As much as we wish it weren’t so — with the world being all candy canes and gum drops, after all — people make judgements about each other based solely on appearance. No, really, it’s true!

Unfortunately, before the glory of the Internet, we had no way to access in an organized and helpful manner those brutally honest judgements, allowing us to live in a cozy cocoon of (mostly) blissful ignorance. 

Now there’s FaceStat.

FaceStat is like a focus group for your face, a way to understand the visceral impression the brand known as You ^TM makes on others. Marketers spend millions of dollars every day testing their products’ packaging and other visual attributes to determine what exactly attracts customers and drives purchasing decisions. Now you can do the very same thing for free!

Simply upload a photo of yourself, choose from a number of attributes that you would like people’s opinions on, such as age, intelligence, attractiveness and approachability, and within a few hours — viola! — your self-esteem is curled up in the fetal position on the floor, gasping for breath!

Allow me to demonstrate:

Just for giggles — because, you know, I really, really don’t care about this sort of thing — I uploaded this photo, which I use on this site’s About Me page:

Tell me, wise and just denizens of the Internet, what you think of this fellow. How old is he? What level of intelligence does he possess? Describe him in one word, if you would be so kind.

Here’s what the world (sigh…) thinks of me. Let’s start with a few of the one word descriptions:

“Goofy,” “poseur,” “slow,” and “gray.” Pretty darn accurate, I must admit, but the cruelest cut of all? “Clintonesque.” Ouch — I think…

How about intelligence? A small number chose “bright,” but three times as many clicked on either “dull” or “doofus.” Is it the hair? Or the heavy-lidded eyebrows? Hmmm…

As for age, most people accurately guessed somewhere in the range of 40 to 49 years (I’m 44); but there were enough guesses in the 50 to 59 range to give me pause, and enough in the 30 to 39 to give me hope — although I’m pretty sure those came from a nursing home somewhere.

Encouraging, yes?

Of course, I went back for more — this time with a secret weapon. 

As tempting as it was to find a photo from, say, 1987, I uploaded this one, taken just a few days after the first picture (that’s me on the right, by the way). Again, I asked:

Describe this guy in one word.

“Cool.” “Happy.” “Honest.” “Smart.” “Upstanding.” “Stallone.”

How intelligent, pray tell?

“Bright” and “Genius” outnumbered “Dull” by four-to-one.

Well, awright!

But, alas, it’s all too obvious, isn’t it? People see me standing next to that sweet and tasty eye candy and…well, just how idiotic and repulsive can he be, right? The dude has got it goin’ on.

The lovely woman in the picture is my wife, Christine, and she competes with a very hot blonde for my attention and adrenaline. I think I’ll ask her to be my vice presidential candidate. 

Hey, I ran it by the focus group.

One of the things we know from the sheer volume of “spam” we receive is that there are endless amounts and varieties of human appetites and endless amounts and varieties of people willing to satisfy them.

And yet, we learn something new every day, don’t we?

This enticing subject line dropped into my spam filter the other day:

“Teenage hotties at their liberal best”

I just might click on that one. I’m actually quite curious about the complex and thoughtful arguments the younger generation is making in favor of universal health care.

What…aren’t you?

I rely on my children’s schools — virtually on faith alone — to do an excellent job teaching them literature, math, biology and history and so on.

But what scares me most is that I have no one to rely on but myself to teach them the skills I have come to understand play the most significant role in their pursuit of happiness, success and achievement — passion, commitment, focus and resiliency.

This wonderful story is from Hollywood Remembered, an oral history of the movie industry. It is an interview with producer A.C. Lyles, who worked at Paramount for over 60 years. This is the kind of child would hope I could raise to adulthood, even as I realize how terribly inadequate I most likely am, both as a teacher and a role model.

