Today’s quote helps us understand beauty.

Beauty is composed of an eternal, invariable element whose quantity is extremely difficult to determine, and a relative element which might be, either by turns or all at once, period, fashion, moral, passion.

Jean-Luc Godard

This quote reminds me of an interesting story from the BBC TV show “The Human Face.” In one segment they juxtaposition a fashion magazine editor’s ideas of beauty with a plastic surgeon’s. The editor talks about this year’s look, the lips that they are looking for, what is hot now. The surgeon offers a mask based on mathematics of the perfectly beautiful face.

The surgeon, Dr. Stephen Marquardt, developed the mask while trying to figure out why some of his surgeries didn’t make his patients more beautiful. The mask is just a transparency that shows the structure of a beautiful face.

In the show he places the transparency over pictures of all kinds of beautiful people and it always lines up. Men women, caucasian, black, asian, doesn’t matter.

The mask is based on the mathematical ratio of 1:1.618, otherwise known as phi or the golden ratio. I think this is the eternal part that Godard refers to. Understanding the relative element is how the magazine editor makes her living.

Want to know how beautiful you are? You can download one of these masks at http://www.beautyanalysis.com/mba_reposefrontalmaskapplication_page.htm.

Today’s word is from an article Adam Curry read on his abbreviated Daily Source Code. The article, by Felicity Lawrence, is a wake up call for the western world’s food consumers. “The way we eat is not just ecologically unsustainable but also morally and even biologically unsustainable.”

The word is profligate. Let’s listen.

Profligate, it an adjective that, in this context, means recklessly wasteful, wildly extravagant. It can also be used a as a noun to describe a profligate person.

Adam, thank you for reading this editorial to us. I think you and Felicity draw attention to a very serious problem. Everyone should read this article or listen to Adam’s podcast.

The Article: This food racket just can’t go on

[I can no longer find the podcast online. But you might be able to find it by searching for DSC20041202.mp3. It was posted on December 02, 2004. –Scott]

Billy Joel’s third historical reference is Red China. It was the nickname given to mainland China in 1949, after the second World War. It was an derogatory term used by critics of communist China to remind us that China was communist. This nickname also helped differentiate communist Mainland China from Nationalist China, modern day Taiwan.

Today there are still two China’s. Taiwan’s ROC or Republic of China and mainland communist China, also known as the People’s Republic of China. Although most of the diplomatic world, including the U.S. operate under a One China policy. A policy that has evolved from the the cold war era when it meant there was only one China, Taiwan to the more recent view that one day Red China and Taiwan will reunite as one China.

I probably shouldn’t use the term Red China, since mainland China isn’t that red any more. Since the late seventies China has undergone many economic reforms that make it look a lot more like a market economy or capitalist economy.

According to the CIA World Fact Book China’s GDP real growth rate for 2003 was 9%. That is huge. Especially, for a country as large as China. The US boasted a 3.1% growth rate in 2003. Hard to imagine a communist country growing 10% more productive in one year.

A little note on the CIA World Fact Book. If you want a quick ten minute overview of a country or you want to know the % of arable land in Namibia the CIA Fact Book is a great resource. BTW it is .99%.

Today’s quote is from Don Marquis, an early 20th century writer, poet and cartoonist. He authored about 35 books and said this:

“If you make people think they’re thinking, they’ll love you; But if you really make them think, they’ll hate you.”

How true. Everyone want to be smart but few want to do the learning.