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Lily Diaz wrote: > What I imagine is more difficult is to derive expression from > constantly changing parameters, such as would be the case if the > problem space were to include the diversity of human cultures. That was my initial reaction but when I read the short published paper behind this here: http://www.cs.tau.ac.il/~tommer/beautification/ and here: http://www.cs.tau.ac.il/~tommer/beautification/dfb_sketch.pdf I saw that, as well as sampling 300 people they were citing sources (Perrett et al. 1994; Jones 1996) which claimed to establish that acceptable facial norms are very consistent across races ands cultures. I could see how that could interact with racial differences. So I guess we have to go back and check the sources. They may be hopelessly naive - eg did they find a way to tune out the possible effect of norms converging because of mass media? or they may reveal durable truths about human tastes. Incidentally if you look at the second pair of photographs in the first link above you will see that the "before" image shows a young woman with a dour expression rather like the picture of Steerpike illustrated in Mervin Peake's Ghormenghast (foreground here: http://www.todayinliterature.com/assets/essays/peake_1/1-gormenghast-428x347.jpg) and the "after" image shows her with her mouth raised up and a smiling expression. All the rest of her feaures are unchanged. I think we could all have predicted that she needed to "lighten up". More importantly, Mervyn Peake, who was a master at capturing the grotesque in the everyday had the ability to draw not just acceptability, but an enormous range of facial characters, each one distinct and human. And, I believe, there is a lot of truth in the assertion that, up to the age of 25 we wear the face we were given, but after that we make our own face. Trying to fight that can lead to horrible results - I saw Barry Manilow on TV the other day (No I didn't seek him out, he caught me unawares). He wears a shocking mask, no longer a real person's face. best regards Chris JONES, D. 1996. Physical Attractiveness and the Theory of Sexual Selection: Results from Five Populations. University of Michigan Press, Ann Arbor, Michigan. PERRETT, D. I., MAY, K. A., AND YOSHIKAWA, S. 1994. Facial shape and judgements of female attractiveness. Nature 368, 239–242.