purely viral campaigns, like disease outbreaks, typically start with a small number of seed cases and quickly burn themselves out unless their R exceeds the epidemic threshold, or tipping point, of 1….There is an important flaw in the epidemic analogy, however: Companies, unlike diseases, can use standard advertising methods to create potentially enormous seeds.
–from Duncan Watts and Jonah Peretti, HBR
Automatic Metaphor Interpretation as a Paraphrasing Task – computational metaphor detection and paraphrase – wow, to be presented at COLING 2010
FactRank from Factery Labs
It could be a buying opportunity. Stocks are at good value. Earnings are growing fairly strongly. Economic fundamentals are still strong, especially for the U.S., making it possible that the risks are overblown.
—Wayne Lin, a money manager at Baltimore-based Legg Mason Inc., which manages $685 billion: via Bloomberg.
Unless you’re trapped on an airplane or enjoying movie night at the penitentiary, you have no excuse for watching “Killers.”
—Jeannette Catsoulis, from the first line of her review of Killers: via NYTimes
There is every prospect that within the next twelve to eighteen months Greece will default on its US$420 billion in sovereign debt. This would constitute the largest sovereign debt default in history….
A Greek debt default would almost certainly result in intense contagion to Spain, Portugal, and Ireland since markets will no longer have the assurance that no Euro-zone country will be allowed to fail.
—Des Lachman: via AEI
and then there’s the new edition of the Economist. It has the special interactive feature only available in the print edition. Whey you hold it in front of you on the train, it makes you look like a pretentious ass.
—Peter Sagal: via NPR. Paula Poundstone followed up that one could achieve the same effect with the iPad.
In sum, those taking more economics classes favored less regulation or government intervention affecting prices for specific goods and services, including wages and salaries.
—FRB of New York, in a recent study that covered graduates of the 1976, 1986, and 1996 classes of UNC, Purdue, Florida Atlantic University, and the Univesrity of Nebraska-Lincoln. The study also suggested that those who study economics were more likely to be Republicans and to donate to a political cause.
Stilltitled 