SEP 10
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“ The different sciences are sometimes likened to successive levels of a tall building - physics on the ground floor, then chemistry, then cell biology - all the way up to psychology, and the economists in the penthouse. ”
Prof. Martin Rees, Astronomer Royal, BBC Reith
Lecture #3 2010.
Smarm your way to the top
Although many would say that the techniques of smarming are fairly intuitive to many in the corporate world, until recently they have not been formally investigated in the scholarly literature.
Now a new research project from the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University and the University of Michigan’s Ross School of Business, has for the first time, identified (the) seven effective smarming strategies prevalent in the high-end corporate world.
They are :
• Framing flattery as advice seeking
• Arguing prior to conforming
• Complimenting manager to his/her friends
• Framing flattery as likely to make manager uncomfortable
• Engaging in value conformity prior to flattery or
opinion conformity
• Conforming to opinions expressed by one’s manager
to a third party
• Referencing social affiliations held in common with one’s
manager prior to flattery or opinion conformity
“ These findings shed new light on why there are only a few top managers with backgrounds in engineering, accounting or finance, as compared to top managers with backgrounds in politics, law or sales.”
They're not so good at smarming.
The paper appears in the latest edition of Admisistative Science Quarterly (ASQ)
30 SEP 10
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A retrospective look at cloudy futures
A new article in the journal Studies of Social Science takes an in-depth look at ‘Weather Derivatives ‘
Specifically focussing on the UK Govt. Meteorological Office 2001 commercial venture into the world of Betting on the Weather.
Here’s a 2001 press-release on the subject :
Business deal first to rain pennies from heaven for Met Office
The weatherXchange venture was a PPP ( Public Private Partnership ) finally involving a total of around £4.5 million of taxpayers’ cash. The state-owned Meteorological Office held 50% and a ' derivatives specialist ', Umbrella Brokers Ltd, held 25%.
Fast-forward to 2006 . . .
weatherXchange Status - Bankrupt
Umbrella Brokers Ltd. Status - Folded
Here’s what the (former) Met Office CEO who set up the PPP said in evidence to the subsequent official government inquiry - when asked ‘ the obvious question ’ “ Why did it fail ? ”
“ Why it failed is a story that will take rather longer than we have got this morning.”
Take away motto : ( from the new research paper )
“Regardless of the political conclusions, turbulence should be expected. After all, a science of weather could hardly be otherwise. “
29 SEP 10
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Patent of the week
A selection of one of this week's newly issued US patents . . .
and that would be ? ............ (click to view)
Comment from reader Carmelita
" Please tell me they called this exercise system 'The Sisyphus'. "
28 SEP 10 (midday edition)
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The power of yellow
You’re a retailer. How can you persuade the punters
there’s a discount when there isn’t one?
An answer might be found in a new working paper from the Faculty of Economics and Business Administration at the University of Tartu, Estonia.
Tanel Mehine’s paper asks the simple question “ Do Yellow Price Tags Matter to Consumers? ”
And finds the answer is yes - in the sense that
“… it was found that consumers perceive yellow price tags as the presenters of a discount. A comparison of the mean values showed that yellow price tags had an effect on the reference price and, furthermore, a yellow price tag always increased the reference price.”
Or, put another way
“…companies have the opportunity to increase the consumer’s reference price, and thereby also revenues by changing the colour of the price tag without offering any actual discount.”
28 SEP 10
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Countering a Cosmologocial Creation Conundrum
Many have drawn attention to a formidable cosmologocial conundrum regarding the biblical view of the creation of the entire universe in six days.
If the universe is – as many contend – just 6,000 years old, then the most distant observable galaxies would only be 6,000 lightyears away. Contrasting sharply with real-world observations – wherein modern day uberscopes are apparently viewing galaxies some 13 billion lightyears distant.
A new article in the latest issue of the Answers Research Journal [ link below ] proposes a solution – in the form of the Anisotropic Synchrony Convention (ASC)
The paper explains the complexities of ASC theory in detail, but the idea can be summed up fairly simply.
