tell you and what not to say. This is where you need to be an experienced interrogator to get the truth out of them before their eyes start going all over the place!

Did you guess right? Okay, it’s not exactly an easy science and it depends on a lot of other things that are going on and what type of questions a person is asked. But it’s very real science. It works. It just takes a lot of training and practice. You might know when someone is lying intuitively. Part of that intuition is because your brain recognizes these eye signals and can figure them out, even if you don’t know what they all mean exactly.

There are two movies out on DVD this week that both carry on the important conversation about global warming. The first is the animated comedy Ice Age: The Meltdown. The other is Al Gore’s documentary, An Inconvenient Truth.

The entire topic of global warming has become a political issue in recent years. There’s one main reason for this. Problems now take precedent over problems later. The problem now is that addressing global warming with any seriousness could devastate economic growth which is the cornerstone of the entire economic system. This doesn’t just hurt big business, it hurts hundreds of millions of people who’s jobs are embedded directly or indirectly in an industrial infrastructure that contributes to global warming.

The problem later is that we hit a tipping point and put ourselves into a position that we can not fix. That affects billions of people - literally, all of us. We see evidence of how a tipping point could be reached in some areas now. For example, the dead zones caused by warmer currents off the coast of Oregon since 2002. In 2006 it got even worse.

The best solution is to compromise and start making gradual but significant changes in how we use energy, the types of energy we use, and how we control pollution. You might ask, why can’t we just solve this? One of the most interesting and engaging articles around is called Maximum Power and it was written by Jay Hanson at dieoff.org (don’t let the name scare you). Jay shows us how we lie to ourselves to make short term gains. He talks about examples where populations used up all their resources and then … just died off, such as the people on Easter Island or the reindeer experiment on St. Matthew Island.

Remember, Earth really is just one big island - we can’t move to Mars or Jupiter if things go bad here. We need to deal with our global problems because sooner or later they’ll deal with us.

Don’t think we need to change? In it’s day, the Tyrannosaurus Rex was unchallenged by any other creature. I haven’t seen any lately.

Ice Age carries on the story of Sid, Diego and Manny (voiced by John Leguizamo, Denis Leary and Ray Romano) and adds some new characters with Queen Latifa as Ellie and the unforgettable possum duo of Crash and Eddie (Sean William Scott and Josh Peck). The movie is a fun way to talk about a very serious topic. Be entertained, but don’t lose the underlying message that Ice Age is sending about global warming. Find out more about it at Amazon: Ice Age - The Meltdown

An Inconvenient Truth is filled with some eye-opening facts and it takes select moments from Al Gore’s travelling slideshow on global warming and pieces them together into a startling scientific view of what industrialization is doing to our planet. The biggest point the movie misses the mark on is how Al Gore calls this a moral issue - after the evidence is layed out, it’s clear that it’s much more than that. It’s an issue that could affect our very survival on the planet. Find out more at Amazon: An Inconvenient Truth