Liar, liar, pants on fire!

How can you tell if someone is lying? Martha Brockenbrough, writing for msn.com, provides some insights:

"A Cornell University professor recently finished a study that counted how frequently 30 of his students lied--about 26 percent of the time, the group learned... Paul Ekman's book Telling Lies: Clues to Detect Deceit in the Marketplace, Politics, and Marriage takes on the eye-contact belief... but the problem is that this is so commonly believed that a good liar will make sure he does make eye contact. Pathological liars do this all the time... shifty eyes are better interpreted as a sign that someone is feeling emotional -- perhaps from a lie, but perhaps just from nerves..."

Of course, no commentary on the subject would be complete without the words of the 1960s pop hit, written by Jim Donna, and recorded in 1965 by the Minneapolis-based one-hit wonders known as The Castaways:

Liar, liar, pants on fire
Your nose is longer than a telephone wire

Ask me, baby, why I'm sad
You been out all night, know you been bad
Don't tell me different, know it's a lie
Come kill me, honey, see how I cry...

(This link complete with guitar chords and kick-@$$ bass solo.)