[Mumbai, November 25. Image via Getty]

A woman mourns as members of the Jewish orthodox Chabad Lubavitch movement of New York attend a memorial service in memory of victims of last year's terror attacks, at the Keneseth Eliyahoo Synagogue in Mumbai on November 25, 2009. A total of 166 people were killed and more than 300 others were injured when 10 heavily-armed Islamist militants stormed the city on November 26, 2008, attacking a number of sites, including the city's main railway station, two luxury hotels, a popular tourist restaurant and a Jewish centre. AFP PHOTO/ Indranil MUKHERJEE (Photo credit should read INDRANIL MUKHERJEE/AFP/Getty Images)

• The Australian Bureau of Statistics has reported that more babies were born in that country 2008 than ever before. They also found that the trend of mothers giving birth later in life "seems to have stalled," and that there were slightly more newborn boys (51%) than girls. •  A 28-year-old German man has been found guilty of stabbing a pregnant Egyptian woman during a court hearing in Dresden. Al-Sherbini was going to testify against Alexander Wiens, who allegedly harassed her at work with taunts of "terrorist" and "Islamist" when Wiens attacked her in the courtroom. Wiens has been sentenced to life in prison. • Jewish activists are anticipating Obama's announcement of a special envoy to monitor anti-Semitism. Rumor has it that the candidate is female, with Chicago connections. • A Hungarian man convicted of using a camera to peep up women's skirts has been banned from filming in public for the next two years. Apparently, the women who he filmed were unaware and have not been informed of the violation. • Jaycee Dugard's family has brought in a publicist to help "clean up" the mess made by several greedy middlemen. Unfortunately, the family is still in looking for donations to help pay for everything from medical bills to food. •  A recent spate of suicides among housekeepers working in Lebanon has lead to a campaign for better conditions for the often overworked immigrant women. A recent survey found that more than one migrant domestic worker was dying in Lebanon each week, usually from either suicide or falling off a balcony in attempts to get away from an abusive employer. •  For the first time ever, the Mormon church has announced support for gay rights legislation in Salt Lake City. Although the Church is still against gay marriage, officials have come out in support of legislation that would prohibit discrimination against gays in housing and employment. • Cynthia Stewart, a 17-year-old junior at Tharptown High School in Alabama, is on her school's prom planning committee and personally raised $200 for the event. But when Stewart asked her principal if she could bring her girlfriend to the prom he said no and told her to take off a sticker that read "I am a lesbian," because, "You don't have that much freedom of speech at school." Her family appealed the decision to the school board, but it upheld the principal's decision. • The Tate Gallery has announced the appointment of Penelope Curtis as the new director for the museum in London. Other good news for women in art comes from Venice, where the Japanese architect Kazuyo Sejima has been named director of the Venice Architecture Biennale. • Scottish widow Mona Webster, who died in August at the age of 96, loved opera and birds so she left most of her $16.6 million fortune to New York's Metropolitan Opera and the British charity Windfowl and Wetlands Trust. • Brits are some of the ugliest people in the world, according to the dating site BeautifulPeople.com. The site lets existing members rate applicants' attractiveness to decide if they should be let on the site and only one in 8 British men and three in 30 British women have been accepted. Swedish men have the most success, with 65 percent accepted, and Norwegian women were voted the most beautiful with 76 percent accepted. • People are criticizing Pittsburgh's recently unveiled Mister Rogers statue because they say the 11-foot tall, 7,000 pound statue looks nothing like him. Jimmy Kimmel said it makes "the nicest man in the world look like a mud monster." •

[North Hollywood, October 29. Image via Getty]

NORTH HOLLYWOOD, CA - OCTOBER 29: Saba Moore-Doucette (C) and her daughter Molly along with neighbors look at the scene after a gunman shot and wounded two men in the underground parking garage of the Adat Yeshurun Valley Sephardic Congregation on October 29, 2009 in the North Hollywood section of Los Angeles, California. The wounded men, arrived in separate vehicles for a morning prayer service and were shot after they got out of their vehicles. (Photo by Kevork Djansezian/Getty Images)

