Smile And The World Smiles With You; Dissect It And People Ask ‘Who’s That Freak?’

I read this quote today: 

What sunshine is to flowers, smiles are to humanity. These are but trifles, to be sure; but, scattered along life’s pathway, the good they do is inconceivable.

-Joseph Addison

So here you go:

According to Mr. Higgins’ Honors Algebra II class at Norwalk High School (07-08) 

The smile of the “smiley face” is in the shape of a parabola.

The smiley face was designed in 1964 in Worcester, Massachusettes by Harvey Ball, and has become a crazy-huge symbol all over the world.  

The equation for a parabola is: (x-h)^2=4p(y-k)             (h,k)=vertex    p=distance from vertex to focus

I thought I would do some research into smiling (gotta love that Google button).  This is from http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qa4128/is_200311/ai_n9341157/:

…smiling isn’t just for fun-it’s a matter of survival. Scientists have discovered that newborn infants, even those who are born blind, know how to smile […] A baby’s smile is designed to attract and hold mother’s attention; it is an infant’s way of bonding with the mother and encouraging her care.

Babies may be on to something. Research shows that smiling is healthy because it can trigger positive feelings. Perhaps that is also why smiling is contagious. When you smile at people, you’ll notice that they generally smile back. But they will not respond to a frown by frowning or to a scowl by scowling. (Try it and see!)

According to The Dating Rule Book, the smile is the sexiest muscle.  However…

Research has shown that it is not enough to just “smile”, humans are fine tuned to being able to subconsciously tell whether a smile is genuine or fake, and the latter is usually responded to by dissent. So it is crucial you practice your smiles, so that a genuine smile would seem genuine (seems easy unless you have severe muscle malfunctions) and a fake smile would seem genuine (as you can guess, a lot tougher). So try thinking of a something horrible (ie. of the economic shituation in America) and try smiling to it, if you can fake a genuine smile with that thought in your head, you’re prepared to take on the world.

QTMama says

A smile creates an atmosphere.  It can be so many different atmospheres too.  From unity to friendship to the flirty “Hi there!” to a thank you to the your welcome … I could go on and on.  And the thing is, smiles are contagious.  You smile at someone and odds are, they smile back.   A smile thrown at someone solicits one in return.  It costs nothing and the best of all?  It feels good to have someone smile at you. 

We may think some people have nothing to smile about – but they do it anyway:

Some people smile because they have good teeth:

 

So let’s get started:

 

The idea for this post came from a Quote of the Day in my Inbox and the glorious sunshine I woke up to.  While I’ve been writing this the sun has been abducted by ugly clouds threatening rain and a wind that even I can’t rival: if ever there was an argument against bringing science to the masses, this isn’t it; it’s just coincidence.

Have a nice day, y’all; d’ya hear?