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How can you keep people honest? Psychologists have discovered one thing that works: a pair of staring eyes. And they don’t even have to belong to a real person!

Psychologists tested this by putting a poster showing a large pair of staring eyes above a box in their university’s kitchen, where people were supposed to drop coins whenever they poured a cup of coffee or tea. Even though it was only a poster, it still worked?payments went up.

In the Independent, Steve Connor quotes evolutionary behaviorist Melissa Bateson as saying, “I and a few colleagues were interested in seeing…if we could manipulate people to pay more money.”
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We recently wrote a story about how wars are now being fought by kids and how this makes it less likely there will be peace. Now one Cambodian soldier, who became a soldier at age 3, is showing the new government where to find and dig up the land mines he planted.

Kate Thomas writes in the Independent that Aki Ra laid his first land mine when he was five years old, and the mine was so heavy, “I could barely lift it.” He was recruited in 1975 at age 3 by the Khmer Rouge guerrillas.
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We recently warned you not to eat like an African. It’s better to eat a diet that emphasizes whole grains, and you’ll hear many messages urging you to do just that in the near future. But the government is not just concerned about our health…
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Global warming is on trial in a big way, in the Supreme Court. A dozen states that are suffering the most from air pollution are demanding that the EPA force car manufacturers to regulate carbon dioxide emissions from cars. This may turn out to be one of the Supreme Court’s most important rulings on the environment.

H. Josef Hebert writes in LiveScience.com that this argument will take a year for the court to settle, with a ruling not expected until next June.
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