When the Universe was created, God put the red-shifted light-beams there at the same time - in order to give the appearance of a universe billions of years old.
The full paper can be read here :
27 SEP 10
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Igs 2010
The imminent 2010 Ig® Nobel Prize Ceremony & Lectures will be screened as a live webcast via YouTube on Thursday, September 30. < Here >
The theme of this year's ceremony ( though not necessarily of the individual prizes ) is: BACTERIA.
The event not only includes the announcement and presentations of the 2010 Ig® Nobel Prizes, but also features a Pathogenic Bacterial Pianoconcerto, a Win-a-Date-With-a-Nobel-Laureate Contest, and much more.
Schedule:
Test pattern: 7:05 pm
Webcast begins: 7:15 pm
Ceremony begins: 7:30 pm
Note: Quoted times are USA Massachusetts Boston time. For the broadcast time in other global timezones see this online converter
24 SEP 10 (midday edition)
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Scale of the Universe
Primax Studio New Media Design & Development of Cincinnati, US, have implemented a very impressive hyper-zoomable Flash™ page to help visualise The Scale of the Universe.
Also see, the book ' Cosmic View ' Kees Boeke (1957), and
Powers of Ten video, Ray Eames and Charles Eames (1968)
( HT to Sciguy at Chron.com )
24 SEP 10
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Inframutt
As our columnist Dr. Nahiv pointed out in his latest groundbreaking article ( It’s tough at the bottom ), the now famous PageRank Algorithm (PRA), which powers the world’s most successful interweb search engines “... is of course pure folly."
“It works by pushing up the search engines pages which are already popular and have lots of links to them. Although it is patented, there is and never was absolutely nothing new about it. It is just a computerized feedback version of ‘The rich get richer’ or ‘Nothing succeeds like success’ - which we all know too well.”
To address this issue, Really Magazine has commissioned and implemented an experimental alpha version of Nahiv’s ‘ UnderDogs Algorithm ‘
[link below]
Using a well known search engine as the core, Inframutt is trained to automatically fetch and display the least popular results for any given search page. As Nahiv explains :
It simply takes the most unnoticed and obscure of the search engine results and forces it to the top of the list ( instead of the bottom ). Is that not more democratic and fair and useful ?
So, if you’d like to continue supporting the already-successful, the elite, the powerful, and the monopolistic, then by all means go here :
If, however, you’re more concerned about the expectations of the underprivileged, the downtrodden, the powerless, and the obscure, why not use Inframutt instead ?
[click
to visit]
Proviso and limitations :
We point out that the core algorithm is still at the development stage, and due to inevitable pre-weighting, the results are still somewhat unfairly skewed – but we believe that it is a brave first step on the way towards an antidote to the tyranny of the PRA.
Inframutt is geared towards a practical demonstration of the core philosophical concept rather than idealised results.
At present it only returns one page - to search
again, click the logo.
23 SEP 10
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Divine Comedy
Albert Einstein’s now famous quote “ God does not play dice.” has generated a great deal of heated debate over the last few decades.
Since then, another philosophical enigma has arisen. “ Is God funny? ”
A new slant on the idea is put forward in the latest issue of the Journal for the Study of the Old Testament.
In which Abigail Pelham, previously at the Theology & Religious Studies dept. at the University of Glasgow, Scotland, presents a comedic reading of God’s speeches in the Book of Job.
The author puts it simply :
“Has Job ever made me laugh? My answer is: Yes.”
' Job as Comedy, Revisited ' can be found here
22 SEP 10 (midday edition)
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EBra
Dr.
Elena Bodnar, winner of the 2009 Ig
Nobel Public
Health Prize " for
inventing a brassiere that, in an emergency, can be
quickly converted into a pair of protective face masks, one
for the brassiere
wearer and one to be given to some needy bystander." whose US
patent we highlighted back in Aug 07, is now marketing
her invention.
