An interesting way to spend the time is to compare the way science is reported in the media to what the actual published research states. There is often quite a mismatch. So when I saw some online comment about an article in Time that said that men preferred woman with less makeup, I didn’t take anything at face value. Continue reading
Don’t worry, I haven’t gone all political. I sometimes set myself the goal to write a blog post based on whatever the first tweet I find on my Twitter feed is. I read the tweet, set the clock running for ten minutes, and see what comes out. This time I found someone was asking if a basic income would encourage people to devote more time to their training and career development. This sounded like a reasonable assumption. But I wondered if it might have other beneficial effects as well. As I say, this is not a political blog so I won’t express an opinion on whether or not we can afford it, nor as to whether there might be better ways to spend public money. I am just wondering what the effect would be if it were to be introduced.
Lovers of taste and decorum will of course be aware that this year’s Eurovision Song Contest was won by Conchita Wurst. Whilst her success was no doubt largely due to musicality and creative artistry, it may have caught some people’s attention that she sports a beard. I wonder if this had anything to do with her success? Recent research suggests it might. Continue reading
Nobody knows exactly why we age. One popular theory is that staying alive is simply too hard to keep it up for long. We have large and complicated bodies full of intricate chemicals, all of which are under constant attack from oxygen in the atmosphere. It is a bit like a ship in the middle of the ocean. Holes keep springing in the hull. We can patch them up, but eventually the whole thing gets beyond repair and the ship sinks. Continue reading
I have only heard about the Beauty Bible compiled by the redoubtable Jo Fairley recently and I haven’t read it yet. In fact I haven’t actually even seen it for sale anywhere. A quick check on Amazon reveals that like the actual Bible, there are various versions so I am not sure where to start. Anyway anybody who names their book the anything Bible is clearly not lacking in ambition for their work. Continue reading
What are beauty bloggers talking about?
A thought popped into my head one day late last year. What products are beauty bloggers talking about? I read about a dozen beauty blogs and I know what they cover, but are they representative of the overall beautisphere? I decided to apply a bit of science to it and carry out some research. If anyone wondered why my blog was a bit quiet in December, I can now reveal what I was up to. Continue reading
I am a slightly gawky individual. I am bit more interested in my computer than my personal appearance and I am not good at relating to other human beings. I am also well aware that the profile of my face does not conform to the ideals of Classical Greek beauty.
Despite all this, I have been reasonably successful in passing my genes on to the next generation. I have the good luck to be relatively tall, and I think that this positive has overcome all my other negatives. I am in the upper quartile for height, very nearly in the upper decile. I am taller than about 80% of other men in other words. In more ordinary language, I am tall but not outstandingly so.
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If you look at the numbers, the financial chaos sweeping the globe hasn’t yet had much impact on the the personal care industry. Although its fourth quarter sales were down, overall L’Oreal managed a very respectable sales growth of over 5% in 2008. The outlook for 2009 is not as rosy, but it seems very unlikely that any company in the sector will be asking any government for any bail outs.
I have already posted about the features of an attractive female face. But what lies behind these observations? Could it be that your hormones make you beautiful?
A few years ago scientists at the University of St Andrews took photos of 59 women aged between 18 and 25 every week for six weeks. They also took urine samples and measured their oestrogen levels. By taking readings over the whole menstrual cycle they were able to come up with meaningful estimates of how much oestrogen the women had in their blood streams. Continue reading
This is a product that takes itself very seriously. It comes with a CD with videos that explain what it is all about and show you how to use it. There is also a website with an impressive amount of information. The bit that interested me most was the clinical data. This has been done by a very respected testing house. Unfortunately I didn’t get a free sample – I had to pay the full £50 ($90), so this is a premium product and we are entitled to hold it to high standards. Continue reading
