This morning I wrote up my next week’s ethics class, on the topic of Detecting Lies. I’m going to play a little game where I tell the students two “facts” about me, one of them true and the other a lie. And they have to ask me questions and try to figure out which is true and which is false. I’ve chosen a list of unlikely but plausible things. Hopefully it should be fun!
The idea is to get the kids thinking and talking about how easy or difficult it is to tell whether someone’s lying. What signs are there? How could you probe to find out if someone’s lying? What if someone invented an app that could tell if people were lying by analysing their voice, and it was accurate – what effect would that have on society?
After writing that up, I took Scully for a drive to refill the car’s fuel and to pick up some pies for lunch at one of my favourite pie shops, at Allambie Heights. I had a vegetable curry pie and a pumpkin and feta one. Last time I looked on Google Maps at the park where I normally eat my lunch there, I noticed there are some bushwalking tracks right behind it. So today I explored a short loop track with Scully. It leads into the Manly Dam Reserve, also known as the Manly Warringah War Memorial Park. The area I was in was at the top of some hills, so we had a good view over the park.
You can see the Manly Dam reservoir in that photo. I don’t think it’s used for drinking water any more – the park and reservoir are used for recreation. Here’s Scully posed on the lookout rock.
The track we walked along was mostly surrounded by heathland. Scully was not impressed.
Back home in the afternoon I sorted some more Magic cards to prepare for selling them. I also made a sourdough loaf to give to our neighbours while returning the now-empty and cleaned jar of home-made marmalade that they gave to us a few weeks ago. I took them over while the bread was still warm from the oven, and they said they’d try some tonight.
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