Random Thoughts

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 proper moral behaviour in its audience by illustrating the triumph of good over evil. I don't think so.  I am unable to find an online copy of The Tragedies of the Last Age Considere'd, but the matters of 'inspiring proper moral behaviour' and 'the triumph of good over evil' go back a very long way. Friedrich Nietzsche  knew this.  The Birth of…

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 present one is worth reading for its wider scope. Now off to Bayreuth we go.  A few years ago, there appeared a web article (link at end) entitled Gitterdammerung (The Twilight of the Gits), referring to the envisaged consequences of the property bubble.  Today, however, another author envisages something even more drastic, which…

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 best served by a balanced philosophy that includes all three cultures. While an emphasis on technology bolsters innovation, market-driven firms are more attuned to what consumers want, giving them an edge in commercializing new products. Firms that focus on their competitors or customers generate more new product suggestions than technology-…

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 latter, researchers say. The study also claims that the highest assault rates are associated with carry-out sites selling alcohol for off-premise consumption. The findings were released yesterday and presented as part of the Feb. 18-22 annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in San Diego, Calif. Using crime statistics and…

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 the women in gym shorts who happen to be limping and follow them somewhere.   I don't have a lot of data points but, anecdotally, I think I am correct.   The APTA (American Physical Therapy Association) is next door. Why the limping?  I am not sure on that.  Physical therapists usually help other people with…

'If you begin by treating the scientific ideas of earlier centuries as myths, you will end by treating your own scientific ideas as dogmas': we have tried, throughout this book, to display the developing character of the scientific endeavor, and to indicate why the different problems of cosmology came to be tackled in the order in which they did. If we are to understand even our own scientific ideas, and do more than simply manipulate with the most up-to-date calculi, we shall do well to study the strong points of the scientific systems which they displaced. From the quandaries and…

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 themselves to customers can increase sales, word-of-mouth marketing and customer loyalty significantly among a subset of their customers, according to the new research from Rice University's Jones Graduate School of Business. Researchers surveyed customers of Dessert Gallery (DG), a popular Houston-based café chain. Prior to the study, DG…

Vigorous two-party competition and modest salaries for lawmkaers are key to preventing pork barrel legislation and other bills that benefit only one lawmaker's constituents, finds a new study of state lawmaking published in the American Political Science Review. the study examined every piece of legislation, a total of 165,284 bills, introduced during seven legislative sessions between 1880 and 1997 in the lower house of 13 state legislatures: Alabama, California, Illinois, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Montana, Nebraska, New York, Texas, Vermont, Virginia, and Washington. The chosen…

The way celebrity entrepreneurs are depicted by the media doesn't illustrate what it's really like to start up and run businesses, according to a survey of small business owners and business advisers from Nottingham University Business School. For the Q4 2009 editions of the UK Business Barometer (UKBB) and UK Business Advisers Barometer (UKBAB) surveys, three questions about the media's portrayal of enterprise and entrepreneurs were added and the results reveal some frustration from people running small businesses that media portrayals don't match their experiences and the challenges they…

Knowledge Should Inform Belief Unfortunately, belief is all too often used as an excuse for selectively ignoring knowledge. ... real-world knowledge does not exist simply to be cherry-picked according to one’s own beliefs, but to be made sense of, and to form one’s beliefs. Kerr Jac - Ideas and Ego.