Will the iphone blend?

Literally speaking - this is one hell of a blender, watch what happens to Chuck Norris, IT infrastructure, and a video camera.

I love the aesthetic (youtube kitsch?) and, of course, don't breath this!

Bruce Bueno de Mesquita

If you listen to Bruce Bueno de Mesquita, and a lot of people don’t, he’ll claim that mathematics can tell you the future. In fact, the professor says that a computer model he built and has perfected over the last 25 years can predict the outcome of virtually any international conflict, provided the basic input is accurate. What’s more, his predictions are alarmingly specific. His fans include at least one current presidential hopeful, a gaggle of Fortune 500 companies, the CIA, and the Department of Defense.

More here, via MR.

Wish you were here

Stardom (our Friday Special blogger) emails me from a 'truly magnificent spectacle of nature'; I am in the midst of one of the most stressful life experiences.

Does being beautiful mean being average?

Yes, according to this research (via Andrew Gelman):

The debate over the definition of beauty has been waged by both scientists and philosophers for centuries. We tested the idea that a facial configuration close to the population mean is fundamental to attractiveness.

First, we digitized images of faces of male and female college students (i.e., transformed the facial images into little dots of lightness and darkness called "pixels"). Each face is represented by a matrix of pixel values that can be mathematically averaged with the matrices of other faces. Once digitized and averaged together, we can turn the averaged pixel values back into images and have the composite faces rated for attractiveness.

College students rated the male and female composite faces as significantly higher in attractiveness than the individual faces used to create them, if the composites had at least 16 different faces in them. Thus, averaged faces are attractive. Note that when we use the word, "average," we mean the arithmetical mean, and not an average-looking person. If, for example, you take a female composite (averaged) face made of 32 different faces and overlay it on the face of an extremely attractive female model, the two images line up almost perfectly indicating that the model's facial configuration is very similar to the composites' facial configuration.

[...] we view averageness as fundamental and necessary to facial attractiveness. Averageness is not the only component of attractiveness, but without it, no face will be attractive.

Here are some selected publications on the matter.

My two cents: what makes you ugly are extreme characteristics (e.g. big nose or ears); averaging simply takes care of these 'large errors'. The same principle is behind the frequently superior performance of composite forecasts (e.g. of economic variables), where the arithmetic mean of a number of forecasts is often more accurate than any of the individual components.

Postscript: Note that averaging doesn't quite work with hair.

A breath of fresh air

So, well into middle age, I figured that it was probably a good time to take up the smoking habit. The result? I enjoy it so much that I don't know why I didn't take it up earlier.

More in the Wall Street Journal.

Corporate Social Responsibility: hijacking democracy?

Robert Reich at the Economist Free Exchange revisits an argument I first heard from David Henderson almost a decade ago:

THE current tempest over whether Toyota is hypocritical in selling the Prius while at the same time signing up with Ford, GM, and Chrysler in opposing a Senate bill mandating higher fuel mileage standards illustrates the dilemma of so-called "corporate social responsibility." Toyota isn't being hypocritical at all. Toyota isn't even a person. The company exists to maximize shareholder value [...]

Presumably Toyota invented the Prius to fulfill an important and potentially growing market niche in cars that consumed less energy. As such, it was being neither socially responsible nor irresponsible; it was simply responding to market demands. In making a political decision to join with the Big Three in opposing higher fuel standards, Toyota was also acting as a profit-maximiser [...]

The problem is that Toyota, and other companies that venture into politics, are undermining the democratic process. Most people are not just consumers and investors. They're also citizens, who have citizen values—including saving the planet from global warming. Toyota has every right to respond to the part of our heads that correspond to consumer and investor values, but companies have no ethical grounds for entering into the democratic realm which should be reserved for citizen values. If corporate social responsibility means anything at all, it should mean refraining from corrupting the political process.

There are three issues here:

1) Given that they are the shareholders's agents, are CEOs justified in straying from the goal of profit maximisation?

2) Companies (and the rich in general) have a much louder 'voice' (through their ability to fund political campaigns, control of the media, better information and contacts etc) when it comes to government policy and setting social priorities. Where should we draw the line? Would it be acceptable, say, for the big auto-makers to collude to decrease emissions? Do companies have the right to have their own social policies when they do not have a democratic mandate?

3) What is the effect of corporate social responsibility and related activities (e.g. charity) on the equilibrium level of public good provision? In other words, and to turn the question as it is usually posed on its head, does private giving crowd out public spending?

My answer on this last one is most probably yes; more here.

Friday Special 25

This dream machine and more from the Tokyo Motor Show

Extreme sports taken to the next level: Wingsuit basejumping

Musicovery is tailored interactive web radio that lets you explore

Something more relaxing: Simply pass the ball

Shuffle and mix your personal Monoface

The world's top 10 most liveable cities