Social scientists have researched the effect of facial hair on the electability of Presidential candidates, and currently consider facial hair to have a negative effect on candidates. Today, the existence of facial hair on potential presidential candidates is regularly noted (albeit somewhat jokingly) as a harmful factor.

(* Definition required)

M'Luddite has some further shocks awaiting him down the line. (The wigs will go, for one). It's like having a judge who only rides horses and knows nothing about cars - deciding traffic cases.

Apart from the fact that the outgoing PM has gone back on her word to bring the Portugal bailout before a special session of Parliament - thus possibly dooming the EU agreement that has to be settled by middle May (by which time the new government is unlikely to have been formed), there's this (copyright: Martti Leppänen 2011)

originally posted 17 April

I'm milking it again. But any road, voting closes in a few minutes and we'll get the advance voting results soon after. The first 50% of today's votes will be counted in around 9, and they'll mostly be rural and north- so expect a bias toward the Centre party, with odd pockets of rampant red-blooded socialism, and, in small Swedish-speaking towns like the harboured Inkoo, the RKP candidate will have a majority worthy of Kim Il Jung.

the thread now discusses results and consequences - afew

I was playing with a little 28k app on my Xperia today, Pattern Generator: "a mix between a kinetic spirograph and a kaleidoscope - creates mesmerizing moving pattern on the screen." You can download it for androids here, for free.

This week one of the social networking site's trends, #lessambitiousmovies, has been swamped with posts including: The Devil Wears Uniqlo; Taxi Passenger and It's Not a Bad Life. Yesterday, #lessambitiousmovies was racking up 200 Tweets a minute. "A lot of movies have pretty epic titles," said cultural website Paste Magazine. "With #lessambitiousmovies, Tweeters have taken the liberty of making these titles more down to earth. PT Anderson's ultimate display of a man consumed by greed (There Will Be Blood) turns into a guy going to the doctor for a regular check-up (There Will Be Bloodwork)."

for your Sunday entertainment - Nomad

The new drug announced below goes a long way back to the Sinclair Method. Dr Sinclair is a good friend of mine and any discussion with him is inspiring: but on the subject of the treatment of alcoholism he is an expert. I'd like briefly revisit the history, but first read the (partly misinformed) news today...

a discussion for the hung-over - Nomad

well, here's today's open thread! afew

The report was released today. The delegation was commissioned by FM Alexander Stubb in late 2008. It has been chaired by ex Nokia CEO and current Royal Dutch Shell chair, Jorma Ollila.

Download the .pdf full report, summary or various sections of it here.

TBG

And yet - they've become prominent at the same time as the discourse has shifted to the far right.

Blogging about policy is not the same as setting policy. Technology is a nice shiny toy, but it doesn't change the fact that in politics either you're setting policy, or someone else is.

Sven

Indeed: it is causal. The shift rightwards is a direct consequence of the exposure of what has previously been fairly hidden for the least few hundred years. The elitist way of life perceives a threat and reacts.

We may argue when the shift to the Right began, (and we are not looking at a synchronized global phenomenon - different cultures are at different arcs of the econophilosophical pendulum) but here I sketch out a few reasons why the shift Right in W*stern societies has been accelerated by the exponential growth in access to the intertoobz.

This is not a carefully thought out thesis: more a collection of ideas that I hope may create a useful debate.

Media organisations are trying various routes to the future - the Guardian's is firmly an open and collaborative one

An excellent and longish article in the Guardian today: The splintering of the fourth estate. The article is an edited transcript of the Andrew Olle lecture 2010 given by Guardian editor Alan Rusbridger in Sydney, Australia on 19 November.

Chinese vase: a foreign price tag in a foreign market

Something strange is going on in the art market, says Catherine Millner