Even if you are in academia:

“(…) In a study of professors at the University of Texas at Austin, whose looks were rated by students who had never met them, I found that the average student evaluation of the instructor’s success in the course differed sharply by the professors’ looks. Going from the 84th to the 16th percentile of professors’ looks in lower-division courses dropped the professor’s rating from 4.4 to 3.6 on a 5 to 1 scale. Since two-thirds of the professors’ ratings were between 3.5 and 4.5, this effect of differences in their looks was very large. The impacts were smaller in upper-level classes, perhaps because those students were more focused on substantive issues than students in introductory classes. This distinction seems similar to the difference in beauty effects between electoral incumbents and challengers.

(…)

A similar approach was undertaken using instructional ratings of German university professors. As in the American study, the ratings of beauty by a group of students (who were not in the professors’ classes) were statistically significantly related to the evaluations that the German instructors received from the (different) students in their classes. While the impacts were not as large as in the United States, they were still substantial. No doubt the results would be different in other countries, for other kinds of students, and using different methods. But even in an occupation like college teaching, where we don’t think beauty will be very important, differences in beauty produce impacts on an outcome that is arguably linked to economic rewards.”

According to these studies students evaluations of theirs professors are more positive for better-looking professors. I wonder how much better my evaluations would be if I had better looks.

(Source: Beauty Pays | Inside Higher Ed.)

“(…)

These and other blessings are showered upon us by legislators in Washington who feel compelled to protect us, much as if we were spotted owls or some other endangered species. It’s nice to have friends in high places.

Last year my federal tax bill — the income tax I paid, as well as payroll taxes paid by me and on my behalf — was $6,938,744. That sounds like a lot of money. But what I paid was only 17.4 percent of my taxable income — and that’s actually a lower percentage than was paid by any of the other 20 people in our office. Their tax burdens ranged from 33 percent to 41 percent and averaged 36 percent.

(…)

Back in the 1980s and 1990s, tax rates for the rich were far higher, and my percentage rate was in the middle of the pack. According to a theory I sometimes hear, I should have thrown a fit and refused to invest because of the elevated tax rates on capital gains and dividends.

I didn’t refuse, nor did others. I have worked with investors for 60 years and I have yet to see anyone — not even when capital gains rates were 39.9 percent in 1976-77 — shy away from a sensible investment because of the tax rate on the potential gain. People invest to make money, and potential taxes have never scared them off. And to those who argue that higher rates hurt job creation, I would note that a net of nearly 40 million jobs were added between 1980 and 2000. You know what’s happened since then: lower tax rates and far lower job creation.”

(Source: Stop Coddling the Super-Rich | NYTimes.com.)

“A former hedge fund manager who defrauded investors out of €345m has been sentenced to more than 10 years imprisonment after one of Germany’s most spectacular cases of financial crime to be revealed by the global economic crisis.

(…)

Mr Kiener, who had originally fought the allegations, in April admitted that he had set up a complex Ponzi scheme.”

(Source: Hedge fund founder jailed for 10 years | FT.com .)

(Source: Tech support | xkcd .)

“(…) What can we learn from these studies for our day-to-day experiences? When we experience something as “taking a long time” it is really the result of three inter-twined processes: the actual duration of the event, how we feel about the event, and whether we think the event is approaching us. There is little we can do about the first factor but there are obvious ways of modulating how we feel about an event and how we think about an event approaching us.(…)”

Source: Why Does Time Fly? | Scientific American.

The following infographic is an excellent example of how graphics can help convey complex information.

I tried to find in our suncream the UV-A star system, but it turns out that in Europe there is only a standardised UV-A seal:

and it indicates a a quantified minimum UV-A-protection which increases in parallel with an increasing SPF. You can find out more here and here.

(Via The Sunscreen Smokescreen | Information is beautiful .)