“When I was 10 [in 1928] I wanted to make movies…

“I had seen a picture called Wings — the first and only silent picture to win the Academy Award — with Clara Bow… and a new fella named Gary Cooper [who subsequently became a huge star]. I went and just fell in love with that picture. It was a Paramount picture playing at the Paramount Theater [at the time, the studios owned the theaters] in Jacksonville. I had seen that it said Adolph Zukor Presents, so I was in awe of Adolph Zukor [the founder and CEO of Paramount]. I spoke to the manager of the theater that day [to see] if he would give me a job. And he gave me a job handing out leaflets…

“After four years in the job [he was then 14] I eventually met Adolph Zukor… when he came to Jacksonville. I asked him to let me come to Hollywood to work for him. He said, “Well, you’re just a kid, but you’ve been working for Paramount now for four years at the theater. So you finish high school, keep in touch, and I’ll hire you when you get out of high school.”

“Now that was extremely kind of him… when he said to keep in touch and finish high school, my main objective then was to finish high school. But the most important thing was writing him a letter every Sunday. He didn’t tell me to write him every Sunday, he just told me to keep in touch. So I wrote him every Sunday for four years.

“He didn’t write back — I didn’t hear from him but it didn’t matter. I never lost confidence or lost courage. I just knew he was looking forward to my letter each week as much as I was looking forward to writing him.

“One day Gary Cooper came to my hometown. I was writing movie news for the hometown paper. I saw Mr. Cooper and I told him I would be out here in Hollywood to work at Paramount as soon as I got out of high school. And there again, for some reason, he took a quick liking to me. I told him about my letters to Zukor every Sunday and he asked me what I would be writing about this week, and I said, “Oh, about meeting you, Mr. Cooper.”

“So he said, “Give me a piece of paper.” So he… wrote a note to Adolph Zukor saying, “I’m looking forward to seeing this kid on the lot.” So I wrote to Mr. Zukor telling him I had met Gary Cooper and enclosed the note to him.

“Then I heard from Mr. Zukor indirectly. A woman named Sidney Brecker, who was his secretary, wrote to me and said, “Mr. Zukor has been receiving your letters. But he feels that you don’t have to write every week. If you wrote once every three or four or five months, that would be enough.”

“Well, that didn’t discourage me at all. I continued to write to Mr. Zukor every Sunday. But I also had a new pigeon, Sidney Brecker, his secretary. So I wrote her every Sunday too. My whole main objective all week was what I was going to write to Mr. Zukor. Then I had to write another original letter to Sidney Brecker…

“I wrote [Zukor] a letter every Sunday for four years, keeping in touch. The day I got out of high school [in 1936, in the heart of the Great Depression], I was in a day coach headed for Hollywood, where you sit up — probably four days and four nights. I had $48 in cash that I had saved up, and two loaves of bread, and two jars of peanut butter and a sack of apples, and I headed for Hollywood. Got off the train downtown, took the streetcar straight to Paramount, and told them at the gate to tell Mr. Zukor I was here.

“And I’ve been here ever since.”

I would be willing to forgive almost any variety of numbers or letters on their report cards if they genuinely demonstrated this kind of heart.

But for now, that’s just between us.

I came across this great bit of advice today, and I thought I’d share it:

There are two rules for success in life:

Rule 1: Don’t tell people everything you know.

I try to avoid the temptation to make this space a daily commentary on politics (you can get plenty of that here and here). However, today’s New York Daily News features a great headline, and a reminder that maybe, just maybe, newspapers aren’t completely useless yet. This is what tabloids do best:

If you care about how and what your children, or any children, are learning, if you care about how your children, or any children, are prepared to thrive — spiritually and intellectually as well as economically — in a changing world, watch this thought-provoking, humor-laden presentation by Sir Ken Robinson:

I stumbled across these guys one night on an HBO special a few years ago; now, they have their own HBO series that, to me, is gut-bustingly funny, but to others is a bit of an acquired taste.

Here’s, ahem, a flavor of their humor:

The premise of their series is the daily life of two Kiwi transplants trying to start a music career in New York. Try it; it’ll grow on you (Sundays at 10:30 p.m. on HBO).

“How to Be Creative”

Amusing. Thoughtful. Useful. Worth the visit.

You know, I have a soft spot for things that take a little elbow grease and about $10, yet completely outshine things people spend thousands, hundred of thousands, or millions of dollars on.

This is one of those things:

(Of course, she’s a little more sophisticated than she lets on)