They're available in sizes 32B to 40C - and in any colour (as long as it's red). $29.99
Full info see : www.ebbra.com
22 SEP 10
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New patent of the week
From this week's newly-granted US patents . . .
Place your bets, then click the drawing to find out what it is . . .
21 SEP 10 (midday edition)
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Divine Limited
Deepak Danak, Professor at the Institute of Management, at Nirma University, India, believes that we may be about to enter a new phase in the sphere of industrial and commercial organization.
The professor points out that many organizations were founded
on greed and exploitation “...
economic organizations triggered
by an animal instinct were started as exploitative device ...”
But he believes that in modern times, many have now evolved, adopting a more ethical and responsible framework which he calls ‘ result-oriented management ’.
There is, however, still room for further progress to be made.
“ As a matter of fact, the highest stage of true effectiveness is one where the business organization blossoms into a divine organization.”
Really Magazine invites readers to send us examples of organizations which are now ready for the transformation into the divine. Or perhaps there already are some ?
The paper ‘ The Divine Side of Enterprise ’ can be found here in the latest issue of the Journal of Human Values.
Comment from reader JJ.
"How about this one ?"
21 SEP 10
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Research of the week
Investigators from the University of Wollongong and the University of New South Wales, Australia, pose an unusual question in their article which is scheduled for future publication in the journal Social Indicators Research.
“ If Men Do More Housework, Do Their Wives Have More Babies? ”
Analysis of data from the Household, Income and Labour Dynamics in Australia [HILDA] ( survey waves 1–6 ) provided the answer – which can be broadly summarised as ‘No’.
“ We find no evidence that the way housework or childcare is shared has an effect, nor that the amount of men’s contribution to housework or childcare has an effect. In addition, the effect of men’s housework and childcare time on fertility does not appear to be mediated through its effect on their wives’ housework and childcare.”
15 SEP 10
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This week's patents
A selection of US patents granted today . . .
Yes . . but what, exactly, are they ?
Click the drawing to find out . . .
14 SEP 10 (midday edition)
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Designer food
“ Food Product Design delivers practical, use-it-now, take-it-to-the-bench editorial for product development professionals . . .”
For those involved in designing food products, this online magazine provides a comprehensive international directory of suppliers for many of those hard-to-source food ingredients.
Some examples:
Limestone, Ground ( FCC Food-Grade )
and many, many, more . . .
Comment from reader Peter K.
Great links! I run a paint and industrial ceramic glazing products firm, it's helped me no end.
14 SEP 10
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Enhancing Superconductivity with beer
A recent press release from the National Institute for Materials Science, Japan Science and Technology Agency :
extract:
" In the present work, the research team focused once again on FeTe1-xSx as a substance positioned between superconductors and non-superconductors, and fabricated a specimen by the solid phase reaction method. Although the specimen obtained does not display superconductivity, it was found that this substance becomes a superconductor on the following day when immersed in an alcoholic beverage and heated to approximately 70°C. As a result of a comparative experiment with red wine, white wine, beer, Japanese sake, shochu, and whisky, superconductivity was achieved with all of the beverages tested, red wine being the most effective. "
10 SEP 10 (late edition)
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Towards Solidifying an International Soccerspeak Corpus
The concept, origins and methodology behind the University of Hamburg's Kictionary website [ a multilingual electronic dictionary of football (soccer) language ] were described at length in the book ‘ The linguistics of football’ (2008) '.
“. . . lexical units are [] organised into synsets, i.e. into groups of words with identical or largely similar meanings. Synsets, in turn, are the building blocks of a number of concept hierarchies, each of which organises a set of synsets into a tree via lexical relations such as hypernymy/hyponymy (X is-a-kind-of Y), holonymy/meronymy (X is-a-part-of Y) and troponymy (to X is to Y in some way)”
The Kictionary website has recently added a selection of transcribed radio commentaries with new examples of soccerspeak.
