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Image credit: DepositphotosIn 2025 it’s hard to argue that social media are not to blame for...

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After a dozen years as a market research executive, Fred Phillips was professor, dean, and vice provost at a variety of universities in the US, Europe, and South America. He is now Visiting Professor... Read More »

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Machine translation poetry

Machine translation poetry

Jan 03 2015 | comment(s)

Nonsensical but oddly beautiful Bing and Google translations from Facebook posts in a variety of languages:

袁嘟嘟第一次以老公的身分參加部門聚會，泡完湯好舒服

12 Common Mistakes In Empirical Social Science

12 Common Mistakes In Empirical Social Science

Dec 29 2014 | comment(s)

Management students entering my thesis prep course without having been involved in research before, or taken a probability course, reliably make these mistakes. Many students go on to do empirical quantitative theses, meaning that their misconceptions about sampling and analysis will come back to bite them.
Companies In Rehab (And Governments. And Universities.)

Companies In Rehab (And Governments. And Universities.)

Dec 24 2014 | comment(s)

A guy messes up his life, and the lives of those around him. We send him for rehabilitation: A jail term, AA meetings, community service, anger management classes, or restitution to victims.

Ah, Cuba

Ah, Cuba

Dec 19 2014 | comment(s)

Ah, Cuba. My father’s college roommate’s mother – are you following so far? – was a travel agent, and had gone on one of these agent junkets to Havana. She danced with the dictator Batista at a formal ball, and returned to the US with stars in her eyes. When my parents married, nothing would do, she insisted, but for them to honeymoon in Cuba.

Cui Bono? B-corporations And The University

Cui Bono? B-corporations And The University

Nov 01 2014 | comment(s)

California and Arizona recently began registering ‘benefit corporations.’ A small California non-profit university with which I’m acquainted has commenced the transition to for-profit, b-corp status.
The Resource Curse: Science Cities Suffer

The Resource Curse: Science Cities Suffer

Oct 20 2014 | comment(s)

I just returned from the Asian Science Park Association conference in Shiraz, Iran.[1] One Science Park official asked me, “Companies in our park cannot get any cooperation from the big petrochemical firms. What can we do?”