a test I’ve thought up to help you keep people from controlling your life by misleading you. By the way, I’m being kind to those people by saying "misleading you." "Lying to you" would be more accurate.

It’s a two-part test, and here’s how it works.

Say you’re watching TV and someone says something like "Women can’t rise to the top level of a large corporation."

The test immediately kicks in, and you ask yourself, "Do I know a woman, or of a woman, who did rise to the top level of a large corporation?" If the answer is, "Yes," then the speaker (a) doesn’t know what he or she is talking about or (b) deliberately lied to you. You see, it's the exception that proves the rule, with "prove" meaning to test.

If the answer is, "No," then the second part of the test comes to the fore with the question you ask yourself, "How likely is that to be true?"

If the answer is, "Unlikely," then again you may conclude that the speaker (a) doesn’t know what he or she is talking about or (b) deliberately lied to you. If the answer is "Likely," then please give me a call, because I’ve got a map that will lead you directly to King Solomon’s mines and I’ll let you have it for a few bucks.

You know, I’ve never been a fan of our judicial system. I believe that there are many defects and inequities in it. But from time to time I run across an aspect of it that makes good sense to me. And this is one of those times.

In a court of law, if a witness can be shown to have lied with respect to one part of his or her testimony, then the jury is free to assume that he or she has lied with respect to all parts of that testimony.

So if someone tells you that women can’t rise to the top level of a large corporation, I’d be very suspicious of anything else he or she says.

By the way, you might consider telling him or her about Colleen Barrett, Carli Fiorina, and Meg Whitman for starters.

Think about it.