The archive will complement and contrast with the extensive ColemanBalls database created by Private Eye magazine in the UK – which has been building a comprehensive archive of transcribed soccer-commentary snippets for more than a decade now.
Here’s the latest addition :
"It was such a good shot that even if the keeper had saved it, it would have gone in the back of the net. "
Les Ferdinand ( ITV )
And some others ( via archive.org )
" Chris Gayle has still got himself up his sleeve. . ."
Shaun Udal ( Sky Sports )
" I suppose that was the sort of game Newcastle fans enjoy – as long as the outcome is what the outcome was at the end of it. "
Glenn Roeder ( London Lite )
" All the other speculation is pure speculation."
Alan Curbishley ( BBC1 )
10 SEP 10
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The taste of water
“Describing the taste of water is a challenge . . .”
explains the abstract of a new research project scheduled for publication in the journal Food Quality and Preference.
Researchers from le Centre Européen des Sciences du Goût, CNRS-UB-INRA, France present -
“ A new methodology based on comparison with a set of references and named ‘Polarized Sensory Positioning’ (PSP) has been developed enabling to easily define the sensory characteristics of water without presenting too many samples.”
Although the article is presently for ‘subscribers only’, one of the lead researchers, Eric Teillet, is publishing a diagrammatic online guide to the new water-taste-describing method.
09 SEP 10
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Notice
( Caution: May contain traces of egg )
07 SEP 10
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Acupuncture goes double blind
The history of the ‘ Placebo Needle ’ goes back at least as far as 1998, when researchers at the University of Heidelberg, Germany invented one.
An ensuing study found that patients couldn’t tell the difference between a real needle and the specially designed non-skin-penetrating one. Opening the way for scientific experimenters to construct valid blind trials - with placebo receiving control groups - to test the efficacy of acupuncture.
A problem remained however. Although the patients being treated couldn’t tell the difference, the acupuncturists administering the needles certainly could. Thus ‘ double-blind ' trials ( in which neither the patient nor the acupuncturist knows if the needle is real ) were impossible.
Until now.
Professor Nobuari Takakura and colleagues from the Department of Acupuncture and Moxibustion, Tokyo Ariake University of Medical and Health Sciences, Tokyo, Japan, have invented the ‘ Non-touch control needle ’. (N-TCN)
In a test experiment, ten professional acupuncturists each made thirty attempts to discern whether they were using a ‘real’ needle or the new N-TCN.
And in general, they couldn't.
Conclusion : " Practitioners had a slight tendency to guess the penetrating needles correctly, but were uncertain about most of their judgments, posing only a very small risk to double blinding."
The study is published in the latest issue of the journal Acupuncture in Medicine.
Comment from reader Peter K
"I'm a builder, and I've invented the Placebo Hammer (pic). Can I get a patent?"
03 SEP 10
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Embodiment and CCT
“ We clothe it, we expose it to the sun, we depilate it, we moisturize it, we beautify it with cosmetics, we cleanse it, we tattoo it, we pierce it, and we scar it.”
The ‘ it ’ in question is of course ‘ skin ’ – and it’s the subject for a new article in the journal Marketing Theory.
“ Skin reflects the dynamic relationship between inside and outside, self and society, between personal identity projects and marketplace cultures. It represents the meeting place of structure and agency; a primary site for the inscription of ideology and a text upon which individuals write their own stories.”
The skin researchers, from the University of Exeter in the UK, and the University of Limerick in Ireland, have identified three functions of skin – from the point of view of Consumer Culture Theory (CCT) -
• Skin as container
• Skin as a projection surface, and
• Skin as a cover to be modified
But ultimately, say the authors –
“ . . . we suggest an abandonment of our fetish for meaning and champion instead an examination of what consuming bodies do.”
The new paper - Borderlands: Skin, Tattoos, and Consumer Culture Theory can be read in full here :
؟ ؟ ؟
Also see : A skin-based
musical inquiry by Jon Quarmby and
Ephraim Lewis (1964)
02 SEP 10
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