By Thomas Sharp
It is a truth as plain to see
as the chemistry between lovers,
that in general we've mostly
got the same bits as each other.
Facially, I mean - the same stuff
crops up, without evolution.
Noses, ears, eyes, you know. Enough
for elegant spectacle distribution.
And, luckily for those of us
with the lowest boredom thresholds,
all these fleshy facial objects
are measurably quite special.
Our databases of faces
heave heavy with statistics.
WE see numerical traces…..
where you see human characteristics.
For instance twenty-five per cent
of us have a face we'll call 'petite.
So sweetly efficient,
saves on sunscreen. In photos is discreet.
And then some of us will possess
(twenty-three in a hundred friends)
faces that feel jolly generous,
faces with much more end-to-end.
Nineteen - noses described as wide,
(per cent again, it's a bugger to scan).
Low-nosed lovelies - twenty-seven point five.
(Sorry if numbers are your bogeyman.)
And the biggest revelation
from our data's existence
is the absence of correlation
between wide heads and pupillary distance.
Now 'all is vanity'
Ecclesiastes mentions,
it's an insult to sanity
to obsess about dimensions.
We're more than our features.
Let's avoid noggins being inflated.
We're essentially the same creatures,
and anyway - headwise-
width and length are not related.
It is a truth as plain to see
as the chemistry between lovers,
that in general we've mostly
got the same bits as each other.
Facially, I mean - the same stuff
crops up, without evolution.
Noses, ears, eyes, you know. Enough
for elegant spectacle distribution.
And, luckily for those of us
with the lowest boredom thresholds,
all these fleshy facial objects
are measurably quite special.
Our databases of faces
heave heavy with statistics.
WE see numerical traces…..
where you see human characteristics.
For instance twenty-five per cent
of us have a face we'll call 'petite.
So sweetly efficient,
saves on sunscreen. In photos is discreet.
And then some of us will possess
(twenty-three in a hundred friends)
faces that feel jolly generous,
faces with much more end-to-end.
Nineteen - noses described as wide,
(per cent again, it's a bugger to scan).
Low-nosed lovelies - twenty-seven point five.
(Sorry if numbers are your bogeyman.)
And the biggest revelation
from our data's existence
is the absence of correlation
between wide heads and pupillary distance.
Now 'all is vanity'
Ecclesiastes mentions,
it's an insult to sanity
to obsess about dimensions.
We're more than our features.
Let's avoid noggins being inflated.
We're essentially the same creatures,
and anyway - headwise-
width and length are not related.
