by Tom | Oct 7, 2009 | Science
In the same spirit as the Placebo story, Ben Goldacre reports on a significant breakage in the way we run clinical trials. NB this doesn’t mean that the theoretical construct is broken, merely that we are human in its implementation and let other factors...
by Tom | Oct 7, 2009 | Government, IT
A valuable reminder of what was going on in the e-Government era (and funny to see fishinglicence.co.uk there – I joined just after the service had been squashed). The summary is that we started well, but maybe without direction, and then lost our way a little...
by Tom | Oct 7, 2009 | Reading
Interesting thought: how would the phone companies replay to you the analytics from the vast amount of spatiotemporal information they gather every day on you? Fascinating thought if you could see that they implicitly know your home, work, friends, favourite...
by Tom | Oct 7, 2009 | Government, IT
The NIEM is a new undertaking in the US, predominantly for emergency situations. However, the general idea of a shared language and categorisation to support sharing between organisations is spot on and a larger version of what we are trying to do in the NHS.
by Tom | Oct 7, 2009 | Science
Pharmaceutical-based medicine will be transformed when we work out how to utilise the placebo effect fully. It’s not that the old meds are getting weaker, drug developers say. It’s as if the placebo effect is somehow getting stronger.I guess there will be...
by Tom | Oct 7, 2009 | Personal, Reading
Lots of frenchified stuff in there, but still fun and for a good purpose. That said, my first run through was still my best – I can’t recreate the belief that I’d know everything and that even my guesses would be correct.
by Tom | Oct 7, 2009 | Reading
Nice bookmarklet creator that will resize and reflow web pages to make them more readable. I like it for some of the longer Wired articles. Let’s see if I keep using it.
by Tom | Oct 7, 2009 | Business
Some entertaining financial illustration of the gulf facing news publishers.£155 is what a paid-up reader is worth to a newspaper each year£5 is the annual revenue from a newspaper online (not sure I buy this; is this as an add-on to the print subscription?)£2 is...
by Tom | Oct 7, 2009 | Business, Reading
Not as pretty as POTUS, but an enlightening discussion on decision making and responsibility in the US DOD. Not a job anyone would take lightly. No wonder Bob Ainsworth is having a difficult time.Separately, is it just me or do the 12 shocking ideas all seem pretty...
by Tom | Oct 7, 2009 | Reading
You have to love shots from above. I wasn’t sure whether I preferred the pyroclastic flows or the gibbous moon (yes, it is that way around).