[Berlin, July 22. Image via Getty]

A girl jumps from a concrete stele to another at the Memorial for the Murdered Jews of Europe in Berlin on July 22, 2009. The memorial, designed by US architect Peter Eisenmann, is made up of 2711 concrete steles forming a curved landscape in the heart of the capital. AFP PHOTO DAVID GANNON (Photo credit should read DAVID GANNON/AFP/Getty Images)

As the blogger, Gwen, points out:

The book is full of images in which the features stereotypically associated with Northern and Western Europeans, or the mythical Aryan race, are associated with sincerity, honestly, a work ethic, and every other positive character trait, whereas large and especially hooked noses and small, hooded, or almond-shaped eyes were indications of negative traits.

What's interesting is that many of these "deceitful" and "unreliable" characteristics are the same ones used to illustrate Disney villains. While Jasmine and Aladdin had large eyes and small noses, look at their enemy, Jafar:


Slanted eyes and a twisted, hooked nose. That's how we "know" he is bad. That's what evil "looks" like.

Snow White had a button sniffer; the evil witch had a large, hooked, decidedly non-Caucasian nose :

The book also speaks of "deceitful" chins:





Much like Cruella de Vil:





Additionally, Ben Franklin types — and Native Americans — are deemed "vicious," because they have broad heads.

Reminiscent of Ursula the sea witch:

While this book is outdated, the idea that you can judge a person by his appearance persists; we often hear people say a woman has "intelligent eyes" or a guy looks like "he couldn't hurt a fly." Even worse are terms like "baby-faced killer," as though one has anything to do with the other.

Helpful Guide to Human Character [Sociological Images]

["Ljubelj South", Slovenia; June 5. Image via Getty]

A woman explores on June 5, 2009 the chamber of former World War II nazi concentration camp 'Ljubelj south' where the names of all nazi concentration camps were engraved, some 100 kilometers from Ljubljana. Slovenian President Danilo Turk and his Austrian counterpart Heinz Fischer visited the tunnel and the entrance to the 'Ljubelj south' World War II nazi concentration camp at Slovenian side of the border with Austria. Between March 1943 to May 1945 Ljubelj south in Slovenia and Ljubelj north in Austria were a branch of notorious WWII Mauthausen nazi concentration camps, from which thousands of political internees, the majority of whom were French, were transported to Ljubelj from there. AFP PHOTO/ HRVOJE POLAN (Photo credit should read HRVOJE POLAN/AFP/Getty Images)

• The Vietnamese media reports that about 130 women are held as prisoners, including some held in dog cages, and forced to work as prostitutes 18 hours per day. • A male white rhino in South Australia led his zookeepers on a 12-hour chase after he escaped from his habitat on Sunday in jealous protest over another bull being mated with a female rhino. • Den of Geek! has compiled a list of the 50 best drug trip scenes from movies, including scenes from The Matrix and Rosemary's Baby. • The principal of an exclusive Sydney boys' school has blamed South Park and Summer Heights High for their un-PC humor after students at the school allegedly posted anti-Semitic comments on a Facebook group titled Jew Parking Appreciation Group. • A new study claims that men have evolved to overspend so that they can attract mates. • A new DIY store-bought test, appropriately called The Sperm Check Vasectomy test, promises to help men check if their vasectomy has worked or not. • Cute alert: here are some photos of a baby orangutan who has befriended a two-year-old girl. • A mother from Detroit was arrested on Sunday after she had her 16-year-old daughter participate in a sex party that included 19 prostitutes and 20 men. • Brazil's sex toy industry is experiencing a boom after the South American country's economy has taken off. • Some high school students in Michigan observed the autopsy of a local 14-year-old girl from their same school district, although none of the students knew her. • New educational strategies distributed to Australian teachers say that red ink is "too aggressive" to use when correcting a student's paper and may contribute to harming a student's psyche. • Strange portraits of Obama on Mental Floss involve two separate paintings that include unicorns. •

The National Review's Kathleen Parker, who we've already invited to move to Thailand, calls for Palin to drop out for the good of the party and the country. Naturally, she also says that all liberal feminists are part of a "hirsute, Birkenstock-wearing sisterhood" — because, naturally, a feminist would never wear cute shoes or trim her bush, let alone shave her legs — but her point is that Sarah Palin is rather obviously out of her league in this contest. After watching Palin's interviews with Charlee Gibson, Sean Hannity and Katie Couric, Parker's response is: "If BS were currency, Palin could bail out Wall Street herself." Ouch.

