Men with beards are more credible than clean-shaven men, according to a paper in the Journal of Marketing Communications. Bearded men were deemed to be more trustworthy and have more expertise when endorsing cellphones and toothpaste, but were slightly worse than clean shaven men for selling underwear.  The men in the study had neat, medium-length beards, so don’t go for the mountain man look. The researchers apparently suggested that politicians should have beards, but I think political research would show that men with beards don’t do so well – maybe we should ask David Farrar. (HT Chronicle of Higher Education NB it’s behind the paywall)

A proud Berkeley alumni has forwarded me a story about the invention of a robot that can fold towels - “the robot succeeded in all 50 trials that were attempted on previously unseen towels with wide variations in appearance, material and size”. It’s apparently much harder to teach a robot how to fold a towel than to assemble a car and, even though towel-folding is a lot less useful, working with deformable objects (ie they bend) could have a lot of potential. Oh dear, I think my friend was just taking the piss and I’ve made it serious. Anyway, watch the video for your Friday Zen moment.