As a current wearer of a ponytail that reaches my shoulder blades and the previous owner of a wicked-fine mullet (hey, it was the ’80s and it was cool back then… really!), I was extremely interested to learn that “long hair ‘consumes a great deal of nutrition’ and could thus rob the brain of energy.”

This little factoid comes from a North Korean media campaign called “Let us trim our hair in accordance with Socialist lifestyle.” Funny… most of the Socialists I knew in college had hair longer than mine. Not only that, but they didn’t use much product, either. Very untidy. Never seemed to affect their ideological fervor.

Tidiness matters in places other than hair, too. Here’s another important sartorial tip from Pyongyang: “No matter how good the clothes, if one does not wear tidy shoes, one’s personality will be downgraded.”

(Link courtesy of novelist William Gibson.)