Random Thoughts

How Effective Is Facebook Marketing? Very, New Survey Says

The popular social networking site facebook is for more than just keeping in touch with friends and sharing photos, according to a new survey in the Harvard Business Review. Companies that use the popular social-media site and its fan page module to market ...

Article - News Staff - Feb 18 2010 - 12:09pm

Blogging The 2010 AAAS Day Two

Day one if you missed it.  Science is sometimes about  taking a hunch and amassing data to confirm the hypothesis.  I am still amassing data but I am reasonably sure the way to know there is a convention of physical therapists nearby is to look for all th ...

Blog Post - Hank Campbell - Feb 20 2010 - 11:20pm

More Liquor Stores Mean More Violence, Study Suggests

A new study by researchers at Indiana University suggests that there may be a link between the number of 'alcohol sales sites' in a neighborhood and the amount of violence that neighborhood experiences. The higher the former, the higher the latte ...

Article - News Staff - Feb 22 2010 - 12:07pm

Emphasis On Technology Drives Business Innovation

Groundbreaking ideas spring most from companies that stress technology, rather than customer needs or staying ahead of competitors, according to research that will appear in the Journal of Product Innovation Management. the findings suggest that firms are ...

Article - News Staff - Feb 22 2010 - 12:28pm

Gitterdämmerung?

Before we get to the Wagnerian bit, here is an article in today’s Telegraph: Simon Singh: it is too late for me, but libel laws must change for the public good.  This was raised earlier on SciBlog in British Libel Laws- Good for Pseudoscience, but the pre ...

Blog Post - Robert H Olley - Feb 23 2010 - 12:03pm

Of Poetry And Justice

Of Poetry And Justice What is the origin of the phrase ' poetic justice '? According to wikipedia English drama critic Thomas Rymer coined the phrase in The Tragedies of the Last Age Considere'd (1678) to describe how a work should inspire ...

Blog Post - Patrick Lockerby - Feb 24 2010 - 11:38pm

Steven Weinberg on prediction vs understanding

Let me also say what I don't mean by final, underlying, laws of physics. I don't mean that other branches of physics are in danger of being replaced by some ultimate version of elementary particle physics. I think the example of thermodynamics i ...

Blog Post - Michael White - Feb 28 2010 - 4:42pm

Lao Tzu on Lab Work

An impressive insight from someone who never tried to get qPCR to work: Thus it is said: The path into the light seems dark the path forward seems to go back the direct path seems long true power seems weak true purity seems tarnished true steadfastness se ...

Blog Post - Michael White - Mar 1 2010 - 10:49am

Baby Einstein DVDs Won't Teach Your Baby Anything

According to a new study in the May issue of the Archives of Pediatrics and Adolescent Medicine, educational DVDs do not improve overall general language learning abilities Among 12- to 24-month old children, and manufacturers' claims that these infan ...

Article - News Staff - Mar 1 2010 - 4:51pm

Who Won The Vancouver Winter Olympic Games?

Newspaper headlines report the total medal count as the most noteworthy measure of a country’s success in the recent Olympic games. The top three were the US with 37, Germany with 30 and Canada with 26. This can be misleading, because the numbers don’t ta ...

Article - Dave Deamer - Mar 1 2010 - 5:26pm