Then there's the New York Times "Editorial Observer" column, which takes Sarah Palin to task for the little rape kit thing she's refusing to talk about. Writer Dorothy Samuels comes to basically the same conclusion that I did — that Palin must have known, and that she did it in an orgy of Republican-y cost-cutting that Samuels calls "boneheaded." Samuels compares that to Joe Biden's sponsorship of the Violence Against Women Act, which Samuels notes contained "provisions to make states ineligible for federal grant money if they charged rape victims for exams and the kits containing the medical supplies needed to conduct them." As far as Samuels is concerned, the voters deserve an explanation.

And as if that isn't enough, today, the Washington Post reports that Palin took $25,000 in gifts from various interests groups with issues before the legislature, causing the campaign to not respond with a denial (of course) and The Guardian digs into the nasty anti-Semitic leanings of the preachers and speakers at Palin's church. So, for the end of this week, Palin's an unqualified Republican who takes bribes, doesn't like Jews and is enthralled with cost-cutting to the point of amorality. That's not a good day.

Worst Of Sarah Palin's Katie Couric Interview (So Far) [Gawker]
More Painful Palin Excerpts From Couric Interview [Daily Kos]
Palin Problem [National Review]
Wasilla Watch: Sarah Palin and the Rape Kits [New York Times]
Palin Accepted $25,000 in Gifts, Alaska Records Show [Washington Post]
Palin's Preacher Problem [The Guardian]

• Warning, Project Runway spoilers! Contestants will design for Sarah Jessica Parker and Jon Bon Jovi. One contestant who gets kicked off is HIV-positive. [NY Daily News]
  
• To celebrate Pete Doherty's engagement to another model, Kate Moss got a trim and bangs. [Vogue UK]
  
• Mary-Kate Olsen: "I love how you can totally change your look by changing your shoes. Or maybe you don't look different, and nobody else thinks you look different, but I feel different, anyway." File this one under "shit that sounds better in your head than it does aloud." [Vogue UK]
  
• Model Coco Rocha is going to help save the world will be teaching Irish dance to children in Harlem? The lessons go down Oct. 20 and yeah we are going. [Vogue UK]

• Oy gevalt! For the love of Judy Garland, which evil hotel could this be, this horrid place "where all the top editors stay" in Europe that is both anti-Semitic and hates the gays?! Start snitchin'! [NY Daily News]
• Los Angeles Fashion Week has started. But take heart: no one gives a shit! [Fashion Week Daily]
• Yves Saint Laurent designer Stefano Pilati is designing T-shirts for a charitable cause, which is a really popular thing to do now because people who actually want to donate money to charitable causes don't have enough money to buy handbags and crap like that. Stefano's T-shirt will fund France's Institute for cerebral and medullary disorders. [Fashion Week Daily]
• Vanessa Williams has inked a $20 million deal with Proactiv, because she and Rick Fox are low on cash. And she'll be starting a Proactiv cosmetics line, because the world is low on cosmetic lines. [NY Post]
• American Eagle is trying to reach out and touch some college students. They're setting up some sort of crazy promotion thingy at big state school football games, where they'll be interviewing kids for on-ine videos about how they get ready for a big game (Um, I'm guessing they just drink? And paint themselves their school colors once drunk enough to not care?) and hiring students at the schools they visit to give out $25 gift certificates to fellow students they see wearing American Eagle. Ah, grassroots marketing. [WWD, sub req'd]
• The New York Rangers love Alexander McQueen? [WWD, sub req'd]