“Supposing that truth is a woman, what then?” The Lie Detector, The Love Machine and the Logic of Fantasy

One of the consequences of the public outcry over the 1929 St Valentine’s Day massacre was the establishment of a Scientific Crime Detection Laboratory at Northwestern University. The photogenic “Lie Detector Man”, Leonarde Keeler, was the Laboratory’s poster boy and his instrument the jewel in the crown of forensic science. The press often depicted Keeler gazing at a female suspect attached to his “sweat box”; a galvanometer electrode in her hand, a sphygmomanometer cuff on her arm and a rubber pneumograph tube strapped across her breasts. Keeler’s fascination with the deceptive charms of the female body was one he shared with his fellow lie detector pioneers, all of whom met their wives – and in William Marston’s case his mistress too – through their engagement with the instrument. Marston employed his own “Love Meter”, as the press dubbed it, to prove that “brunettes react far more violently to amatory stimuli than blondes”. In this paper I draw on the psychoanalytic concepts of fantasy and pleasure to argue that the female body played a pivotal role in establishing the lie detector’s reputation as an infallible and benign mechanical technology of truth

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Scholarly articles, filled with indubitable knowledge and analysis, only exist for the general public behind pricey paywalls. So one lecturer is advocating for them to be free of charge

HID-1 is required for sensing CO₂ level in the pharynx.

<p>(<b>A</b>) One-day-old adult <i>hid-1(yg316)</i> and N2 worms were exposed to 5%, 10%, or 20% CO₂ balanced with 21% O₂ and N₂. The pumping rate was measured under a dissecting microscope while the animals were exposed to the different gas mixtures. A gas mixture of 21% O₂ and 79% N₂ was used as a normal air control. (<b>B</b>) The inhibition of the pumping rate of the pharynx after exposure to high CO₂ level in <i>hid-1(yg316)</i> allele mutants is significantly reduced. Similarly, the inhibition of the pumping rate of the pharynx after exposure to high CO₂ level is reduced in other <i>hid-1</i> allele mutants (<i>sa772</i> and <i>sa1058</i>). Transgenic expression of HID-1 fused to eGFP in the <i>sa722</i> or <i>yg316</i> background (<i>hid-1(sa722</i>);HID-1::GFP or <i>hid-1(yg316)</i>;HID-1::GFP) is sufficient to restore the effect of high CO₂ level on the pumping rate back to the wild-type phenotype. In all experiments <i>N</i>≥30 animals. Different groups were compared by one-way ANOVA followed by <i>t</i> test. ***<i>P</i><.001. Error bars indicate SEM.</p

Community and Trust in the Network Society. The Case of Virtual Communities

In the uncertain scenario that surrounds today’s man, there is a new need for spaces to share, to establish new relationships of mutual trust. As the new technology advances, virtual communities are one of the responses to such need. In this revolutionary media environment, one might ask how a quite strong relationship of mutual trust can be created and nurtured in a virtual community, in relation to real objective relations and to the virtual community itself, as well as the technology that makes it possible, when it is, by definition, an ever-changing system. In this respect, some issues have been found to promote such relationships and others to (un)willingly hinder it. Therefore, the concept of trust should be re-semanticised to have a new relational paradigm built on ethical grounds, in which the individual becomes aware of what resources are required to cope with the insecurity of an increasingly uncertain society, partly with the help of virtual communities. Only through a jointly responsible behaviour, aimed at filling the gap that is inherent to the very concept of (virtual) community, can one trust something else—whether an individual, a technology or the community itself—aware of the hint of “magic” that is implied in the very etymology of the concept of trust