Expression impression

I was thinking about school days recently and I recalled a friend and I each being able to do a recognisable impression of someone in the year below simply by pulling a certain facial expression. Absolutely no words or bodily actions were required.

I’m sure he cannot have walked around 24/7 with exactly that expression on his face, for that would not allow him to exhibit the whole range of emotions that humans are capable of displaying.

So what was special about that particular expression? Or perhaps it was that his facial structure lent itself to falling naturally into that sort of position? Does anyone else know of anyone who can be successfully mimicked using just one facial position? If so, what do you think is the reason behind the success of the impression?

Mirthful murderers

I was discussing current affairs with some friends last night. One noted that there had recently been uproar and revulsion in the US in reaction to a couple of students in Pennsylvania who posed for Facebook pictures dressed as victims of the Virginia Tech gun massacre.

One's initial reaction to this seems to be to concur with the revulsion (or at least mine was). But then the same friend noted that another of our friends attended a Hallowe'en party this year dressed as Harold Shipman. I recalled back to when I first heard about that, and I reacted with mirth.

But when you analyse the two situations with cold logic, what is the difference between them? Is it simply that different amounts of time have passed since the killings that brought respective notoriety? And if time is the key factor, how long do you have to leave it before revulsion turns to mirth? Is it a sliding scale? Or does the severity of the crime have to be thrown into the equation too??